Colbert and Dawkins

Stephen Colbert interviews atheistic Darwinian Richard Dawkins. It's pretty funny. Along the way Dawkins impresses the audience with the question, "If God designed the world then what designed God". Despite the audience's enthusiasm for the retort it's really little more than a red herring. The answer, of course, is 1) nothing, and 2) it doesn't matter.

1) The universe is the totality of all contingent (or designed) things and therefore the creative cause of the universe cannot itself be contingent or else it'd be part of the universe.

2) Once it is agreed that the universe has a creative cause, as is tacitly done in Dawkins' question, the argument is over. In order to pose his question Dawkins has to tacitly accede to the theist's main point which is that the universe has a cause responsible for all of its order, design, and personality. Whether that cause is itself caused by something greater than itself makes no difference to the argument that the universe has a cause outside of itself and does not alter the fact that the theist has won the point.

Soft on National Security

If this turns out to be as it appears it'll be just one more reason why Democrats can't be trusted to handle national security:

WASHINGTON - House Intelligence Chairman Peter Hoekstra has suspended a Democratic staff member because of concerns he may have leaked a high-level intelligence assessment to The New York Times last month.

In a letter obtained by The Associated Press Thursday night, Rep. Ray LaHood (news, bio, voting record), R-Ill., a committee member, said that an unidentified staffer requested the document from National Intelligence Director John Negroponte three days before the Sept. 23 story about its conclusions.

The staffer received the National Intelligence Estimate on global terror trends on Sept. 21.

"I have no credible information to say any classified information was leaked from the committee's minority staff, but the implications of such would be dramatic," LaHood wrote Hoekstra, R-Mich., late last month. "This may, in fact, be only coincidence, and simply 'look bad.' But coincidence, in this town, is rare."

A spokesman to Hoekstra, Jamal Ware, confirmed that a committee staff member was suspended this week. He said the staff member is being denied access to classified information pending the outcome of a review.

"Chairman Hoekstra considers security highly important, and the coincidence certainly merits a review," he said.

So far there hasn't been much said about this in the MSM, I mean not compared to, say, the really super-important scandals like Dick Cheney's hunting accident, Scooter Libby mentioning that Valerie Plame works for the CIA, and Mark Foley's licentious correspondence with a male page. Those scandals were about really important things and, besides, they featured Republicans.

I wonder what the media would be doing with this story were the suspected leaker of genuinely significant national security information a Republican?

This Week's Feedback

Today we highlight several of the many interesting reader responses we've received to last week's posts. We are taken to task by one reader for Limbo while others offer thoughts on Thirty Eight Ways to Win, YEC v. ID, and one young lady offers a different perspective on Orange Bowl Brawl. Their thoughts can be found on the Feedback page. Enjoy.