You know the $700 billion bailout that was passed to create a “Troubled Asset Recovery Program”? Well, Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson has decided not to buy troubled assets. Instead, he is buying bank stock. According to ABC,
“Paulson said today, he knew when the bill was signed the purchase of trouble assets wasn’t the right solution to the problem.” But. . .but. . .that’s not what he told Congress or the American people. Did we just give him a blank check with a $700 billion line of credit to do anything he wants to with it? We are also going to bail out the auto industry, people behind on their mortgages, and who knows where it will stop? If YOU want a bailout, here is a link to the proper form. (HT: ABC)

It seems to me that you can’t get out of an economic problem by just printing money and giving it away. Can you?

UPDATE: See this account of the bailout fiasco.

A Salt Lake City suburb has a monument of the Ten Commandments in a public place. That’s OK because it was donated by a private group. So now a self-described New Age Gnostic group called Summum has donated a monument inscribed with its Seven Aphorisms. A court ruled that the city had to give equal time and allow the Summum monument to be displayed. Now the appeal has reached the Supreme Court. From Display of Religious Tenets Debated - washingtonpost.com:

That [lower court] decision ordered Pleasant Grove to put up the Seven Aphorisms, saying a city cannot accept one privately donated monument but reject another if it disagrees with that group’s message.

If that decision stands, opponents argue, governments could be forced to erect monuments some would find highly objectionable — a memorial to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, for example, might stand alongside a commemoration of al-Qaeda.

“When you have a Statue of Liberty, would you have to have a Statue of Despotism?” Roberts asked.

I blogged about this case some time ago, but now that it is being argued before the Supreme Court, it deserves further consideration. For your edification, I post the Seven Aphorisms below.

Is there any kind of criteria that would pass Constitutional muster that would allow for the Ten Commandments of the Jews and Christians, but not the Seven Aphorisms of the Summumites? If not, would it be better not to have any religious monuments than to emulate the altars to many gods that St. Paul confronted in ancient Athens?

HT: FW

1. Summum is mind, thought; the universe is a mental creation.

2. As above, so below; as below, so above.

3. Nothing rests; everything moves; everything vibrates.

4. Everything is dual; everything has an opposing point; everything has its pair of opposites; like and unlike are the same; opposites are identical in nature, but different in degree; extremes bond; all truths are but partial truths; all paradoxes may be reconciled.

5. Everything flows out and in; everything has its season; all things rise and fall; the pendulum swing expresses itself in everything; the measure of the swing to the right is the measure of the swing to the left; rhythm compensates.

6. Every cause has its effect; every effect has its cause; everything happens according to Law; Chance is just a name for Law not recognized; there are many fields of causation, but nothing escapes the Law of Destiny.

7. Gender is in everything; everything has its masculine and feminine principles; Gender manifests on all levels.

Source: washingtonpost.com.

Compare these to the Ten Commandments. With its relativism, pseudo-science, and comforting lack of commands and demands, do you think Summum might catch on?

Still more from William Lane Craig on God in contemporary philosophy:

The ontological argument. Anselm’s famous argument has been reformulated and defended by Alvin Plantinga, Robert Maydole, Brian Leftow, and others. God, Anselm observes, is by definition the greatest being conceivable. If you could conceive of anything greater than God, then that would be God. Thus, God is the greatest conceivable being, a maximally great being. So what would such a being be like? He would be all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-good, and he would exist in every logically possible world. But then we can argue:

1. It is possible that a maximally great being (God) exists.
2. If it is possible that a maximally great being exists, then a maximally great being exists in some possible world.
3. If a maximally great being exists in some possible world, then it exists in every possible world.
4. If a maximally great being exists in every possible world, then it exists in the actual world.
5. Therefore, a maximally great being exists in the actual world.
6. Therefore, a maximally great being exists.
7. Therefore, God exists.

Now it might be a surprise to learn that steps 2–7 of this argument are relatively uncontroversial. Most philosophers would agree that if God’s existence is even possible, then he must exist. So the whole question is: Is God’s existence possible? The atheist has to maintain that it’s impossible that God exists. He has to say that the concept of God is incoherent, like the concept of a married bachelor or a round square. But the problem is that the concept of God just doesn’t appear to be incoherent in that way. The idea of a being which is all-powerful, allknowing, and all-good in every possible world seems perfectly coherent. And so long as God’s existence is even possible, it follows that God must exist.

This gets into highly technical philosophy, I suppose, but can anyone explain how it is that if God’s existence is possible, then God must exist?