This is from the blog Common Sense Atheism.

Atheist Luke Muehlhauser interviews well-respect cosmologist Luke Barnes about the fine-tuning argument, and the naturalistic response to it.

Luke M. did a good job explaining the outline of the podcast.

Details:

In one of my funniest and most useful episodes yet, I interview astronomer Luke Barnes about the plausibility of 11 responses to the fine-tuning of the universe. Frankly, once you listen to this episode you will be better equipped to discuss fine-tuning than 90% of the people who discuss it on the internet. This episode will help clarify the thinking of anyone – including and perhaps especially professional philosophers – about the fine-tuning of the universe.

The 11 responses to fine-tuning we discuss are:

1. “It’s just a coincidence.”
2. “We’ve only observed one universe, and it’s got life. So as far as we know, the probability that a universe will support life is one out of one!”
3. “However the universe was configured, evolution would have eventually found a way.”
4. “There could be other forms of life.”
5. “It’s impossible for life to observe a universe not fine-tuned for life.”
6. “Maybe there are deeper laws; the universe must be this way, even though it looks like it could be other ways.”
7. “Maybe there are bajillions of universes, and we happen to be in one of the few that supports life.”
8. “Maybe a physics student in another universe created our universe in an attempt to design a universe that would evolve intelligent life.”
9. “This universe with intelligent life is just as unlikely as any other universe, so what’s the big deal?”
10. “The universe doesn’t look like it was designed for life, but rather for empty space or maybe black holes.”
11. “Fine-tuning shows there must be an intelligent designer beyond physical reality that tuned the universe so it would produce intelligent life.”

Download CPBD episode 040 with Luke Barnes. Total time is 1:16:31.

There is a very good explanation of some of the cases of fine-tuning that I talk about most on this blog – the force of gravity, the strong force, etc. as well as many other examples. Dr. Barnes is an expert, but he is also very very easy to listen to even when talking about difficult issues. Luke M. is very likeable as the interviewer.

There’s an old saying that if you’re not a leftist before they age of 30 then you have no heart, and if you’re not a conservative after the age of 30 then you have no brain. But are leftists really big-hearted? Does the worldview of leftism really make it rational for the leftist to sacrifice their own interests in order to produce good results for other people? Or is there something else going on?

A new study published in the peer-reviewed journal Current Psychology was reported in the New York Post:

Left-wing extremism is linked to toxic, psychopathic tendencies and narcissism, according to a new study published to the peer-reviewed journal Current Psychology.

“Based on existing research, we expected individuals with higher levels of left-wing authoritarianism to also report higher levels of narcissism,” the authors wrote.

As result of the new data, study authors Ann Krispenz and Alex Bertrams have coined a new term for such psychological behavior: the “dark-ego-vehicle principle.”

“According to this principle, individuals with dark personalities — such as high narcissistic and psychopathic traits — are attracted to certain forms of political and social activism which they can use as a vehicle to satisfy their own ego-focused needs instead of actually aiming at social justice and equality,” they told PsyPost.

Advocating for left-wing activism isn’t being done to get results – it’s just being done for personal gain:

“In particular, certain forms of activism might provide them with opportunities for positive self-presentation and displays of moral superiority, to gain social status, to dominate others, and to engage in social conflicts and aggression to satisfy their need for thrill seeking.”

[…]Beyond using any means necessary, people of privileged backgrounds who are aligned with LWA often use their narcissism to make activism solely about themselves instead of achieving social equality for struggling groups.

[…]“As grandiose narcissists typically desire fame, distinction, elevated social status and high social importance, they can be assumed to strive for influential positions that involve social visibility and outreach as well as access to financial and other resources.”

Leftists aren’t trying to comply with an objective standard of morality that exists independent of their own desires. For leftists, morality is just a set of social conventions. They shout their allegiance to social conventions, and advocate for trendy causes with Instagram posts, Facebook shares, and bumper stickers. That’s why the BLM leaders only gave 33% of the donations they collected to charities to advance BLM goals. The rest they kept in order to buy things like million-dollar mansions and other luxuries. They say one thing to make people like them, then they do something else. And their actions are for their benefit, not any victim group. This is the morality of atheism. Do what’s best for you, but paint a picture of yourself as virtuous so people think you’re not self-centered.

One issue where the left is hypocritical is on gun ownership vs gun banning. The same leftists who advocate for gun bans often have private security or bodyguards. They want to tell you how they oppose gun violence, but they want armed people to protect them. Their families need to be protected by guns, just not your family.

Leftists are also hypocritical about race. If you’re a black person and you blame your problems on white people, they love you. But if you’re a black person, and you think that people succeed or fail based on hard work and good decisions, then they hate you. There is no racial hatred like the racial hatred that a white leftist has against black conservatives.

Remember when Democrats were all rushing around warning people to wear masks and stay inside? But they we found out that all the biggest mouths on the left were going to parties and baseball games and hair salons in private, breaking their own rules. The same things happens on climate change. The people who talk the loudest about it are the same ones flying around on private jets.

Democrat politicians are always talking about making the rich “pay their fair share”, but if you look at their rates of charitable giving, it’s lower than the average American. Sometimes much lower. Again, the talk says one thing, but the actions say something else. Because their goal is to be evil, but paint a picture of themselves as good.

I think it’s important for people to understand that loud advocacy for left-wing policies can often be a sign of mental illness. People who want to produce good results are not typically in front of cameras shouting out their virtue. But you’ll have to look far and wide to find a leftist who achieves a good result for someone else at their own expense.

I thought about what story from military history to share with you all for Memorial Day. This time, I decided on the story of Lieutenant Commander Robert W. Copeland and his ship the Samuel B. Roberts. The story takes place during World War 2, in the Pacific Theater, as the American fleet is battling with the Japanese to re-take the Philippine Islands.

I read about this story in “World War II at Sea: A Global History” by  Craig L. Symonds and in “The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors” by James D. Hornfischer.

Before we get started, let’s learn about some ship classes and weapon capabilities.

Japanese Yamato-class battleship:

• displacement: 72,809 tons
• speed: 27 knots
• 9 x 18.1″ guns
• 12 x 6.1″ guns
• 12 x 5″ guns

Japanese Takao-class heavy cruiser:

• displacement: 15,781 tons
• speed: 35.5 knots
• 10 x 8″ guns
• 4 x 5″ guns

American Fletcher-class destroyer:

• displacement: 2,500 tons
• speed: 36.5 knots
• 5 x 5″ guns

American John C. Butler-class destroyer escort:

• displacement: 1,370 tons
• speed: 28.7 knots
• 2 x 5″ guns

So, this story is from October 25th, 1944. It takes place east of the Philippine islands. The American force “Taffy 3” consists of 6 escort carriers, 3 destroyers, 4 destroyer escorts, and an amphibious invasion force. An escort carrier is a light aircraft carrier. The Japanese force has 4 battleships, including the Yamato (!), 6 heavy cruisers, 2 light cruisers, and 11 destroyers. The Yamato is the largest and most powerful battleship ever constructed. The Americans are severely outnumbered and outgunned.

Normally, American escort carriers would be escorted by much larger ships, because they are so valuable. Carrier aircraft have much longer range and striking power than a battleship. But the Japanese had made a plan to lure Admiral William “Bull” Halsey away from the escort carriers and the invasion force, which he was supposed to be protecting. They used some aircraft carriers as bait, and Halsey chased after them with his battleships, cruisers and destroyers. The Japanese aircraft carriers had few aircraft and air crews, and were thus a weak threat. Halsey also declined to communicate his decision to leave the escort carriers to his superiors. He also refused to respond to messages from Fleet Admiral Nimitz. By the time Halsey returned to his duty, he arrived too late to have any impact on the Battle of Samar.

But what about that force of destroyers and destroyer escorts that stayed with the escort carriers?

Here is an article from Warfare History Network that tells the story:

At exactly 6:45 on the morning of October 25, 1944, Rear Admiral Clifton A.F. Sprague received a message from one of his pilots on antisubmarine patrol. The admiral recalled that the message went something like this: “Enemy surface force of 4 battleships, 7 cruisers, and 11 destroyers sighted 20 miles northwest of your task group and closing in on you at 30 knots.”

[…]At 6:58, the ships opened fire. Less than a minute later, colored splashes from the Japanese shells landed astern of Taffy 3.

Two more things I need to explain. First, a “rain squall” is the equivalent of a foxhole in naval warfare. Ships inside the rain squall are invisible to ships outside the rain squall. Second, aircraft carriers must be sailing against the wind in order to launch aircraft.

More:

Sprague was fully aware of his predicament and did not think that his force of “baby flattops” and their escorts would last 15 minutes against the oncoming battleships and cruisers. As soon as the approaching task force was confirmed as Japanese, he “took several defensive actions in quick succession.” He ordered a change in course from north to due east, which pointed Taffy 3 “at full speed toward a friendly rain squall nearby.” The new course also turned his carriers into the wind, and at 6:56 Sprague ordered all carriers to begin launching aircraft for torpedo and bombing attacks against Kurita’s force. A minute later, he ordered the carriers and their escorts to make as much smoke as possible to screen Taffy 3 from the Japanese gunners. A smokescreen offered scant protection against large-caliber enemy shells, but it was better than nothing.

This part is interesting. I have to highlight the bravery of the torpedo, bomber and fighter pilots:

After they dropped their bombs, the pilots made dry runs on the enemy ships to distract the Japanese gunners. The commander of Gambier Bay’s air group flew his Avenger through enemy flak for two hours after he dropped his bombs. The pilots of the Wildcat fighters were sent in to strafe “with the hope that their strafing would kill personnel on the Japanese warships, silence automatic weapons, and, most important, draw attention from the struggling escort carriers.” When their ammunition ran out, the fighter pilots also resorted to dry runs to harass the enemy. One pilot made 20 strafing runs, 10 of them without ammunition.

To me that is astonishing. I would only order my strike aircraft to strafe after dropping their ordnance if the enemy ship was on fire, moving slowly, and far away from her allies.

But it worked:

“The bombers and torpedo planes were very aggressive and skilful and the coordination was impressive,” a Japanese officer told his American interpreter after the war, “even in comparison with the many experiences of American attacks we had already had, this was the most skilful work of your planes.”

Next, the American destroyers – Hoel, Heermann and Johnston -attacked:

In addition to his carrier’s air groups, Sprague also sent his destroyers and destroyer escorts against Kurita’s force. The normal job of these screening warships was to protect the escort carriers from submarines, but now they would be performing a completely different task.

The destroyers did a great job of disrupting the advance of the much stronger Japanese ships with gunfire and torpedo attacks. The Japanese ships had to dodge the torpedoes, delaying their pursuit of the valuable escort carriers:

American torpedoes were not fast and were easily avoided. However, the evasive action not only slowed the advance of the Japanese warships but also created confusion. Admiral Kurita himself said, “Major units [warships] were separating all the time because of the destroyer torpedo attacks.” He realized that he was losing more tactical control every time his ships had to turn to avoid Taffy 3’s torpedoes.

[…]Yamato turned away to evade the torpedoes, heading north and keeping on that course for about 10 minutes. This effectively took Yamato out of the fight.

You can read all the details in the article I’m quoting from, but I want to focus on the destroyer escorts – Dennis, John C. Butler, Raymond, Samuel B. Roberts.

More:

Kurita was becoming convinced that he was facing a major American task force, not just a few escort carriers and destroyers. However, the battle was far from over. At about the same time that Hoel was firing her torpedoes at Haguro, Sprague ordered his destroyer escorts to begin their runs at Kurita’s warships: “Little Wolves form up for a second attack,” he barked. “Wolves” was code for the destroyers, while the radio call sign for the destroyer escorts was “Little Wolves.” So far, the destroyer escorts had been assigned almost exclusively to antisubmarine patrols. Torpedo attacks against cruisers and battleships were something new to Taffy 3’s Little Wolves.

They threw themselves into the task. Raymond took on Haguro, the leading Japanese cruiser. Just before 8 am, she launched three torpedoes at a range of about 6,000 yards. Haguro turned to avoid them while Raymond changed course and got away from the scene as quickly as possible.

Dennis followed the same course of action. She fired her torpedoes at the nearest Japanese cruiser, either Chokai or Tone, and turned sharply to the southwest. At about 8:10, Dennis opened fire with her after 5-inch battery on a cruiser that was already under air attack.

[…]As soon as they made their torpedo attacks, all of the Little Wolves reversed course and headed southwest, making smoke and firing their 5-inch guns at the nearest enemy ship.

On its way back to the escort carriers, the Samuel B. Roberts charged a Tone-class heavy cruiser, and engaged it in a gun fight to stop it from firing at the fleeing escort carriers. Other heavy cruisers also opened fire, sinking the Samuel B. Roberts.

Robert W. Copeland, commander of the Samuel B. Roberts, broadcasted this message to his crew before the battle:

This will be a fight against overwhelming odds from which survival cannot be expected. We will do what damage we can.

And here is a short 12-minute animation that shows what happened in the battle:

In Fredericksburg, TX, at the National Museum of the Pacific War, there is a wonderful movie that shows the whole battle. I’ve been there.

Since this is Memorial Day, I want to highlight the American casualties of the Battle of Samar:

• 2 escort carriers sunk
• 2 destroyers sunk
• 1 destroyer escort sunk
• 23 aircraft lost
• 4 escort carriers damaged
• 1 destroyer damaged
• 2 destroyer escorts damaged
• 1,161 killed and missing
• 913 wounded

The casualty list would have been a lot worse, if not for the bravery of the pilots, and the crews of the destroyers and destroyer escorts who charged much larger ships to protect the valuable escort carriers and the amphibious landing force.

What’s the definition of racism? Well, it seems to me that a person is racist if they treat people of a different skin color differently than they treat people of their own skin color. So, if a white person treats a black person differently than they do a white person, then the white person is a racist. Because they’re discriminating on the basis of skin color. So, who are the real racists? Conservatives? Or Progressives?

The Yale School of Management reports on an academic study that provides the definitive answer to the question:

According to new research by Cydney Dupree, assistant professor of organizational behavior at Yale SOM, white liberals tend to downplay their own verbal competence in exchanges with racial minorities, compared to how other white Americans act in such exchanges. The study is scheduled for publication in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

[…]Dupree and her co-author, Susan Fiske of Princeton University, began by analyzing the words used in campaign speeches delivered by Democratic and Republican presidential candidates to different audiences over the years. They scanned 74 speeches delivered by white candidates over a 25-year period. Approximately half were addressed to mostly-minority audiences—at a Hispanic small business roundtable discussion or a black church, for example. They then paired each speech delivered to a mostly-minority audience with a comparable speech delivered at a mostly-white audience—at a mostly-white church or university, for example. The researchers analyzed the text of these speeches for two measures: words related to competence (that is, words about ability or status, such as “assertive” or “competitive”) and words related to warmth (that is, words about friendliness, such as “supportive” and “compassionate”).

[…]The team found that Democratic candidates used fewer competence-related words in speeches delivered to mostly minority audiences than they did in speeches delivered to mostly white audiences. The difference wasn’t statistically significant in speeches by Republican candidates… There was no difference in Democrats’ or Republicans’ usage of words related to warmth.

More testing confirmed the patronizing white supremacist attitude of whites on the political left:

They designed a series of experiments in which white participants were asked to respond to a hypothetical or presumed-real interaction partner. For half of these participants, their partner was given a stereotypically white name (such as “Emily”); for the other half, their partner was given a stereotypically black name (such as “Lakisha”). Participants were asked to select from a list of words for an email to their partner.

[…]The researchers found that liberal individuals were less likely to use words that would make them appear highly competent when the person they were addressing was presumed to be black rather than white. No significant differences were seen in the word selection of conservatives based on the presumed race of their partner.

Conservatives aren’t racist at all – they’re color blind.

One of the reasons why I get along so well with white conservatives is that they don’t patronize me with low expectations, the way that white leftists patronize non-whites. The view of white progressives is similar to the view of white supremacist racists – they think that there is something defective about people like me because of our non-white skin color.

White supremacists and white progressives agree on this: that non-white people aren’t competent enough to make our own decisions. We need help from big government in order to do what whites can do without help. We need to be told what to think for our own good, and shamed if we step out of line. It’s amazing to me that white racist progressives are seen as “compassionate”, when they are the ones who actually believe in the racial inferiority of non-whites.

I have the most amazing video for you to see. It’s a crazy left-wing activist doxing a libertarian lesbian woman wearing a breathe-through mask. First, let’s take a look at the video. Then, we’ll look at a recent survey reported by Pew Research in 2020, which assesses how mentally stable far-left feminist women are (self-reported). Then, I’ll make some comments for unmarried men.

OK, so here is the video, which was shared by the woman who was doxed. So it’s OK for me to share it, since the doxed woman didn’t care about it.

So, is this crazy woman rare? Or is she common?

Progressive white women and mental illness

Feminist web site Evie Magazine reported on the some 2020 findings by Pew Research (left-wing pollster):

A 2020 Pew Research study reveals that over half of white, liberal women have been diagnosed with a mental health condition at some point.

[T]he study, which is titled Pew American Trends Panel: Wave 64, was dated March 2020 — over a year ago.

The study, which examined white liberals, moderates, and conservatives, both male and female, found that conservatives were far less likely to be diagnosed with mental health issues than those who identified as either liberal or even “very liberal.”

[…]White women, ages 18-29, who identified as liberal were given a mental health diagnosis from medical professionals at a rate of 56.3%, as compared to 28.4% in moderates and 27.3% in conservatives.

Here’s the part of the data I thought was most interesting:

Who would marry a crazy person?

So, the point about this that I want to make is… who is going to marry these mentally ill progressive white women? Being a good wife and mother takes a certain amount of connection to reality. It takes a certain amount of empathy, compassion, and rationality. These progressive white women don’t have any of that. So, who is going to marry them? I know that there are thirsty progressive men (and thirsty conservative men who fake being progressive), who will go ahead and hit it and quit it. Pump it and dump it. But how many men would commit to someone who’s mentally ill?

And in fact, that’s exactly what we’re seeing with the marriage rates:

That’s for America, but things are even worse in countries that have slid further toward the secular left edge of the political spectrum.

When you look at marriage rates in Canada and Europe, you understand that men are even LESS likely to choose marriage when they have to pay over 50% of what they earn in taxes. And so the marriage rate is declining. I think young, unmarried women in Canada and Europe are want to raise taxes in order to get free stuff from government. Single mother welfare, food stamps, abortions, contraceptives, IVF, breast enlargements, etc. Some feminists are even asking for free cosmetic surgery. With a big enough government, they don’t have to marry at all. Big government leaves them free to play the field, without having to care about finding a good man. But what if taxes get so high that the few good men those women passed over for 40 years simply can’t afford to take on a wife and support multiple children he didn’t father? Paying for things like a stay-at-home wife and homeschooling, etc. is expensive. Men can’t afford a wife, and also pay for goodies for all the single progressive women with mental illnesses.

Conservative men want nothing to do with daycare and public schools – we know that those facilities are dominated by progressive women. And we don’t want trouble from feminist lawyers and feminist judges in the divorce courts. Divorce is very expensive for men. And we may never see our children again. Then there are the progressive white women in the workplace, who get very bitter with men as a result of getting wrecked by bad boys. Even if we find a good wife, we still have to deal with all these progressive white women with mental illnesses in positions of power. Is it worth it to take risks like this? It depends on the reward, I guess. There comes a point where the juice isn’t worth the squeeze.

My podcast co-host Rose and I both want Christians to argue for the Christian worldview using studies and evidence. We want the other side to reply on feelings and intuitions, while we present hard data. With that said, I have a report on a new study for you that will help you discuss the issue of medical transitioning of autistic adolescents with gender dysphoria.

Consider this report on the new study from Daily Wire:

The study, published in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, found that guided, peer support group therapy showed positive mental health outcomes for autistic adolescents struggling with gender dysphoria. The study, conducted in the Netherlands, emphasized the importance of mental health treatments, while deprioritizing medical interventions like puberty blocking drugs, cross-sex hormones, and surgery.

“These findings add to a quickly growing stack of evidence suggesting that it’s the psychotherapy and support that is improving these kids’ well-being, not medicalized transition,” said Dr. James Cantor, Director of the Toronto Sexuality Centre, and associate professor of the University of Toronto Faculty of Medicine.

By the way, you may have heard that most gender dysphoria resolves itself without any need for medical intervention. The article says:

Dr. Cantor’s website, Sexology Today, is often cited as a resource that documents eleven studies finding that roughly 60–90% of children who identify as transgender, but do not socially or medically transition, will no longer identify as transgender in adulthood. These studies were referenced by the group of researchers, who acknowledged that gender dysphoria may resolve on its own.

“In a large proportion of children who express their desire for medical gender-affirming care, this seems to disappear during puberty,” the study read.

In a previous post, I blogged about the “social contagion” cause of transgenderism. The technical term is Rapid-Onset Gender Dysphoria (ROGD). Same-age peers and social media play a huge role in children having gender confusion.

But the Daily Wire article had even more interesting information – a link between autism and susceptibility to gender confusion:

Children and adolescents on the autism spectrum are disproportionately represented among the large, newly emerging cohort of children claiming to be transgender. Over the past 10 years, there have been at least nine studies connecting Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and transgender identities. Rates of autistic traits in these studies range from five percent to 54% among those with gender dysphoria, significantly higher than among the general population.

Data from the now-shuttered Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) at the U.K.’s Tavistock Centre found that autistic adolescents were significantly overrepresented in the population of referrals to the clinic. Pediatrician Dr. Hilary Cass was commissioned to conduct a review of the services provided by the National Health Service and investigate why there has been such a huge rise in the number of adolescent biological girls seeking referrals to gender clinics.

Dr. Cass found that approximately one third of youth referred to GIDS had autism or autistic traits. By comparison, the prevalence rates of autism spectrum disorder during childhood in the UK have been estimated at 1%.

Previously, I blogged about how many countries that are more advanced in treating gender dysphoria are leaning towards psychotherapy instead of medical treatment. Something to think about if people in your life and jumping straight to medical treatment instead of psychotherapy,

I have been seeing interesting tweets about the sudden popularity of transgenderism among young people. One of them went something like this. First, they deny that sex-change surgeries are happening. Then, they say they are happening, but not many. Then, they say many are happening, but not to children. Sadly, this new study shows that many are happening to children.

Here’s the story from Daily Wire:

A new study of nationwide hospital databases found that at least 1,130 adolescents between 2016 and 2019 received “gender-affirming” chest surgeries in the U.S.

The study, published in JAMA Pediatrics, saw a 389% increase in adolescents (ages 12-17) obtaining chest surgeries from 2016 to 2019. An overwhelming majority (1,114) of the adolescents seeking this surgery were female (98.6%), and just 16 were male (1.4%).

“To our knowledge, this study is the largest investigation to date of gender-affirming chest reconstruction in a pediatric population,” the paper’s authors wrote, who are each affiliated with Vanderbilt University Medical Center. “The results demonstrate substantial increases in gender-affirming chest reconstruction for adolescents.”

Here is the breakdown by age:

The ages of the pediatric patients ranged from 12 to 17, with 42 (5.5%) of the recipients between 12 and 14, 131 (16%) aged 15, 291 (34.5%) aged 16, and 365 (44%) aged 17.

It’s an interesting situation. I would expect parents to set boundaries on their children. First, to shelter them from public schools and social media. But second, at least keep them away from the people who are profiting from “gender-affirming care”.

Speaking of profiting, there was this:

The median total charges for chest reconstruction were $29,886 ($21,285–$45,147), a number that was adjusted for inflation, the authors note. Most of the chest surgeries (61.1%) were covered by private health insurance, 16.5% used public health insurance including Medicaid, 15.8% paid out of pocket, and 6.7% indicated “other.”

Remember what the lady from Vanderbilt said?

It was reported by Daily Wire:

“It’s a lot of money,” VUMC Clinic for Transgender Health’s Dr. Shayne Sebold Taylor said at one Medicine Grand Rounds lecture, video reveals. “These surgeries make a lot of money.”

Taylor noted that a “chest reconstruction” can bring in $40,000 per patient, and someone “just on routine hormone treatment, who I’m only seeing a few times a year, can bring in several thousand dollars … and actually makes money for the hospital.”

Citing the Philadelphia Center for Transgender Surgery, Taylor said vaginoplasty surgeries can generate $20,000, gushing that it “has to be an underestimate,” since hospital stay, anesthesia, post-op visits, and other add-ons are not included in the total.

“And the female-to-male bottom surgeries, these are huge money makers,” the doctor continued, adding that such surgeries could bring in “up to $100,000” for the hospital.

Some clinics are “entirely” “supported” financially by such phalloplasty surgeries, Taylor boasted.

“These surgeries are labor intensive, there are a lot of follow-ups, they require a lot of our time, and they make money,” she emphasized. “They make money for the hospital.”

Sadly, for one reason or another, the adults have decided that it is more virtuous to go along with the agenda of the schools and social media, and inflict surgeries on their children. I could never understands why anyone would cut healthy organs off of a child with mental health issues. That would be like putting an anorexic person on a diet.

There was a previous study:

In July, the same four authors, with the addition of two others, published a separate study on adults who received “gender-affirming” chest reconstruction surgeries. Their results, also using NASS outpatient hospital data, found that 21,293 individuals obtained chest surgeries between 2016 and 2019, a 143.2% increase. The large majority of chest surgeries were performed on female patients, with 82.1% receiving double mastectomies; 27.9% of trans-identifying males received breast augmentations.

When it comes to debating social issues, I like to have studies close at hand. For same-sex marriage, I use studies showing different outcomes for children raised in same-sex homes. For abortion, I use science textbooks showing that the embryo is fully human. It is self-directed and has distinct DNA from either parent. And for transgenderism, I like to use studies like these, showing how health care providers are profiting from the social trends being pushed by the “don’t judge” compassion crowd in the public schools. The study showing that gender-affirming care does not lower the number of suicides (in the long term) is a good one, too.

I’ve already been blogging about Ron DeSantis’ record of achievements as governor of Florida. DeSantis announced his candidacy on Twitter Wednesday night. 600,000 people wanted to listen, and it crashed Twitter’s servers! After that, he went on Fox News to do an interview. We now have a good picture of what we would get from him as president on Day One.

Here’s an article from Daily Caller about the Fox News interview:

“I have always rejected the politicization of the weather and I think what we should be doing in the United States is focusing on being energy-independent and making sure that we are utilizing the resources… and oh, by the way, when you have market-based solutions and when you innovate, in Florida we have seen emissions go down dramatically in the last 10 years, but that is through market and innovation,” DeSantis told Fox News host Trey Gowdy.

I like this. He is aware of how green energy policies have affected Germany and California. Those are the exact two examples I use on this blog, as well as Canada, which has seen its electricity prices skyrocket after going green.

“What Biden wants to do, he wants to take us in a direction where we are like Germany where we don’t have a reliable power grid, where prices spike,” DeSantis said. “California for example, they have a tough time keeping the lights on, and yet they want to ban the internal combustion engine?”

California has pushed to ban gas stoves, diesel trucks, and gas-powered lawn mowers and leaf-blowers in the name of combating climate change. In August, the state advised citizens not to charge electric vehicles to avoid potential blackouts.

One of the top issues of the 2024 campaign will be what to do about corruption and treason in federal law enforcement.

Daily Caller reports:

“I would not keep Chris Wray as the director of the FBI, there would be a new one on day one, I think that’s very important,” DeSantis told Fox News host Trey Goudy. “In terms of an attorney general, you need someone that’s got a very strong backbone. You need somebody that knows that if you are going in there and you are taking care of business, The Washington Post is not going to like you, The New York Times is not going to like you, you are going to get attacked by CNN and you have to wear that as a badge of honor.”

[…]The FBI has frequently been accused of becoming politicized in cases involving pro-life advocates and parents protesting at school board meetings, and was involved in censorship of social media, according to documents released in the Twitter Files.

“I think the DOJ and FBI have lost their way, I think they have been weaponized against Americans who think like you and me and I think they have become very partisan,” DeSantis said. “Part of the reason that is happening is because Republican presidents have accepted the canard that the DOJ and FBI are ‘independent.’ They are not independent agencies, they are part of the executive branch, they answer to the elected president of the United States.”

Garrett O’Boyle, Stephen Friend and Marcus Allen testified at a hearing held by the House Judiciary Committee’s Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government Thursday about retaliation they faced after they raised concerns about FBI activities, noting their security clearances had been suspended, resulting in them losing their pay and health benefits.

“If the FBI or DOJ, whatever collude with a tech company to try to censor information, everybody involved in that would be fired immediately if I were the president,” DeSantis said. “And right now, I think those agencies have been able to go without any real accountability and so guess what, when there is no accountability, the bad behavior is going to continue.”

You might remember that Trump appointed Director Wray, so this would be quite a change in policy. Trump also praised the work of COVID tyrants Deborah Birx and Anthony Fauci, praising them for their work in locking down the country. Meanwhile, DeSantis kept Florida open and got a lot of flak from the corporate news media.

DeSantis is running to the right of Trump on abortion. DeSantis signed a 6-week ban on abortion into law in Florida. Trump condemned the law, saying it was “too harsh”.

Daily Caller reports:

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said there is “a role” for the federal government in restricting abortions during a Fox News appearance Wednesday evening after he announced his candidacy for president.

[…]Florida’s heartbeat bill, signed by DeSantis on April 13, restricts abortion after six weeks, with exceptions for rape, incest, human trafficking or when the life of the mother is in danger, and brought the state’s abortion restriction down from 15 weeks gestation.

[…]Former President Donald Trump criticized DeSantis’ signing of the bill, claiming many in the pro-life movement believe the abortion ban was “too harsh.” DeSantis seemingly fired back at the former president’s remarks, where he insisted it was “the right thing to do.”

“When we are acting to protect an unborn child that has a detectable heartbeat, that is humane, that is not harsh – that is the right thing to do,” DeSantis said at the National Religious Broadcasters convention in Orlando, Florida, on Monday.

Daily Wire also posted an excellent article about DeSantis’ announcement and his record of past achievements. And noted that DeSantis had raised $1 million in the first hour after the announcement. A lot of Trump’s former campaign staff have moved over to DeSantis, so he’ll have a good experienced team.

As far as I’m concerned, we have to make this election about achievements. If we choose a candidate based on his ability to clown around, insult people, and entertain us, that won’t work to get results. Let’s just pick the person who is known to get things done in the areas we care about.

I found an interesting article featuring a 35-year-old woman who is alarmed that her approach to life has left her in debt and single, with a gap-filled resume of short-term jobs. I thought it might be useful for young women to read this, and consider whether making “rash” decisions and being “adventurous” works out.

She writes:

I feel like a ghost. I’m a 35-year-old woman, and I have nothing to show for it. My 20s and early 30s have been a twisting crisscross of moves all over the West Coast, a couple of brief stints abroad, multiple jobs in a mediocre role with no real upward track. I was also the poster child for serial monogamy. My most hopeful and longest lasting relationship (three and a half years, whoopee) ended two years ago. We moved to a new town (my fourth new city), created a home together, and then nose-dived into a traumatic breakup that launched me to my fifth and current city and who-knows-what-number job.

Rash decisions, adventure, exploring…. and lots of debt:

For all these years of quick changes and rash decisions, which I once rationalized as adventurous, exploratory, and living an “original life,” I have nothing to show for it. I have no wealth, and I’m now saddled with enough debt from all of my moves, poor decisions, and lack of career drive that I may never be able to retire. I have no career milestones and don’t care for my line of work all that much anyway, but now it’s my lifeline, as I only have enough savings to buy a hotel room for two nights.

No STEM degree, which means she doesn’t like to study hard things that can be tested against the real world for correctness:

I used to consider myself creative — a good writer, poetic, passionate, curious. Now, after many years of demanding yet uninspiring jobs, multiple heartbreaks, move after move, financial woes, I’m quite frankly exhausted.

Surprised by aging and poor health:

Also, within the past year I’ve had a breast-cancer scare and required surgery on my uterus due to a fertility issue. On top of that, I’m 35 and every gyno and women’s-health website this side of the Mississippi is telling me my fertility is dropping faster than a piano falling out of the sky. Now I’m looking into freezing my eggs, adding to my never-ending financial burden, in hopes of possibly making something of this haunted house and having a family someday with a no-named man.

She’s still trying to be the sexpot 25-year-old she used to be:

I’m dating. I’m working out and working hard. Listening to music I enjoy and loving my cat. Calling my mom…. I’m drinking too much… And with men I date, I feel pressure to make something of the relationship too soon (move in, get married, “I have to have kids in a couple of years”; fun times!). All the while still trying to be the sexpot 25-year-old I thought I was until what seemed like a moment ago.

But her plan hasn’t worked out:

I used to think I was the one who had it all figured out. Adventurous life in the city! Traveling the world! Making memories! Now I feel incredibly hollow. And foolish. How can I make a future for myself that I can get excited about out of these wasted years?  What reserves or identity can I draw from when I feel like I’ve accrued nothing up to this point with my life choices?

Well, I’ve known women like this, and I think we’re going to see more and more women like this as the society becomes more secular and feminist. I want to say something about whether she is sincere about wanting to get married and have children, and what women should do to avoid ending up like her.

Do women today understand male nature and marriage?

This woman’s demonstrated life plan is that she chose whatever made her feel good from age 18-35+, and now wants to enter into a marriage some time after age 35. And what does marriage mean to her? Has she prioritized entering the traditional roles of wife and mother? Don’t listen to her words. Look at her actions. Her actions show that marriage and children were of NO importance to her. And her current approach to getting married and having kids is the same as ever – work out in order to look hot, and try to coerce a man who signs up for recreational sex with no commitment into becoming a man who makes a life-long commitment to provide for her and her children (which is the opposite of what he signed up for). She wants marriage now for the same reason that she’s wanted anything: for fun, thrills, adventure and to keep up with her girlfriends who are already married.

What kind of man should she have been pursuing from age 18 to 35, if she really wanted marriage and children? Well, the first thing to realize is that not all men want marriage. And the next thing to realize is that women who are serious about marriage need to focus ONLY on men who want to marry. All the men that the women quoted above wanted in her youth didn’t want to marry. They wanted premarital recreational sex with her, and that was fine with her – she chose them, and disregarded the men who were interested in marriage.

A man who was interested in marrying her would have:

• ….told her no to sex before marriage (because the more sexual partners a woman has, the less happy she will be in marriage, and the more unstable her marriage will be).
• …led her to become better at being a wife and mother, by discouraging her thrill-seeking, traveling and wasteful spending, and instead encouraging her focus on a STEM education, career and getting debt-free.
• …led her to develop a Christian worldview in which she would understand the importance of marriage and children, and learn to sacrifice her own interests to love and care for others.

Was she interested in getting ready for marriage? No. She never chose those marriage-minded men. She didn’t want to be a wife. The men she chose were chosen for fun, for thrills, and to show off their outward appearance to her girlfriends.

So, who are the men in this group of marriage-minded men? How do you recognize them? Marriage-minded men are interested in marriage because they want to lead a home. They will have invested a lot of time learning how to protect others, how to provide, and how to debate and lead on moral and spiritual issues. Marriage-minded men see the marriage enterprise as a way of advancing the causes that they care about most. Women who really want to get married will recognize those men, and pursue those men. And they’ll do it early, so that they can invest in their husbands early and be young enough to have children.

Do you shop at Target? I stopped shopping there in 2004, when they banned the Salvation Army from their stores during the Christmas holiday season. At the time, I thought to myself “I wonder if this is being caused by an anti-Christian bias”. And then more stories came out showing that they really might be. Let’s take a look at some of Target’s actions, and decide whether we should shop there.

Here’s the story from The Federalist:

Since 2012, Target has happily stocked the front of its stores with pro-LGBT T-shirts, accessories, pet items, party supplies, and decor. In recent years, Target expanded the reach of messages like “trans people will always exist,” “queer,” and “live laugh lesbian” to the children’s section.

[…]Target furthered its commitment to advancing radical gender ideology this month when it partnered with a Satan supporter who called for the eradication of anyone who disagrees with the mutilation of children to supply transgender-themed merchandise to Target’s “pride” collection.

Target is collaborating with “the U.K.-based brand Abprallen and its designer “Erik,” a self-proclaimed “gay trans man”.

But is Erik really a Satanist?

One quick glance at the designer’s website and Instagram shows dozens of designs featuring satanic and sacrilegious symbols such as pentagrams, “Satan respects pronouns” T-shirts, “gay as hell” stickers, and stained glass windows covered up by “trans bodies are holy.”

“So for me, Satan is hope, compassion, equality, and love. So, naturally, Satan respects pronouns. He loves all LGBT+ people. I went with a variation of Baphomet for this design, a deity who themself is a mixture of genders, beings, ideas, and existences. They reject binary stereotypes and expectations. Perfect,” Erik wrote.

[…]One particularly graphic image on the designer’s Instagram shows a naked demonic creature with a horned skull and mutilated breasts.

In addition to promoting explicit evil, Erik often uses violent language and imagery, with products such as a “burn down the cis-tem” lighter, a “we bash back” mace, and “time’s up for transphobes” skull pins to call for action against people who take issue with radical gender ideology and the dangerous mutilation and castration it prescribes. Erik also sells merchandise promoting the murder of babies in the womb.

One can only infer from this that Target supports all this as well. And if you shop there, then so do you. I disagree with all of that, because I’m a Bible-believing Christian and a Constitutional conservative. So I don’t shop at Target.

This isn’t the first time that Target has gotten into trouble with Christians and social conservatives.

You can see it in their bathroom policies.

Breitbart reports:

The Target department store chain drew the ire of millions of Americans after it announced it was opening its bathrooms to transgender shoppers and employees and allowing them to choose whatever bathroom they feel like using at any given time.

And Christian Post notes:

With that in mind, FRC compiled a list of 21 cases reported in the U.S. stretching back to 1999, but most within the last 10 years, where men violated the privacy of women in bathrooms, locker rooms, and other private spaces.

The most recent case was reported on Jan. 17 by WPRI, concerning a man who mounted a camera inside the family bathroom at a Target store in Lincoln, Rhode Island.

Umit Cakmak, 41, of Providence, was arrested by Lincoln police and charged with video voyeurism, with reports noting that the man already had an active warrant for the same crime.

In a similar case from July 2016 in Idaho Falls, a man who identifies as transgender was arrested on one count of felony voyeurism for taking photos of another woman changing clothes at a Target store in Ammon.

And then of course there was the banning of the Salvation Army from the sidewalks outside of Target stores during the Christmas holidays.

Christian Post reports:

Target shoppers won’t be hearing the sound of bells ringing or a polite “Thank You” when they contribute to Salvation Army Kettle Drive this holiday season. The Salvation Army expects the enforcement of Target Corp’s non-solicitation policy to hurt projected donations and cutback the ministry’s services to the community.

[…]The decision will force many Salvation Army locations to reduce services to make ends meet. The Salvation Army in Metro Detroit has already suffered $1 million in income cutbacks this year and will lose the $220,671 in potential donations it collected last year at Target, which can fund 6,000 meals.

“We’re going to lose 112 days of food service for the hungry because of (Target’s) decision,” Russ Russell, Salvation Army executive director of development, told The Detroit News.

I’ll bet their Satanist friend really approved of that. Do you? Is it time to stop shopping at Target?

There is a very famous thought experiment from UC Berkeley philosopher John Searle that all Christian apologists should know about. And now everyone who reads the Wall Street Journal knows about it, because of this article. (Full text available at archive.md)

In that article, Searle is writing about the IBM computer that was programmed to play Jeopardy. Can a robot who wins on Jeopardy be “human”? Searle says no. And his famous Chinese room example (discussed in the article) explains why.

Excerpt:

Imagine that a person—me, for example—knows no Chinese and is locked in a room with boxes full of Chinese symbols and an instruction book written in English for manipulating the symbols. Unknown to me, the boxes are called “the database” and the instruction book is called “the program.” I am called “the computer.”

People outside the room pass in bunches of Chinese symbols that, unknown to me, are questions. I look up in the instruction book what I am supposed to do and I give back answers in Chinese symbols.

Suppose I get so good at shuffling the symbols and passing out the answers that my answers are indistinguishable from a native Chinese speaker’s. I give every indication of understanding the language despite the fact that I actually don’t understand a word of Chinese.

And if I do not, neither does any digital computer, because no computer, qua computer, has anything I do not have. It has stocks of symbols, rules for manipulating symbols, a system that allows it to rapidly transition from zeros to ones, and the ability to process inputs and outputs. That is it. There is nothing else.

Here is a link to the full article by John Searle on the Chinese room illustration.

By the way, Searle is a naturalist – not a theist, not a Christian. Now, let’s hear from a Christian scholar who can make more sense of this for us.

Here’s a related article on “strong AI” by Christian philosopher Jay Richards.

Excerpt:

Popular discussions of AI often suggest that if you keep increasing weak AI, at some point, you’ll get strong AI. That is, if you get enough computation, you’ll eventually get consciousness.

The reasoning goes something like this: There will be a moment at which a computer will be indistinguishable from a human intelligent agent in a blind test. At that point, we will have intelligent, conscious machines.

This does not follow. A computer may pass the Turing test, but that doesn’t mean that it will actually be a self-conscious, free agent.

The point seems obvious, but we can easily be beguiled by the way we speak of computers: We talk about computers learning, making mistakes, becoming more intelligent, and so forth. We need to remember that we are speaking metaphorically.

We can also be led astray by unexamined metaphysical assumptions. If we’re just computers made of meat, and we happened to become conscious at some point, what’s to stop computers from doing the same? That makes sense if you accept the premise—as many AI researchers do. If you don’t accept the premise, though, you don’t have to accept the conclusion.

In fact, there’s no good reason to assume that consciousness and agency emerge by accident at some threshold of speed and computational power in computers. We know by introspection that we are conscious, free beings—though we really don’t know how this works. So we naturally attribute consciousness to other humans. We also know generally what’s going on inside a computer, since we build them, and it has nothing to do with consciousness. It’s quite likely that consciousness is qualitatively different from the type of computation that we have developed in computers (as the “Chinese Room” argument, by philosopher John Searle, seems to show). Remember that, and you’ll suffer less anxiety as computers become more powerful.

Even if computer technology provides accelerating returns for the foreseeable future, it doesn’t follow that we’ll be replacing ourselves anytime soon. AI enthusiasts often make highly simplistic assumptions about human nature and biology. Rather than marveling at the ways in which computation illuminates our understanding of the microscopic biological world, many treat biological systems as nothing but clunky, soon-to-be-obsolete conglomerations of hardware and software. Fanciful speculations about uploading ourselves onto the Internet and transcending our biology rest on these simplistic assumptions. This is a common philosophical blind spot in the AI community, but it’s not a danger of AI research itself, which primarily involves programming and computers.

AI researchers often mix topics from different disciplines—biology, physics, computer science, robotics—and this causes critics to do the same. For instance, many critics worry that AI research leads inevitably to tampering with human nature. But different types of research raise different concerns. There are serious ethical questions when we’re dealing with human cloning and research that destroys human embryos. But AI research in itself does not raise these concerns. It normally involves computers, machines, and programming. While all technology raises ethical issues, we should be less worried about AI research—which has many benign applications—than research that treats human life as a means rather than an end.

When I am playing a game on the computer, I know exactly why what I am doing is fun – I am conscious of it. But the computer has no idea what I am doing. It is just matter in motion. The computer’s behavior is just the determined result of its programming and the inputs I supply to it. And that’s all computers will ever do. Trust me, this is my field. I have the BS and MS in computer science, and I have studied this area. AI has applications for machine learning and search problems, but consciousness is not on the radar. You can’t get there from here.

I’ve been blogging about DeSantis’ achievements for some time, but a whole bunch of new ones just happened. I want to make sure that people have a good grasp on everything that he’s is accomplishing. How else would you choose a candidate for president, except by looking at what battles he’s fought and won? DeSantis has just visited Iowa and New Hampshire, and I’ll cover that too.

So, here come the stories.

High tourism and low unemployment:

Gov. Ron DeSantis’ office celebrated that Florida witnessed a record 37.9 million visitors in the first quarter of 2023, the highest ever recorded in a quarter.

That tally includes 34.6 million domestic visitors and 1.8 million international.

[…]Florida’s unemployment rate also held at a low 2.6% for April, which the governor’s office bragged is the lowest “among the top 10 largest states.”

Florida’s new six-week abortion ban:

In a recent interview, Trump said that the six-week abortion ban recently signed into law by DeSantis may be “too harsh” in the eyes of “many people within the pro-life movement.”

[…]“What are your thoughts on that?” DeSantis was asked.

[…]“As a Florida resident, you know, he didn’t give an answer about, ‘would you have signed the heartbeat bill that Florida did?’” he continued. “That had all the exceptions that people talk about the legislature put it in.”

[…]“I signed the bill. I was proud to do it. He won’t answer whether he would sign it or not.”

No sex-reassignment surgeries on kids:

Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill to ban sex reassignment surgeries and medications for minors Wednesday.

[…]State funds are prohibited from being used for these treatments. This includes state counties, municipalities, districts and commissions.

Physicians are required to receive written informed consent from adults receiving the surgeries or prescriptions.

The governor said it also gives the Florida courts temporary jurisdiction to intervene and halt procedures for out-of-state children.

“You have actually some states in this country that want to be a haven for these types of procedures, and even welcome minors without their parents consent,” DeSantis said. “We’re obviously doing the opposite here.”

No pronouns required in Florida schools:

Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill into law Wednesday that will prohibit a school from requiring students and teachers to use preferred pronouns and adds guidelines for books that citizens wish to challenge in schools.

“We’re not doing the pronoun olympics in Florida. It’s not happening here,” DeSantis said.

DeSantis said the law, HB 1069, makes sure that Florida students and teachers will “never be forced to declare pronouns in school, or be forced to use pronouns not based on biological sex.”

“There’s a lot of nonsense that gets floated around and what we’ve said in Florida is, we are going to remain a refuge of sanity, and a citadel of normalcy, and kids should have an upbringing that reflects that,” DeSantis said.

No kids at drag queen shows:

 Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill into law to penalize businesses and people who admit children into “adult live performances.”

[…]The law authorizes Florida to fine, suspend, or revoke the license of any public establishment that admits a child to “adult live performances” that depict or simulate nudity, sexual conduct, or lewd exposure.

Pre-game prayer is allowed:

Gov. Ron DeSantis signed legislation to protect youth sports in Florida on Wednesday, which will also allow high school teams to pray before games.

[…]“You have a right to free expression of religion. If government is denying your right to say a prayer before the game, they are infringing your speech, you’re not violating anything, but by doing that, and so for them to do it is discriminatory,” DeSantis said.

No men in women’s sports:

Governor Ron DeSantis signed SB 1028 creating the “Fairness in Women’s Sports Act” and preserving fair opportunities for female athletes to demonstrate their strength, skills, and abilities in athletic competition.

The bill specifies that an athletic team or sport that is designated for females, women, or girls may not be open to students of the male sex, based on the student’s biological sex listed on the student’s official birth certificate at the time of birth.

Add these actions to the list of previous DeSantis actions:

• • universal school choice
  • making collection of union dues optional for teachers
  • flying illegal immigrants to Massachusetts
  • elect conservatives to school boards
  • teach students about the historical record of communism
  • ban grooming of young children
  • protect wildlife
  • banning biological males from women’s sports
  • punishing Big Tech social media companies for censoring conservatives

Finally, let’s see where DeSantis has been traveling to ahead of the 2024 GOP primaries.

Iowa:

“Governing is not about entertaining. Governing is not about building a brand or talking on social media and virtue signaling,’” said DeSantis at a fundraising event in Sioux Center. “It’s ultimately about winning and producing results.”

The Florida governor has emerged as the most formidable threat to Donald Trump’s securing the GOP nomination.

He’s presented himself to voters as a staunch conservative without Trump’s distinctive abrasiveness.

Trump was scheduled to host his own Iowa event Saturday in Des Moines, but canceled the event due to a tornado warning.

While Trump and his campaign have raged against DeSantis, the governor has been hesitant to criticize the ex-president who endorsed his gubernatorial campaign in 2018.

DeSantis told voters that in order for conservatives to secure victories in the upcoming elections, they need to remain focused on the issues and “reject the culture of losing,” appearing to reference Biden’s 2020 election victory over Trump.

“We must reject the culture of losing that has impacted our party in recent years. The time for excuses is over,” DeSantis told prospective voters.

“If we get distracted, if we focus the election on the past or on other side issues, then I think the Democrats are going to beat us again.”

And New Hampshire:

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis traveled to New Hampshire late this week where he met with voters, state lawmakers, and the state’s governor just days ahead of his anticipated announcement that he will be running for president in 2024.

DeSantis met with voters at the Red Arrow Diner in Manchester where he was very well received by many who thanked him for what he has accomplished in Florida.

DeSantis, 44, focused on talking to voters in the Granite State about economic and family issues like school choice, tax cuts, crime, and inflation, The New York Times reported.

[…]DeSantis has been busy racking up large lists of endorsements in recent days, including 37 state lawmakers in Iowa, approximately 50 state lawmakers in New Hampshire, and 99 out of 113 Republicans in the Florida state legislature.

[…]“These fights are not easy,” DeSantis said. “I think when you look, there’s a reason why things have gotten crazy in this country, because there’s a lot of powerful people that want it to be, a lot of institutions push that direction. When you kind of step out and you speak truth, you get a lot of blowback for that, but I think what I found in Florida is no governor ever received more incoming, I would say in modern history, than me, during my first term, particularly with COVID, but it really went on after that, a lot of narratives generated.”

Interesting that he mentioned COVID, as Donald Trump recently criticized DeSantis for opening up his state, comparing him unfavorably to NEW YORK GOVERNOR ANDREW CUOMO. Yes, really. And you might remember that Trump issued commendations to “Operation Warp Speed” members, including Deborah Birx and Anthony Fauci. Something to think about.

A MUST-SEE lecture based on Dr. Stephen C. Meyer’s book “Signature in the Cell“. One of my favorite 6 arguments for a Creator and Designer is the origin of the simplest replicating living system. When you look into the cell, what you’ll find is carefully sequenced components that for complex structures, like proteins. In this lecture, you’ll learn all about this “biological information”.

I highly recommend watching the lecture, and looking at the slides. The quality of the video and the content is first class. There is some Q&A (9 minutes) at the end of the lecture.

Topics:

• intelligent design is concerned with measuring the information-creating capabilities of natural forces like mutation and selection
• Darwinists think that random mutations and natural selection can explain the origin and diversification of living systems
• Darwinian mechanisms are capable of explaining small-scale adaptive changes within types of organisms
• but there is skepticism, even among naturalists, that Darwinian mechanisms can explain the origin of animal designs
• even if you concede that Darwinism can account for all of the basic animal body plans, there is still the problem of life’s origin
• can Darwinian mechanisms explain the origin of the first life? Is there a good naturalistic hypothesis to explain it?
• there are at least two places in the history of life where new information is needed: origin of life, and Cambrian explosion
• overview of the structure of DNA and protein synthesis (he has helpful pictures and he uses the snap lock blocks, too)
• the DNA molecule is composed of a sequence of bases that code for proteins, and the sequence is carefully selected to have biological function
• meaningful sequences of things like computer code, English sentences, etc. require an adequate cause
• it is very hard to arrive at a meaningful sequence of a non-trivial length by randomly picking symbols/letters
• although any random sequence of letters is improbable, the vast majority of sequences are gibberish/non-compiling code
• similarly, most random sequences of amino acids are lab-proven (Doug Axe’s work) to be non-functional gibberish
• the research showing this was conducted at Cambridge University and published in the Journal of Molecular Biology
• so, random mutation cannot explain the origin of the first living cell
• however, even natural selection coupled with random mutation cannot explain the first living cell
• there must already be replication in order for mutation and selection to work, so they can’t explain the first replicator
• but the origin of life is the origin of the first replicator – there is no replication prior to the first replicator
• the information in the first replicator cannot be explained by law, such as by chemical bonding affinities
• the amino acids are attached like magnetic letters on a refrigerator
• the magnetic force sticks the letters ON the fridge, but they don’t determine the specific sequence of the letters
• if laws did determine the sequence of letters, then the sequences would be repetitive
• the three materialist explanations – chance alone, chance and law, law alone – are not adequate to explain the effect
• the best explanation is that an intelligent cause is responsible for the biological explanation in the first replicator
• we know that intelligent causes can produce functional sequences of information, e.g. – English, Java code
• the structure and design of DNA matches up nicely with the design patterns used by software engineers (like WK!)

There are some very good tips in this lecture so that you will be able to explain intelligent design to others in simple ways, using everyday household items and children’s toys to symbolize the amino acids, proteins, sugar phosphate backbones, etc.

Proteins are constructed from a sequence of amino acids:

Proteins sticking onto the double helix structure of DNA:

I highly, highly recommend this lecture. You will be delighted and you will learn something.

Here is an article that gives a general overview of how intelligent design challenges. If you want to read something more detailed about the material that he is covering in the lecture above related to the origin of life, there is a pretty good article here.

There is a good breakdown of some of the slides with helpful flow charts here on Uncommon Descent.

Positive arguments for Christian theism

• The kalam cosmological argument and the Big Bang theory
• The fine-tuning argument from cosmological constants and quantities
• The origin of life, part 1 of 2: the building blocks of life
• The origin of life, part 2 of 2: biological information
• The sudden origin of phyla in the Cambrian explosion
• Galactic habitable zones and circumstellar habitable zones
• Irreducible complexity in molecular machines
• The creative limits of natural selection and random mutation
• Angus Menuge’s ontological argument from reason
• Alvin Plantinga’s epistemological argument from reason
• William Lane Craig’s moral argument
• The unexpected applicability of mathematics to nature

From Justin Brierley’s “Unbelievable” podcast.

Details:

Stephen Meyer is a leading proponent of Intelligent Design who directs the Centre for Science and Culture at the Discovery Institute in Seattle. His [first] book “Signature in the Cell” claims to show that the DNA code is the product of intelligent mind, not naturalistic processes. Keith Fox is Professor of Biochemistry at Southampton University. He chairs the UK Christians in Science network but disagrees strongly with ID. They debate how life could have originated and whether design is allowed as an explanation in science.

Download the MP3 here. (Direct link to file)

Summary: (stuff in italics is my snarky paraphrase)

Meyer:

• background and how he got interested in intelligent design
• his research focus is on the origin of life – the first replicator
• summarizes the history of origin of life studies
• authored the book “Signature in the Cell”
• the DNA enigma: where did the information in DNA come from?
• naturalistic explanations of the DNA information have failed
• but intelligent agents are known to be able to produce information
• the best explanation of the information in DNA is that an intelligent agent authored it
• Meyer’s book was named by atheist philosopher of science Thomas Nagel as a Times Literary Supplement Book of the Year in 2010
• why is design so controversial? Many people think that Darwin explained why nature appears design
• the Darwinian view is that nature can create the appearance of design using mutation and selection
• however, Darwinian mechanisms cannot explain the origin of the first living cell, it assumes replication, and the origin of life is about where the first replicator comes from

Fox:

• Meyer’s argument is not about the evolution of life after the first cell
• Meyer’s case for design is about the origin of life
• naturalists do not know a naturalistic explanation for the origin of life
• there are a number of naturalistic hypotheses for the origin of life, like the RNA-first hypothesis
• maybe in a few years one of them will turn out to be correct
• what intelligent design is arguing from a gap in our current naturalistic knowledge to infer that God intervened in nature

Meyer:

• that’s not what intelligent design is at all
• the approach ID theorists use is the inference to best explanation
• you evaluate all explanations, non-intelligent causes and intelligent causes
• you prefer the best possible explanation
• we know that minds are capable of producing information just like the information we find in DNA

Fox:

• living cells replicate, so they have the ability to introduce mutations as they replicate and then some of those mutations can be selected
• so maybe the process of replicating that living cells do created the first living cell
• maybe the first living cell created itself, X brought X into being, self-creation, what’s irrational about that?

Meyer:

• the issue is the origin of life – where did the first living cell come from?
• you cannot appeal to the operations that a living cell can perform to explain the origin of the first living cell
• there was no first living cell operating before the first living cell
• there was no replication, mutation or selection before the first living cell
• in fact, in my book I show that there is no known naturalistic mechanism that is able to produce the information needed for the first living cell
• nothing can create itself, that is self-contradictory

• Well, you are just saying that because something is complex that God did it

• Sadly, no. What I actually said needed to be explained was the information, not complexity
• And we know from software engineering that the process of adding information to code is performed by programmers
• in the absence of any adequate naturalistic explanation for information, we are justified in taking the explanation that we are familiar with – namely, intelligent agency – based on our uniform, universal experience of what causes information

• well, maybe we can appeal to the mutation and selection in existing living cells to explain the origin of the first living cell
• maybe there were living cells before the first living cell, and then these other living cells created the first living cell

• we can’t keep invoking mutation and selection when those processes are not operating prior to the origin of the first living cell

• well maybe some bare-bones self-replication molecule was a precursor to the first living cell

• even to generate very limited replicator would require a large amount of information
• the argument I am making is – where does the evolution come from?

• well, maybe we will think of an explanation for information that is naturalistic in 20 years
• we’ve thought of explanations to things that were NOT information before
• so maybe we will be able to think of something to explain information based on our ability to explain NOT information before

Moderator: Change topics: the Dover decision

Meyer:

• the Discovery Institute opposed the policy that causes the trial
• the wording of the statute was poor
• the judge was completely wrong in his decision
• young earth creationists used the phrase “intelligent design” to cover their agenda
• intelligent design is an inference using the normal methods of science

• intelligent design is a science stopper because it stops looking for a naturalistic explanation
• everything in nature must have a naturalistic explanation
• everything has to be explained using matter and time and chance
• it just has to be that way!!!!

• well, what luck would you have explaining an effect like Mt. Rushmore?
• can you explain that using matter,time and chance?
• Mt. Rushmore was the product of intelligence, not wind and erosion
• similarly, there is information in the cell, and we know that intelligence causes information

• So you are saying that we don’t understand and therefore an intelligence is necessary?

Meyer:

• no I am saying we DO understand and we are making an inference based on that understanding
• you are the one who is insisting on a material explanation because you pre-suppose materialism
• we know that minds have causal powers, and we can infer mind as an explanation from information

• well nature is a seamless chain of material causes and effects

• agents can act without violating the laws of nature
• even humans can act as intelligent agents to create information in books, and they don’t violate the laws of nature
• intelligent causes are real, and they explain effects in nature

• you’re trying to impose on science something to do with meaning and purpose

• no that’s not what we’re doing, we’re inferring from from the fact that we ourselves are known causes of information to the fact that an intelligence cause is the best explanation for information in the cell

• but I am a materialist, I need a materialist explanation

• mind IS an answer to the how question
• we infer to mind in many other scientific disciplines, like cryptography, archaeology, etc.
• a materialist might accuse an archaeologist of engaging in a “scribe-of-the-gaps” argument, but the best explanation of an artifact with information is a scribe
• we are inferring that mind is the cause from the nature of the effect: information

Fox:

• well DNA is just a molecular polymer, any reference to information is just by analogy

• DNA is a molecular polymer, but it also exhibits the property of specified complexity
• the arrangement of bases, which function as machine instructions in a software program, for performings task in the cell
• we have observed that the property of specified complexity always comes from an intelligence

• well, maybe there are other sequences that would work, so maybe it’s really not uncommon to develop functioning sequences by chance alone, without an intelligence

• you can measure how precise the functional specificity is in DNA and proteins

Moderator: is Shannon information the same as functional information

Meyer:

• Shannon information refers to the sequences of digits or symbols that do not necessarily have any function, i.e. – a four character string QSZX has as much Shannon information as WORD. However, only the latter is functional against the pattern of the English language. There are arrangements of DNA bases and amino acids that have the same number of symbols/characters as a functional sequence would have, but they have no biological function – they do not exhibit specified complexity

• Well, maybe there are lots and lots of sequences of DNA and proteins so that it is fairly easy to get a functional one by chance

Meyer:

• DNA sequences that are functional are extremely rare, protein sequences are even more rare
• this is not my opinion, this is what the research shows – functional protein sequences are rare

• well maybe there are other functional sequences that are occur before the first functional sequence that are precursors to the first functional sequence
• maybe there are billions of years of replication, mutation and selection before the first replication, mutation and selection

Meyer:

• you can’t get to the first selectable functional sequence by appealing to precursor selectable functional sequences – there are no selectable functional sequences before the FIRST one
• you have to get the first selectable functional sequence by chance alone, because there is nothing to mutate or select before the first replicator
• the chance hypothesis has been rejected because the minimal amount of information for the simplest replicator is too high to get by chance alone, given the resources, including time, that are available

Moderator: Keith are you confident that naturalism will be able to substantiate these naturalism-of-the-gap speculations that you offer in response to Meyer’s actual science that we have today? 

Fox:

• well, it is hard to know for sure because it was just a fluke event
• but there’s nothing irrational or unscientific or miraculous about it – the fluke would have a material explanation
• there is nothing that we can detect that would implicate God, my speculations about a fluke which I cannot observe or measure or test would all be compatible with an atheistic worldview that omits God as a causal entity

Meyer:

• where are those material processes that could account for this fluke then?
• the whole point of this argument is that the information in DNA transcends the material components in the sequence
• it’s the arrangement of the material parts/letters/characters/symbols/instructions that needs to be explained

• Well, I just have a different philosophy of science that rules out intelligent causation a priori

Meyer:

• Yes, that’s the difference between us – you pre-suppose that all explanations of natural phenomena must exclude intelligent causes

There is a bit more where Meyer talks about how parts of the cell are implementations of various design patterns (Gang of Four design patterns) that are used by software architects who design software.

So, on Friday night, there was a debate between Dr. James Tour and Profesor Dave, an atheist with a bachelors degree who makes YouTube videos. The atheist spent his entire opening speech attacking Tour’s character. When Tour asked him to show him origin of life chemistry, he refused. The atheist shuffled through papers he apparently found by Googling, and read the titles. When asked what was in them, he said that he couldn’t remember.

But I was trying to decide who won the debate. There was one place where the atheist claimed that the early Earth had no molecular oxygen. He needs that to be true, in order for the chemistry that creates the building blocks of life to work. So I thought I would talk about a paper that refutes that. After my argument, I’ll talk about another mistake that the atheist made in the debate. Based on those two mistakes, I concluded that the atheist was lying, and therefore lost the debate.

Here’s a paper published in the prestigious peer-reviewed science journal Nature, entitled “The oxidation state of Hadean magmas and implications for early Earth’s atmosphere”.

Evolution News explains what the paper is about.

Excerpt:

A recent Nature publication reports a new technique for measuring the oxygen levels in Earth’s atmosphere some 4.4 billion years ago. The authors found that by studying cerium oxidation states in zircon, a compound formed from volcanic magma, they could ascertain the oxidation levels in the early earth. Their findings suggest that the early Earth’s oxygen levels were very close to current levels.

[…]Miller and Urey conducted experiments to show that under certain atmospheric conditions and with the right kind of electrical charge, several amino acids could form from inorganic compounds such as methane, ammonia, and water. Several experiments have been done using various inorganic starting materials, all yielding a few amino acids; however, one key aspect of all of these experiments was the lack of oxygen.

If the atmosphere has oxygen (or other oxidants) in it, then it is an oxidizing atmosphere. If the atmosphere lacks oxygen, then it is either inert or a reducing atmosphere. Think of a metal that has been left outside, maybe a piece of iron. That metal will eventually rust. Rusting is the result of the metal being oxidized. With organic reactions, such as the ones that produce amino acids, it is very important that no oxygen be present, or it will quench the reaction. Scientists, therefore, concluded that the early Earth must have been a reducing environment when life first formed (or the building blocks of life first formed) because that was the best environment for producing amino acids. The atmosphere eventually accumulated oxygen, but life did not form in an oxidative environment.

The problem with this hypothesis is that it is based on the assumption that organic life must have formed from inorganic materials. That is why the early Earth must have been a reducing atmosphere. Research has been accumulating for more than thirty years, however, suggesting that the early Earth likely did have oxygen present.

[…]Their findings not only showed that oxygen was present in the early Earth atmosphere, something that has been shown in other studies, but that oxygen was present as early as 4.4 billion years ago. This takes the window of time available for life to have begun, by an origin-of-life scenario like the RNA-first world, and reduces it to an incredibly short amount of time. Several factors need to coincide in order for nucleotides or amino acids to form from purely naturalistic circumstances (chance and chemistry). The specific conditions required already made purely naturalist origin-of-life scenarios highly unlikely. Drastically reducing the amount of time available, adding that to the other conditions needing to be fulfilled, makes the RNA world hypothesis or a Miller-Urey-like synthesis of amino acids simply impossible.

If you read the paper’s abstract, it finds that molecular oxygen would have been present by the end of the Hadean era. The earliest signs of life we have are from just after the end of the Hadean era. So, its undeniable that molecular oxygen was present. Did professor Dave lie, or was he just ignorant? One thing for sure, he pronounced that there was no oxygen in the same confident, insulting voice that he used for the rest of his presentation.

OK, so with that out of the way, Professor Dave also cited a paper in the journal Science. And there is an article on Creation.com by Johnathan Sarfati, who has a PhD in chemistry, about that very paper.

His post says:

It’s likely that the media reports you mention were referring to the paper in Science journal by Tracey Lincoln and Gerald Joyce.¹ Quite often, the media hype just doesn’t match what was actually discovered. To be fair, Joyce, a well known chemical evolutionist, made it clear that he and his Ph.D. student Lincoln had not produced life, despite the headlines.² Much earlier, Joyce admitted:

“The most reasonable assumption is that life did not start with RNA … . The transition to an RNA world, like the origins of life in general, is fraught with uncertainty and is plagued by a lack of experimental data.”³

Joyce and Lincoln started off with a fairly long RNA molecule. Given that nothing like RNA appears in Miller–Urey experiments, this already shows unjustified interference from an intelligent investigator. In fact, not even the building blocks, ribonucleotides, appear in such experiments, and they do not spontaneously form RNA. In fact, there are numerous chemical difficulties with obtaining RNA by blind undirected chemistry, the only sort allowed on the hypothetical primordial earth, as chemical evolutionist A.G. Cairns-Smith points out in his book Genetic Takeover4 (see extract at Cairns Smith: Detailed criticisms of the RNA world hypothesis). And it’s a huge step from RNA to the genetic code, its major use today.

Furthermore, this paper didn’t demonstrate replication but ligation—joining two small RNA pieces, previously designed to be a match to the longer strand. So this research already assumed not just one but three RNA strands. For this to be relevant to chemical evolution, the two pieces just by chance had to have pretty close to the complementary base pairs of the first piece—natural selection could not be invoked before reproduction.

Furthermore, since polymerization is unfavorable, the RNA pieces must be chemically activated in some way. Note that a catalyst merely accelerates the approach to equilibrium; it doesn’t change it (see diagram and explanation in Dino proteins and blood vessels: are they a big deal?). The paper states that one of the two joining RNA strands has a triphosphate group on the end. This is very reactive, so would be an unlikely component of a primordial soup, and would not last long even if it appeared. So a supply of matching activated RNA pieces likewise shows unacceptable investigator interference.

See also Does ribozyme research prove Darwinian evolution? for a critique of an earlier Joyce paper on alleged ribozyme evolution, as well as Self-replicating peptides? which has many similarities to the recent Joyce claim.

Now Tour seemed to let this problem drop in the debate. It just seems that Professor Dave was assuming from the titles of the papers that they were relevant to the problem of life. Well, scientists always sound optimistic in their papers. I know, I had to write one for my masters degree thesis, and it was published. That’s why you have to look at the data and be skeptical. Sadly Dave wasn’t able to be skeptical. He wanted something to be true, so he just didn’t bother to interact with challenges to his view.

Dr. Tour lost his temper and shouted a lot during the debate, so I don’t think the debate is worth watching. However, if you want to watch a good debate on the origin of life, try this one between Dr. Fazale Rana vs Dr. Michael Ruse. And if you want to see a good explanation of the sequencing problem, check out this lecture by Dr. Stephen C. Meyer. (who has also debated atheists who didn’t lie, shout or insult him – and they even had doctoral degrees)

When terrible things happen to men in this society, you often get comments from people saying “well, it’s his fault, he chose a bad woman”. And I agree that men often make poor choices because they focus on attraction instead of on character. But what if a man is an innocent bystander, and is falsely accused by a woman he doesn’t even know? Is it still his fault then?

Here is the news story from Fox 2 Detroit.

Excerpt:

A Metro Detroit man cleared his name after Friend of the Court sent him a letter saying he had a baby with a woman he never met.

“She don’t know me, how do you just put my name down? How do you just put anybody’s name down?” DeAngelo Smith said. “I don’t know her. Never seen her. Still to this day, haven’t talked to her, and it just proves the baby has no ties to my name.”

Late last year, DeAngelo received a letter from Friend of the Court in Berrien County saying that he was the father of a baby girl.

His wife was the first to see the accusation:

His wife first spotted the letter in the mail from Friend of the Court.

“Let’s just set the record, I trust my husband,” Tyahvia Smith said. “I know his character, man of integrity.”

They contacted his employer:

While waiting for the child’s mother to take the baby for a DNA test, DeAngelo said the school where he teaches received an inquiry for possible garnishment in case the child was his.

“It made it something that is not being alleged, but now it’s something that’s being taken into action and no paternity has been established,” he said.

Finally, the woman had the DNA test done, and DeAngelo has since gotten a letter confirming he was not the father.

Legislation introduced by Republican Jim Runestad to prevent this from happening has been tied up for eight years… in a Republican-led legislature:

“It’s very unfortunate, but paternity fraud is not a unique, unusual situation in Michigan,” Sen. Jim Runestad (R-White Lake) said.

Runestad said he has been pushing for new legislation on the matter for the past eight years. Currently, there is no penalty for lying and a DNA test is not required before a person is contacted about the paternity of the child.

The fact that there are no consequences for doing this means that women are going to keep doing it again and again.

Does masculinity mean that a man should give a woman whatever she wants?

I sent this story to a conservative pro-marriage friend, and she said “So what? How many times does something like this happen?” Her only concern was that this story made women look bad. She had previously told me that “masculinity is when a man uses his strength to protect and provide for women”. So, then it is just “masculine” for this innocent man to pay for a child who isn’t his own. Why would he object to paying? Does he not like children?

Most people today like the changes that feminism has made for women. They like public schools run by women that discriminate against boys. They like women taking out huge student loans for useless non-STEM degrees, then demanding bailouts from taxpayers. They like women taking part in hook-up culture. They like women using no-commitment bad boys for validation. They like no-fault divorce laws. They like false accusations during divorce trials. They like biased domestic violence laws. They like paternity fraud. They like massive welfare spending designed to reward women who make reckless decisions. And they like feminist judges stripping fathers of parental rights for refusing to agree with the transing of their kids.

Men are expendable when it comes to creating greater happiness for women. So what’s wrong with sending a man a bill for a woman who needs some money for a child that isn’t his? It’s horrible to tell a woman that she can’t do what she feels like doing. It’s horrible to tell a woman that she has to pay the costs of her own actions. Just make a man pay for it. Men are big and strong, they can handle it. And besides, women never tell lies. We have to believe all women. We have to force men to make women happy. That’s “masculinity”.

Society pressures men to get married

This “believe all women” attitude that is shared by many Christians and conservatives becomes a problem for men when men are pressured to get married. This society makes marriage a risky enterprise for men. And men have to understand that this pressure to get married is often coming from people who see men as expendable in the cause of increasing women’s happiness. The person telling you to get married is often the same person who thinks that a DNA test shouldn’t be performed in a paternity case.

Men have to understand that the command to “get married” is coming from pro-marriage activists who think that men exist solely to make women happy. Who cares about the risks and costs of marriage for men? Who cares about men’s needs and desires? Who cares what reasons a man has for marrying? Who cares about a man’s standards for his wife? Who cares about a man’s plan for his marriage? He should just be pressured to get married. Just like the falsely accused paternity fraud victim should have to pay.

It’s not the purpose of men’s lives to get married and have kids

Always remember that according to the Bible, serving God is more honorable than getting married and having children. (Read 1 Cor 7:8-9 and 2 Tim 2:4) Many social conservatives try to guilt men into getting married and having children by denying the risks and costs of marriage for men. They think that Christianity’s main purpose is to force men to make women happy, regardless of what women offer to men in exchange. That’s the actual view of several of my social conservative Christian friends.

Men are designed to serve God first and foremost. And it’s much easier to serve God if you are not encumbered by alimony, child support, false accusations, denial of due process, paternity fraud, feminist judges, etc. Only women who honor that obligation, and want to help a man to meet that obligation, should be taken seriously for marriage and child-rearing.

Is it OK to end a baby just because she is not a boy? If you’re conservative, or a Christian, then you probably think that’s morally wrong. It’s a living being with a human DNA signature that is distinct from the mother’s DNA and the father’s DNA. But, if you’re a secular leftist, then that’s a perfectly good reason for ending a baby. After all, they have to keep the good times rolling, don’t they?

Here’s an article from the far-left The Atlantic (link goes to archive.is, not The Atlantic) where they interview a doctor who performs sex-selection baby ending.

Excerpt:

He specializes in ab*rt**ns late in pr*gn*ncy—the rarest, and most controversial, form of ab*rt**n. This means that H**n ends the pr*gn*ncies of women who are 22, 25, even 30 weeks along.

[…]In the 1970s, physicians did not induce f*t*l demise during ab*rt**n, and once or twice, during a procedure at 15 or 16 weeks, he used forceps to remove a f*t*s with a still-beating heart. The heart thumped for only a few seconds before stopping.

[…]The reason doesn’t really matter to H**n. Medical viability for a f*t*s—or its ability to survive outside the uterus—is generally considered to be somewhere from 24 to 28 weeks. H**n, though, believes that the viability of a f*t*s is determined not by g*st*tional age but by a woman’s willingness to carry it…he’ll take the case—usually up until around 32 weeks…

[…]H**n had told me about a woman who’d sought an ab*rt**n because she didn’t want to have a baby girl. I thought he had refused. But when I followed up to ask him why, I learned that I had misunderstood… It was their choice to make, he explained.

Keep in mind that sex-selection baby ending is supported by all Democrat voters. Regardless of what they say with words, when it comes to policy, they want sex-selection baby ending to be legal. And if you disagree with it, then the FBI and DOJ think that you are a domestic terrorist for disagreeing with it. So please be extremely careful in the comments, as the federal government doesn’t look kindly on people who disagree with them on this issue. And the only way to stop that is to win the next election.

When arguing this issue, I find it useful to get the person to agree that if the woman can choose to end the baby for any reason, or for no reason at all, then there are no limits. Sex-selection baby ending is OK. Race-selection baby ending is OK. And if the woman just changes her mind about wanting the baby, then that’s fine, too.

In the interview, the doctor talks about the “white supremacy” of his opponents. This is despite the fact that a disproportionately large number of baby endings are performed on non-white mothers. In fact, the practice was started by white supremacists who wanted to eliminate races that they didn’t think much of. And the doctor is helping them to achieve that goal, although he’s smart enough to lie about it, in order to help himself to feel good about taking in the fees. He’s being paid a lot of money to do what he does. Just like the slave owners made a lot of money off of their slaves. Every single individual person who supports baby ending today would have supported slavery in those times. It’s the same argument – dehumanize a group people in order to make more money.

I’m posting this so that when you argue this issue, you bring up these cases of sex-selection and race-selection, and make your opponent sign off on them. Don’t listen to their evasive words. “I’m a moderate” “I’m a centrist” “I’m politically homeless”. If they voted for Biden, they support these cases. The words don’t matter. Only their actions matter. Secular leftists like to talk to themselves about how reasonable they are. And it sounds so good to them. They feel better. They talk themselves out of the responsibility for their actions. “I’m not a bad person for destroying people made in the image of God” they say. But happy talking to yourself doesn’t work on The Judge.

Again, be careful in the comments.

I am re-posting this post because recently a well-known Christian apologist changed his worldview from Protestant to Catholic, and I thought I would explain why I have not done so.

In this post, I explain why I’m not Roman Catholic. And I also explain how Protestant Christians arrive at their beliefs. We’ll start with J. Warner Wallace on Purgatory, then I’ll go second.

Purgatory

Here’s the first article from Cold Case Christianity, by the Master of the Evidence J. Warner Wallace. He writes about the Roman Catholic doctrine of purgatory, and his experience with studying and then rejecting it.

Here is his introduction:

The notion of purgatory assumes many of us die with unforgiven sins that need to be purged from our account; some of us are not good enough to go to heaven, but not bad enough to go to hell. Purgatory, therefore, is a temporary, intermediate place (or state of being) where good deeds and works can be performed in order to purge our impurity prior to our final destiny with God. Although millions of Catholics believe purgatory to be a reality, the idea needs to be tested in light of the Scripture. Is purgatory something we, as Bible believing Christians, should accept as true?

He’s got a stack of Bible verses to make two points against Purgatory: first, that Jesus’ death on the cross is sufficient to atone for all our rebellion against God, and we don’t need to endure any suffering or punishment to supplement it. And second, the teaching about the afterlife in the Bible says that believers are immediately ushered into the presence of God after they die (without resurrection bodies, yet), while unbelievers are separated away from God.

Here’s what he says about the first point:

Our Salvation Isn’t Based On Our Good Works
According to the Biblical doctrine of Salvation, forgiveness is not based on the good works of the believer. For this reason, deeds or works performed for those in purgatory are both unnecessary and ineffectual:

Romans 3:21-24, 27-28
But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus… Where, then, is boasting? It is excluded. On what principle? On that of observing the law? No, but on that of faith. For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from observing the law.

Romans 8:1
Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering.

Our Salvation Is Based On Jesus’ Work on the Cross
According to the Biblical doctrine of Salvation, Jesus’ work on the cross (His blood) purifies us from allsin. For this reason, there isn’t a lingering sin problem requiring the existence of a place like purgatory:

Titus 2:13-14
…we wait for the blessed hope—the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good.

1John 1:7b
…the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.

1John 1:9b
…he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.

1John 2:2
He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.

Hebrews 10:14
…because by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy.

Our Salvation Has, Therefore, Already Been Guaranteed
According to the Biblical doctrine of Salvation, Jesus has already purified and purged believers of sin based on our faith in Him. For this reason, there is no need for a place like Purgatory where additional purging must be performed…

[…]The Biblical doctrine of Salvation clearly eliminates the need for purgatory.

I was never able to find anything in the Bible to support purgatory. It’s a very very late doctrine that was unknown to the early church until the late 2nd / early 3rd century, where it is spoken about by a handful of people. But lots of weird doctrines were creeping up on the fringe around that time, so we shouldn’t be surprised… the point is that they have no support from the Bible, and not in the community of believers for the first 150 years after the death of Jesus.

The bodily assumption of Mary

Anyway, my turn now. The Roman Catholic church teaches that Mary was “bodily assumed” into Heaven after her death, i.e. – she didn’t just stay in her grave. Let’s see if that is in the Bible or in the early church.

Here’s what I found:

1. To be a Roman Catholic, you need to believe in Papal infallibility in matters of dogma.
2. In 1950, the Pope pronounced the assumption of Mary to be infallible dogma.
3. This pronouncement was solicited by a petition featuring over 8 million signatures.
4. There is no historical record of this doctrine in the Bible.
5. No early church father mentions the assumption until 590 AD.
6. Documents dated 377 AD state that no one knows how Mary died.
7. The assumption appears for the first time in an apocryphal gospel dated about 495 AD.

Data

I only cite Roman Catholic sources for my facts.

6. “But if some think us mistaken, let them search the Scriptures. They will not find Mary’s death; they will not find whether she died or did not die; they will not find whether she was buried or was not buried … Scripture is absolutely silent [on the end of Mary] … For my own part, I do not dare to speak, but I keep my own thoughts and I practice silence … The fact is, Scripture has outstripped the human mind and left [this matter] uncertain … Did she die, we do not know … Either the holy Virgin died and was buried … Or she was killed … Or she remained alive, since nothing is impossible with God and He can do whatever He desires; for her end no-one knows.” (Epiphanius, Panarion, Haer. 78.10-11, 23. Cited by Juniper Carol, O.F.M. ed.,Mariology, Vol. II (Milwaukee: Bruce, 1957), pp. 139-40).

7. “The idea of the bodily assumption of Mary is first expressed in certain transitus–narratives of the fifth and sixth centuries. Even though these are apocryphal they bear witness to the faith of the generation in which they were written despite their legendary clothing. The first Church author to speak of the bodily ascension of Mary, in association with an apocryphal transitus B.M.V., is St. Gregory of Tours.” (Ludwig Ott, Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma(Rockford: Tan, 1974), pp. 209–210).

It should be noted that the apocryphal gospel in which the doctrine of the assumption of Mary first appeared was condemned as heretical by two Popes in the 5th and 6th centuries. However, I was not able to find a CATHOLIC source for this fact, so I deliberately chose not to use it in my case.

Conclusion

The first thing I want to say is that the Bible is not the only place you look to decide these issues. You also look in church history, and you are looking for a clear chain of custody of the doctrine as far back as it can go. Purgatory and the perpetual virginity of Mary have some track record, but the bodily assumption of Mary is just nowhere – not in the Bible, not in the Early Church fathers. So that’s the silver bullet against Roman Catholicism, since they made it “infallible”.

This post is more directed to non-Christians to sort of show you how we do our homework. I am the first Protestant in my family. We have half the family who is Muslim, and the other half mostly Hindu, with some Catholic. I had to debate all these people growing up, and I wiped the floor with them. It was not even close. I simply settled on the beliefs that allowed me to win every argument, every time. That’s how you do religion. If you have to go against your whole family in order to be right, you do it. It’s not good to be wrong about things just because that’s what your family believes. These things were not pushed hard on me by my parents, I studied them on my own in order to win arguments. After a while of winning, I found myself acting consistently with what I was arguing for. Although that might sound really weird to you, that’s probably the right way to do this. Don’t listen to parents and church, find your own way forward by winning arguments, and believing only what the evidence supports.

Although most people think that if I had kids, I’d bully them into my beliefs, I actually would not. Because that’s not what worked on me. What really works is fighting about evidence, welcoming questions, and allowing differences of opinion. Being free to pursue truth is more important in the long run than coercing your kids to act nicely.

This post presents evidence against Mormonism/LDS in three main areas. The first is in the area of science. The second is in the area of philosophy. And the third is in the area of history.

The scientific evidence

First, let’s take a look at what the founder of Mormonism, Joseph Smith, believes about the origin of the universe:

“The elements are eternal. That which had a beggining will surely have an end; take a ring, it is without beggining or end – cut it for a beggining place and at the same time you have an ending place.” (“Scriptural Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith”, p. 205)

“Now, the word create came from the word baurau which does not mean to create out of nothing; it means to organize; the same as a man would organize materials and build a ship. Hence, we infer that God had materials to organize the world out of chaos – chaotic matter, which is element, and in which dwells all the glory. Element had an existance from the time he had. The pure principles of element are principles which can never be destroyed; they may be organized and re-organized, but not destroyed. They had no beggining, and can have no end.”
(“Scriptural Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith”, p. 395)

A Mormon scholar named Blake Ostler summarizes the Mormon view in a Mormon theological journal:

“In contrast to the self-sufficient and solitary absolute who creates ex nihilo (out of nothing), the Mormon God did not bring into being the ultimate constituents of the cosmos — neither its fundamental matter nor the space/time matrix which defines it. Hence, unlike the Necessary Being of classical theology who alone could not not exist and on which all else is contingent for existence, the personal God of Mormonism confronts uncreated realities which exist of metaphysical necessity. Such realities include inherently self-directing selves (intelligences), primordial elements (mass/energy), the natural laws which structure reality, and moral principles grounded in the intrinsic value of selves and the requirements for growth and happiness.” (Blake Ostler, “The Mormon Concept of God,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 17 (Summer 1984):65-93)

So, Mormons believe in an eternally existing universe, such that matter was never created out of nothing, and will never be destroyed. But this is at odds with modern cosmology.

The Big Bang cosmology is the most widely accepted cosmology of the day. It denies the past eternality of the universe. This peer-reviewed paper in an astrophysics journal explains. (full text here)

Excerpt:

The standard Big Bang model thus describes a universe which is not eternal in the past, but which came into being a finite time ago. Moreover,–and this deserves underscoring–the origin it posits is an absolute origin ex nihilo. For not only all matter and energy, but space and time themselves come into being at the initial cosmological singularity. As Barrow and Tipler emphasize, “At this singularity, space and time came into existence; literally nothing existed before the singularity, so, if the Universe originated at such a singularity, we would truly have a creation ex nihilo.”

[…]On such a model the universe originates ex nihilo in the sense that at the initial singularity it is true that There is no earlier space-time point or it is false that Something existed prior to the singularity.

Christian cosmology requires such a creation out of nothing, but this is clearly incompatible with what Mormons believe about the universe. The claims about the universe made by the two religions are in disagreement, and we can test empirically to see who is right, using science.

Philosophical problems

Always Have a Reason contrasts two concepts of God in Mormonism: Monarchotheism and Polytheism. It turns out that Mormonism is actually a polytheistic religion, like Hinduism. In Mormonism, humans can become God and then be God of their own planet. So there are many Gods in Mormonism, not just one.

Excerpt:

[T]he notion that there are innumerable contingent “primal intelligences” is central to this Mormon concept of god (P+M, 201; Beckwith and Parrish, 101). That there is more than one god is attested in the Pearl of Great Price, particularly Abraham 4-5. This Mormon concept has the gods positioned to move “primal intelligences along the path to godhood” (Beckwith and Parrish, 114). Among these gods are other gods which were once humans, including God the Father. Brigham Young wrote, “our Father in Heaven was begotten on a previous heavenly world by His Father, and again, He was begotten by a still more ancient Father, and so on…” (Brigham Young, The Seer, 132, quoted in Beckwith and Parrish, 106).

[…]The logic of the Mormon polytheistic concept of God entails that there is an infinite number of gods. To see this, it must be noted that each god him/herself was helped on the path to godhood by another god. There is, therefore, an infinite regress of gods, each aided on his/her path to godhood by a previous god. There is no termination in this series. Now because this entails an actually infinite collection of gods, the Mormon polytheistic concept of deity must deal with all the paradoxes which come with actually existing infinities…

The idea of counting up to an actual infinite number of things by addition (it doesn’t matter what kind of thing it is) is problematic. See here.

More:

Finally, it seems polytheistic Mormonism has a difficulty at its heart–namely the infinite regress of deity.

[…]Each god relies upon a former god, which itself relies upon a former god, forever. Certainly, this is an incoherence at the core of this concept of deity, for it provides no explanation for the existence of the gods, nor does it explain the existence of the universe.

Now let’s see the historical evidence against Mormonism.

The historical evidence

J. Warner Wallace explains how the “Book of Abraham”, a part of the Mormon Scriptures, faces historical difficulties.

The Book of Abraham papyri are not as old as claimed:

Mormon prophets and teachers have always maintained that the papyri that was purchased by Joseph Smith was the actual papyri that was created and written by Abraham. In fact, early believers were told that the papyri were the writings of Abraham.

[…]There is little doubt that the earliest of leaders and witnesses believed and maintained that these papyri were, in fact the very scrolls upon which Abraham and Joseph wrote. These papyri were considered to be the original scrolls until they were later recovered in 1966. After discovering the original papyri, scientists, linguists, archeologists and investigators (both Mormon and non-Mormon) examined them and came to agree that the papyri are far too young to have been written by Abraham. They are approximately 1500 to 2000 years too late, dating from anywhere between 500 B.C. (John A. Wilson, Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, Summer 1968, p. 70.) and 60 A.D. If they papyri had never been discovered, this truth would never have come to light. Today, however, we know the truth, and the truth contradicts the statements of the earliest Mormon leaders and witnesses.

The Book of Abraham papyri do not claim what Joseph Smith said:

In addition to this, the existing papyri simply don’t say anything that would place them in the era related to 2000BC in ancient Egypt. The content of the papyri would at least help verify the dating of the document, even if the content had been transcribed or copied from an earlier document. But the papyri simply tell us about an ancient burial ritual and prayers that are consistent with Egyptian culture in 500BC. Nothing in the papyri hints specifically or exclusively to a time in history in which Abraham would have lived.

So there is a clear difference hear between the Bible and Mormonism, when it comes to historical verification.

Yes, there will be a live stream. Yes, it will be open to the public.

Dr. James Tour is famous among Christians for his accurate, informed skepticism about naturalistic theories of the origin of life. But how would his ideas survive attacks from a critic? We’re about to find out.

• ABOUT:
Join us for an exciting debate between Dr James Tour and Dave Farina on The Science of Abiogenesis.

This in-person event will take place on Fri May 19 at 7:00 PM CST in Keck Hall 100, Houston, TX and will be streamed LIVE on YouTube!

Dr. James Tour is a world-renowned scientist and professor of chemistry at Rice University. He will be presenting evidence that he believes demonstrate huge problems and hype in the origin of life field.

Dave Farina is a prominent atheist and Youtuber who will argue for the theory of abiogenesis, the idea that life arose from non-living matter through natural processes.

Join us Friday May 19 at 7PM CT at Rice University or ONLINE to for this highly anticipated event! See more at tourvsfarina.com

• TOPIC:
ARE WE CLUELESS ABOUT THE ORIGIN OF LIFE?

• WHEN:
May 19th, 2023, at 7 PM CT

• WHERE:
Stream the debate LIVE at watch.tourvsfarina.com. It’s the ONLY place to watch the debate between Dr. James Tour and Dave Farina LIVE from Rice University on May 19th at 7 PM CT.

If you are near Houston, then you can attend in person. I’m going to be watching the live stream, instead:

It’s being streamed via YouTube.

I remember learning about professor Dave from this recent article from Evolution News:

The saga of renowned organic chemist James Tour and atheist YouTube personality Dave Farina continues in the second season of Tour’s video series on the origin of life. As a recap of Season 1, Farina responded to Tour’s critique of origin-of-life research with a critique of Tour’s claims. Tour then created a 14-part video series detailing the multitude of errors in Farina’s response. It also serves as an advanced tutorial on the dismal state of origin-of-life research.

Farina in turn responded to Tour’s video series with two new videos (here, here) that included interviews with three scientists: Lee Cronin, Bruce Lipshutz, and Steve Benner. Cronin and Benner are considered leading origin-of-life researchers, and Lipshutz is a highly respected synthetic chemist. Their testimony was intended both to discredit Tour’s assessment of the field and to assure viewers that researchers are making steady progress in unraveling the mystery of life’s origin. Tour’s new series exposes that the truth is the exact opposite.

As an introduction, there are 3 parts to the origin of life problem.

• First, you have to come up with the building blocks of the components.
• Second, you have to sequence the building blocks correctly to build the components.
• Third, you have to assemble the components into a living, self-replicating cell.

That post by Brian Miller is excellent. You can drill down as far as you want to, but if you just are new to the topic, he gives you the big picture.

I thought this part was interesting:

The most problematic interview was with Bruce Lipshutz, describing his design of surfactant molecules that enable amide/peptide bonds. Farina claimed that Lipshutz was challenging Tour’s statement that amino acids do not spontaneously link together in water. The problem is that Lipshutz sent Farina the video clip about his research for a completely different purpose. He was unaware Farina used the clip to challenge Tour’s claim, and he never even saw Tour’s video. Most importantly, Lipshutz was not linking together amino acids, and he was not performing the chemistry in water but in a hydrophobic pocket (here, here).

What Farina did not know was that Tour has been friends with Lipshutz for nearly forty years, so he emailed Lipshutz asking him about his comments. Lipshutz not only stated that he was unaware he was in Farina’s video, but he acknowledged that his research is irrelevant to the question of amino acids linking into chains in water.

And this is very direct:

Farina is a committed atheist who has demonstrated that he is not encumbered by the same ethical standards that James Tour is. He is also not trained in the chemistry that Tour addressed in his videos, so his misrepresentation of the science is not surprising. What was far more disturbing to Tour was the extent to which Cronin and Benner exaggerated the relevance of their experiments to the question of life’s origin.

So, there is a lot of deception, intentional or unintentional, going on from the naturalistic side of the debate.

When my YEC friend told me how excited he was about this debate, I had an idea about why he was. And I think it’s because Professor Dave has been talking about things he doesn’t understand for a long time on social media. I knew that he didn’t have the same credentials as Dr. Tour, who works in the labs and publishes research. So a YouTuber with a large following is going up against a specialist with real-world knowledge and experience. So, we are looking forward to a public resolution of this debate. A lot of non-Christians who have been following Dave are about to have their worldview rocked.

All three of these areas are challenging for atheists who believe that life was not created by an intelligent agent.