My Mixed Reaction to Harris v Craig

I'd say the Harris/Craig debate is kind of a battle of the titans. Craig is the very best Christian debater in my view and the view of a lot of people. Harris is one I would expect to be a top atheist debater. I say that based on limited exposure to him. Just listening to him in the few venues I've heard I find that I'm impressed. Who is better than him? There are a lot of second rate atheist debaters in my view. Some are very smart and know a lot, but among those very smart atheists there are only a select few that have the additional debater's skill. I'm expecting Harris to be among them.

On the whole though after listening to him debate Craig, and you can get the audio here, I'm a bit disappointed. I was hoping for better. Not terrible. Not an atheist victory on scoring certainly. But maybe a success anyway.

Here's what Harris does well. His calm demeanor is perfect. He's got some great lines. And much of what he offers I think is very persuasive in its own right. For instance during his first rebuttal he offered some very poignant arguments related to the absurdity of belief that good is from God when we simply consider the 1,000 children that die in agony every hour hoping and praying to God and God will not be answering them. Meanwhile we are thanking God as if he's responsible for curing our eczema or providing us with a nice parking space. It's absurd.

Those are great points. They are very difficult for the Christians in the audience to deal with. But here's what they don't do. They don't directly rebut Craig's argument. Perhaps they do tangentially. But not directly.

Take Craig's point offered in his opening statement that under atheism morality is in fact just a biological by product of evolution. Given that, then had we evolved differently we'd have different values. Maybe we would value rape. Some animals forcibly copulate with one another. It's not "rape". It's forced copulation. The fact that we see it as immoral is kind of a biological accident.

Where is Harris' answer to that objection? There isn't any. Now, that's not all bad. Perhaps Harris chose to forego a technical victory and just take advantage of the fact that he's here at Notre Dame with a bunch of Christians and he's going to take this opportunity to hammer away at Christians with the absurdity of their view. What will Craig do in reaction? He'll ignore that and stick to the subject. What does that mean? Christians will leave without answers. That can be very persuasive. So forget about scoring. What matters to Harris is convincing. What I hear is very convincing.

When I was a Christian I think the type of thing Harris did was the kind of thing that struck me most deeply. He hasn't answered Craig's opening statement which shows that objective morals don't exist without God. So (from the neutral observer perspective) he doesn't have a logical foundation for his view. But my view is also silly. So now what? If anything I think the Christian leaves and says Deism makes more sense. That's the first baby step out of religion.

At one point Harris says "If you wake up tomorrow and think that if you say a few magic words over your pancakes and they will turn into the body of Elvis Presley you've lost your mind. However if you think that when a priest does it over wafers it becomes the body and blood of Jesus you are just a Catholic." That's pretty hilarious. And it's a great illustration. But what does that have to do with the debate? Not much. Perhaps Harris knows this and doesn't care.

So who wins? There can be no question that Craig technically wins. His opening statement wasn't rebutted. But if you gauge it by whether you think a religious person would be more likely to lean in favor of non-religion and vice versa I think it may be that Harris won. For Harris perhaps that matters more.

Discussion on Libyan Invasion

Would that there was more discussion in our country.

David Frum is Coming Around

His positions on the surveillance state and war are terrible, but on economics he seems to be coming around. Here's a quote:

Speaking only personally, I cannot take seriously the idea that the worst thing that has happened in the past three years is that government got bigger. Or that money was borrowed. Or that the number of people on food stamps and unemployment insurance and Medicaid increased. The worst thing was that tens of millions of Americans – and not only Americans – were plunged into unemployment, foreclosure, poverty. If food stamps and unemployment insurance, and Medicaid mitigated those disasters, then two cheers for food stamps, unemployment insurance, and Medicaid.

Why Big Business Opposes Single Payer

I've always thought it was a little strange that one lobbying sector (health insurance providers and pharmaceuticals) had the power to override the remaining sectors. Single payer health care seems very appealing to business. It's half the cost of what we have. Isn't it good for business to reduce health care costs?

And yet here's IBM attempting to destroy single payer in Vermont. That's kind of hard to understand. I understand the right wing claim that the quality of health care would suffer. That claim is totally bogus, but health insurance providers will offer it because single payer threatens their gravy train. But why would IBM care about that? They should care about profits. Cheaper single payer should be more profitable for them.

But here's the problem as described in the linked article. The present state of affairs provides an excellent recruitment and retention tool. Say you are an engineer that's put a bit of money away and you'd like to take a year off. Maybe hike the Appalachian trail or try and bike across the country. That's manageable if health care is provided by the state. But not with our present system. You can't be without health care in this country, which means you need to be employed always.

Also the fear of being unemployed keeps wages low. You'll work for less because you are scared to be without. And you should be scared, because if you develop health problems without insurance you can be in a world of hurt. Worker insecurity is great for the economy as Alan Greenspan explained.

The other thing this does is crush start up companies. Health care is a tremendous start up hurdle for a new small business. The status quo reduces competition.

Big business isn't a monolith. Some sectors might prefer a cheaper, higher quality system. But so far it seems there are not enough in that sector for us to make this kind of a change. The kind of change that would not only deliver freedom for everyone, but would deliver better care, eliminate health related bankruptcies, and eliminate the deficit in one fell swoop. An ideal solution supported by the vast bulk of the population. But not supported by the people that count. That is, some elements of big business.

Illegality of Afghan War

For some reason I just assumed that the war in Afghanistan was in fact approved by the UN Security Council. I don't know why I thought that, but it's false. Since the UN Charter is the supreme law of the land this means that the war was illegal even according to US laws. The UN Charter mandates that countries settle their conflicts peacefully and that force is not permissible unless authorized by the Security Council, except in the case where it is required to repel an imminent attack, which did not apply here.

Despite that did Congress pass a law authorizing the war? It would seem they did not. The Congressional authorization granted the President the authority to use force "against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons."

Did the Taliban do that? Nobody I know claims that they did. None of the 9-11 hijackers were Afghans. Two may possibly have passed through Afghanistan. That's about it. The Congressional authorization no more gives the President authority to attack Afghanistan than it gives him authority to attack Germany, where some of the planning is believed to have occurred.

What a ridiculous and destructive war. And Congress knows this stuff. It's not like they don't have Ron Paul on the floor informing them of the facts. Here he goes. At least we still have Ron Paul.

The Tobin Tax

Complaining about today's problems is one thing. I do it often. Here I am complaining about how the financialization of the economy has ruined things. But what about solutions?

One is something called the Tobin Tax. It's a measure that would throw a little sand in the speculative machine, increasing incentives on investment for productive use rather than speculation. A thousand economists have signed a letter to the G20 finance ministers urging them to adopt such a measure.

Hedge fund managers make as much in one hour as a middle class household makes in 47 years. And while the income earner in that middle class household is actually bringing overall value it's not clear that the hedge fund manager is doing so. The Tobin Tax would help. It's working fine in England, but Wall St is resisting and so far Washington is siding with them.

The Poor Pay The Highest Percentage of State Taxes

Following up on my earlier post about what the rich pay in taxes, Vinny made the point that at the state level things get even worse. The poor pay a higher proportion of their income in every state except Vermont. It sounds shocking but it's true.

I learned this via an interesting article called 9 Things the Rich Don't Want You To Know About Taxes. It's worth a read.