Blinks: 30 arguments for God, GMOs are safe, libertarian Demographics, and Bryan Caplan on Arguments
- Questions Libertarians can’t answer? Let me Google that for you. Some answers libertarians give are good, some are not so good. But if you don’t think that virtually all libertarians have engaged in some of the most obvious questions -- who would care for the poor? – Who would build the roads? – Wouldn’t Robber Barons take over the World? Then you just aren’t listening.
- Here are 30 arguments for the existence of God. The question that comes to my mind is how many of these arguments are sound? Atheists have to say 0. One sound argument proves God exists unless it is a probabilistic argument. Theists, I anticipate, would give a number between 25-30. In an unbiased world I would expect more low non-zero numbers, even if The Truth is that 0 or 30 of them are sound.
- Shocking news -- Genetically Modified Foods are safe. "The scientific research conducted so far has not detected any significant hazards directly connected with the use of genetically engineered crops." There was never any reason to think that they weren’t safe. Every argument I’ve ever heard against “Franken Foods” was just plain fake science, appealed to the perfection of nature (as if she took such great care of us), appealed to unknowns (because how do we know the long term effects?), or warned against people making money off of it (as if people never make money helping other people).
Cecil Adams also has a page on GMOs. It is pretty good except for the end – “The big agribusiness companies will move on to some other pesticide, but organic farmers will be screwed.” The vast majority of organic foods in the marketplace are from big business. Moreover, even if it weren’t, who cares? People losing their jobs to more efficient processes is the normal economic process of creative destruction.
- A very good post by Bryan Caplan on quality argumentation. “… a good argument must have a conclusion less obvious than the denial of your initial premises. You can't argue that 1+1=3. After all, any argument of the form ‘A, therefore B’ is also an argument that ‘Not B, therefore not A.’”
- Steve Jeffrey’s articulation of Post-Millennialist Eschatology is fabulous. He gives an audible account of it on the Theopologetics Podcast.
- 2013 American Values Survey: In Search of Libertarians in America has some very good demographic information of libertarians.
