Today on "Kresta in the Afternoon" - Feb. 3

Talking About the “Things That Matter Most” on February 3, 2014

Live from the Ave Maria School of Law

4:00 - Guttmacher Study Shows Pro-Life Success in Swing States

Earlier this month, the Guttmacher Institute released their 2013 state-policy review. The report indicates that pro-lifers continue to make very good legislative progress at the state level. In 2013, 70 state-level pro-life measures were enacted — making 2013 the second most productive year on record. The report specifically cites Texas, North Dakota, North Carolina, and Arkansas as being especially active in passing pro-life laws. Overall, according to Guttmacher, there have been more pro-life laws passed between 2011 and 2013 than in the entire previous decade. Pro-life writer Michael New is here to analyze why and the impact of these numbers.

4:20 – Kresta Comments: The Super Bowl / Phillip Seymour Hoffman / Pro-Life Impact and More

5:00 – Continuing to Follow the Ins and Outs of the Cases Against the HHS Mandate

As of last week, more than 50 briefs were filed in the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of Hobby Lobby Stores and the Green family, supporting their challenge to the HHS mandate. That case is one that the Supreme Court will hear in its next session, but many more challenges continue to wind their way through the courts. We talk to Gene Milhizer of the Ave Maria Law School.

5:20 – The Last Superstition: A Refutation of the New Atheism

The central contention of the "New Atheism" of Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens is that there has for several centuries been a war between science and religion, that religion has been steadily losing that war, and that at this point in human history a completely secular scientific account of the world has been worked out in such thorough and convincing detail that there is no longer any reason why a rational and educated person should find the claims of any religion the least bit worthy of attention. But as Edward Feser argues in The Last Superstition, in fact there is not, and never has been, any war between science and religion at all. There has instead been a conflict between two entirely philosophical conceptions of the natural order. He joins us to make his case.