the new ussr [illustrated]

now at wordpress

2011-05-13T16:11:00.000-07:00

Another last post - I'm moving to a new site at the daunting WordPress. Not that blogger has failed me particularly - I rather feel that I've failed it in not being able to attract readers. Anyway, we'll see what a new start can do.

I'll try to rescue all the stuff from my old blogs, which will no doubt be closed down eventually.

major economic changes

2011-05-06T15:44:00.000-07:00

that's me, buried under the other patches

We used to have a two-speed economy [and before that, just an economy], but that was too neat and simplistic, so we moved to a multi-speed economy, but that sounded downright dangerous, and why the need for speed? Now we have a patchwork economy, which is colourful, but also nice and homely.

introducing the ussr

2011-04-25T02:26:00.000-07:00

three patron heroes of the ussr

The following planned to be my debut video posting, but I've had a crisis of confidence and probably won't post it as a video. I actually think I would be best if I just got someone to interview me for videos.

Hello, welcome to the USSR, with me, Luigi Funesti Sordido - perhaps. I'm here to provide you with some pabulum I hope, and some diverting and delightfully edifying discourse on a variety of topics. This first discourse is introductory, in which I'll explain the USSR and its great significance. The USSR stands for the Urbane Society for Sceptical Romantics, of which I, Luigi Funesti Sordido am the founding secretary and sole member, and clearly this society is founded on Urbanity, Scepticism and Romanticism, or at least the founder's conception of those concepts.

So let me take these terms in reverse order. Romanticism, to me, is a simple idea or state, in which the thing focused on becomes, at least temporarily more than the sum of its parts, being invested with emotion, imagination, ideality, even transcendence, dare I say. This is often called the 'swoon' effect, and it can be brought on by a woman's smile, a memory, a mathematical equation, a landscape, a piece of music, a journey, a joke, a reading, a conversation, almost anything. It's a moment or a feeling charged with wonder and delight, and is often associated, however vaguely, with sex, in that I strongly suspect that the parts of the brain that light up or are revved up by this state are also involved in feelings of sexual passion and lust.

So romanticism isn't much associated with rationalism, though I wouldn't want to call it irrational which has all sorts of negative connotations. Perhaps non-rational is the term to use, but I think that romanticism provides a strong emotional current that can partly power our lives, and I think there's a lot to be said for it, and I think it should be encouraged.

Now scepticism is another matter. A popular notion of scepticism has arisen in recent years, associating it with sceptical groups, podcasts, magazines and celebrity sceptics. This is quite a different version of scepticism from the old philosophical notion, which was a position of radical doubt, including doubt of the status of all knowledge and even existence. The modern notion, which I don't reject, as I find it quite useful, is based largely on science and the nature of evidence – that it must be verifiable, testable, repeatable and so forth. In some respects it's odd that this focus on evidence has come to be identified with the term 'scepticism', but be that as it may, this is the way I'm using the term, along with a residual sense of the philosophical usage, which involves a kind of state of eternal uncertainty, that all knowledge is conditional, even ephemeral, and just a bit untrustworthy. My sense of scepticism has been shaped by a number of intellectual heroes from the past. First, Socrates. Whether Socrates is generally regarded as a sceptic I'm not sure, but my Socrates is a sceptic.

We know of Socrates' reputation but little about his actual ideas. The Socrates of Xenophon seems little more than an idealised version of Xenophon, and the Socrates of Plato can't really be differentiated from Plato's ideas. For some time it was generally thought that the Socrates of Plato's early, less conclusive dialogues might be the most accurate depiction we have, a depiction of someone concerned with the most basic concepts – basic in the sense of fundamental but also in the sense of 'everyday'. The concepts of ordinary, not necessarily well-educated or philosphically-minded citizens, concepts they used to get by in their daily interactions. Socrates questioned the assumptions behind these everyday concepts and exposed their contradictions. Perhaps the two key sayings associated with this version of Socrates are 'I know nothing, but my advantage over others is that I know that I know nothing', and 'the unexamined life is not worth living'. Clearly, this is good sceptical stuff – not so good on the positive theory-building, but excellent for the negative ground-clearing.

Another sceptical hero is Michel de Montaigne, one of the greatest of all practitioners of the essay, whose motto was 'What do I know?'. Montaigne often used himself as the subject of his essays, not so much out of egotism but because the self and its mind were, to him, subjects of the most immediate knowledge, via direct perception [think of Descartes a couple of generations later]. Everything else was that much more uncertain. He was also far from being an abstruse 'academic' philosopher, always choosing to write in an accessible but highly discursive style, letting his thoughts take him where they might.

I'll mention one last sceptical thinker, though there are many to choose from. David Hume represents in some ways a bridge between the old established philosophical concept of scepticism, with its largely negative, undermining overtones, and a more positive and modern concept, emphasising evidence and scientific methodologies in the establishment of sure knowledge. Hume was a major figure of the eighteenth century enlightenment, and an inheritor of the seventeenth century scientific revolution in Britain, spearheaded by the likes of Boyle, Hooke, Newton and Halley. He was also as outspoken a critic of religion as it was safe to be in an age where even the leading scientific figures swore by their faith.

Hume's opening remarks in his essay, 'The Sceptic', beautifully capture, to me, the essence of an initially negative, but healthy scepticism:

I HAVE long entertained a suspicion, with regard to the decisions of philosophers upon all subjects, and found in myself a greater inclination to dispute, than assent to their conclusions. There is one mistake, to which they seem liable, almost without exception; they confine too much their principles, and make no account of that vast variety, which nature has so much affected in all her operations. When a philosopher has once laid hold of a favourite principle, which perhaps accounts for many natural effects, he extends the same principle over the whole creation, and reduces to it every phænomenon, though by the most violent and absurd reasoning. Our own mind being narrow and contracted, we cannot extend our conception to the variety and extent of nature; but imagine, that she is as much bounded in her operations, as we are in our speculation.

These remarks are as relevant today as they were when first written: happy 300^th birthday, David Hume.

So, that's scepticism, a major focus of the USSR. Urbanity I've left to last. Urbanity is of the city, it's what we like to imagine our cities are about, sophistication, diversity, eclecticism, imagination, pragmatism. One of the features of the great urban centres is that they're in some sense the same, in their mix of cultures and periods and styles, in their boldness and their staleness, in their recognisability and their anonymity, in their inspirational yet frightening and overwhelming nature. To be on top of that, or to seem to be, to be riding the wave of it all with a more or less affected nonchalance, is to be urbane. So urbanity, in the context of the USSR, is the tremulous overarching force that connects scepticism and romanticism and combines them into some sort of coherent and workable form. Perhaps.

So that introduces and pretends to explain the new ussr, as opposed to the old one, that bunch of Ultra Silly Soviet Ratbags. Next time, perhaps, our first edifying discourse...

Edward Gibbon and the neo-Platonists

2011-03-24T02:52:00.000-07:00

Since it's been a while, I thought I'd better post before I disappear into the aethernet.

I've been reading, inter alia, Edward Gibbon's thoroughly readable Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. It wears very well for an eighteenth century work. I wish he'd reveal his sources though.

Gibbon, though conservative in outlook in many respects, was an enlightenment figure in terms of science and religion. His take on the neo-Platonists is still quite relevant today, and worth quoting at length. Gibbon was referring to the period just before, and during, the reign of Constantine in the early fourth century of the Christian era. He points out that, with the emperors of this time being drawn largely from the military, and with the preoccupation being with the 'barbarians' at the frontiers, and with internal strife between the different camps created by Diocletian, science, knowledge and the literary arts were largely neglected. 'The voice of poetry was silent,' he writes. Even the practical arts and sciences, such as law and medicine, were at a low ebb. And into this stagnant pool plops the great millstone of neo-Platonism.

The declining age of learning and of mankind is marked, however, by the rise and rapid progress of the new Platonists. The school of Alexandria silenced those of Athens, and the ancient sects enrolled themselves under the banners of the more fashionable teachers, who recommended their system by the novelty of their method and tha austerity of their manners. Several of these masters, Ammonius, Plotinus, Amelius and Porphyry, were men of profound thought and intense application; but by mistaking the true object of philosophy, their labors contributed much less to improve than to corrupt the human understanding. The knowledge that is suited to our situation and powers, the whole compass of moral , natural and mathematical science, was neglected by the new Platonists; whilst they exhausted their strength in the verbal disputes of metaphysics, attempted to explore the secrets of the invisible world, and studied to reconcile Aristotle and Plato on subjects of which both these philosophers were as ignorant as the rest of mankind. Consuming their reason in these deep but unsubstantial meditations, their minds were exposed to illusions of fancy. They flattered themselves that they possessed the secret of disengaging the soul from its corporal prison; claimed a familiar intercourse with demons and spirits; and by a very singular revolution, converted the study of philosophy into that of magic. The ancient sages had derided the popular superstition; after disguising its extravagance by the thin pretence of allegory, the disciples of Plotinus and Porphyry became its most zealous defenders. As they agreed with the Christians in a few mysterious points of faith, they attacked the remainder of their theological system with all the fury of civil war. The new Platonists would scarcely deserve a place in the history of science, but in that of the church the mention of them will very frequently occur.

Way to go, Eddie!

Joshua, the amelekites and history

2011-02-27T06:15:00.000-08:00

At 1 Kings 6:1 we are told that 480 years had passed between the Exodus and the fourth year of King Solomon. The date is schematic [twelve generations of forty years], and, as we have seen, it balances the Israelites' length of time in Egypt [430 years at Exodus 12:40]. If we took it literally, it would put the exploits of Joshua back at c1420-1400 BC: it is not, however, a correct figure.
Robin Lane Fox, The unauthorized version: truth and fiction in the Bible

I'm trying to get my head around ancient history, starting with events described in the Old Testament, but probably mythical. That's to say, the bloody events described mainly in the book of Joshua. In the Hebrew Bible [he's a much more minor figure in the Torah] Joshua became the leader of the Israelites after Moses. Bible chronology isn't entirely reliable, as my quote indicates, but scholars are more or less agreed that he flourished between 1450 and 1370 BCE. That's to say, that's the period in which he's calculated to have lived, had he lived at all.

The Joshua of the Bible is an almost monotonously victorious general. His first victory was over the Amelekites – the first of many slaughterings of a people destined to become the archetypical enemy of the Jews. Next he crossed the Jordan, with Yahweh parting the waters as before at the Red Sea, and was bloodily victorious in battle against Jericho, Ai [after a brief glitch, see Joshua 7: 3-26], Gibeon, Makkedah, Libnah, Lachish, Gezer, Eglon, Hebron, and Debir. Chapter 10 of Joshua ends on a high note:

So Joshua smote all the country of the hills, and of the south, and of the vale, and of the springs, and all their kings: he left none remaining, but utterly destroyed all that breathed, as the LORD God of Israel commanded. And Joshua smote them from Kadeshbarnea even unto Gaza, and all the country of Goshen, even unto Gibeon. And all these kings and their land did Joshua take at one time, because the LORD God of Israel fought for Israel.

To most modern consciences, this is sickening stuff, and the fact that we have not a shred of external evidence that this Yahweh-sanctioned splattering spree ever took place, or that Joshua or Moses ever existed, hardly makes it more palatable. But if we put our feelings aside, what evidence do we have, either from archaeology, or from external records, of these Biblical places and peoples and their histories? For it should always be emphasised that the Bible is by no means a history book, and every supposedly historical statement found therein should be treated with the utmost scepticism.

The only extra-Biblical reference I've found regarding the Amalekites so far comes from one Nachmanides, a mystical Jewish scholar of the thirteenth century, whose own gleanings would have come from the sacred texts. This isn't to say that the Amalekites were purely fictional – it's very likely that they were an aboriginal group in southern Canaan or Palestine – but the name should give us pause. The Amalekites are named for Amalek, mentioned in two genealogies [Genesis 36:12 and 1 Chronicles 1:36] as a grandson of Esau, Jacob's brother. Jacob and Esau, though, are as mythical as Adam, so at this point I've reached a dead end so far as the Amalekites are concerned.

We can say more that's extra-biblical about some of the other places I've mentioned. A lot of archaeological work has been done at the site of Jericho, unearthing more than twenty successive settlements going back 11,000 years. The results have proved extremely problematic for the Bible-is-history pundits, because unfortunately the author of Joshua provided details of the battle which are subject to empirical testing

early christianity and natural philosophy

2011-02-05T04:03:00.000-08:00

Although the course of the moon... is known to many, there are only a few who know well the rising or setting or other movements of the stars without error. Knowledge of this kind in itself, although it is not allied with any superstition, is of very little use in the treatment of the divine scriptures and even impedes it through fruitless study; and since it is associated with the most pernicious error of vain [astrological] prediction it is more appropriate and virtuous to condemn it.
Augustine of Hippo, On Christian doctrine.

One of the themes of David Lindberg's essay, 'Early Christian attitudes toward nature', is the love-hate relationship of early Christian intellectuals towards the Greco-Roman culture around them. Tertullian, and to a lesser extent Augustine, are clear examples. The quote above captures this nicely. There's this view, which might almost be called a pretence [just to be presentist about it] that knowledge is useless unless it illuminates 'scripture', as if scripture is the given, like a giant maypole that everything else must be tied to and dance around. What always fascinates me about this is the dogmatism of the early Christians. Many of these folks - not just Tertullian and Augustine, but such leading lights as Origen, Ambrose, Athanasius, Arius and many others - though they argued interminably amongst themselves, were united in this kind of maypole view, and yet the texts and tales they based their unshakeable faith upon were quite newly minted. The same thing happened, of course, with the the advent of the Islamic religion some centuries later. If we were able to grasp more thoroughly the psychological forces behind these sweeping forms of group-think, I think we would be able to make major advances in guarding ourselves against them.
It seems that concepts about nature were pushed to the back burner during this early period of Christian fervour from the second to the fourth century. The very influential figure of Paul of Tarsus set the tone with remarks like this addressed to the Colossians:

Be on your guard; do not let your minds be captured by hollow and delusive speculations, based on traditions of man-made teaching centred on the elements of the natural world and not on Christ.

However, not all the early Christian intellectuals followed this advice, and Plato, the neo-Platonists, Pythagoras and other pagan speculators were mined for material that would provide support to Christian metaphysics. At the same time, the new religious orientation provided an opportunity to scoff at the 'blindness' of pagan thinkers. Commentators like Tertullian and Basil of Caesarea were very keen to provide evidence of their mastery of the most abstruse pagan thought while insisting on its uselessness and upon the need for simple faith.
Augustine was generally a little more sympathetic to what was called 'natural philosophy', but still he had serious reservations, as the quote indicates. In his Confessions he describes curiosity as a disease – one that he himself was curiously prone to. It should be added that this attitude wasn't born of Christianity. Suspicions about pursuing knowledge purely for the sake of it were rife in highly stratified pagan society. Plato's Republic discouraged abstract thought in society as a whole – it should only be pursued by an intellectual elite. Such an attitude to knowledge would've been commonplace in his time, and for a long time afterwards - in fact right up to the enlightenment period really, and beyond. And the idea of natural philosophy as the handmaiden of religious faith, as an aid to the comprehension of the deity's glorious creation, an idea more or less encouraged by Augustine, is still found more than 1300 years later in the thought of Isaac Newton, and further on in the approach to science of Georges Cuvier and Robert Owen in the nineteenth century.
The point is that although all of these thinkers gave priority to their faith, they still made contributions to an understanding of the world which, whether or not they might be considered baby steps, led us away from enthralment to religion. That's no doubt a 'presentist', internalist perspective. Augustine, in spite of being a 'dyed in the wool faith-head', took pride in his own knowledge of 'profane' matters, and was embarrassed at the ignorance of his fellow believers:

Even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones and so forth, and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience. Now it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian.... talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn.

Augustine himself wrote a work called The Literal Meaning of Genesis, in which he analysed the first three chapters of Genesis, covering the biblical creation story through the lens of his very considerable knowledge of natural philosophy as it was understood and practised in the Graeco-Roman world of that time. It was accepted, for example, that the earth was spherical. Eratosthenes had quite accurately calculated its circumference more than 500 years before Augustine's time. There's little evidence that Christians of the patristic period rejected such knowledge. Certainly, in medicine and other practical sciences we find a mixture of empirical knowledge, superstition and ideas of supernatural possession, just as we find in pagan thought and practice. However, with Christianity's transformation into a state religion, concepts of orthodoxy and heresy became paramount, and the freedom of intellectuals to think freshly about the natural world became severely curtailed. And that seems to have been the situation for a long long time.

presentism and the conflict thesis

2011-01-30T00:33:00.000-08:00

Even the most well-founded, well-argued, and well-intentioned ideas about science and religion are liable to later change or eventual rejection. The same is true for historiographical positions, including, of course, the complexity thesis itself.
David Wilson, 'The historiography of science and religion'

Wilson's essay in the Science and Religion collection is certainly more thought-provoking than the previous one, though the view is much the same - that a conflict thesis has operated largely among non-historians, and particularly among scientists, but that historians of science have largely come round to a 'complexity thesis'. Again, though, its many examples point to a complexity of understandings of both science and religion between individuals, and often within particular individuals, particularly in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The fundamental philosophical issues are not discussed.
Having said that, Wilson does highlight some important themes. Particularly pertinent is the issue of 'presentism'. Wilson explains it in contrast to contextualism. I'll provide a lengthy explanatory quote from early in the essay:

Although historians have espoused various approaches to the past, it will make our subject more manageable if we concentrate on the polar opposites around which views have tended to cluster. One approach has been to examine past ideas as much as possible in their own context, without either judging their long-term validity or making the discussion directly relevant to present issues. Another approach has been to study past ideas from the perspective of the present, taking full advantage of the hindsight provided by later knowledge to judge which ideas have proven to be valid. The second approach has apparent advantages. It does not exclude current knowledge that can assist us in the historical task. It also keeps present issues to the fore by insisting that historians draw lessons from the past that are relevant to current issues. However, historians have tended to regard the second approach as precariously likely to lead to distortion of the past in the service of present concerns. Dismissing this as 'presentism', therefore, historians of science have come to favor the first, or contextualist, approach.

Presentism isn't a term I've heard before, but the problem is familiar enough. we find it in fiction too, of course, when we find modern writers of historical romances getting not just the tone but the whole seventeenth century context wrong - sometimes deliberately. Or we have new dramatic interpretations of such perennial faves as Jane Austen which 'tease out' feminist undertones claimed to be found in the original. It raises the obvious question of whether we can ever really recapture the context of the times [I think of Borges' character writing an exact replica of Don Quixote which critics find disturbingly other than the previous version]. Here, though, the distortions of presentism are said to feed into a progressivist view of science and knowledge, what historian Herbert Butterfield called 'the whig interpretation of history' [he published a book with this title in 1931].

Were I a historian, I would heed the warnings, while also recognising, for example, that the rigorous exclusion of non-natural explanations in the sciences [meaning, essentially, a tightening of the definition of scientific praxis] has been a great boon in the advancement of knowledge over the past few hundred years, an advancement that has been truly sensational. We should indeed guard against what Maurice Mandelbaum called 'the retrospective fallacy', in which we lose sight of the groping, uncertain nature of the past as it was lived for those who felt it as present and future. For that would be to destroy empathy and to judge harshly. Many great past scientists 'transcended' their times, but only to a limited extent, and to see them as our contemporaries would be to do them a great disservice. Sometimes, in reading them or reading about them, we wish we could free them from the context of their times and show them how times have changed, partly as a result of their own achievements. That's only human, but it's fantasy, after all.

So, it's true that the earliest practitioners of what we 'retrospectively' call modern science were not atheists, secret or otherwise, and that they were seeking to comprehend the glory of their god's creation, but I'm not so sure that it's a 'presentist' distortion to point out that they were, in fact, contributing to a loosening of the grip of theology and religion upon our modern understanding of how the world works, to a degree that, a few hundred years later, that grip is but a memory trace in the collective scientific consciousness. Or is that going a bit too far?

Again the point I'm making is that there's plenty of complexity in the relations between and among scientists and believers, but science and religion have ceased to mix sociably since science has refused to, or forgotten to, keep to its circumscribed territory, and has shrugged off its dress-up as some deity's hand-maiden.

more on the history of Jesus

2011-01-29T06:20:00.000-08:00

how old was this corpse?

But thou, Bethlehem, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel.
Micah 5:2

I try to limit myself to reading six books [slowly] at a time, but I must admit that two books occupying me at present are not on the six-list, which is all a bit of a worry. One is the collection of essays I've been criticising, and the other is a new addition to my library, Robin Lane Fox's The unauthorized version: truth and fiction in the Bible [1991]. I've had a few things to say already about Fox's monumental work of scholarship, Pagans and Christians [1985], which provided a fantastically detailed background to the world that Christian belief was disgorged into, as well as a rich account of the differences between 'pagan' and Christian belief, and how the different beliefs interacted. However, I found the work heavy-going at times because of my unfamiliarity with much of the material. I have no such problem, so far, with The unauthorized version, the first chapter of which throws fascinating light on the two creation stories in Genesis, and the jumbled nativity stories in the gospels [largely as result of ensuring that Jesus of Nazareth should be connected, in birth, with Bethlehem, to fulfil the prophecy from Micah]. The second of these themes covers much the same ground as my two-part, and unfinished, post 'how real was their Jesus?', but of course Fox is a much more thorough scholar than I am. Still, he only focuses on a few problems, such as the census, the different birth datings of 'Matthew' and 'Luke', the star and the maji, Jesus's age at his death, and the date of the crucifixion. He doesn't enter into the problem of the massacre of the innocents, the genealogies, the miracles and so on. Some of these are hardly worth refuting of course, but I'm surprised that, as a historian, he didn't get stuck into the massacre of the innocent legend [maybe later?], and 'Matthew's' penchant for linking Jesus's story to Old Testament prophecy - though he did mention one that I wasn't aware of. Matthew is at pains to mention that the star guided the cognoscenti to Bethlehem, and I wrote about modern astronomical exploration of this star recently, but I didn't realize that Matthew may well have been providing a link to Numbers 24:17 - 'a star shall come forth out of Jacob, and a sceptre shall rise out of Israel', again revealing that gospeller's concern to present Jesus as a king rather than a god.
Considering the endless disputation over such matters, Fox does occasionally surprise with definite conclusions. He's convinced he's found the right dating of the crucifixion - at the end of March in the year 36, the last year of Pontius Pilate's governorship. He works it out by the Passovers in the gospel of John, as well as from the described incarceration of John the Baptist, at which point Jesus's 'ministry' began [Mark 1:14]. John the Baptist was jailed for criticising Herod Antipas's marriage to Herodias, and his consequent abandonment of his first wife, events described in Josephus with enough detail that a date can apparently be put on it. There are three distinct Passovers mentioned, and Fox believes they were consecutive, covering, essentially, the three years of Jesus's ministry. However, he inclines to the belief that Jesus was older than popular mythology has it, leaning heavily on a passage in John [8:57], and inclining also, it appears, to the view that the star of Bethlehem was in fact Halley's comet, definitively dated as appearing in Rome in 12BCE.
Anyway, it's all good fun, and just what the doctor ordered as far as I'm concerned.

'The conflict of science and religion' - a critique

2011-01-25T15:47:00.000-08:00

bulldog Huxley

For nearly a century, the notion of mutual hostility [the Draper-White thesis] has been routinely employed in popular science writing, by the media, and in a few older histories of science. Deeply embedded in the culture of the West, it has proven extremely hard to dislodge. Only in the last thirty years of the twentieth century did historians of science mount a sustained attack on the thesis, and only gradually has a wider public begun to recognise its deficiencies.
Colin Russell 'The conflict of science and religion'

Colin Russell's contribution to the book of essays I've been reading was a dismal one, as I will show. His bias struck me as so clear and manifest that I had to check out his bio. He's very much an elder, born in 1928, and he's been admirably prolific in the promotion of science and its history, especially in chemistry, his chosen field. However, as I suspected, he was at one time president of Christians in Science, and vice-president of the Universities and Colleges Christian Fellowship. Always useful to have these things out in the open.

From the quotation above, taken from early in the essay, one might expect a laying out of the deficiencies of the conflict thesis, but it doesn't happen - apart from the usual stuff about the religiosity of Boyle, Newton, Pascal, Gassendi, Faraday and so on, none of which is dwelt on in any detail. It might've been useful for example, to be made aware that Blaise Pascal, a mathematical wunderkind, gave up doing mathematics because he believed the severe migraines he suffered from were his god's punishment for indulging in such a frivolous pastime. We now know, though, that Pascal's sufferings were due to a deformed skull, probably resulting from a forceps delivery. If only Pascal had been armed with such scientific knowledge, instead of the religious 'knowledge' he thought he had direct from his god, his own personal history would have been much altered.

Russell tries to be systematic in his undermining of the conflict thesis, giving six 'problems' with it, which I'll summarize.
1. The conflict thesis hinders the recognition of other relationships between science and religion.
2. It ignores the many documented examples of science and religion operating in close alliance.
3. It enshrines a flawed view of history in which 'progress' or [in this case] 'victory' has been portrayed as inevitable.
4. It obscures the rich diversity of ideas in both science and religion.
5. It engenders a distorted view of disputes resulting from causes other than those of religion versus science.
6. It exalts minor squabbles, or even differences of opinion, to the status of major conflicts.

So let's look at these problems. As to [1], what about these other relationships? It's true that, in earlier times, much scientific work, and science-talk, was conducted within a religious framework. The writings of Francis Bacon provide a good example. Nowadays, though, science and religion have little to say to each other, and I don't see any harmonious relations in the offing. Again, Russell avoids looking at science and religion as 'ways of knowing' [he doesn't ever attempt a definition of either], he just talks about relations between scientists and believers, which is an entirely different matter. The same goes for [2], he really means scientists and believers operating in close alliance, by avoiding all the issues.
Problem 3 is of course familiar, and more or less identical to what Marilynne Robinson says in her talk, in which she accuses 'new atheists' of having a defunct enlightenment view of science, in which mystery after mystery will fall like so many dominoes before the winds of scientific explanation. Exactly how flawed is this view, though? The scientific explanatory framework does seem to be cumulative. The mystery of lightning gets explained by theories which gradually become more comprehensive, covering electricity, magnetism, the behaviour of matter inside stars and so forth. Scientific analysis has also proved fruitful in categorising the kinds of supernatural concepts that are found to be viable for religious practice, and in detecting patterns in religious thinking. I don't think victory over religious modes of thought and practice is inevitable, but I do think it is desirable, because religious ways of thinking profoundly interfere with a comprehensive understanding of how the world works - precisely because it provides an alternative, competing view, which is inadequate and stunting, but highly appealing to some.
Problem 4 speaks of diversity, but scientific diversity is necessarily circumscribed by the need for hypotheses to pass certain crucial and stringent tests. Religious or theological diversity has no such tests - which is precisely why heresies are dealt with so harshly. Orthodoxy can only maintain itself through repression, and through the gaining of popular support [often through a kind of demagoguery that whips up a frenzy of opposition to 'heretics']. Russell, though, is again largely speaking of personal approaches to religion. He does claim that it was only the Catholic Church, and then not uniformly, that sought to condemn Galileo, while the Protestants had no problem with heliocentrism. This may well be so - and after all, accepting heliocentrism doesn't really concede much, for scriptures really have little to say about the relationship between the earth and the sun, but the problem really is whether scriptures are acceptable as a way of knowing how the world works. It's the methodologies being developed by Galileo and other pioneers that were the real challenge to the religious, and this was a challenge perhaps barely recognized at the time. Russell uses much the same argument regarding the response to Darwin [though without the sharp division between Catholic and Protestant], but he has nothing whatever to say about the challenge to human 'in God's image' specialness that Darwin's theory represented. It's hard to understand how so central a point could be so completely overlooked.
Problem number 5 is one well-recognized, I think, by many observers. The rise of anti-scientific fundamentalism, particularly in the US in recent decades, cannot be attributed wholly to religious belief, few of us are unaware of this. The causes are complex and multi-faceted, and have much to do with a new-found 'tradition' of insularity, and the indoctrination of children. However, religion has always provided a haven for this kind of inward-looking community spirit, which is why cults are perennially attractive to the culturally alienated.
Problem number 6 is perhaps a matter of opinion. Russell it seems wants to minimise the issues involved because he wants to see a harmonious relationship between religion and science, something that he has perhaps managed in his own life. However, I suspect that he has achieved this by ignoring much that looms large in those with a different perspective. I cannot say more as I don't have any idea what Russell is left with in his religion if he accepts the findings of biology, genetics, cosmology and the methodologically rigorous analysis of texts presumed to be sacred.
In his conclusion, Russell presumes that he has proven the 'warfare model' to be manifestly inadequate, and he gives the example of Thomas Huxley as an explanation for its continued success:

By establishing the conflict thesis, [Huxley and his friends] could perpetuate a myth as part of their strategy to enhance the public appreciation of science. Thus, Huxley could write, with a fine disregard for what history records: 'Extinguished theologians lie about the cradle of every science as the strangled snakes beside that of Hercules; and history records that wherever science and orthodoxy have been fairly opposed, the latter have been forced to retire from the lists, bleeding and crushed if not annihilated; scotched if not slain'.

This is surely the shout of science triumphant, and I'm pretty sure that Russell quotes it with a sneaking admiration in spite of his criticism. And the question of whether Huxley really did disregard history, in its broad sweep, is far from decided.

science and religion again

2011-01-23T20:53:00.000-08:00

Andrew Dickson White - early proponent of the conflict thesis

The Draper-White thesis, as it has come to be known, was enormously influential. For the past century it has been the predominant view of the relationship of science and religion among scientists and laymen alike. It wedded a triumphalist view of science with a patronizing view of religion. Popular misconceptions doubtless underlay the widespread presumption that religion was opposed to science. Grounded in faith, religion seemed bound to suffer when confronted by science, which was, of course, based on fact.
Gary Ferngren, 'Introduction', Science & religion: a historical introduction

Being dirt poor, I can't afford to buy the latest texts, assuming there are any, on the topics that most interest me, such as the science/religion conundrum [conflict, compatibility, incompatibility, complementarity, complexity], and I still have difficulty reading long screeds online, so it was with some interest that I uncovered a text at my local library, Science & religion: a historical introduction, which was published not so very long ago, in 2002 [actually, all but one of the essays was written before 2000]. I realized, of course, that the book wouldn't take into account the resurgence of interest in this subject due to the publication of such 'new atheist' works as Breaking the spell and The god delusion, but I was hoping for some really stimulating discussion about these two 'ways of knowing'. I have to say that after reading the intro and the first essay, I've been sorely disappointed.
My expectations were too high perhaps. These are essays by historians of science and religion, not by scientists or philosophers. They're really looking at the way the relationship has played out in the public arena, rather than the central philosophical and theological issues involved. Still, I detect an irritating bias. I'll probably write a few posts as I read my way through the essays.
The quotation at the top of the post gives an indication of the approach, which I suspect will persist throughout the book. Triumphalist and patronising - where have I heard that before? More importantly, terms such as 'popular misconceptions' litter this introduction and the following essay. The conflict thesis persists due to 'popular misconceptions' or it persists 'in the popular mind', condescendingly referred to in contrast to the sophisticated mind. There is no attempt to present these popular misconceptions for our examination, there's just a lot of telling and no showing. More to the point, the conflict thesis is presented as warfare between personalities, and so it's easy for the historian to show that, in fact, there isn't just warfare, there's tension, there's accommodation, there's mutual ignorance, there's collaboration, there's a whole variety of positionings which amount to a complexity thesis which more accurately reflects the relationship.
All of this, though, seems utterly irrelevant to the issue. At no point in the introduction or the first essay [by Colin Russell - and he's much more biased in his approach than Ferngren] do the writers address the basis of the conflict between religion and science. They make no acknowledgement whatever that, personalities aside, the aims of science in general clash with the aims of religion as explanations of how things are. The community benefits of religion, the sense of group or tribal identity generated by these beliefs are well understood by most non-believers, but what gripes us is that the beliefs that the religious share are very unlikely to be true, and they clash head-on with scientific theory and scientific evidence. The closest that either of these two writers come to even considering this fundamental issue is in the last sentence quoted above - Grounded in faith, religion seemed [and forget about the past tense] bound to suffer when confronted by science, which was, of course, based on fact.
Too right, but then this possible starting point is abandoned, and particular struggles or accommodations are focused on again. No attempt is made to examine what faith is, and of course no notice is made of the fact that faith is used precisely to justify belief in stuff that isn't backed up by any evidence - that there's an afterlife, for example, or that a dissident preacher who may or may not have lived 2000 years ago was the offspring of the supernatural creator of the world/universe/multiverse. Along with many people, I just don't accept that science and the rules of evidence have nothing to do with these claims. Most believers don't believe in this separation either - they're often intensely concerned with finding proof, of the power of prayer, of the existence of life after death, of miracles and so forth.
Anyway, what I've read so far has only underlined for me the considerable limitations of taking a purely historical approach to this subject, with little thought for the philosophical. As to Colin Russell's infuriating first essay, I'll deal with that next time.

By the way, here's a much more informative, and plausible, account of the conflicts between science and religion, especially in the US.

something to crow about

2011-01-21T15:57:00.000-08:00

It took scientists the better part of the twentieth century to fully develop the mathematics for describing such quantum activity of the electromagnetic, and strong and weak nuclear forces. The effort was well spent: calculations using this mathematical framework agree with experimental findings to an unparalleled precision [eg calculations of the effect of vacuum fluctuations on the magnetic properties of electrons agree with experimental results to one part in a billion].
Brian Greene, The fabric of the cosmos

In my internet to-ings and fro-ings I recently came across a piece from 1991, written by a creationist, warning a Catholic educational institution of the dangers of having invited that apostle of scientism, Carl Sagan, to speak at a seminar or conference. It was interesting to me that the term was being used twenty years ago, and of course it was also interesting to note who was using it. All of this relates to a recent post in which I noted the term 'parascience', apparently used by Marilynne Robinson to indicate the prideful stories scientists tell each other to keep up morale. The implication seemed to be [nay, more than seems] that science was generally getting too big for its boots and becoming tediously self-important.
The thing is that too many non-science, and genuinely anti-science people have willfully cut themselves off from the extraordinary advances that have been made. There is really a lot to crow about, and the results are so self-evident that little propaganda is required, all that's needed is a clear statement of the facts. Take this little piece from the latest issue of Cosmos magazine, accompanying a tech-blue photo of the installation:

Housed within a 10 storey, 70,000 square metre building, the US National Ignition Facility in Livermore, California, is the biggest and highest-energy laser in the world, designed to produce limitless, self-sustaining energy. On 8 October 2010, all of its 192 giant lasers were combined to form a single beam - 10 billion times stronger than an average household light bulb - and sent through almost 1.6 kms of lenses, mirrors and amplifiers into a fingernail-sized capsule filled with hydrogen fuel. The reaction delivered an explosion of neutrons so powerful it produced a tiny man-made star.

Now think of a nineteenth century technogeek reading this. What would impress her most? Well, there would be the Big Numbers - a 10 storey building just to house some piece of techno wizardry? Wow. 10 billion times the average household light bulb? Sounds impressive, but it wouldn't mean much to someone of the nineteenth century, as there was no such thing as an average household light bulb then. Patents had been taken out throughout the second half of the nineteenth century for various kinds of incandescent bulbs, but mass-produced, standardised globes were very much a thing of the future. And 1.6 kilometres of lenses, mirrors and amplifiers - hard to conceive in the nineteenth century, even for a science nerd.
Two words would also completely discombobulate such a nerd - laser and neutron. The laser might well rank as the most powerful technological development of the twentieth century. There's lots of competition of course, but the laser is right up there. And like so many modern developments in physics, technological or theoretical, its development can be traced back to Einstein, who wrote a paper in 1917, 'On the quantum theory of radiation', which conceived of probability coefficients, since known as Einstein coefficients, for the absorption, spontaneous emission and stimulated emission of electromagnetic radiation. Such an invention was inconceivable of course without the revolutionary developments in quantum mechanics of the early twentieth century. As for neutrons, their existence wasn't confirmed until the 1930s, some ten years after they were theorized by Ernest Rutherford.
All of this new knowledge and these new developments are combining in experiments which actually reproduce the activity inside stars, an activity about which nothing was even known in the nineteenth century. A nineteenth century geek would be totally flabbergasted.
The general point I'm making is captured largely in the quotation at the top of this post. Quantum mechanics and relativity have transformed our understanding of the physical world more comprehensively than any other scientific developments in human history. Not enough people fully understand the monumental achievement of these developments, together with the massive advances made in our understanding of the living world, from the theory of natural selection through to molecular biology and genetics. The theories underpinning these developments have been experimentally confirmed to the nth degree, and they present a complex and comprehensive account undreamed of in previous centuries. I don't deny that there can be such a thing as scientific hubris and triumphalism, but even if it isn't always justified it's surely understandable, and the fact is that many of those most critical of science, those most loudly bemoaning such supposed triumphalism, are in denial, or are just plain ignorant, of the giant strides we've made.

Aristotle, his god and the primum mobile

2011-01-20T06:26:00.000-08:00

absurd but influential, apparently

Despite his conviction that the world was uncreated, Aristotle did believe in a divine spirit, or God. But the attributes he assigned to his God, whom he called an 'Unmoved mover', would have been strange, and perhaps repugnant, to anyone raised in one of the three traditional monotheistic religions. Obviously, Aristotle's God was not the creator of our world, since it is uncreated. Indeed, he is not even aware of the world's existence and, therefore, does not, and could not, concern himself with anything in our world. Such a deity could not, therefore, be an object of worship. The only activity fit for such a God is pure thought. but the only thoughts worthy of his exalted status are thoughts about himself. Totally remote from the universe, Aristotle's God thinks only of himself.

Edward Grant, 'Aristotle and Aristotelianism', in Science and Religion: a historical introduction, edited by Gary Ferngren

I've long had a thing for Aristotle, especially his ethical and political philosophy, but it's all been from quite meagre gleanings. He seemed to have a common-sense empirical approach, and I like to think of him as a this-wordly philosopher through and through, making big assumptions such as that his primum mobile was just a way of kick-starting the universe, after which it could be abandoned, with all the focus being on a kind of physicalist approach thenceforward. If the above quotation is to be trusted, though, Aristotle's metaphysics are a lot weirder than I'd assumed. I was under the impression that Grant's term 'unmoved mover' was a direct translation of primum mobile, which I always took to mean 'first mover', but I'm beginning to realize my error. In fact the term primum mobile [first moved] is a medieval construction used in astronomy and having nothing to do with Aristotle's metaphysics [though it may have been indirectly drawn from him]. So enough of that concept and let's look at Aristotle's god, at least as revealed in the quotation.
How this god could even be described as a 'mover' is a mystery. He didn't create the world, he's unaware of the world, so of what theological use is he? Why even posit his existence? Clearly we would have to investigate Aristotle's metaphysics much more thoroughly to answer these questions. One possible answer is that it was impossible, in those times, for a thinker worth his salt not to have a theology or a metaphysics of some kind. So Aristotle invented a metaphysics that was beside the point. Not consciously perhaps, but just to get it out of the way, to focus on this world, a world entirely untouched by his god. Whether this answer is plausible would depend on a greater familiarity with his metaphysics, which I may or may not achieve. I actually spent some time in Borders bookshop the other day perusing a book called Aristotle's Metaphysics, a contemporary commentary [something like this one, but costing more than $50] on the works under the title of The Metaphysics [not a term Aristotle used himself]. That's essentially why I'm writing this post today.
I do find that Aristotle's strange god, as presented in the quotation, provides a salutary lesson, and an amusing one. You can create in your mind all sorts of supernatural beings, even ones that are completely irrelevant to the generally agreed purpose of supernatural beings - to give purpose and meaning to the world, or to reality. In fact, Aristotle's god is irrelevant to everything except himself. There seems something important here about theological pointlessness, but maybe not. In any case, I might just return to Aristotle's metaphysics in a later post, when I've learned more about it.

on the end of philosophy, mainly

2011-01-17T19:49:00.000-08:00

As for the school of Gothic novelists, they didn't have anything to do with anything except their own gloomy and morbid imaginings: they were probably all opium fiends who got hopped up from daylight until moonlight and kept ravens and indulged in unhealthy thoughts. Life these days, I thought, was Real and filled with Purpose and Endeavour and Downtrodden Masses, and all that Gothic stuff was just made up.
Charmian Clift, 'On Gothic Tales'

Well, it seems that the people of Southern Sudan have voted overwhelmingly to secede from the north and to form their own nation. Obviously it's going to be a hard road to hoe, but hopefully the struggle will be relatively peaceful in the foreseeable future. This site has some useful maps giving an at-a-glance view of the ethnic, religious and language mix of the region. Australia has it so much easier in terms of governance.

Common sense atheism has a stimulating post, with comments, which touches on issues of scientism I've also been touching on in the last few posts. Of course, I'm not a philosopher, and I really don't understand the Bayesian rule [which in any case is a development of mathematics, and specifically probability, rather than philosophy], but I do know that this way of thinking of philosophy - that it's aim should be to kill itself with a thousand cuts, gradually cutting off its various issues and handing them over to science one by one - has been around for quite a while. I myself seem to remember reading something from Max Black around thirty years ago, something to the effect that problems kind of pass through the digestive system of philosophy to come out as science. But no, that probably wasn't it at all.

he says no to atheistic scientism - amen to that

Anyway, I tend to side with the blogger, Luke Muelhauser, here. When have philosophers ever solved a philosophical problem? At best they've helped to make it more clear and distinct. And of course at worst they've done the opposite. Many issues once held in the sights of philosophers have passed over into the sciences, which have often made rapid progress towards solving them. They're no longer philosophical issues, but issues within a scientific framework - cosmology, neurophysiology, genetics and so forth. I expect that the best developments in the future, in ethics, in philosophy of mind, in philosophy of science, will come, as they have been coming, from practical developments in cognitive psychology, in AI research, in astrophysics, etc. And I agree also with Luke that those developments won't involve a dualistic approach. But what would I know?

on supervenience

2011-01-16T18:32:00.000-08:00

Pour qu'une chose soit interessante, il suffit de la regarder longtemps.
Gustave Flaubert

Amongst a number of other no doubt fascinating potted insights at this site, Joshua Greene gives us a condensed version of supervenience. The issue of human mind and consciousness was harped on by Marilynne Robinson in her RSA talk, and at one point she ridiculed what she would describe as the reduction of the mind to that glob of grey matter inside the skull. As everyone knows, this has long been a contentious point between materialists, or to use Greene's term, physicalists, and their opponents, be they dualists or some other ists. Greene's supervenience concept - which doubtless has been around for ages - is that mind is supervenient on the brain. We can't have minds without brains, but that doesn't mean they're identical. You can have a brain without a mind, but more importantly, they operate at different levels. Greene gives the example of a computer image made up of pixels. The image was generated using pixels, but the image also exists on another, human, psychological level, imparting emotion or ideas. Altering the number of pixels might change the resolution but it won't generally alter what the image intends to convey - that 'information', if you like, operates on another level. It is supervenient on the process by which the image was generated.
Greene provides this general definition of supervenience:

Supervenience is a relationship between two sets of properties. Call them Set A and Set B. The Set A properties supervene on the Set B properties if and only if no two things can differ in their A properties without also differing in their B properties.

He then 'concretises' this piece of abstraction rather well - though you can see just by the definition how it works for the mind/brain conundrum, including the asymmetry of the relationship. Essentially the world can be seen as operating on different levels, but there's a basic level upon which everything else supervenes. This is the 'hard' level that physicists work on, and explains why physics is the most fundamental science. When physicists talk about developing a 'Theory of Everything' [TOE] they don't of course mean this quite literally, though in a sense they do - what they mean is the possibility of developing a theory of that upon which everything supervenes.
As this isn't a new approach, no doubt philosophers have been pulling it apart for some time, though on the face of it, it seems very helpful. My strong sense from people like Robinson is that their emphasis on human brilliance and the specialness of human consciousness is really not so much to urge scientists to get their finger out and start studying this stuff, but to put a god-shaped spanner in the works, to almost sneakily claim that there's something that can't be explained, something that's god's doing. Most religious beliefs are self-aggrandising, or 'human-aggrandising' if you will. Certainly this is true of the Judeo-Christian religion, in which only humans are in the image of the creator-deity, and therefore get to lord it over other creatures and to revel in their own specialness and brilliance. Perhaps if Robinson were to focus a bit more on other species and their minds [bearing in mind my quote at the top of this post], she might start to get a clearer view of consciousness as an evolving property, and she might be more impressed with the differently evolving cognitive qualities of pigs and elephants and cetaceans and other beasties. I'm not sure though that she really wants to do that.

Roger Scruton and the atheist 'fashion'

2011-01-14T21:28:00.000-08:00

I note that the British Medical Journal, which has spent some time investigating the controversial study of some years ago [published in the Lancet in 1998, and since retracted] linking childhood vaccination to autism, has recently come out strongly against the study [which has not been replicated by other studies], claiming, in particular, that it downplayed the already-present symptoms of autism of some of the children. There were in fact only 12 children in the study. It's reported here.

Now to the last speaker in the public talks I've been critiquing. Roger Scruton is a very well known British philosopher, of a conservative bent. Apparently he plies his trade as a philosopher in the same faculty as A C Grayling, who describes Scruton as a good friend with whom he disagrees about virtually everything. So it amuses me to surmise that he would have heard many times over what I'm going to say in criticism of his position.
By the way, the RSA actually stands for the royal society for the encouragement of the arts, manufactures and commerce, and it describes itself as a charitable organisation which encourages enlightenment thinking.
Scruton at the outset describes himself as someone who lost his faith as a youngster, but who found it again late in life through a circuitous and painstaking journey. So we're dealing with another believer. He then, referring again to Robert Elsmere, claims that the new atheists present atheism as a liberation, in which you gain much and lose nothing - contrary to the experience of Elsmere. A couple of responses to this - many atheists are acutely aware of how difficult it is, in terms of family relations, social status, even danger to one's own life - to openly declare yourself an atheist. From the awful experience of Ayaan Hirsi Ali to the awful experience of local religious sect members, horror stories abound. At the same time, for many, atheism is a liberation. It should be remembered that 'new atheism' didn't spring from nowhere, it emerged as a response. A response to one of the most troubling developments of the late twentieth century - that's to say, the rise and rise of a new, more aggressive, more primitive, more intolerant and belligerent form of religious belief, or dogmatism. Richard Dawkins would have felt it most in the rise, particularly in the US, of an antipathetic, indeed an enragedly hostile, attitude towards the theory of natural selection [or any other evolutionary theory], a theory he has spent his professional life expounding and promoting as the most profound and successful theory in the history of biology. I for one can well understand his extreme frustration, and it's hard not to imagine, even for believers like Scruton, that these kinds of rigid, aggressively primitivist belief systems are something of a prison-house, especially for women as they always seem to be profoundly patriarchal.
So, yes, liberation is a theme for atheists, but they don't see it, by and large, in simple-minded terms - at least I don't. I've attended a few atheist meet-ups, and they often feature traumatized members or visitors who have lost a great deal in coming out against the family or community faith.
Scruton points to two major features of religion. One is the set of metaphysical beliefs that point to an understanding of the world as a created, purposive entity rather than an accidental, random one. And the other, which he characterises as much more important - membership of a community of like-minded believers, and the sense of cohesion and identity this brings. He also asserts that the idea that you can be set free from religion is naive 'because it doesn't engage with that part of the human condition from which religion springs'. Now again, I can't speak for other atheists, but I know that I am very much concerned with understanding the causes and nature of religious belief, and I'm massively aware of the fact that religious beliefs or spiritual beliefs are very much at the heart of human being for a lot of people. It would be unthinkable for such people to lose their faith - which is indeed so much a part of their being that they don't even recognise it as faith.
However, it should also be recognised that these people are generally innocent of modern science. In Afghanistan, for example, you'll find virtually no atheists, and you'll also find one of the lowest levels of literacy in the world. There are no debates there, I strongly suspect, around 'intelligent design' and evolution, because the vast majority of the population, outside of some cities, haven't much of an inkling of the theory of evolution. This is important, because there's one feature of modern atheism - one of many perhaps - that differentiates it from the atheism of the nineteenth century, say, and that is the issue of the compatibilism of science with religion. No doubt this was touched on in the nineteenth century with the controversy over Darwin's theory, but today that debate is more complex, sophisticated and urgent. Most of the prominent 'new atheists' today - Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, Myers, Coyne and a number of others - are incompatibilists. They see science and religion as being on a collision course, and they see religion as presenting a false understanding of our world, an understanding that is a major roadblock to the scientific view and the scientific approach. To these atheists, no amount of sophisticated metaphysics and no amount of community spirit can justify the holding of what they see as patently false beliefs. Many of the most damaging false beliefs - that children can be possessed by demons, that women who dishonor their families should be stoned to death, that those who don't believe in a particular god, or a particular version of a god, deserve death, and so on - are held to be so by the majority of religious people as well as by atheists, but modern atheists argue that a truer understanding of the nature of humanity will lessen our sense of dependence on or subjection to any supernatural agency, from which these pernicious beliefs ultimately spring.
Now, I think it's true that the rise of fundamentalism and Islamism isn't entirely the fault of religion per se. There are a number of complex forces determining this development, which we should try to comprehend and intelligently combat. Religious indoctrination, though, of the sort evidenced in the documentary 'Jesus Camp', and in the head-bobbing youths in Pakistani madrassas, is a matter of serious concern never addressed or even mentioned by the three speakers I have been critiquing.
Scruton finishes by talking of the sacred, a sense of which most people need in their lives. He talks of Weber's idea of 'disenchantment', of the desecration of sex as a formerly sacred activity, and the general downgrading of the sacred, presumably in western society.
Ah, the sacred, the sacred. How often this one is wheeled out in at attempt to diminish the experience and the aims and ambitions of atheists. Of course it's true that many atheists are contemptuous and dismissive of this catch-all term. The concept of the sacredness of sex and the sacredness of the family has been used by the Vatican to promote a homophobic and mysogynist agenda for centuries. The sacredness of life - almost always exclusively human life - has been invoked to prevent the development of medical procedures and medical research of all sorts, not to mention its sometimes pernicious influence on contraception and the treatment of the suffering and the dying. Scruton doesn't sufficiently emphasise, I think, the self-serving nature of the human concept of the sacred - it's generally about the monumental, dare I say god-like, specialness of all things human. So the concept of the sacred needs to be scrutinised much more carefully, I think - and this is being done by our best evolutionary psychologists. Meanwhile, as person who is highly sceptical of the concept of the sacred, and who doesn't feel this metaphysical need to see myself, or my sexual activity, or my impending end, as a sacred matter, I do feel the need to defend myself against the charge of crassness or superficiality that the 'pushers of sacredness' often make. A few years ago I wrote a no doubt inadequate response to two books I read in tandem - both of which were about pilgrimages of a kind, albeit secular pilgrimages. The two books were Roads to Santiago, by Cees Nooteboom, and Passage to Juneau by Jonathan Raban. They were both deeply reflective and contemplative works, which I found both intellectually and emotionally challenging and satisfying. They both reflected on history, religion, lifestyle, change, questing, the big issues. They were as close to spiritual works as I ever want to come - though of course there are other works of this kind out there, for which we must be grateful. I don't like to use the word 'spiritual' or 'sacred' myself - I think there's far too much baggage attached to these words that I don't want to be a part of. But I've always deeply resented the use of these terms to indicate some sort of superiority of being and feeling. I'm sure we've all met the self-described 'deeply spiritual person' who has about as much sensitivity to others as a doorknob. There are also those those who would eschew such terms as 'spiritual' and 'sacred' but who are deeply empathic to our world and its struggling, failing denizens, human or otherwise.
Finally I should make some remarks about the apparent theme of these talks - 'beyond the new atheism'. For me, what is beyond the new atheism, a term I reject, is more atheism. Modern atheism has certainly been given a shot in the arm by the anti-scientific, anti-modernist move towards religious primitivism in some parts of the world, and it has found a number of new voices, some rather shrill, some very articulate. However, Roger Scruton's description of it as a fashion strikes me as the most profound mischaracterization I've come across in a long time. Atheism is here to stay, and it's here to make itself heard. Not only are the numbers swelling and the percentages rising in the west, but most of the best and brightest are going or have gone 'secular' - not only our best scientists, but our best philosophers, our best lawyers, our best journalists - take any intellectual profession you like, and you'll find the percentage of non-believers will far exceed the percentage in the general population. We're an increasingly questioning society - a good thing, in my view - and religious belief tends to crumble under rigorous - but fair - interrogation.

a critique of Jonathan Ree's contribution

2011-01-12T16:48:00.000-08:00

Don't take up golf. James Watson

The second speaker in these talks, Jonathan Ree, is a British philosopher and historian, and an atheist who has serious doubts about 'new atheism'. He begins his talk by referencing Robinson, speaking approvingly of her term 'parascience', which is nothing like parapsychology, but refers to the tales scientists tell each other to 'gee themselves up', a kind of scientific jingoism, something like what others have described as scientism chit-chat. The idea is that 'new atheists' are particularly prone to this arrogant scientistic tone and attitude. As Ree puts it, it's rather dualistic - there's either science or ignorance. Yet, again, if you look at the people being dubbed 'new atheists', they are quite various. Certainly, such atheist advocates as Richard Dawkins, Michael Shermer and Daniel Dennett are probably guilty, even self-confessedly, of scientism, but others such as Christopher Hitchens and Anthony Grayling are not so easily classified. I do have an interest in this subject, and I generally take the view that science, defined broadly as an open-ended set of methods and techniques and even ways of thinking, which involve discipline and rigour, repeatability, verifiability and testability, can contribute substantially to our understanding of any subject. It's not so much about reducing all ways of knowing to science, but expanding science to comprehend and judge all ways of knowing. Science is, to me, not just a method, but an organic, evolving set of processes. And the subject matter will determine which process or processes out of the set should be applied. If this is scientism, so be it. It's an approach that seems to be working a treat.
Ree next seeks to criticize the new atheists by arguing that there's really nothing they say that wasn't already said in the nineteenth century. So, guess what, they aren't new. An extraordinary insight, that one. Interestingly, this is one of those truisms that isn't quite true. Yes, the philosophical arguments are largely the same, and I haven't heard any of those dubbed new atheists claiming that their arguments are new. But today's atheists are able to present new evidence, the fruits of archaeology, palaeontology, genetics, particle physics, cosmology, precise evidence about when our universe was formed, when and how our planet was formed, our relationship to other species and our evolutionary history, as well as evidence relating to the authorship of sacred texts, the probable where and when of that authorship, and how the events related in those texts are verified or falsified by archaeological and other evidence. The modern atheist lives in a more globalized world, in which more is known about a variety of religions, through the media and through direct contact as well as via the fruits of twentieth century anthropology, not to mention Wikipedia. Religion can be looked at from a broader and more multi-faceted perspective than it was in the nineteenth century.
Of course, the real issue isn't newness but trueness. Atheists, new or old, are saying what they have long said, that we should look to this world for understanding and meaning, not to some putative other-worldly phenomena. Many atheists would like to say that gods just ain't true, and probably feel gyped that they can only allow themselves to say there ain't no evidence. This has nothing to do with scientism, and often nothing to do with science. Jonathan Ree himself points out that his own loss or lack of faith had nothing to do with Copernicus or Darwin or whoever, and that would be the same for me. It had to do with something ludicrous about the whole god-worshipping ritualistic paraphernalia when I was first confronted with it, a sense of profound ludicrousness which has never left me. This hasn't been a rational response, which is why I'm a little wary of those atheists who connect non-belief to a greater rationalism, but neither is it an irrational response. It's something visceral and basic. I'm reminded of Paul Valery's comment, something along the lines of the 'the nonbeliever is always convinced that the believer is being insincere, and vice-versa'. Maybe there is an unfathomable divide between 'believers' and 'unbelievers', or this-worlders and other-worlders, as I prefer to designate them, and maybe this-worlders will always be in the minority. I personally hope not, but I don't hope with a great deal of confidence.
Ree's objection to new atheism, that it isn't new, is also ludicrous - 'new atheist' is a term foisted on people like Dawkins and Dennett and Harris by their opponents, and once the term is grudgingly accepted by the culprits, since there seems no alternative but to accept it with a more or less good grace, the same opponents leap up and down shouting 'there's nothing new about you lot'. It's all very hypocritical and silly.
Ree's description of the novel Robert Elsmere sounds intriguing, but his attempt to use it in support of multifarious atheisms surely fails. He says that Robert Elsmere's objections to his church, his rejection of certain beliefs, would put him on the same level of belief as the 'reformed' Anglican Church of today, and he uses this example to suggest that there are many kinds of atheism. But this isn't true. Elsmere - and I haven't read the book - might have reacted negatively to some aspects of church doctrine, and had a 'crisis of faith' as a result, but if his belief at the end of it all was the same as what the Archbishop of Canterbury believes now, then it's clear that Elsmere never became an atheist. I'm assuming here that the Archbishop isn't an atheist, which is perhaps a big assumption. Atheism isn't many different things. Atheism is something clearly defined. It's a lack of belief in gods. You could perhaps extend this to a lack of belief in supernatural agency, which would bring ancestor spirits, rainbow serpents and even ghosts into the net, but I think it's safer to just leave it at gods. Apart from this lack of belief, atheists are of course as various as all humans are.
Ree's final remark, referring to William James's Varieties of Religious Experience, is another attempt to have a go at the 'new atheist' straw person. He says we should guard against the varieties of religious inexperience, as evidenced by some of these new atheists. What is meant by this piece of rhetoric? I have never experienced religious belief, it's true, just as, presumably, the pope has never experienced non-belief. I'm talking about direct, personal experience here, of course. There are some who've had faith, and lost it, and there are some who converted to a particular faith, from having no interest in matters religious. These are varieties of experience that we all accept and recognise. I feel no need to apologize for having no direct experience of religious belief. I've learned a lot about religion through reading anthropological essays, through talking to people of faith, through observing various rituals, through reading history and sacred texts etc etc. That's the best that I can do to try to understand religious belief. It's true that some atheists are willfully ignorant of religious practice and belief - it takes all kinds. Some new atheists may fit that description. Some may not. It's not a fair criticism of modern atheism. One is reminded, when talking of the religious inexperience of atheists, that recent research has shown that American atheists are on the whole more literate about the Bible than Christians are. So it might even make sense to talk about the varieties of religious inexperience of the professedly religious.

Marilynne Robinson tries her hand at taking on 'new atheism'

2011-01-11T14:23:00.000-08:00

Marilynne Robinson - 'the world's best prose writer', according to some geezer

When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours - Stephen Roberts

I'm failing in my course, and would much much rather focus on my favourite topics, so I will. The above quote comes from the common sense atheism blog, and I love it.
I was somehow directed recently to this set of talks, hosted at the website of the RSA [the Royal Society for the encouragement of the Arts], and co-produced by New Humanist magazine. I want to respond to the speakers, Marilynne Robinson, Jonathan Ree and Roger Scruton, whose collective take on the soi-disant new atheists struck me as very limited and straw-personish. I should hope that New Humanist encourages other voices than these - and I'm sure they do.
The first speaker, Robinson, is a US novelist and essayist, and a committed Christian. She starts out very badly by making the claim that 'new atheists' are generally committed to a kind of post-enlightenment 'science is on the verge of explaining everything' view of the world. She doesn't provide any evidence for this claim. I'm not sure I've heard this one before, though I've heard much criticism of new atheism in terms of scientism and scientific triumphalism. This criticism is often levelled at Richard Dawkins in particular, and maybe there's something in this, but I've read quite a bit of Dawkins's work specifically on science, and he has often commented on the way science raises more questions, opening up ever-new fields of enquiry in a never-ending project. The more we do science the more we find things that are in need of explaining, and there's doesn't seem to be any end in sight. So Dawkins, the favourite whipping-boy of the critics of 'new atheism', takes a view of science which is precisely the opposite of the one Robinson seeks to criticize. I can't think of a single prominent modern atheist - and they're a very diverse bunch - who takes this 'everything's almost explained' view. Names and evidence are required.
After pointing out how 'fantastical' [at least she didn't say miraculous] are the findings of modern science, and arguing, or rather boldly stating, that new atheists don't appreciate this, Robinson goes on to talk about William James, obviously an important philosopher, but talked up here as the American philosopher of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Her presentation of James's 'democracy of ontology', in which, according to James, we concede the mystery of everything that we encounter, sounds rather relativistic. Science, as one commentator to this discussion points out, just cannot proceed this way. Here is his comment:

In the light of the data, we look how plausible each proposed theory/model is (using probability calculus). Redundant statements (i.e. that don't add up to the explanation of the facts) are discarded, and experiments are devised with maximal information value in it (testing limits, or rival hypotheses).

I'm not sure of the detail in this comment, but surely the point is that we have to be much much more hard-nosed in sorting out what we allow in and what we discard from an 'ontology' or a theory in order to produce reliable knowledge. And science is all about the production of reliable knowledge. Quantum theory may be 'fantastical', but more importantly, it is reliable, or it would have been discarded long ago.
Robinson speaks favourably of James's contention that you can reject a particular 'cosmology' because it offends your moral sense - another example of relativism, and Robinson's choice of the word 'cosmology' seems arbitrary here. Why not 'scientific theory'? After all, hasn't the theory of natural selection - along with every other evolutionary theory - been rejected on just those grounds by creationists? And it was largely due to this kind of rejection that 'new atheism' has grown up and come out fighting. No modern scientist and no modern philosopher of science would accept moral feelings or moral qualms as a reasonable basis for rejecting any scientific theory or 'cosmology'. The data has to be respected. And democracy is no basis for accepting or rejecting a theory. If James ever seriously put this forward, then, however pleasant and open it might sound, his philosophy of science is impossibly naive and completely unworkable.
Robinson next goes on to claim that 'new atheism', which she seems to understand as something monolithic, has ignored the issue of human consciousness and human brilliance. Again, Robinson tells us what new atheists think, or don't think, rather than showing us. And again I would counter that new atheists are a very diverse bunch. One of that bunch, Daniel Dennett, is a philosopher who has spent most of his career analysing and probing the nature of consciousness, human and non-human. I'm not sure what Robinson is trying to say, in fact, with this observation. It seems to be something about the specialness of humans, a felt specialness which is at the heart of much religious thinking, with supernatural beings generally being obsessed with the detail of human lives - they know every hair on our heads - thus enhancing our specialness to ourselves. Scientists in general seems unimpressed with this specialness, not because of obtuseness, but because they find 'specialness' - or complexity, extraordinariness, unpredictability [but also regularity] - everywhere, whether they're studying cephalopods, hadrons or plate tectonics. I do think, of course, that human consciousness is amazing, and that our achievement in discovering laws that seem to comprehend the formation and activity of our universe, the formation of complex living entities from much more simple [but in their way still incredibly complex] life forms, and which have enabled us to colonise and dominate the biosphere so effectively, all of this is a wonder. It just doesn't make me think in religious terms - let alone in Christian ones.
So much for Marilynne Robinson's brief and, IMHO, unconvincing contribution to the future of 'new atheism'. I'll deal with the other two next time.

back to training training: picking out modules

2011-01-03T17:08:00.000-08:00

a training package

For the next month or two this blog will be devoted entirely to my tedious studies, in which I'm way behind. My first task is to find a cluster of units of competency that I can develop training and assessment for. As my community centre is seeking ACE and other funding for foundational courses or at least units in IVEC, especially relating to basic literacy and numeracy, I'll take my units from that list. So here are three - they're called modules:

Basic Reading Skills for Everyday Use. TAFE SA code: NYHC. Discipline code: 1302205 General Literacy [see Cert 1 in IVEC, p158]

Basic Writing Skills for Everyday Use. TAFE SA code NYHG. Discipline code: 1302205 General literacy [see Cert 1 in IVEC, p166]

Reading and Writing 2 (Life Skills). TAFE SA code ARYY. Discipline code: 1302205 General literacy [see Cert 1 in IVEC, p1013]

This group is called a cluster and I'm not sure if I'll be able to use them to develop an assessment plan and mapping grids, but I'll try. I've printed out and read the three modules, which are all quite similar. They each provide a module purpose, and relate them to national competency standards through the NRS. Each of them has a content section which provides a clear guide of what is expected of trainees. Next comes the assessment strategy which is divided into two sections, the method of assessment and the conditions of assessment. Emphasis in each module is given to flexibility [real life tasks, practical demos, role play, discussion, etc], a holistic approach, a strong responsiveness to need, and appropriate contextualisation. Assessment should be both formative and summative, and every opportunity should be given to the trainee to succeed. Success is the aim. Conditions of assessment are for NRS level 2, where competence is demonstrated in familiar, predictable contexts, where mentor assistance and advice is acceptable, as is recourse to a first or other language if required.
The next section covers the learning outcome details. Four specific learning outcomes are presented [I'm looking specifically at the first module on my list, the number of learning outcomes may vary, but four is the usual number], each of which builds on the previous one. Each outcome is attached to assessment criteria, which govern what is to be assessed, and conditions and methods of assessment, which govern how assessment is to be carried out. Interestingly, assessment comes before delivery in these documents, just as it does in the course text, Training in Australia, and this is no doubt deliberate. In any case, module delivery is the next section. Various delivery modes and strategies are suggested, with emphasis on providing a mixture of strategies and options, to cover learning styles. Resource requirements are detailed, both human [the requirements of the trainer] and physical [classroom, equipment, technology for online delivery if required, etc]. Recommended texts, online resources and materials are usefully provided for all modules [though these resources are surprisingly dated]. The documents finish with OH & S requirements, pretty standard for these particular modules.
So those are the modules, next I'll look at an assessment plan.

touching on the Christian legacy, inter alia

2011-01-01T15:35:00.000-08:00

ethical solutions, inc

Happy new year to all my darling fans.

Now I mustn't forget my promise about a quotation, so this time, a double dose:

I've just read Geoffrey Robertson's The case of the pope, gifted to me for Christmas. Robertson does his usual thorough job, and is very convincing on the inadequacies of Canon Law, and the abysmal record of the current pontiff in his previous role as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. The overall impression I get is of a profoundly insular, arrogant organisation, convinced of its moral superiority, and convinced that its 'house rules', aka Canon Law, is superior to all secular laws in dealing with every aspect of 'sin'. The result, of course, has been disastrous for thousands of children in every country the RCC has made inroads into. And there's no real sign of change in spite of the pressure being applied.

I'll review the book in more detail later perhaps. For now, I'm going to be a bit churlishly critical - I love a bit o' churlishness, especially during the festive season. In a section titled 'Reflections' at the end of the book, Robertson makes this statement, after arguing at length on the Vatican's abuses of human rights:

It should not be necessary to invoke human rights law against a great church, especially one whose founder laid down the Judeo-Christian ethics that have contributed considerably to the principles of that law.

Now, I suspect that this praise of Judeo-Christian ethics was a concessional bone thrown at the RCC after nearly 200 pages of relentless, but judicious, attack. But I must object to it on two counts. First, Robertson refers to the church's founder, by whom he clearly means the character known as Jesus. Now, the idea that Jesus founded the RCC is quite preposterous. Even if we assume that the name refers to a historically real character - a big assumption - there is no evidence from the gospels [and the gospels are all we have] that he intended to found a 'church' as such, and certainly not a church anything like the RCC. The RCC is, and has been since the beginning, a profoundly authoritarian, ritual obsessed, secretive organisation. There are certain consistent qualities of Jesus that emerge from the gospels - an impatience with ritual, a preference for substance over form, an anti-authoritarian tendency, an open simplicity of style and a preference for the company of the poor, the dispossessed and the powerless - notably women and children. His attack on the pharisees for being more concerned with dress and form than substantial teachings, for being essentially out of touch with ordinary people, gives a pretty clear indication of what he would've thought of the RCC, which raises the question of whether the RCC is or ever has been a Christian organisation.
The second point is the familiar one - that our modern ethics were 'laid down' by Jesus, as recorded in the gospels. I find it extremely difficult to comprehend how anybody reading the gospels carefully and with an open mind can find a foundation for modern ethics therein. The sayings of Jesus are not, in my opinion, particularly 'ethically rich', and the parables are often obscure and sometimes very dubious in their message. The golden rule, for example, is found in dozens of religious traditions, indicating that it transcends religion as a common-sense formula for social living. The peacemakers are, or should be, blessed, and the meek shall inherit the earth. This is wishful thinking - admirable enough, but hardly the basis of an ethical system. Love your enemies [a piece of preaching that Jesus didn't always practice himself] is merely a paradoxical remark that undermines the concepts love/hate and friends/enemies. The remark 'let he who is without sin cast the first stone' is a useful corrective against moral dudgeon, but it's hardly original [and in any case was a later insertion]. Altogether, all we have in the gospels are a few general remarks, mostly unobjectional and generally kindly, but not particularly earth-shattering. Had they never been published or bruited about, I strongly doubt that our modern ethical thinking and the laws based on it would have been any different.

My point is that Christianity continues to be over-rated from an ethical perspective, even by non-believers. We have always done better, in thinking about ethics, to leave religion out of it, as the Graeco-Romans did. It is to that tradition, more than any, that we owe the upholding of ethical standards in law.

life in all its intensity, illogicality and durability

2010-12-28T14:21:00.000-08:00

orthodox for some

Recently I received the gift of a book of essays and occasional pieces, written in the sixties, by Charmian Clift, one of Australia's most talented and thought-provoking writers. The collection is entitled Trouble in lotus land. One of her pieces, 'The loftiest form of springtime', is a short but intense and vivid description, half poetical, half anthropological, of the ritual activities and festivities around Easter Passion week on a Greek island - that's to say, within a close-knit and profoundly tradition-bound Greek community. The Day of Lazarus, Palm Sunday, Holy or Passion week, Maundy Thursday, these are terms with no great significance for me, but on this Greek Island these days and weeks are imbued with a seasonal ritual which clearly isn't entirely Christian. As Clift puts it:

Christ and Dionysus merge in torn flesh and flowers, and life is resurrected from the dead earth. The pagan world is always there, lingering on, dark and impenitent.

Reading about these rituals, their colour and intensity, their apparent essentiality to the communities that engage in them, takes me far from the kind of remark I read this morning, a blog comment about faith as a form of intellectual dishonesty, and not really 'a way of knowing' at all. My response, right now, would be that faith, for these communities, isn't a way of knowing, but more like a way of being, and that to call it faith wouldn't be entirely accurate. For these villagers, as with tribal peoples throughout the world, all of this goes beyond the label of 'faith' or 'religion', and terms like 'truth' and 'falsehood' don't really apply. It's just what they do, and it constitutes their identity. I've written about this in an essay called 'big and small religions', in which I express my ambivalence about attacks on religious belief based purely on logic. I don't think religious belief is particularly logical in the accepted sense, but it can clearly provide people with a strong sense of identity, motivation and energy, as the work of Emily Kngwarreye has so powerfully shown. I've long been of the view that religion and science are not reconcilable, that at base they are in competition in seeking to explain how the world is and how it works, but it's clear that we can't all be scientists, and there are whole cultures with traditions that can't readily incorporate the findings of modern science. The sorts of vigorous and rigorous critiques aimed at fundamentalist Christians, or at the teachings of the RCC, seem to me inappropriate when dealing with smaller, tribal religions or belief systems, or their quirky versions of mainstream, larger religions. A sort of 'tread softly, for you tread on my whole way of being' approach is called for. We can even celebrate the colour and intensity and ingenuity of their rituals and belief systems, while always recognising how much damage they can do [I've seen a horrible video in which a young girl was being threatened with death by a 'witchdoctor' for being possessed, and we often hear of the horrific treatment of albinos in Africa, due to irrational belief systems, etc]. For the most part, though, they are effective in binding communities together and helping them to thrive collectively, if not individually - otherwise, such rituals and belief systems wouldn't have developed.
Some have argued that the sympathetic attitudes of some western intellectuals towards these 'small religions' or local 'traditions' smacks of condescension, but in Australia, as elsewhere, we've learned the hard way of the dangers and the damage involved in underestimating the power, the energy and the resilience of supposedly primitive belief systems. I for one don't see them disappearing in the foreseeable future, until at least a scientific worldview is equally capable of binding communities together, providing equivalent rewards and satisfactions [as of course it does in many modern scientific fields and 'campus communities'].
Another thing about this little piece - it took me back to my own readings of anthropological writings in the eighties, especially Clifford Geertz's concept of 'thick description', the idea that the anthropologist should describe the ritual or practise in the richest possible detail, incorporating not only her own observations, but whatever commentary or background can be provided by the participants, however contradictory or multifarious - the contradictions and 'illogicalities' being often more revealing and key to the understanding of the event as any 'official' version. To try to see things from a variety of other perspectives can't be a completely bad thing, can it?

an unsatisfying mix of astrology, astronomy and religion

2010-12-26T02:14:00.000-08:00

not the most interesting subject

The other night, I think it was Christmas eve, I caught an odd late-night program on SBS, I think. It was called 'Star of Bethlehem. Behind the myth', and was completed in December 2009, so was probably first shown last Christmas. The blurb claims that astronomical evidence supports the Christmas story, by which they presumably mean the story of the 'star of Bethlehem'. The program didn't bear that out at all, in fact it was a sometimes interesting, often irritating mix of astronomical info and speculation, astrological history and religious pap.
The theme of the program appeared to be: could the star of Bethlehem, the one mentioned in Matthew [and only in Matthew], refer to a real, verifiable event in the night sky at that time? Answer: quite possibly.
I mean - big fucking deal. Of course there could have been an event in the night sky sometime during the very vague defined period of time within which Jesus may have been born. Does this back up the Christian birth story? Of course not. Here's a quote from the doco:

Looking at the story of the magi and the stellar beacon from a scientific point of view, is it possible to determine what exactly the "star" was that heralded the arrival of a baby boy to the wise men? If you believe the account was more than just a story and the star was more than a story-telling device, then you need to analyze the sky around the time of Jesus's birth to find what may have played the role of the Star of Bethlehem.

This misses the bleeding obvious point [to me] that a very real comet or supernova may well have appeared in the night sky in 6BCE or 5BCE or 7BCE and been incorporated into the story by the author of Matthew, with as little regard for the truth as his genealogy of Jesus and his links to Old Testament 'prophecy'. The use of a 'star' as a portent would be just like Matthew - anything that might add to the significance of his 'messiah' would be roped in and manipulated to suit his story. It doesn't make the event [I mean Jesus's birth, not the comet or whatever] more real. As to the speculation about what the star of Bethlehem might actually have been, there just isn't enough information in Matthew to get a handle on it, so it's a bit pointless, but if evidence turned up that a comet or supernova was visible in the night sky at those latitudes in those years, that's fine and dandy, Matthew might have been referring to it. Or not. End of very feeble story.

christmas cheer

2010-12-25T00:26:00.000-08:00

watch out for Santa!

We often have people complaining about the commerciality of xmas, with the 'real' message being forgotten, but while indulgence often sickens - and I've been feeling half-sick all day - the basic message for me has always been kindness to children, anticipation, surprise, imagination and fun. Santa and his jollity are an apt replacement for the solemn figures bowed around the manger. He has become the closest thing to a secular mythical figure we have, and although some insist that 'he knows if you've been bad or good', the emphasis is overwhelmingly on goodness, and even more on happiness. I've discovered some who really love Christmas for the simple delight and sense of expectation it brings. They don't say that the real message has been subverted by Christians, for many of them are probably Christians themselves, but they appear to give little thought to Jesus and being saved from sin at this time of the year, and so much the better.

So, happy Christmas, for what's in a name, and thank you, Santa.

amongst other things, what julian assange should say in response to US claims that he's a terrorist

2010-12-21T05:46:00.000-08:00

Ages ago I decided to head all of my posts with quotes from my desultory reading, but typically I didn't keep it up for long. however, as there have been rich pickings of late I've decided to try again.

Science is often misrepresented as 'the body of knowledge acquired by performing replicated controlled experiments in the laboratory'. Actually, science is something much broader: the acquisition of reliable knowledge about the world.
Jared Diamond, Collapse

In avoidance mode big-time re my studies, and of course it's that time of year when self-indulgence, even if only in the form of sluggishness, is permitted to come to the fore.

Tonight I watched Stephen Fry in the USA, travellin north up the Mississip, his arm all slung up, presumably due to the accident he suffered in Last Chance to See, which I also loved. I was jealous, because being famous and in demand allows you to do just this, meet all sorts of bods, quirky and weird and resilient and hospitable and optimistic and delightful. Anyway, experiencing all these folks in one-way-mirror TV land is way better than not experiencing them at all, so cheers to Fry and his open-heartedness and curiosity and self-deprecating humour and energy.

I'm still not sure of the ethics of what Julian Assange and Wikileaks is doing, but I'm sure I'm one of many who get their back up when someone like him gets described as a terrorist. I wish he would come out with an eloquent statement of denunciation, or retaliation, something to really rouse the rabble, something like this:

Hello everyone, I'd just like to address some brief remarks to you about the recent claim, by no less a personage than Joe Biden, the USA's President of Vice, that I am a terrorist, who runs a terrorist organisation. Now, you might think that Mr Biden, considering his position, would know a lot about vice, and I have no doubt that terrorism is one of the nastiest vices around, but I would ask you to consider carefully this claim. What is terrorism, and what is a terrorist? Well, I think that my own understanding of terrorism is an uncontroversial, mainstream understanding. Terrorists are people whose intention is to spread terror. That's why they're called terrorists, right? It's not rocket science, it's terrorism. And they spread terror through acts of violence, usually extreme violence. Murder, bombing, kidnapping - we all know the story. But unfortunately, the term terrorism and the term terrorist are currently perhaps the most abused terms in the English language today. Since September 11, and really before that, in the last ten or fifteen years in which terrorism has gained a much higher profile in the west, the term has been hijacked by rogue states wishing to silence internal dissent, by nations wishing to goad enemy nations, by political parties keen to denounce their opposites, and so forth. It is a tool intended, I think, to silence debate, but as always with such tools, the more it is used [or rather, abused], the more ineffectual it becomes.
Biden isn't the first US establishment figure to use the terrorism word against me - I believe Joe Lieberman has made a similar accusation recently. This surely should move us to ask - why is it that the US establishment in particular is so keen to abuse and denigrate me? And I hope you can see the humour in Biden's accusation, for in the very same interview in which Biden described me as a terrorist - that's to say, the most horrific and inhuman of arch-criminals - he told the interviewer that he had set a legal team to comb the legislation to see if just possibly they could find some charge they could lay against me. And no doubt they've been looking for months, and so far have found nothing to charge me with. So here I am, a terrorist, the most criminal of criminals, who hasn't broken the law.
So, okay, let's be serious again and ask ourselves, why all this nasty rhetoric? Well, I don't think it's all that difficult to explain. I'm not a historian, but I do have an interest in history, and I can tell you that every state that has risen to great power and prominence, now or in the past, has been ruthless, utterly ruthless, in protecting, and if possible furthering, its own hegemony. I make this historical point lest anyone imagine that I am some kind of rabid anti-American. Each of these powerful states - the USA, the Soviet Union, Imperial Britain, Imperial Rome - have tended very strongly to identify their own interests with the interests of their subject peoples, their client states, and the world in general. It is a natural enough fallacy, but it undoubtedly is a fallacy. And it's a fallacy which, when acted upon, as it so often is, can have terrible consequences, as so many of the people of Iraq, for example, have discovered to their cost.
One way in which the hegemony of powerful states is protected and enhanced, as we know, is by the manipulation of information. This is often done cynically, to gain advantage, with an 'ends justifies the means' mindset. Often though, it is done quite 'unconsciously', as with any individual who's instinct is to survive and thrive, often at the expense of those around her, without giving a great deal of thought to the matter. Again, in the recent case of the invasion of Iraq, we see, in my view, a combination of cynicism and unconscious motivation, which, while understandable - I don't condemn the USA, for I think any other nation in its position would do much the same - was highly regrettable from the point of view of many non-US citizens [and for quite a few US citizens]. Organisations like Wikileaks are trying to open up, as much as possible, to the rest of the world, the kinds of deals and deliberations that go on in the world of diplomacy and official international relations, a world which, I think, is overly elitist and arrogant in its treatment of the ordinary people most often destined to suffer from their high-handed decisions. Of course the establishment see this as a major threat to their assumed authority, and they will pound out the rhetoric accordingly. We should take this rhetoric with a generous measure of salt, but we should also note that these people have the power to 'act dirty' as well as to 'talk dirty', as Bradley Manning, and others I'm sure, have discovered. Their suffering should not go unrecognised.
I note in passing that the activities of the Wikileaks organisation, and their ethical implications have come under much scrutiny from the blogosphere and various online sites. Many of the commentators are professional philosophers and experienced political pundits, and I welcome their scrutiny. Some have expressed reservations about our activities, others have offered more or less qualified support. All have been far more nuanced, thoughtful and measured than the establishment figures in the US government and their staunchest allies. However, in spite of their rhetoric, and in spite of what they try to do to me personally, they will not be able to control this debate, nor will they be able to control the spread of information and knowledge which, horror of horrors, will not always be in their best interests. Lash out as they might, control of information will continue to slip from their grasp. Time for a rethink, ladies and gentlemen.

I should also say that I very much enjoyed Jason Rosenhouse's clear-minded critique of Michael Ruse here. Rosenhouse has done much to sharpen my own thinking regarding science, religion, conflict and compatibility, and it's a pleasure to see him back on that task again, after something of an absence.

a few little thoughts on the Assange case

2010-12-17T15:39:00.000-08:00

I haven't been following the Julian Assange case too closely, but of course I'm interested in it, with its issues of freedom of information, the exercise of power and the nature of diplomacy, as well as the other issues around sexual assault, the justice system and the likelihood of political interference. Since I've only heard bits and pieces about the assault issue, including claims that it was a borderline case, that it had already been dropped some months ago for lack of evidence, and that the Swedish judiciary have been behaving with a sudden unwonted heavy-handedness, I thought that I might try to get my head around what's been going on, for my own sake. For the fact is that it's, dare I say, fun like a thriller, but of course with a great deal more reality in terms of weight and repercussions.
However, I don't think I will write extensively on it, as so many others are doing so, people better qualified than myself. This brief piece at three quarks captures some of my concerns though.
Questions arise. Since the assault case was dropped for lack of evidence last August [the day after the charge was issued], is there new evidence in this new charge? Charge or charges? If there are are no new charges, how can the case be reopened? What exactly are the charges? Why is this case so obviously being treated differently from other sexual assault cases? I happen to have some familiarity with such charges and accusations. A person accused of sexual assault - and he hadn't even been charged, he was merely taken into custody at the request of Swedish authorities - would not normally be placed in solitary confinement while in custody. Whatever for? It's the sort of treatment you'd expect to be meted out to someone suspected of espionage or something.

how real was their jesus? part 2

2010-12-05T14:01:00.000-08:00

The announcement in Matthew is strikingly different. Not only is it more cursory than in Luke, but it is made after Mary's conception:

The birth of Jesus the Anointed took place as follows: While his mother Mary was engaged to Joseph, but before they slept together, she was found to be pregnant by the holy spirit. Since Joseph her husband was a good man and did not wish to expose her publicly, he planned to break off their engagement quietly. While he was thinking about these things a messenger of the Lord surprised him in a dream with these words: 'Joseph, descendant of David, don't hesitate to take Mary as your wife, since the holy spirit is responsible for her pregnancy. She will give birth to a son and you will name him Jesus. This means 'he will save his people from their sins' [Matthew 1 18-22].

So, the messenger, not specified as Gabriel, visits Joseph rather than Mary, after she has found herself to be pregnant and after she has told him, which she may well have delayed doing, considering their unmarried state, until it couldn't be hidden. If Mary was young and naive, she may well not have known of her state until she was well on. So we're talking four weeks minimum after conception, and probably much later.
So how would our Tardis team deal with these grossly contradictory accounts? Clearly we would need sufficient facts, or leads, to place us in the right place at the right time. Luke's gospel gives us an 'announcement' place - 'a city in Galilee called Nazareth', though the archaeological evidence strongly suggests that Nazareth would've been no more than a small village in Jesus's time [blessed news for the Tardis team]. Matthew's gospel doesn't specify a place, but tells us that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, some seventy miles south of Nazareth - a few days by donkey.
However, all of this 'where' information is useless without further information as to when.

To find out more, we turn to the birth itself, and again we find two seriously incompatible stories, leading us to be sceptical of both. We'll look at Matthew first this time:

Jesus was born at Bethlehem, in Judea, when Herod was king [Matthew 2:1].

A very useful lead, but unfortunately for our team, Herod's reign was a long one, from around 37BCE to 5 or 4BCE.We know of course that the official year of his birth marks year zero in our calendar, but if Matthew's gospel is to be relied on here [and I see no reason why it should be], his birthdate is out by four to thirty-seven years. And there's no obvious reason to assume it's closer to four than thirty-seven. That's a long period to stake out. Let's see if we can reduce it.
In chapter two of Matthew, one event is mentioned which is so strikingly horrific that it just might provide a lead for us, before we even embark on our expedition:

When Herod realized he had been duped by the astrologers, he was outraged. He then issued a death warrant for all the male children in Bethlehem and surrounding regions two years old and younger [Matthew 2: 16]

Surely such a regally sanctioned massacre, in the reign of such a well-known monarch, would be in the historical records, giving us a date to go on? The answer is no. The infamous massacre of the innocents mentioned in Matthew isn't corroborated anywhere else, in spite of a great deal being known of Herod's reign. Josephus, the most important Jewish historian of the period, doesn't mention it. However, it was a very bloody reign, especially in the last years, and it's just possible that this local massacre got lost amongst the general carnage. After all, if we exclude Jerusalem, the number of slaughtered children in and around Bethlehem may not have been great. At least we can point to the last years of Herod as being slightly more likely as the birth period.
However, there's an argument which tells against this massacre having occurred, and of the consequences for Jesus, who was described as having escaped with his family to Egypt. Matthew's gospel is obsessed, it seems, with the fulfilment of prophecy, and this leads me to wonder if certain events are fashioned to fulfil those prophecies. For example, on the massacre, Matthew writes:

With this event the prediction made by the prophet Jeremiah came true: In Ramah the sound of mourning and bitter grieving was heard: Rachel weeping for her children. She refused to be consoled: they were no more [Matthew 2: 18].

The reference is to Jeremiah 31:15. I don't for a moment believe this passage was an accurate prophecy of Herod's behaviour centuries later - Ramah was more or less in the vicinity of Bethlehem, but these prophecies were generally written after the events prophesied had occurred, so it probably referred to the invasion of the Assyrians, or the later invasion of the Babylonians - but it does indicate that Matthew was prepared to shape the tale to fit his propagandist intent. And of course it's quite possible, even likely, that the whole story was filched from the old testament tale of events surrounding the child Moses:

Then Pharaoh gave this order to all his people: “Every Hebrew boy that is born you must throw into the Nile, but let every girl live.” [Exodus 1:22, NIV]

So where does this leave us? Nowhere clear, and with a heightened scepticism of the Matthew gospel. The period of exile in Egypt was also claimed as a fulfilment of prophecy:

So Joseph got ready and took the child and his mother under cover of night and set out for Egypt. There they remained until Herod's death. This happened so the Lord's prediction would come true: 'Out of Egypt I have called my son'.

The Old Testament reference here is Hosea 11: 1, but note the whole verse:

When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son'.

To me, at least, the manipulation here is palpable. Hosea is speaking with the voice of 'the Lord', speaking of his 'child', the chosen people of Israel. The reference is clear - it's about the soi-disant exile from Egypt of a whole people, and their wandering in the wilderness. So the Matthew gospeller is being pretty audacious in substituting Jesus and family for the whole Jewish nation. Amongst other things, this tale is meant to emphasise Jesus's role as a particularly Jewish saviour, rather than the son of God. It comes to seem all the more unreliable as the birth story of any real person.

how real was their jesus? part 1

2010-12-03T13:06:00.000-08:00

some useful resources

I recently read an atheist blogger commenting that 'so-and-so is much more extreme than me - he doesn't believe Jesus ever existed'. Though I have an open mind on the matter, I don't consider such a position to be particularly extreme, and - as with Mohammed - there are many bits of the Jesus story, as told in the canonical gospels, that are incontrovertibly, though of course not uncontroversially, fictional.
We'll never know for sure, and for sure we'll never stop speculating. I've long had a fantasy about time travel - imagine if we developed a 'space-time' capsule along the line of Doctor Who's Tardis, which could take us back to any time and place to find out what really happened. I have to say that, until a few years ago, the resolution of the Jesus question wouldn't have been a priority for me as Tardis skipper. Uncovering the real life and achievements of Archimedes, say, or the quasi-mythical Socrates, or taking a tour through the great library of Alexandria, these would've been more to my perverse and desperately elitist taste. But the resurgence of popular debate on all matters theistic has got me hooked. So it's back to Palestine we go.
Of course, being a thorough-going amateur and dilettante, I'd have to fill my Tardis with a bunch of smarties - archaeologists, language specialists, New Testament scholars, pet theorists [within reason], cinematographers, journalists, and a really good comedian or two. However my Tardisy adventure would be unlike those of the good doctor in at least one vital respect - strict non-interference. My painstakingly selected team would, via the mechanism of compressional warp 15 hyper-reality fluxion drive, be able to observe the goings-on in and around Galilee for the period spanning the research target's presumed immaculate conception, birth, peregrinations, trial, death and resurrection, without our presence being detected by said target or any of his fellow-travellers. The same mechanism would of course allow us to complete this exploratory journey and fifty-year mapping exercise [from about 10BCE to 40CE] in one solitary day. We should be back in time to report our findings for the seven o'clock news.
So what would we find, and what would we look for? Well, we're going to let the gospels be our guide, and, though of course I would consult the afore-mentioned NT scholars, it's likely that the canonical gospels will be our main focus. There are or were fifty or so others at least, all in general agreement about the time of Jesus's life, but wildly diverging on his character and acts. Most of these gospels were written in the second century or later, and for various reasons have been discounted as accurate descriptions of the Life and Times. We have to limit our enquiry somehow, though we'll be looking out for any lead, no matter how unusual, as befits our professionalism. So let's begin at the beginning...

1. Annunciation and Conception [immaculate or otherwise]
Only two of the canonical gospels, Matthew and Luke, describe the conception and birth of Jesus, and their descriptions are hard to reconcile with each other. First, let's look at the announcement of the birth, traditionally associated with the archangel Gabriel [an archangel is a kind of top-class angel, a feature of all three Abrahamic religions]. Christians call this the Annunciation and celebrate it, unsurprisingly, on March 25. However, Gabriel is only mentioned in Luke [I use the Jesus Seminar's Five Gospels version]:

In the sixth month the heavenly messenger Gabriel was sent from God to a city in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man named Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin's name was Mary. He entered and said to her, 'Greetings, favored one. The Lord is with you!' But she was deeply disturbed by the words, and wondered what this greeting could mean. The heavenly messenger said to her, 'Don't be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. Listen to me: you will conceive in your womb and give birth to a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great, and will be called son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give him the throne of David, his father. He will rule over the house of Jacob forever; and his dominion will have no end.'

And Mary said to the messenger, 'How can this be, since I am not involved with a man?'

The messenger replied, 'The holy spirit will come over you, and the power of the Most High will cast its shadow on you. This is why the child to be born will be holy, and be called son of God. Further, your relative Elizabeth has also conceived a son in her old age. She who was said to be infertile is already six months along, since nothing is impossible with God.'

And Mary said, 'Here I am, the Lord's slave. May everything you have said come true.' Then the heavenly messenger left her [Luke 1: 26-38].

Apologies for the length of this quote, but it's quite important for the initial identification of our subject. And clearly there are problems from the outset. Firstly, it's announced that this special person, Jesus, will be born to a woman engaged to Joseph, of the house of David. Jesus's future greatness is foretold, but essentially as heir to the throne of David, a probably mythical early ruler of the probably mythical Kingdom of Judah. The Old Testament is a text largely devoted to the promotion of this Kingdom, but unfortunately there isn't a scrap of evidence outside the OT to verify David's existence. One piece of archaeological evidence, the Tel Dan stele, discovered only in the 1990s, created great excitement as apparently featuring the words 'House of David', in early Aramaic or Hebrew, in an account of the victories of a king of Damascus, a rival of the more southerly Judean peoples. While this was an important find, it hardly proves the existence of David - rather it tends to say something about the self-identification of the Judeans - just as the Romans identified themselves as the descendants of Romulus and Remus.
In any case there is a problem with Jesus being identified so clearly with a former Judean king. Luke also provides a genealogy [Luke 3 23-38] tracing Jesus back to Adam, through David. Notoriously, Matthew also provides a genealogy, which only goes back to Abraham, and which counts only 27 generations back to David, compared to Luke's 41. Only a few of the names are the same. The most likely explanation for all this is that both genealogies are entirely bogus. Proper lineages were very important for claimants to kingdoms, as you would expect, and supporters of particular claimants were not above inventing them. What the genealogies do indicate, though, is that, first and foremost, Jesus is being claimed as a Jewish messiah. If the emphasis was on Jesus as the son of God, immaculately conceived via a virgin, his male descent would clearly be irrelevant.

IVEC and me

2010-11-26T20:07:00.000-08:00

I'm supposed to be doing a course called TAA, which I wrote about back in September, asking myself and answering textbook questions. Really though it's time for me to start innovating, or to start comprehending what I'm to do, to start thinking my way into this, because people are relying on me to come up with some goods.

I'd previously chosen a competency package, or whatever it's called, in ESOL, which tended to fit in more with high school teaching so I shall abandon that and focus on basic computing through the course.

why do I never have such students in my class?

Today at a meeting with the co-ordinator of the community centre I've been attached to over the past few years, I learned about IVEC, which is not in vitro expression cloning. It seems to mean introductory vocational education. We were talked to by a woman called Michelle from TAFE, who informed us that if we won funding for providing the goods for clients to obtain cert 1 in IVEC, we'd have to look at units of competency and develop training around it, which would be a simple matter. She talked of multiliteracy units and foundational units and pathways, it's all about pathways. Our co-ordinator tells me though that the money is all in the foundational stuff not the multiliteracy stuff, where there's lots of work to be done for little reward.

Anyway, client numeracy and literacy skills can be assessed at National Reporting System [NRS] levels 1, 2 and 3, though some clients are at an even more basic level [Not Yet Achieved, NYA 1]. I've obtained the whole TAFE document describing everything to do with this cert 1 IVEC course - it's over 1500 pages long! But here's an interesting quote from page 8:

Providers working in the Adult and Community Education (ACE) area are encouraged to offer accredited education and training programs to their clients, especially for Community and Neighbourhood Houses. Although there are no formal or funding-based requirements to do so, providing such accredited training in turn establishes a means for transitions from ACE to TAFE. Many such community clients are preparing themselves for work or vocational training and use ACE programs as a pathway to VET and TAFE.

The trouble with this observation is that while many of my students [computing, ESOL and literacy] are preparing themselves for work, very many, probably the majority, are not. Would I lose the other students if I switched to a vocational focus in my English class?

I note that this particular certificate has three supposed levels - preliminary, foundational and certificate. Also known as competency standards, with preliminary being NYA 1, certificate being at level 2 minimum and preferably higher. The problem is of course that I have no clear evidence from my teaching experience that progress is being made by my students, though there's more positive evidence I think from my one on one computer students than my ESOL students.

Hopefully I'll be able to garner evidence of improvement in my students from this framework. Here are some reassuring words about NRS:

The NRS is a framework for describing adult language, literacy and numeracy competence in two dimensions reflecting real life performance. It provides Indicators of Competence in Reading, Writing, Oral and Signed communication1, Learning Strategies and Numeracy at five different levels and in six different aspects of social and vocational activity.

The NRS is used as a reporting mechanism for DEST-funded literacy and numeracy programs and is currently undergoing further review and development. Further information about the NRS can be obtained at http://www.nrs.dest.gov.au/

Is the Catholic Church a cult?

2010-11-21T22:33:00.000-08:00

A recent news item on ABC 24 about religious resurgence in Russia caught my attention, because the more orthodox Russian church has expressed concern about the growth of unorthodox 'cult' versions of Christianity. The news report took the line that many of these 'cults' would not be so regarded in Australia and the US, and that this was really about orthodox forces trying to impose their will.
It all raises interesting questions about what a cult actually is, and whether a so-called mainstream or traditional religion can still be regarded as a cult.
Without even reaching for wiki definitions, I think it's safe to say that the term cult is usually associated with new religions or new variations on established religions, as well as being associated with extreme behaviour, ritual and attitudes. So that, if we take the Catholic Church, its belief that, through ritual, you can partake of the actual blood and body of the central, foundational figure of the religion can't be considered cultic because, though extreme enough, surely, it's sanctioned by tradition, as well as by the agreement of church leaders throughout its history [most notably at the Council of Trent in 1551].
Basically this way of looking at things says that any 'orthodox' belief system can't be a cult, and that's the end of the story. The problem with this is that one person's orthodoxy is another person's weirdness. The opening line of the wikipedia definition of a cult, for what it's worth, says this:

The word cult pejoratively refers to a group whose beliefs or practices are considered strange.

That puts the Catholic Church well and truly in the cult category in my book, and many skeptics and scientists would surely agree, but of course there's more to it than that, otherwise flat-earthers and young earth creationists would be considered cult members, and that's going too far. Interestingly, the above quote has a note attached, saying it comes from the OED, and that note adds this, from the American Journal of Sociology, to the definition:

"Cults[...], like other deviant social movements, tend to recruit people with a grievance, people who suffer from some variety of deprivation."

Clearly this doesn't apply to Catholics, the majority of whom just find themselves in the religion for family and societal reasons. The common run of Catholics don't really look to the hierarchy for guidance in their everyday lives, especially not in developed countries. The Catholic commentator Paul Collins said exactly this in an interview this morning. In this respect you could say that the Catholic Church is a failed cult. One of the characteristics of cults, after all, is a slavish obedience to the dictates of the cult leadership. And didn't the Catholic cardinals 'make' the Pope infallible back in the nineteenth century precisely to encourage this slavish obedience? Infallibility is a supernatural category. Cults always endow their leaders with some supernatural quality or other.
When a Papal Bull or encyclical is issued from the Vatican, it's usually about directing the followers, like a shepherd directing his sheep. I've read one or two of these documents, and one of the features I've noticed in them is a tendency to declare Truths. Capitals are always used. It's a simple device to impart a supernatural flavour - truths are for commoners, Truths are declared by the Infallible. It's here that the cultish state of this very hierarchical church is most evident, but luckily for the followers [and the leaders too perhaps], it's undermined on every lower rung of the ladder by the pragmatic, the sensible, the perverse and the indifferent.
We shouldn't get too complacent about this wannabe cult though - yes, in the west it is seen as having more show than substance, but in Africa, in the Pacific Islands, in nearby Papua, where supernatural beliefs often saturate the atmosphere, just begging to be exploited, the Catholic Church is a very real and very dangerous force. We must continue to monitor it and combat it.

letter to Charles Taylor

2010-11-12T17:59:00.000-08:00

Prof Taylor meets fans

Hello Mr Taylor, I hope this finds you well. I've been meaning to have a look at your big book, A Secular Age, for some time now, but being impoverished, and in any case a slow reader, it would be a costly venture for me all round.
Like yourself I suspect, I've been animated of late by the lively debates going on around religion, Christianity, secularism and science, but my take would certainly not be the same as yours. I must say I enjoyed reading some of your lucid essays in the eighties, on thinkers as diverse as Foucault and Hegel, and I always meant to read more of your work, but life took over, and then much more recently I heard of your winning the Templeton Prize, and that you were 'religious'. You could've knocked me down with a feather.
You cropped up again, for me, in the pages of Philosophy Now [July-August 2009 edition], a magazine I buy from time to time, where you were interviewed about, amongst many other things, the atheist bus campaign in Britain. That's what I want to focus on in this letter. Here is the part of the interview I want to focus upon:

Interviewer: I was thinking about your recent book, A Secular Age this morning when a bus passed by with an atheist, or more correctly, agnostic slogan 'There's probably no god. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.'

Taylor: I heard about that. It's hilariously funny. It's very odd, isn't it? I'm trying to figure out why this is happening in our time. This new phenomena is puzzling. Atheists that want to spread the 'gospel' and are sometimes very angry. I think it may be rather like the response of certain bishops to Darwin in the nineteenth century. The bishops had a sense that the world was going on in a certain direction, more and more conversion and so on. And then they found that they're suddenly upset in their expectation, and they get very rattled and very angry. Similarly, we're seeing this now among the secularizing intelligentsia. Liberals who felt that the world was going in a certain direction, that it was all going according to plan, and then when it seems not to be, they get rattled. So you get these rather pathetic phenomena. Putting things on buses as though that's going to make people somehow change their view about God, the universe, the meaning of life and so on. A bus slogan! It's not likely to trigger something very fundamental in anybody.

Well Professor Taylor, I don't know if you'd call this an unguarded moment, but I would almost want to call it a 'hissy fit'. First you describe the phenomenon of an atheist slogan as 'hilarious', and then you describe it as 'puzzling', both, it seems to me with an air of condescension. Personally, I think it's because you're rattled.
For example, why do you describe an atheist slogan as pathetic, without any mention of Christian slogans, which outnumber the atheist ones by thousands and thousands to one, especially in your part of the world? Do you think these Christian slogans - Jesus is the Answer, Jesus Loves You, Jesus Saves, Honk if You Love Jesus, What would Jesus think? Not Perfect, Just Forgiven, and so on ad nauseum - are going to change anybody's view, are going to trigger anything fundamental in anybody? Or maybe you think these slogans are shoved before our faces constantly for other reasons? If so, maybe you should think again about the many and varied reasons atheists might use slogans too.
How interesting, though, that you respond to a perfectly reasonable [and notably agnostic] bus slogan with references to atheist 'gospel' and atheist anger. Could this, again, be projection? Gospels, after all, don't generally have the word 'probably' in them, and Christian slogans never do.
Let me look more closely, though, at your analysis of this phenomenon. You compare the atheist response to things not going their way to the response of some bishops when Darwin produced his Origin of Species. The idea being that the bishops thought in the nineteenth century that things were going their way too, with more and more conversions, etc. But there is something fundamentally wrong with this comparison. The bishops were reacting to the theory of evolution by natural selection, which is the most powerful and successful biological theory ever developed. It has transformed our understanding of life on this planet, and is one of the most significant scientific developments in human history. The arguments of the bishops in opposing this theory are seen as shallow, ideological and absurd. Modern atheists are still fighting these shallow, ideological arguments, in the form of creationism/intelligent design, and the rise of the soi-disant new atheists has had much to do with the rise of anti-intellectual fundamentalist religion in recent times, as well as the anti-intellectual, 'submissive' strand inherent in all religious belief systems. It seems to me to be a 'we've had enough of this' reaction to this wave. So, in making this comparison, you appear to be equating the theory of evolution with the wilful ignorance of fundamentalist religion. If you can't see the absurdity of this, then I can't see much hope in your approach to the issue.
I can only hope that A Secular Age cuts a little deeper than your 'understanding' of the atheist bus campaign. I don't want to be wasting my time and money. But I do hear that you are in fact a Catholic, a sect for which I feel a particular antipathy, I must say, being not by nature traditionalist, authoritarian, patriarchal or homophobic. Still I'm open to what you have to say. Maybe you'll actually be able to make sense of 'spirituality'? Nobody else has.

another stirpot letter

2010-11-10T04:26:00.000-08:00

This letter writing malarky is beginning to appeal to me, after posting my first. But I'm thinking that the Pope isn't necessarily the best recipient - there are so many others, Christians and non-Christians, that I should write to, using snail mail, which can't be so easily ignored, I'm hoping, as email. I have nothing to lose, if nobody responds or even reads these letters, since nobody reads the blog anyway. So I could turn the criticisms I've made in the past [of Paul Collins, John Dickson, William Lane Craig, Charles Taylor and others] into letters actually sent to them. Pourquoi pas?

So let me begin with Paul Collins - who has apparently come out with a new book, Judgement Day, treating of environmental theology, may the gods help us. Of course it was a previous book of his, Believers, that I dealt with here. So, based on my critique, here's my next letter.

Dear Paul Collins

I hope this letter is able to find you, as obviously I have no proper address for you. I wanted to address to you some queries regarding a book you wrote a few years ago, Believers. I bought the book in order to get a sense of what is happening with Catholics and Christian believers in Australia, and as such it was quite informative. I imagine that some Catholics reading the book would find it quite grim and depressing reading. However, I'm neither a Catholic nor a Christian so I have a different perspective.

Of course, your book doesn't deal with theological issues or questions of beliefs and their justification, but you do make one reference in the text to non-belief or lack of belief, which, not surprisingly, alludes to the so-called 'new atheism'. Here is the passage:

...one of the focal sources of modern angst is the attempt to live without any sense of God or the transcendent, without faith in anything. This has become particularly virulent with the recent publication of Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens' tomes attacking all forms of religious belief and equating mainstream faith with fundamentalism. These authors actively oppose God and set out to to explain reality as the product of evolution, without any sense of transcendence or spirituality. In the process they cut off any possibility of hope and creativity for a better world. Modern anxiety constitutes one of the basic ministerial challenges for Catholicism: to offer a sense of trust in God to the wider world.

I find this a very strange passage, and I would like to examine it in more detail, to see if I can make sense of it.
To take the first sentence first, I myself, along with many others I know, have lived without any sense of 'God', by whom you presumably mean that male god called 'God', first described by Semitic writers a few millenia ago. This god is, of course, one of thousands of gods, some living, some dead, worshipped, loved, feared and so forth by different cultures and civilizations over the space and time of our planet. I wouldn't say that I've 'attempted' to live without this god, for I've not had to put much effort into it, and I've certainly not suffered angst over a life without him. However, in more recent times I've developed an interest in your god and in Christianity generally, out of historical curiosity. In reading the Bible, as well as some analyses of the text, I must say that I'm very happy that this 'God' fellow hasn't deeply affected my life, for it would be difficult to find a more unpleasant character in the world of fiction. I should also add, as a lifelong reader of fine literature, that I find the character quite implausible.
To return to your first sentence, in it you have linked three things, 'God', 'transcendence' and 'anything' [or everything]. You have linked the three items with the term 'faith'. There are, it seems, a couple of implications here. It seems that 'God' implies 'transcendence' [and/or vice versa], and that a lack of belief [or faith] in either [or both] implies a lack of faith in anything. I have to ask you - do you really seriously mean this? Are you not playing fast and loose with the term 'faith' here? I have faith in my nearest and dearest, I have faith in the postal service, and I have [a somewhat wavering] faith in my local football team, and that is just the tip of the iceberg, and all without any considerations about supernatural entities or transcendent beings. 'Faith' in terms of these transcendental [but yet strangely personal] beings seems to mean something entirely different - something like a belief in the real, objective existence of something non-material [a very specific something!] for which there is no evidence. Only in this highly circumscribed sense do I lack 'faith'.
So your first sentence presents a puzzlement. But I haven't finished with it yet! You claim that the attempt to live without 'faith' is a major source of angst. I wonder how you can know this? I myself have felt angst - and moral angst too - about many many things in my life, but certainly not about the lack of supernatural beings! I'm sure you're aware that, amongst the scientific community, the level of religious unbelief is far higher than it is amongst the general public. Now, scientists are generally high-achieving, intelligent, confident types, not overly given to angst. Nor are they particularly given to moral irresponsibility. To take the most famous example, Albert Einstein, who considered the belief in a personal god to be a form of childishness, you could hardly find a man more concerned about moral responsibility. So I can only assume that your statement about moral angst is a form of projection. You would feel a great deal of moral angst if someone tried to force you to live without your favourite supernatural being [what some nasty unbelievers unkindly describe as 'your imaginary friend'], so you project that angst onto others. I can assure you, we have no interest in sharing your angst, and we have no interest, either, in taking your god away from you. You can keep him.
Looking now at your second sentence, where you claim that the books of Dawkins and Hitchens, which I've read, 'equate mainstream religious faith with fundamentalism'. I think this is something of an over-simplification, and the issue is too philosophically complex to cover in a hopefully short letter. The central point is that all belief systems which cannot point to a mechanism [how the material world can be influenced by, let alone created by, a non-material force], whether god-beliefs, astrology or faith healing, are regarded as equally suspect by people like myself. Some religious believers are liberal and progressive, some are conservative, some are fundamentalist, and so forth, but to the non-believer or sceptic these are relatively unimportant distinctions. The problem is the lack of evidence, and indeed, the lack of plausibility. The implausibility of religious beliefs is underlined, in my view, by their self-serving nature, with humans being made in the image of the creator god, who is so concerned with his pet creatures that he knows every hair on each and every one of their heads. These are comforting childish fantasies, rendered 'plausible' by centuries of obsessive theological rationalisation.
But I digress. Let me finish by looking at the next two sentences, which presumably summarize your attitude to those who don't believe in supernatural beings:

These authors actively oppose God and set out to to explain reality as the product of evolution, without any sense of transcendence or spirituality. In the process they cut off any possibility of hope and creativity for a better world.

These extraordinary lines are well worth commenting on, though it's hard to know where to begin! Firstly I should point out Hitchens, Dawkins and others don't actively oppose the god called God any more than they actively oppose Ahura Mazda, Baal, Ganesh, the Rainbow Serpent or the Flying Spaghetti Monster. They don't believe that any of these entities have any real existence, so opposing them would make no sense. What they oppose is belief in these entities. That is a major, major distinction.
Second, nobody sets out to explain 'reality' as the product of evolution. Evolution by natural selection is a [phenomenally successful] theory that explains the proliferation of life on this tiny, insignificant speck of a planet. That's a very far cry from explaining 'reality'. It is science in general, not just the individual authors mentioned, that sets out to explain reality without resort to transcendence or spirituality, high-falutin terms always given a positive spin by believers, but less than useless as mechanisms for explaining anything. It should be further pointed out that Catholic 'spirituality' essentially means a belief, without any evidence whatever to support it, that humans, unlike any other mammal or primate, have an 'eternal soul', a preposterous notion that is an insult to the intelligence of any educated person.
But it is the following sentence that's the real doozy. 'In the process they [i.e. Dawkins and Hitchens, or do you mean all scientists, or all 'this-worlders'?] cut off any possibility of hope and creativity for a better world.'
Now, I'm hoping that even you will recognize that this sentence doesn't constitute one of your greatest literary efforts. Perhaps, though, you're thinking of the better world which awaits us when we pass over, where the lion lies down with the lamb, and nothing ever happens? Something to hope for, maybe, but nothing whatever to do with creativity. Otherwise, this sentence is just meaningless gibberish.
I myself live for the creative energy, the enthusiasm and the optimism around me. I'm a lifelong lover of the arts, especially literature and music, but in recent years I've been particularly enthused by the creative exploration of our world that goes under the general banner of science. I've just read an article on recent exciting initiatives to finally cure AIDS. Yesterday I read another exciting article about the possibility of life existing under the surface of Titan, Saturn's largest moon. And today I've just received the extraordinary news that the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva has succeeded in creating a miniature 'big bang', at a temperature of around ten trillion degrees. The future looks pretty exciting to me!
I don't know what it is you believers are hoping for, and I don't think your hopes are particularly coherent. In any case, we won't build a better world by worshipping and endlessly praising dodgy superhuman father figures. That seems to me an insult to our creativity and our energy. We're not the puppets [or the free-willed creations] of a god, we're a bunch of apes - and we have mountains of evidence to prove it. But, as such, we've done pretty well for ourselves, especially when we've tried looking at our world as it really is. I respectfully suggest you try doing the same.
Good luck with your future literary endeavours.

my first letter to the pope

2010-11-06T15:51:00.000-07:00

So, okay, I've been asked to start writing letters to the Vatican about their positions on various issues, and if I don't get responses, at least I can try collecting them in book form. I don't entirely like the idea of getting bogged down in such a project, but at least letters might provoke more of a response than my blog does.

Before I get started though, just another, entirely different subject to get off my chest. In the most recent issue of Cosmos there was an exciting piece on the exploration of Saturn's largest moon, Titan, by the space probe Huygens, named after the 17th century Dutch astronomer Christiaan Huygens, who discovered Titan [a lovely romantic touch]. Turns out it's one of the most promising bits of rock in our solar system for exploring the possibility of extra-terrestrial life. It's believed, but not yet substantiated, that there's H20, in liquid form, beneath the crust, some 45kms deep. Evidence of radioactive decay suggests that this possibly watery area is a lot hotter than the surface [which averages -179 degrees celsius]. The combination of this subterranean ocean and a surface rich in hydrocarbons makes for very interesting possibilities. And even if the search for life turns out to be unsuccessful, it raises hope that certain chemical combinations friendly to life as we know it will surely exist elsewhere in the outer vastness. It's a cinch, surely. I truly believe that extra-terrestrial life will be discovered in the coming decades, hopefully in my life-time. These are among the thoughts that can keep a fellow bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.

Anyway, back to my letter.

Dear pope,
I don't mind if one of your employees responds to this enquiry as I realize you're a very busy man. Please send it on to whoever oversees this sort of thing. It's just that, in my part of the world, Australia, one of your archbishops recently advised his constituents - I don't know how many there were, but I don't think Australia is a very Catholic country - not to vote for the Greens, a political party, here as elsewhere, with an environmentalist and generally liberal agenda. It seems that the Greens are advocating reform in the fields of abortion and euthanasia, which the archbishop found offensive, presumably in line with the doctrine of the Catholic Church. He urged all Catholics to avoid voting for the Greens in an upcoming election. Or it may be that he urged all potential voters so to do. Which raises another niggling question, which I'm sure you are best placed to answer. Does Catholic doctrine on moral matters cover just Catholics or is it intended to cover all of humanity? I realize this is a big issue, but just to save time and effort, a yes or no answer would be fine. Thank you.
Anyway, because the Catholic Church comes out very strongly with its views on such topics, I thought I should do some research on Catholic doctrine. You know, on how, when and why it was formulated. I have been reading the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care services, fourth edition, which, to quote, was developed by the Committee on Doctrine of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops [in the USA] and approved as the national code by the full body of bishops at its June 2001 General Meeting. I'm not sure if the document was submitted for your approval, or that of your Vatican advisers, but I'm sure it's very much in line with Catholic doctrine, which is universal and unified, is it not?

Obviously the document doesn't go deeply into the history of the formulation of Catholic doctrine, but it does provide some hints, and I'm hoping you and your office can provide clarification. I won't go into all the questions I have, because I know you and your people are very busy, so I'll confine myself two one or two hopefully clearly formulated questions. First, in relation to this quote from the Introduction to Part One of the above-mentioned document:

... within a pluralistic society, Catholic health care services will encounter requests for medical procedures contrary to the moral teachings of the Church. Catholic health care does not offend the rights of individual conscience by refusing to provide or permit medical procedures that are judged morally wrong by the teaching authority of the Church.

Does the Catholic Church consider 'the rights of individual conscience' to be the rights of all human individuals with a conscience? If so, how can it claim to know that it is not offending anyone by its refusals?Or does 'individual conscience' here mean some kind of abstraction created or defined by the Catholic Church? In the first case, offence is a very personal, sometimes idiosyncratic thing, but in the second case something entirely created by the Catholic Church could be treated in whatever manner the church wants to treat it, for example as never being offended by any of that Church's decisions. So I would assume that by 'individual conscience' you mean something else, something more objectively defined as a morally active force or sounding board? If so how do you know that such a conscience is not offended by the Church's refusals? Clarification on this matter would be much appreciated. Thank you.

I will quote from another part of the document, ask a few questions, and then I will be finished, I promise. In the Introduction to Part Four, there is this passage:

For legitimate reasons of responsible parenthood, married couples may limit the number of their children by natural means. The Church cannot approve contraceptive interventions that "either in anticipation of the marital act, or in its accomplishment or in the development of its natural consequences, have the purpose, whether as an end or a means, to render procreation impossible." Such interventions violate "the inseparable connection, willed by God . . . between the two meanings of the conjugal act: the unitive and procreative meaning."

Now, I know that when Catholics use the term 'God' they're referring to their god, and I know, because I've researched the matter, that this god is one of hundreds, indeed thousands of gods, major and minor, universal and local, that people have believed in and do believe in throughout the space and time of this planet. So I'm wondering whether all the marital acts, of all kinds [and think of all the many different cultures and religions that have celebrated these acts] have been willed by your god, according to your church, and how you come to this conclusion. Does your beloved book, The Bible, state this explicitly anywhere? I will say nothing for now about the unitive and procreative meanings of the conjugal act, for now, because I think I may have already asked too many questions in this preliminary letter. I suppose I'm wondering whether your god, God, only connects Catholics in marriage by his will, or does he even connect those who reject or are ignorant of your god? And how do you know the answer to this - whichever answer is correct?

I thank you and your team for their patience, and I look forward to your response.

I've printed out a very slightly edited version of this letter ready for sending to the pontiff.

on Catholic morality, mainly

2010-11-03T15:29:00.000-07:00

Reading round the blogosphere, flitting about silently, and I visited Panda's Thumb, Richard Hoppe's article on ID and the imminent demise of 'Darwinism', which took me to this intriguing site, apparently well known to proponents of the debate but new to me, and it was at turns hilarious, chilling and informative. I recall, apropos of this, one of my step-daughters [a converted Christian] relating to her brother, a geophysicist and presumably an atheist, that she'd heard that evolution was on the skids. This was about eight years ago, and my stepson had no ready reply, and neither had I. How different would be the situation now, but the opportunity has passed. The wonderful Yiddish word for this is trepverter, which I learned from a Saul Bellow novel, Herzog maybe.

On other vaguely religious matters [ID being vaguely religious], the Catholic Church in Victoria has come out against the Greens, because of their approach to abortion, euthanasia and same-sex marriage, issues I have strong views on myself, especially that last issue - and also here. The Archbishop of Melbourne, Dennis Hart, has come out so strongly against those nasty progressive Greens that pundits have to hark back to the fifties for an equally strident Catholic campaign. Hart reckons that candidates should reflect community values and community expectations [as he imagines the HRCC does]. Fortunately he represents urban Melbournians, with a Catholic population that is minuscule and falling, so I suspect his clarion call to the faithful will, when the election is done and dusted, provide a useful measure of the power of that ultra-conservative organisation in modern politics. Watch the Green vote in the Victorian election in a few weeks time. I wouldn't be surprised if the Catholic protest actually wins it a few votes.

Which of course brings us to the actual issues under scrutiny, namely euthanasia and abortion [since I've largely dealt with the gay marriage issue]. The Catholic Church 's attitude towards these issues are fairly basic and IMHO, dogmatic and dumb. It's the predictable line - human life [and no other life] is 'sacred', and that includes all fertilized cells, no matter how embryonic, and spermatozoa. For those remotely interested, here are the Catholic 'Ethical and Religious Directives' for their Health Care workers. Much of it is reasonable enough when it doesn't touch on theology. Unsurprisingly, it horribly mixes the reality of health care with the myths of Jesus's health 'ministry', and 'science' is naturally commandeered for this quasi-supernatural without being asked:

Through science the human race comes to understand God's wonderful work; and through technology it must conserve, protect, and perfect nature in harmony with God's purposes. Health care professionals pursue a special vocation to share in carrying forth God's life-giving and healing work.

No comment on the undeniable fact that an increasing number of scientists reject the existence of gods. And of course it gets worse, when apparently god-given Catholic dogma is at issue:

... within a pluralistic society, Catholic health care services will encounter requests for medical procedures contrary to the moral teachings of the Church. Catholic health care does not offend the rights of individual conscience by refusing to provide or permit medical procedures that are judged morally wrong by the teaching authority of the Church.

It doesn't offend individual conscience by refusing to, say, perform abortions? Says who? Says the Catholic Church, that's who. Apparently the Catholic Church decides who it has offended and who it hasn't. Not that I mind that Catholic health services refuse to perform procedures contrary to their dogma. I don't necessarily want them to change, I just want them to get out of the way. And I would dearly love for the general public to turn its collective back on the dogmatic approach of this institution. And, of course, it largely has.

As I say, most of these health care directives are unexceptionable, but there are of course some that are reflective of Catholic dogma. Take directive 36, which treats of female rape victims:

A female who has been raped should be able to defend herself against a potential conception from the sexual assault. If, after appropriate testing, there is no evidence that conception has occurred already, she may be treated with medications that would prevent ovulation, sperm capacitation, or fertilization. It is not permissible, however, to initiate or to recommend treatments that have as their purpose or direct effect the removal, destruction, or interference with the implantation of a fertilized ovum.

This may be all very well for people who choose to be Catholic, or who can't conceive of any alternative to being Catholic. My concern would be where the Catholic church provides the only health-care facilities in a particular region, permitting them to impose their moral dogma on unsuspecting rape victims.

The introduction to part four of the directives goes on a great deal about the sanctity of marriage [hardly a health-care issue]. Considering that the title of part four is 'Issues in Care for the Beginning of Life', one might wonder why marriage is such a focus [and I wonder, just as an aside, whether the HRCC still considers children born out of wedlock as illegitimate?], but of course, according to this institution marriage is the only way to procreate. And nothing should be allowed to interfere with [legitimate] procreation. Here's what the HRCC has to say about contraception:

For legitimate reasons of responsible parenthood, married couples may limit the number of their children by natural means. The Church cannot approve contraceptive interventions that "either in anticipation of the marital act, or in its accomplishment or in the development of its natural consequences, have the purpose, whether as an end or a means, to render procreation impossible." Such interventions violate "the inseparable connection, willed by God . . . between the two meanings of the conjugal act: the unitive and procreative meaning."

The usual supernaturally sanctioned claptrap, always emphasizing that human life is different from mere animal life, and subject to holy, or holier, laws. And with this they get into some deep waters, using scientific terminology usually inimical to theological manipulation, as in directives 40 and 41:

Heterologous fertilization (that is, any technique used to achieve conception by the use of gametes coming from at least one donor other than the spouses) is prohibited because it is contrary to the covenant of marriage, the unity of the spouses, and the dignity proper to parents and the child.

Homologous artificial fertilization (that is, any technique used to achieve conception using the gametes of the two spouses joined in marriage) is prohibited when it separates procreation from the marital act in its unitive significance (e.g., any technique used to achieve extra-corporeal conception).

Presumably these directives carry their rationale within them, that is, that heterologous fertilization is contrary to the covenant of marriage as the HRCC conceives of it, though presumably the HRCC believes their conception to be 'objectively true' and supernaturally given, and that homologous artificial fertilization somehow interferes with the true nature of the marital act [again as the HRCC conceives of or defines it]. All of this makes me inclined to write to the Vatican [let's start at the top] to ask them to clarify, not so much when they arrived at this conception, but when their supernatural being informed them that this was the true definition of marriage, since I don't believe it is explicitly stated in the big book that is supposed to have been written by this being.

Anyway, that is enough for now. I'll finish off on this issue in my next post

speed reading, with thanks to skeptoid

2010-11-01T14:15:00.000-07:00

Not posting a lot lately, for various reasons. Have been moving house, a horrible and endless task, especially the downsizing and trying to get rid of accumulated stuff. Also, getting a little depressed about the blog, which I can't even get my nearest and dearest to read. Am I that boring? Apparently so. Have had two comments since I changed url about eight months ago, neither of them of any interest. Not sure how to attract traffic - obviously the thing to do is comment more often on other people's sites, but I don't do much of that, as I generally find myself too inexpert in specific fields. I like reading other people's blogs though.

Visited and listened to Skeptoid for the first time today. An 11 minute podcast - presumably that's his usual span - on speed reading, something I've often chortled over in the past. Dunning [Brian Dunning is the Skeptoid man] deals with it seriously though, and along the way provides useful knowledge on the reading process.

I remember as a teenager being intrigued by some speed reading claims on the telly, and also, somehow a paperback found its way into our house, promising great strides in reading proficiency - improved speed and comprehension. I was both skeptical and hopeful, for, though an avid reader, I always felt myself to be frustratingly slow, just as I dawdled behind everyone else in my walks to school.

Anyway, I particularly remember the book recommending you increase your visual intake with each saccade [I made some effort to do so], and I'm sure it would've had much to say about subvocalisation too. These are two 'gimmicks' focussed on by Dunning in his debunking. His general conclusion is that there's almost always a trade-off between speed and retention [and poor retention is, presumably, a result of not taking it all in in the first place]. It's not that you can't increase your reading speed, but the methods usually touted are more of less useless. Those who can read [and retain stuff] at high speeds are usually 'freaks', such as Ken Peake, who was supposedly able to read some 10,000 words per minute [the average is around 300 wpm], presumably with reasonable retention. He could apparently read two pages at a time, according to Dunning, though one would assume that he read them in the right sequence. Maybe his saccade stretched across the two pages. Peake was born without a corpus collosum connecting the two brain hemispheres, possibly allowing some kind of parallel processing.

At a guess, my reading speed is about 200 wpm, and that's when I'm really flying, reading a page every two minutes. Fact is, I dawdle and dream a lot, I've always been very permissive with my mind, allowing it to wander hither and yon, and I often have to reread when I find I haven't properly taken things in. Even when I have, I sometimes like to reread, to squeeze as much from the text as I can, or to really 'nail it down'. Which brings to mind something Dunning also mentions, that speed and retention depend significantly on what you're reading. I mean, try flying through Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations, or Heidegger's Being and Time, just to name-drop for a moment.

But even the fastest readers [with normal brain wiring] never manage to go beyond 600 wpm, with reasonable [say 75%] retention, according to a study conducted by Ronald Carver, quoted by Dunning. For most people, 400wpm is really pushing at the limits. As I've said, the elimination of sub-vocalisation is one of the approaches to speedier reading promised by the merchants, but this can't actually be done, you apparently can't read without it, and even the fastest readers, and skimmers, do it, even when they think they don't, as nerve-impulse measuring has shown. Apparently NASA even uses these barely detectable sub-vocalization effects to build systems for web browsing and other tasks. It's all about the fact that reading is inextricably linked to speaking. So any claim to eliminate sub-vocalisation is a crock.

So how about saccades - training your eyes to take in more words at a leap? Well, here's what Maryanne Wolf, author of Proust and the squid: the story and science of the reading brain, has to say:

Research reveals that our eyes continually make small movements called saccades, followed by very brief moments when the eyes are almost stopped, called fixations, while we gather information from our central [foveal] vision. At least 10 per cent of the time, our eyes dart back ever so slightly in regressions to pick up past information. When adults read, the typical saccade covers about eight letters; for children it is less. One brilliant design feature of our eyes allows us to see 'ahead' into a parafoveal region and still farther along the line of text into the peripheral region. We now know that when we read in English, we actually see about fourteen or fifteen letters to the right of our fixed focus, and we see the same number of letters to the left if we read in Hebrew.

As I recall from the 'reading dynamics' book I read avidly as a teen, the typical saccade was described as covering about eight words rather than eight letters, and I can't recall anything being mentioned about a parafoveal region, but the above explanation helps us understand how we don't feel our reading to be particularly jumpy - there's a combination going on between actual focus, anticipation and checking. And we also need time to absorb what we're reading, to retain it. So pauses are inevitable and necessary.

So is there any way we can train ourselves to read more quickly, and also effectively? Dunning suggests we focus on improving our recognition vocabulary, that's to say our reading-already-comprehension. However, he doesn't really go into any detail about that, except to say that we spend more time sub-vocalising words we don't recognize. Yet it seems to me that as my vocabulary [and therefore my recognition vocabulary] has grown, my reading has gotten slower. I must say, though, that when I come across a word I don't know, I not only sub-vocalize at a snail's pace, I often put the damn book down and go and look it up, usually online these days, and that slows my reading down considerably, especially when I get distracted by, or absorbed by, the internet, and don't return to the book till an hour later, and then I have to reread to get back into context.

It's also a fact of life that much improvement in recognition vocabulary over the years is more than counterbalanced by a deterioration in eyesight, probably caused by lots of reading.

So, I suppose I'll just go on reading, more and more slowly, until, one day, I stop.

Francis Bacon's dream

2010-10-26T22:50:00.000-07:00

So much concerning the several classes of idols, and their equipage; all of which must be renounced and put away with a fixed and solemn determination, and the understanding thoroughly freed and cleansed; the entrance into the kingdom of man, founded on the sciences, being not much other than the entrance into the kingdom of heaven, whereinto none may enter except as a little child.

These remarks are from Francis Bacon's Novum Organum, in which he criticises what he calls 'idols', what we might call preconceptions or idees fixes, which inhibit our understanding and our approach to the phenomena around us. Interestingly, Bacon was particularly concerned about the muddying effects of everyday language, anticipating such later seventeenth century thinkers as Spinoza and Descartes, who were won over by the achievements of mathematics, and sought to model philosophical thinking upon mathematical axioms.

In the version I have, an extract published in the Norton Anthology of English Literature, Bacon describes the Idols of the Tribe [the tendency to generalize or abstract from too little evidence, and to create general forms from specific instances], the Idols of the Cave [the tendency to generalize too much from your own specialization], the Idols of the Marketplace [the above-mentioned tendency to mystify what should be clear, through the use of everyday language], and the Idols of the Theater [a preoccupation with philosophical systems, discredited or not, as a guide to truth]. Another problem that I encounter is the fear of divesting yourself of the trappings of supposed adulthood and sophistication, so to become child-like, as if wonder is a failing and knowingness is all. Our identity is wrapped up in a bank of knowledge, opinions and attitudes, and these are the greatest barriers to scientific exploration we have - which is all somehow rather ironic.

touching on the coherence of perfection

2010-10-26T15:32:00.000-07:00

As I've often said, I'm one of those who has yet to hear a convincing argument for the compatibility of religious belief and scientific endeavour [which, after all, is an endeavour to uncover the truth about how our world works, and a pretty damn successful endeavour at that]. Attempts to mesh the two have invariably watered down both, often to homeopathic proportions. Ophelia Benson here reports on an attempt to describe the 'conflict model' as impoverished - that's to say, we should - what? Play down the obvious incompatibilities? Refrain from criticizing the often silly attempts to either unite the two or show that they operate in mutually exclusive spheres?
I do agree though that we should maybe spend less time pointing out the absurdities of religious pseudo-scientific claims, and more time being scientific about religious belief. That's a way of avoiding direct conflict while strengthening the scientific position.
Here's a view I have about religious belief, though it may not be all that scientific. I was reading an exchange of comments on a philosophy blog, and one person made the fairly commonplace assertion that the usual attributes of a monotheistic deity - omniscience, omnipotence, perfect goodness - must be ruled out because they are logically incoherent. This may or may not be true, but what is definitely true is that these attributes are very easily imaginable, especially to a child - and therein lies the power of all religion. In fact, not only are these attributes easily imaginable but we can't help but imagine them. Logical coherence is no obstacle to the child's imagination.
Religion is all about power, punishment and perfection [okay, maybe I'm putting wordplay above truth here, but bear with me]. For children the struggle for power, and against power, is very real and very everyday. The same goes for the struggle to avoid punishment and, as a corollary, to gain rewards and kudos. And the best way to avoid punishment and gain rewards is to be perfect - in the eyes of the powers that be [the parents]. Even as adults, when we make mistakes, we wish we hadn't and we try to learn from those mistakes, so as to be more perfect [we might say, so as to be better at such and such, but it amounts to the same thing - the ultimate end of self-improvement is perfection]. But our adult, wiseacre selves know that such perfection can never be achieved. We know it largely through experience. Not so the child, and this is why super-heroes, witches and wizards - and gods, it must be added - are so appealing to the child in us. The child might not think through what perfection means, or any of the other attributes of gods, but she knows that if she had done otherwise she might not have gotten into trouble, that if she had done something else, or refrained from doing something, she would have been dubbed a good child instead of a bad one, and if she'd kept on making the right decisions, she might have been dubbed even more than good, even perfect. Though it wouldn't have taken long to realize that, no matter how 'good' she was, she wouldn't have gotten the same glowing response from her parents. She would notice an inconsistency, an occasional unfairness in parental judgement. If only she could make her parents as perfect in their judgement as she was in her behaviour.

It's pretty clear where all this is going. Ideas about perfection, though perhaps logically incoherent to a trained philosopher or logician, are perfectly coherent to a child, and quite probably they are among the first Big Ideas we have to grapple with. There's something about this, it seems to me, that connects intimately with the basic appeal of religion. Ultimate, perfect judgement, ultimate, perfect example, total control and more than a whiff of magic. They're all a kid's delight, and if we bring all our adult ritualism and sophistication to bear on these fantasies, we can flesh them out almost to our satisfaction, and live in a child's dream for many lifetimes.

quel surprise - a flawed pope

2010-10-11T14:27:00.000-07:00

While I was out the other day, collecting my thoroughly unremarkable academic transcript from campus west of Unisa, I took the time to visit Borders and catch up on some reading. The book I finally settled on was The hound of Hitler, by Gerard Noel, a biography of the controversial Pius XII, pope from 1939 to 1958. I had no intention of buying it - I have no money - but after a bout of reading, I was hooked, and definitely would have liked to buy it. It would have made a great companion volume to the new Geoffrey Robertson book - which I also can't afford.
I've heard Pius XII described as 'the nazi pope', and his activities got an airing at the atheists meetup I attended about a week ago. So what was coming out of the Vatican during the war and the immediate post-war years? What, if anything, was this pope's association with nazism? After reading only a dozen pages of this book, I have more inklings about this than I had previously.
The first thing to become clear about the book is that it's no hatchet job, which you might expect it to be from the title, though that title is ambiguous - was he a hound attacking Hitler or working for him? The author is himself a Catholic, having edited a major Catholic journal for a decade in the seventies and eighties, and he seems to know plenty about recent Catholic history and Catholic politics. More importantly, he has the historian's detachment and fealty to the deepest and fairest understanding of his subject. What comes out, in the small portion that I've read, is a judicious appraisal of a closeted, delicate, intellectual, unworldly personality, probably ill-fitted to the position of moral arbiter of millions of people's lives at such a time of storm and stress as the second world war provided. Eugenio Pacelli, to use his real name, was no Nazi. After all, Nazism invoked an extreme, specifically German nationalism, which could hardly appeal to anyone who wasn't German. As to whether he had fascist sympathies, I've not read enough yet to determine that, but it's possible. Pacelli's aristocratic family had been lawyers and advisers to various popes for decades. They were members of the soi-disant 'black nobility', nobles created by the Holy See who remained loyal to the papacy during the years of church-state conflict from 1870 to 1929, and Pacelli himself seems never to have questioned the authoritarianism of the RCC, an authoritarianism that fascist regimes, as well as sympathetic organisations such as Action Francaise, partly modelled themselves on.
Now I've just finished reading the quite comprehensive Wikipedia article on Pius XII, as well as reviews of Noel's book, such as this one [since it's sadly unlikely that I'll be able to secure myself a copy], and the figure that emerges is of a pope who, in spite of his previous extensive career as a Vatican diplomat, was a political naif who placed too much emphasis on treaties and agreements, a la Neville Chamberlain, and who failed to realize the threat of Hitler until too late. Pacelli was notoriously silent about Nazism during the war years, and in the post-war years reserved his strongest criticism for communism, the more 'natural' enemy of the RCC. This silence has been the subject of numerous books and articles, and the focus of furious debate for decades. The question of the Jews and anti-semitism lies at the heart of it all. Anti-Judaism was a major feature of Roman Catholicism for centuries. Noel writes about an extraordinary ceremony that traditionally accompanied the inauguration of a new pope, in which the pope would offer to a rabbi a copy of the Bible, or perhaps it was the Tanach, upside-down, together with thirty pieces of silver. This symbolized, presumably, that the Jews had gotten the 'word of god' upside-down. No prizes for guessing what the silver coins represented. Pacelli would have been imbued with this traditional enmity towards the Judaic religion. All in all, though, he doesn't seem to have been any more anti-semitic than the rest of his tribe, and he really does seem to have made some efforts to help the Jews towards the end of the war - too little, too late. He seems particularly to have read Hitler all wrong, imagining him, because of an early pact made between the Nazis and a left-wing workers' group, to have been 'secretly' a creature of the left. And he always saw the greatest danger as coming from that direction. Apparently, in his days as as a Catholic diplomat in the thirties, he had an audience with Roosevelt, in which he harangued him about the threat of communism in the US.
Above all, this pope was concerned about the power of his church, a church whose 'truth' was beyond question. Plus ca change... His silence may have had something to do with his ambivalence about the Jews [there were no doubt plenty of rabid anti-Semites in the Vatican in the early twentieth century, and Pacelli's family had by and large come out against Dreyfus at the time of the notorious Dreyfus affair] but just as much to do with the fear of becoming the target of the Nazis, as had occurred when Dutch bishops protested against Nazi behaviour. A vast number of Dutch clergy and laity were then rounded up and executed.
It's probably unlikely that a more vociferously anti-Nazi pope would have made much of a difference to the Nazi killing machine during the war. However, I'm trying in vain to find an explicit statement from Pacelli about the Holocaust made after the war. I'll keep on trying. Meanwhile, I note that a number of Jewish historians and writers have come out in defence of Pacelli and the Catholic church's role in saving many thousands of Jewish lives during the war.

Cicero on universal law and morality

2010-10-08T13:16:00.000-07:00

Marcus Tullius Cicero was more renowned as a literary stylist and an orator [as well as a prominent lawyer and politician] than as an original philosopher, but these comments, made more than two thousand years ago, and in turned derived from earlier Stoic philosophers he had studied, would be endorsed by many a modern-day thinker, such as Stephen Pinker, concerned to emphasize a real human nature rather than a 'blank state' which might be filled with whatever values a teacher or master-manipulator might choose to impose.

In his essay On Duties, Cicero distinguishes between statute or civil law and 'the moral law which nature itself has ordained':

As I have said before - and it needs constant repetition! - there is a bond of community that links every man in the world with every other. Though this bond is universal in application, it is particularly strong as a unifying link between people of the same race: between actual compatriots the link is closer still.

The existence of this natural bond of community between all human beings explains why our ancestors chose to make a distinction between the civil law of the land and the universal law. The law of the land, it is true, ought to be capable of inclusion within the universal law, but they are not synonymous since the latter is more comprehensive.

Cicero regularly refers to this universal law as 'natural', and so one thinks of principles of natural justice, and of natural law, which dates back to Roman law. The idea of a bond of community between all humans surely contains the germ of the concept of universal human rights [and universal human responsibilities], in spite of the rigidly hierarchical nature of Roman society, the overall powerlessness of women, and of course the general acceptance of slavery [upon which much of the economy was based]. Cicero doesn't take the concept too far, taking human nature as 'god given', the god he mentions being Jupiter. His claim that 'people of the same race' have a stronger bond, and compatriots a stronger one still is both questionable and a commonplace. David Hume would certainly have agreed, and it's a bit reminiscent of Singer's 'expanding circle', though I've often wondered myself about the strength of the nationalist bond, a very weak bond in my case. I'm not sure what he means by 'people of the same race', as opposed to compatriots, and I'm not at all sure if his contemporaries understood it either. The Romans at this time were forever fighting peoples on their borders - in fact this sort of fighting went on throughout the many centuries of Roman power, and presumably they considered these 'barbarian' peoples as races rather than nations. Then again, they may have distinguished some of their enemies as more civilized than others, as 'compatriots' among themselves. In any case Cicero was clearly grappling with the same sorts of issues around the extent of human sympathies that philosophers and psychologists have been grappling with in more recent times, and which genetics and evolutionary psychology have been helping to shed light on - even as they have rendered the concept of race redundant.
The main subject of Cicero's essay, though, is the relationship between 'right' [as in doing what is right] and 'advantage' [as in self-interest]. He treats the subject confusingly at times, and I might look more closely at it later.

gleanings from other blogs

2010-10-03T22:39:00.000-07:00

I've never been to this blog before, but I like its head quote:

I have come to the following conclusion: Scholarship devoted to the question of the historicity of Jesus, while not a total waste of time, could be better spent gardening.

Joseph R. Hoffmann

Though that might just be the head quote of this post. So much for the Jesus Seminar - and didn't Hoffmann have something to do with that? The post goes on to look in detail at the problems of historicity in the gospels, a subject I've harped on about in the past, and the blogger, Tristan Vick, comes to much the same conclusion as myself:

Modern biblical scholarship has revealed many insights into early Christianity, and when we look into the details surrounding the historical Jesus’ life we are at a lost to formulate any chronology which would be considered a viable model of historic events. Failing to meet the basic prerequisite of supplying the necessary information to be deemed a real historical person is probably the strongest evidence for the Legendary Hypothesis, and which is why I think it is a valid inference. This doesn’t mean I deny Jesus existed or that he was merely a myth. There is enough textual massaging of the Gospel narrative to suggest that there was a genuine Jewish person who fit the description of Jesus lingering somewhere behind the shroud of myth, so I can’t simply dismiss Jesus of Nazareth altogether, but one needn’t dismiss this in order to accept the fact that most of the information we have is either mythical (i.e. improbable) or historically inaccurate.

It's a solid piece, though covering familiar ground.

I found the blog through this site, in which David Lane Craig's version of the Kalam cosmological argument comes in for decidedly and delightfully rough treatment.

Also rather enjoyed this piece via three quarks daily. It is certainly true that some people have adopted environmentalism as their new religion. I was amused by the quote from Freeman Dyson that leftist environmentalism has 'replaced socialism as the leading secular religion', because I know of someone once near and dear to me who used to be a socialist, very much in the 'secular religion' sense, and who is now an environmentalist activist, replete with crusades, missionary work and assaults upon the infidel. There are a great many of these ultra-orthodox, right-thinking true believers around nowadays. The article isn't about climate change denial, rather it celebrates unorthodox approaches to looking at the problems we're faced with. Heretics.

Constantine's role

2010-10-02T19:39:00.000-07:00

the arch of constantine, rome

Theology is a subject I've tried to get into, and apparently Jason Rosenhouse and Jerry Coyne have been trying to do the same, with regard to modern theology. Being a lesser mortal, without immediate access to modern university material, and being too poor to be able to subscribe to scholarly journals, I've looked at whatever scraps came my way, such as the apparently dubious interpretations of Islamic theology offered up by Karen Armstrong, as well as more ancient theologies such as Augustine of Hippo's attempt to prove the existence of the soul, Anselm's ontological 'proof' of his god's existence, and historical interpretations of the thought of the likes of Origen and Arius.
Much of this I've found a real yawn, though I've occasionally been impressed by the ingeniousness, as well as the energy, of the arguments. I've tended to take the 'emperor's new clothes' position - is there really anything to talk about? This seems especially relevant to theology about Jesus - a person or a god or an aspect of a god? It seems to me that, before you start speculating about such things, you have to establish whether the guy ever really existed - a matter for empirical research, not pure intellectual speculation. But with theology in general, you have to have something of the other-wordly about you to appreciate it, and there's not much of that in me. And I find too little of the this-worldly in theologians.
To judge from Rosenhouse's experiences with modern theology [or theistic enquiry into the existence of gods, which isn't quite the same thing, but which is surely self-evidently problematic], I'm probably not missing much. From my reading, Rosenhouse thinks much like me on the subject - but probably with a greater command of formal logic - and once you encounter the first profoundly dubious or unwarranted assumption in these writings it's hard to find the energy or enthusiasm to go on. I'm more interested in the history of these debates, and their political implications, which aren't great these days, but were very great when the RCC ruled the roost, or when monarchs claimed to rule by divine right.
So I'm currently, through Robin Lane Fox, learning much about a key moment, probably the key moment, in the history of Christianity's relationship to secular authority, that's to say the Roman Emperor Constantine's accession to full power in 324, and his various decrees and speeches from that time, requiring the institution of Christianity as the religion of the emperor, if not of the state.
Constantine's conversion and its momentous impact has occasionally come up in conversations I've had with vaguely interested parties, and as always I've pretended to know more about the subject than I actually do. Now I can partially rectify the situation - I mean, I'll still pretend to know more than I do, but at least what I do know is a lot greater than before.
One issue Fox helps clarify is this: Wasn't it just a matter of time before Christianity became the official state religion, considering its gradually growing popularity in the Graeco-Roman world? Another is this issue: Was Constantine a 'real' Christian, or did he just adopt the religion for specific, pragmatic reasons? And there are other issues I'd love to have clarified. What was the reaction of the various strata of the population to Constantine's conversion and his decrees? How did Constantine get converted in the first place? How did all this affect the church hierarchy? When was the first pope consecrated, and how was power distributed between the emperors and the popes? etc etc
Not all of these questions are addressed directly in Fox's book, and I suppose I'd have to read or peruse dozens of texts before I got a proper handle on it all [always remembering too that the primary materials are so scant, and often one-sided and propagandist, that many questions will never be fully answered], but if I can trust Fox - and I feel inclined to do so - I can at least answer the first two questions more or less to my satisfaction. Most of the following comes from Fox and from wikipedia articles on Constantine, his dad Constantius, Diocletian and others.

Constantine was born in 272. At the time, his father was a Roman officer, part of the bodyguard to the emperor Aurelian [270-275]. Interestingly, Aurelian, a highly successful emperor in spite of the brevity of his rule, raised the status of the sun god, Sol, as the main divinity of the empire, providing a first glimpse of European monotheism, though perhaps we shouldn't make too much of that.
Hard to know how much the young Constantine was aware of it all, but the empire was in a right mess during his early years - the last years of what has been dubbed by historians 'the crisis of the third century' - with seven emperors having dropped dead by his fourteenth birthday. The eighth emperor, Diocletian, a former army officer of 'low birth', eventually raised Constantius, the army officer of low birth, to the position of Caesar, or junior co-emperor. For some reason Diocletian decided, over time, to divide the empire into quarters. First, in 285, after only a year as emperor, he appointed Maximian as his senior co-emperor, or Augustus, and then in 293 he appointed Constantius and Galerius as junior emperors. My guess is that there were so many marauding peoples on the borders of the empire [Quadis, Sarmatians, Goths, Alamanni, Longiones, Franks, Burgundians and Vandals to name a few] that Diocletian realized he'd have to be in four places at once to keep his eyes on them.
Constantius was one of the western emperors. His son, the future Constantine, eventually joined him on campaign in Gaul and Britain, where Constantius died, in York, in 306. This was in the year after Diocletian retired to his vegetable garden [he was one of those rare top pollies who chose to turn his back on power]. The tetrarchy he created immediately came under strain. Constantine wasn't named Caesar after his father's death, and a complicated power struggle ensued. More importantly though, for the future of Christianity, Constantine, who was brought up in Diocletian's court, witnessed the early years of the Great Persecution, the worst persecution of Christians in the empire's history, a persecution begun by Diocletian and further pursued by Galerius and Maximin. It probably had a profound effect, and, while trying to consolidate power in the west, he took a more tolerant approach to Christianity, as his father had before him. He seems to have converted to Christianity around the year 312, probably under the influence of a close adviser, Ossius, bishop of Cordova. Ossius was to become Constantine's representative in the Christian disputes the emperor felt bound to deal with in the 320s, most notably the Donatist and Arian controversies. He also presided over the Council of Nicea in 325.
Anyway, to answer the two questions. Firstly, no, it wasn't inevitable that the Roman Empire would become Christian. It came as quite a shock in fact. Although we don't have clear data like censuses and the like, there's little evidence that Christianity was on the rise before Constantine's conversion, and of course the vast majority of the ruling class and the ranks of the military were pagan. It was also hardly inevitable that Constantine would survive to stabilize the empire, and to take it onto the road towards Christianisation. The fifty years before Constantine's rise to power were incredibly bloody and dangerous for emperors. Many were corrupt or incompetent, but many were brilliant, or at least potentially so. No doubt Constantine kept his wits about him, but he also would have had more than his fair share of luck, and Christianity itself was riding on this luck. But it should also be noted that Christianity was a vastly different religion from paganism. It was far more than just moving to a more monotheistic paradigm, as with the emperor Aurelian and his son-god. With Christianity came the concepts of sin, redemption, salvation, the Fall and the Second Coming, a way of looking at the world completely at odds with the pagan religion. For this reason, once the religion became established, disestablishing it - as the later emperor Julian tried to do - was something of a too-hard-basket proposition. So, given that, had Constantine not been persuaded that way, another later and successful emperor might have turned to Christianity, the religion still might have been successful without Constantine. Then again, maybe not. The best approach would've been to ignore the religion, rather than adopting it or persecuting it. And perhaps that's the best approach today - but it becomes difficult when a religion interferes with scientific theory, or campaigns against the furtherance of knowledge, as I believe the Catholic Church does.
As to the second issue, it's clear from his concern to iron out the problems with Christianity in the early fourth century, and his keenness to establish an orthodoxy, that Constantine was a sincere Christian. There doesn't seem to have been any obvious pragmatic motive for his conversion, which would've caused more logistical and process problems than not.

the patron saint of whistle-blowers?

2010-09-25T16:41:00.000-07:00

Well the latest revelations about Mary Mackillop have suddenly raised my interest in the future 'saint'. Not that I've ever lacked admiration for a woman who was such a battler for children, education and overcoming disadvantage. Also for her struggles, as an obviously headstrong, dedicated and independent-minded woman, with the male authoritarian hierarchy of the RCC. It's just that she was no more a saint or a miracle-worker than anyone else.

The revelations are that Mackillop was ex-communicated in 1871 at least partly because she attempted to blow the whistle on a sex abuser in Kapunda. As is the way with these things, the offending priest, Father Keating, was shifted back to Ireland, where he continued to practise as a priest, and no doubt to pursue his other interests. Meanwhile, Keating's crony in Kapunda, Father Horan was apparently incensed by Mackillop's interference, and was bent on revenge. He prevailed upon bishop Shiel of Adelaide to act against the sisters of Joseph, the order set up by Mackillop and Father Tennison Woods.

In fact the article I'm referring to isn't clear about whether Mackillop was ever actually ex-communicated. It seems that the issue never actually went to Rome, and I'm not sure if local bishops, or archbishops, have the power to ex-communicate. In any case she was banished for a time. That means being put out on the street, with nothing but the habit on her back. A few months later the dying bishop repented of his decision and lifted the ban. It's quite likely that the bishop finally decided the Josephites' good work among the poor outweighed their meddlesome interference in secret men's business. One commentator suggested that Mackillop be declared the patron saint of whistle-blowers. That's one form of sainthood I would subscribe to..

Of course priestly child sexual abuse has been going on since the RCC came into power, and no doubt before. This site mentions four texts illuminating the problem, to which Geoffrey Robertson's new book should no doubt be added:

- ‘The Power and the Glory: Inside the Dark Heart of John Paul II’s Vatican, David Yallop, Constable & Robinson Ltd, London, 2007.
- ‘Sex Priests and Secret Codes: The Catholic Church’s 2,000-Year Paper Trail of Sexual Abuse’, Doyle et al, Volt Press, Los Angeles, 2005.
- ‘Fallen Order: Intrigue, Heresy, and Scandal in the Rome of Galileo and Caravaggio’, Karen Liebreich, Grove Press, New York, 2004.
- Peter Damian, ‘Book of Gomorrah: An Eleventh-Century Treatise against Clerical Homosexual Practices’, Ed. P Payer, Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1982.

The site also provides lots of online info and links on the subject.

I should also add, for my own information if nobody else's, the work of the American, Patrick Wall, especially his book 'Sex, priests and secret codes'.

religious commitment, boredom and counsels of dullness

2010-09-23T17:04:00.000-07:00

Still reading, and almost at the end of, Robin Lane Fox's Pagans and Christians, a most excellent book which has massively informed me about the so-called 'pagan' religion of the Graeco-Roman world, as well as about the organisation, and sometimes lack thereof, of the early Christian church, and about the details of various heresies, persecutions and new religions, further offshoots of Christianity, such as the phenomenally successful cult begun by Mani.
Fox has a wonderful way with the throwaway comment which you certainly wouldn't want to throw away. Two of them have, to me, provided entrees into thinking about religion generally. First, he writes about 'boredom, that great enemy of religious commitment', and then he refers to 'counsels of dullness'. Whether or not Fox himself is religious, I've no idea, but he strikes me as realist, not without a wry sense of humour.

In his comment about boredom he was referring specifically to the late third century of the Christian era, during and after the emperorship of Gallienus, when the persecution of Christians, and their consequent obsession with martyrdom, faded to nothing. With their growing power from the early fourth century, heresy became the obsession. But of course this observation about boredom and religious commitment has modern application. It helps explain the battles over intelligent design, the bombings of abortion clinics, Peter Jensen's need to meddle with ethics classes, and Ratzinger's urge to keep himself in the spotlight with assinine remarks about atheism's links to Nazism. For the fact is, there are some religious types, and perhaps especially Christian types, who will never do what Anthony Grayling wants them to do, that is keep their religion to themselves. For them, religion is all about drawing attention to themselves, and if there are no controversies ready to hand, they must create them. Hence you'll always find noisy young earth creationists, placard-waving Christian homophobes, flashy predictors of the Last Days, evangelical excitement machines and the like. In the early years of Christianity, 'over-achievers' [another delicious term employed by Fox] drew attention to themselves by absurdly long periods of fasting, in-your-face devotional acts, and constantly attracting martyrdom by spurning the Graeco-Roman gods. When there wasn't enough real martyrdom to feed their need for perpetual religious excitation, they invented stories about martyrdom, of which there were hundreds. Interestingly, though, the early Christians martyrs didn't go the next step, of committing terrorist acts, as modern, mostly Moslem 'martyrs' do. I don't think that this was simply because they hadn't thought of it or because a 'fashion' for it hadn't arisen. I think it was more because of the example of Jesus, as presented in the gospels, whose passive martyrdom and other-wordliness had set the trend. Many over-achievers sought to out-Jesus Jesus in terms of suffering, as well as in other ways, such as poverty, simplicity and meekness.

The term 'counsels of dullness' refers to all the early killjoy precursors of Malcolm Muggeridge. As Christianity became more commonplace, and as the End of the World or the Second Coming receded into the unforeseeable future, many Christians became just as worldly as their opponents. The acquisition of wealth and power, illicit sex, over-indulgence of all sorts, these started to become the concern of those bishops who weren't 'part of the problem'. Fun was never part of the gospel message. This world was meant to be endured not enjoyed, and certainly not taken advantage of. Muggeridge and Ratzinger continue in this long, thin tradition.

on so-called ethics

2010-09-21T15:22:00.000-07:00

before it goes cold, must give vent to my annoyance with the insufferable peter jensen - who presumably gets trotted out by the abc because his very insufferability is such a goad to the liberal spirit - on the subject of ethics classes in nsw schools. according to the piece i saw - i think on the abc 24 hour program - these classes are run by the st james ethics centre, the manager of which, not surprisingly with a title like that, is a christian. but let that interesting if slightly worrisome fact pass.
these ethics classes, which i'd read about some time ago, were highlighted on the compass program on abc 1 a few days before. i rarely watch the program, which is devoted to religious issues, because watching religious programs presented from a religious perspective generally makes me feel queazy, but on this occasion i had to keep watching because the contrast between the 'religious instruction' class and the ethics class was so striking. The kids involved looked to be about nine or ten years old, and they apparently had a choice between ethics and ri, and it seems the vast majority were choosing ethics. even the parents seemed to be encouraging this [even in faith-based schools]. it was no wonder, as the ethics classes encouraged debate and negotiation between students, who clearly relished the opportunity to express their own views and have them tested against others. the ri class on the other hand featured kids reading from the bible, after which the teacher told them what it was all about - the usual sermonizing.
enter peter jensen, who in this abc interview complained about how these 'so-called ethics' classes - his term - threatened to undermine or replace religious instruction. he was never probed as to why he used this term, but he did 'clarify' it later himself. these classes weren't really about ethics, they were about philosophy and argument. they didn't really teach right and wrong. so, according to jensen, it was the teacher's job to tell kids about right and wrong, something they wouldn't be able to work out for themselves. and the clear implication was that religious instruction is the class that provides the answers vis-a-vis right and wrong.
so how does this come about? are all the answers in the bible? the ten commandments, the sermon on the mount? let's take a gander. thou shalt not kill, god says, through his intermediary [and there are always intermediaries - unless we assume that, on this occasion, god himself got out his hammer and chisel to carve his edicts on stone tablets]. unfortunately, god doesn't obey this commandment himself, committing mass-murder quite regularly throughout the old testament. and you can't argue that god is different, he's above the law, because he encourages humans to commit mass-murder too, and rewards them for doing so, as in the slaughter of the midianites, and elsewhere. So forget that particular commandment, it wasn't worth the stone it was chiseled out of. How about keep the sabbath day holy? eh? oh, that's about people necessarily resting on the seventh day because this god made the universe in six days and rested on the seventh, so we should rest too to commemorate the god's work. yeah right. fact is, none of the commandments stand up to the scrutiny of modern philosophical ethics.
As to the sermon on the mount, love your enemies, great, but don't imagine jesus ever did - just ask the worthy townsfolk of capernaum, bethsaida and chorazin. In any case, loving your enemies is a questionable tactic - love loses its meaning if we apply it universally, just as friends mean nothing if we don't have enemies to contrast them with. This 'philosophy' is quite impracticable, and it's apparently the best the new testament has to offer.
so where then do we get our right and wrong from, mista jensen? if not from the bible, maybe from your god, by some other means? well, your god doesn't seem to say much - or does he speak to you and your reverendy brethren, perhaps? i mean, you're closer to him than the rest of us, aren't you? we await your instruction.

some obvious remarks about work practice, etc

2010-09-20T15:41:00.000-07:00

Up to 81 kg this morning. When will the balloon burst?

Training for training continues. Before I get stuck in, some troublesome acronyms in the training sector. We might call it the VET [vocational education and training] sector, which you can find out about through NTIS, the National Training Information Service. Another useful information station is NCVER, the National Centre for Vocational Education Research. For specific industries, you can check out the ISC website, a portal for the eleven different Industry Skills Councils. For standards, qualifications, accreditation and pathways, the Australian Qualifications Framework [AQF] website provides much useful info. This is not to be confused with the Australian Quality Training Framework [AQTF], though it will be, because it's totally confusing, but maybe that will be unravelled later.

This field is of course littered with the corpses of defunct acronyms, such as ANTA, ASTD, NTQC [now NQC, the National Quality Council], as well as the acronyms for various ever-changing government departments that have connections with HRD [human resource development]. I won't provide all those acronyms, but my textbook, Training in Australia, the biblical text covering the field, has all the data. There's more to say on this stuff I'm sure, but now I'll go on with answering some textbook questions.

An activity: imagine a 24-7 convenience store, run by a couple, with three full-time and six part-time staff. Their turnover is around $1.5 million a year. They're about to automate their accounting system, having installed the necessary systems for electronic funds transfer. Discuss the workplace changes and training required.

The couple have manually handled their business since it began, and they recognize the difficulties involved. Clearly, general computer skills will be required, as well as skills possibly related to specific software such as MYOB. The processes of internet banking need to be developed, as well as computerized inventory and labelling. Those who work directly with customers will need to be efficient and relatively speedy at accessing computerized data and processing payments. There will need to be outlays for computers, eftpos facilities, software and the like. The staff will need to be conversant with laws or in-house rules relating to transactions [minimum amounts for eftpos purchases, maximum cash-out, types of cards accepted, validating signatures].

Another little exercise - how have things changed in the workplace since around 1980?

Before, the workforce was more stable, jobs were mostly full-time, there was full employment [well, actually that was more like before 1970] and job security or security of employment. There was some shift work, but work hours were standard, with the main employers being in manufacture and agriculture. Systems and procedures were manually operated and the workforce in general was male-dominated. Of course, we were operating in a cash society in them days.

After, service industries were the main employers, there was an increase in female employees and part-time work, systems and procedures were automated, we became a plastic card society, things became highly competitive, and work structures much more flexible. Operations were often 24 hour, requiring 24 hour staffing, though staffing in general was significantly reduced. There was generally less than full employment, though the whole concept of employment underwent considerable revision.

training for training

2010-09-17T21:07:00.000-07:00

More on the organisation of the early Christian church, as well as the beginning of canon law, later.

Not having much in the way of money or prospects, I'm trying to do something about it by turning my voluntary, and sometimes paid, work as a teacher [I currently teach ESOL, basic computing and, just recently, literacy] into something more of a bread-winning nature. So I've commenced the Certificate IV in Training and Assessment, with financial assistance from Maxima. Being a lazy bugger, I might use this blog to further my studies [which are terribly boring - even the lecturer recommends reading the course materials with a glass, or even a bottle, of your favourite beverage ready to hand]. Basically it's about multi-skilling, employability and being a change agent for your students, methinks.

So how have things changed, work-wise, since the late 1970s? Well the participation of women in the workforce has increased apace; there has been a move, in Australia and elsewhere, away from large, mostly unskilled numbers of industrial workers to a more diversified workforce, with in particular an increase in work in the service sector; the typical nine to five, or at least eight hours a day, five days a week job has been replaced by more flexible working hours, and a higher level of part-time and casual work; and people move from job to job, and even from career to career much more readily than they used to. This sort of chopping and changing was once frowned upon; now it is seen as a fundamental asset [as long as it's not a sign of incompetency]. Even within one job, more of a diversity of skills is now required. All of this is positive change; people feel more motivated when they have a hand in every aspect of the job. They feel a greater ownership of the work they do.

These changes have brought the importance of training to the fore, and have highlighted the importance of training to employers, who have come to recognize that if they aren't able to provide a varied environment to their employees, they're likely to lose them. This involved multi-skilling and the concept of life-long learning. I should return here to the changes since the seventies - I didn't mention the rapid and endlessly ongoing changes in technology, which requires ongoing training to keep up with it. It involves changes in occupational health and safety, and in personnel management in the ever-changing environment of work practice. Trade unions, for example, have seen their roles transformed and diversified, as they have seen the importance of collaborating with employers in the provision of training.

As training has come to the fore in recent decades, issues of uniformity, proper targeting and accreditation have arisen, and this was an obvious role for government as a body transcending particular workplaces and industries. It's essential, given that people are moving more than ever from job to job and from career to career that their skills can be transferable and flexible, applicable to a range of workplaces and industries, and that tey are able to get recognition for skills acquired in previous positions. An over-arching system of accreditation and quality control was required. The government is an essential player, considering the globalisation and the international competitivism of skills and productivity. The whole working nation needs to be able to compete in the international market-place.

There you go, and I didn't drink a thing.

Weight and exercise problems. I'm up at 80.7 kgs, need to lose about 10kgs. It's mainly just overeating.

reflections various

2010-09-17T01:55:00.000-07:00

This post by P Z Myers, dealing with one bunch of loonies in particular, but with apocalyptic other-worldly types, like Muggeridge, in general, is rather more scathing and succinct than my piece of relative politesse. If only Malcolm were alive to read just how contemptuous, and articulate, many modern non-believers are when confronted with the sort of bilge he used to promulgate. To me, one of the problems with Muggeridge's rhetoric was that it just wasn't challenged enough - he didn't have to deal with tough debates, his appalling treatment of evidence was never properly exposed, and he was generally treated with kid gloves. In my research on him, I constantly encountered Catholic hagiographies, describing him as one of the great prose stylists of the twentieth century, and a great intellectual. Don't these people ever read? Most of the blogs I read are far superior, in style and content, than Muggeridge's work, which is largely undisciplined pap. If this is the best the Catholics can do - and Muggeridge was a fierce critic of Catholicism himself, especially after Vatican II - then it's no wonder that institution is on the nose wherever ideas and real morality are respected in the world.

And speaking of that august institution, the pope's copping a fair bit of flack as he kicks off his visit to Britain, which coincides with a new book by Geoffrey Robertson, The Case of the Pope, dealing with human rights abuses, the Vatican, immunity and such issues. Child abuse victims, humanists, human rights advocates and other activists will be trying to make things as hot as Hades for ole Pope Ben, and he can't help adding fuel to the fire, with vague and vacuous complaints about atheists and their narrow beliefs, with strange, questionable allusions to the nazis of his youth. I've been leaving a few barbed comments on catholic websites, but none of them seem to be getting published.

I'm still reading Robin Lane Fox's book Pagans and Christians, and I'm learning about how the very early Christian church actually became a church, from being an informal, more or less underground movement, with people meeting in houses, to a hierarchy of elders, bishops, archbishops and popes. When was the first bishop appointed? How were they chosen? What did these early cultists talk about at these clandestine meetings? Did they complain about the Christ-killing Jews? Did they mock 'pagan' rituals? Did they confabulate on how to deal with the Roman authorities? Presumably there were the usual problems, encountered by the Jews, of being required to pay lip service to Graeco-Roman religion, including the swearing of oaths [expressly forbidden by Jesus] and blood sacrifices. And then there were questions of doctrine. As Fox describes it, the early Christian period was, if you like, plagued with 'superior' Christians who forged their own enlightened path - many of them taking the religion, or trying to take it in altogether unexpected directions. Marcion is the most famous, or notorious example. Given the diversity of thought put into the new religion, doctrinal coherence would have been the first major problem. There were no accepted canonical gospels, and new texts were springing up all over the place, some of them harking back to Plato's Timaeus and developing labyrinthine gnostic mysticisms. And then there were the inevitable reactions, harking back to the clear and simple message of the founder, Jesus. More anon.

versions of jesus - malcolm muggeridge

2010-09-15T21:17:00.000-07:00

the divine mr m smoking a worldly fag

I think this might be an interesting series to do - versions of that vague and protean figure of yesteryear, Jesus aka Christ, according to various believers past and present. Each essay could end up being longer than a blog piece, but I'll post bits and pieces here.

I remember Malcolm Muggeridge's dour and imposing presence on the television of my childhood. He seemed always grimly disapproving, rather like the Christian god, to my sense. Yet also, like the god, a peripheral figure, no concern of mine.

More recently, having decided to look more closely at Christianity, its inherited god, and its transformation of that god and of Judaism in the form of Jesus, I picked up a book essays, articles and sermons by Muggeridge, Jesus Rediscovered, published in the late sixties. It was a best-seller at the time, and marked an increasing interest in matters of faith for the one-time satirist. Considering that he has been described as one of the pre-eminent Catholic intellects of the twentieth century [though he only became a Catholic in 1982, when he was nearly eighty years old], I'm sure it would be worthwhile to examine Muggeridge's version of Jesus, as presented in his book.

Muggeridge is no theologian, far less a philosopher. He likes - I use the present tense, though he's long gone, and not particularly contemporary in his thinking - to present himself as a humble, hesitating everyman, modeled on one of his favourite characters, Christian from John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. However, he certainly doesn't hesitate, in this book at least, in rejecting 'the things of this world', including all of science, as well as politics, economics, history, entertainment and, above all, sex. We might think of him in terms of the Christian fundamentalism that has sprung up since his time, though in some ways he's more like the Islamist imams who abominate western decadence. I can't say that reading him has brought me much pleasure, or insight, except as it has led me to reflect on other-worldly utopianism - a feature of Christian thinking throughout its history.

Muggeridge's version of Jesus, such as it is, is most centrally presented in his essay 'A life of Christ', based on a BBC2 series he presented in 1968. I'll look most closely at this essay, while supplementing my commentary with reflections on the other pieces.

Muggeridge begins his presentation by describing the birth of Jesus as 'on any showing, the most momentous event in the history of our Western civilization'. This may be so [or it may not be], in spite of the event being entirely legendary. I'm not making here the large claim that Jesus never existed - though I don't rule that out. What I am saying is that, though Jesus may have existed, the stories of his birth are entirely legendary. There are of course two, in Luke and in Matthew, and, unsurprisingly, they don't entirely cohere. If Jesus did exist, then the gospel accounts of his adult sermons, his trial [though that was likely held in camera] and his execution may be based on handed-down eyewitness accounts, but these eyewitnesses, who would have come to observe Jesus as his reputation grew, wouldn't have been present at his birth and childhood. These parts of the story are surely inventions. Not that they aren't plausible inventions, apart from the bogus genealogies and the immaculate conception, but they add to the legend of Jesus's humble origins, the fellow from nowheresville who turns out to be the king of the Jews, the Messiah.

Muggeridge differs from most modern fundamentalists in that he's far from a biblical literalist, so the possible legendary nature of at least some of the Jesus story doesn't seem to bother him. Not that there aren't other problems with his take on Jesus. Take this revealing passage from his sermon 'Unto Caesar':

The various dogmas of institutional Christianity – like, for instance, the doctrine of the Trinity, or of the Immaculate Conception – just do not impinge; I neither believe nor disbelieve them, and feel no inclination to defend or denounce them. I find them perfectly comprehensible, perfectly harmless, and - as far as I'm concerned - totally without significance. Nor does the historicity of the Gospels' account of Christ's birth, life and death worry me at all. If, tomorrow, someone were to unearth another Dead Sea Scroll proving that, in earthly terms, the traditional Christian story just didn't happen in that way at that time, it wouldn't disturb my attitude to Christianity at all. Legends, in any case, seem to me more relevant to our human situation, and in that sense more 'factual', than history, which is really only the propaganda of the victor. Thus - by way of example - I find the Book of Genesis, considered as legend, infinitely more prescient on the subject of the origins and subsequent unfolding of our human story than, say, the theory of evolution, considered as fact.

Clearly there is plenty in this to say 'hang on a minute' to, but for now I just want to emphasise Muggeridge's absolutism. Jesus's birth is absolutely the most important event in Western, or perhaps human, history, just as the Genesis origin story [stories, in fact] is infinitely more important to our understanding of the human story than Darwin's Origin of Species, which [we can be absolutely sure!] Muggeridge never opened in his life.

Of course, Muggeridge has to be exaggerating when he claims that the veracity of the gospel account is of no importance to him. He has staked everything on Jesus being 'the light, the truth and the way', the light coming from another world which will lead himself and presumably a select few others out of the utter darkness of this world. Jesus, therefore, cannot be a mere human, he must be divine. This helps explain why the gospel of John is Muggeridge's favourite - it's the only gospel that really promotes Jesus's divinity. In terms of the human story, though, the real significance for Muggeridge of Jesus's birth is its apparent insignificance:

The essential point, as I see it, about Christ's birth is that it was so poor and so humble. The Son of God was born into the world, not as a prince, but as a pauper. So, to deck up the legendary scene of his nativity with precious hangings, pictures, glittering lamps and other ornamentation, is to destroy whatever valid symbolism it might otherwise have. Truly, we human beings have a wonderful faculty for thus snatching fantasy from the jaws of truth.

Indeed, Malcolm.

The unworldly, sackcloth-and-ashes element of Christianity, first suggested by Jesus's humble birth, obviously appeals to Muggeridge, as it appealed to the early Christians, who saw little future for themselves in a rigid, highly stratified Graeco-Roman society. The early Christians inherited their exclusive 'superior' god from Judaism, but rejected Judaic insularity in favour of evangelical or missionary enterprise. What they offered to converts was the promise of a new world for the faithful, a complete transformation, where the first would be last and the last first, and in order to make this new world more enticing it was naturally necessary to denigrate the Roman world around them. This forsaking of the real world for a promise of happiness in some other place, of mind or body, of heaven or earth, has been a feature of many religions since, and no doubt before, the advent of Christianity, but I've rarely encountered anyone so devoted to this dubious promise as Muggeridge. In this, he is happy to number himself among the credulous herd, as against the wise men of Jesus's age and his own. He is unimpressed by the tale of the wise men of the east:

Judging by our own wise men, I find difficulty in believing that any such would recognise God's son in Mary's. Let the vastly more numerous unwise go on marvelling at that stupendous moment in history when, for the first time, God was revealed to men, not in the guise of power or wealth or physical beauty, but of weakness, obscurity and humility.

Muggeridge's profound anti-intellectualism is first referenced here, though it's in evidence throughout the collection. I've already provided his 'thoughts' on evolutionary theory. On science generally he has a number of throwaway comments. In the foreword to the book he writes:

All I can say for the Genesis version [of creation] is that it strikes me as more plausible than Professor Hoyle's.

For Hoyle, we can of course insert the name of any cosmologist, but he seems particular disdainful of the irascible Englishman. Maybe Hoyle once give him an intellectual box on the ears? He mentions him again in his essay 'The crucifixion':

Towards any kind of scientific mumbo-jumbo we display a credulity which must be the envy of African witch-doctors. While we shy away with contumely from the account of the creation in the Book of Genesis, we are probably ready to assent to any rigmarole by a Professor Hoyle about how matter came to be, provided it is dished up in the requisite jargon and associated, however obliquely, with what we conceive to be 'facts'.

This favourable comparison of Genesis with various scientific explanations is reiterated throughout the book, as if he seems well pleased with himself for coming up with it. Of course he doesn't deign to explain why Genesis is superior to all of science, it's apparently too too obvious [and Muggeridge sprinkles his text with such terms as 'obviously', 'of course', 'without any question' and so forth, often in connection with the most laughable claims. Take this doozy: 'I have no wish to luxuriate in apocalyptic prognostications, yet it would seem obvious enough that the last precarious foothold of law and order in our world is being dislodged']. In his brief article on Simone Weil, one of the few 'lights in the darkness', as he calls her, he quotes with approval her remarks about science [a subject that clearly interested her more than it did Muggeridge]:

Everything that is most retrograde in the spirit of religion has taken refuge, above all in science itself. A science like ours, essentially closed to the layman, and therefore to scientists themselves, because each of them is a layman outside his own narrow specialism, is the proper theology of an ever increasingly bureaucratic society.

As a more or less regular reader of New Scientist and Cosmos, and a consumer of many popularist books on science, I see plenty of scientists and science writers happy to reach out to the general public, but a lot of science is genuinely difficult and necessarily complex and 'technical'. Any language will be mumbo jumbo to those who are convinced that even attempting to learn it is beneath contempt.

Muggeridge next considers the political context of Jesus's birth, and life, in an outpost of the Roman Empire. He makes the extraordinary claim that at the time of Jesus's birth, this empire was 'already beginning to decompose, as even a carpenter's son on its periphery might vaguely realize'. Even when taking into account Muggeridge's revelling in the idea of worldly decay, this goes a bit far. At the time of Jesus's birth [between 10BCE and 10CE] Augustus was in power - the first emperor in Roman history! Some ninety or so were to follow. Of course, to describe this as an egregious error on Muggeridge's part would be to make the mistake of believing that Muggeridge cares about historical accuracy. He prefers the deeper truth of legend. This becomes clear when he compares this decadent empire to the modern era [that is, Britain and the US at the time of the 'swinging sixties']:

One cannot live by bread alone, [Jesus] was to say, thinking, I dare say, of the bread and circuses, the avid pursuit of wealth and luxury, the permissive morality and eroticism, which characterized Roman society at the time, as it does ours today.

This description of Roman society [more accurately Graeco-Roman society] would not be agreed with by any historian that I've read - and I've read a few. Augustus was quite an abstemious ruler, and in any case the vast majority of his subjects would have known little or nothing about him. They went on with their lives regardless, lives of daily toil, wheeling and dealing, civic duties and religious observance, all depending on their place in that complex and relatively rigid society. In spite of the indulgences of a minority of Roman emperors and governors, Graeco-Roman society, though it would have had its prostitution and its homosexual haunts like every society, was not sexually permissive by and large. Certainly there was corruption and avarice, just as there was in later Christian society. But 'mere facts' shouldn't be allowed to interfere with Muggeridge's message. His interest is in making a connection between the 'darkness' of the Roman world and our current 'dark age', so that he can bring his version of Jesus, the light of the world, into sharp contrast with each of them.

After describing, with breathless credulity, Jesus's greatness and importance in bringing light to the world, and his prophecy-fulfilling baptism, Muggeridge turns his focus to Jesus's ministry. All, of course, is praise and admiration. The miracles are somewhat downplayed, with more focus given to infirmities of mind rather than body:

The world at all times is full of shattered or distorted bodies and minds (not least now, despite all that modern medicine can do). To them Christ offered, not medicine, but forgiveness; when he relieved them of their burden of guilt, he also automatically relieved them of their infirmities.

The fact is that, at the time of Jesus, and before, and for a long time afterwards, physical and mental illness were believed to be caused by the displeasure of the gods, or God, or the ancestors, or other such other-worldly entities. The fanatically other-worldly Muggeridge buys into that of course - as does the Jesus character. That there are lots of suffering people out there in spite of the wonders of modern medicine is a sign of 'spiritual malaise' rather than practical problems such as economic disadvantage, isolation, lack of proper facilities and treatments in particular areas and a host of other causative factors. We are sick - no matter what the sickness - because of individual and collective guilt. Hard to know how to respond to such fatuous claims and inferences.

Muggeridge's point, as always, is that this world is worthless. Or perhaps, more accurately, this world has its beauties, but to invest in it in any way, rather than focusing on the world to come, is a sure sign of worthlessness:

If cures were found for every disease ever known or to be known (a miracle far exceeding any achieved by Christ in his random essays as a healer), everything would be the same. We should still be blind and sick and crazy as long as we allowed ourselves to be preoccupied with the hopes and desires of this world.

Muggeridge reveals himself here as an other-worldly utopian absolutist, and his version of Jesus is geared toward that end. This would be a good time to examine his background, which certainly helps to explain his extremism. His father was a committed socialist, who was indefatigable in his efforts to further the cause of utopian socialism. Muggeridge often accompanied him on his mission to convert the workers, and he apparently adored his father [who was also a Christian]. As Muggeridge and so many others have pointed out, there was much evangelism and religious ritual in late nineteenth century and early twentieth century socialist proselytizing, but as a journalist in the thirties, Muggeridge came face to face with two horrific examples of worldly utopian failure, the Nazi attempt to impose an Aryan 'thousand year reich', and the bolshevist state, so degenerate under Stalin. Clearly these two horror states had a profound effect on Muggeridge, but it's also clear to me that his devotion to and loyalty to his father made it impossible to give up on the utopianism his father worked so hard to bring about. In transferring his utopianism to the other world he was able to reject socialism without entirely betraying his Christian father. This is a very sketchy piece of 'psychoanalytic mumbo-jumbo' as Muggeridge would describe it, yet I suspect even he would admit there's more than a grain of truth in it.

So Muggeridge's version of Jesus is simple enough. He's a representative of the other world, or if you like, an embodiment of the other world come down to earth. He harps on Jesus's 'obvious' uniqueness: 'Never man spoke like this man', he quotes the gospel of John. The sermon on the mount is, of course, sublime and unique, and if Jesus has a worldly message it is one of love. Love your neighbour and love your enemies, and love without desire [which is naturally selective and horribly fleshly] . He doesn't go into too much detail about this, as it's worldly stuff. More important is to 'die in the flesh so as to be reborn in the spirit', which is why the crucifixion is, to him, the high point of Jesus's life.

Having read the gospels several times myself, I see little that is extraordinary or original in Jesus's remarks. In any case I don't like being preached to, I like being encouraged to think for myself. This was the Socratic method, and it's also the modern educational method, and I suspect that Christianity will never survive the relentless application of this approach. Of course, Muggeridge, so enamoured of his version of Jesus, has no great interest in examining the gospel texts closely for inconsistencies and less than sublime utterances. My favourite has always been Matthew 11: 21-24, in which Jesus, having only a few chapters before proclaimed the necessity of loving one's enemies [to me, a paradoxical remark that undermines the meaning of 'love' and 'enemy'], curses the folk of three towns, Capernaum, Bethsaida and Chorazin, for not listening to his preaching, and promising them a fate worse than that of Sodom [whose townsfolk, you might remember, were burned alive for their sins, after which they presumably burned forever in the fires of hell].

There's little point in continuing with too much detail here. It seems to me that Muggeridge's utopianism, and anti-utopianism, is strictly an adolescent approach to the world. It's very often offensive, belittling real efforts to alleviate suffering (he mocks the distribution of spam to the survivors after the second world war, instead of, presumably, the distribution of much-needed spirituality), expressing contempt for the development and use of contraceptives, which he seems to think is about the only innovation we have to crow about, and predicting, with repetitious regret, the downfall of western civilization. It's no wonder that he was trotted out, in his last years, as a conservative buffoon, always liable to outrage those who didn't know him well enough to be bored stiff by his apocalyptic rhetoric.

Darkness and light are favourite terms of Muggeridge. This world is all darkness, the other world is all light, and that's really all you need to know. It's a kind of adolescent black-and-whitism, boring enough in an adolescent, rather more disturbing and creepy in a grown-up. Of course, Muggeridge preferred to see himself as a clear-sighted anti-utopian, but it's clear enough to me that his ideological commitment to the 'new life' [as vague as any Marxist utopia] somehow symbolized and brought into being by the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus has blinded him to the realities of the real world, where there is much corruption and much benevolence, much thoughtlessness and much self-sacrifice, much genious and much stupidity, much expense of spirit in a waste of shame, much hard work for no gain, lots of fun to be had, many obstacles to be overcome, and a world of suffering to sympathize with and to try to alleviate. It's the only world we have after all. But then again, you never know. Now that he has passed out of this world, I'm sure that he has found, on the other side, precisely the utopia he deserves.

climate change complexities 1 - the nitrogen cycle

2010-09-07T14:57:00.000-07:00

I'm just a dull dilettante, and, as Oliver Morton says, 'the carbon/climate crisis is almost unbearably complex', so I'm trying to break it down always to see if I can somehow fit all the complexities, or as many as I can, into my incapacious brain. So I've started a series of notes to myself [and anyone out there who is like-minded and happens to stumble upon this], Montaigne-like essais or 'attempts' to understand and further my knowledge of this issue. Hope I don't end up getting overly discursive a la Montaigne.
Morton's book Eating the Sun, about photosynthesis and other plant matters, has provided a starting point for my explorations. It's a pretty good introduction, but I still find myself struggling, both to grasp and to retain.
So.
Plants need many elements to survive and thrive, to make proteins and other chemical material. They get carbon, oxygen and hydrogen from the surrounding air. They also require nitrogen - oxidized in the form of nitrates, reduced in the form of ammonia - and phosphorus [oxidized phosphate]. Nitrate and phosphate fertilizers are, of course, much-used in modern, non-organic agriculture.
Plants are eukaryotes, of course, and one of their deficiencies, if you can call it that, is that they can't 'fix' nitrogen. That's to say they can't transform, via electron transfer and enzyme action, nitrogen gas into reduced ammonium ions. This nitrogen fixing is done by bacteria, including some cyanobacteria. Up until recently, eukaryotes have been dependent, for the two billion years or so of their existence, on nitrogen fixed by bacteria.
Now to look at a little of the complex history of nitrogen fixation. The experts divide earth history into four periods, the Hadean, the Archaean, the Proterozoic and the Phanerozoic. The nitrogen-fixing machinery evolved in the iron-rich oceans of the Archaean. Nitrogen-fixing occurs through the electron transfer chains of proteins, and they require iron and molybdenum. However, in the Proterozoic, the longest period of earth history, iron and molybdenum levels dropped substantially. We're talking here about the oceans, and in the very stable and 'boring' Proterozoic, what evolved and was maintained for a long time was what has been called a 'Canfield ocean', named after earth scientist Don Canfield.
The Proterozoic lasted nearly two billion years, half of the lifetime of life. Its beginning was marked by the 'Great Oxidation Event' and the snowball earth, its end was marked by what Morton calls 'isotopic wildness' and global glaciation leading to the Cambrian explosion.of complex life forms. The middle Proterozoic period has been described as the 'boring billion', due in part to its flat, unchanging carbon isotope record.
Eukaryotes had evolved by the early Proterozoic, and the atmosphere was oxygenated, though not to today's extent. This allowed the slow development of complexity, and the evolution of sexual reproduction, but the fossil record shows little change during this long period. Canfield and others argued that the atmospheric changes at the beginning of the Proterozoic not only oxygenated the oceans but, perhaps more importantly, changed their sulphur chemistry. In fact, oxygen levels in the atmosphere were still too low to affect the oceans much. To quote Morton:

The oxidized surface of the planet would have provided the oceans with a greatly increased supply of sulphate, which microbes in the oxygen-free depths of the oceans would reduce into sulphides. Something similar can be seen in the poorly aerated waters of the Black Sea.

The point is that this 'Canfield ocean' is distinct from the previous Archaean ocean and the later oxygen-rich Phanerozoic with its 'dissolved oxygen available even at depth'. This view of things disrupts ideas of a smooth transition to today's oxygen-rich world.
So, during this period, 'the sulphides would have precipitated out any iron' [and I can't pretend to really understand what this means], and they would also have 'got rid of the soluble molybdenum oxides which provide today's bacteria with their supply of the metal' [ditto]. Nitrogen fixation in such an environment would not have been easy, and eukaryotic algae were basically starved of usable nitrogen. This explains, probably, the flatness of the carbon 13 record, which usually fluctuates according to the dumping of phosphates into the ocean through erosion and tectonic plate movements. In modern times, the limits to the growth of oceanic life are set by the phosphate levels - in the Proterozoic it was probably set by the usable nitrogen levels [ammonia, essentially].
None of this is set-in-stone science, however, and I'll leave it there and look at the nitrogen cycle from a more contemporary perspective. The nitrogen cycle [as well as the sulphur cycle] is driven by bacteria. So is the carbon cycle, if you allow that chloroplasts were once bacteria, now harnessed to eukaryotes. Basically, usable nitrogen is fixed through a two-stage process, first of oxidation of ammonia into nitrites, and second the oxidation of nitrites into nitrates. Ammonia oxidation is performed by bacteria and archaea, nitrite oxidation by Nitrobacter, mainly. This two-stage process is called nitrification. I don't want to go into too much detail, because I'll probably get it wrong. Ammonia is available through waste material, animal and vegetable. Importantly some of the bacteria are endosymbiotic, attached to root nodules and thus directly providing plants with usable nitrogen. Denitrification completes the process by returning nitrogen to the atmosphere.
Soils become 'depleted' if there isn't enough nitrogen-fixing bacteria to keep plants healthy. In the nineteenth century and early twentieth a lot of work was done to develop artificial nitrogen-fixing, culminating in the Haber-Bosch process, which led to a massive production in chemical fertilizer in the twentieth century [and a near four-fold increase in soil yields in the course of that century]. Morton tells the story nicely; the great pioneering geologist James Hutton was one of the first to recognize the importance of compost and manure for healthy productive farmland. He himself was a model farmer, utilizing the 'Norfolk rotation' to greatly enrich the soil. By the nineteenth century, such rotation systems and an increased use of manure had trebled the yield of wheat on English farm lands - a massive boon to the rapidly growing population. Of course it wasn't always understood that nitrogen-fixing was the key to increased productivity, but once this was established, interest was raised in the possibility of artificial nitrogen fixing. By the 1930s, almost a million tonnes of nitrogen was being fixed annually into fertilizer. Nowadays, the figure is more like a hundred million tonnes a year. This helped enable humanity to feed itself, but it has a down side. The excess nitrates go into river systems and out to sea, with various negative consequences, or back into the atmosphere, sometimes as nitrous oxide, a very powerful greenhouse gas.
Artificial fertilizers also break the cycle between manure and bacteria naturally enriching the soil and diversity of growth producing various endosymbiotic or otherwise mutually beneficial organisms. They have enabled the production of high-yield monoculture, which in turn requires pesticides and other inputs to be maintained at a constant level. To abandon the use of such intensifiers, to return to organic farming, would inevitably mean giving up a great deal more land to crops, with all sorts of attendant consequences. Thorny problems abound, and on that note I shall abandon this post.

contra the Catholic Church

2010-08-29T17:18:00.000-07:00

gravely delinquent

I know nobody reads this blog, but I would urge all conscientious Catholics to seriously consider the institution they belong to. It would not exist, of course, without its millions of worshippers and supporters.
There has been a stream of 'revelations' in recent times, many of which have come as no surprise to those who are students of history and who are aware of the corruptions of power. Still, let's struggle against the fatigue which wave upon wave of sickening tales of Church cover-ups and outrageous Church pronouncements are likely to cause, and be clear and courageous about this impossible organisation.
To me, the only good thing about the recently revealed behaviour of the Irish Catholic Church in colluding with the state and the police to obstruct justice is that it just might hasten the demise of a too-long lingering institution.
The latest comes from the police ombudsman for Northern Ireland. A priest, James Chesney, known by just about everyone to have been a high-ranking figure in the IRA, became the central figure in a cover-up in 1972. In the summer of that year, the village of Claudy, in Londonderry, was struck by three car bombs which killed nine people. The resulting investigation was woefully, and apparently deliberately inadequate, as you can read here. Chesney was moved over the border into southern Ireland where he died in 1980, aged 46. The case was opened up again in 2002, leading to a report, just released, by the ombudsman. This report has been criticized on the basis that Derry was a 'war zone' at the time, with some 500 deaths in that year, the height of the 'troubles'. While this no doubt made the police's job very difficult, it doesn't excuse the fact that a crime was poorly investigated, and that there seems to have been interference from political and religious authorities. Nobody was ever charged over the Claudy bombing, in spite of many claims that Chesney had his hand in much of the IRA killing at that time. Given what we know about how the Catholic Church has tended to deal with pedophiles in its employ, and how reluctant authorities have been to deal with this powerful institution in the way they haven't hesitated to deal with other clubs or societies, these latest 'revelations' are hardly revelations - they're just more examples of the corrupting power of power.
All this reminds me of something I never got round to writing about a little while back, when this same institution came out with some sort of edict about the ordination of women...
In June, new disciplinary rules were issued, declaring the ordination of women as 'a crime against the faith'. Crime? The Catholic Church still derogates to itself the right to define what is or is not a crime? Well, apparently only in Canon Law - which, one hopes, has about as much legitimacy as shar'ia law in this country.
So what status does Canon Law, or I should say canon law, have here? Or anywhere else? We'll return to that later.
The Australian online reported it thusly on July 16:

The ordination of women is now on the same level as child abuse in the eyes of the Church.

A sweeping revision to the laws on sexual abuse of children by priests includes the "attempted ordination of a woman" to the priesthood as a "grave delict" subject that can lead to immediate excommunication at the hands of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the disciplinary body once headed by the present Pope.

The newspaper doesn't mention what the status of these laws are, or what this organisation thinks it is doing in referring to what are presumably internal processes as laws. It can have rules, like a tennis club, but not laws. If you infringe the rules, you get kicked out of the club, fair enough, but those rules can't trump the laws of the land. The rules can't contravene anti-discrimination legislation, for example. And what is a delict? From Wikipedia:

In the most narrowly construed sense, delict is a Latin word and a legal term, which, in some civil law systems, signifies a wilful wrong, similar to the common law concept of tort though differing in many substantive ways

So, delict is not a term exclusive to the RCC, and I would question that institution's right to borrow this term from civil law systems, which are presumably backed up by proper state legislation. The remarks of the RCC's disciplinary body can only refer to a 'grave breach of its own rules or policy', not to any crime, for the RCC doesn't have the power [any more] to determine criminality of any kind. Much has been made of this elevation of the 'attempted ordination of women' to the status of a 'grave delict', which puts it on the same level as child abuse. Obviously some clever RCC watcher has noted the equivalence and put it about, and others have run with it. Not even the RCC would be arrogant enough to highlight such an equivalence, and its response is that 'grave delict' is a catch-all term which doesn't mean that all grave delicts are equivalent. perish the thought.
So what about the true legal status of canon law? A brief examination of the Wikipedia article on canon law makes it clear enough that it only governs the internal affairs of the RCC and affiliated bodies, such as the Anglican Communion. Maybe it has some state legal status within the Vatican, but nowhere else. Thus the term 'crime' or 'delict' [grave or otherwise] should only be understood in this highly circumscribed sense. The RCC should make this clear, but of course it won't, because it still believes it's the light of the world, and that it's 'law' is the only law that really matters.

further remarks on gay marriage

2010-08-15T06:37:00.000-07:00

protesters in Tasmania this weekend

Further to what I've written, there were other responses that our government, or rather the Labor opposition of that time - for I have no great faith in the illiberal coalition - could have made to the challenge of 'the gay revolution' I've written about. They chose to support a discriminatory piece of legislation in 2004. What has been the response elsewhere?
The Marriage Amendment Act came hard on the heels of, and was 'inspired' by, the United Kingdom's Civil Partnerships Act. This Act presented gays with a kind of 'half-way house' arrangement, it provided gays with a solemnized, contractual arrangement that was identical to marriage in terms of rights and responsibilities - yet it was not allowed to be called 'marriage'. Presumably, it was only allowed to be called 'marriage in inverted commas'. This system of gay 'marriage in inverted commas' was presumably intended to please, or fool, one constituency, while soothing the ruffled feathers of another [ie conservative, religious, homophobic heterosexuals]. It's unlikely to succeed either way.
The Australian Liberal government's response was not to follow suit, but to make explicit that marriage [with or without inverted commas] was not to be granted to homosexuals. The Marriage Amendment Act is entirely exclusionary.
Two things about the Civil Partnerships Act. First, note the word 'civil', that's to say, secular. It's as if the government is pointing out that gays aren't allowed to be religiously married, they can only be 'civilly' married [in inverted commas]. Considering that there's supposed to be a separation between Church and State, you'd have to wonder at the State panderng to religious institutions in this way. It certainly seems to imply that 'real' marriage is religious. This is all very murky.
Second, the Brits weren't the first to try to resolve this issue with the idea of 'civil partnerships'. Many states have brought in legislation, using titles such as 'civil union', 'registered partnership', 'domestic partnership' and the like, beginning with Denmark back in 1989. Other states have bitten the bullet and gone all the way with same sex marriage. Considering that, in those states that have taken the 'civil partnership' route, apparently ungrateful homosexuals have insisted on mounting legal challenges and demanding their right to marry without inverted commas, this half-way house approach looks unlikely to be viable in the long term.

So the gay marriage issue is a long way from being finished with, in Australia and elsewhere. Look forward to further pressure in this area, especially if Labor wins the election. Bob Brown has already urged a conscience vote on the issue - as a response to nationwide protests over the mean-spirited amendment to the Marriage Act six years ago.

some reflections on the gay marriage issue

2010-08-13T08:16:00.000-07:00

I've been ignoring the election, largely - not that my mind hasn't been on it. Far from it. Though it's a comparatively minor issue as things go, I was interested in Julia Gillard's response, on Q and A, to a question by an extremely nervous young women on gay marriage. Under Rudd, of course, the government undertook a sweep-out of legislation which discriminated against same sex couples. All to the good, but it had the unfortunate effect of highlighting what they didn't reform. On Q and A Gillard re-emphasised Labor's attitude towards same-sex marriage:

'the position of the Labor Party, which we worked out at our national conference, is we believe that the Marriage Act should stay in the same way that it is now, so marriage would be defined as marriage between a man and a woman..'

At the time of these changes, I felt that Labor's holding out on gay marriage was driven at the top, by the religious Rudd. However, the Labor party endorsed the Marriage Amendment Act in 2004, before Rudd was leader. Gillard, an atheist, has since endorsed the Rudd government's position, on Q and A and elsewhere. tonight. Yet, as before, nothing resembling an argument has been presented. The line has simply been 'we see no need to change it'. The argument is implicit, and it is an argument from tradition. Marriage has traditionally always been between a man and a woman. The Marriage Amendment Act was intended to enshrine that tradition in law.

It's interesting that this issue has come up again, in the light of the recent ruling that California's Proposition 8, banning same-sex marriage, was unconstitutional. Of course the legal issues in the USA are very different from what they are here, but the ethical issues are much the same, and some are discussed at talking philosophy, most notably the tyranny of the majority.
However, having done my little bit of research, I note that the Marriage Act first became law only in 1961, and, apparently, it didn't stipulate that marriage had to be between a man and a woman. This was only made specific by the amendment of 2004: Here is the 2004 Marriage Amendment Act in full:

1 Subsection 5(1)

Insert:

marriage means the union of a man and a woman to the exclusion

of all others, voluntarily entered into for life.

2 At the end of section 88B

Add:

(4) To avoid doubt, in this Part (including section 88E) marriage has

the meaning given by subsection 5(1).

3 After section 88E

Insert:

88EA Certain unions are not marriages

A union solemnised in a foreign country between:

(a) a man and another man; or

(b) a woman and another woman;

must not be recognised as a marriage in Australia.

That's it: very short, if not too sweet. The amendment, introduced by then Attorney-General Philip Ruddock, received bipartisan support in the Federal parliament, though there was very vocal dissent from Andrew Bartlett of the Democrats and Bob Brown of the Greens.
It's a kind of weird testament to the growth of the pro gay marriage lobby that this amendment was introduced – for the specific purpose of excluding marriage between same sex couples. Bob Brown described the amendment as 'hateful', and it's very clear that it has no purpose other than to discriminate against same sex couples.

The argument used by the Liberals who introduced this amendment was that the institution of marriage 'needed to be protected' - they didn't add 'against homosexuality and homosexuals' but that was clearly what they meant. I cannot myself see how the acceptance of same-sex marriage endangers marriage as an institution. It is hardly a self-evident claim. It needs to be backed up. The opposition Labor party, in supporting the government, avoided making a statement of principal, merely claiming that the amendment brought the Act into correspondence with the common law definition of marriage. This simply shifts the philosophical issue over to the common law definition.

So first let me look at the legal issues from an Australian context, then I'll look at a general historical context, and then I'll return to the philosophical or ethical issues.

First, the Australian Constitution, Section 55 [xxi] gives the Commonwealth government the power to make laws in respect of marriage [however defined]. Section 109 of the Constitution gives Federal law priority over State law, in cases where there is a contradiction. That's to say, the Federal law invalidates State law. The Marriage Act 1961, and the Marriage Amendment Act 2004, are therefore nationally binding.

Of course, where same sex couples are concerned, the legal definition of marriage is absolutely crucial, so it's worth noting that the High Court, according to this research note from the Parliamentary Library, 'has not given any detailed consideration on the meaning of the term marriage'. What we have is a lot of individual High Court opinions on various case over the years. For example, back in 1908, J Higgins gave this view:

Under the power to make laws with respect to 'marriage' I should say that the Parliament could prescribe what unions are to be regarded as marriages.

This leaves it completely open to the Parliament to the decide upon the very meaning of marriage. On the other hand, in 1962, J McTiernan took this view:

The term marriage bears its own limitations and Parliament cannot enlarge its meaning. In the context-the Constitution-the term 'marriage' should receive its full grammatical and ordinary sense: plainly in this contest it means only monogamous marriage.

McTiernan here doesn't expand on these 'limitations' and plainly relies on a 'common-sense' definition of marriage - i.e. monogamous and, presumably, heterosexual. However, in the same case, J Windeyer dissented:

It has been suggested that the Constitution speaks of marriage only in the form recognised by English Law in 1900 ... and that therefore the legislative power does not extend to marriages that differ essentially from the monogamous marriage of Christianity. That seems to me an unwarranted limitation. Marriage can have a wider meaning for law.

In 1984, J Brennan took much the same line as McTiernan:

The scope of the marriage power conferred by sec. 51 (xxi) of the Constitution is to be determined by reference to what falls within the conception of marriage in the Constitution, not by reference to what the Parliament deems to be, or to be within, that conception.

Unfortunately, this resort to the Constitution is unhelpful, as the Constitution comes nowhere near defining 'marriage' with any exactitude. In later opinions, Brennan took a different tack, as for example, here:

The nature and incidents of the legal institution which the Constitution recognises as 'marriage' ... are ascertained not by reference to laws enacted in purported pursuance of the power but by reference to the customs of our society, especially when they are reflected in the common law...

The emphasis is mine, and I will have more to say about customs later. In 1999, in an opinion that related specifically to same-sex marriage, J McHugh had this to say:

... in 1901 'marriage' was seen as meaning a voluntary union of life between one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others. If that level of abstraction were now accepted, it would deny the Parliament of the Commonwealth the power to legislate for same sex marriages, although arguably 'marriage' now means, or in the near future may mean, a voluntary union for life between two people to the exclusion of others.

This little tour of High Court opinion is, I think, sufficient to show that there is no obvious legal barrier to Parliament legislating for same-sex marriage. Common law changes with custom, and custom changes all the time.

Which brings me to a brief historical consideration of the custom of marriage, and of attitudes to homosexuality.

Not surprisingly, some of the most vocal opposition to same-sex marriage comes from traditional established religion [the Catholic Church] and, in the Christian context, those denominations that, though sometimes modern in formation, are essentially reactionary in outlook. These groups tend to go on about the 'sacrament' of marriage, the 'union of couples with God' and so forth, and they're usually connected with a strong homophobic tendency. However, the idea of marriage as an essentially religious institution doesn't stand up to scrutiny. Taking only a Christian perspective, marriage - contractual and solemnized and ritualized - has predated Christianity by thousands of years. It formed the bedrock of the so-called pagan society that Christianity was born into, and of course it has been and still is fundamental to societies uninfluenced by Christianity. In Japan, a marriage ceremony conducted by religious authorities alone, no matter which religion, is not even considered legal.

Marriage is a universal custom, but the arrangement varies in detail from culture to culture. However, it is true to say that it has always, until recently, been between a man and a woman [or between a man and a girl, or a boy and a girl, and more rarely between a woman and a boy, but that certainly has happened, legally - to say nothing of polygamous and polyandrous marriages]. So why not accept that it should always be between a male and a female? After all, the reason for marriage's universality is surely that it provides a relatively stable environment for the raising of children. Gays don't breed, so what use do they have for marriage?

Such an argument could be used to prevent marriage between people who are beyond child-bearing age, or between sterile couples, or between couples who, as in the early days of Christian asceticism, preferred to remain celibate within marriage. In short, there are many weird and wonderful reasons why people choose to marry, and few would think it conscionable to prevent people from marrying if they had no plans to produce offspring. It follows that gay couples, too, would have a variety of reasons for wanting to solemnise their relationship [including, quite possibly, the raising of children].

Of course, the reason why marriage has always, until recently, been between males and females is not hard to seek. Homosexuality, in the past, has been 'beyond the pale', more or less universally. So beyond the pale, in fact, that, until a few generations ago, the idea of homosexual marriage was practically inconceivable. This, of course, explains why marriage has never had to be spelt out as between a male and a female. It is absolutely vital to recognise how completely attitudes towards homosexuality have changed in the west, despite the rearguard actions of reactionaries. It would be no exaggeration to claim the change as revolutionary, and historically unprecedented. Let me give a graphic illustration. Only a little over a hundred years ago, the famous writer Oscar Wilde was found guilty of 'gross indecency' and sentenced to two years' gaol with hard labour, a punishment that destroyed his health, and finally his life. 'Gross indecency', it should be noted, was a lesser crime than 'sodomy', which consisted of consensual sex with other males, something that occurs today in bedrooms throughout the country on a regular basis, and with complete legal sanction. It's worth remembering that, at the time, the presiding judge apologized for the leniency of the sentence, which he described as 'totally inadequate for a case such as this', though it was the maximum sentence he was able to give under law.

How things have changed, and surely this change is as permanent as a change can be, for we can't return to a state of innocence after having eaten the fruit of the tree of knowledge. Our current understanding of homosexuality is based on science and on history. We know that a certain percentage of the human population, regardless of which nation or culture they belong to, will be predominantly homosexual in orientation, and that this percentage has remained stable, as far as we're aware, through human history. We also know that, despite being abominated, reviled, tortured, executed, and having their existence denied for century after century, in civilization after civilization, people have acted on their homosexual desires, having, after all, the same need for sexual satisfaction, love, tenderness, affection and long-term companionship as everyone else. And in modern times, in western countries, they're actually able to celebrate their sexual orientation in a public manner. It's an extraordinary and invigorating development.

It's because of the extraordinariness of this development that we cannot look to tradition in the case of marriage. To turn to tradition is to return to the kind of exclusionary, discriminatory, abusive attitude towards homosexuality that we've finally [though of course not completely] managed to escape from.

I repeat, tradition is not an argument. So, is there an argument, a real argument, for refusing to allow homosexuals to marry? I would like to hear one. The religious argument [which essentially amounts to 'god hates faggots'] is easily brushed aside. What else is there? There is only 'marriage needs to be protected from homosexuality', in other words, a mean-spirited, petty-minded refusal to allow homosexuals their place in the sun, their place as true equals.

The Marriage Amendment Act of 2004 will be seen, historically, as a tragic-comic moment in Australian history. It will be overturned, I'm one hundred percent certain of that, and when it is, people will wonder at how such a rearguard action against egalitarian values was allowed to get through so easily. They will wonder particularly at the supineness, the cowardice and the hypocrisy of the Australian Labor Party of that period, in failing to rise to the occasion, and instead joining with the illiberal coalition in enforcing the tyranny of the majority. We wait impatiently for something more enlightened than what is on offer at present.

the spiritual dimension

2010-08-02T16:05:00.000-07:00

Below is the first part of a new essay for 'the faith hope'.

There have been various strategies and concerns for those engaged in fighting back against the increasingly vocal atheism of recent times. One of them is a concern to rescue spirituality, from what is seen, no doubt sincerely, as the shallow understanding, or outright dismissal of that term by the opposition. A commentator to the religion section of the Huffington Post website, one ‘Larstein’, articulates well enough many of the themes and concerns:

“Spiritual consciousness is simply a different way of seeing reality, not as something supernatural, but as just the way it is, bursting with spirit, with the divine spark in every atomic particle that exists - the God Soup. It is what Quantum science has been pointing to for years now. We are all connected, everything is interdependent and on a sub-atomic level everything is made of light. Now if that isn't spiritual perception I don't know what is. Concepts of God are by now uninteresting and irrelevant. We need more spiritual experience, not conceptual argument.”

It’s hard not to feel some sympathy with this line of thinking. After all, it’s positive, glowing with light, and, like the best soup, hearty and invigorating. One might be tempted to describe it as ‘new agey’, but that would of course box it and label it reductively and dismissively. In fact the ‘all is light’ claim links the passage to pre-Socratic philosophy and reminds us of the human tendency, still very much with us, to look for over-arching principles, an explanation for or basis for everything – a monotheistic god being one example.

Ideas of connectedness are rather too abstract to come under the purview of science, and yet in another sense they’re not abstract at all but deeply felt. A sense of connectedness to all things but to some things more than others, such as totemic plants and animals, seems to be a feature of the oldest religions. One can see how this might fairly be described as a spiritual feeling, without resort to the term ‘supernatural’, so beloved by non believers or sceptics, so much a source of irritation to theists.

I have mixed feelings about all this. A sense of interconnectedness, of being at one with the universe, is something we can all too easily imagine ourselves into, for our own security, and if we persist in emphasising this sense, in making it more rational, we can easily fall into the trap of seeing it validated everywhere, in scientific endeavour, in religious experience, in everything. People have cited living in a bustling city as bringing with it a thrill of interconnectedness. Others have felt the same way in the stillness of isolated landscapes, or in contemplation of the ocean. A sense of the interconnectedness of all things can come from looking a sperm whale in the eye, or even a pet dog or cat.

Of course, it might not be a trap at all. 'Larstein', above, mentions quantum mechanics as pointing to this 'God soup' of inter-connectedness. I doubt that a lot of physicists would agree with him, but quantum entanglement, the spooky action at a distance that Einstein was so keen to discredit, has understandably generated much metaphysical speculation. Yet one has to question what 'spiritual experience', this feeling of universal interconnectedness as 'larstein' describes it, really does for us, and why we need it, as he claims. Why should feeling spiritual be superior to analysing metaphysical concepts? The idea that everything is connected to everything else is far from new. It surely comes from the same ancient category of thought as 'all is...', and it suffers from the same weakness, in that, as knowledge, it gets us no further forward. For example, to say that all is God, an essentially pantheistic claim, doesn't move us a step forward in understanding the world around us. It doesn't even allow us to feel spiritually uplifted since we are no more, or less, god-like than our pet cat, or a bacterium, or an electron. Everything is lifted up with us, so we're all back on the same level. Similarly, our posited interconnectedness with all other things, though it might lead us to feel a greater sense of moral responsibility towards everything around us, doesn't help us one iota in making moral decisions. It might seem glib to say that to be connected with everything is to be connected with nothing, but for practical purposes it may as well be true.

I once wrote a definition of spirituality which went like this: Spirituality is the belief that there is more to this world than the things in this world, together with the sense that, in believing this, you are superior to those who have no sense of this.

Perhaps the 'more than this world' feeling just is this sense of inter-connectedness. Perhaps not. There's no doubt in my mind though about the second part of my definition. Spirituality is seen as a positive and a sign of superiority [by those who possess it], regardless of the observation that possessing it seems to make no difference to one's being-in-the world. You can be 'deeply spiritual' and withdraw to contemplate the interconnectedness of all things, or you can reach out to others as richly or as often as possible. It is no clear guide to action.

Not surprisingly, there's a reaction to this 'superior talk' from those who regard spirituality as incoherent or, at best – taking spirituality to mean 'a sense of interconnectedness' – true but trivial. After all, someone who rejects spirituality is often described as a materialist, with all the negative connotations that can be heaped on that term; selfishness, avarice, lack of imagination, closed-mindedness and so forth. Yet the 'this-worlders', if I might call them that, have their own weapons to use against more spiritual natures, and the most effective one is the phenomenal success of that most this-worldly project for comprehending our world – modern science and the methodologies associated with it. I've written elsewhere about the benefits of scientific development, not only in terms of productivity, amenity and comfort, but in terms of a deeper understanding of human nature and human flourishing, with its links to morality. Here I want to contrast the scientific push with what might be termed the spiritual push.

I quoted 'Larstein' above on the need for spiritual experience rather than conceptual argument, but I've already pointed out that having the spiritual experience doesn't get us anywhere, though it might allow us to feel superior to those who don't have it. Conceptual arguments about gods and spirituality generally come under the heading of theology, though this might be broadened to include any discussion of spiritual experience – e.g. whether it really is about a sense of universal interconnectedness, or more, or other, than this. Now, theology has been something of a focus for many theists and agnostics who have carped at 'new atheists' for their ignorance of and disregard for the subject. The response of many atheists has been to cite the courtier's reply. This is a reference to the fable, 'The Emperor's new clothes'. The Emperor's courtier replies to a sceptic, who wonders whether there's anything useful to say about the clothes [since he doesn't appear to be wearing any], that the sceptic, not having studied haute couture, is not qualified to comment on such matters. In other words, atheists claim that ignorance of theology is not a barrier to criticising claims about gods or other-worldly entities, since theology, by and large, assumes the existence of at least some kind of other-worldly entity as a starting point for its subject. It is this assumption, which appears to have no empirical basis, that atheists reject.

space follies

2010-07-29T22:42:00.000-07:00

The other night I watched a program about UFOs and conspiracies. At least, I watched the first part of it, I was too annoyed to sit in front of the telly for the whole thing, but I heard it droning on while I sat in front of Luigi [my computer], and so 'got' pretty well all of it. The documentary was called 'I know what I saw', and it was very heavy on anecdotal evidence and ideas about cover-ups, and very light on science. It was surprising to find it aired on ABC-2.

As I watched all this stuff about flying, inexplicable disc-like objects, videos and photos of strange v-patterned lights in the sky [usually grainy or shaky], and people exclaiming 'oh, that's weird, that's not a plane' and 'that's moving so fast - that's incredibly fast', etc, etc, my sceptical antennae were stretched to breaking point. Just looking at the visual evidence presented, disregarding the talk around it, the program was spectacularly unconvincing. Most of the stuff looked easily explicable. One of them could've been a paper plate, another looked like a coil of party lights. The rest just looked like aircraft, or aircraft lights - though I have to admit, I didn't see all the visuals, having turned my back on the last third or so of the show.

The commentary was another thing. Cleverly, just when I was starting to think 'silly rednecks', on would come a UFO-convinced senior scientist, a politician, an astronaut, to scramble my preconceptions. Just when I was starting to think 'dumb Yanks' [It was a US program], the interviewee would suddenly be a Frenchman or a German, and so on. Basically it was about a lot of people talking about things they saw which didn't make sense to them, sometimes phenomena seen by a group of people [though there was no attempt to treat these group sightings scientifically - that is, to determine whether each person's description correlated with those of the others]. Often the sightings were by pilots, by military personnel and the like, with the implication that these people are more trustworthy than your average Jo. The conspiracy theory element was constantly hammered - the central point being that, since the seventies, the US air force has refused to inquire into the endlessly growing number of UFO sightings [who can blame them?], with the usual assumptions about suppressing information, 'our government is our worst enemy' etc etc.

The first and last thing thing I wanted to scream at the screen during all this was - where's the science? I personally believe in UFOs - that's to say, I believe that there are thousands, maybe scores of thousands, of flying objects - saucer-shaped, cigar-shaped, lights in the sky, etc etc, that people have not identified. Why not? I think in the vast majority of cases, it's because they haven't tried hard enough - they've preferred to settle for the 'aliens from outer space' scenario. It's a lot sexier than any other alternative. I don't think these people are charlatans - though no doubt some are. I do think they are people whose credulity has outstripped their knowledge. This might come as a surprise when there are astronauts and scientists talking of these things, but of course you can always find a scientist or an 'expert' who acts as an 'outlier', way outside the statistical average. But let's look at the scientific knowledge.

As I've said, there was virtually no science at all in this documentary. At one point [and I'm quoting from memory here] the film-maker was asked a question by a radio presenter, presumably about a particular group sighting. She had sought out a military/scientific expert on the matter, and thus armed she asked: 'Why was there no strong force field felt on the ground, and no damage, such as burnt fields, uprooted trees etc, which you would expect to find if the vessel was as large and fast-moving and as close to the ground as witnesses suggest?' The film-maker just shrugged: 'I've no idea.' This could've been an important starting point for exploration but of course it wasn't taken up. Mystery was emphasised, attempts at explanation minimised.

A more important question, of course, is where do these devices or machines come from if they involve a non-terrestrial technology, as implied and occasionally overtly claimed? Do they all come from the same 'outer space' planet, or do we have a wide variety of space invaders and extra-terrestrial locations to deal with? Is there a pattern to these sighted objects which might suggest to us that they were all built by the same extra-terrestrial civilization? And how did they get here, considering what we know of distances, light-speed limitations and so forth?

Well, let's look at a few of these questions scientifically [always remembering that I'm no scientist]. Firstly let's think locally. What are the chances that these 'objects' or phenomena originate from another world within our solar system. We know more about our solar system than ever before, not only from space probes and space telescopes, but from the many improvements in ground-based observations and measurements in recent decades. It isn't universally agreed by astronomers that there's no life, apart from that on Earth, in our solar system, but it is universally agreed that there's no advanced life, on anything like a par with our own. There may just be microbial life, on Mars or Europa or elsewhere, but this is far from being substantiated. Is it likely that microbes are building elaborate craft and sending them to Earth? I think it's more likely that they're projecting themselves here individually, microscopically, and invading our bodies completely unseen and reprogramming our brains. This could possibly account for the rise of fundamentalist beliefs worldwide over the last decade or two.

Realistically, though, we're going to have to look outside our solar system for the homeland, or homelands, of these smart space critters. And we know that the nearest star to ours, Proxima Centauri, is 4.3 light years away - that's 270,000 times further from us than our sun. That's the closest region of origin. Space critters from that region would take over four years to get here travelling at the speed of light. Of course such speeds are impossible for any objects of mass, even sub-atomic particles, let alone the lumbering, light-flashing vehicles reported by ufo sighters. Pioneer 11, our old space probe, managed, with the help of Jupiter's gravitational field, to attain a speed of 175,000 km/hour. Briefly, of course. That's pretty impressive - 55 times the muzzle velocity of a high speed rifle bullet - but according to my calculations, the speed of light is more than 3,600 times faster. So, travelling from the Proxima Centauri region, a space craft travelling at a constant speed of Pioneer 11 at its fastest, would take at least 15,000 years to get here. Unlikely? Nah. A piece of piss.

These problems, which should be front and centre of any serious investigation into ufos, are never even mentioned in the documentary. At one point, one of the UFO believers makes a fleeting reference to anti-gravity devices, but that's about it. Anti-gravity was first popularized by H G Wells over a hundred years ago in his book, The First Men in the Moon. It's fiction, and so far nothing has come of the concept of 'gravity shielding' on a practical level. Even if it were possible, I'm not sure if it would solve the distance problem. Also, I'm no physicist, but I think that if it were possible, it would refute Einstein's General Relativity theory.

UFO sighters generally have no interest in these issues, they just 'know what they saw', and many of them believe in a conspiracy of silence. There are some people I know who just love conspiracy theories. I find then boring as all get-out, and there's not much to say about this one except, of course the US Air Force isn't going to investigate every UFO sighting. There are tens of thousands of them for god's sake. So they should only investigate the credible ones [5% of them according to the UFO fans]? Fine, so who determines the 5%, and are the UFO fans going to help fund these investigations? It's funny, it seems to me that most US conspiracy theory buffs are anti-government, often libertarian types. Small government, taxation is theft, all that malarkey, yet when government doesn't jump to do their bidding, spending squillions in the process, they have 'all their fears confirmed'!

I'm not against investigating these matters, but it's against a certain background knowledge. First, SETI and other organisations have been out to find extra-terrestrial life for years now, and they haven't succeeded yet. NASA has a Terrestrial Planet Finder on the drawing-board, but hasn't been provided with the funds to realize the project - conspiracy theorists please note. Still, telescopes are getting better and better at finding Earth-like planets, and the possibility of finding life elsewhere in the universe is exciting some of our best minds. UFO fans should be looking at all this if they really want answers to their questions. Second, are the alternative explanations of these phenomena really being exhausted before the leap to space critters? None of these sightings seem way way out of this world. The stuff being reported, photographed and videoed looks and sounds human, all too human. What's more, there is a pattern to these findings. Reports of flying saucers in the fifties looked like flying saucers, made of beaten panels of metal rivetted together, or something similar. They conformed to the technology of the fifties - no LED displays or anything like that. UFO sightings of the eighties looked like the technology of the eighties, and so forth. So let's use our brains before going on any expensive wild alien chases.

encountering William Lane Craig

2010-07-15T08:32:00.000-07:00

smooth operator

I spent some time yesterday looking at video talks and debates featuring one William Lane Craig, theologian and philosopher who has, apparently, a reputation as a debater, and of course quite a big Christian following in the US. Of course he's no match for a scrupulously analytical thinker like the Jesus Seminar's Robert Price, but such people are rare. Craig is completely incapable of scepticism, so he's both a philosopher and an evangelist, so suavely sure of himself that he manages to make plausible the most manifest absurdities. The cosmological argument - Kalam or not - is a particularly weird one, which seeks to base the existence of Yahweh or Adonai or however you name that particular god out of thousands, on the old first cause conundrum. Something can't come out of nothing, and the something that the universe came out of must have been greater, more complex than the universe, so presumably it must've had intention [?], etc etc, all of which has nothing whatever to do with a personal god who had a son via a virgin and who answers prayers, but yes, Craig, like Roy Williams of Yahweh, Actually, swallows the whole kit and caboodle. Daniel Dennett has a thoughtful reflection on Craig here, in which he acknowledges Craig's enthusiasm and erudition, and points out the difficulty of combating that erudite confidence 'on the hop' so to speak, in a debate. This of course is the problem with debates. No issue of any moment in philosophy has ever been decided by a debate. That's just not how ideas win out over other ideas. Debates are won, presumably, by those who are most confident about their position - and most articulate, well-organised, etc. Almost by definition, the sceptic isn't going to be that person. Scepticism is generally about uncertainty. Scepticism wonders and dithers. Debates are fun, like boxing matches, and Wittgenstein thought that philosophers should always be ready to get in the ring, and debates certainly hone some useful skills, but I don't think any debate will cross the bridge between the natural and the supernatural. There will never be any evidence for supernatural causation, thus it can never be more than an article of faith. In this debate with Robert Price for example, Craig smoothly enumerates 'facts' about Jesus' death and supposed resurrection, and comes to the only reasonable conclusion, according to him, that the god called God rose him from the dead. As Dennett says, Craig makes a habit of presenting a handful of apparently reasonable and anodyne premises which lead up to the most absurd conclusion. He speaks confidently, enthusiastically and without a trace of scepticism, steamrolling his way through a presentation that mixes putative historical evidence with more or less disguised supernatural claims as if this is all perfectly normal. Yet we know that people don't 'rise from the dead'. We know the physiological impossibility of this, and we know of no empirically proven examples of this ever having happened. We also know that claims about supernatural intervention were routinely made, even at the highest levels, in ancient, so-called pagan times. They're routinely made today, too, though rarely at the highest levels these days, leaving aside the divinely guided George W. So, in spite of Craig's claims that no other burial story like that of Jesus exists, it is still of a pattern with ancient legends, death and resurrection being, after all, as ancient as our understanding of the seasons. Having said that, bodily, human resurrection was quite a new idea. The pagan cults, after all, were practised by pragmatic country folk, by and large, who saw clearly enough what happened to the body after death, and they weren't bothered by texts such as the book of Revelation - their beliefs were orally transmitted, and grounded, at least to some degree, in common sense.

Really, though, I don't know why I'm getting into this. Examining gospel texts, canonical or otherwise, isn't going to convince any reasonable sceptic that somebody rose from the dead, or was the son of a deity. Craig would at best convince some wavering believer with no scientific understanding. This miraculous stuff was dealt with centuries ago by Hume, and the argument has only tightened since then. Craig makes much of the consensus of New Testament scholars, probably a bogus consensus, but that isn't important since the vast majority of New Testament scholars are Christians. I'd be much more interested in what human physiologists might have to say about coming to life again once you're dead - but of course Craig would respond that this wasn't a physiological phenomenon but a divine one. The only response to that is to shrug. A divine phenomenon is something always beyond evidence, so all discussion must grind to a halt. I would just ask people, with Hume, which was more likely - a miracle, or that people let their imaginations, filled with supernatural possibilities, get the better of them?

We have no difficulty in deciding between these two options with 'paganism', the religion that Christianity had to compete with once it spilled out of Palestine. Robin Lane Fox, in Pagans and Christians, examines a whole host of examples of the gods - most notably Apollo, but also Asclepius [the son of Apollo], Hermes, Athena, Dionysus, Isis, Serapis and others, being thanked or acknowledged for their intervention in human affairs. Fox, of course, isn't interested in the truth of these claims, and he assumes his readers aren't either. He's interested in patterns and influences, the way inscriptions and treatment of the gods varies from region to region and through time. Imagine our surprise if, suddenly, in describing an inscription to Asclepius [a god of healing, and so naturally a god often consulted in the Graeco-Roman era], Fox argued that the inscription's claim that the god had cured someone of a mortal illness was corroborated by more than one contemporary writer, each of whom had 'somewhat' similar accounts of the god appearing at the woman's bedside just before she made a swift and apparently miraculous recovery. Imagine then that Fox claimed this to be pretty substantive evidence that Asclepius really had cured the woman. How would we respond?

We would feel that the usually dependable Fox had suddenly, unaccountably, taken leave of his senses. After all, Asclepius never existed - we all know that. So thoroughly has paganism been uprooted and replaced by Christianity. The number of corroborating accounts wouldn't much influence us, because those writers were all believers. We know better. No contest. Neither is there any contest in the case of William Lane Craig. What's the difference exactly between a dead supernatural being like Asclepius and a 'living' one like Jesus? I suppose the difference is that one is kept alive by belief. But belief isn't evidence - far from it.

hailing Myers, bemoaning the HRCAC

2010-07-14T03:59:00.000-07:00

always a hard act to follow

I'm a great fan of PZ Myers. Maybe sometimes he comes on too strong, but that's only in seeming - a reread usually convinces me of the logic and the need for toughness. And he's such a good writer - always entertaining, brief and clear. And informative with a word or two, not just on matters scientific. This recent post is an excellent example - I learned about Adonai [again - I'd forgotten the term] and shofars while having my thoughts provoked on how to deal with the more bizarre aspects of religious belief - in this little piece he manages to show how those bizarreries might be seriously combated while mocking such a serious combat and musing on the power of laughter. Mockery is often the most appropriate weapon but it pays to have a whole, diverse arsenal. Anyway, the prolific PZ is always worth reading, and is also a corrective when I get too pseudo-philosophically prolix.
Keep it pungent, without sacrificing too much depth.

David Walker, erring bishop

Tonight's 7.30 Report featured abuse allegations, and damn convincing ones, against catholic priests in Australia - good for me to focus on the backyard instead of Ireland, Germany, South America... face it, their protection racket spreads o'er the planet. The 7.30 Report has been doing good work in this field in recent times, and tonight's report is a follow-up on two Irish-born priests recruited to Australia, Finian Egan and Paddy Maye. Egan in particular has a lot of evidence against him, and tonight's report has two more women, twins, adding to the other allegations. In fact, the church has found against both Maye and Egan but has failed to prevent them from administering services as priests. In this case, the neglectful authority seems to have been bishop David Walker, of Broken Bay in northern Sydney. The old old story, and Egan used the old methods, described by Colm O'Gorman in his book Beyond Belief, written from the perspective of an abuse victim in Ireland. He inveigled himself into the family, winning their trust and respect, thus throwing the poor child into a confusion of guilt and self-blame. My advice to anyone who has suffered abuse at the hands of such people is to go to the police straight away. Never, never, never leave it to the church to sort out. In fact many catholic clergy are coming to the same conclusion - they understand the church's divided loyalties and ineffectiveness in this sphere. I wish sometimes people knew about or read this blog, so I could make this advice effective - but the message is already getting through by many other means.

scientism, etc

2010-07-11T18:35:00.000-07:00

maybe I should read this book

I've been reading with some bemusement about the problems Chris Mooney has been having with sock-puppetry. I'm no expert, but it does seem as if they've been largely of his own making. And all I wanted to do was focus on the compatibility issue [which is related to, but different from, the accommodationist issue]. Mooney's credibility seems to be sinking fast, so I'd better get on with looking at his and others' claims that there's a useful distinction to be made between methodological naturalism [roughly, the view that science should follow methodologies which rule out the supernatural, for purely pragmatic reasons - it works, spectacularly] and philosophical naturalism [the view that the natural world is all there is]. The reason for this 'useful distinction', of course, is to allow science and religion to cohabit, or to occupy mutually exclusive spheres, the natural and the supernatural. In other words, science has nothing whatever to say about philosophical naturalism, because it shines no light on the supernatural to discover whether it exists or not.

I've already raised a number of objections to this, as have Dawkins, Coyne, Rosenhouse and probably innumerable others. The essential objection is that the supernatural never seems to keep to its own sphere in the minds of those who believe in it. In fact it is central to deistic thinking that something/someone supernatural caused the natural world. You can't get more connected than that.

Unfortunately, when scientists explore causation with regard to such biggies as the origin of the universe, they follow the tenets of methodological naturalism, which tends to render more and more remote the possibilities for supernatural causation - especially as the scientific theories involved are extremely rigorous and highly verified. We now know that our universe is about 13.7 billion years old, that it began with a 'big bang', and that our earth, far from being central and prominent, is minuscule, peripheral and contingent. It becomes harder to believe in a personal god, with a special interest in the human species in particular, created in that god's likeness.

You could also say that methodological naturalism has nothing to say about astrology or faith healing, except that this approach yields much better explanations [for people who get better after visiting a faith healer], or helps show that no explanation is necessary [astrological predictions are no more likely to be true than any random predictions], and thus undermine any reasons for believing in them. For this reason, many scientists, insofar as they go in for philosophy, tend to make no distinction between methodological naturalism and philosophical naturalism. Everything in their world, their working world, can be explained naturalistically, so why not just accept that this methodology can explain everything, or has the potential to do so.

Mooney and others want to uphold this distinction as vital, and seek to disparage philosophical naturalism as 'scientism', which they associate with hubris. Instead of 'science has been found, after centuries of testing and exploration, to provide the best methodologies for understanding our world and ourselves [and indeed, science could be defined as the sum of those best methodologies]', scientism lectures us with 'science has all the answers, or will have shortly, so get with the program or fuck off'. You could say it's just a matter of tone. Philosophical naturalism doesn't claim to provide all the answers, it only argues persuasively that its approach has been phenomenally successful and provides the standard. Belief in the supernatural, whether religious or not, hasn't gotten us anywhere, either in the sphere of knowledge or of morality. Our growing scientific knowledge of the human species has informed our morality, as we come to understand the basis of our feelings of sympathy and antipathy, upon which morality is based. Belief in supernatural entities and obedience to their supposed commandments has not helped us towards greater understanding, and introspection has clear limits. As scepticism has been an important factor in developing scientific methodologies, it's unlikely that the genuine philosophical naturalism will ever claim that science has or will have all the answers. Science has always generated more questions than answers, and it's likely that it will continue to do so. It is this scepticism, I think, that distinguishes philosophical naturalism from scientism.

So what other objections do Mooney et al come up with? So far, I've not been able to come up with anything philosophical from Mooney, it's all about pragmatic accommodationism. Casey Luskin suggests that he's concerned primarily about constitutional issues [see the first amendment to the US constitution], but I think it's more about recognising, in the US sphere, that there's a real fight to be had in keeping claptrap out of American schools, and being nice to scientifically-minded believers will be the best strategy in fighting that fight, considering the high percentage of supernatural belief in that country. This may be right, in the short term, but I'm more concerned about deeper issues of compatibility. I'm also concerned that the being-nice-to-the-right-sort-of-believers strategy might entail being nasty to the wrong sort of atheists.

I'll keep looking through Mooney's back catalogue of posts for something more substantial from him.

supernatural beliefs and their consequences

2010-07-03T18:59:00.000-07:00

In reference to my last post, when I tried out on Sarah the assertion that the proposition 'Humans [and only humans] have souls' is a proposition about biology, I was met with complete disagreement. Presumably she would describe it as a proposition about the supernatural. That's to say, it's a claim that, though we're biologically one of the set of animals, in some sense supernaturally we're outside that set.

I have real difficulties with this, and the reasons are obvious - or they are to me. There are things that flow from the claim that humans have souls, and these are not insignificant things, with not insignificant moral implications, not to mention implications with respect to our relationship to other animals. As Jason Rosenhouse puts it:

If you hold views about a supernatural realm that have absolutely no empirical consequences whatsoever then you have nothing to fear from science. There are even certain religious systems that posit such a realm. But that is not the sort of faith held by most Christians.

I'm not even sure that any religious system posits a supernatural realm with no consequences [we say 'empirical consequences' but we know of no other] in the natural realm. Those who believe in ancestor spirits rarely if ever believe that they have no effect on this world - that is the point of the belief. The spirits account for events otherwise inexplicable in this world.

We can, I suppose, believe in something supernatural with no effect on this world, but it requires some effort. For example, one might believe in reincarnation, but a reincarnation process which is arbitrary, bearing no relation to rewards and punishments. In other words, in our next life we might be a rodent, a bacterium, or a rich, beautiful, popular human being, regardless of how we behave in this life. This of course, would render us the playthings of whatever forces decide upon these things, and there would be no moral dimension to such a belief. Or would there? If we firmly believed in this form of reincarnation, might we not want to opt out as soon as life in this particular incarnation turned ugly? If the going gets rough, why not top yourself? Your next life couldn't be much worse, and might be a whole lot better. And if you're safe in the knowledge that you'll continue to live, you'll be like a gambler, throwing in your lot time after time for the next world, until you come up with a win. Though of course, you'll only be able to gamble when you return as a being with a higher consciousness - bacteria and mosquitoes don't have the wherewithal to gamble. Such a belief, firmly held, might make suicide terrorism more attractive, not to mention murder. You can escape the consequences of your actions into a new world of possibilities.

This is just one example of how difficult if not impossible it is to imagine a supernatural belief having no effect on our behaviour in this world - the world science deals with. Sarah suggested that believing that you have an extra, invisible finger would be an example of a belief that is clearly not biological. In other words, the believer might accept that the finger has no 'biological' existence but claim that it nevertheless exists. Again [and the comparison with gods here is obvious] if the invisible finger merely exists, and makes nothing happen in the natural world, this wouldn't be a problem, though one might wonder about the point of such a belief. If the believer claims that the finger is actually used to pick things up and so forth, it would be reasonable to ask for evidence of this. If the finger's purpose is to, say, point to wrong-doers, then, if it is invisible, nobody sees it and it wouldn't make any difference. If only the owner of the finger sees it, or claims to see it, that's a serious claim that needs to be investigated - it hardly matters whether you call it a biological claim or a moral claim - it's a claim that the person [or his invisible finger] knows something about this world. It needs to backed up.

So, returning to claims about the exclusively human soul, about humans being in the image of god, and of having somehow inherited 'original sin' or being somehow 'fallen' - it really doesn't matter so much whether you call them biological claims [though that's how I would prefer to classify them]. What needs to be emphasised is that such claims have this-worldly implications. They seek to tell us something [in fact, a lot] about what we really are. In doing so, they compete with modern biology and modern psychology, the primary aims of which, when they are dealing with homo sapiens, is to give us an account of what we really are. The accounts are very different, and quite incompatible.

assorted reflections - biology, religion, etc

2010-07-01T21:11:00.000-07:00

more of putting a face to the name - Jerry Coyne

I wrote my last post before reading Coyne's response [and those of his commentators] to Mooney, which covers the same ground, and then some. Maybe it would be better to read the whole to-and-fro before writing myself - but then I'd probably have nothing to say, it would all have been said. Anyway, I write to get clear about my own views. It has to be all for myself, since nobody reads this blog.

I agree with what Coyne says about the 'posters' [the commentators]. So often, after reading a piece I disagree with, I get all worked up to respond and refute, only to find that some commentator [or a dozen] has done so with more eloquence, brevity and wit than I could possibly muster in my apoplectic state. And of course, many of them are scientists, or specialists in one field or another, with bits of useful and enlightening knowledge always worth lapping up.

Having said that, on balance I more often find comments so irritating I want to reach for my water-pistol. Take this comment from one 'smijer' on Mooney's next post:

I’m all for “lessen[ing] the moral authority and hegemony of religion in our society “ [a quote from Coyne], but that has bumpkus to do with biology – and biologists who pretend it does are doing a disservice to their craft.

I'm not a biologist, so maybe I can say what I like, though this comment has probably already been shot down by other commentators, supposing they thought it worth the effort [the comment dates from over a year ago, but it's a perennial theme].

The moral authority claimed by religion has a lot to do with biological, or quasi-biological claims, and I've already dealt with some of these in the past. In the Easter attacks on atheists, George Pell, our most prominent conservative Christian, said that we had souls, unlike animals. The claim that we are not animals is a biological claim [what else could it be?], and the claim that we have souls is both a biological claim [about our human, biological nature] and a moral claim [our souls go to heaven or hell depending on how good or bad we are, or depending on whether or not we serve Yahweh - which seems to be the basis of Judeo-Christian morality]. To make a more general point, biology [and psychology, and even physics and cosmology] is all about finding out what we are, where we came from, and how we best survive and thrive. Religion also makes claims to answer these questions. This is why religion and science are in competition, and always will be. To me, this is obvious. And religions gain their moral authority and hegemony by trying to monopolize understandings of what we are, what we should be, how we should behave and so forth. We should confess to priests, we should listen to their sermons, we should respect the clergy as go-betweens and facilitators, pointing out to us the righteous path, etc etc. Biology and its many sub-branches, ethology, neurology tell us a different story, and a competing one, of what we are, why we behave the way we do, and how we should behave to maximise our interest and society's interest - and it also helps us to understand how our interest and the interests of society seem to differ and clash. Biology helps us a lot in our understanding of morality. The magisterial claim of 'smijer', delivered so bumptiously IMO, just rings hollow to me.

Mooney and Forrest: strategy or truth?

2010-07-01T07:32:00.001-07:00

In Chris Mooney's second [short] post on the science-religion compatibility issue, he again focuses on strategy, and, in the very title of his essay, accuses Coyne [and by implication Dawkins, Dennett, Rosenhouse and others] of incivility, because he takes the view that even believers like Kenneth Miller and Karl Giberson, who are pro-evolution liberals, have problematic interpretations of evolution - necessarily problematic, in order to let Christian belief in. This despite the fact, as I would call it, that Coyne is not at all uncivil in his treatment of Miller and Giberson, he simply points out the flaws in their reasoning.

Mooney approves of the position of the philosopher Barbara Forrest, who directly challenged Coyne on the matter of strategy at a conference in Michigan. She criticized Coyne's approach from three perpectives. First, etiquette [be nice]; second, diversity [so many beliefs out there, wouldn't it be better to focus on the fundamentalists, or literalists, or primitivists?]; third, humility [we can't prove a negative, so why be arrogant?]. Essentially, Mooney's post simply draws our attention to Forrest's position, which he elaborates a little further. I hope he got it right because it needs to be criticized.

Apparently, in asking us to be nice, Forrest argues that religion is a very private matter. Presumably, in emphasising this, she's referring to people's sensitivities about their beliefs, and of course this is true enough in many cases, but it's also important to point out that religion, in its essence, is no more private than language is. We don't invent religion any more than we invent our own languages - we learn the language around us, and use it to relate to others. That's also what we do with religion, which has its rules and conventions and shared histories and public displays. It doesn't really make sense as a purely personal way of making sense of the world, because religious people learn about their gods from others, and they learn about the characteristics and the histories of those gods - they aren't simply free to invent the gods to suit their purposes. Their gods are public figures, and as such are open to public scrutiny, as are all their supernatural beliefs. And Forrest's claim, as reported by Mooney, that 'they're not trying to force [their religion] on anybody else' is quite doubtful. Few religious people think their religion is true only for themselves. In fact it would be quite weird if that were the case. Most would certainly find it incumbent on themselves to bring their children up in the same religion. After all, religion tells them something about the world, not just about themselves. In fact, I would argue that, far from religion being intensely personal, few people if any would hold religious views if others didn't have them too - I mean basically the same views.

On diversity, Forrest claims that of the range of believers, there are those 'who have not sacrificed scientific accuracy' in their views about evolution, and they should be seen as allies. I've already dealt with this issue, as have Coyne, Dawkins and others. This blanket claim ignores completely the arguments of Coyne and others, who have been at pains to point out that believers do sacrifice scientific accuracy to accommodate their religious convictions. And they go into detail on the whys and wherefores.

Finally, humility. Scientists don't know everything, and logic can't disprove negatives, so gods might exist, indeed it might just be true that the god of the Bible existed, and had a son somehow by a virgin who died for our sins and was resurrected and taken up to 'heaven'. Come on. It isn't arrogant to reject these beliefs or to mock them. They're absurd. And there are many good reasons why they're absurd. Why should we hold back in getting stuck into this kind of silliness? After all, we're interested, primarily, in discovering more and more of the truth about ourselves. I understand that many Americans are more immediately concerned about the spread of creationism and anti-sciencism in the US school system, and no doubt that's important - but the battle against religion itself, and not just its loopy fringes, will have to come. The truth will out. Why postpone the inevitable?

Mooney and Forrest appear to be odd types. They might well be incompatibilists at heart, but for strategic purposes they are accommodationists. Maybe it's a useful strategy from where they sit, but I don't see much use for it at all. Perhaps it's just that we're further along the road here in Oz.