Archives for January 2015

Thoughts on the movie American Sniper

Instead of watching President Obama's recent State of the Union Address, my son and I paid some of our hard-earned cash to see American Sniper. In retrospect, I'd have to say our money and time were wisely spent. It's probably a little too soon for me to write a full review of the film...to be perfectly honest, at the moment I'm tempted to declare it the best movie ever made in the history of Hollywood. That degree of adulation may be a tad premature. Only time will tell, after the impact of watching the movie fully sinks in. I'd really like to see it at least one more time before going completely overboard with my praise. It surely jaded my opinion that we were watching American Sniper in IMAX, which seemed to turn what would normally be just an emotionally draining ordeal into an absolutely surreal experience. As of this writing, my emotions are simply still too raw. If I may borrow a line from the movie, "I guess I just needed a minute" or more accurately in my case, a couple of days to recover. Even so, I can offer a few of my thoughts on the film with anyone who might be interested. For example, there is no doubt in my mind that Chris Kyle was truly an American hero. End of debate. The cruel irony that Kyle survived four tours of combat duty serving in Iraq only to be murdered by a fellow veteran he was trying to help recover from post traumatic stress disorder has been a bitter pill to swallow. I can easily say that American Sniper may be the very best movie I've ever seen, and I've seen quite a few over the years. I actually know a little … [Read more...]

The court of public opinion

In the court of public opinion, Bill Cosby has already been tried and convicted of serial rape. Now that more than twenty women have come forward to publicly accuse Mr. Cosby, apparently that is enough for most people to decide he's guilty. Before going any further, let me be crystal clear about something-- rape is NOT even remotely funny. Rape is no joking matter. Period. End of discussion. The act of forced rape is a despicable crime committed by cowards, an act of violence that is usually perpetrated against women. Rape should never be excused or tolerated, no matter the identity of the accused, or the victim. Convicted rapists and sex offenders should be punished to the full extent of the law, with no exceptions whatsoever. I need to be very clear to say that I don't know whether or not Mr. Cosby is guilty -- only that if he is guilty of any of these horrific accusations and they can be proved in a court of law, that he should be tried, convicted, and sent to prison. On the other hand, it's very important to note that as troubling as these allegations may be, it is equally troubling to see his reputation destroyed without these charges being proved in court. More than twenty potential rape cases couldn't even find one prosecutor like Mike Nifong? Why has Bill Cosby been immune from prosecution all these years? A preliminary investigation into the histories of the accusers of Cosby represented by attorney Gloria Allred suggests at least some of these cases are fraudulent. However, if even one of them is true and can be proved in court, then … [Read more...]

More popular criticisms of my book Counterargument for God

Writers need to have a thick skin when it comes to receiving criticism. Personally, I value every review that any reader has posted on Amazon, whether positive or negative. Of course, positive reviews help sell books. More importantly, negative reviews, if the author listens to his or her audience, can help make future books better. For if we do not learn from our mistakes, we will be doomed to repeat them. My philosophy is when anyone takes the time and goes to the trouble of writing a review of something I've written, I tend to pay attention, even more so to critique than praise. As an example, even though my novel Secondhand Sight won a Readers' Favorite gold medal for Fiction/Horror, I thought the comments on Amazon were very fair criticisms when some readers suggested the sections that described tennis activities intended to provide local color were too long. Those lengthy sections really only served as plot devices that got the protagonist out of his house and could have been achieved with at least a thousand fewer words, to be perfectly honest. It was Shakespeare who, as Polonius in Hamlet, famously said, "...brevity is the soul of wit." As a result of listening to those readers, in my novel titled Premonition that followed Secondhand Sight, my editors and I worked even harder to trim every scrap of unnecessary fat from the manuscript. Our goal was to establish a steady pace that never lagged, increasing speed as we moved from start to finish, which I hope to have accomplished, thanks to the feedback from readers. Once again, we will … [Read more...]

The probability problem

The fallacy in Paley's famous Watchmaker analogy was not that the Watchmaker was blind, as Richard Dawkins has suggested. The problem is that Paley's analogy assumed the rock could have always existed in an eternal universe, whereas if physicists are correct and the Big Bang created our universe, we can safely assume the rock has not. No one is certain why a prehistoric civilization built a monument that we call Stonehenge, but we know this peculiar rock formation exists, because we've all seen pictures of it and can easily visit the physical location. Was it a temple to worship the sun? A giant calendar? An ancient medical center? Nobody knows who built Stonehenge, or why it was constructed. We can rather safely assume that someone built it, though. Or can we? What makes us so certain that Stonehenge isn't merely a natural rock formation somehow created miraculously by the vagaries of Time? Because if you listen to Richard Dawkins explain the probability problems associated with our existential questions, he seems to be saying that as long as something is theoretically possible, it doesn't really matter how improbable the event in question might be. What makes us so sure that Stonehenge is not a naturally occurring rock formation? Well, it is extremely unlikely, no matter well how you craft any alternate explanation. The rocks that form Stonehenge appear to have been quarried from a location several miles away. The rocks that form Stonehenge shouldn't be where they are -- unless humans put them there. The rocks shouldn't be stacked and apparently … [Read more...]