The establishment media

One of the big propaganda successes of the right wing conservative movement in the US has been the portrayal of the mainstream media as ‘liberal’. They have become so good at driving home this message that the media goes out of its way to have conservatives and extreme right wing people over-represented in its ranks. It seems like there is nothing that a right wing crank (like Erick Erickson, Marty Peretz, Rush Limbaugh, Pat Buchanan, or Glenn Beck) can say that will prevent him or her from securing a perch in the media, while those who lack that protective barrier (like Helen Thomas or Octavia Nasr or David Weigel or Rick Sanchez) can get fired. People who are not right wing usually have to prove themselves to be ‘safe’ voices (i.e., not say anything remotely insightful, let alone controversial) to get even a toehold.
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Westboro Baptist Church and free speech

Tomorrow the US Supreme Court will hear the case as to whether the Westboro Baptist Church has the right to conduct their anti-gay protests at funerals.

I think it is misguided to try and use the law to suppress the Westboro group because not only it does infringe on their free-speech rights, it also gives them the kind of publicity they crave and allows them to act as First Amendment defenders.

What should be done is to organize flamboyant counter-demonstrations, the way that the people at Comic Con did in July of this year or as Michael Moore did back in 1999 in his TV show The Awful Truth.

Or as Red State Update did.

Ridicule and humor is the best weapon against hateful speech. We should laugh them out of business.

Why does god hide?

It must be really frustrating to be a thinking person who believes in god because he doesn’t help you in the least. Since god does not seem to actually do anything that you can point to as incontrovertible evidence of his existence, believers have to look in obscure corners of knowledge, as was the case with so-called intelligent design. God seems like this passive-aggressive personality who wants you to believe unquestioningly in his existence and worship him but doesn’t give you anything in return. As a result, believers have to confront the question of why god is so elusive.

A rabbi by the name of Alan Lurie has taken up the challenge and written an essay titled “Why Does God Hide?” His essay lays out the problem clearly enough:

This notion, that God’s presence is hidden, is a significant dilemma for many, and for some is clear proof that God does not exist. Why, one asks, would the creator of the Universe be so difficult to spot? Surely if such a creator exists, there would be obvious evidence. And why wouldn’t this creator, in order to silence disbelievers and recruit more faithful, simply appear on the White House lawn, announce his presence, and miraculously end all war, hunger, and disease? For some, this hidden presence is evidence that even if a creator deity does exist, such a being is not worth worshiping. What kind of a god, who religious people say loves us, would stand by as horrible atrocities happen, and silently allow us to suffer? Such a god is either not all-powerful, not all-knowing, or certainly not completely benevolent. Many site [sic] the Holocaust, for example, as clear proof of God’s impotence or indifference.

Why yes, rabbi, these are excellent points and exactly what we atheists say. But please go on.
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Book review: Quicksand by Geoffrey Wawro

The title of this book is taken from a quote by British foreign secretary Sir Edward Grey at the dawn of the twentieth century who said that “The Arab question is a regular quicksand” and that, along with the subtitle America’s pursuit of power in the Middle East, tells you pretty much what this new book is about. In its 610 pages, Wawro, a professor of military history at the University of North Texas, tries to provide a comprehensive overview of that region, with its complex interplay of tribal and religious conflicts, overlaid with superpower geopolitical meddling because of its oil and other strategic values.
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Book review: The Grand Design (Some final thoughts)

In part 1, part 2, part 3, and part 4 of the review of The Grand Design by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow, I looked at the science and at the implications for religion. In this last part, I want to tie up some loose ends.

The Grand Design is a very short book. In addition to being only 181 pages, the lines are double-spaced, the font is large, and it has plenty of white space and many illustrations, which makes the amount of actual text quite small. (My own book God vs. Darwin is 192 pages but I estimate that it has about twice the number of words.) The production values are high, with vivid, colorful photographs and illustrations on heavy-duty glossy paper and careful attention to layout.

Hawking’s books are curious. They are supposedly aimed at the general reader but even I, as a physicist though not a cosmologist, find them heavy going at times. When reading them, I find that if I know the material, the writing seems lucid and clear, but if I don’t know it already, it seems difficult and obscure, which is why I found the popular success of his A Brief History of Time somewhat mystifying. How much did non-physicists get out of it? Is there any truth to the jibe that it was top of the list of unread best sellers?
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