Right Reason

In the wake of his debate with Dinesh D’Souza on whether or not the Christian God exists, John Loftus says that even if he didn’t win, he learned a lot. I asked him if, given his loss (as a few people see it – including Loftus I think) in this debate, he was still hoping to debate William Lane Craig, something he has wanted for a while. After all, I figured, although D’Souza is good at what he does, Craig is more qualified and experienced. John’s answer was bold enough: “I’m not afraid. I’ll debate any Christian any time. Are you game?”

For those who follow this blog, you may have just done a double take. At this blog I publicly offered to debate John Loftus, back in April 2009.  Being somewhat amused by this apparent challenge, I reminded John that he had already received such an offer from me but had not taken it up. Here’s what came next: “Glenn, what are you talking about? I have no recollection of this.”

I thought I’d do him the favour of jogging his memory. I have also pointed this out in the comments thread. Here is what transpired here in April 2009:

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On the 9th of February 2010 at the University of Illinois (Champagne-Urbana campus) Dinesh D’Souza debated John Joftus on the question “Does the Christian God Exist”?

There exists a broad consensus among those who I have read assessing the debate, whether Christian or sceptic (including John Loftus himself). I won’t tell you what that consensus is. By the time you’ve watched the debate, I won’t need to. Here’s part one of the debate. There are thirteen parts:

As you listen to this debate, bear a couple of things in mind. Firstly, D’Souza is a good presenter of arguments and I would take no credit from him. However, it’s not terribly controversial to say that he isn’t the most academically esteemed defender of Christianity out there. Someone like William Craig would take that title, and perhaps the title of the best public defender of Christianity as well. Bear in mind, in light of how you see this debate unfold, that John Loftus wants a public debate with William Lane Craig. For the sake of the Christian cause, I’d really like that to happen. But I doubt that it will. That would be like Ken Ham demanding that Richard Dawkins publicly debate him on Darwinism. It would be great for Darwinism, but it will never ever happen.

If you spend your own money supporting or criticising a political candidate, your political opponents get to know where your family lives. Nice.

The Electoral Finance Act 2007 was a real bone of contention when the Labour Government introduced it. The long and short of it was this: It was a way of preventing private citizens and groups from spending however much of their own money they like to encourage people to support political parties or their policies leading up to an election. The Act made it illegal for any person or group “to spend more than NZ$12,000 criticising or supporting a political party or taking a position on any political matter, or more than NZ$1,000 criticising or supporting an individual member of parliament, without first registering with a state agency, the Electoral Commission.” That registry is public information and can be read by anyone. If you spent $1,001 criticising the Prime Minister leading up to an election, her supporters, whether politicians, union bosses or common thugs (Helen Clark was Prime Minister at the time) would know who and where you were.

That alone is fundamentally wrong in a free society. But what’s worse, the Bill limited private spending to $60,000 – although this was increased by recommendation of a Select Committee to $120,000 before becoming law. It may be your money, and your opinion, but how much of it you can use was not your decision. This was a clear free speech violation.

Thankfully, the Act was repealed in March 2009.

Not so thankfully, those experts in tinkering with things until they break otherwise known as Government Ministers are at it again:

Justice Minister Simon Power has just announced changes to the laws governing campaign spending during elections, and details of next year’s referendum on the MMP electoral system.
Under the changes, people who spend more than $12,000 on parallel campaigning will have to register with the Electoral Commission. The register will be publicly available.
But unlike under the previous Electoral Finance Act, which was repealed by National last year, parallel campaigners such as unions – or the Exclusive Brethren – will not be limited to spending $120,000 during the campaign.

Is it better than the Electoral Finance Act? Yes, but let’s not get carried away. It is not generous to allow people to spend their own money expressing their political viewpoint. They should have that right without any dispute. Not limiting that right in this case simply amounts to refraining from injustice. But why impose any injustice at all? Why make people who want to advertise political values tell everyone else who and where they are? Not to keep them honest, for there are already laws in place against false advertisement. Why then?

What is more, “the Government has rejected proposals that would have allowed third parties to advertise on television or radio during campaigns.” Just so that you realise that this is as bad as it sounds: Private businesses and private individuals are forbidden by the government from doing business involving the expression of political values during election time.

It’s like dumping Heroin and taking up Cocaine. Arguably not as bad, but why would you?

Glenn Peoples

A group of zealous atheists in New Zealand have been raising money to run an advertisement campaign: advertisement for – well nothing, really (quite literally). The campaign was a spinoff from an identical one in the UK where signs declaring the (probable) non-existence of God.

They’ve hit a snag. The company that the group would like to peddle its advertisements has decided that they don’t want to do so. “The company has defended the decision, saying it has the right to decline ads that it sees as controversial or divisive.” As a spokesperson for NZ Bus said,

“NZ Bus has the right to decline advertising that may, in its perception, be considered controversial or divisive,” she said.

“We have said ‘no thank you’ to Mr Fisher and have wished him well in his endeavours to secure a bus company to work with.”

Ah well, it’s a free world and we live in a free market economy. If the ads have merit, surely someone will want to promote them, right?

Somehow, this line of thinking doesn’t seem to be popular with the atheists in question, and certainly not with their spokesperson Simon Fisher. In fact, not only is this just an unfortunate reality of the free market, but it’s a violation of their human rights, the group maintains. “The group was considering taking the case to the Human Rights Review Tribunal, Mr Fisher said.”

It’s an interesting world where someone thinks they have a basic human right to the use of someone else’s advertising space to promote their beliefs. I can only wonder what these very same atheists would have said if a bus company decided not to run ads encouraging people to become Muslims – and the Muslims started talking about legal action. I’ll let your imagination run wild with the sort of descriptions that would be applied. In fact, feel free to offer your on wild speculation in the comments section!

This is a brief comment on something that just caught my eye and jogged my memory. Every now and then someone points out that affiliation with a Christian church has declined steeply over the last half century in New Zealand. Now, I’m not the sort of myopic person to think that trends in my own neighbourhood are global indicators of anything. But my other and perhaps more interesting thought is that this shows much less than one might suppose. The nature of the relationship between Christian faith and official membership of a denomination has shifted significantly. The reality is that this generation, as opposed to that of the mid twentieth century, is much less likely to see official membership as important. This is all the more so in large evangelical or Pentecostal churches where the question of church membership might never even arise.

It was interesting to see this thought reflected in an article in the LA Times today, citing a study that illustrates the fact that a decline in church affiliation is not the result of a lack of religious conviction in young people.

According to Martin Varsavsky, “nothing much” happens when a society gives up religion. Religion does nothing to maintain social order, does not improve standards of justice, doesn’t help people to be better citizens, and really makes no positive difference on a societal scale. He uses Spain as an example. Now, there’s a certain bias in both the selection and the comparison. Under the dictatorship of Franco, the author says, Spain was a Catholic country, but after “three decades of democracy,” this is no longer the case. It’s easy to see where a comparison like this leads. Religion = tyranny, but freedom tends away from religion. Of course any reader (hopefully) realises straight away that other examples could have been chosen that did not favour this portrayal of history. For example, in the 1930s in the Soviet Union under the atheistic state during the dictatorship of Stalin, it was very risky to be a Christian and religion was viciously suppressed, but after the collapse of the Soviet Union and communism there, Christianity now flourishes by comparison. So of course we’ve got to be careful about how we let the writer’s selective sample sway us.

But back to the main point: Mr Varsavsky’s article is written to assure us that religion is not the backbone of a good society, and that when religion disappears, a society does not turn to chaos or fall apart or anything dreadful.

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Aquinas’ “moral argument” might not be what you expect to find.

Thomas Aquinas is famous for – among other things – his five arguments for Christian theism, arguments called “the five ways” (quinque viae). The first way is the argument from the unmoved mover. The second way is the argument from the first cause (commonly called the cosmological argument). The third way is the argument from contingency and the fifth way is the argument from purpose (not from design, contra Richard Dawkins), namely the teleological argument.

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