Stuff

This blogging business is quite seductive. Just because the paragraphs all line up and the words are in nice neat rows it all looks official and proper. It seduces you into thinking it's all so serious and important. It's not really of course. It is for the most part a conversation with me. Not even so much a conversation with anyone else.

Didn't do anything unusual today. Don't feel especially strongly about anything at the moment. Just about to put the weans to bed, and read a paper on the effect of stationary cues on smooth pursuit initiation. Fascinating stuff.

Private vs public

So, in an otherwise quiet weekend for political news, it was the disappearance of Mark Oaten from the Liberal Democrat frontbench that stood out. He was accused, in News of the World, of hiring male prostitutes. When confronted with the story, he resigned and issued an apology for his "errors of judgment in personal behaviour and for the embarrassment caused". He has a wife and children - who are among the real victims it seems to me.

The reaction of his political colleagues is interesting. Yet again we are being told this is essentially a private matter, a private tragedy. However, as even the NotW pointed out it has its public aspects. After all here was man who publicly condemned someone else, a judge, who lost his job over something fairly similar. But the point the politicos are really making is that a man can be one thing in private and another in public and that's ok.

But hang on.

If a man is a liar in private, why should we not expect him to tell public lies if he thinks he can get away with it? He clearly has no problem in principle with lying. And if a man is prepared to betray that most personal and fundamental of human relationships, marriage, why should one expect any kind of personal loyalty from him? Admittedly this is probably a problem more for his party than the rest of us. But in that betrayal, so much is involved. Promises have been broken. Why should I trust any of his public promises? Bit of a problem for a politician.

Is redemption possible? Of course. But redemption has it precursors. There's repentance to be exhibited, and somewhere along the line a price to be paid.

Does politics attract flawed people, or is this an example of what politics does to them? Politicians are just like the rest of us. So it should come as no surprise that some of them lie, cheat, steal, abuse. I try not to be cynical. I suspect that such behavior is not typical. I hope it's not. They are perhaps more likely to get caught if they indulge in certain extreme forms of unacceptable behaviour. Maybe the rest of us should consider just how well we would stand up to the scrutiny of the News of the World. But then, there is in fact a far more penetrating scrutiny.

Israel in the OT is interesting in this respect. They were forever going off and hiding when they indulged themselves. As though they could hide from their God. They couldn't. I can't. It's both comforting and challenging to know that He sees me wherever I am, and whatever I'm doing. It's a comfort because it means I'm never outwith His loving gaze. But it's a challenge because I'm also never outwith His holy gaze.

Testing times

A bit like David, I've been snowed under with marking. I don't suppose it comes as much of a consolation to students sitting exams (like Stephen), but some poor member of staff (I nearly typed something else) has to mark their efforts. And the ability of students to avoid securing easy marks by doing the obvious thing (that you've probably told them to do and demonstrated for them) constantly amazes me. However, I've just got a few more second year assignments to mark, and then it's back to the 1001 other things I'm supposed to spend my time doing.

Relativism....

Relativism is not my desire to prefer my mother-in-law above others who are not related to me, it's the philosophical idea that there is no absolute truth. The truth (or right and wrong) of a statement or proposition or creed, is at least partly dependent on context. It's been around at least since the ancient Greeks (but probably from Eden), and it's most familiar modern form is the post modernism that holds sway in most Social Science departments (and many theology ones too?). However, it suffers from the following key weakness. If I can fairly sum it up by saying "There's no such thing as absolute truth" then that statement itself cannot be absolutely true. Therefore there must be circumstances in which there is such a thing as absolute truth. Whether it is findable or knowable is a separate issue. But you cannot deny its existence. Not an original argument I know (Popper did something similar with Logical Positivism), but interesting none-the-less.

On Fundamentalists.

Fundamentalism is much in the news. At the mintue the focus is on Islamic fundamentalists. But it's important to be clear what we're talking about - not all fundamentalism is the same. Consider the following contrast. Recently it was revealed that Sir Iqbal Sacranie, the head of the Muslim Council of Britain, was being investigated for 'homophobic' comments made on the Today programme. I heard the interview in question. Nothing he said could possibly come as a surprise to anyone. His comments were made in a very moderate and reasonable tone. He made clear that he was expressing a mainstream muslim view, which was his right in democracy. He accepted that his views (which as he fairly pointed out were shared by many Christians and Jews) were held within the context of a society at odds with them. But he was seeking to make them known none-the-less.

I suppose Sir Iqbal would be seen by many as a fundametalist. He holds to the fundamentals of his faith as expressed in the Koran. But there is night and day between Sir Iqbal and another fundamentalist whose views are receiving media coverage currently - Abu Hamza. No need to repeat here the sort of things he preached as recorded in tapes and videos. The language is violent, the tone is violent, the result may well have been intended to be violoent, that's what the jury has to decide. Both are muslims, both are fundamentalists. The police should be spending there time on the latter not the former. One is exercising a basic right in a democracy. He is seeking to debate and communicate. The other apparently has no time for such niceties. Sir Iqbal should certainly be heard. I of course will innevitably disagree with much he has to say. But I don't expect the State to suppress it.

Mind you, if I were a Christian fundametalist in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia or Indonesia, I wonder if I would find it as straightforward to communicate my views? I pose this as a genuine question. I have never visited any of those countries. I have certainly never stayed in a "muslim" country for any length of time. So I don't know what the answer is.

All of which raises the issue of what a Christian fundamentalist is. I know that there is a technical answer to this in that there have been scholarly studies shich have noted the claims made against this title. But I must say I had always considered myself a Christian fundamentalist. I have never considered this incompatible with rationality or debate. I have never considered it incompatible with dialogue with other faiths, particularly with fundamentalist muslims (at least here in the UK). When I was a warden in a student house, I well remember a graduate from Iran, who was a fundamentalist muslim. In fact we had more in common with each other, more common ground from which to begin a dialogue, than I found I had with the non-beleiving westerners in the house.

We need to fundamentally distinguish between fundamentalists. Or as someone else said, "lets put the fun back into fundamentalism!".

Bare feet on snow

Our central heating boiler gave up the ghost yesterday. No central heating and no hot running water until we get a new one. Hopefully that wont be too long. I might have been tempted to moan a bit more about my lot, were it not for a report on last night's news. It was a followup report from Pakistan on the aftermath of the earthquake. Things are pretty grim. But what struck me was a clip of man climbing up a snow-covered hill in his bare feet. It provided a bit of easily-lost perspective.

More duff philosophy….

I’ve long since stopped trying to work out how and why “Nature” (a weekly scientific “journal” that we’d all like to publish in for reasons that are too tedious to mention) picks what it picks to publish. There’s a letter in this week’s edition entitled “Neuroscience gears up for dual on the issue of brain versus deity”. It’s another one of these examples of the bad effects of the philosophical ignorance and lack of philosophical education among scientists.

Some quotes to give a flavour:

“… the truly radical and still maturing view in the neuroscience community that the mind is entirely the product of the brain presents the ultimate challenge to nearly all religions.”

Don’t think so! From Christian perspective I would have thought that the problem of an all powerful and loving God vs a world containing evil and suffering was a tad trickier. Not to mention the “God’s sovereignty vs human freewill” debate.

Apparently the decisive question is “..whether a product of the mind, such as God, can have any traditionally valid existence whatsoever.”

I haven’t had independent confirmation of this yet, but I suspect God isn’t too perturbed by this. Please!! Where to start. Except to point out that if we can only start the debate from a position where God is the product of the mind, then we are not talking about the Living God the Bible talks about, and whom I worship. Suffice it to say that those of us who are neuroscientists and Christians (and there are a few of us, we even have a society!) see no fundamentally new challenges here. The issues raised by neuroscientific advances are important, but the key issues have been around for a very long time. The mind/brain debate is at least a couple of thousand years old, an is probably not amenable to a solely scientific answer. And regardless of my forthcoming blockbuster results (reflex saccades are indeed modified by visual illusions!) the really big questions, questions if purpose and personal significance, are not scientific at all. Bit more humility, bit less hubris would not go amiss.

There's nothing new under the sun.....

Last night (on C4) it was Richard Dawkins attacking religious faith in general, this morning (on R4) it was David Starkey attacking Paul as a corruptor of Jesus' simple and attractive Gospel. There's nothing new in either of these.

Dawkin’s attack is along lines that would have been familiar to the Greeks. If you accept an authority by faith, you cannot be reasoned with. You will have such certainty that eventually (and I think he thinks inevitably) you will begin attacking (often physically) others who don't agree. There's no doubt he managed to find some fairly stereotypical fundamentalists. And, at least in his inevitably edited version of the interviews, some of them came across as either a bit mad, or a lot dangerous. He contrasted their unreasonableness with the rigour, transparency and sheer reasonableness of "the scientific method".

Of course if I was a militant a-scientist (which I'm not as you can see from my links) I might claim that science was in the pocket of big business, that scientists cannot be trusted because a lot of them make up their data, and that science should be banned because it has brought us nuclear and biological weapons, factory farming (and bird flu with it), and the prospect of Hitler being cloned somewhere in the Far East (haven't you heard, the Koreans have cloned humans already - 'cept they haven't). None of this would fair, accurate or reasonable. Dawkins version of religion is about as fair, as accurate and as reasonable.

Consider just one small point. There have been attempts to set up societies which eradicated if not belief in God, at least organised religion. One of the more familiar attempts was Stalinist Russia. And about 30 million Russians didn't survive to tell the tale. I’m prepared to accept the possibility that religion (a human institution) has played its role in stirring up violence. Although I suspect that attributing any given violent act to religion as opposed to psychosis, politics, culture or upbringing may be a bit tricky. But I really don’t fancy the atheist alternative – not that there is one.

David Starkey we rehashing the line that Jesus was quite a nice tolerant man, perhaps even a great moral teacher, but His teaching was distorted and corrupted by Paul. This idea is hardly new. Nor is it sustainable, as his expert witnesses tried to point out a couple of times. But why let the facts get in the way of a good story?

What’s slightly disconcerting is not that these views are being put forward. It’s the way bold claims are being communicated authoritatively by “experts”, in such a prominent way. If suspect one would not be allowed to make a documentary about the Gospel, that sought to proselytise the way Dawkins does. This despite there being bags of evidence that religion in general, and Christianity in particular, is surprisingly good for you. And that’s before we get anywhere near trying to establish whether it’s right or not. And their expertise is suspect into the bargain. Dawkins can speak authoritatively on certain aspects of the scientific endeavour with authority. But when it comes to religion, he cannot even speak as a dispassionate observer. The scientific method is not applicable (even if it exists), he’s not measuring anything, there’s no proper hypothesis to be tested. He’s just ranting. Starkey is perhaps on stronger ground. He is at least a trained historian. But since when was theology simply religious history? In both of these examples, and agenda is being prosecuted. I wonder to what extent the viewer or listener is aware of that?

Jesus in Court

So now there's a court case in which an Italian priest has to convince the court that Jesus existed (see the story in the Times). Presumably the court will be taken up with evidence. Interestingly the evidence of the Gospel accounts is already being discounted. One wonders whether Julius Caesar was a figment of someones imagination? But of course the issue has never been the evidence. After all we live in a culture which accepts the usefulness of detox diets and believes that Elvis is living in a WW2 bomber on the moon. Many believe things in the teeth of the evidence. Most decisions, even important ones, are taken on the basis of trust without any evidence ever being tested. Christian faith, saving faith, is never blind. But it is faith, it is trust. Exercised in response to something that really is there. Yes it is a step further than the evidence goes. If it wasn't it wouldn't be faith. Will it persuade the Italian magistrate? I'm not convinced. I am convinced that Jesus lived a life I could not live, died a death I could not die, and now lives a life that I share. What did it for me? Not just the evidence, but the evidence plus experience.

Another New Year

Ici nous sommes encore - as the French never really say. So much fuss about an arbitrary day out of the other days of the year. This day is really no different, except we've decided to single it out. So it becomes a start, or a new start. It is accompanied by things like "resolutions", sort of vague promises. Some seem to be so trivial and meaningless, that while we can guarantee to keep them, there's little involved in the keeping. At best they provide a sort of confidence boost. Others are so ambitious, there's no real attempt to keep them. I suppose in this era of targets, they might serve some personal purpose, but I can't work out what it is. Meanwhile, with all this resolution taking, and occasional efforts at resolution keeping, basic everyday stuff, the sort of stuff where we know what we should do, gets somehow missed.

Basic plodding type things like not telling lies, being a decent human being, a reliable colleague, a dependable husband or father (or mother, uncle, aunt, friend), might not set the pulse a-racing the way a fanfare, fireworks and ten "resolutions" might. But in the long run, they are more likely to deliver.

Talking of fireworks, we went down into Liverpool city centre Saturday teatime to see the fireworks at St Georges Hall. Nipped in and out on the train, so we were very green, and avoided all that CO2 that the car would have produced. The fireworks were brilliant, as was the laser show and large flame thrower types things they also had. Just as well we saved on the CO2 by not using the car!

Oh well. Happy New Year to anyone actually reading.