Shopping for Jesus

Could this headline ever run in a major newspaper?   

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Of course not!  Never is the alleged wall between the news department and the sales department of newspapers so low as during the holy season of senseless spending. 

Yes, I changed this headline to make a point.  The real headline disturbed me and I was struggling to effectively explain why.  I even considered an alternative make-believe headline: “In the name of Jesus, newspapers promote the buying of useless things, through purported news articles, to make their advertisers happy.” Both of my false headlines reflect the deep and disturbing reality of what drives modern day American Christmas better than the headline that actually ran.  Here’s the actual front page headline reporting the earth-shaking news that Thanksgiving Friday retail sales were brisk:

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The actual headline works hard to convince us that we the shoppers are heroes trying to conquer the challenge of shopping on a deadline or, perhaps, victims of the long lines.  I seriously question both of those characterizations.  I would say that many of us have been hoodwinked by fake news.

For the next thirty days or so, newspaper “articles” and television “news” reports will work hard to convince us to buy expensive and unnecessary consumer goods, allegedly to honor Jesus Christ.  The message is absurd.  Absurd, but powerfully seductive.  …

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Why Waste Money on Space?

I got riled up while reading the latest Utne Reader by an article by Keith Goetzman entitled “Houston, We Have a Problem“. He eloquently argues that we should stop wasting money on space research and spend it solving problems here on Earth.

Let’s look at the numbers. What fraction of a percent of our national budget is spent on space? NASA got about $16B in 2005 (including military allocations) out of $2,200B Federal revenues. That’s 0.72%, leaving only a paltry 99.28% to deal with problems here on Earth. I’m ignoring the record-high deficit spending that makes the NASA fraction even smaller. Look the numbers up yourselves. Check my assertions.

We could spend that little fraction on some other issues here at home. But how will we solve problems such as the next major asteroid impact? Yes, it will happen; we just won’t know when. How will we solve the problem of running out of {pick your resource}? Anything we need down here (or a reasonable substitute) can be found up there. After we build a space elevator, it would be cheaper to get it from up there than to dig it up here now! But, this project would necessarily be a crash program about as expensive as — and probably longer lasting than — a war in the middle east and it’s aftermath. Of course, the space elevator would employ a comparable number of people in a third world location that a hypothetical war on Iraq would kill …

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You can now “attend” a “Free-for-All on Science and Religion”

Science Network, an educational organization based in California, recently sponsored a La Jolla, California conference entitled “Beyond Belief: Science, Religion, Reason and Survival.”  According to this article, the conference rapidly escalated into an invigorating intellectual free-for-all.”  You can watch videos of the sessions here. The speakers were numerous well-credentialed scientists…

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I wonder what Iraqis have to be thankful for

While Americans were enjoying the companionship of family and friends on Thanksgiving day, secular violence continued in Iraq, with more than 230 people either killed or found dead.  One attack alone claimed 161 lives.  America might have taken away Iraq's dictator, but we appear to have exchanged tyranny for genocide, which raises…

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Dawkins on religion:”the process of non-thinking called faith”

Here is a link to a 2006 documentary called "The Root of All Evil? - Part I," narrated by Richard Dawkins.  In this elegantly written and presented documentary, Dawkins does not mince words.   He explores the seductive beauty of religion, as well as the damage that religion, especially fundamentalist religion,…

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