Here, let me.

His “proof” of Christianity rests on five pillars. I’m only going to talk about the first in this post.

It runs like this:

1. Everything that begins to exist must have a cause to exist.
2. The universe began to exist
3. Therefore there must have been a cause for the universe to begin to exist.

Anyone can immediately see that this proves nothing, and certainly does not prove a God of any sort, let alone the highly complex Christian God, but Craig says that this points to the need for a Creator.

First point, no it doesn’t. It simply argues that something caused the universe to start because the universe started. That cause precedes effect. Nothing else. This much is probably true, although it is likely to be outside our known laws of physics because the conditions just prior to the “big bang” were not the same as the conditions we see in our universe today.

Plus, if he says God was responsible for the “big bang”, he is placing God outside of our universe. This means that God must exist in an environment which also began and required a cause.

And of course God must have begun and had a cause – and God, being a much more complex entity than the universe, would be far harder to explain.

So he’s not only explained nothing, he’s made the problem worse – instead of a relatively easily explicable universe, he now has to explain a hugely complex omnipotent omniscient God and an environment to place him in.

Of course he regards this line of argument as “unsophisticated”. Maybe, but it still knocks his point for six (and I gain confidence that the extremely sophisticated Carl Sagan thought this line of argument sophisticated enough to bat aside Craig’s reasoning).

Like most religious people, when faced with logic, he resorts to magic. He says that God has always existed and always will – he’s infinite.

Any proof of that?

Also, wasn’t in William Lane Craig that argued that infinite things did not exist because we have no evidence of such things? I think he used the phrase “metaphysically impossible“.

So that would apply to God then – or is it because he’s outside of our universe and maybe in his environment infinite things are somehow magically possible?

If you argue that God can be infinite, then you can equally argue that the universe can be infinite. If the logic fits for one, it must fit for the other or it fails.

This is unsophisticated. The sophisticated view (i.e. Craig’s view) holds that God is infinite – because he is.

Any proof of that?

More magic?

The more you pull and tug at Craig’s argument, the more you realize it’s just smoke and mirrors.

Being a party leader is three jobs in one. First, you have to lead the party; then you have to lead the opposition and challenge the government, appearing like a Prime Minister in waiting; and third you have to lead the government and be a world statesman, actually be a Prime Minister. These are three very different things.

Neil Kinnock was probably the best party leader Labour have ever had. He transformed Labour from the shattered mess of 1983 – a party that polled just a smidge over 27% and was toying with a Tony Benn leadership – to near victory in 1992. This was an astonishing accomplishment, only failing to win the 92 election because he failed as leader of the opposition. He never convinced the country that he was a Prime Minister-in-waiting and failed far too often to hold the Thatcher and Major governments to account. This meant we never got to see how much a real PM he’d have been, I suspect quite an effective one. Unfortunately once Major had replaced Thatcher, and the 90s had replaced the 80s, Kinnock looked as old-fashioned as an episode of Swap Shop. The country wanted John Smith.

Tony Blair was probably the most effective leader of the opposition in history. He completely dominated parliament during John Major’s latter years and his 1997 victory felt as certain and inevitable as any election I can remember. Major looked tired and incompetent, Blair bright, clever and energetic. He was unstoppable and caught perfectly the mood of the nation. He was a rubbish party leader though, large parts of Labour couldn’t stand him and didn’t believe in his policies. He ploughed on anyway, never bringing the party with him, surviving on electoral success partly achieved by positioning himself against his party. He failed to build a next generation, which meant they stumbled blindly on with the highly unsuitable Gordon Brown for lack of serious alternatives. This led to the 2010 meltdown, getting only 29% in the election, second only in rubbishness to the 1983 nadir.

Even as a Prime Minister, whilst certainly not a bad PM (Major, Brown etc), he greatly under-achieved given he had 10 years, landslide victories, a sustained economic boom and dominated the political scene.

One has to go back to Clement Attlee to find a really effective Labour PM in terms of achievement. The ambition of the 1945 Labour government was breathtaking, and their achievements equally staggering. They made mistakes, could have done a lot more, and eventually lost timidly in 1951 (although did get more votes than Churchill’s Tories who won more seats), but Attlee was undoubtedly a successful and convincing PM.

So, since “Lucky” Jim Callaghan, a Tony-Blair-like well-respected dominant figure who was unloved by his party, through the lovable and lovely, but entirely ineffective, Michael Foot, to the brilliant party leader Kinnock who entirely failed to convince the public he was PM material, to John Smith, someone who was shaping up to be both a mediocre party leader and mediocre leader of the opposition when he his career was tragically cut short by his death.

Four leaders spanning nearly 20 years and not a single election victory.

Tony Blair won the leadership because the Labour Party realised that you need to elect someone electable if you want to get elected. This obviously worked, but it’s an exception by Labour Party standards and left many wondering what was the point of being in government if you were not governing as a Labour Party anyway (unfair criticism in my opinion). Picking leaders for “electability” is a dangerous game, it’s like picking someone you think everyone else will like but you don’t really like them yourself – see Mitt Romney, John Kerry etc. for examples.

So why did Brown then get the job? There were not many alternatives: John Reid, Alan Johnson, David Miliband, maybe even Charles Clarke … some people even (wrongly) mentioned Jack Straw. Mostly either too old, too young or too rubbish. Mainly he got it because it was his turn. That’s no way to run a party.

That said, Brown was not as bad as people remember. He was initially very impressive, leapt ahead in the polls, looked the part and sounded confident and capable. Then it all went wrong and everything that was wrong with Brown dominated the next three years apart from when he saved the world from economic collapse. He just couldn’t turn it round and got worse and worse. Labour stuck with him, bless them.

So, we get to 2010. Following that short shambolic period of government and election disaster, Labour actually had several very able options open for the next generation: not just the five who stood (I would question whether Diane Abbot falls into the category of potential leader), but also other who didn’t like Douglas Alexander, Alan Johnson, Hilary Benn, Sadiq Khan and the person who I hope becomes the next leader, Yvette Cooper.

They choose Ed Miliband.

First, let’s get past this nonsense about him being ruthless and standing against his own brother. He wasn’t actually the only candidate standing against his own brother, David Miliband also stood against his own brother. I don’t see that Ed was any more to blame in this than David, if blame is even relevant. Being older doesn’t make you superior. If they couldn’t work it out between them, like the Balls/Cooper household did, then that’s the fault of both brothers not just Ed, and why shouldn’t they stand and let the party decide rather than cook up a deal between them, Granita-style. That way doesn’t always work out either.

Second, David was another Blair. Capable and all that, clearly much more PM-material than Ed (at least in 2010) but unloved by his party as someone too far to the right. Ed, a Gordon Brown man, was seen as more ideologically attuned and was adept at playing that card, cleverly becoming the only feasible not-David-Miliband candidate. Had he not stood, I don’t see Burnham, Balls or Abbot being able to bring together the same coalition and I guess David M would have won.

I have got over this. I supported David Miliband because I thought he was good Foreign Secretary, is PM material and went to the same school as I did, briefly – although not at the same time as I.

Since Ed’s election, Labour have barely put a foot right. His initial shadow cabinet selection was laughably shit. Putting Johnson as Shadow Chancellor was weak and incompetent, it had to be Balls or Cooper (I’d have picked Cooper and put Balls at Business to take on banks and university fees). Then shoving Balls as shadowing the Home Office made about as much sense as giving Cooper the Foreign Office. The two most talented people in the shadow cabinet in the wrong jobs, looking absurdly ill at ease and seeing their talents wasted.

Since then, Ed has failed entirely in PMQs, trying to be something he isn’t. The pithy one-liners someone else wrote read from a script at best sound like pithy one-liners someone else wrote read from a script. More usually they just sound a bit crap. He should focus on the big picture and the policy, areas where he shines. He should build a long-term narrative that shows off his qualities not a short-term tactic that plays to his weaknesses.

On vision he’s actually doing quite well, but because he’s failing to lead both the opposition and the party, he sounds like a reedy little kid shouting on his own. The rest of them should be lined up echoing his themes, exploring the ideas and painting in the colours in their departments. When he talks about a moral capitalism this does make sense, it is what people want to hear, but then why aren’t we hearing from Burnham, say, on what this means in health, or the invisible Khan about how this applies to justice.

(I don’t expect anyone’s read this far, if you have type the secret keyword “handlebar” in the comments section so I know at least someone did).

The other big failure is how Labour have allowed the Tories to paint the financial and economic collapse as a Labour problem. This is clever, a failure of capitalism and a greedy deregulated financial sector is painted as a failure of social democracy with a neo-liberal solution. What? I would love to hear them explain how Labour’s decision to fund health and education in the UK led to the collapse of Lehman Brothers?

It’s a pity. Ed Miliband, like William Hague was for the Tories, is a brainbox bright young thing and a real talent for the party and the country, but that doesn’t mean he’s the right man to lead them, but now nor is David, his moment has gone, he probably should have challenged Brown in 2009. The right man to lead Labour now is Yvette Cooper.

Then, instead of steady and mediocre John-Major-like Romney, we’d get a proper nutjob candidate having to actually make sense for longer than a single breath, having to actually know stuff and have policies that don’t contradict each other too much. This won’t happen, because hot on the heels of Iowa is fairly sensible New Hampshire. If we went straight to South Carolina and maybe a couple of southern crackers like Mississippi and Alabama, then the momentum might stick to Santorum.

What a laugh that would be!

Currently most states never get to vote in a meaningful primary. The majority of candidates only limp to Florida at best, the really successful maybe as far as Super Tuesday (March 6th) if they’re lucky. Most read the signs following Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. Rick Perry’s already “considering his candidacy” (which is something he should have done before launching it) and Bachmann’s dropped out. These three states have the combined population of less than 9 million (under 3% of the US total, roughly the same as New York City). but their results set the momentum behind each candidate and make them look inevitable or inevitably doomed. Now, once Romney tucks NH in his knapsack with Iowa, it’s pretty much game over.

The only scenario that might give us some greater fun is if the other conservatives drop out and back Santorum and he can take SC on Jan 21st. This is more likely if Hunstman can stay alive and split the sane vote.

Then it’s game on.

Romney is slick enough not to foul up and will probably promise Hunstman the Secretary of State job, so Huntsman will anyway back Romney after Florida, so Santorum is going to have to beat Romney on his own, and on turf that’s not made of crazy. Tough job.

For kicks, let’s just say he does. That would only be step one, he’d still have to beat Obama. Not impossible, but unlikely given his lack of appeal to the majority of Americans who are not completely insane.

Obama aside, Democrats usually choose rubbish candidates: John Kerry, Al Gore, Mike Dukakis, Walter Mondale, Jimmy Carter, George McGovern. There’s only one President among them and Carter was fighting the unelected Gerald Ford only a couple of short years after Watergate and Nixon’s humiliating resignation. Even if you give the 2000 election to Gore (as the American people did) for a sitting Vice-President not to clearly and convincingly beat a chump like Bush is anyway a damning verdict on his candidacy. This means that since Johnson’s 1964 win, only Clinton has looked like a great campaigner and he won in large part because Ross Perot split the vote in both 92 and 96.

In any normal year we’d expect the Republican candidate to end up in the White House – Bob Dole (in 96) and John McCain (in 08) are the only Republican Presidential nominees not to be President since Goldwater lost in 64. Obama is clearly a fly in this ointment. The ointment being the argument I just made, and Obama being the fly and that’s not because he’s black but because he’s quite obviously clever, capable and a great campaigner: i.e. not a rubbish Democratic candidate. However, the fly in the Obama ointment is that he can’t sell us hope this time around, and his inspiring words fall flat when he’s been a disappointment to Democrats and a demon to Republicans – so even with someone as good as Obama, there’s a chance for whoever gets the GOP nomination, even if it’s someone as clearly as shite as Santorum.

Let’s hope so.

Obama might outfox the fly in his ointment by picking a more inspiring and exciting veep choice than Joe Biden – although it’s not obvious who and I don’t think he will. Santorum could anyway counter-outfox and try to persuade someone like Condi Rice, a widely respected person of impressive intellect and experience who would broaden his appeal, although she’s not a great politician or campaigner. Anyway, whatever, let’s say he does this (which he won’t, I know) and we have a Santorum/Rice ticket – then it really is game on.

Poor unemployment numbers, high debts, a Congress refusing to do anything, and Santorum wins by a whisker due to vote rigging in Florida on the promise of reducing the deficit and huge tax cuts. At last, a proper Tea Party candidate having to actually deliver rather than just shouting out absurd lists of disconnected ideas and quasi-religious nonsense.

Then we sit back and watch the American empire fall, consumed by its own sense of divine exceptionalism and rigid dogmatic silliness. And spend any spare time learning Chinese.

I don’t really want this to happen, I love America and would hate it to fall … but if having a Democrat means a timid and compromising Obama losing the arguments, then we might as well give the other side their heads and let them see what really happens when you put the conservative crackpots in charge of the asylum.

Blood is mother nature’s lubricant (horayforlogic)

I always thought that we lived in a post-feminist society: that feminism was the last generation’s issue, something people my age didn’t think of anymore. Case closed, mission accomplished, job done. This extraordinary testosterone-fuelled feeding-frenzy on Reddit proves me wrong.

BITE THE PILLOW, I’M GOING IN DRY (Hbeck22)

Can you believe that some actually said that in public? In print? To a 15-year-old girl trying to have an intelligent conversation?

I assume that most of the anonymous bullies who commented in such an offensive way were not serious about wanting to actually inflict rape, but even if this was only an attempt at humour and nothing more, it betrays such a breathtaking lack of respect to treat someone so incredibly nastily just because she’s a young and pretty girl.

I felt ashamed.

This isn’t at all about atheism, in that regard I don’t like Skepchick’s post title. Atheism is not about an abandonment of morals and the adoption of a responsibility-free lifestyle. Atheism is about taking a skeptical and intellectually reasoned approach to issues and not accepting faith as a method for learning and understanding. This is why people like Sam Harris argue against the word atheist and others use words like “smarts” to emphasise that it’s about using your brain. I prefer “truthist” which is a bit clumsy but it accurately captures the point: it’s about seeking understanding and wanting to know the truth about things, however difficult that truth may be.

That’s what this girl was doing. She is intelligent enough to have questioned her mother’s religion and asked for interesting and challenging books for Christmas, she then seeks to engage with others to learn and grow on what should be an intellectually rewarding online forum. Then she meets these cock-for-brains idiots.

Clearly the fact that we can hide anonymously on the internet means we can all sound tough. What could be a great global conversation usually ends up with people just shouting at each other. The internet brings out the worst in people. This doesn’t actually happen in real life. Does it?

I think I might be wrong.

Helen Lewis-Hasteley argues here that feminism needs to convince people that it’s still needed in 2012, that it’s still a live issue. At least as far as I’m concerned, case closed, mission accomplished, job done. I’m convinced.

Tears, natures (sic) lubricant (j12601)

Who the hell do they think they are to be offended by what someone else does that has no impact on them? I don’t give a hoot if they’re offended, they have no right to impose their absurd offended-ness on anyone else, no more than I have a right to tell Newt Gingrich to stop having extra-marital affairs or tell Rick Perry to stop being so incredibly fucking stupid.

Rick Perry (see him here if you have a strong stomach – remember to click the “don’t like” option) explains that his bigotry and ignorance come from his faith. That does explain it. His moral compass is calibrated by an external source, he looks to a book of rules to know what’s right and wrong. Most of us understand right from wrong internally: from our evolutionary understanding of society, from our upbringing and from moral reason, but Rick Perry needs a book to help him.

How does he know which book to use? Clever clogs Perry has an answer to this. Here he relies on his faith: the believing of something in the absence of evidence or proof, often despite significant evidence to the contrary. This allows our hero to get his absolute infallible morals from the Bible.

The Bible (used to support slavery, sexism and murder, all of which I believe are morally wrong) does indeed damn homosexuality, but on close examination we can see that the main anti-gay passages are also pro-female gang rape. I wonder if Perry believes in offering his daughters for sex with strangers as in here in Genesis 19:

4 … Before they had gone to bed, all the men from every part of the city of Sodom—both young and old—surrounded the house.

5 They called to Lot, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us so that we can have sex with them.”

(because gays do that all the time)

6 Lot went outside to meet them and shut the door behind him

7 and said, “No, my friends. Don’t do this wicked thing.

8 Look, I have two daughters who have never slept with a man. Let me bring them out to you, and you can do what you like with them. But don’t do anything to these men, for they have come under the protection of my roof.”

I like to imagine he was holding a “World’s Best Dad” mug of tea while he said this.

Although, in Lot’s defence, he is right – and arguably brave – to speak out against the rape of the two male visitors (angels) by the men of Sodom.

This lovely tale continues as Sodom is destroyed, innocents as well as “the wicked”, and Lot’s poor old wife is turned into salt (punishment for the deadly crime of ‘looking back’ – harsh, but arguably consistent with Texan justice) and, desperate for a baby and seeing no other option whilst hiding in the hills, Lot’s daughters get him drunk on wine and impregnate themselves with him while he sleeps: first night the elder daughter, second night the younger one (I would have urged patience before going down the incest route, but that’s just my morals). Lot denies all knowledge and also knew nothing of any newspaper phone hacking scandal, I’m a man, I know these things, and believe me, this defence is weak:

33 … He [Lot] was not aware of it when she lay down or when she got up

This is where Rick Perry and his GOP pals get their morals and justify denial of human rights to homosexuals.

God help us all.

I used to play tennis at a club on Brighton sea front. One woman who’d recently had a baby was telling me how her husband had gone out “with a few of the dads” they’d met at ante-natal classes. I felt a chill run up my spine, sweat broke out across my brow, a bitter sickly taste on my tongue. What could possibly be worse than spending an evening “with a few of the dads” met at an ante-natal class? It’s hard to imagine anything less appealing. Perhaps being repeatedly beaten in the bollocks with a large wooden club with shards of broken glass embedded cruelly in its side. Perhaps.

I mean, being forced to stand and make awkward conversation with these people right now in this car park wouldn’t be as bad as the night out “with a few of the dads” because the timescale is shorter, and there is no pretense. Going out and having “a few pints” is supposed to be fun, unlike standing in a car park waiting for your kid, which we know is not fun, it’s just passing the time. In the car park you can stand about looking bored but if you go out “with a few of the dads” you can’t spend all evening standing around looking bored. It’s not cricket. You’ve got to make an effort and have “a few pints” and chat about stuff.

This is hard. What do you talk about? You can rack your brains for likely topics but if you go to politics, you tend to get over-simplification of issues with a right-wing slant, and disagreeing is disagreeable, can’t be done, except in the safety of a solid relationship. You’ve got to nod along and say “that’s right” at the petty racism or whatever Daily Mail bullshit they come out with. Once I heard the following as a comment on the myth of unemployment: “there are jobs, people just don’t want to work”. Yes, both of these comma-separated statements contain truths, but there is not a causal connection and it is not related to unemployment. Most of the people who don’t want to work already have jobs which they’d rather not do. Most of the people who don’t have jobs would ideally like to work. Then they’ll probably turn into the first type who don’t want to work, but do so anyway. Most people who don’t want to work, do actually work, even though they don’t really want to. There are also jobs, but most vacancies are taken by people who already have jobs. I just made all of that up without checking any facts at all, but it’s probably true. That’s good enough.

There’s always football – but then I tend to have to nod along too because I don’t really know that much about football which is exposed when they get into the detail of whether Lampard is at his most effective playing “off the front two” or in “the hole”. All I know is that he danced round the corner flag when he scored against Leeds United, aping his father who did the same after he scored at Elland Road many years earlier. My main beef in football is the BBC refusing to write Leeds United. They always put Leeds without “United”. This is lazy and rude. This isn’t the sort of thing you bang on about when stuck in a pub having “a few pints” “with a few of the dads”.

This means that I’d spend most of the evening “with a few of the dads” feeling excluded. I’d hover on the edge of a circle, perhaps be drawn into a one-to-one conversation, always feeling awkward and self-conscious and drifting off to think about what I’d rather be doing, things which offer me more fun than “a few pints” “with a few of the dads”, which is more or less everything else in the world, including, for example, sitting in my car reading a book.

A pay rise for everyone? Who’s going to pay for that then?

Assuming they were public sector employees, taxes would have to rise by an equal amount to pay for it. This means it’s a real-terms pay cut for everyone not in the public sector.

If they weren’t in the Euro they could print more money (now misleadingly titled ‘quantitive easing’ so it doesn’t sound like ‘printing money’) which is essentially fraud because if you put more money in the system without a corresponding increase in value it just gets swallowed up by inflation. The amount of money is only equal to the value of the economy, you don’t create value by printing notes and minting coins. You just create inflation. Another real-terms pay cut.

On the other side of the argument is the theory that while we cut demand domestically through austerity, we grow our way to prosperity through exports. Ok, but who do we export to? Didn’t we start importing everything from China already, leaving our balance of payments looking as unbalanced as Newt Gingrich at a Middle East peace conference? Who’s going to buy this stuff we’re going to suddenly manufacture for export? Everyone else is trying to export to us!

I know that there are no easy answers to this economic crisis. We’ve been living beyond our means for years, basking in the fake luxury of a bubble, then complaining that we can’t sustain that level of lifestyle once the bubble bursts. There is an element of hard cheese that we might just have to swallow. It doesn’t matter if it wasn’t our fault, or whether we were one of the ones who got to grow fat during the good times, facts is facts and we are where we are – and while it’s lovely and entirely correct to blame the banks and the inept financial regulation, there are a lot of people who got high on high house price valuations and thought that they had just got rich by magic.

Outside of fairy tales, you don’t get rich by magic. Money is not value, it only represents value, and more money means nothing unless it’s supported by more value.

That’s the flaw in the logic of the guys on the bus. They shouldn’t take a day off work to demand more easy money, they should demand that we work together to create more value. We can’t just export our way to value, because other countries are in the same boat: we’re all in this together as millionaire aristocrats Cameron and Osborne like to remind us.

So how do you create value in an economy bereft of demand? Surely you try to create demand. How do you create demand? Increase the marginal income of those with the highest marginal propensity to consume: the poorest groups. If you cut taxes on the rich who don’t need the money to survive, they will be more likely to save and invest – they may create some additional jobs because they may be more confident in taking additional risk, but as long as demand remains weak, it’s unlikely many people will rush to expand supply. At best, it’s an inefficient way to create jobs. If you give the money to people who will spend it, then you get it moving in the economy. Those on lowest incomes will be far less likely to save it or ship it overseas to a tax haven, they will be much more likely to go out and spend it, probably on pies, booze and fags, but they’ll spend it. The sellers of pies, booze and fags will pass it on the makers of pies, booze and fags and spend their additional profits at the bookies or whatever it is that sellers of pies, booze and fags spend their money on. Probably yet more pies, booze and fags.

Cameron is right that all anyone ever demands is more spending, tax cuts and less borrowing. He’s right that this doesn’t add up, but there are some things that could be done which would help such as infrastructure projects (and hats off for sticking with the HS2 investment), and revenue-neutral shuffling of the tax thresholds and rates to have a significant impact at the lower end – these are good ideas which will help. Increasing VAT is an example of a bad idea which won’t help.

There are loads of small ideas which can contribute, but this is not just an opportunity to devise a thousand little cuts to kill the beastly recession, it’s an opportunity to rethink entirely how we manage capitalism. We all accept the need for a mixed economy: a strong and dynamic private sector with an enabling and efficient public sector; we all accept the need for clever regulation which encourages competition and responsibility without strangling innovation and growth. We all – crackpot lying idiots like Lord Monckton aside – want to see a sustainable lifestyle which doesn’t poison our planet, and I think most recognise that time is running out to do something about this.

Surely someone can cobble together a pretty sexy vision with that much consensus and this much desperation. All we seem to be doing is struggling to get back on the horse that just collapsed: trying to get the banks going again, just like the old days, get the house prices moving up again, inflate that feel-good bubble … pay rises for all …