Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
I watched half an hour—all about healthcare—and I give up. Harris won’t admit that she’s banning employer-sponsored healthcare, nor tell us where the money for her plan comes from. Biden is being overly polite. And Americans care about other stuff, too. It’s dispiriting. Something about an internecine squabble, necessary thought it may be, makes me think that Trump is sitting back, waiting to use some of this stuff when he finally is forced to debate.
Anyway, by all means discuss your impression below. I’m done, and am going to work on my lectures for Antarctica.
Read this op-ed by David Brooks in today’s New York Times (click on screenshot) and see if you disagree with it. His fear, which is also is mine, is that the Dems, by moving ever further left in an effort to out-woke each other, will improve the prospects of Trump:
An excerpt (Brooks is a centrist):
According to a recent Gallup poll, 35 percent of Americans call themselves conservative, 35 percent call themselves moderate and 26 percent call themselves liberal. The candidates at the debates this week fall mostly within the 26 percent. The party seems to think it can win without any of the 35 percent of us in the moderate camp, the ones who actually delivered the 2018 midterm win. . .
The party is moving toward all sorts of positions that drive away moderates and make it more likely the nominee will be unelectable. And it’s doing it without too much dissent.
First, there is health care. When Warren and Kamala Harris raised their hands and said that they would eliminate employer-based health insurance, they made the most important gesture of the campaign so far. Over 70 percent of Americans with insurance through their employers are satisfied with their health plan. Warren, Harris and Sanders would take that away.
According to a Hill-HarrisX survey, only 13 percent of Americans say they would prefer a health insurance system with no private plans. Warren and Sanders pin themselves, and perhaps the Democratic Party, to a 13 percent policy idea. Trump is smiling.
Second, there is the economy. All of the Democrats seem to have decided to run a Trump-style American carnage campaign. The economy is completely broken. It only benefits a tiny sliver. Yet in a CNN poll, 71 percent of Americans say that the economy is very or somewhat good. We’re in the longest recovery in American history and the benefits are finally beginning to flow to those who need them most. Overall wages are rising by 3.5 percent, and wages for those in the lowest pay quartile are rising by well over 4 percent, the highest of all groups.
Democrats have caught the catastrophizing virus that inflicts the Trumpian right. They take a good point — that capitalism needs to be reformed to reduce inequality — and they radicalize it so one gets the impression they want to undermine capitalism altogether.
Third, Democrats are wandering into dangerous territory on immigration. They properly trumpet the glories immigrants bring to this country. But the candidates can’t let anybody get to the left of them on this issue. So now you’ve got a lot of candidates who sound operationally open borders. Progressive parties all over the world are getting decimated because they have fallen into this pattern.
Fourth, Democrats are trying to start a populist v. populist campaign against Trump, which is a fight they cannot win. Democratic populists talk as if the only elite in America is big business, big pharma — the top 1 percent. This allows them to sound populist without actually going after their donor bases — the highly educated affluent people along the coasts.
. . .The debates illustrate the dilemma for moderate Democrats. If they take on progressives they get squashed by the passionate intensity of the left. If they don’t, the party moves so far left that it can’t win in the fall.
Right now we’ve got two parties trying to make moderates homeless.
There’s more; read the whole piece. And then weigh in.
I, of course, will vote for any Democrat over Trump; I haven’t seen one who wouldn’t get my vote in such a contest. But I also want Trump gone for good in the next election.
I missed all but the last ten minutes of the first Democratic Presidential debate, as I was out and about. All I saw was a bunch of self-promotion, and some heated moments as the Dems attacked each other. Well, that’s to be expected. Weigh in below with your opinion, though it’s early days. Who did well and who didn’t?
CNN’s analysis is here, with their list of winners and losers. Of course making lists like this is largely for entertainment value, but for what it’s worth:
WINNERS
* Julián Castro: The former San Antonio mayor had been running below the radar — WAY below the radar — until Wednesday night. That is likely to change after his performance, in which he was able to carve out a remarkable amount of speaking time for a candidate polling somewhere between 0% and 1%. (An hour into the debate, Castro had spoken as much as Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, who is in the midteens in national polling, according to a count kept by The Washington Post. Hugely helpful!) Castro’s battering of Beto O’Rourke on immigration was hard to watch (especially if you were related to O’Rourke), but a clear win for Castro.
* Elizabeth Warren: Yes, she got more questions than anyone else. And, yes, she didn’t directly answer all of them. But Warren — especially in the early parts of the debate, when the most people were watching — was the straw that stirs the drink in the debate. (She did disappear somewhat in the second hour.) The debate began on home turf for her — talking about economic inequality. And Warren’s hand-raising when all of the candidates were asked whether they supported abolishing private insurance (only Bill de Blasio joined her) was a strong message to liberals watching that she was proud of who she was and what she believed. Warren came into the debate with the momentum in the race. Nothing she did on Wednesday night will stop that momentum.
* Cory Booker: The senator from New Jersey won’t be the big star coming out of Wednesday’s debate — my guess is that Castro will be that person — but he found a way to inject himself into most of the conversations during the night — even those where he wasn’t directly asked. Booker had the most talking time of any of the 10 candidates; talking the most isn’t always a sign of victory, but when you are someone like Booker who is just trying to get his name out there, it’s a pretty good measure. One caveat: For all of that talking, is there a memorable line from Booker coming out of this debate? I don’t think so.
LOSERS
* Beto O’Rourke: Hard to watch. Badly out of his depth from a policy perspective. Too rehearsed in his answers. The idea of him starting his first answer of the debate by speaking Spanish might have seemed like a good idea in his debate prep room but it played as pandering and overly planned in the moment. If one of O’Rourke’s goals coming into this debate was to show he was more than a good-looking but sort of empty vessel, it, um, didn’t work.
* NBC’s sound people: It’s never a good thing when there are hot mics when there shouldn’t be. It’s even worse when the tech people can’t fix that problem quickly and you have to go to an unplanned break. And it’s disastrously bad when the President of the United States takes to Twitter to say this: “.@NBCNews and @MSNBC should be ashamed of themselves for having such a horrible technical breakdown in the middle of the debate. Truly unprofessional and only worthy of a FAKE NEWS Organization, which they are!”
Lucky you! Tonight you get to watch, for free—and it costs $40 to attend live—a debate at this website, which runs from 7:00 to 8:45 pm this evening, Eastern US time. Just click here or on the screenshot below to see the livestreamed fun.
Here’s the topic, which is just plain weird:
Does God have a place in 21st century human affairs? For many, the answer is an unapologetic yes. Belief in a higher power, they argue, is the foundation of human consciousness and the soul of all social, political, and scientific progress. Further, some claim, humans are biologically predisposed to embrace religion and require faith to live moral lives. Others are far more skeptical. For them, adherence to faith and religious tradition serves only to fracture communities and prevent humanity from embracing a more enlightened, reasoned, and just social order. As we look to the future in uncertain times, should spirituality and religion play a central role in human evolution, innovation, and discovery? Or has God become obsolete?
On the “no” side we have Michael Shermer, whom most of you have heard of, along with Heather Berlin, a neuroscientist and science popularizer. Defending the need for God we have Deepakity (I’ll be curious to see what kind of “god” he conceives of) along with Anoop Kumar, described as “a board-certified emergency physician practicing in the Washington, D.C. metro area, where he also leads meditation gatherings for clinicians.”
Were I on Shermer and Berlin’s team, I suppose I’d start by asking them at the outset to demonstrate that God exists. If they can’t prove that to the audience’s satisfaction, then there’s no need to consider whether God’s become obsolete. Unless, that is, Deepakity and Kumar take the position that it doesn’t matter whether God exists, but that we need some form of a “higher power” to sustain human existence. But dragging in “human evolution” seems totally irrelevant, as our ideas are evolving far faster than our genes.
Or Shermer and Berlin could just say “Scandinavia, Q.E.D.” and sit down.
UPDATE: Shermer was apparently going to use this strategy, as he noted in a tweet:
LOL. The estimable Jerry Coyne @Evolutionistrue just shortened my 6 minute opening statement on tonight's debate resolution—the more we evolve the less we need God—to 2 seconds: “Scandinavia, Q.E.D.” That actually is in my opening statement, but more…https://t.co/tQ7VAiw4Cv
The women are expected to attend Trump’s debate with Hillary Clinton, which is airing on CNN at 9 p.m. ET. The town hall forum is co-moderated by CNN’s Anderson Cooper.
What kind of moron could possibly think that trotting out those women could help him?
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The mere thought of having to watch tonight’s debate makes me ill. There will be a lot of yelling, Hillary Clinton will bring up Trump’s latest idiocies early and often, Trump will be expected to show contrition (he will, but he won’t mean it), and it’s going to be a reality show of the worst type. I got my absentee ballot today and will mark it for Clinton (and other Democrats) tomorrow.
Given that my vote is as good as cast, I’m not sure what reason I’d have to watch the debate. Entertainment? None for me there. Information about the candidates’ stand on the issues? If you expect that, you don’t know the political climate.
Seriously, the thought of watching this is nauseating, and so I won’t. But I’m putting up this post so that readers who do—and I don’t fault you for it—can weigh in as the “debate” progresses, and perhaps give a final evaluation. Or, if you’re like me and not watching, go ahead and predict what you think will happen.
As for me, I have 500 pages left in The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.
This video, a recent debate in London between philosopher Anthony Grayling and Rabbi Daniel Rowe, was sent to me by reader Mark, who made this comment:
I have to admit to finding the prospect of an orthodox rabbi holding his own in a debate with Dr. Grayling on God’s existence rather disheartening, but I’m afraid that’s exactly what went down the other night in London.
Knowing Anthony, I was dubious, but I have to say that having watched the debate, I see that Mark is right.
First, a bit about the debate from the YouTube description:
J-TV: The Global Jewish Channel hosted its very first live event with a debate on the existence of God between Professor AC Grayling and Rabbi Daniel Rowe. AC Grayling is known as the “fifth horseman of atheism”, having written many books and articles on the atheism. Rabbi Daniel Rowe completed a postgraduate in the philosophy of mathematics. The two went head-to-head amidst a packed hall.
And here it is. The Q&A from the audience begins about 55 minutes in, so you can skip the last 20 minutes if you’re pressed for time.
The reason that Grayling didn’t crush Rowe was based on one thing: Anthony wasn’t up on the responses of physicists to the “fine tuning” and “first cause” arguments for God. The rabbi made three arguments:
You can’t get a universe from nothing; there is a “law” that everything that begins has a cause. Ergo, God. In response to Krauss’s book about how you can get a universe from a quantum vacuum, Rowe responded, as do many theologians, that “nothing” is not a quantum vacuum—it’s just “nothing.”
I’ve heard this many times, and what strikes me is that theologians never define what they mean by “nothing”. Empty space, the quantum vacuum, isn’t nothing, they say so what is? In the end, I’ve realized that by “nothing,” theologians mean “that from which only God could have produced something.” At any rate, the “law of causation” doesn’t appear to hold in modern physics, and is not even part of modern physics, which has no such law. Some events really do seem uncaused.
Also, Rowe didn’t explain how one can get a god from nothing. Theologians like him always punt at this point, saying that God is the Cause that Didn’t Require a Cause, because He Made Everything. But that is bogus. What was God doing before he made something? Hanging around eternally, bored out of his mind?
The next two contentions of Rowe are basically appeals to ignorance: God of the gaps arguments. Grayling did note this, but should have given a fuller response. Rowe:
We don’t understand why the Universe is orderly and why the laws of physics are the same everywhere. Clearly the only answer is that those laws were made by God to create a designed universe in which life could exist.
The “fine-tuning” argument shows that the parameters of the Universe are such that only slight deviations from some of the constants of physics would have made the existence of life impossible. Therefore the Creator was the Fine Tuner.
In response to the third argument, Grayling’s response is weak: the chances that his grandparents would have met, calculated a priori, were also very low. But it happened, and he is here.
That’s not a great response because it’s not addressing the fine-tuning argument but asserting the Weak Anthropic Principle. The former argument asks the harder question: why are the parameters of physics such that only a slight alteration of some of them would make life impossible? And why are the physical constants as they are?
We don’t know the answer to this, though religionists, taking advantage of scientific ignorance, say, “See, there must have been a God!” But physicists have grappled with this problem, and I discuss their responses in Faith versus Fact. One response is that the physical constants may not, if varied, be as rigid as we think in permitting life: we just don’t know. Another may be that there is a deeper reason for these physical constants to take their values, and we don’t know that deeper reason. Finally, the constants may vary in different universes if there is a multiverse system, and we live in one of those lucky universes.
It’s useful for everyone who encounters these arguments—and they are now the default argument of the Sophisticated Theologians™ because they sound so daunting—to know how physicists respond to them. If you don’t have FvF on hand, I suggest Sean Carrolls’ fine essay, “Does the Universe need God?“, also published in The Blackwell Companion to Science and Christianity.
Near the end of the debate, Grayling asks the important question: “If there was a creator, how do you know that it was the creator described by the Abrahamic religions?” I’d add, “How do you know that your creator was beneficent rather than malicious?” “And how do you know that God, after making the laws of physics, didn’t abscond and become a deistic god rather than a theistic one who still interacts with his creation?” The rabbi has no answer.
The Q&A session had one interesting question: when Rabbi Rowe is asked, at 1:05:00, how he knows that his religion, Judaism, is the “correct” religion. His answer is lame, in fact, he ducks answering completely (to be fair, he had only 90 seconds to answer). But his response is basically this: “Well, I’ve proved that there was a creator, and it would be stupid to think it was a rabbit, wouldn’t it?” But how one goes from Not a Rabbit to Yahweh and Moses defies me!
At any rate, it’s time to bone up on the fine tuning argument, and the argument for God from the constancy of the “laws” of physics.
Since we’ve been discussing Christopher Hitchens’s discussions of religion with the faithful, Michael Shermer sent me a link to this 1.5-hour documentary about Hitchens’s interactions and debates with one Christian man. Michael’s description:
Along the lines of what I mentioned previously about how Hitch would often engage people “on the other side” in order to better understand their positions, this documentary, Collision, is worth watching as it follows Hitch on the road, in debates, in restaurants, elevators, taxis, homes, etc. with evangelical Christian Doug Wilson. Hitch was certainly not a one-dimensional man. His motives were complex, but mostly I think he loved being engaged with people to challenge them and learn from them, and of course to stir things up and get people thinking, including himself.
Click on the screenshot to go to the documentary; its description from the thoughtmaybe website is below:
Renowned political journalist and best-selling author Christopher Hitchens is pitted against fellow author, satirist and evangelical Christian Douglas Wilson, as they go on the road to exchange debate over the question: Is Christianity Good for the World? The two theologians argue, confide and even laugh together as they journey through three cities presenting the debate. This film documents the journey, bringing the sharp points together to provide a critical analysis of religion and its perpetuation.
There are some preliminary shots, and the film proper begins at 7:30:
I wonder if Hitch confessed to Wilson that he was thinking of embracing Christianity. 🙂
