Minor Thoughts from me to you

John Goodman looks at whether or not Obamacare will save lives. He starts out by defining the problem.

Being uninsured is like being unemployed. It happens to lots of people for short periods of time. Of all the people who are uninsured at a point in time, more than half will obtain insurance within 12 months and 90% will be insured within two years. So if you want to argue that being eligible for Medicaid is better than being uninsured for most people you have to have a theory that says that extending Medicaid to the temporarily uninsured saves lives.

It gets worse. Since Medicaid eligibility is conditional on income, people become eligible and ineligible as their incomes rise and fall. So like uninsurance, Medicaid eligibility also is a condition that affects a lot of people for short periods of time.

So now you need a theory that says that temporary enrollment in Medicaid for the otherwise temporarily uninsured adds to life expectancy. I know of no studies that test this proposition.

He then points out that, even if this is true, it's the exact opposite of what Obamacare does. Obamacare uses tax data (that can be up to two years out of date) to decide whether or not you can purchase health insurance on an exchange or whether you have to go on Medicare.

So what kind of reform would you want if you believe that temporary uninsurance is bad for health and continuous insurance is good? Obviously, you wouldn't want to enroll people in a plan where eligibility changes every time family income bobs up and down. You would instead want to encourage plans that cover people for long periods of time. The help (subsidy) you make available can bob up and down as income changes -- but enrollment shouldn't follow the same rollercoaster. The subsidy may be income dependent, but enrollment should not be.

Ideal health insurance actually would not include Medicaid at all. It would involve people enrolling in private plans that are portable, and travel with them from job to job. And this result is consistent with other research. For although there is some argument about how much difference health insurance makes, almost every study finds that private insurance is better than Medicaid.

Obamacare delenda est. Because it really is a bad way to solve the problem of health insurance.

Ha! It's still Wednesday! This post's on-time! He slides into home!

(Ahem.)

Ere we return to the contents of I_ Don't Have Enough Faith..._ scheduled for today, I wish to regale you with a joke - one made by my father's side of the family whenever the occasion is suitable.

Imagine, if you will, that the entire family is about to sit down to a meal. Prior to seating herself, one of the cooks - likely my grandmother - notices the oven has been left on, even though its contents have long since been removed to the table.

She immediately demands: "Who left the oven on?!"

Whereupon one of us replies: "Well... I guess we all did."

Cue much laughter and mirth. Or groans and denunciations. Whichever happens to suit your temperament. You get it though, right?

Sure you do. But wait! There's more. Please imagine that after the joke is acknowledged, my grandmother once again asks: "Seriously, though! Who left the oven on?!"

Oops - turns out she really is a little upset about this. We probably shouldn't have joked about it. The atmosphere grows a little uncomfortable.

But not as uncomfortable as when two voices pipe up from the end of the table: "We just told you."

The voices belong to two men named Norman Geisler and Frank Turek. They were in town for the holiday, so my family invited them over. My father's a fan of Geisler's work. He bought me a copy of The Big Book of Bible Contradictions for Christmas one year.

"Excuse me?" my grandmother might reply (might, because we are of course firmly in the territory of fiction now).

"We all left the oven on," Geisler and Turek say again.

"Yes, but who forgot to turn it off?" my grandmother asks.

"Everybody!" Geisler and Turek respond. They are smirking to each as they say this, clearly congratulating each other on their brilliance. Everyone else, meanwhile, is exchanging nervous glances. On the one hand, they're guests in our home and we must treat them well. On the other hand, they're being jerks, and they don't even seem to realize it; it's as if they really, truly believe they've addressed the question. Something should be done.

So, as is the way with anecdotes, especially fictional ones, I become the hero of the story by saying: "OK. Who removed the turkey from the oven and did not proceed to then twist the knob to the 'off' position?"

At this point, the culprit sheepishly owns up. My grandmother gives him an appropriately withering look. Luckily, however, her glare transmits far less ire than it might have otherwise. By now, most of her anger has been diverted and firmly fixed toward toward our guests.

OK. That's my tale. Please keep it in mind as we return to today's pages of I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist.

When last we left our heroes (I mean authors Geisler and Turek, not Joe and me... lest there be any confusion), we had just been introduced to their patented Road Runner Tactic.

Just to review: the Road Runner Tactic is "the process of turning a self-defeating statement on itself" (39), so named because:

it reminds us of the cartoon characters Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote... Just when the Coyote is gaining ground, the Road Runner stops short at the cliff's edge leaving the Coyote momentarily suspended in midair, supported by nothing. As soon as the Coyote realizes he has no ground to stand on, he plummets to the valley floor and crashes in a heap.

Well, that's exactly what the Road Runner tactic can do to the relativists and postmodernists of our day. It helps them realize that their own arguments can't sustain their own weight.

The authors primarily intend to utilize this tactic to defeat claims that all truths are relative, or that all truths might as well be relative since it's impossible to know anything for certain - claims they have labeled ornery agnosticism. The reason they seek to invalidate ornery agnosticism, of course, is because it provides a convenient excuse for people not to believe evidence for their Christian claims.

So they list multiple examples of how one might become an "absolutely fearless defender of truth" (p.39 - no, really) by deploying the Road Runner Tactic against

self-defeating postmodern assertions such as: "All truth is relative" (Is that a relative truth?); "There are no absolutes" (Are you absolutely sure?); "True for you but not for me" (Is that statement just true for you, or is it true for everyone?).

You see their point - and presumably, also the point of my story.

Yes, the Road Runner Tactic allows for some fun "Gotcha!" moments, but it doesn't remotely address the actual argument of the ornery agnostic, does it? It's just a quibbling over semantics - a diversion from the real issue.

Let's Tarantino back real quick to my grandmother, who is an excellent example of an ornery agnostic because she's demented and has Alzheimer's. Her five senses and memory are constantly misinforming her. Let's say she has what alcoholics call "a moment of clarity" - she becomes briefly, terrifyingly aware of her mental illness - and looks over to Norman Geisler and Frank Turek, who happen to be standing by her at the time.

"Help!" she says. "I can't tell what's real! I can't know anything for sure!"

"Oh?" one of them replies, unable to keep a smile from creeping onto his face. He knows he's about to look like a super genius. "Do you know that for sure...?"

In this scenario, hopefully my grandmother maintains her sanity long enough to kick one or both of them in their groins. But perhaps she doesn't, because before things go any farther someone nearby might roll their eyes and say to the apologists: "OK, I'll answer. No, she doesn't know that for sure. Maybe her brain is telling her truth, but she can't tell. Duh!"

Similarly, if any ornery agnostic says: "Since our brains are capable of misinforming us, we can never be completely certain of our findings."

And Messrs. Geisler & Turek respond: "Are you certain of that?"

The ornery agnostic is quite within his or her rights to answer: "No. Maybe my brain always tells the truth, but I can't be sure. That's the point."

QED. So much for the Road Runner Tactic's disproving of the ornery agnostic's position - which doesn't mean it's useless, only misapplied in this case. Thumbing through the second chapter, I see other points at which Geisler and Turek deploy the R.T.T. quite effectively. Here are a few other paraphrased examples of theirs, both hits and misses:

• "I don't believe in the Law of Causality." "What caused you to come to that conclusion?" (Thumbs up.)
• Page 40: "All truth is relative!" "Is that a relative truth?" ("Nope, you're right. It's not. So we've identified one truth that is. Yay." Bad usage.)
• Page 43: "I'm skeptical about everything." "Oh? Are you skeptical about skepticism?" (What is that even supposed to mean? Oy vey.)
• Page 59: Off-hand, the doctors' attack on Hume's principle of empirical verifiability looks solid, but then I'm not really schooled in Hume. In regards to Kant, I think they make the same error I've been trying to illustrate for these last two posts. Kant's point is clear to those willing to honestly wrestle it.

CHECKING ARGUMENTS AGAINST REALITY

Here's another, more simple way of putting all of the above:

When Geisler and Turek say that truth is knowable, it's implicit that they mean: "People can accurately observe Reality."

We know for a fact, however, that many people like my grandmother cannot accurately observe Reality.

We also know that people who cannot accurately observe Reality are often incapable of understanding their condition.

So Geisler and Turek are quite simply wrong here, just as biologists were quite simply wrong (and to their credit, understood they were wrong) when they decided it was physically impossible for a bumblebee to fly. They've gotten so hung up on their rhetorical argument that they've failed to notice its departure from their actual experience (an obvious irony when we're discussing ornery agnosticism, but there it is).

That's a mistake with a history, especially in religious apologetics.

NEXT: As we cross over into Chapter 2, we hopefully finish up with I Don't Have Enough Faith's treatment of Agnosticism - and after having spent so much time showing why they're wrong to discount it like they do, nevertheless (reservedly) agree with Messrs. Geisler & Turek that it's not a worthy a world view.

We have to cut spending, so that we can stop borrowing, so that we can start paying down our existing debt. Why? Well, if we don't, the interest payments on our debt will soon be the only thing left in our budget.

Is this fear mongering? No, that's actually the best case scenario.

Thanks to the Mercatus Institute and Veronique de Rugy for this info.

Michael Lewis writes about Greece, a collectivist nightmare:

The Greek state was not just corrupt but also corrupting. Once you saw how it worked you could understand a phenomenon which otherwise made no sense at all: the difficulty Greek people have saying a kind word about one another. Individual Greeks are delightful: funny, warm, smart, and good company. I left two dozen interviews saying to myself, "What great people!" They do not share the sentiment about one another: the hardest thing to do in Greece is to get one Greek to compliment another behind his back. No success of any kind is regarded without suspicion. Everyone is pretty sure everyone is cheating on his taxes, or bribing politicians, or taking bribes, or lying about the value of his real estate. And this total absence of faith in one another is self-reinforcing. The epidemic of lying and cheating and stealing makes any sort of civic life impossible; the collapse of civic life only encourages more lying, cheating, and stealing. Lacking faith in one another, they fall back on themselves and their families.

The structure of the Greek economy is collectivist, but the country, in spirit, is the opposite of a collective. Its real structure is every man for himself. Into this system investors had poured hundreds of billions of dollars. And the credit boom had pushed the country over the edge, into total moral collapse.

Contrast this to capitalism. When I see a well-off American, I can be reasonably sure that he got where he is through hard-work, thrift, and good luck. The vast majority of people in this land of cowboy capitalism are not cheating on their taxes, bribing the government, or lying.

Which society would you prefer to live in?

(Link and title idea from Russ Roberts.)

Kay S. Hymowitz wrote about the fragile family effect, 3 weeks ago.

One of the study's most surprising initial findings was that the large majority - 80 percent - of poor, unmarried couples were romantically involved at the time of their child's birth. In fact, 50 percent of the couples were living together. Fathers almost always visited the mothers and children in the hospital and usually provided financial support. Even better, most of these new parents said that there was a 50-50 chance that they would eventually marry each other. They spoke highly of their partners' commitment to their children and of their supportiveness.

But within five years, a tiny 15 percent of the unmarried couples had taken wedding vows, while 60 percent had split up. At the five-year mark, only 36 percent of the children lived with their fathers, and half of the other 64 percent hadn't seen their dads in the last month. One-half to two-thirds of the absent fathers provided little or no financial support.

These families -- and society as a whole -- would have been far, far, far better off had these parents stayed together, instead of splitting up.

I don't know the full story of why 85% of the unmarried parents parted ways. But I can speculate as to one cause. Is it possible, is it conceivable, that welfare and broad societal support for "single mothers" is making mom feel comfortable about life without dad? Is it possible that welfare is making Dad feel okay about walking out on Mom?

I can only speculate but it would seem that Dad doesn't have to deal with the guilt of leaving Mom penniless and unsupported if he knows that Mom can register at the welfare office. And Mom doesn't have to worry about the implications of life without Dad if she knows that she can get a monthly support check with or without him.

I think it's a question worth asking. Is our compassion towards single moms leading us into a policy that creates more single moms and more "fragile" (broken) families?

Warren Meyer points out Richard Lindzen's Congressional testimony as a great example of the central problem with global warming models.

Here are two statements that are completely agreed on by the IPCC. It is crucial to be aware of their implications.

1. A doubling of CO2, by itself, contributes only about 1C to greenhouse warming. All models project more warming, because, within models, there are positive feedbacks from water vapor and clouds, and these feedbacks are considered by the IPCC to be uncertain.

2. If one assumes all warming over the past century is due to anthropogenic greenhouse forcing, then the derived sensitivity of the climate to a doubling of CO2is less than 1C. The higher sensitivity of existing models is made consistent with observed warming by invoking unknown additional negative forcings from aerosols and solar variability as arbitrary adjustments.

Given the above, the notion that alarming warming is 'settled science' should be offensive to any sentient individual, though to be sure, the above is hardly emphasized by the IPCC. 4

Did you catch that? Even assuming that all of the warming that occurred from 1900-2000 was due to human activities (a very dubious assertion to begin with), the climate still isn't as sensitive to increases in CO2 as the climate models predicate. The climate models have to add in additional fudge factors to get the results that the "scientists" want to see.

Until that changes -- until there is hard evidence that the climate really is that sensitive to increases in CO2 -- I'll continue to oppose any kind of carbon caps, carbon taxes, or any other attempt by the government to control how we generate and use energy.

It turns out that the life insurance industry loves the estate tax.

The life insurance industry's lobbying presence in D.C. is huge - larger than almost any other industry sector. According to the report, life insurers spent $10 million per month on lobbying in the first half of 2010. Only the pharmaceutical, electric utilities and oil and gas sectors, the heaviest of heavy hitters, spent more.

Life insurers spent more on lobbying than even bankers and health insurers.

One of the most outspoken voices urging a higher estate tax, Warren Buffet, owns six life insurance companies, the report says.

The report was produced by the American Family Business Foundation, an ardent opponent of the estate tax, and written in part by Tim Carney, a senior political columnist at the Washington Examiner.

It's really not hard to understand why the life insurance companies would love the estate tax. Most wealthy people don't have banks and mattresses stuffed full of money. They own expensive assets: businesses, houses, artwork, the Yankees, the Cowboys, etc. When they die, and their estate is suddenly taxed at 55%, the heirs are left with unpalatable choices. Do you sell the Yankees, to pay the tax man?

In steps the helpful life insurance company. For a hefty annual premium, they can help provide the money to pay the tax man, without needing to sell cherished family assets. If the estate tax goes, how many of these wealthy individuals will need life insurance? None, probably. Poof. There goes 10% of the industry's revenues.

Fight "the man". Fight oligarchic "capitalism". Fight crony capitalism. Fight the estate tax.

Ken Pierce points to this satire of President Obama as an example of why he likes Sarah Palin.

I agree. There are many things not to like about Governor Palin. Her sense of humor isn't one of them. He also points out a great example of President Bush's humor.

Any advice for parents of teens? "Look them in the eye and say, 'I love you and there's nothing you can do to make me stop loving you. (pause) So, stop trying!'"

As I was reading President Bush's memoir, I was reminded that I do like his sense of humor and his personality. It was just his policies that I mostly disliked.

Sorry I'm late with this one. The wife fell ill this week and the new employee needed training. Wah, wah, wah. Onwards.

With Chapters 1 and 2 (they are grouped together in the book, so we'll do it too), Messrs. Geisler and Turek seek to prove, as you might expect, the first two points of their case for the Bible. In keeping with their intention to prove the inerrancy of the Bible "from the ground up" - taking no link in the chain of their argument for granted - these first points are pretty basic:

1. Truth about reality is knowable.

2. The opposite of true is false.

For purposes of clarity, I'm dividing their first point into two sub-points (both of which they address):

1.1. Truths about reality exist.

1.2. Truths about reality are knowable.

The first point of these two sub-points and the second point are easily and ably proven through logic. Since all truths exclude their opposites, they can't all be true; most of them have to be false. Easy. So let's just check those right off by bolding them, like Geisler and Turek do in their book:

1.1. Truths about reality exist.

1.2. Truths about reality are knowable.

2. The opposite of true is false.

Now: in my opinion, the first thin ice upon which Geisler and Turek walk concerns Point 1.2.

The doctors declare that truths about our reality can be induced and deduced through information we obtain via our five senses and some good logic - and as easily agreeable as that sounds, many a philosopher would disagree. A school of thought exists which suggests we can never be certain of anything, because our five senses are easily fooled and our ability to analyze anything logically depends on our senses.

My maternal grandmother is a perfect example of what these philosophers mean. To my family's general horror, my grandmother's mind has disintegrated over the last several years; she is now "demented" in the medical sense of the word, as well as a victim of Alzheimer's. As a result, I have entered her home to find her hiding in her house from intruders she can clearly see, but we can't; had to stop her from going into the forest to look for her lost children (my parents); and watched helplessly as she spoke with her reflection in her bedroom mirror. I've never witnessed anything more heartbreaking or disturbing.

I can compare my grandmother to other people and see that yes, she must be the one who's crazy. All evidence points to her view of reality being mistaken, not mine. But try telling my grandmother that.

I certainly have. To my regret I occasionally became frustrated with her - mad because as many times as I told her my aunt is not her sister or some other rudimentary fact about the world, she did not absorb that information - but now I've come to accept she can't will her way out of her current perspective. Her way of looking at the world is as unshakable as mine is now... which apparently isn't that unshakable at all. All it would take to change it is a good, hard hit to the head or a neurological disorder.

So what if you were afflicted with my grandmother's disorders? Yes, you'd be insane - but how could you tell? And how, some philosophers add, can we tell that we're not already afflicted with "disorders" of our own? We can't, of course. And thus the truth may be out there, but we can't know it for sure. Geisler & Turek name this viewpoint ornery agnosticism*.

Or so many of us might think, say Drs. Geisler & Turek, before reading I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist - because they claim to have coined a method by which you - yes, you! - can easily demonstrate the absurdity of such notions. And if you think I'm merely mocking the good doctors with my enthusiasm, well, here's their introduction of it:

If someone said to you "I have one insight for you that will absolutely revolutionize your ability to quickly and clearly identify the false statements and false philosophies that permeate our culture," would you be interested? That's what we're about to do here. In fact, if we had to pick just one thinking ability as the most valuable we've learned in our many years of seminary and postgraduate education, it would be this: how to identify and refute self-defeating statements... (38)

They call it... the Road Runner Tactic.

And it is certainly as simple as advertised: you're supposed to identify a self-defeating statement (if I write "I can't write a word in English" I am clearly wrong) and then turn it back on its itself ("Ah ha!" you might wittily reply, "That can't be true, because you just wrote that in English!"), thus revealing it as the nonsense. Simple as it is, though, Geisler and Turek assure us:

This will make you look like a super genius!

And as is their wont, they offer us a few anecdotes to show us how well it's worked for them.

Which we'll judge for ourselves on Wednesday.

*I just tried to google "ornery agnosticism", since it struck me as an odd label, and can't find it referenced outside of Christian apologetics.

Last Tuesday, the Senate passed a food safety bill. The House is expected to pass it easily and the President plans to sign it.

They shouldn't. It's a bad bill.

One of the biggest problems with food safety is that different agencies are responsible for different parts of the food supply.

In the case of the Wright County Egg salmonella outbreak which resulted in the recall of half a billion eggs earlier this year, the USDA was aware of problems such as dirt and mold in the Iowa facility. But the USDA did not notify the FDA, which has overall authority.

Moreover, the regulatory responsibilities often overlap, leaving agencies unsure who is in charge of what. As an example, Coburn pointed to frozen pizza:

Do my colleagues realize right now when we buy a pizza at the grocery store, if you buy a cheese pizza it comes through the FDA, but if you buy a pepperoni pizza, it gets approved by the U.S. Department of Agriculture? How many people in America think that makes sense?

This bill does nothing to change that. It should be rejected on that basis alone.

Second, food safety just isn't that big of a problem.

Indeed, according to the Centers for Disease Control, no more than three-thousandths of one percent of food-borne illnesses are fatal in the United States.

Senator Tom Coburn remarked on that as well.

We could spend $100 billion additionally every year and not make food absolutely safe. There are diminishing returns to the dollars we spend. But if you look at what the case is: In 1996, for every 100,000 people in this country, we had 51.2 cases of food-borne illness -- the best in the world, by far. Nobody comes close to us in terms of the safety of our food . But, in 2009, we only had 34.8 cases -- three times better than anybody else in the world. So the question has to be asked: Why are we doing this now when, in fact, we are on a trendline to markedly decrease it?

Third, this bill will be expensive.

The legislation will cost $1.4 billion over 5 years. This cost does not include an additional $230 million in expenditures that are directly offset by fees collected for those activities (re-inspections, mandatory recalls, etc.). The total cost of the bill is over $1.6 billion over 5 years. Of these costs, $335 million are for non-FDA programs - the food allergy grant program, implementation grants to assist producers, assistance grants to states and Indian Tribes.

Fourth, this bill gives the FDA new powers that it doesn't need and that it will probably abuse.

Most worrisome is the fact the bill as it currently is written would give the FDA the authority to require mandatory recalls of tainted food.

At first blush this seems reasonable, but the current system of voluntary recalls already resulted in a $100 million loss to tomato growers in the U.S. when a salmonella outbreak caused the FDA to recommend a recall. It turned out the problem was not tomatoes but jalapeno peppers, but by the time the real culprit was discovered the damage was already done.

Hart points out that bureaucrats with the power to order recalls would be very likely to jump the gun and order a huge recall before all the facts are in. Worse, it would precipitate a fight between the industry and regulators, who currently have a fairly good working relationship.

Coburn noted in his address that inspectors do not need the authority to order recalls

Why don't they need that authority? Because if you have a problem with your product in the food system in this country, you are going to get sued. You are going to get fined if you do not recall that product.

"You're going to see (inspectors) pull the trigger prematurely," Hart said, noting bureaucrats tend to be more worried about doing what's safe in terms of their jobs rather than what's right.

This is a bad bill. Rather than modernizing the food safety responsibilities of the federal government, it leaves authority split between more than 30 different agencies. It directly raises costs to small farms and producers. It gives the FDA a large incentive to order damaging recalls with no incentive to protect farmers from hysteria. Finally, it just isn't needed. America's food supply is already the safest in the world. Spending more money won't create any noticeable increase in food safety, only an increase in the price of our food.

For the good of the nation, the House should reject this flawed bill and President Obama should refuse to sign it.

(Note: The House was originally expected to pass the bill easily but now may not be able to, as the bill infringes on the House's constitutional rights. The Constitution states that all bills for raising revenue must originate in the House. This bill raises revenue and originated in the Senate. Oops.)

Decision Points by George W. Bush

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

When I read political memoirs, I'm typically looking for one of two things: a much better understanding of the politician or a much better understanding of the decisions that were made and the day-to-day, nitty-gritty detail of events that led into the decisions. Sadly, with this book from "43", I got neither.

President Bush had an active presidency and was often juggling many simultaneous crises. I was hoping for a look at what life was like in his White House. How crazy does a typical day look when you're juggling a Social Security reform bill, a war in Iraq, and a belligerent North Korean state all at once? Sadly, I never found out. By organizing the point around different topics and focusing on one decision point at a time, he stripped events from their context, rendering them sterile and unmoored from the emotions of each year of his presidency.

I was also greatly disappointed by the lack of detail surrounding each decision point. Many of the descriptions boiled down to a very simple formula. "An event happened. I had a gut feeling but knew I needed to consult with some trusted advisors. My advisors confirmed my gut instinct and I implemented the plan. Ultimately, I was disappointed in the outcome and I know realize that I should have changed my tactics (but not the overall plan). Today, America is better off and I'm glad I made the attempt, even if it didn't turn out quite the way I'd hoped it would."

I wish I could say that I exaggerate and that there is a higher level of detail in the book. I can't. The Harriet Miers debacle, for instance, only takes about a page to relate. I've watched the West Wing. I know that a huge amount of work goes into the selection of a Supreme Court Justice. Going into the book, I wanted to know a lot more about the process that led to picking Ms. Miers as a nominee. This book did nothing to satisfy my curiosity.

People who already love President George W. Bush will probably love this book. Those of us who read it hoping to find a reason to reevaluate his presidency will have to go away disappointed.

The 12-point argument for the Bible's divinely-inspired authority doesn't actually start until Chapter 1, but Mssrs. Geisler and Turek make a couple of assertions in their book's introduction ("Finding the Box Top to the Puzzle of Life") that require addressing - and more importantly, also begin to reveal a tendency they have to manipulate their readers.

Their introduction begins by recounting Frank Turek's experience as an undergraduate in a university's course on the Old Testament. Turek writes:

From the beginning, the professor took a very skeptical view of the Old Testament. He immediately affirmed the theory that Moses did not write the first five books of the Bible, and that many of the Bible's supposed prophetic passages were written after the fact.

At the end of the semester, Turek claims he was nearly convinced the Bible could not be taken as read, but still didn't know whether that meant God existed. So he decided to ask his professor.

Without a moment's hesitation he snapped, "I don't know."

"You don't know?"

"No, I have no idea."

Hearing this, Turek "simply walked out, frustrated with the entire semester... I expected a lot more from a university religion professor. I later learned that my expectations were too high for the modern university" (18-19).

Like most Christian conservatives, Turek and Geisler have a serious axe to grind with today's public universities. They deride the attitude they believe has taken hold in the "_plura_versities" that "deem every viewpoint, no matter how ridiculous, just as valid as any other" (19).

This accusation of theirs is, I think, an oversimplification of what's actually a pretty reasonable point-of-view. Sure, there are plenty of people out there who just so hate conflict that they've chosen to protect themselves from it by effectively shutting off their minds to the question of who's right and who's wrong in politics and religion. There are also those who've put serious thought into the matter, however, and have decided against judging world views because if The Truth is unknowable - and there are good reasons to suggest it's not - then practically speaking, all that matters is what works for you, while not infringing on others' search for what works for them. I'm not really a fan of this view, but it makes more sense than Geisler and Turek are suggesting here when they condescendingly explain how two mutually contradictory claims can't both be true (do they truly believe this idea's never occurred to the "_plura_versities" with whom they disagree?).

But we'll talk more about agnosticism when Geisler and Turek do; I don't want to get ahead of them. Today I just want to talk about Turek's Old Testament professor, because the episode irks me. The avowed agnosticism of Turek's professor doesn't bother me as it did (and apparently still does) bother Turek because it's clearly only a summary of the man's ideas on the subject. As a lone statement it doesn't tell us much at all; the specifics of his world view clearly require a little unpacking. All of which is to say that if Turek had simply stuck around long enough to ask a second or even third question, he probably would have gotten a much more concrete response.

Obviously I can't know what Turek's O.T. professor would have said if given the chance, but here's just one of many possibilities:

"If you don't know if God exists, how do you know the Bible isn't 100% true?"

"Oh no, I'm as certain as I can be that the Bible's version of God is incorrect. It bears all the marks of simply being a man-made document. But in so far as whether a being we could rightly name 'God' exists in our vast multiverse? Whether the Prime Mover was or is intelligent? I really have no clue and I'm not convinced we can. I wish it were otherwise."

See? That wasn't so hard, was it?

Here's the thing, though: taking this episode in isolation, I would simply chalk up Frank Turek's huffy exit here to a young man's impatience. But a pattern begins to emerge when you read through the other chapters of I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist. It turns out Geisler & Turek love to provide us with anecdotes in which they wittily outmaneuver an atheist in a debate. Chapter 2 includes a plethora of them, including several more examples of how much smarter Christian apologists were as young men than their secular college professors (come to think it, it's practically a genre of anecdote in Christian apologetics: David and Goliath recast in an academic setting). And the cut-off points for a number of these recounted conversations are problematic for me in the same way Turek's opening story of his semester in an Old Testament class does, particularly when G&T; get to their patented "Road Runner Tactic" for debates in Chapter 2. I'll note them as we come upon them.

For now, I'm just going to point out that Frank Turek's lack of further inquiry into his old professor's belief accomplishes something: it makes the professor look more foolish than he probably was. As we continue reading through I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist, I think we'll find Geisler and Turek do this often.

(A twice-weekly schedule, by the way, is looking about right for now. So see you on Sunday.)

That Geisler and Turek have written a book about how much more intellectual sense it makes to be a Christian is, to my mind, interesting in itself for what it says about modern Christianity.

The title isn't simply a catty remark about how ridiculously unsupportable Geisler & Turek believe atheists' world view to be; it's the central contention of their book - that one reason to believe in Christianity is because it's the shortest leap of faith available. As early as their introduction, they set out very carefully an understanding of faith as an unnecessary evil, one which everyone is forced to employ to the least possible degree because none of us have omniscience. And they are very clear on the point; later they spend part of their second chapter insuring we understand the only good reason to believe something is if it's supported best by the available data.

Which is not an argument with which I'm inclined to disagree... but, er, isn't it an unbiblical position? I mean, I can't be the only one who remembers that faith is considered a good thing in the Word, right? Isn't Faith one of Paul's three virtues?

I realize I'm open to charges of equivocation here. "Faith" has a number of definitions and the one Geisler & Turek use ("belief that is not based on proof") is different from the faith Jesus finds and applauds in a Roman soldier ("confidence or trust in a person or thing"), or the faith of the three Hebrews before Nebuchadnezzar's oven ("the obligation of loyalty or fidelity").

But it's not different from what Jesus is talking about when He says, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed” (John 20:29). Or when He demands we come to Him with the belief of little children (i.e. unquestioning) in Matthew 18:3 & 19:13-15, Mark 10:13-16, and Luke 18:15-17. Or when God informs Israel that any messenger capable of "signs and wonders" should nevertheless be distrusted if his message does not conform to prior revelation, so that even actual, first-hand evidence of the supernatural is no excuse to change one's mind. No, these are all ringing endorsements for faith irrespective of evidence. In fact, the less evidence you need the better.

The modern rationalist, of course, dismisses this world view as a near-perfect inversion of the true respective worths of faith and evidence. In I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist, it's clear Geisler & Turek agree it's more important to have evidence than faith, as do many other Christians here in the West (just check out Webmaster Joe's own introductory posts on the book In Search of A Confident Faith. The first one's here, second one's here). But by doing so, they in effect cede that the Bible's own point-of-view about belief is antiquated.

If you ask me, that's not a good way to start an argument for the Bible's inerrancy.

NEXT: The book's introduction.

A couple of days ago I wrote about why I wouldn't be writing a series on this blog rebutting Norm Geisler's and Frank Turek's I_ Don't Have Enough Faith To Be An Atheist_, a book I feel is pretty emblematic of Christian apologetics as a field.

This is the beginning of that series.

I changed my mind and decided to write it for a couple of reasons. First, I was pretty convinced that such a series would be merely redundant, since Kyle over at ExChristian.net has already done an excellent job of putting paid to Geisler and Turek's book, but on further reflection Kyle's responses to the majority of these arguments aren't (all) mine. Second, the book's 12-step line of reasoning for why the Bible is divinely-inspired and inerrant also looks like a handy way to organize a discussion not only of Geisler and Turek's points, but the points of other Christian apologists like the odious Dr. William Lane Craig. Third, I have to read the book anyway - I promised - so I might as well get some mileage for Joe's blog out of it.

Webmaster Joe, incidentally, is reading and annotating a book of Christian apologetics himself: In Search of A Confident Faith, by Drs. Moreland and Issler. I think it'll be interesting to see how the two books we're reading compare. I suspect, for example, to find the two books replicate many of the same arguments. I will, of course, continue to snap at his heels whenever he posts, and gladly invite him to return the favor.

OK then! So here's Geisler and Turek's chain of logic, which is designed to take one from no presuppositions whatsoever in favor of Christianity to believing the Bible is the divinely-inspired Word of God.

1. Truth about Reality is knowable.
2. The opposite of truth is false.
3. The theistic God exists, which we can tell from the Cosmological Argument, Teleological Argument, and Moral Argument.
4. If God exists, miracles are possible.
5. Miracles can be used to confirm a message from God.
6. The New Testament is historically reliable.
7. The New Testament says Jesus claimed to be God.
8. Jesus' claim to be God was miraculously confirmed by his fulfillment of prophecies, sinless life, miraculous deeds, and resurrection.
9. Therefore, Jesus is God.
10. Whatever Jesus/God said is true.
11. Jesus taught the Bible is the Word of God.
12. The Bible is the Word of God and anything which contradicts it is false.

We'll start either tomorrow or the day after.

If anyone has any good ideas for what to call this series of posts, by the way, I'm open to suggestions. Nothing's coming to me just at present and unless something does, I'm just going to be boring about it.

There's only one possible debate between a skeptic of the Bible and a Christian apologist I would care to hear more than Dr. Robert M. Price vs. Dr. William Lane Craig: a debate between the aforementioned Dr. Craig and Dr. Jeremy Beahan (unfortunately not yet the recipient of a Wikipedia page) of the always-excellent Reasonable Doubts podcast.

I'm still sadly unaware of such an event - but I'm more than content to learn today that my second-place dream match-up did in fact take place as far back as 1999 at Ohio State and can be downloaded here. And so utterly convinced am I of its entertainment value that as of this writing I've yet to listen to it for myself.

Which means I might as well throw out my prediction ere I enjoy: I think Dr. Price is the most Biblically literate and clear-thinking skeptic I've ever discovered, but I cringe to suspect Craig will acquit himself better, as his debating skills are legendarily sharp (thus my hope he'll one day debate Dr. Beahan, who I'd wager anything knows at least as much bout philosophy as Lane, if less about the Bible, but most importantly knows how to formally debate). Let's find out...

UPDATE: Yeah, I had it just about right. Craig stayed completely on-target and Price rambled, allowing himself easily to be diverted by whatever side-subject caught his interest. The former came to a debate, the latter merely to talk. What I find curious about this result is its (herein demonstrated) predictability; how bizarre that Craig's opponents, from Hitchens to Price, either never seem to realize he intends to engage them in an old-school, formal debate - in which points are systematically laid down, then attacked and defended - or simply refuse to put in the time to prepare for one with him (and preparing wouldn't even take them that long. This particular apologist rarely varies his case; listen to any one of his presentations and you've listened to them all). What's more, they don't seem to understand how ineffectual they look when they fail to address his points.

Ah, well. Maybe one day I'll get my debate with Dr. Beahan.

So I got into a little bit of a tiff on Facebook recently with a Creationist acquaintance and foolishly ended up promising to read any one book he desired. He chose Norman L. Geisler's I Don't Have Enough Faith To Be An Atheist.

I found the choice almost serendipitous, since I once toyed with annotating another one of Geisler's books, his Big Book of Biblical Contradictions, before deciding I would rather do something else with my time (after all, I didn't leave the Church just so I could switch teams). Now, however, I flirted with the idea of following through with the project using I Don't Have Enough Faith.... The discovery that I_ Don't Have Enough Faith..._ is free to download on Google Books almost clenched it for me; I wouldn't have to worry about getting my copy back to the library on time.

Then I also found this lengthy but entertaining article by Kyle of ExChristian.net, in which he demolishes the same book point-by-point - and does such an effective job of it that I felt my enthusiasm disappear with every additional line I read.

Now I've finished and just don't care again.

So it goes.

Everyone is discussing tax cuts -- and tax hikes -- right now. The prevailing opinion seems to be that the tax cuts for "the rich" (defined as anyone making more than $500,000 a year) have to go.

The problem, as I see it, is that the income tax rate essentially doesn't matter. Income tax revenues (the actual amount of money collected) have stayed flat over the last 50 years even as income tax rates have fluctuated wildly.

Cutting taxes for the rich hasn't led to a massive drop in tax revenues. When Bill Clinton left office, in 2000, income taxes made up 12% of GDP. In 2008, income taxes made up 10% of GDP. As a percentage of GDP, the Bush tax cuts led to a very small drop in tax revenue. In actual dollar terms, the Bush tax cuts didn't create any drop in tax revenues. In 2000, the government collected $1.5 trillion of incomes taxes. In 2008, the government collected $1.8 trillion of income taxes.

In fact, federal government revenues have more than tripled since 1965.

Note the uptick in federal revenue starting in 2004, after the Bush tax cuts were passed. Taxes as a percentage of GDP stayed relatively constant (or fell slightly) even as tax revenues were increasing dramatically. That's because the economy started growing as soon as the tax rates were cut. People paid more in taxes even as their tax rates fell. From a government's perspective, that looks pretty good to me. You could argue that the growth is coincidental to the tax rates. (I don't believe that but you could choose to argue that.) But I don't see how you can argue that the tax cuts actually cut federal revenues or hurt the economy.

The real problem with the federal budget isn't tax cuts it's spending. We don't have a revenue problem, we have a spending problem. In 2000, the federal government spent $3.2 trillion. In 2008, the federal government spent $5.3 trillion. In eight years, federal spending increased by an incredible 65%. Why do we even have anyone arguing that the government needs even more money? Does the government do everything so efficiently that there is no fat anywhere in the federal budget? When was the last time you saw legislators seriously looking for money to cut out of the budget instead of looking for more ways to tax citizens? When was the last time you saw a government agency get its budget truly cut instead of just getting a cut in the rate of increase?

Income tax rates aren't the problem. Government spending is the problem. Until we start talking seriously about cutting spending, we won't make any progress on cutting the federal deficit and the federal debt.

If you want some ideas about what spending to cut, I'd start with Downsizing the Federal Government.

(Numbers from US Government Revenue and the Heritage Foundation.)

It's popular these days to say that "you can't legislate morality". I've even said it a time or two myself. But is it true?

I read an article a couple of days ago that challenged my thinking on that question: Why We Can't Help But Legislate Morality. In it, Micah Watson argues that morality underlies every law that's passed.

It is of course true that some laws will be better conceived than others, and many may fail entirely to achieve their purpose. But that they have a purpose, and that the purpose includes at least an implicit moral element, is incontrovertible. One need only ask of any law or action of government, "What is the law for?" The answer at some point will include a conception of what is good for the community in which the law holds. The inversion of the question makes the point even more clearly. What would provide a rationale for a law or governmental action apart from a moral purpose?

...

Of course, some choices will fall within the discretion of a polity's citizens. Not every decision has profound moral consequences. But even drawing the line between morally innocent choices and morally culpable choices demonstrates our moral understanding. Abraham Lincoln made this clear in his debates with Stephen Douglas when he noted that Douglas' professed ambivalence about whether states voted for or against slavery showed that he did not think slavery belonged in that category of actions that are truly morally wrong. If you don't care which way a state votes on slavery, then you clearly don't view it as a horrendous moral evil. Rather, you treat it like a state lottery: it is fine if the people want it and vote for it, and it is fine if they don't.

The logic of morals, then, means that there can be no right to do a wrong. Built into the notion of wrong is the corresponding truth that an authority is right to punish perpetrators of the wrong. The idea that government can act as a neutral arbitrator between competing notions of the good life is ultimately incoherent because the idea itself promotes an underlying conception that this arrangement will lead to the best state of affairs.

Every one acts on their understanding of what is moral -- what is best for society. People advocate for higher or lower taxes because of a belief that the rich either need to bear more of the burden or that people are entitled to keep what they've created. People advocate for more or less international trade because they either believe that it's more moral to buy from others no matter where they're located or they believe that it's more moral to buy from your own countrymen. Morality underlies all laws.

The true question is not whether or not a law is legislating morality. The true question is whether that moral issue is critical enough to justify creating a law against it.

Obamacare represents the biggest expansion of taxpayer-funded abortion in American history.

Thankfully John Boehner, our probable next Speaker of the House, is one of the most pro-life people in Washington. Boehner would like to pass a bill "to codify the Hyde amendment ... which would prohibit all taxpayer funding of abortion across the board." I hope he's successful.

Thanks Z, for the link to this video.

Derek Lowe has a very interesting post on Where Drugs Come From:

We can now answer the question: "Where do new drugs come from?". Well, we can answer it for the period from 1998 on, at any rate. A new paper in Nature Reviews Drug Discovery takes on all 252 drugs approved by the FDA from then through 2007, and traces each of them back to their origins. What's more, each drug is evaluated by how much unmet medical need it was addressed to and how scientifically innovative it was. Clearly, there's going to be room for some argument in any study of this sort, but I'm very glad to have it, nonetheless. Credit where credit's due: who's been discovering the most drugs, and who's been discovering the best ones?

Spoiler: Overall 58% of all new drugs come from the pharmaceutical companies. BUT, 53% of all drugs for unmet needs came from either biotech companies or universities and 56% of all truly novel drugs came from either biotech companies or universities.

My conclusion: all 3 sources are important parts of the drug innovation system and we shouldn't bash or diminish the importance of any of the 3 sources.

Obamacare delenda est