NO. He is pandering to Florida. This has nothing to do with vision. After Florida, if he finds it politically advantagious, he will drop this whole thing.

I live in Florida, and am well aware that he is attempting to speak to Floridian interests. That does not automatically mean he is pandering. You might personally judge him to be of the pandering type, and I consider him duplicitous myself, but the point here is not speculation about his motives, but considering the merits and demerits of what he said, in its own right. I think Newt articulated part of a good idea along with a very bad idea. The fact that he offered a bad idea doesn't mean we should overlook the meritorious part, namely, that he has high ambitions far space exploration.

Manned exploration hasn't gotten any further than the moon, but we aren't ready to. Robot exploration has been doing just fine, and would do alot better with another $100,000,000,000.You know what else would benefit from $100,000,000,000? EDUCATION!!!How many scientists could we inspire if that money were to be invested in education?Newt is not a visionary. He is a charlatan

Zero. Scientists (and others dedicated to learning) aren't inspired by the dollar value of their education. They are inspired by the quality of the ideas they encounter, and that is the cheapest thing in the world. I first got into science by reading a used copy of "The Insect World of J. Henri Fabre," which probably wasn't worth more than four bucks. I got interested in poetry by having a teacher who was avery passionate performer, but her passion was not one of the things she was paid for.

The reason American education has such lackluster acheivements has to do more with the use and misuse of money that the amount spent. We could have great education for the money we already put into it if we weren't doing silly things like basing everything on standardized tests and then devising courses to meet testing requirements. Talk about spinning our wheels! It is bad ideas, not lack of money that holds education back.

I grant the plan is silly, and Gingrich is nuts in most respects, but we aren't we being a bit hard on him? There's a point he's making that more important than the realism of this plan, namely, he sees that the space program needs more ambitious support from Washington. I think of Carl Sagan lamenting how after the moon landing the task of exploring space hit its zenith, and I find it heartening that somebody, even crazy ol' Newt thinks the same. His job as president wouldn't be to tell scientists what is feasible; in the end, they will tell him that, and he will be in a position to support scientific endeavor, and clueless as he is, I don't see any other candidates vowing the same level of support for science. I advise no one to vote for him, but I appreciate that he has drawn public attention to the dereliction of the space program. One wishes he had done it in a competent way, but at least he did it.

Comment 28 by Tord M

Instead of asking us to read that book, why don't you summarize for us what those "legitimate criticisms" are?

I didn't notice any post where Czar.Bernstein answered your question, I will. I just read John Earman's "Hume's Abject Failure," and it is a serious philosophical work, not a just apologetics. (I am not even sure if Earman has any religious commitments; he seems motivated to refute the argument on miracles not for sectarian reasons, but because he thinks the argument's failure exposes important weaknesses in Hume's epistemology in general.) I will give you a summary of some of its key theses.

Earman argues that Hume lacks a consistent definition of miracle to begin with. He claims a distinction between "miracle" (violation of natural laws) and "marvel" (extremely improbable event) which is not really defensible given the probablistic nature of Hume's epistemology, which allows only for presumptive laws of nature, not absolutely defined one. In order to define a natural law, Hume must assume a straight rule of induction, whereby a presumpitive law, if it has always been observed to hold, is taken as 100% certain, which is obviously fallacious. (That Hume's assumes a straight rule is disputed, but my purpose here is just to give Earman's position. I understand that another book, by Ernest Fogelin, which I have not read yet, takes Earman up on this point.)

Earman also argues that Bayesian probability analysis identifies a formal flaw in Hume's argument because he fails to properly balance antecedent and consequent probability. Because I do not know probability calculus, and much of the book depends on complex Bayesian equations, I did not understand this part well, but the general argument seems to be that Hume's presumes a high antecedent improbability for miracles and simply asserts that the improbability will outweigh any consequent evidence.

Hume himself, after reading criticisms published in his own lifetime, came to see that his original thesis that no miracle could be proven by testimony was too extreme, and he changed later editions to say only that no miracles has yet been confirmed by such evidence, which amounts to a concession of the point at issue, and reduces Hume's thesis to the banality that "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."

There is more to say, but those are the core claims.

By the way, I am actually beginning work on a research paper right now on Hume, so if anyone as any criticism of my understanding of Earman, let me know.

Fill in the blank: "There are certain incompatibilities between science and ______ion."

Did you guess "relig"? The answer, according to this guy, is "televis."

WHY IS THAT SO DIFFICULT FOR YOU PEOPLE TO UNDERSTAND?

Um... It isn't difficult to understand. I didn't literally mean to deny our African origins, as in fact the article we are commenting on does not. Obviously Dawkins can keep his shirt. I was making a joke: the point of my joke is just that a broad view of natural history does not give to any single continent the sole glory of spawning us - it is just a matter of where our most proximate ancestors were. Hence "We are all Africans" makes sense only as a qualified statement, restricting our view to a specific, recent line of our ancestry. But that is not a real criticism of the phrase, since it is obviously intended in no other may.