P. Z. Myer's Tacit Admission: I Shouldn't be Taken Seriously by Philosophers

This much, at least, can be reasonably inferred from his recent post on Pharyngula, a response to David Hart's new essay in First Things. Despite Myers' claim that he attacks all arguments for the existence of God, he frankly admits that he does not comprehend the terms employed in the cosmological proof for God's existence: "composite", "contingent", "finite", "temporal", "absolute plenitude of being", and so on.

These terms are, of course, slightly technical; but they are the basic vocabulary used in metaphysics in general, and the cosmological argument in particular. Hart is prone to unusual verbiage, but this is simply not the case here. Anyone who is even slightly familiar with the cosmological argument from the original texts knows these basic terms.

"Composite" just means a thing composed of matter and form; two elementary concepts from Aristotle's metaphysics. "Contingent" is simply a being that might exist or might not, but doesn't exist necessarily. "Finite" simply signifies that a thing is circumscribed within limits. "Temporal" signifies that a thing is subject to change over time. "Absolute plenitude of being" is simply a reference to God as pure actuality in Book VIII of Aristotle's Physics. This is Philosophy 101 level material.

P. Z. Myers' bafflement indicates that he has not made the slightest effort to familiarize himself with the cosmological arguments as it appears in the primary texts or, for that matter, anywhere. Even Richard Dawkins would have made the effort to scurry on over to infidels.org, so that he could at least find the (incorrect) stock response. Myers didn't even bother to do a quick Google search.

I won't say the cosmological argument is easy; it certainly can be formulated in many ways, and implicates the deepest questions of ontology (as I've written about before here). In fact, my only complaint about Hart's piece is that he doesn't make the cosmological argument, he just describes it in an oversimplified way. It's a bit as though P. Z. Myers explains to someone that evolution is a biological process whereby fitter animals survive, speciation occurs, and the animal kingdom gets more complex over time, on which his interlocutor would express dismay that anyone could possibly understand the concepts "fitness", "speciation", or biological complexity. Myers would no doubt end the conversation there, and instruct his interlocutor to at least get the basic ideas down so that the subject may be intelligently discussed.

The same thing is going on in Myers post. He doesn't understand the most basic of the philosophic issues involved, and he cannot expect competent philosophers or theologians to take him seriously. Why should they? They can't read the Physics for him; he must do that for himself.

What would Myers think of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason? Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit? Heidegger's Being and Time? If he can't get the concept of actuality straight, I can only imagine what he would think of transcendental idealism or an immanentalist ontology. Or what he would think of David Hart's academic philosophical writings (which are actually difficult).

In the end, Myers just proves Hart's point. Unlike the great atheists of yesterday, the neo-atheists don't have the faintest clue about the very arguments they claim to reject. Myers has the courtesy not to pretend that he does. For his honesty, I suppose, we should be grateful.

Kentucky Equality Federation Wrong: It's stupidity that threatens us, not hate

The first reports said that a gay Jackson County teen was the victim of kidnapping and attempted murder. Three teens had dragged the victim, Cheyenne Williams, with a chain around her neck, out of her car and tried to push her off a cliff. The mother of the victim claimed it was because of her daughter's sexual orientation. She was "nearly killed," said one report. But the gay teen had the presence of mind to record the whole thing on her cellphone, providing proof of what happened. Gay Rights activists donned their masks and capes and leaped before the cameras with their verdict.

"It was a hate crime," said Jordan Palmer, head of the Kentucky Equality Federation.

In fact, it seemed the perfect confirmation of the narrative of gay rights groups, who seem to believe the cultural landscape is replete with roving bands of homophobics looking for gays to bash.

But then the facts started to become clearer. The Kentucky State Police started looking into the incident. Both victim and the assailants were longtime friends, having known each other since 6th grade. Williams went on from the harrowing incident to a job interview, and then to her parents, neither of whom she mentioned it to at the time.

But it didn't matter to people like Jordan Palmer. It was a hate crime.

When police investigators asked Williams why, instead of filming the incident on her phone, she didn't call 911, she said she didn't think they would respond in time. In fact, has anyone thought to ask exactly how a victim of such a crime manages, without the assailants apparently even noticing it, that the victim is filming the whole thing with her cell phone?

It didn't matter. It was still a hate crime.

Then police--and the judge--viewed the video. There was no chain around her neck. And Williams was laughing throughout the whole incident, causing the judge to walk out of the undoubtedly disappointing cinematic experience and give both sides a good talking to. Then she reduced the charges to misdemeanors.

But the people who really need a talking to are people like the Kentucky Equality Federation, who still, unaccountably, think it's a hate crime.

The Lexington Herald-Leader described the Kentucky Equality Federation as "a volunteer organization." This is probably accurate, since no one has yet detected anything resembling professionalism. The group has announced that it is backing Williams up "all the way." But the group may have trouble backing someone up who herself is backing up. Here is part of the transcript of Williams being questioned by the attorney for one of the accused girls:

Gay: "Is there any evidence to support the murder charge?"
Williams: "No, ma'am."
Gay: "Is there any evidence to support the kidnapping charge?"
Williams: "No, ma'am."

As most people are figuring out, this was apparently a prank that went to far, conducted by teenagers with a severely low level of common sense and a little too much time on their hands. Teenager doing stupid things. Imagine that.

The State Police don't think it's a hate crime. The judge doesn't think it's a hate crime. No one thinks it's a hate crime--except the Kentucky Equality Federation.

And once the Kentucky Equality Federation succeeds in hauling the FBI into Jackson County, Kentucky to investigate a good case of stupid teen tricks, they've got more planned. Says Palmer:

It's learned behavior, whether they are learning it from their surroundings or they're learning it from home, they're learning it somewhere. And we need to reach to those children now and expose them to diversity and non-threatening environments before they grow up and they actually do kill someone.

There they go again: saying that stupidity is learned behavior. Don't they know that stupidity is inborn? Stupid people can't help being stupid, and they need to be protected. In fact, isn't there a group somewhere that stands up for the rights of stupid people? Why isn't there a law preventing people like the Kentucky Equality Federation from picking on stupid people?

In any case, once they're done trying to convince all the people who now know this is not a hate crime that it is, in fact--despite all the evidence, a hate crime, they're going to start exposing us to their brand of diversity, which consists exclusively of the uniform thought that there is some sort of widespread wave of violence against gays by people who hate them. Which, of course, is a dramatic overstatement at best, if not simply false.

As I have pointed out before, anti-gay murders are almost nonexistent, and actual physical violence against gays by anti-gays is dwarfed by violence against gays by other gays--in the form of domestic violence.

But this doesn't matter the Kentucky Equality Federation, who, despite all the evidence, still think it's a hate crime.

Page One pulls a punch

Well apparently Jake over at Page One did a post called "Cothran bigoted and anti-semitic," but when I click on the link from my Sitemeter, it goes to an error page. And a search of Page One yields nothing. Apparently, the post was taken down.

Darn, sounds like it would have been an exciting post. Wonder if the folks over there had a fit of conscience or something. Maybe they thought, "Hey, ya' know, maybe we better start practicing responsible journalism. Maybe we should actually start sticking to the facts rather than passing along rumors and stop engaging in hateful criticisms of people with disagree with, particularly when we are accusing them of being hateful."

Not.

C'mon, Jake, let us see it.

The Issue of Question #9: Is the Rand Paul campaign throwing a state pro-life group under the bus to cover up its own mistake?

Have we found the Rand Paul campaign's tragic flaw?

I have thought for several months now that Rand Paul has been, if not the superior potential senator, at least the superior candidate. He is smarter, more thoughtful, and more articulate than Trey Grayson. These are nice qualities to have when you are an elected lawmaker. I was even thinking of personally endorsing him here on this blog.

But now we've got a problem.

I was disappointed when Paul did not receive the endorsement of the Kentucky Right to Life Association (KRLA), and pleased when he got it from the Northern Kentucky Right to Life group. I'd like to see him do well.

It appears that the Paul campaign didn't receive the KRLA endorsement at least partly because of an administrative snafu in answering the KRLA survey, which looms large in the group's endorsement process. An administrative error is forgivable, and if that was where it ended, that's something most of us could live with. But now a more important issue has been created, and it appears to have been created by the Paul campaign itself.

Here's what happened:

• The Paul campaign answered the KRLA survey, but left one question (Question #9) blank. It was the question about human cloning and stem cell research.
• Because of the blank question and for several other reasons, KRLA endorsed Grayson over Paul.
• KRLA was asked about the matter, and responded politely that the Paul campaign had not answered Question #9, and therefore could not be said to have answered the survey "100 percent pro-life," as Grayson did. KRLA has the originals on file--and has posted them on its website--for anyone to view.
• In mid-May, KRLA received a phone call informing them that the Paul campaign was claiming that KRLA was "lying" about the survey and that KRLA was "blocking" the Paul campaign's phone calls.
• KRLA then called the Paul campaign and asked that they stop telling people that they had lied and that they were blocking their calls. In fact, according to KRLA, their phone records show no calls being received from the Paul campaign on any of their three lines.
• KRLA executive director Margie Montgomery then received a fundraising letter from the Paul campaign, stating that Paul had answered the survey "100 percent pro-life."
• After KRLA tried to set the record straight with a press release, the Paul campaign posted a screen shot on its website of their questionnaire, completed, including a "yes" next to Question #9--implying that that is what they had sent to KRLA, and continuing to claim that KRLA had, in fact, been less than truthful about what it had received.
• Then, at a debate on April 23rd (and here is what is really disturbing), Rand Paul said “Whatever they have – I don’t know how it became unmarked, but what we have is marked. We sent it to ‘em by certified mail, and they need to stop, also, not telling the truth on this.” "Sent" in that sentence is in the past tense, but, as it turned out the "certified mail" that was "sent" was sent only after Paul made the statement. KRLA has the tracking number. The debate in which Paul made the statement ended at 1:30 p.m. The certified mail was received at the Bowling Green Post office at 2:40 p.m.
  

Either Rand Paul is lying about this, or his staff is lying to him. In either case, it needs to be addressed.

The Kentucky Right to Life Association has, in my opinion, been more than polite about this considering that a major U. S. Senate campaign is accusing it of lying. But the gloves are starting to come off. The Paul campaign has been almost picture perfect in getting its message out, but this incident could seriously damage the campaign in its final weeks of the Republican primary.

The thing about all this is that it didn't have to happen. All of this could have been cleared up by a polite phone call from the Paul campaign to KRLA. Instead, in an uncharacteristically clumsy (not to mention dishonest) move, the campaign has alienated an important state conservative political organization, and is on its way to alienating the many conservative Kentuckians who support it and consider themselves pro-life.

Rand Paul has billed himself as the outsider, the enemy of politics as usual. But what is more usual about politics than untruthfulness? Grayson has made himself easy pickings for Paul through the incompetence with which it has conducted its campaign.

Let's hope that Paul doesn't force Republican voters in this state to choose between a candidate who has trouble conducting a campaign and a candidate who has trouble being honest.

Heil Jake! The Tolerance Police on the Move Again

Jake at Page One Kentucky is once again marching at the head of the goose-stepping Tolerance Police, and his group of Brown Shorts is now heading for the campaign office of Renee True whose crime seems to be that she supports traditional marriage.

According to Jake, True once made a contribution to the campaign for the Marriage Amendment in 2004--and amendment which garnered more yes votes in Kentucky than any other amendment had votes for AND against.

But Jake isn't taking this standing up. He's laying down in front of True's electoral parade and protesting. Support for traditional marriage, according to Jake, disqualifies her from the office of PVA.

And what is so controversial about a political candidate supporting the most popular ballot initiative in Kentucky history?

Renee’s such a gay-hater she not only supported the anti-gay marriage amendment, she contributed financially to Kent Ostrander’s mess.

If she feels that strongly about an issue – that she financially supported writing discrimination into the constitution – what on earth makes anybody think she’s not going to discriminate or do something equally ignorant as an elected official?

All the Marriage Amendment did was to define marriage the way everyone has always defined it--up until recently when some, like Jake, wanted to change the definition: as between a man and a woman.

Folks, this is what we're in for from the gay rights extremists like Jake: if you believe in marriage as it has traditionally been defined, then you should be disqualified from holding public office.

Now it's interesting that there is nothing in the amendment that says anything about whether gays can hold office or do whatever they want. Yet Jake himself is for preventing anyone with a traditional view of marriage from public office.

Heil Jake!

The problem with out-of-wedlock pregnancy is a lack of marriage, not a lack of contraceptives

The inimitable Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation argues that the focus on teen pregnancy by liberals is a smokescreen hiding the fact that most out of wedlock pregnancies are among young adult women. It is a result, he says, of the breakdown of marriage and is the driving force behind the welfare state:

The steady growth of childbearing by single women and the general collapse of marriage, especially among the poor, lie at the heart of the mushrooming welfare state. This year, taxpayers will spend over $300 billion providing means-tested welfare aid to single parents. The average single mother receives nearly three dollars in government benefits for each dollar she pays in taxes. These subsidies are funded largely by the heavy taxes paid by higher-income married couples.

America is rapidly becoming a two-caste society, with marriage and education at the dividing line. Children born to married couples with a college education are mostly in the top half of the population; children born to single mothers with high-school degrees or less are mostly in the bottom half.

The disappearance of marriage in low-income communities is the predominant cause of child poverty in the U.S. today. If poor single mothers were married to the fathers of their children, two-thirds of them would not be poor. The absence of a husband and father from the home also is a strong contributing factor to failure in school, crime, drug abuse, emotional disturbance, and a host of other social problems.

In other words, the decline of marriage doesn't really bother liberals. But why?

Despite the transparent linkages among poverty, social problems, and disintegration of the family, the liberal intelligentsia has watched the steady collapse of marriage in low-income communities with silent indifference.

The reason? Most liberal academics regard marriage as an outdated, socially backward institution; they have shed no tears over its demise. Even worse, liberal politicians and anonymous government bureaucrats have a vested interest in the growth of the welfare state, and nothing grows the welfare state like the disappearance of marriage.

Single mothers are inherently in far greater need of government support than married couples, so an increase in single parenthood leads almost inevitably to an increase in government benefits and services and a thriving welfare industry to supply them. Marital collapse creates a burgeoning new clientele dependent on government services and political patrons. When liberals refuse to talk about marriage and the poor in the same breath, they are guilty of willful neglect of the major source of poverty.

For the statist, the collapse of marriage is a gift that keeps on giving. It’s no accident that the modern welfare system rewards single parents and penalizes married couples.

The Left, with the complicity of the liberal media, hypes the issue of “teen pregnancy” -- partly because feminists think girls should attend college for a few years before becoming single mothers, partly in order to strengthen their agenda of promoting condom use and permissive sex ed in the schools. (In reality, condom proselytizing is a bogus answer to actual social problems. Contrary to conventional wisdom, lack of access to birth control isn’t a significant contributor to non-marital pregnancy among teens or non-teens.)

Liberal journalists and pundits deliberately remain silent on the far larger issue of out-of-wedlock childbearing among adults because they believe the collapse of marriage is irrelevant, if not benign. From their perspective, concern about marriage is a mere red-state superstition; the important task is to increase government subsidies as we build a post-marriage society.

Read the whole thing here.

Could biofuels ruin the environment?

First there was Climategate. Now another group of Warmers has been caught hiding data that reflects badly on biofuels. Here's Marlo Lewis at Globalwarming.org:

Reuters reports that it used freedom of information laws to obtain a copy of text that was stripped from a December 2009 European Union study on biofuels. The hidden portion of the study found that biodiesel fuel made from North American soybeans has an indirect carbon footprint of 339.9 kilograms of CO2 per gigajoule — about four times larger than standard diesel from petroleum.

The suppressed analysis jibes with Fargione et a. (2008) and Searchinger et al. (2009), who found that CO2 emissions from the land use changes associated with biofuel production exceed the emissions avoided by combusting biofuels instead of petroleum-based fuels.

“The EU’s executive European Commission said it had not doctored the report to hide the evidence, but only to allow a deeper analysis before publishing,” Reuters reports. Uh huh. And if the analysts had found that biodiesel has a much smaller footprint than standard diesel, the Commission would have deep-sixed that study too pending a “deeper analysis.” Right!

Read the rest here.

U. S. Army boots Franklin Graham from prayer service for saying Islam is a violent religion

Apparently Muslims now have veto power over who gets invited to speak a military prayer events:

WASHINGTON, April 22 (Reuters) -- The U.S. Army on Thursday withdrew an invitation to a Christian evangelist to speak at a Pentagon prayer service next month following an outcry over his references to Islam as a violent religion.

Franklin Graham, the son of famed evangelist Billy Graham, said in a statement he regretted the Army's decision and would keep praying for U.S. troops.

The invitation prompted a harsh reaction, including from a prominent U.S. Muslim group that said Graham's appearance before Pentagon personnel would send the wrong message as the United States fights wars in Muslim countries.

Too bad Christian groups don't have this kind sway with our military. With people like this in charge of our nation's defense, we don't need enemies.

Scientists say the darndest things

Science has again discovered something everyone else knew already and didn't need a study to tell them:

Increasingly, neuroscientists, psychologists and educators believe that bullying and other kinds of violence can indeed be reduced by encouraging empathy at an early age.

What would we do without these people? Coming soon: Researchers discover food is good for you.

Getting it wrong (again) on sex abuse in the Catholic Church

John Haas the American Spectator has an excellent response to Peggy Noonan who has now chimed in with all the other uninformed voices that are simply ignoring the Catholic Church's actions in recent years to respond to problems of sex abuse by priests--and asking why, while everyone is piling on the Catholic Church, so little is being said or done about sex abuse and harassment in places like public schools:

Peggy has apparently not noticed that tremendous reform has occurred. In fact, more reform has taken place in the Catholic Church than in any other social institution in which the abuse of minors has occurred. In 2002 the U. S. Bishops approved a Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People. They hired the John Jay College of Criminal Justice to conduct an independent investigation of the problem. They established a National Review Board chaired by a woman (Peggy called for a woman's touch), Justice Anne M. Burke. The National Review Board monitors the policies of the Secretariat of Child and Youth Protection of the bishops and oversees its annual audit. Five of its current 13 members have that "woman's touch." One of the original members of the Review Board was a media representative, William Burleigh, at the time head of the Scripps news agency. This was surely expressive of a desire on the part of the bishops for transparency.

The chairman of the research committee of the original National Review Board, Robert Bennett, said when the report was issued that the sexual abuse of minors was a broad social problem and that a focus merely on the Catholic Church would be a disservice to our children. Regrettably, however, that is exactly what has happened.

There will be media reports of sexual abuse by school teachers, Scout leaders, swimming coaches, and others, but they are fleeting. In March a judge ordered the Boy Scouts to release over 1,200 "perversion files" with Scout leaders who had molested boys. In early April a headline shouted, "Sex Abuse Pervasive in USA Swimming," with reports of molesters going unchallenged for decades as they moved from state to state. In 2002 Dr. Charol Shakeshaft of Hofstra University prepared a report for the U.S. Department of Education that found that 6 to 10 percent of high school students across the country have been sexually abused or harassed. "The physical sexual abuse of students in schools is likely more than 100 times the abuse by priests," she declared. However, such reports will surface for a day and then quickly recede from public consciousness.

Read more here.

Reality check on "Equal Pay Day"

Christina Hoff Sommers on "Equal Pay Day":

Excuse me for interrupting, but this holiday has no basis in reality. Even feminist economists acknowledge that today’s pay disparities are almost entirely the result of women's different life choices—what they study in school, where they work, and how they balance home and career. This is not to deny that some employers will try to pay Jill 78 cents and Jack $1.00 for an identical job. But our strict laws give Jill the right to take that employer to court. The claim that American women as a group face systemic wage discrimination is groundless.

Even feminist economists acknowledge that today’s pay disparities are almost entirely the result of women's different life choices.

There are by now many reputable studies that refute the assertion that women are being cheated out of a fair salary by unscrupulous employers. In January 2009, the Labor Department posted a study prepared by the CONSAD Research Corporation, “An Analysis of the Reasons for the Disparity in Wages Between Men and Women." It analyzed more than 50 peer-reviewed papers. Labor Department official Charles E. James Sr. summed up the results in his foreword:

"This study leads to the unambiguous conclusion that the differences in the compensation of men and women are the result of a multitude of factors and that the raw wage gap should not be used as the basis to justify corrective action. Indeed, there may be nothing to correct. The differences in raw wages may be almost entirely the result of the individual choices being made by both male and female workers."

Read the rest here.

HT: Alternative Right

Christopher Hitchens issues a challenge

Christopher Hitchens has issued a challenge:

Here is my challenge. Let Gerson [Michael, at the Washington Post] name one ethical statement made, or one ethical action performed, by a believer that could not have been uttered or done by a nonbeliever. And here is my second challenge. Can any reader of this column think of a wicked statement made, or an evil action performed, precisely because of religious faith? The second question is easy to answer, is it not? The first – I have been asking it for some time – awaits a convincing reply. By what right, then, do the faithful assume this irritating mantle of righteousness? They have as much to apologize for as to explain.

The second challenge is not even contested by Christians, so I'm not sure what rhetorical force Hitchens thinks it has. Of course people do evil things in the name of religion: they're sinners.

Likewise, as to the first, of course there are no ethical statements that could not be uttered or done by a nonbeliever. Nonbelievers contradict themselves all the time. The question should be: name one ethical statement that a nonbeliever could not justify rationally given his own unbelieving position. And the answer to that question is: all of them.