Algorithm-driven news is a mess.
Will Oremus at his article Facebook Just Banned News in Australia. Like, All of It tells us the story of how, in response to forthcoming laws in Australia, the social media giant will no longer allow links to news articles “down under” and anybody who posts an Australian news link to the platform will find it will no longer allow them to do so.
In an article I wrote for CNBC Africa recently, I called 2021 the Year of Social Media’s Reckoning (forgive the hyperlinks in that article, I don’t know why they aren’t cleaning up their opinion pieces lately)…
I am a strong believer in the Fourth Estate — the press and its necessary place in society. Journalism has always been an essential component of any healthy democracy, a fact that any dictator knows very well. The press should always be independent and without bias, able to freely critique the government and the corporate sector and hold them accountable to the citizenry. When it works, it works exceptionally well. When it breaks, it breaks an important part of a healthy society.
Media bias has become a thing. I suppose it’s always been around to a certain degree or another…
Many years ago, when I was probably in my mid-twenties, I had a strange kind of epiphany while spending an African summer evening home alone at my folks. They were out, I can’t remember where, and I was still living with them — enjoying time to myself in their spacious and rather luxurious home. It was a beautiful summer evening. I made myself dinner (some sort of rice stir fry, with a decent amount of rum thrown into the sauce — I don’t know why, I just thought it would be nice. It was.). …
Surely God would have it that we should pursue being good first, before anything else? Isn’t that what he wants? No.
Throughout pretty much all of philosophical and religious history, including irreligious history (if I could call it that!) the central focus has always been, and remains, our ‘good works’. Our righteousness. Our goodness.
But nothing is as valuable as trust. Or, its more olden-day word, ‘faith’.
The trouble is, faith has come to mean all sorts of things today. Songs and books tell us to “just believe” when things go wrong. But believe what? Who? We’re told to ‘believe in ourselves’ — to have faith that we have what it takes. Really? Not all of us can keep that sort…
Thomas Jay Oord offers up a new solution to the problem of evil. Does he offer a healthy view of God and life, though?
I’ve just finished reading Thomas Jay Oord’s book, The Uncontrolling Love of God. Most people who will read this will have no idea who he is. He is a scholar, philosopher, and a theologian. This latest book of his offers a ‘new way’ to look at the subject of providence — how God works in this world. In so doing, he addresses the problem of evil: the question of how to reconcile the existence of evil with an all-powerful, all-loving, all-knowing God.
I enjoyed the book and recommend it to anyone interested in philosophical and theological approaches to the subject…
In a short series of posts, I’ll be looking at what I call “Righteous Wrongs” — things Christians say and teach about morality that are simply not in the Bible, and don’t reflect the way Jesus dealt with matters. This post is about probably the most common idea I have often heard: that you keep doing ‘bad things’ because you ‘refuse to let go of your sin’, and you must just ‘stop it’.
In Romans 7, Paul summed up a huge part of the human experience: “I don’t really understand myself, for I want to do what is right, but I don’t do it. Instead, I do what I hate.” (Romans 7:15, NLT). What I find interesting about this is that Paul — a great Christian hero — says nothing about ending this pitiful experience by just ‘stopping it’. One would expect him to say, “But I realize it’s because I don’t want to let go of my sin, that’s why I keep doing these things. I must just stop it.”
He doesn’t…
I originally wrote this in 2014 when Robin Williams passed away. I’ve decided to repost this here as I figure out Medium. It’s one of the most popular posts from my blog.
Robin Williams. Talented. Funny. Wacky. Deep. Able to move from one subject to another without even taking a breath. Sometimes accused of being sentimental, although I always thought that he seemed to choose his roles carefully. I used to criticise him a bit — perhaps because I often saw him represent a shallow everything-will-be-ok, you’re-ok and I’m-ok modern liberal sort of philosophy so prevalent in our western culture…
