The Canaanite Genocide, William Lane Craig, and Richard Dawkins

Rubin was a rescue. Having been seized at a dogfight when he was less than two years old, his history was highly questionable. A good deal of previous experience with abused dogs, and more specifically, a background in working with pit bulls led me to believe that Rubin still could make a good pet. Given that I was in college at the time, unmarried, no children, etc. Rubin, despite having had a questionable history, was a good choice for a dog. He was loving from the get go, but as might be expected with pit bulls in general, and a pit bull that’s actually been involved with fighting on any level, he exhibited a good deal of dog aggression. As days turned to weeks, months, and eventually years, time at the dog park, time with friends dogs, and a good deal of discipline turned Rubin into a reasonably stable dog, great with people, okay with other dogs, but probably never be trusted entirely around other dogs.

And he never was.

As life went on, college turned into grad school, I married, had children, etc. Rubin was there for all of this… really through every experience of my adult life, and given this as well as his history, there is no doubt that he was my favorite pet of all time.

Eventually, we moved to a dead end road in the woods, lots of space, no neighbors… a place where the kids and dogs could run freely.

This was a different environment and living situation for Rubin. Whereas in college, he saw many different people all the time –people were constantly in and out of my college residences– and interacted with many people, people rarely come to the end of my road. What became normal for Rubin after a number of years was to not see people near my home. I suppose that over time, he interpreted this to mean that people were not supposed to be at the end of my road.

Though great with my young children, Rubin gradually became less and less reliable around strangers. It was his opinion that our home was ours exclusively, and that others didn’t belong there. What made the situation worse is that he reacted badly to people being frightened of him. The difficulty here is that people are naturally inclined to be frightened of 80 lb pit bulls that are barking and growling at them.

Regarding William Lane Craig’s Refusal to Debate John W. Loftus

Numerous readers have pointed out the apparent inconsistency between The Reactionary Researcher (TRR) commenting on Richard Dawkins’ refusal to debate William Lane Craig, arguably the world’s leading and most well-known Christian apologist, while seemingly ignoring another similar inconsistency: William Lane Craig’s refusal to debate John W. Loftus. In all honesty, TRR has not previously commented on this because:

• TRR had not heard of John W. Loftus

Thus, TRR had not heard of Craig’s refusal to debate anyone, much less, John W. Loftus, specifically.

So, exactly who is John W. Loftus?

Interestingly, John W. Loftus is a former student of William Lane Craig’s, and according to his blogger profile:

I have three master’s degrees in the Philosophy of Religion with some Ph.D. work. I majored under William Lane Craig at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in 1985. I’m the author of Why I Became an Atheist, and editor of The Christian Delusion, and The End of Christianity.

It is also noteworthy that Loftus was recently added to the roster at FreeThoughtBlogs (translation = Anti-ChristianBlogs), a slightly more appropriately, but arrogantly named, multi-author blog, that is a more aggressively venomous anti-Christian spinoff from the already anti-Christian ScienceBlogs, where very little science was actually discussed anyway.

Captain Trips is Here. European Researcher Engineers ‘Superflu’ with Potential to Kill Millions

Fans of Stephen King’s The Stand will recall that the story’s engineered ‘superflu’ was created under the direction of “Project Blue” at a U.S. Army Base, and was colloquially known as “Captain Trips”. “Captain Trips” was inadvertently released when a guard and his family were allowed to escape the base as a consequence of a security malfunction. The virus quickly turns into a pandemic and proceeds to kill more than 99% of the world’s human population. The opening scene to the TV miniseries adaptation of The Stand, which is relatively well-done, is shown below.

Let’s hope that reality doesn’t mirror fiction in any way, especially given the news that European researchers have engineered a ‘superflu’ with the potential to kill millions.

Unscientific Rubbish: Fox News Makes You Stupid? FDU’s Data and Methodology are an Incoherent Mess

Firstly, this entry will be prefaced by noting that The Reactionary Researcher (TRR) has no stake here; TRR has never and will never utilize FoxNews for his information concerning world events. For that matter TRR does not obtain his news from any television based sources.

A “study” has been making a big hit on the internet with its claim that “Some News Leaves People Knowing Less”. Within the first paragraph of this Fairleigh Dickinson University PublicMind Poll, the authors note that some news outlets,

especially Fox News, lead people to be even less informed than those who say they don’t watch any news at all.

This has been enthusiastically picked up by a variety of sources that have gleefully highlighted the point regarding FoxNews:

• Poll: Fox News Viewers Less Informed Than Those Who Read No News
• Surprise! Fox News Makes You Stupid
• Study Confirms That Fox News Makes You Stupid

Literally hundreds of other websites make similarly irresponsible, uninformed, and ridiculous claims. TRR is doubtful that any of these sources actually bothered to consult the original FDU poll.

Let’s straighten up a couple of things right off the bat: Firstly, this is no “study”, it’s a phone poll conducted by Fairleigh Dickinson University (FDU) that asked 612 random people in NJ exactly four questions, the answers to which were subsequently used to extrapolate this information.
Secondly, it is noteworthy that the fact that Talk Radio, the true news source for most conservatives, had an allegedly positive effect on people’s degree of ‘being informed’ went unnoted by any of the outlets that highlighted the story. Go figure.

Irrespective of what the results say, they are an incoherent and indecipherable mess, that as a consequence of being based on flawed methodology, are ultimately, meaningless.

TRR has reproduced some of the actual data from FDU PublicMind Poll below to illustrate the serious flaw in their methodology:

Regarding Richard Dawkins’ Refusal to Debate William Lane Craig

Author, Zoologist, former Professor at Oxford University, current emeritus fellow at the New College, Oxford, and outspoken atheist Richard Dawkins, recently published an article in The Guardian titled “Why I refuse to debate with William Lane Craig“, addressing, logically, the issue of why Dawkins refuses to debate William Lane Craig. Given that The Reactionary Researcher (TRR) is a big fan of both Dawkins and Craig, it was with great anticipation and expectations of a reasonable, coherent, and articulate explanation as to why Dawkins won’t debate Craig that I read this article. When I finished reading Dawkins’ piece, I found myself feeling strangely unsatisfied, which unfortunately, has become the rule rather than the exception for me when I read Dawkins recent work. I often get the impression that Dawkins believes himself to have been elevated to the status of no longer needing to offer logical, well-thought out, or coherent explanations. This would not only explain “The God Delusion“, but the inconsistent, illogical, ad hominem, harangue being discussed here.

This article expands on a more concise and simple answer addressing the question as to why Dawkins won’t debate Craig, which can be seen below:

Dawkins response in the above video is to state:

“I always said when invited to do debates that I would be happy to debate a bishop, a cardinal, a pope, an archbishop, indeed I have done those, but I don’t take on Creationists and I don’t take on people whose only claim to fame is that they are professional debaters; they’ve got to have something more than that. I’m busy.”

Craig is not a Creationist in the Young Earth sense of the word, and certainly is no more or less of a Creationist than the other religious figures that Dawkins mentions having debated, and as we’ll see below, Craig has much more to offer than simply being a debater. As the questioner in the video pointed out, Craig is arguably the world’s leading Christian apologist, not simply a Creationist or debater.

Why is Healthcare So Expensive in the US, or Why is Life Expectancy So Low in the US?

An article published in the UK Daily Mail online has become the most recent to highlight the apparent incongruence between per capita health care spending in the United States and a relatively low life expectancy in the U.S. The article highlights the findings of a recent Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) report stating that

Americans pay more than $7,900 per person for healthcare each year – far more than any other OECD country – but still die earlier than their peers in the industrialized world.

The author utilizes this apparent discrepancy between life expectancy in the US and higher than average health care costs to ultimately conclude that US healthcare costs are so high because the US lacks

“an effective government mechanism that acts to keep prices down.” and that “it’s a structural defect”

that is somehow inherent in the US system.

All of this leads to three important questions concerning these conclusions:

1. Is healthcare in the US somehow substandard?
2. Why are healthcare costs in the US higher than other OECD nations?
3. Why is the life expectancy in the US lower than in other OECD countries?

It is not uncommon for these reports of lower than average life expectancies to simply be dismissed as a consequence of a larger than average number of accidents, suicides, homicides, premature births, as well as soaring obesity rates in the U.S., though an honest analysis of the data does not allow such an easy dismissal.

Examine the two figures below: they indicate that while accidents, suicides, homicides, etc. do affect overall life expectancy, they are relatively minor causes of death after the age of 40 in the U.S.

Figure showing causes of death as a percentage of total deaths in the US.

Figure source

Origins of E. coli O104:H4 Published — The Reactionary Researcher was Right!!

You may recall that during the apex of the E. coli O104:H4 outbreak, editor of NaturalNews.com, Mike “The Health Ranger” Adams was most probably attempting to draw traffic to his site by espousing the hysterical notion that the German E. coli O104:H4 outbreak was somehow deliberately bioengineered and deliberately released in Europe in an effort to undermine the Organic Foods Market at least in Europe, but most probably worldwide. The Reactionary Researcher (TRR) has dealt with these claims at length and will not address them again here in this post.

Indeed, this isn’t even necessary.

God, Extraterrestrials, Science, and… Michael Shermer

Science writer and historian, founder of The Skeptics Society, Editor-in-Chief of Skeptic magazine, debater, and self-professed atheist Michael Shermer has recently authored an article titled: God or ET? You decide, wherein he proposes the following question:

What’s the difference between God and an extraterrestrial being?

Given Shermer’s status as a self-professed atheist, the answer–his answer–can be easily presupposed before one reads the article.

Nothing

In the article’s first paragraph, one encounters the following:

My question is this: how could we distinguish an omnipotent and omniscient God or intelligent designer (ID) from an extremely powerful and really smart extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI)?

Shermer further claims that any search for either God or an extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI) is going to be confounded by the eponymous, self-aggrandizing, and narcississtic Shermer’s Last Law (though self-aggrandizing and self-important, Shermer–apparently–lacks any confidence regarding his future ability or opportunities to formulate additional scientific laws, hence Shermer’s Last Law):

Any sufficiently advanced extraterrestrial intelligence is indistinguishable from God.

The Problem with Science Journalism

Sportswriter Dick Schaap once offered the following observation.

All of journalism is a shrinking art. So much of it is hype. The O.J. Simpson story is a landmark in the decline of journalism.

The Reactionary Researcher (TRR) is inclined to agree with this, and to further offer that this phenomena extends itself deep into the reaches of science journalism, as well as typical news stories. Though the orchard of popular science literature is laden with the rotting, overripe, undernourishing, overmarketed, mealy, ornamental fruits of the popular science press, where one must strip away a veritable mountain of decayed fluff to reveal even a morsel of sustenant flesh, TRR has decided to focus on one specific example to illustrate the problem with science journalism, which is no different than than problem with any type of journalism: Journalists must sell you their product.

As is the case with any type of journalism, the facts will be available–usually within the piece itself–but the reader must separate the wheat from the chaff, which depending on one’s level of expertise and familiarity with any given field, might be accomplished with great difficulty in some cases.

With respect to science, TRR is here to separate the wheat from the chaff for you.

De Novo Stem Cell Breakthrough Further Undermines Embryonic Stem Cell Research

The Reactionary Researcher (TRR) has previously offered a number of posts concerning the practical application of stem cells, as well as the ethics concerning the use of human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) specifically. Indeed, relatively detailed and specific cases against the use of hESCs in either medical research or medical applications can be read here and here. To briefly summarize, the ethical considerations surrounding the destruction of nascent human life alone are sufficient to justify banning research on hESCs, or development of medical technologies that utilize hESCs. In addition to this, the development of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) –a viable alternative to hESCs– combined with the host-donor rejection difficulties associated with the use of hESCs and the propensity for hESCs to form cancerous tumors, as well as the fact that more than 80 successful medical treatments that utilize Adult Stem Cells (ASCs) are in current use, would seem to provide a relatively open and shut case against the use of hESCs.

However, this has not been the case.

The debate has continued on. As of this writing, a legal battle concerning the federal funding of research that utilize hESCs is being heard in the District of Columbia. This particular case addresses the obvious of question of whether or not federal funded research on hESCs violates a federal law banning federally funded research that destroys human embryos.

You can reread that last sentence again if you need to, but for clarity: The abovementioned current court case is addressing whether or not federal funding of research utilizing hESCs, which are derived via the destruction of viable human embryos, violates pre-existing federal laws that specifically ban federal funding of research that destroys human embryos.

Go figure.

The discussion has devolved to the notion of whether or not guidelines associated with federal funding of hESCs “incentivize” the destruction of human embryos, which they clearly do. Much like making funds available to build more windmills results in more windmills being constructed, making funds available for research on hESCs will cause more hESCs to be harvested. TRR has previously discussed this.