Inflategate and Measurement Standards

Posted on 06 Aug 2015 by Frank Moraes

Inflategate As regular readers know, I don’t like football. I’m not that keen on professional sports, anyway; but football really does operate at a whole different level of boringness. If it weren’t for the fact that it is so explicitly violent, it never would have become America’s game. (Although I have noticed that Americans haven’t gotten into rugby — a game that makes American football players look like the masculine pretenders they are.) As a result, I’ve met the whole “deflategate” controversy with nothing but derision.

One thing about it is that it is like the whole steroid hysteria. How is it that people can live in a world where people are born into poverty, lead joyless lives, and die young, and yet they get upset because a form of entertainment isn’t “fair”? It makes no sense. And these sports have had rules handcrafted for specific kinds of bodies. In the 1960s, NFL linemen were smaller than most quarterbacks today. What’s more, “Of the 170 players that have started at least one game as an offensive lineman this season, only 28 weigh less than 300 pounds.” Today, Fran Tarkenton would be a baseball player.

But I found an interesting article on the “deflategate” controversy, Pressure Gauge Discrepancies Undermine Wells Report. It doesn’t directly deal with the question, but it answered something I wondered about: just how under inflated where these footballs? Well, not much: less than 3%. Is this a big deal? I don’t know. It might give a player a slight advantage. But I do know this: no normal person would be able to tell the difference between a ball filled to 12.5 PSI and 12.2 PSI. But okay, if true, it is something — it is an advantage. You have to wonder why anyone would cheat to get such a small advantage. But okay: an advantage.

The most important issue is that it isn’t at all clear that any of the balls were deflated. The officials had two pressure gauges at the game. One of them read 0.3 to 0.45 PSI higher than the other gauge. The alleged deflation was — What a surprise! — between 0.3 and 0.45 PSI. And the official who measured the balls cannot remember which gauge he used for the first measurements. This really should be the end of it. But of course it won’t be. There are too many people who think this is very very important. Above all, it is an opportunity for the NFL to make a big deal about the fact that it takes the sanctity of the game very seriously.

But clearly, the NFL does not take the sanctity of the game seriously. For many hundreds of years, the accuracy of weights and measures have been critically important to people all over the world. People understand that if you are buying a hundred pounds of tomatoes, you want it to be a hundred pounds — not a hundred ounces. But the NFL apparently doesn’t care about the pressure of the footballs in their games. If there is such variability with pressure games at one game, imagine what it is across the league.

Again, I don’t care from a sports standpoint — except that the people who get worked up about this stuff are fools. And I don’t feel bad for the players. Just the same, what we are seeing here is something I’m very familiar with from politics. A particular team, and player, and assistant are being used as a way for a bigger, more powerful, group to make itself look good. It’s pathetic. On the other hand, if everyone decided that football is corrupt and stopped watching it, I’d be on board.

If Only the Democrats Debated Like the Republicans

Posted on 06 Aug 2015 by Frank Moraes

Scott Eric Kaufman The Democratic National Committee and MSNBC announced Wednesday afternoon the name of the 10 candidates who will be participating in the first Democratic presidential debate of the 2016 electoral season. Only the top 10 candidates in the five most recent polls will be allowed to participate in the debate, which will be moderated by MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, Chris Matthews, and PBS’s Gwen Ifill.

The meteoric rise of media mogul Oprah Winfrey (23%) is posing a threat to both establishment favorite Hillary Clinton (13%) and insurgent socialist Bernie Sanders (11%), both of whom must be concerned with what the beloved Chicago politician-in-training might say given that she’s vowed to “hurt anybody” who criticizes her.

Rachel Maddow told Politico’s Dylan Byers that MSNBC has a secret plan to prevent Winfrey from dominating the debate, but declined to outline it in specific detail. “Rest assured,” she said, “it’s magnificent.”

Joining that triumvirate on the Cleveland stage will be a trio of formerly disgraced politicians who have managed to resurrect their careers in light of the multiple indictments against Hillary Clinton for her role in Benghazigate. Anthony Weiner (7%), Rod Blagojevich (6%), and John Edwards (5%) all hope to escape the shadow of their own comparatively minor failures by hiding in the massive one currently threatening to engulf the Clinton campaign.

Some of the more entertaining candidates with whom they will share the stage are the fading Michael Moore (3%) and the ultimate single-issue candidate, Jenny McCarthy (2%), who will no doubt seek to educate both Toby Keith (1%) and Gary Hart (1%) about the dangers of childhood vaccination. Keith and Hart, meanwhile, will do their best to justify their continued existence during the main event…

—Scott Eric Kaufman and Benjamin Wheelock
What If the Democratic Presidential Primary Were as Bizarre as the GOP One Currently Is?

Good Debate, Bad Debate

Posted on 06 Aug 2015 by Frank Moraes

Drunk Blogging Well, the Republican debate is coming up. I hope you are excited! As you read this, I am at the county fair being impressed by the local arts and crafts. But for those looking forward to the debate, Jonathan Bernstein reminds you, How Debate Moderators Get It Wrong. And he makes an excellent point, which explains why I won’t be watching: debates should be about introducing candidates to the public. It isn’t about the moderators — or people like me who are very well informed about what all these fools are campaigning on. Actually, it makes me feel better about missing it, because I would only be there for the worst reasons.

According to Bernstein, there are basically only two kinds of questions that should be asked at debates:

What policies the candidates support on the various issues
What they think about things as a way of finding who they are as people

He thinks that “gotcha,” tactical, current event, and attack invitation questions are all invalid. I agree. For one thing, “gotcha” questions are almost always about “flip-flopping” and those are just stupid. The current events are horrible. I’m sure there will be lots of questions about Planned Parenthood, and all they really come down to is the policy question: each and every one of them believes abortion should be illegal. What Planned Parenthood did or did not do has nothing to do with it. As for attacking other candidates, that’s just silly, because they don’t need an excuse to do that.

But there is no doubt that policy questions could be a whole lot better. For example, on the abortion issue, I would very much like it if we could get all the candidates on record. They are all anti-choice, of course. But do they believe in abortion in the case of rape? What about life of the mother? This last one is critical, because if you don’t believe in a life of the mother exception, you really do just hate women. In that case, there are competing rights and you are coming down squarely on the side of an unborn baby. But I’d like to know if any of them would go that far. I think Carson might. And so too might Huckabee. Maybe others. I don’t know. But let’s nail that down.

But there won’t be anything like that. It would tell the audience something for them to go down the line. They could ask, “Are you pro-life?” And they would answer: yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. But it will be worse than that. They will all get away with rhetoric like, “I always am going to err on the side of life. I believe life is precious. I have been in the pro-life camp since I was a teenager.” So within the framework that Bernstein has put out, you could have a very good, informative debate; and you could have an awful one.

As for the personal stories — who is behind the candidate — I guess I disagree with Bernstein about that one. At one time, that might have been fine. But today, in the world of constant polling and focus groups, that’s all so managed as to mean nothing. If every campaign had an official comic strip, it would say more about the candidates than the “narratives” their campaigns sell.

I hope the debate is good. I’m sure I’ll see parts of it. I may even watch the whole thing later if it sounds like it is worth it. But it isn’t worth doing on spec. And I really deserve this day off. I’ve been promising myself for weeks.

I’ll Be Missing Tonight’s Republican Debate

Posted on 06 Aug 2015 by Frank Moraes

I had been planning to live blog today’s Fox News Republican presidential debate. But after my experience on Monday, I’ve decided against doing it. In fact, I am going to do everything I can to avoid even seeing the debate. And I know: I’ll miss out on a few good moments. And Trump might be a lot of fun. But I’ve been through this before. It’s a lot of time to waste just waiting for the occasional Oops! or Let him die! It is mostly just the candidates being in absolute unanimity about even the most extreme of positions.

Think back to the 2012 Republican debates. Bret Baier asked the candidates, “Say you had a deal — a real spending cuts deal: ten to one… spending cuts to tax increases… Who on this stage would walk away from that deal?” Not one them would. Not even the supposed reasonable guy, Jon Huntsman. No, the Republicans are the party of “all or nothing.” They are a revolutionary group where no one is allowed to disagree on policy. They are only allowed to disagree on how loud they shout about it. If the Republicans weren’t such authoritarians, they would have split up into endless factions by now.

Consider how that would have gone at a Democratic debate, “Say you had a deal — a real tax increase deal: ten to one… tax increases to to spending cuts. Who on this stage would walk away from that deal?” Well, they might all walk away from it, but not because they didn’t think that was enough of a compromise. Of course, the question doesn’t make much sense either way. The question was originally just to hammer the point that Republicans will never raise taxes. Baier could have made it a million to one and at least six of the eight would have walked away — and very likely all of them.

The mistake I made before was remembering back on previous general election debates. In those at least, there are two sides. On Monday, I watched in horror as candidate after candidate talked about how Planned Parenthood was selling fetal tissue without even a hint of push back, much less any actual truth being presented. And that was true of just about every issue. The only thing that was ever pressed was what the candidates might do about all the problems and non-problems they were whining about. And they had no answers. It was the same old stuff that they want to do for different reasons. There was no Democrat to counter any of the nonsense.

But there is something else that was missing: alcohol. During the 2012 general election debates, I was always drinking. That helps a great deal. And in that regard, let me recommend Matt Terzi’s article, The 2016 GOP Presidential Debate Drinking Game! But let me caution you: the drinks have to have a low alcohol content. The rules are such that if you were drinking hard alcohol, you would be passed out after five minutes. For example, you are supposed to drink once when someone mentions “Obamacare.” That alone is likely to result in 40-50 drinks. I really liked this part of the game:

FINISH YOUR DRINK and open the next one any time a Republican candidate:

Confuses socialism, fascism, or communism, in any combination
Compares the Republican Party or themselves to one or more civil rights leaders
Mentions President Obama’s birth certificate in any way
Argues that they’re more like Ronald Reagan than another candidate or multiple other candidates
Promises to shut down Planned Parenthood

So be careful if you play the game. As for me, I’m planning to go to the fair that day.

Morning Music: King Creole

Posted on 06 Aug 2015 by Frank Moraes

Not all Elvis movies are about him losing his job and having to sing at a nightclub. Sometimes there are other reasons that he must sing at a night club. For example, in King Creole, he must sing at a nightclub because he has to leave high school. It’s based upon a Harold Robbins novel. And best of all, it stars Carolyn Jones — the actor who played Morticia Addams in The Addams Family. She had such an unusual beauty — with a long nose, full lips, and huge eyes. And she’s not the only great actor in it. It also stars Vic Morrow, Paul Stewart, and Walter Matthau at “The Pig.” And it was directed by Michael Curtiz!

This morning, we listen to the title track, “King Creole,” written by Dennis Linde. He wrote what is very possibly my favorite Elvis song, “Burning Love” — Elvis’s last top 10 hit. But this one is great too. The video sucks and isn’t well synced. But it’s the music that matters.

Anniversary Post: Voting Rights Act

Posted on 06 Aug 2015 by Frank Moraes

It is fifty years ago today that President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965. And it only took conservatives 49 years to destroy it. Scott Lemieux wrote a great article on the subject, John Roberts Has Been Trying to Gut the Voting Rights Act for Decades. Never imagine that conservatives really believe in democracy or freedom or any of the other things that are normally considered obvious ideals of the United States. These guys are authoritarians and anything it takes to get power is fine. This is why they have no trouble believe that Obama is planning to take over Texas with Jade Helm 15. They know the way they think.

Of course, the Voting Rights Act is still in effect. And it still does good. What Roberts managed to do was to make it far less powerful. And the moment he did that, Republican controlled legislatures all over the nation just happened to have new laws to pass. It isn’t a coincidence. Nor is it just that these localities are filled with a bunch of bigots (although they generally are). It is that this is part of a grand scheme. It’s not a conspiracy, exactly. That’s because they all think the same. Rush Limbaugh picked a perfect name for his followers, “Dittoheads.”

Passage of the Voting Rights Act was a great accomplishment. And it remains a great law. And maybe the Democrats can eventually get control of Washington and fix it. But I suspect if they do, the Republicans will use this as an excuse to then vote against it every time it comes up. You know, because, “Well, the Democrats have turned it into a partisan issue.” Well, since about 1968, it has been a partisan issue. All I can say is that all those conservative Christians in the Republican Party had better hope that they are wrong about God. Because they are going to burn.

Happy birthday Voting Rights Act!

Odds and Ends Vol 17

Posted on 05 Aug 2015 by Frank Moraes

Odds and Ends I’ve got to make this quick. I worked most of the day editing an article about computer hackers. It was kind of interesting and I took some real crap writing and turned it into something that wasn’t bad. This is, of course, the greatest success that an editor can have. But as it is, I’m kind of behind on giving love to Frankly Curious. And it is Sunday as I write this, so there isn’t a whole lot to write about.

Back in Odds and Ends Vol 15, I labeled it “Cool Images Edition.” But that now seems the way that these things are going to be from now on. And I have a whole bunch to post today. So let’s get started.

Opium Dreams

I’ve been hired to write the introduction to the re-release of Claude Farrère short story collection, Black Opium. In doing some research, I came upon this quite dazzling picture called, Opium Dreams. It is a photo manipulation by Kassandra. I think it is the best illustration I have ever seen of what it is like to sleep while under the influence of opioids. I’m going to assume that the little creatures below ground are dormice. And they are working away, even though the young woman is asleep. That’s very true. It’s like the wheels (or dormice) are continuing to work away. The opioids do not provide good sleep. But in addition to being insightful, this is such a gorgeous image:

Right after Christopher Lee died, I got a hankering to watch, The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes. The main story is about Holmes falling in love with a woman who turns out to be a Russian spy. They had been traveling together undercover as Mr and Mrs Ashdown. At the end of the film, Holmes makes a deal to allow her to return home. But then, many months later, Holmes’ brother Mycroft sent him a letter informing him that the spy was caught by the Japanese government and executed. But it ends with, “It might interest you to know that she had been living in Japan these past months under the name Mrs Ashdown.” It’s very poignant. But you all know what a softy I am about this kind of stuff.

Here are my best efforts to combine the letter, which were panned and so required my meager skills in PhotoShop.

The Stewart Children

This one came from The Daily Show, but I have no recollection when or in what context. Clearly, Jon Stewart is making fun of his height. Martha Stewart is not that tall, but she is taller than Jon Stewart — and me.

Squab Story

Clearly, this is from Real Time With Bill Maher. I assume it is about the news that ISIS had banned pigeon breading because their genitals were offensive. This is just weird, because pigeons don’t have genitals the way we do. They have cloacae and so don’t bread like humans at all. Whatever. The main thing is: a pigeon in a burka. It’s hilarious. Pigeons are generally hilarious. I love pigeons.

Political Signs for White People

This one showed up on Google+. Usually, political signs have to be pithy. But often we white folk have to have things made very clear to us. This woman stepped up to the plate admirably.

That’s it for today. If you like this kind of stuff, you might want to check out Ted McLaughlin’s blog, Job’s Anger. Every night, around midnight Texas time, he posts about ten things. Some of them are analysis and he provides great visualizations of recent polling data. But most of it is cartoons and other visually interesting things. I have him in my RSS feed, so it’s nice each evening to have all of this stuff come in. Check it out.

The Best Candidate vs the Lesser Evil

Posted on 05 Aug 2015 by Frank Moraes

Matt Taibbi totally nailed the danger of Donald Trump last week, In the Age of Trump, Will Democrats Sell Out More, Or Less? There are a lot of liberals who like the idea of the Republican Party getting so insane that they are unelectable. I’ve never been one. It is still going to depend upon the voters. And if they are not careful, the Democratic Party will do what seems to come naturally: move to the right. As Taibbi put it, “History shows that if the Republican Party pushes further in the direction of brainless nativism and economic reaction, the Democrats will probably follow right behind them.”

This is what the New Democrats were all about. If you believe that the country really did move rapidly to the right in the 1970s and 1980s, then the idea of moving the Democrats to the right was a good idea. But that is a misreading of history. What’s more, the New Democrats embraced social liberalism — the only kind of liberalism that a case could be made against. Now there are reasons for this; the New Democrats were funded by a bunch of economic conservatives. And there will always be a lot more money to be made pushing economic conservatism.

The primary target of Taibbi’s article is the recent Politico article by Barney Frank, Why Progressives Shouldn’t Support Bernie. It was an unfortunate display. Frank claimed that Bernie Sanders couldn’t win the general election. There is exactly zero evidence of that. As I talk about all the time, if the economy collapsed next year, Donald Trump would have little difficulty winning the general election. And conversely, if the economy continues to grow through 2016, and Bernie Sanders is the Democratic presidential candidate, he will win. I still don’t really understand why it is that everyone thinks presidential politics is so very personal. It isn’t.

The core of Frank’s argument is that the Democrats are going to need lots of money to beat the Republicans. Again: this just isn’t true. I’m with Bruce Bartlett on this issue. Clearly: candidates need a critical mass of funding. But the vast majority of the money spent in these high profile elections is just wasted. A good example of this is 2010 race for California governor. Meg Whitman had vastly more money than Jerry Brown, yet she lost by 13 percentage points. And it certainly seems that under most circumstances, the winning candidate gets more money because the funders see that the candidate is going to win. Regardless, we shouldn’t encourage this kind of corruption. And thinking that Sanders can’t win because he isn’t going to be able to raise a billion dollars just feeds into that.

Taibbi pointed out that this “move to the right” and “choose the electable lesser evil” nonsense has a long history with very predictable arguments. And the biggest part of that argument is that people like Hillary Clinton are actually true liberals inside. The argument goes that she is just “pragmatic.” Well, I believe that to some extent. The problem is that being “pragmatic” tends to become a habit. Clinton has now publicly supported a $12 minimum wage. But if she had gotten through the whole campaign without endorsing that, it would likely have stayed buried deep in her liberal heart where she keeps all the other things that “sure would be nice in a perfect world…”

Ultimately, I no longer look at elections as events. Certainly I think it will be terrible for the nation if a Republican becomes president in 2016. But the big issue over the last 40 years has been that the entire playing field of politics has moved to the right. Now on trade agreements, the only thing the parties disagree about are the exact details of the deals. Obama isn’t against these deals — he just wants to make them a little less worse for the American worker. On the minimum wage, now we have to listen to large numbers of people in the Republican Party claiming that we should have no minimum wage at all. And both parties are obsessed with job killing policies like low inflation and strong dollar.

Our only hope — and it is not much of one — is that the people pay attention and force our leaders to do what is right. Bernie Sanders is a good choice for us. But I even think that Hillary Clinton could be good if we force her to be. But if we can’t even manage to vote for the candidate we really agree with, how are we going to hold candidates accountable afterward?

H-1B Visas Are a Scam to Keep Wages Low

Posted on 05 Aug 2015 by Frank Moraes

Visa H-1B visas allow high tech companies to hire foreign workers when they just can’t find “qualified workers.” And I’ve been writing about this for a very long time, because it is a total scam. But in saying this, I don’t mean to put down the people who work under H-1B visas. I’ve worked with many of them and they are generally quite competent and I’ve considered a number of them friends. But H-1B visas are a scam for the high tech industry. They hurt high tech workers in America. And above all, they hurt the people working under them because they end up being limited kinds of slaves.

Michael Hiltzik wrote a great article over the weekend, Tech Industry’s Persistent Claim of Worker Shortage May Be Phony. He’s far to careful to come right out and say it, thus we get “may be” instead of “is.” Because there is no doubt. But I only say that because I’ve worked in the field and I’ve seen it firsthand. But it isn’t hard to understand. There are incentives in this situation. And it is a hell of a lot easier to push the government to allow a flood of high tech talent into the country than it is to raise wages.

You may remember the big conspiracy to keep down wages in Silicon Valley. It was headed by every idiot’s idea of an entrepreneur, Steve Jobs. He didn’t like that other companies like Google were stealing his employees. So rather than do what one would in an actual free market, he went to Google and other companies, and made a secret deal that they wouldn’t hire each other’s employees. Problem solved! But that shows you that high tech is no kind of bastion of liberality. Those guys are just as cut-throat and anti-competition as George Pullman.

Hiltzik highlighted a great example of just how disingenuous these people are:

Alice Tornquist, a Washington lobbyist for the high-tech firm Qualcomm, took the stage at a recent Qualcomm-underwritten conference to remind her audience that companies like hers face a dire shortage of university graduates in engineering. The urgent remedy she advocated was to raise the cap on visas for foreign-born engineers.

“Although our industry and other high-tech industries have grown exponentially,” Tornquist said, “our immigration system has failed to keep pace.” The nation’s outdated limits and “convoluted green-card process,” she said, had left firms like hers “hampered in hiring the talent that they need.”

What Tornquist didn’t mention was that Qualcomm may then have had more engineers than it needed: Only a few weeks after her June 2 talk, the San Diego company announced that it would cut its workforce, of whom two-thirds are engineers, by 15%, or nearly 5,000 people.

Even after this was pointed out, Qualcomm claims that it really does need those H-1B visas, because it “continues to have open positions in specific areas.” I have no doubt that is true. Because pretty much every business in the world has certain employees that they really, really want. For example, right now I would love to have access to a top quality researcher who I could pay a dollar an hour to. And that’s the thing with Qualcomm. Is it setting up programs to encourage people to go into these high demand areas? Of course not. It just wants to use it as an excuse — a way to keep wages down here at home.

Hiltzik interviewed Michael Teitelbaum, author of, Falling Behind? Boom, Bust, and the Global Race for Scientific Talent. It argues that our need for STEM employees (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) is just a myth. And of course it is. When have businesses ever not complained that the workers were not good enough and that they were paid too much? Never. That’s why most rich people today earned their money off the back of the government.

Now the high tech industry is lobbying to more than double the number of H-1B visas — from 85,000 to 195,000. And it will probably get them. After all, there is no high tech union around that is going to lobby on the other side. Congress always talks about creating jobs, but here is an idea that will do something like destroy 100,000 jobs. That’s because the companies will replace existing jobs that clearly have Americans who can do them. But it isn’t hard to manipulate the law. But it will increase profits and income inequality. So hooray?

Morning Music: Bossa Nova Baby

Posted on 05 Aug 2015 by Frank Moraes

I hope I’ve been clear that these silly Elvis songs are in no way bad. In fact, thus far, I’ve loved every one of them. And today’s is no exception. But before we get to that, let’s talk about the film, Fun in Acapulco. It involves Elvis losing his job in an exotic location so that he has to take a job singing in a club, but it all works out and he leaves with the girl. I told you the title of the movie, because that description works for basically every Elvis movie.

But there is something special about this film. Elvis did all of his acting in the US because he was banned in Mexico. In 1957, Elvis was quoted as saying that he didn’t like Mexico and would rather kiss three African American women than one Mexican woman. Such was Elvis’ talent that he could offend two groups of people in a single sentence. But this apparently caused there to be groups of young people who were pro-Elvis and anti-Elvis. And at the premieres of a couple of his films, there were fights between the two sides. In one case almost a hundred people were arrested. So Elvis wasn’t allowed in the country and his films were banned. But the film crew was able to shoot everything but Elvis in the film and then stick him into the middle of it afterwards.

The song is “Bossa Nova Baby” by the great Leiber and Stoller. And the performance is wonderful. That bigot sure can sing and dance!

Anniversary Post: Air Traffic Controllers Fired

Posted on 05 Aug 2015 by Frank Moraes

Air Traffic Controllers Strike On this day in 1981, Ronald Reagan fired 11,345 striking workers of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization. In addition to being a terrible thing in itself, it marked open season on labor unions. Labor laws have pretty much not been enforced since then. It’s been a bit better under Democrats — but certainly not good.

There are those in the labor movement who welcome the coming of “right to work” laws. They think it may be what it takes to create a new kind of union — one that is backed by workers and takes care of their needs. Personally, I don’t see how the current status quo stops unions from re-imagining themselves. What’s more, it is hard not to see that unions haven’t been part of the problem.

Exhibit A in this regard is the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization itself. In the 1980 election, it endorsed Ronald Reagan. Now, it is true that Reagan had given the union some support during the Carter administration in its fight with the FAA. But did they really think that Reagan was a friend of any union?! It’s ridiculous on its face. And the union gave Reagan a great gift: allowing him to fire so many people all at once. What a big man! No one would ever question him again!

None of this means that I think the air traffic controllers should have been fired. Reagan was going to win that election regardless. But it does show that the union didn’t understand who its friends were. And that’s sad. I continue to wonder how it is that the power elite have managed to convince the workers of this nation that unions are somehow bad.

Regardless, it was a sad day 34 years ago.

The Silliness of the Kalam Cosmological Argument

Posted on 04 Aug 2015 by Frank Moraes

Scott Clifton has been having an longtime argument with William Lane Craig over the Kalam cosmological argument. Craig has basically made a whole career out of this argument. And it boggles my mind. Clifton has taken the argument on in great detail. And it shouldn’t come as any surprise that he has totally destroyed Craig’s argument. Of course Craig would never admit this. As much as I admire Craig’s abilities as an apologist, he is a true believer. Nothing can shake his faith and his blinders are so big that he can’t even see straight ahead.

The Kalam cosmological argument is pretty simple. Basically, it is that the universe must have a cause because everything in the universe has a cause. If that seems slippery, it should. Everything in the universe has a cause therefore the container of everything has a cause? That could be true. But it doesn’t follow deductively. Clifton distinguishes this as creation ex nihilo (out of nothing) and ex materia (out of existing material). But it really isn’t necessary to get technical about this stuff. Truthfully, it makes my brain hurt. And it doesn’t matter how carefully Clifton nails down the argument, Craig will never accept it.

Scott Clifton Of course Clifton knows this. He talks about how Craig works back from his conclusions. Craig starts with, “God exists.” And then he ends with any number of “assumptions” — including the idea that everything that starts to exist must have a creator. And this turns Craig into a very silly person, except for those who are as determined to believe Christianity as he is. One time, I saw a debate between Craig and Sam Harris on the question, Is God Good? Harris (who I don’t think that highly of regarding his intellect), totally destroyed Craig. But it didn’t matter, because Craig’s entire argument was, “If God does it, it must be good.” The fact that you could make the same argument for Satan or Hanuman doesn’t apparently bother Craig, because he knows he is the follower of the “right god.”

To me, the counter argument to Kalam is very simple. We humans are parochial. Our experience of the universe is constrained. That’s why relatively theory seems so strange to us. We aren’t in the habit of interacting with objects moving near the speed of light. To give you some idea of this, the New Horizons spacecraft was traveling at 35,000 mph — that’s just 0.005% of the speed of light. But at least that is us being parochial about things inside the universe. It’s a joke to think that our experiences inside the universe would provide us with any kind of intuitions about the way universes are created.

If you read much Christian apologetics, you will see that it is most clearly not an intellectually honest endeavor. But it isn’t even intended to convince nonbelievers. It is meant as a kind of pacifier for believers. It allows them to dismiss cogent arguments against their faith with a facile claim, “We too have intellectual-sounding arguments that prove that we are right.” This is the same thing that is going on in the intelligent design movement. The problem with it is that believers have mistaken it for truth and pushed it out into the wide world where it has been systematically dismantled.

Scott Clifton has done the same thing for Craig’s argument. I admire that. Unfortunately, I don’t have the patience to take clearly incoherent and disingenuous arguments seriously. The Kalam cosmological argument is not serious. On the other hand, it is an example of an issue that I care very much about: modern Christians really aren’t interested in ontology. Their theology is firmly rooted inside the universe. And that throws away the only part of religion that is interesting. Really what Craig is arguing is that the universe is inside some larger universe that he defines as God. And that is question begging. But why should he care as long as other true believers keep paying for his books and speeches so they can feel better about the avalanche of data pushing against their faith?