Thursday, November 29, 2007
So in the middle of an article about Intelligent Design after the Dover decision, this appears in the Salon article:
But like bacteria adapting to antibiotics, creationism has slimmed down once again, this time shedding even a mention of an intelligent designer.
I don't want to critique the overall point he is making, but I want to point out the analogy Mr. Slack uses.
Like bacteria slimming down.
Bacteria doesn't beef up to thwart antibiotics. Blind, natural forces don't beef up, they slim down. In other words, Mr. Slack confirmed the thesis of Michael Behe's new book.
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Back in May, Christopher Hitchens had an online debate with Douglas Wilson, who challenged Hitchens to provide a basis, any basis, for an objective morality without God.
So here is Hitchens being asked about his debate with Wilson:
What about the question of morality without God? Al Sharpton spent a lot of time grilling you on that. And it was also a major theme in your email debate with the Christian author Douglas Wilson at Christianity Today.
Weird guy.
Wilson insisted that if you took Jesus out of the equation, the words “right” or “wrong” would have no meaning. Thoughts in the brain would just be a series of chemical reactions, like bubbles in a soft drink. As he put it, “If you were to take a bottle of Mountain Dew and another of Dr. Pepper, shake them vigorously, and put them on a table, it would not occur to anyone to ask which one is ‘winning the debate.’ They aren't debating; they are just fizzing.”
What he’s saying is that if he ceases to believe in Jesus, he’s going to instantly become an immoral person. It’s a terrible admission to have made! It’s an awful insult to human self-respect to say that. And they don’t seem to understand that they give themselves over in that way. It’s like saying that nothing would stop me from raping you now if I weren’t under the supervision of a heavenly dictator. And I have a higher opinion of myself than that.
So the person asking the question understood Wilson. And what does Christopher Hitchens say?
"What he's saying is that if he ceases to believe in Jesus, he's going to instantly become an immoral person. It's a terrible admission to have made!"
But that's not what Wilson said. After a five-part debate, the interviewer got the point but Hitchens still doesn't understand Wilson's argument.
Labels: apologetics, atheism, christopher hitchens, douglas wilson, morality, tag
I got this in an email from Ed Whelan, who works for a think tank.
Nov. 12 1908—In Nashville , Illinois , the human fetus to become known as Harry A. Blackmun emerges safe and sound from his mother’s womb. Some sixty-five years later, Justice Blackmun authors the Supreme Court opinion in Roe v. Wade. (See This Week for Jan. 22, 1973.) Somehow the same people who think it meaningful to criticize Justice Thomas for opposing affirmative-action programs from which he putatively benefited don’t criticize Blackmun for depriving millions of other unborn human beings the same opportunity that he was given.
Labels: abortion, affirmative action, clarence thomas
Thursday, November 01, 2007
“Al Qaeda in Iraq is defeated,” according to Sheik Omar Jabouri, spokesman for the Iraqi Islamic Party and a member of the widespread and influential Jabouri Tribe. Speaking through an interpreter at a 31 October meeting at the Iraqi Islamic Party headquarters in downtown Baghdad, Sheik Omar said that al Qaeda had been “defeated mentally, and therefore is defeated physically,” referring to how clear it has become that the terrorist group’s tactics have backfired. Operatives who could once disappear back into the crowd after committing an increasingly atrocious attack no longer find safe haven among the Iraqis who live in the southern part of Baghdad. They are being hunted down and killed. Or, if they are lucky, captured by Americans.
Al Qaeda attracts murdering, evil people. When they do what they do for long enough, they wear out their welcome. Even in Baghdad.
