Einstein’s God

At Dangerous Intersection, we have often encountered definitional issues when we’ve cnsidered whether someone believes in “God.”  During a recent vigorous exchange several of us invoked the “Einstein” version of God.  Although I had read a few quotes of Einstein regarding his beliefs, I had not comprehensively read Einstein’s own words describing his “God.”

The April 16, 2007 edition of Time Magazine features a new biography about Albert Einstein (Einstein, by Walter Isaacson).  For that reason, I jumped at the chance to read this Time article, which focused on what Einstein actually meant when he said he believed in “God.”  The bottom line? 

[Einstein] settled into a deism based on what he called the’ spirit manifest in the laws of the universe’ and a sincere belief in a ‘God who reveals himself in the harmony of all that exists.

Einstein was born to two parents who were Jewish “by cultural designation and kindred instinct, [though] they had little interest in the religion itself.”  Young Albert ended up attending a large Catholic school in his neighborhood.  While there, he “developed a passionate zeal for Judaism.” At the age of 12, however, he gave this up, concluding that “much in the stories of the Bible could not be true.  From that time on, he articulated (through many essays and interviews) a “deepening appreciation of his belief in God, although a rather impersonal version of one.” 

At a dinner party in Berlin, one of the guests publicly expressed amazement that …

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Global warming gets a bit of local newspaper coverage

How important is it that the United Nations just issued an apocalyptic report on global warning? 

Serious stories on global warming have been rare in my local paper, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.  I was thus happy to see that the Post-Dispatch placed a punchy graphic about global warming on the front page of yesterday’s paper—2,500 scientists say it’s going to happen and it’s going to ruin the planet.  To get the story, though, one had to turn to page 25A.  There, one learns about

more than a billion people in need of water, extreme food shortages in Africa, a planetary landscape ravaged by floods and millions of species sentenced to extinction.

This report was so incredibly important that the Post-Dispatch dedicated 21 column-inches of text to the story. It’s about the same amount of space the PD gave to yesterday’s front page story about “bratzels” (bratwurst wrapped in pretzels) a new food featured at Cardinal baseball games.  Who would have thought that “bratzels” were almost as important as global warming?

That this story on global warming appeared in a local paper at all is important.   Most people get most of their news from local TV and newspapers.  If global warming hadn’t appeared in the P-D, many people in my city might have assumed that it was all a hoax or that someone figured out what to do about it.

Setting aside the graphics of the global warming story, the PD provided three thin columns of 7-inches each to describe …

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Happy Easter, What?

Enjoy this day celebrating the ancient festival of the resurrection of the seasons, the rebirth of the year, the celebration of the new year, or its newer interpretation as specifically about a particular one of the born-to-a-virgin, talked-to-god(s), performed-miracles, and died-to-rise-again messiah-candidates. All the popular symbols (hatching eggs, bunnies, flowers,…

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Tragedy and Farce: how the American media lost its way

I was recently provided with a copy of Tragedy and Farce: How the American Media Sells Wars, Spend Election’s, and Destroy Democracy, by John Nichols and Robert W. McChesney. Written in 2005, this book is a great way to get an historical perspective on the state of journalism in America.  “How bad have things gotten?” you might ask.

Our media system has become so dysfunctional that it repeatedly shows its willingness to stenographically report the Bush administration’s spin as truth “while rejecting expressions of reality as manifestations of partisanship that must be balanced with more spin.”  (Page 4) The authors write that the media is a “lumbering and lazy media” that is ideally suited to the whims of “Karl Rove and the thousands of other paid liars.”

Our media system is so bad that American political discourse has become “meaningless.”  There is no better way to exemplify the bankruptcy of the media system than the March 2003 press conference at which George Bush was not challenged by anyone in the Washington press corps with regard to the preemptive war he was about to launch.  The members of the press “asked him not a single probing question about the flimsy case that had been made for war, nor its likely costs, nor about anything akin to an exit strategy.”

The authors argue that our elite reporters no longer show passion for truth, but rather passion only for access to those who wield power.  Reporters for major media outlets have become …

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A credible U.S. position on the uncertainty about our future oil supply

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) recently released a detailed yet accessible report addressing future energy supplies in the U.S.   The title of the report is Uncertainty about Future Oil Supply Makes It Important to Develop a Strategy for Addressing a Peak and Decline in Oil Production.
Here are some of the report’s conclusions:

Most studies estimate that oil production will peak sometime between now and 2040.

In the United States, alternative fuels and transportation technologies face challenges that could impede their ability to mitigate the consequences of a peak and decline in oil production, unless sufficient time and effort are brought to bear. For example, although corn ethanol production is technically feasible, it is more expensive to produce than gasoline and will require costly investments in infrastructure, such as pipelines and storage tanks, before it can become widely available as a primary fuel. Key alternative technologies currently supply the equivalent of only about 1 percent of U.S. consumption of petroleum products, and the Department of Energy (DOE) projects that even by 2015, they could displace only the equivalent of 4 percent of projected U.S. annual consumption. In such circumstances, an imminent peak and sharp decline in oil production could cause a worldwide recession.

The report also contains a section on Peak Oil:  Oil Production Has Peaked in the United States and Most Other Countries Outside the Middle East.  Here is an excerpt:

According to IEA, most countries outside the Middle East have reached their peak in conventional oil production, or

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