Ed Feser on Aquinas' First Way and the nature of God

Ed Feser in part 2 of his lectures at Gozaga University. He goes into depth on the cosmological argument, as stated in Aristotle's Prime Mover argument and Aquinas' First Way, and relates the cosmological argument (which clearly demonstrates God's existence) to the deeper understanding of God's attributes, which turn out to be, simply from careful reasoning, quite like God as the scriptures portray Him.

Compare Feser's detailed rigorous argument with the middle-school banalities of Dawkins and his fans. One of the things that moved me to the Christian side in this great debate about God's existence was the rigor and precision of the theist arguments, and the abject idiocy of the atheist arguments.

Grab a cup of coffee, kick back, and enjoy. For atheists, you might want to have some smelling salts handy.

"This Home is Gun Free!"

I love James O'Keefe.

A devastating interview of Richard Dawkins

Wow. The interviewer is Mehdi Hasan, a Muslim journalist on Al-Jeezera. It is one of the most skillful interviews I've ever seen. Hasan's questions are brilliant, and he pins Dawkins again and again on his inane atheist "philosophy".

It's long, but please watch the whole thing. We need to hear a lot more of Hasan. What a pleasure to hear an intelligent dissection of Dawkins' pseudo-scholarship. Hasan is an uncommonly skillful journalist.

Is Fox News listening?



HT: Jerry Coyne

The new pro-abortion meme

Abortion mongers have shifted their rhetoric rather dramatically in the past couple of months. It is a major change in the terms of the debate, in a way that we on the pro-life side may not fully realize.

Abortion proponents have been dumping the "pro-choice" canard for a new, and much more effective, lie.

Fashionista Nanette Lepore got the memo, and she explains:

... January marks the 40-year anniversary of the historic U.S. Supreme Court decisionRoe v. Wade that legalized abortion. Young women have grown up assuming that abortion access is a given -- that every woman should be able to make decisions about her pregnancy and her health. They don't know what our nation was like when abortion was illegal -- when women died from unsafe abortions -- when a woman's decision about her pregnancy was up to the politicians who decided the abortion laws in any given state. In my hometown, abortion was performed by strangers pretending they were doctors. 

Nearly half a century of safe and legal abortion has been empowering for women, and has allowed us to lead our lives on our own terms. Whatever we decide about our pregnancies -- these are decisions that a woman can make because of the historic Roe decision. It's something that I recognize as so important for women everywhere, but it's also something I'm very aware needs to be protected. 

Because unfortunately, politicians continue to try and undermine women's health care access -- in state after state, we've seen relentless attempts to chip away at access to abortion. Just last month in Michigan, state legislators came together behind a bill that would create burdensome restrictions on abortion providers in the state -- a thinly veiled move aimed at limiting a woman's access to abortion that has nothing to do with improving women's health and everything to do with denying them care. We've seen similar attempts across the country -- from my home state of Ohio to Texas and beyond. 

This is wrong. And it's dangerous. 

I will not let this most personal of health care decisions be undermined by politicians. I want this medical option to be safe and legal for young women today and for generations of young women to come to consider if and when they need it. As a longtime supporter of Planned Parenthood, I have seen that they work tirelessly to protect access to safe and legal so that women can make their own health care decisions.

The abortionistas are rebranding baby-killing as "women's health".  Why? The rhetorical effectiveness of "choice" may be diminishing, but I think that there is a more important reason for the change in tack.

Obamacare.

"Choice" is a counter-productive term in a socialized health care system, because of course the things that you "choose" need not necessarily be paid for by the government (i.e. your fellow taxpayers). The meme: Plastic surgery is a "choice". Abortion is a medical necessity.

Abortion-mongers are rebranding abortion as necessary life-saving (!) women's healthcare, to guarantee that it will be funded and protected by our new government healthcare apparatchiks.

Defining a procedure which isn't successful unless someone dies as "life-saving healthcare" should make you spit your coffee, but this is Obama's America.

Euthanasia will be included eventually, as well. Get used to it.

Oh, and I hate to use "meme" in the title for this post, but since it suggests a viral infection of the mind, it seems to fit.

David Attenborough: 'Sorry, there's just too many of you'.

Sir David Attenborough, reporting from England, which population control cranks predicted
would cease to exist 13 years ago. 

From the Reich Chancellery Press Office:

David Attenborough - Humans are plague on Earth 

Humans are a plague on the Earth that need to be controlled by limiting population growth, according to Sir David Attenborough.

By Louise Gray, Environment Correspondent

The television presenter said that humans are threatening their own existence and that of other species by using up the world’s resources. 

He said the only way to save the planet from famine and species extinction is to limit human population growth. 

“We are a plague on the Earth. It’s coming home to roost over the next 50 years or so. It’s not just climate change; it’s sheer space, places to grow food for this enormous horde. Either we limit our population growth or the natural world will do it for us, and the natural world is doing it for us right now,” he told the Radio Times. 

Sir David, who is a patron of the Population Matters, has spoken out before about the “frightening explosion in human numbers” and the need for investment in sex education and other voluntary means of limiting population in developing countries. 

“We keep putting on programmes about famine in Ethiopia; that’s what’s happening. Too many people there. They can’t support themselves — and it’s not an inhuman thing to say. It’s the case. Until humanity manages to sort itself out and get a coordinated view about the planet it’s going to get worse and worse.”

Malthusians have perhaps the most consistent record of predictions of any fringe movement. If you look at Malthusian predictions dating back to the late 18th century, every one has been the opposite of what has actually happened. From Malthus to Ehrlich, every population control nut has gotten it wrong: the food supply didn't increase arithmetically, but exponentially. Population growth in developed areas naturally slows, and does not increase exponentially. Population density has no correlation whatsoever with human flourishing. The predicted famines in the developed world in the 1970's and 1980's never happened. In the developing world, food security has improved markedly in the past half-century, thanks to the Green Revolution. 

Attenborough's asylum-mates in the population control movement have quite a record:

In 1968, Paul R. Ehrlich wrote The Population Bomb and declared that the battle to feed humanity had been lost and that there would be a major food shortage in the US. “In the 1970s … hundreds of millions are going to starve to death,” and by the 1980s most of the world’s important resources would be depleted. He forecast that 65 million Americans would die of starvation between 1980-1989 and that by 1999, the US population would decline to 22.6 million. The problems in the US would be relatively minor compared to those in the rest of the world. (Ehrlich, Paul R. The Population Bomb. New York, Ballantine Books, 1968.) New Scientist magazine underscored his speech in an editorial titled “In Praise of Prophets.”

Claim: “By the year 2000 the United Kingdom will be simply a small group of impoverished islands, inhabited by some 70 million hungry people … If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000.” Paul Ehrlich, Speech at British Institute For Biology, September 1971. 

Claim: Ehrlich wrote in 1968, “I have yet to meet anyone familiar with the situation who thinks India will be self-sufficient in food by 1971, if ever.” 

Data: Yet in a only few years India was exporting food and significantly changed its food production capacity.

Population controllers' theories may be a joke, but their methods are not. Hundreds of millions of people in China, India, and Peru have been victims of brutal one-child policies, forced sterilization and abortions, coerced infanticide, and incessant totalitarian propaganda campaigns-- all crimes against humanity. 

Take these people seriously. They pay lip service to voluntary methods, but their 'solution' for overpopulation is totalitarian to the marrow, and they mean to do serious harm.

"who ever knew Truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter?"

Sometimes atheists and Darwinists are just so stupid and hypocritical that it takes your breath away.

Darwinist fanatic Jeff Shallit blogs about a non-credit course titled "God and Reason" organized by four Christian professors at the University of Waterloo where Shallit is a math professor. The course addresses the questions of God's existence and the relation of theology to reason.

Shallit is skeptical that the course will address atheism fairly:

In thinking about this course more, I think there is a big dilemma for the instructors. All four of them are respected and accomplished researchers and scholars. But a scholar, by definition, must explore the literature both for and against any point of view. If there are arguments with some merit against your thesis, you must address them. 

On the other hand, a Christian evangelical usually feels no such obligation. Their primary goal is to convert you to their belief, not to explore themes with scholarly detachment. 

So, which will it be in this course? So far I am not very optimistic that scholarship will win out over Christian apologetics. For one thing, the textbook is Timothy Keller, The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism which, at least judging from the reviews, is not an academic or scholarly text that addresses the other side fairly. Second, no opposing point of view is given as recommended reading. Third, the whole exercise is sponsored by "Power to Change Ministries". And finally, no one associated with the course is a skeptic, non-believer, or even non-Christian. 

So here is a suggestion to the organizers. Live up to your obligations and reputations as scholars, and, for each session, list some suggested readings for "the other side". For example, for the next lecture, you might mention Jordan Howard Sobel's recent book, Logic and Theism: Arguments for and Against Beliefs in God, which is available here for free if you are a student or faculty member at the University of Waterloo. I could list many more. 

After all, "who ever knew Truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter?"

Free and open encounters are the heart and soul of scholarship. And I have no doubt that the professors will address atheist and theist arguments fairly and in some detail-- that seems to be the whole point of the course.

How about this, Dr. Shallit: let's apply the same enthusiasm for free and open encounters to evolutionary biology courses, offering students I.D. books and books on theistic and Thomistic evolution as well as the implicitly atheist Darwinist gruel.

'Teach the controversy' should apply to evolution as well as to apologetics. 

Please pray for the people in Brazil

There's been a horrible nightclub fire in Brazil that has killed 233 people. Reportedly it was caused by pyrotechnics used by the band, like the horrendous Station Nightclub fire ten years ago in Rhode Island. Why are bands allowed to use pyrotechnics anymore?

Please pray for the victims and their families of this heart-breaking tragedy.