Texts & Ideas

Some facts of evolution

2009-07-16T22:36:00.005+01:00

In the last weeks, Richard Dawkins has been making several simple videos trying to clarify some of the most common misunderstandings among those who don't accept evolution. I give here three of them:

- Comparing the human and the chimpanzee genomes (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBEtw7esmvg)

- Why are there still chimpanzees? (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wh0F4FBLJRE&feature=SeriesPlayList&p=101582689E353E13)

- Show me the intermediate fossils! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o92x6AvxCFg&feature=SeriesPlayList&p=101582689E353E13&index=1)

Each one of these is informative in itself, and hopefully there'll be new ones coming up in the future. It's true that most of the things he says are well known among scientists, but still these questions seem to keep reappearing in most debates, so it's good to address them like this.

Enjoy!

Did Jesus raise from the dead?

2009-05-19T18:52:00.002+01:00

There is an interesting debate between W.L. Craig and B. Ehrman here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhT4IENSwac

It's a bit long but worth listening to. They both explain rather well the two points of view (Christian and atheist) about this subject. It is making me think a lot about what history has (or has not) the potential to tell us. The main question is: Can history (the use of the historical method) tell us anything about God's actions in the world, or are all these questions forever theological instead of historical?

Going to church?

2009-04-01T09:30:00.005+01:00

In the last month (perhaps even more) the most church-like experience I've had was a Snow Patrol concert I went to two weeks ago in Belfast. The sound, the emotions, thousands singing at once, the lyrics (quite spiritual in a sort of way), the atmosphere... even the preaching (these people can say a thousand things with just one song), the relevance of what they had to say, the down-to-earthness of their talking.

I know this is not what most christians have in mind when they talk about 'going to church'. But when church doesn't seem to offer what is expected of it, then some people have to find alternatives. And, these days, alternatives are not hard to find. Which brings me to the main question I wanted to ask: What is 'going to church' supposed to mean? What is church supposed to deliver? What should christians expect (or not expect) from their 'going to church' experience? And, most importantly, is it being delivered?

Did Darwin Kill God?

2009-04-01T08:51:00.003+01:00

Another program on Darwin was shown on TV last night. The title: "Did Darwin Kill God?". The link to watch it again is here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00jhfwt/Did_Darwin_Kill_God/

The program was unexpectedly better than average. The main argument was that evolution, by itself, is not a challenge to God, since the scientific method has limits built into it that avoid it to be used to draw conclusions outside of science. An obvious point? Perhaps, but not one made sufficiently enough. And in order to prove his point he explains (going to different Church Fathers) that this controversy between evolution and creation is just a very recent development which started in the last century and which most christians never recognized before that. The presenter, Conor Cunningham, is, in fact, a Christian and an evolutionist, showing that both things are not complete opposites.

As an aside, it is always interesting to hear these ideas from the people involved in this battle. Among the people he interviews we can find Daniel Dennett, Francis Collins and Michael Ruse. I would've liked to hear Dawkins himself, who is mentioned a couple of times in the program as believing that evolution proves God's non-existence (I doubt he would've said that with those words - perhaps: "it makes it very improbable"). And he even gets to visit the Creation Museum in the States!

Plantinga vs. Dennett

2009-03-14T19:39:00.004Z

Recently I listened to a debate between the philosopher and theologian A. Plantinga and the atheist philosopher D. Dennett. It can be easily found in You Tube.

I only want to make one comment about something Plantinga said in Part 2 of the debate. In there he seemed to support (much to my surprise) Behe's idea (explained in his last book) of considering plasmodium, the parasite that causes Malaria, an irreducible complexity. The fact that Behe hasn't shown any scientific evidence so far about any of the affirmations he confidently proclaims, and the fact that his arguments seem to be flawed even from the theological (specifically christian) point of view, makes me wonder what Plantinga is really doing by appealing to Behe's ideas in his search for a solution to the problem of science, naturalism, religion and faith. I would've thought a philosopher of the calibre of Plantinga wouldn't have needed to use Behe's flawed arguments (nor any of the ID proponents's) to support the claim that evolution and theism are not incompatible. The fact that he does, makes me wonder whether perhaps he might be in favour of such ID theories. If this is so, I would expect him to read a bit more about it before stating such positive affirmations about them. He can start with Kenneth R. Miller's books, in which he exposes the numerous problems with Behe's (and other ID proponents's) arguments.

To confirm the impression I got in Part 2, Part 3 shows Plantinga talking about the problems that complexities at the molecular level pose to evolutionary theory (remiscient of the vocabulary used by Behe and other ID proponents in their books). This is, in my opinion, quite worrying (for christians). If the only way that christian philosophers and theologians have to give God a place in the evolutionary process is by appealing to 'irreducible complexities', we are indeed doomed. I would've expected a more serious attempt, on Plantinga's side, to answer some of the serious questions posed by evolutionary atheists. In this occasion Dennett had it, I think, too easy...

Rescuing Darwin

2009-03-05T09:19:00.005Z

This is an interesting report, by Nick Spencer and Denis Alexander, about Darwin and evolution from a christian perspective:

http://campaigndirector.moodia.com/Client/Theos/Files/RescuingDarwin.pdf

"The project is managed and run by Theos, the public theology think tank, in partnership with the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion", says in the first page. In page 9 we read:

"In 2009, the evidence for evolution by natural selection is overwhelming, although of course the theory itself continues to evolve as new data come to light. The fossil record, although incomplete, firmly supports the theory, revealing impressive series of transitional forms. More recently, advances in genetics have hugely strengthened evolution, to the extent that, in scientific circles at least, it is now incontestable".

It's certainly refreshing to read christians saying that.

I warn you: the document is 72 pages long, but from what I've read so far it seems pretty sound. I wish all christians spent some time reading it - although I don't expect that any kind of evidence will convince any fundamentalist christian. Why the negativity? Keep reading...

"According to a recent, detailed quantitative research study commissioned by Theos and conducted by the polling company ComRes, only 37% of people in the UK believe that Darwin's theory of evolution is 'beyond reasonable doubt'. 32% say that Young Earth Creationism ("the idea that God created the world sometime in the last 10,000 years") is either definitely or probably true, and 51% say that Intelligent Design ("the idea that evolution alone is not enough to explain the complex structures of some living things, so the intervention of a designer is needed in key stages") is either definitely or probably true".

If scientists (and anyone who has the energy and the time to read the relevant literature) would agree that "the evidence for evolution by natural selection is overwhelming", then what is wrong with some christians?

I encourage you to read this document. It might come useful sometime...

An interesting debate

2009-02-16T11:28:00.002Z

This debate - with R. Dawkins, D. Dennett, B. Carson and F. Collins - has good (and not-so-good) ideas and arguments, most of them already heard in different forums, blogs, books and conversations of all kinds. The link is:

http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/pagegen/brochure/p3.html

I found particularly interesting the very last sentence R. Dawkins used to reply to the well-known Pascal's wager (used here by Carson). I find his reply very appealing and, indeed, very christian. In fact, I even think Jesus himself would've agreed with it. Don't you think?

Dawkins and Coyne

2008-12-10T10:47:00.002Z

This is the full uncut interview with the Catholic thinker Fr. George Coyne which was omitted from Richard Dawkins' television program, The Genius of Charles Darwin. It is really interesting indeed:

http://es.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=965C53D2B4BCCCF5

Here are some of the thoughts that Father Coyne leaves with us to think about:

“There is no official position of the Catholic church on the issue of evolution”

“Human beings are not just made of what science discovers human beings are made of”

“There is positive evidence for the supernatural but it goes beyond the scientific methodology”

“We are all subjects to our personal histories” (explaining why he is Catholic instead of Muslim)

“There are ingredients of God speaking to the Muslim tradition, to the Buddhist tradition, to the Hindu tradition… There are elements of God’s true revelation to those people in each of those traditions”

“What that exactly means [about the inspiration of Scripture] is far to difficult to get into”

“The book of Genesis, is fairly established by now, was written by many authors over vast periods of time, it has two creation stories…”

“I tend to get very upset by it, any literalist, fundamentalist interpretation of Scripture… because it reveals a fundamental ignorance of what Scripture is all about”

“The ID movement is a mistaken attempt to use science to establish the implications of science, that is, going beyond science to the philosophical and theological implications… Its fundamental fault is that it steps outside scientific methodology and would not acknowledge its doing it... It’s a religious movement”

“The so-called anthropic principle is not a principle and is not anthropic… We observe that the universe is made in this way and if we change anyone of a series of 20 constants… by a little amount we wouldn’t be here… To me it’s a scientific problem, it’s a scientific observation that does not yet have a scientific answer but to bring in God to explain it is to bring the great ‘God of the gaps’”

“I will accept, in the way that you have presented it, that the God in whom I believe is superfluous. That is: I do no need God. That the God in whom I believe is a God who gave himself superfluously, whether I needed him or not”

“God gave us brains so that we can explore the universe and find answers to the questions we have”

“I don’t believe in the soul; I don’t believe that at some time in the evolutionary process God put a soul… I’d like to think more of the spirit emerging in the whole evolutionary process”

“I believe that I survive death… I don’t believe my soul does; I do”

I wonder how many Christians would agree with these words... I suspect not to many...

Yet another debate

2008-12-04T13:54:00.004Z

Yet another debate between Christopher Hitchens and a christian thinker:

http://www.wts.edu/flash/media_popup/media_player.php?id=462&paramType=video

Whoever has the patience (and the time) to listen to this (1 hour and 52 minutes) debate will find in the lips of this christian minister all the arguments that separate so many thinking people from Christianity. And even though I still consider myself a believer (in some way), it is very evident to me that arguments such as these don't really help to make the Christian faith more palatable (that is, if you consider yourself a coherent thinking person). The circularity in which this christian speaker constantly falls during the debate ("I believe in miracles because the Bible tells me so, and I believe the Bible because... the Bible tells me to") seems to assume Christianity to be a non-coherent system of thought. I remember a book by J.I. Packer in which he tried to argue that either you should put reason above the Bible or put the Bible above reason (somewhat similar to what this guy says towards the end of the debate). I really can't understand this way of 'thinking'... Can you?

Torres vs. dog (dog wins!)

2008-11-28T10:42:00.001Z

This attempt to make an advert where Torres scores a goal to a dog is revealing:

http://es.youtube.com/watch?v=Sj0rrJE7qxE

Perhaps football should've been a dog's game after all...

Albacete vs Hitchens

2008-11-17T08:58:00.002Z

This is an excerpt of a debate between these two opposites:

http://es.youtube.com/watch?v=Jq08XDbapVI&NR=1

Interestingly, the catholic opponent mentions half way through the excerpt an interesting argument which deserves consideration: talking about miracles, after Hitchens having said that a miracle wouldn't be enough for him to believe in a Christian God (it wouldn't be enough to prove the identity of the miracle-worker), and after agreeing with that affirmation (Jesus points to the imcompleteness of miracles by themselves in John's gospel), Albacete says the following:

"There is one fact upon which he [Jesus] risks everything, in which he was willing to risk the authenticity of who he was... 'the world will believe only to the degree that you love one another; if you break this law, the world is right in not believing any of my claims'"

Although I myself don't believe that Jesus really claimed anything like this about his own messiahship, this affirmation by Albacete makes things (I think) very easy for any opponent in a debate. I mean: if this affirmation is true, do the love between Christians shine as much as would be expected if the Christian message was true? I'll leave the question open...

Obama on faith

2008-11-07T14:51:00.003Z

Here are some interesting thoughts on faith, extremism and literalism by the President-Elect Barack Obama (speech given earlier this year):

http://es.youtube.com/watch?v=odsDYodanxQ

Very interesting to hear those words from the US president...

God and suffering

2008-10-07T21:14:00.002+01:00

"I believe in God. God created the world. Obviously pain had to be included in God's plan. Otherwise we'd never learn that our actions have consequences. Our cave-person ancestors, finding fire warm, would conclude that curling up to sleep in the middle of the flames would be even warmer. Cave bears would dine on roast ancestor, and we'd never get any bad news and pain because we wouldn't be here.

But God, Sir, in Your manner of teaching us about life's consequential nature, isn't death a bit ... um ... extreme, pedagogically speaking? I know the lesson we're studying is difficult. But dying is more homework than I was counting on. Also, it kind of messes up my vacation planning. Can we talk after class? Maybe if I did something for extra credit?"

P.J. O'Rourke, The Guardian, Tuesday October 7 2008

Capitalism and idolatry

2008-10-03T09:04:00.001+01:00

This is a link to the last controversial comments of Rowan Williams regarding capitalism and the finantial crisis we live in:

http://www.spectator.co.uk/the-magazine/features/2172131/face-it-marx-was-partly-right-about-capitalism.thtml

Is he possibly right about it?

Crawley vs. Dawkins

2008-09-09T08:34:00.002+01:00

Check this out!

http://es.youtube.com/watch?v=7mgaRKsIR_U

Clever questions and clever answers going to the heart of the matter. In a time where it's not hard to find many ridiculous interviews in the most unexpected contexts (I am thinking of Rick's interview to the US presidency candidates), is this not one of the best interviews you have seen done to Richard Dawkins?

A human book

2008-09-07T22:11:00.003+01:00

"One must read the Bible in a human way, for the Bible is a book written by men for men: the language is human, and human the external means by which it was written and preserved; indeed, when all is said and done, the mind by which the Bible can be understood is human, as is every means of explaining it, as it is the whole purpose and use to which the Bible is applied. So you can certainly believe that the more humanly (in the best sense of the word human) you read the Bible, the nearer you come to the purpose of its Originator, who created men in his own image; and in all works and good deeds where he shows himself to us as God, he acts for us in a human way"

Herder

Perhaps that was the trick from the start: to take the Bible as human, only human, and not as human and divine (which eventually became only divine).

Surrendering to the Bible

2008-08-13T17:23:00.003+01:00

'Scripture to which one surrenders... uncritically, leads... to indistinguishability between faith and superstition'

E. Kasemann

This is true, at least, in some cases: I open the Bible one day in a random page hoping to find an answer to an important question and happen to find a text that (apparently) answers it. Is this God answering my question or is it me trying to make sense of some words I have just read? And leaving that question aside for a moment, what kind of God will I end up believing in if it becomes a habit to open the Bible at random every time I need some answer to my questions?

Two questions worth thinking about...

Reasonable faith

2008-08-01T08:47:00.002+01:00

'Reason conceives only of such an unknown within itself that it can conceive by means of itself'

Kierkegaard

I take this to mean that reason, by its own definition, can only ever be reasonable to itself; reason cannot 'transcend itself' to conceive of a superiority outside its own means. The unknown is reason's own inaccessible exteriority, the absurd, at which it must stop short. It seems that for Kierkegaard there is no reasonable basis for faith - faith is absurd. Faith is in this sense baseless, a chasm, a leap into the unknown. And this idea of faith as necessarily opposed to reason appears again and again in many Christian churches today.

Although I don't defend the view that reason can explain everything, I don't agree with this either. If God exists at all it is clear that he must be mysterious to a big extent (and probably beyond understanding). However the biblical faith seems to be based on some kind of evidence, be that the testimony of those witnesses who experienced the first things that happened when Jesus was alive, or the later experiences that the people who heard the gospel had. Paul's constant testimony to the people around him is based on the assumption that they can test whether what he is saying is true or not in their own lives, and his arguments often stand or fall depending on whether those tests hold. I think reason is involved in this process of testing and I think that still applies today.

Before the law

2008-07-02T08:11:00.001+01:00

An excerpt from Franz Kafka's story The Trial, narrated by Orson Welles:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZYugbqI3rQ

This is an inspiring story. What does it tell you?

All-power vs. all-good

2008-07-01T08:32:00.002+01:00

This is a video where Greg Koukl appears to explain an everlasting problem:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jRMWKz4hbw&feature=related

Now - this is the guy who has appeared in several videos over the internet supposedly refuting the atheists' arguments and showing that they are not reasonable (that they are fallacious).

Being this a very reasonable person who boasts in following logical arguments, I thought that perhaps he had at last found an answer to this problematic question. However, after hearing his answer I have two immediate reactions: first, I am surprised to find that he is not saying anything new at all but just repeating a Christian argument made long time ago; second, this argument doesn't really follow. His main premises are:

1. Although God could have chosen to create any kind of world (because he is all-powerful), God decided to create the best possible world, a world which allowed human beings to have freedom (because he is all-good).

2. In such a world, evil is necessary.

3. Therefore, although God is all-powerful and all-good, evil is necessary in the world.

I think my main problem with this argument is premise 2: why is evil necessary in a world with human freedom? I assume that the kind of evil that is being considered here is 'human evil', the kind of evil that human beings choose to do (and therefore a direct consequence of human freedom). But, what about the other kinds of evil, the evil from natural disasters, the evil that comes directly from blind nature? How can we justify this kind of evil? Is the freedom of human beings to blame for all kinds of evil that happen in the world?

And even if we took evil to mean just human evil: is it not possible for a loving mother to allow for the freedom of her children without allowing for them to kill themselves? Does a mother's love imply that she cannot be caring? Is there not love in advice?

Perhaps I am not seeing the extreme logic of this guy's argument: if this is so and you can see it, please illuminate me!

Solipsism and Big Brother

2008-06-19T14:00:00.002+01:00

'But how can you control matter?' he burst out. 'You don't even control the climate or the law of gravity. And there are disease, pain, death----'

O'Brien silenced him by a movement of his hand. 'We control matter because we control the mind. Reality is inside the skull. You will learn by degrees, Winston. There is nothing that we could not do. Invisibility, levitation--anything. I could float off this floor like a soap bubble if I wish to. I do not wish to, because the Party does not wish it. You must get rid of those nineteenth-century ideas about the laws of Nature. We make the laws of Nature.'

[...]

'But the world itself is only a speck of dust. And man is tiny--helpless! How long has he been in existence? For millions of years the earth was uninhabited.'

'Nonsense. The earth is as old as we are, no older. How could it be older? Nothing exists except through human consciousness.'

'But the rocks are full of the bones of extinct animals--mammoths and mastodons and enormous reptiles which lived here long before man was ever heard of.'

'Have you ever seen those bones, Winston? Of course not. Nineteenth-century biologists invented them. Before man there was nothing. After man, if he could come to an end, there would be nothing. Outside man there is nothing.'

'But the whole universe is outside us. Look at the stars! Some of them are a million light-years away. They are out of our reach for ever.'

'What are the stars?' said O'Brien indifferently. 'They are bits of fire a few kilometres away. We could reach them if we wanted to. Or we could blot them out. The earth is the centre of the universe. The sun and the stars go round it.'

1984, George Orwell

Our friends, the... crows?

2008-06-16T18:28:00.002+01:00

This is a short and pretty wonderful talk at TED:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXQAgzfwuNQ&feature=user

Share your ideas about what you think crows could do for us...

Nice...

2008-06-16T17:45:00.002+01:00

"Tell me", Wittgenstein asked a friend, "why do people always say it was natural for man to assume that the Sun went round the Earth rather than the Earth was rotating". His friend replied: "Well obviously because it just looks as if the Sun is going round the Earth". To this Wittgenstein replied: "Well, what would it have looked like if it had looked as though the Earth was rotating?"

Is Lee Strobel pro-ID?

2008-06-16T17:09:00.002+01:00

Judging from the fact that in most Christian bookshops in Spain we can find many of Lee Strobel's books, and judging form the fact that you'll struggle a lot to find only one Christian book that defends evolution (I never found any), it seems logical to assume that Strobel's books don't support evolution. Here you can find the evidence for this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_0WL1D5jOY&feature=related

Any opinions about this guy's argument?

Karl Barth and the Christian faith

2008-06-09T16:29:00.003+01:00

"In history itself there is nothing, so far as the eye can see, that could provide a foundation for belief... In history itself everything could always also have been regarded as quite different. One should unequivocally hold that faith is based on revelation - on historical revelation to be sure, but on revelation; and one should get accustomed to thinking of revelation as a special category, as that unresolvable unity of happening, speaking and listening which is actually witnessed to in the Bible. Whoever wants to find revelation must find revelation and not something else, not something that revelation is as well. Otherwise he does not find revelation at all".

K. Barth

I think Barth comes closer to revealing his own position (among all these rather mysterious and cryptic paragraphs) in a casual remark:

"The more clearly the biblical witnesses of Jesus Christ speak, the more what they say gets lost in what we should today call the realm of pure legend".

In other words, the more clearly the Bible claims a revelation has occurred, the less reliable that passage is as history.

Barth's way of thinking here is rather weird: on the one hand he seems to share the historical judgement of liberal biblical scholars who thought that the events that reveal God's power in the Bible did not actually occur, but on the other he didn't follow them in disregarding these events and concentrating on something else. Rather he affirmed that the whole complex event of the Bible, which centred around those alleged revelations of God's power, was an indispensable part of a larger pattern of revelation.

This, to me, sounds like a lot of trickery focused on escaping the obvious conclusions to which your investigations are leading you. I can understand why people like Bultmann would get very angry when finding this dualistic view about the Bible. What I find harder to understand is why so many people today keep using these tricks in order to continue believing that which they suspect is not historically true anymore.

The truth of faith

2008-06-05T12:09:00.002+01:00

"So what does it mean to claim that the truth affirmed by Christianity is not a description but an event, not a fact to be grasped but an incoming to be undergone? It means that the truth affirmed by Christianity is not primarily related to some external facts such as the age of certain Gospels or the particular facts contained in them. These are interesting and important issues that should be debated and reflected upon. However, the deep truth of Christianity is not found in the acceptance of some particular historical claim. Rather, it refers to a happening testified to within the Bible that cannot be reduced to words, confined in concepts, or divulged by definitions. The truth of Christianity is not something that can be reduced to intellectual affirmations or experiential moments that can be objectified and dissected by experts."

The fidelity of betrayal, Peter Rollins

So, what is it then? If the truth of Christianity (what makes it different from any other religion) doesn't depend on any historical happening such as, for example, the resurrection of Jesus, then: what does it depend on?

I have to recognize that I find this idea of letting Christianity be a religion based mainly (or most profoundly) on an unsearchable mystery a very tempting one. In this way (and this is not a criticism) Christianity can become anything I like: it can be the religion of my soul, pure subjectivity, not based on anything historical and completely and safely independent of the findings of any criticism that we can think of. In this way, it seems to me, Christianity becomes the perfect barthian religion, always separated from the realm of objective reality.

I have two problems with this. First, I am not sure that this way of understanding Christiniaty is fair to the way primitive Christians seemed to think of it - I remember that Paul mentions in 1 Corinthians that if it can be shown that Jesus was never raised from the dead (a historical and objective fact) then his faith is vain (a subjective consequence). Second, this attempt to separate the Christ of faith from the historical facts of Jesus' life reminds me of Bultmann's way to do that very same thing. And if this is a fair comment, then I think Bultmann's attempt showed us why that wasn't a very good idea.

Hello, my uglies!

2008-06-01T21:15:00.002+01:00

This is a new album by Rachel Austin. You can find it and listen to some of the songs here:

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=60023848

The whole thing is really good (and it's not because I know her), but I specially like the fourth song: 'They said'. Very true...

Persepolis

2008-06-01T20:29:00.001+01:00

This is a very worth watching film. Here you can access the trailer:

http://www.sonypictures.com/classics/persepolis/

I recomend it. And after you watch it, share what you think!

Hierarchized oppositions

2008-05-28T21:21:00.003+01:00

Where is she?

Activity/passivity,
Sun/Moon,
Culture/Nature,
Day/Night,

Father/Mother,
Head/heart,
Intelligible/sensitive,
Logos/Pathos,

Form, convex, step, advance, seed, progress.
Matter, concave, ground - which supports the step, receptacle.
Man
-------
Woman

Always the same metaphor: we follow it, it transports us, in all its forms, wherever a discourse is organized. The same thread, or double tress leads us, whether we are reading or speaking, through literature, philosophy, criticism, centuries of representation, of reflection.

Thought has always worked by opposition,

Speech/Writing,
High/Low

By dual, hierarchized oppositions, Superior/Inferior. Myths, legends, books, Philosophical systems.

H. Cixous, 'Sorties'

I've just read a message where someone was using Ephesians 5-6 to show God's loving order: 'submit to one another in God's love: wives to husbands, children to parents, slaves to masters'. Although the text we are reading is often used as God's direct word from heaven, it sounds to me very much like Cixous' list of hierarchized oppositions. I wonder what God thinks of texts like this...

Doubt as belief

2008-05-19T14:51:00.002+01:00

“Those who believe that they believe in God, but without passion in their hearts, without anguish in mind, without uncertainty, without doubt, without an element of despair even in their consolation, believe only in the God idea, not God Himself” (Unamuno).

This is a hero of mine, above all for his honesty when dealing with subjects as serious and profound as this one. And he makes me think... perhaps an important part of believing in God is doubting God; perhaps part of being a believer is being an atheist. I certainly would like that, and I think (or want to think) that's what Bonhoeffer discovered in prison. Perhaps part of God's personality consists of hiding himself; and if it is, he is certainly very good at it.

(Kind of) Evolution conversation

2008-05-01T14:07:00.001+01:00

This is a very informative conversation:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjKMhtyI3L8&feature=related

On heresy and the tribal mind...

2008-04-23T20:30:00.003+01:00

A genuine first-hand religious experience like this is bound to be a heterodoxy to its witnesses, the prophet appearing as a mere lonely madman. If his doctrine prove contagious enough to spread to any others, it becomes a definite and labeled heresy. But if it then still prove contagious enough to triumph over persecution, it becomes itself an orthodoxy[...]

The plain fact is that men's minds are built, as has been often said, in water-tight compartments. Religious after a fashion, they yet have many other things in them beside their religion, and unholy entanglements and associations inevitably obtain. The basenesses so commonly charged to religion's account are thus, almost all of them, not chargeable at all to religion proper, but rather to religion's wicked practical partner, the spirit of corporate dominion. And the bigotries are most of them in their turn chargeable to religion's wicked intellectual partner, the spirit of dogmatic dominion, the passion for laying down the law in the form of an absolutely closed-in theoretic system. The eclesiastical spirit in general is the sum of these two spirits of dominion; and I beseech you never to confound the phenomena of mere tribal or corporate psychology which it presents with those manifestations of the purely interior life which are the exclusive object of our study[...]

Piety is the mask, the inner force is tribal instinct.

William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience

Lies, lies, lies...

2008-04-15T09:04:00.004+01:00

'Love thy neighbour as thyself', say the petty bourgeois, and by this those well-raised children and now useful members of the state - who are very prone to any passing emotional influenza - mean partly that if someone asks one for a pair of snuffers, even though they are sitting quite far away, one is to say 'by all means', get up 'with the greatest pleasure' and hand the snuffers to the person, and partly that one must remember to pay the obligatory condolatory calls. But they have never felt what it means for the whole world to turn its back on them, since of course the whole shoal of socializing herring in which they live will never let such a circumstance arise, and should serious help ever be required, sound sense will tell them that the person in sore need of their help, yet not at all likely to have any opportunity to help them in return, is not their 'neighbour'.

S. Kierkegaard

I wonder: is 'heresy' not the word that Christianity invented to be able to turn its back on some people with a clear conscience? Are words like that not the only way that a christian can justify with a smile in their face that the people who has left the church are 'not of God', or 'not spiritual enough'?

I recently heard of someone in a church who said: 'those who left our church were just not good enough, they were not walking with God; but we are very happy now'. This shows the importance of a clear conscience to the Christianity of our day, even when that clear conscience might be based on lies, lies, lies...

There will be blood

2008-04-07T08:47:00.003+01:00

I found this film quite remarkable. This is the web page:

http://www.therewillbeblood.com/

You have to watch this film and then comment your impressions here.

Eternal answers...

2008-02-29T08:10:00.003Z

I remember one day in early spring, I was alone in the forest, lending my ear to its mysterious noises. I listened, and my thought went back to what for these three years it always was busy with - the quest of God. But the idea of him, I said, how did I ever come by the idea?

And again there arose in me, with this thought, glad aspirations towards life. Everything in me awoke and received a meaning... Why do I look further? a voice within me asked. He is there: he, without whom one cannot live. To acknowledge God and live are one and the same thing. God is what life is. Well, then I live, seek God, and there will be no life without him...

After this, things cleared up within me and about me better than ever, and the light has never wholly died away. I was saved from suicide. Just how or when the change took place I cannot tell. But as insensibly and gradually as the force of life had been annulled within me, and I had reached my moral death-bed, just as gradually and imperceptibly did the energy of life come back. And what was strange was that this energy that came back was nothing new. It was my ancient juvenile force of faith, the belief that the sole purpose of my life was to be better. I gave up the life of the conventional world, recognizing it to be no life, but a parody on life, which its superfluities simply keep us from comprehending.

Tolstoy (abridged)

And Tolstoy thereupon embraced the life of the peasants, and has felt right and happy, or at least relatively so, ever since.

I was speaking to a friend last night and he mentioned his feeling of how unpleasant life often feels. His problem with life seemed a little bit similar to that of Tolstoy: in William James' words, "the superfluities and insincerities, the cupidities, complications, and cruelties of our polite civilization are profoundly unsatisfying". And they are.

There seems to be something that heals, something that has the potential to break the effective edge of sadness, in the very act of accepting an eternal answer to our deepest questions, even when this answer is as mysterious as God (or 'the eternal', or 'the MORE', or 'the Wholly Other') can be. I am not speaking here of answers in the doctrine-dogma-system way, but rather in the acceptance that there is, in fact, an eternal answer (although it may not be possible to put it into logical and reasoned words).

I find this a very interesting thought... Perhaps even satisfying...

Good evidence

2008-02-26T08:48:00.003Z

"Only religious belief requires faith because only religious belief postulates the existence of entities which we have no good evidence to believe exist. It is a simple error to suppose that just because atheist beliefs are also 'unproven' or 'uncertain' that they too require faith. Faith does not plug the gap between reasons to believe and certain proof. Rather it is what supports beliefs that lack the ordinary support of evidence or argument. And that is why, as the traditional religious texts tell us, faith is not as easy as ordinary belief. Or, as atheists tell us, why faith is foolish".

Julian Baggini, Atheism: A very short introduction

I think there is some truth here. I think that both religious and atheist 'faiths' (if they can be called like that) are quite different in that they do not both argue for the existence of something but rather one of them argues against the existence of that which there is not enough 'good evidence' to believe in. As some atheists keep telling us, we are all (or most) atheists with respect to Zeus, and we all know what it means to be so. I certainly am an atheist with respect to divine cats with two heads that fly and answer my prayers - I have no 'good evidence' to believe in them.

However I wonder what kind of evidence would count as 'good evidence' for atheists to start believing in any God. I don't think that all the believers around the world do not have any evidence at all that could count as 'good evidence' to believe in the God they believe in; I don't think they are just blind people who happened to choose one God they heard about and that's why they believe.

I find it hard to make sense of discussions like this because sometimes people talk about 'good evidence' but they don't make clear what they mean by it. I recently heard a debate between a woman believer and Richard Dawkins in which he admitted the possibility of the existence of 'emotional truth' (as a kind of truth different to scientific truth), for which 'good evidence' would not need to be scientific but rather 'emotional'. In fact he himself is aware of parts of his life where that kind of truth applies. However, if this is so and both truths are based on 'good evidence' (although different kinds of evidence), is it not possible that religious faith is based on 'good (religious) evidence'?

Snowman photos

2008-02-11T15:23:00.000Z

It is true... We created a monster...

The evolution of the flagellum

2008-02-10T21:09:00.000Z

For all those who really want answers, this is an interesting video...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdwTwNPyR9w

And ID again...

2008-02-07T17:30:00.000Z

"It turns out God has fought back... "

You don't usually hear these days sentences like that coming from the lips of ID proponents. They have learnt that when they present God as their main scientific argument they are showing their real intentions (as well as how little they know about science). And so they usually are very careful to avoid saying things like that. This is why I think the last 10-20 seconds of this short interview are specially enlightening:

http://www.comedycentral.com/motherload/index.jhtml?ml_video=90952

It's God-talk... I knew it!

Evolution and ID debate

2008-02-02T20:00:00.000Z

This is a VERY enlightening debate...

http://www.kkms.com/blogs/JeffandLee/11566451/

I think it shows quite a lot of what really is going on. Enjoy it!

The intelligence of ID

2008-02-01T16:54:00.000Z

http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=3015753963746035923&q=intelligent+design&total=2698&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=4

Thanks for the link, Pete!

Does God exist?

2008-01-10T19:05:00.000Z

This is a well worth and really interesting debate about the existence of God.

http://www.ajula.edu/Content/ContentUnit.asp?CID=1766&u=7037&t=0

Enjoy!

Rich Mullins

2008-01-06T15:47:00.000Z

This was a hero of mine. Still is... He tells in a simple song so much that I find difficult to express. Enjoy the song.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDR_ksEln-4

Money, only money...

2007-12-12T21:16:00.001Z

The priest performed his functions with an easy conscience because he had been brought up from childhood to believe that this was the one true faith which had been held by all saints that had ever lived and was held now by the spiritual and temporal authorities. He did not believe that the bread became flesh, or that it was good for the soul to pronounce a great number of words, or that he had really devoured a bit of God - no one could believe that - but he believed that one ought to believe it. But the main thing that confirmed him in this faith was the fact that, in return for fulfilling the demands of this faith, for eighteen years now he had been drawing an income which enabled him to support his family, and send his son to a high-school and his daughter to a school for the daughters of clergy.

Tolstoy, Resurrection

How hard to preach without being aware that your salary depends on the very people you are preaching to. How hard not to adapt the message to that the are expecting to hear (be that good or harsh). How hard not to use the terminology they are expecting to hear from a minister of the Lord. How hard not to convince yourself that the doctrines they expect you to believe are actually true. How hard...

Rick Warren

2007-11-18T16:18:00.001Z

Check this out...

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/71

As you will notice (Rick repeats this more than once in his talk), his main book has sold already about 30 million copies. Am I the only one that finds this talk (tone, words, arguments...) terribly annoying? Is this the image that christians want other people to remember when they think of Christianity?

Moreover, if Christianity is a religion that prides itself in its honest search for Truth, is this book by Rick Warren the best example of such an enterprise? According to Dan Dennett, the answer is NO:

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/94

And I think his judgement on Rick's book might actually be right. What do you think?

Lilies

2007-11-10T20:49:00.000Z

'Consider the lilies of the field' is the only commandment I have never broken

Emily Dickinson

I have, and I repent...

Phantoms

2007-11-08T21:29:00.000Z

You'll need to helpers (I will call them Julie and Mina). Sit in a chair, blindfolded, and ask Julie to sit on another chair in front of you, facing the same direction as you are. Have Mina stand on your right side and give her the following instructions: 'Take my right hand and guide my index finger to Julia's nose. Move my hand in a rhythmic manner so that my index finger repeatedly strokes and taps her nose in a random sequence like a Morse code. At the same time, use your left hand to stroke my nose with the same rhythm and timing. The stroking and tapping of my nose and Julia's nose should be in perfect synchrony'.

After thirty or fourty seconds, if you're lucky, you will develop the uncanny illusion that you are touching your nose out there or that your nose has been dislocated and stretched out about three feet in front of your face. The more random and unpredictable the stroking sequence, the more striking the illusion will be. This is an extraordinary illusion; how does it happen? I suggest that your brain 'notices' that the tapping and stroking sensations from your right index finger are perfectly synchronized with the strokes and taps felt on your nose. It then says, 'The tapping on my nose is identical to the sensations on my right index finger; why are the two sequences identical? The likelihood that this is a coincidence is zero, and therefore the most probable explanation is that my finger must be tapping my nose. But I also know that my hand is two feet away from my face. So it follows that my nose must also be out there, two feet away'.

V.S. Ramachandran, Phantoms in the Brain

This remarkable book shows, in a careful series of scientific experiments, that the logic that works within our brains is much less logic than we would like to think. In fact, if you get a chance to read the book, you will see that the experiments show much more bizarre 'logics'. Our brains seem to be filled with phantoms.

I was wondering what are we... Am I a phantom? Am I an illusion that thinks is coherent and makes sense, but only because is dreaming? Martin Heidegger dared to suggest many years ago that the essence of our beings is not in space but rather in time. Is that true? Are we who we are because we have been here some time? When I say 'I', what do I mean by that? What do you?

Comprehension

2007-11-05T16:32:00.000Z

Comprehension does not mean denying the outrageous, deducing the unprecedented from precedents, or explaining phenomena by such analogies and generalities that the impact of reality and the shock of experience are no longer felt. It means, rather, examining and bearing consciously the burden which our century has placed on us - neither denying its existence nor submitting meekly to its weight. Comprehension, in short, means the unpremeditated, attentive facing up to, and resisting of, reality - whatever it may be.

Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism

We cannot pretend to forget all that we now know - that would be lying to ourselves, going against the truth towards which we try to walk. Any religion that asks this from us, that asks us to pretend not to know that which we know, is not worth being called religion, since it goes against truth. And religion is another word to refer to our search for truth... or is it?

Wisdom, knowledge, information...

2007-10-31T20:48:00.000Z

Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

T.S. Eliot, The Rock

The whole is bigger than the parts. We have heard that many times, but sometimes it is hard to accept it. However, it must be true. And the steps chosen by T.S. Eliot seem very relevant. There is a big leap to be taken between information and knowledge, and maybe even a bigger one between knowledge and wisdom. Perhaps a leap of faith...

State of the Union

2007-10-26T20:43:00.001+01:00

This is a really good video by David Ford:

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=qv4QBRS-U50

I hope you enjoy it. I did...

Real freedom

2007-10-25T18:35:00.000+01:00

One particularly telling representation of the fundamental relation between man and freedom is offered in the biblical myth of man's expulsion from paradise.

The myth identifies the beginning of human history with an act of choice, but it puts all emphasis on the sinfulness of this first act of freedom and the suffering resulting from it. Man and woman live in the Garden of Eden in complete harmony with each other and with nature. There is peace and no necessity to work; there is no choice, no freedom, no thinking either. Man is forbidden to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. He acts against God's command, he breaks through the state of harmony with nature of which he is a part without transcending it. From the standpoint of the Church which represented authority, this is essentially sin. From the standpoint of man, however, this is the beginning of human freedom. Acting against God's orders means freeing himself from coercion, emerging from the unconscious existence of prehuman life to the level of man. Acting against the command of authority, committing a sin, is in its positive human aspect the first act of freedom, that is, the first human act. In the myth the sin in its formal aspect is the acting against God's command; in its material aspect it is the eating of the tree of knowledge. The act of disobedience as an act of freedom is the beginning of reason. The myth speaks of other consequences of the first act of freedom. The original harmony between man and nature is broken. God proclaims war between man and woman, and war between nature and man. Man has become separate from nature, he has taken the first step towards becoming an 'individual'. He has committed the first act of freedom. The myth emphasizes the suffering resulting from this act. To transcend nature, to be alienated from nature and from another human being, finds man naked, ashamed. He is alone and free, yet powerless and afraid. The newly won freedom appears as a curse; he is free from the sweet bondage of paradise, but he is not free to govern himself, to realize his individuality[...]

There is only one possible, productive solution for the relationship of individualized man with the world: his active solidarity with all me and his spontaneous activity, love and work, which unite him again with the world, not by primary ties but as a free and independent individual.

Erich Fromm, The Fear of Freedom

I knew a church long ago in which one of the funcions of the authority was trying to control our thoughts and actions. Some people would call it a sect, but since it doesn't appear in the introductory books about sects, then it escapes the name. I remember the fear to think for myself, to question, to criticize what I thought was going wrong with these people: in fact the fear to even think that something was going wrong. Any question, any doubt, any criticism was sin, sin against the leaders of the church, and therefore sin against God. The myth of creation works and continues working today in the minds of many Christians.

However, it shouldn't come as a surprise that the Jews of the first century held together many different myths about creation, not only the one in Genesis 1-2. In another book, 1 Enoch, the myth of creation and the fall is not related to acquiring knowledge, as if knowing and thinking was in itself a sin. Rather, knowledge in itself is good, and what is bad is its misuse. This fits better with what I think... I wonder why these other texts and myths haven't continued being read along with all the other 'inspired' books of the canon. I wonder if the leaders of the church had anything to do with that... Hmm...

Models and truth

2007-10-19T20:00:00.000+01:00

It would... be subtly misleading to say, 'The medievals thought the universe to be like that, but we know it to be like this'. Part of what we now know is that we cannot, in the old sense, 'know what the universe is like' and that no model we can build will be, in that old sense, 'like' it... There is no question here of the old Model's being shattered by the inrush of new phenomena. The truth would seem to be the reverse; that when changes in the human mind produce a sufficient disrelish of the old Model and a sufficient hankering for some new one, phenomena to support that new one will obediently turn up. I do not at all mean that these new phenomena are illusory. Nature has all sorts of phenomena in stock and can suit many different tastes.

C. S. Lewis, The Discarded Image, p.221

This may be true in some sense - science doesn't provide as clear-cut answers to our problems as we would like. However, it surely cannot be completely true that the change from one worldview to another depends only on the fact that our minds are simply changing and that we need another model different from the one we had. Surely we must be getting closer to the truth, even though we may still be very far away from that final Model or theory of everything. Or are we not?

Sermons don't dialogue

2007-10-18T17:39:00.000+01:00

The Christian discourse has some degree of involvement in doubt, the sermon operates absolutely, solely with authority: scriptural, or of the apostles. In a sermon, then, it is absolute heresy to get involved with doubts, however well one knows how to handle them[...] A sermon presupposes a priest (ordination); the Christian discourse[r] can be an ordinary person.

Soren Kierkegaard, Papers and Journals

I would rather have a proper dialogue than a hundred wonderful sermons. Unfortunately both are as complicated to find.

Hitchens - McGrath

2007-10-17T20:18:00.000+01:00

If you enjoyed the debate between Alister McGrath and Richard Dawkins, then you probably will enjoy this one:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6851159367044940771&hl=en

Pretty interesting... Let me know what you think...

Pride

2007-10-16T19:51:00.000+01:00

"I did that", says my memory. "I could not have done that", says my pride, and remains inexorable. Eventually - the memory yields.

Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

It seems to me that everyone, be that christian or atheist, believer or unbeliever, as long as we are dealing with human beings, falls prey to this truth that Nietzsche, to whom some people regarded as crazy, tells us.

Blessed are the crazy, because they'll see what others cannot, and they'll say what they see despite the attacks of the blind.

An unimportant moment

2007-10-08T19:26:00.000+01:00

He was so interested in it all that he often did things himself, rearranging the furniture, or rehanging the curtains. Once when mounting a stepladder to show the upholsterer, who did not understand, how he wanted the hangings draped, he made a false step and slipped, but being a strong and agile man he clung on and only knocked his side against the knob of the window frame. The bruised place was painful but the pain soon passed, and he felt particularly bright and well just then. He wrote: 'I feel fifteen years younger'. He thought he would have everything ready by September, but it dragged on till mid-October. But the result was charming not only in his eyes but to everyone who saw it.

Leo Tolstoy, The death of Ivan Ilych

That was the moment that changed his whole life...

I was thinking of Ivan Ilych today. How easy for us to become imbued by the world around us and forget to look inside ourselves and even ask a couple of risky and life-threatening questions! I am very busy these days. And I am scared I will lose the capacity to stop and ask myself some of those important questions now and again. I don't want to be like Ivan, and wait until I am dying to remember who I am, or what I am.

I think I love this character, and also hate him. I love his humanity, his similarities with everyone else and with me. I love his need to find something else and his incapacity to find it. But I hate his apparent inability to realize all those things I've just said, his self-deception, his blindness. Are we all that blind?

Think for yourself

2007-09-26T16:03:00.000+01:00

THE LITTLE MONK: But I would mention other reasons. Let me speak for a moment of myself. I grew up as a son of peasants in the Campagna. They were simple people. They knew all about olive-tress, but very little else. While observing the phases of Venus, I can see my parents, sitting by the hearth with my sister, eating their cheese[…] They are no rich but in their misfortune there lies concealed a certain invisible order of things[…] They call up the strength to sweat up the stony paths with their baskets, to bear children, yes, even to eat, from the feeling of continuity and necessity which is given them by the sight of die soil, of the trees springing with new green foliage every year, of the little church, and by listening every Sunday to the Bible texts[…] What would my people say if they learned from me that they were really on a little bit of rock that ceaselessly revolves in empty space round another star, one among very many, a comparatively unimportant one?[…] So do you understand that in that decree of the Holy Congregation I perceive true maternal compassion, great goodness of soul?

GALILEO: Goodness of soul! What you probably mean is there’s nothing there, the wine’s drunk up, their lips are parched, so let them kiss the cassock! And why is nothing there? Why is the orderliness in this country merely the order of an empty cupboard, and the necessity merely that of working oneself to death? Among bursting vineyards, beside the ripening cornfields! Your Campagna peasants are paying for the wars which the representative of gentle Jesus is waging in Spain and Germany. Why does he put the earth at the hub of the universe? So that the throne of Saint Peter can stand at the hub of the earth. That’s why! You are right: it’s nothing to do with the planets, it’s to do with the peasants in the Campagna.

I encourage anyone to read this marvellous play: Life of Galileo, by Bertolt Brecht. You can read a shortest version here: http://www.vidyaonline.org/arvindgupta/lifeofgalileo.pdf. I have recently come across Part 7, entitled: A Conversation (you can read a small section in this message). It’s worth reading. It addresses some of the questions that I have made myself more than once. And the conclusion of Galileo sounds about right to me: if you don’t care about the truth, others will. Thinking for yourself, tiring and dangerous as it might be, at least allows you to decide what kind of life you want to live, instead of living the life other people expect you to. Some people say: blindness is bliss, or faith is blind and ignorance is bliss. I suspect that all those who invent these sentences are not as blind and ignorant as they proclaim we all should be.

Christian suggestion

2007-09-24T15:23:00.000+01:00

There are many leaders in the world today that use this very method to manipulate our thoughts and actions. Watch this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7s6yklp80Q

We are gullible and easy to cheat. We need to learn to think for ourselves and question the authority figures that control our lives. Socrates said once: 'An unexamined life is not worth living'. This is self-evident since you are not really living your own life as long as you are being manipulated.

There is one thing that should characterize Christianity: the capacity of believers to think and analyze for themselves the different statements and affirmations that are being proclaimed. Jesus never said: 'Follow me, but leave your brain at home'.

The humans are dead

2007-09-24T13:55:00.000+01:00

You need to see this...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGoi1MSGu64

Really good!

Random coincidences

2007-09-24T13:22:00.000+01:00

Amid the action and reaction of so dense a swarm of humanity, every possible combination of events may be expected to take place, and many a little problem will be presented which may be striking and bizarre

Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle

It is the law of the large numbers.

It is ironic that the very existence of random possibilities in the complex world in which we live may provide one of the basis for the prayer life of many religious people. It is ironic considering the war that many christians have against the existence of such random events.

Acceptance

2007-09-11T10:39:00.000+01:00

Sometimes at that moment a wave of light breaks into our darkness, and it is as though a voice were saying: 'You are accepted. You are accepted, accepted by that which is greater than you, and the name of which you do not know. Do not ask for the name now; perhaps you will find it later; do not try to do anything now; perhaps later you will do much. Do not seek for anything; do not intend anything. Simply accept the fact that you are accepted!'. If that happens to us, we experience grace. We may not be better than before, and we may not believe more than before. But everything is transformed. In that moment, grace conquers sin, and reconciliation bridges the gulf of estrangement. And nothing is demanded of this experience, no religious or moral or intellectual presupposition, nothing but acceptance.

Paul Tillich, The Essential Tillich, p.201

I would like to think that God's grace is similar to this kind of grace, an unconditional acceptance that doesn't look at your wrong-ness or right-ness but rather accepts, simply. And if this is true, if this is God, then Christians should try to find this kind of grace within themselves, and let it grow and go out towards the rest of us. It doesn't often happen this way: perhaps there are not so many Christians out there after all...

The frog and the ox, by Aesop

2007-09-08T12:36:00.000+01:00

“OH Father,” said a little Frog to the big one sitting by the side of a pool, “I have seen such a terrible monster! It was as big as a mountain, with horns on its head, and a long tail, and it had hoofs divided in two.”

“Tush, child, tush,” said the old Frog, “that was only Farmer White’s Ox. It isn’t so big either; he may be a little bit taller than I, but I could easily make myself quite as broad; just you see.” So he blew himself out, and blew himself out, and blew himself out. “Was he as big as that?” asked he.

“Oh, much bigger than that,” said the young Frog.

Again the old one blew himself out, and asked the young one if the Ox was as big as that.

“Bigger, father, bigger,” was the reply.

So the Frog took a deep breath, and blew and blew and blew, and swelled and swelled and swelled. And then he said: “I’m sure the Ox is not as big as—” But at this moment he burst.

“SELF-CONCEIT MAY LEAD TO SELF-DESTRUCTION.”

People keep thinking that faith in faith, or faith for faith's sake, is what is all about. They keep thinking that that's enough. Is it? Shouldn't faith have something to do with Truth as well, even when Truth can only be approached but never possessed?

Only words

2007-09-06T17:52:00.000+01:00

Respect for the word is the first commandment in the discipline by which a man can be educated to maturity - intellectual, emotional and moral.

Respect for the word - to employ it with scrupulous care and an incorruptable heart-felt love of truth - is essential if there is to be any growth in a society or in the human race.

To misuse the word is to show the contempt for man. It undermines the bridges and poisons the wells. It causes Man to regress down the long path of his evolution.

Dag Hammarskjold, Markings, p.101

They never are 'only words' when these words help us to find a way towards Truth. But it's a pity that many people still use them to walk the opposite way, to conceal Truth, that Truth which is so scary and uncomfortable.

Religion and science

2007-08-30T09:47:00.001+01:00

If you are interested in the old debate, science versus religion, you might find very interesting this conversation between Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath:

http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=6474278760369344626

It's worth watching and thinking about. It's just a pity that such an interesting interchange hasn't found space in any TV program yet. Perhaps the general public is more interested in the misrepresentation of religion nowadays than in a proper debate about these issues.

Of Birds

2007-08-29T09:42:00.000+01:00

Abba Nicetas said of two brothers that they met with the intention of living together. The first thought within himself, 'If my brother wants something, I will do it', and the second thought the same, 'I will do the will of my brother'. So they lived many years in great charity. Seeing this, the enemy set out to separate them. He stood at the entrance to the cell, appearing to the one like a dove and to the other like a raven. The first said, 'Do you see that little dove?'. The other said, 'It is a raven'. They began to argue and to contradict one another, then they stood up and fought till they drew blood, to the great joy of the enemy; and they separated. After three days they returned and came to their senses and each asked the other's forgiveness. They recognized that each of them had believed the bird to be what he had seen and recognized that their conflict came from the enemy. So they lived to the end without being separated.

Benedicta Ward, The Sayings of the Dessert Fathers, p.157

'All that glisters is not gold'

2007-08-29T09:35:00.000+01:00

So I didn't pick up from the ground what lay there shining. It was gold, dear God. It was probably gold.

Clarice Lispector, The Foreign Legion, p.197

Forgetting

2007-08-29T09:05:00.000+01:00

If you ever come to this cloud to live and work in it, this is what you must do: just as the 'cloud of unknowing' is above you, between you and God, so you must put a 'cloud of forgetting' below you, between you and all creation. Perhaps you think that you will be far away from God, with this cloud between you, but surely it follows that you are further away than ever if there is no cloud of forgetting between you and 'all creatures'? By 'all creatures' I mean not only the creatures themselves but everything connected with them, including physical and spiritual beings, irrespective of their state or of how good or evil they are. Everything, without exception, must be removed, hidden under the cloud of forgetting.

At other times it may well be valuable to think of certain people - who they are and what they do - but in this case it is of little value, if any. For calling to mind an individual affects the spirit. Your soul's eye focuses on him just as a marksman fixes his eyes on his target. I can tell you that everything you thus engage your mind in comes between you and God, with the result that you become further away from him. Nothing but God must fill your mind.

In fact, if I may say so with all due reverence, when we are doing this work it is of little value even to dwell on God's kindness or worthiness, or on Mary, the saints or angels, or on the joys of heaven itself. It is no use thinking that such meditation will strengthen your purpose. I can tell you that it will not help one whit. For although it may usually be good to think of God's kindness and to love him and praise him for it, it is far better to contemplate God as he is, and to love him and praise him for himself alone.

The Cloud of Unknowing, pp.28-29

Not sure if all this is true. I'm sure it sometimes helps to let go of some things that keep filling our minds and don't let us enjoy life. I can't help but think of Alexander Pope's poem (Eloisa to Abelard):

How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd

But I also know that if it wasn't for being able to remember, I would probably make the same mistakes again and again. I wouldn't grow, my constant change would not imply growing and learning but rather random move without any purpose nor meaning. Remembering is part of my humanity; perhaps it's even what makes me human. And surely that's how God would want me to relate to him, as a human.

Faith in faith

2007-08-27T11:40:00.000+01:00

I believe in belief - or rather, I have faith in having faith. Yet I am an atheist... so, how can that be?

It is important to have faith, but not necessarily in God. Faith is important far beyond the realm of religion: having faith in oneself, in other people, in the existence of truth and justice. There is a continuum of faith, from the basic everyday trust in others to the grand devotion to divine entities.

Recent advances in behavioral sciences, such as experimental economics and game theory, demonstrate that having faith is a common human attitude toward the world. Faith is vital in human interactions; it is no coincidence that the anchoring of behaviour in risky trust is emphasized in systems of thought as diverse as Soren Kierkegaard's existentialist Christianity and modern theories of bargaining behaviour in economic interactions. Both stress the importance of inner, subjective conviction as the basis for action, the feeling of an inner glow.

Tor Norretranders, What We Believe but Cannot Prove, pp.46-47

Photons

2007-08-27T11:24:00.000+01:00

What are photons? A friend asked me this question yesterday. I don't know. But this is an interesting lecture by someone who might know, Richard Feynman:

http://www.vega.org.uk/video/programme/45

Tell me what you think...

Are you happy?

2007-08-27T10:42:00.000+01:00

Evidence of our deluded brains begins with a seemingly innocuous question: Are you happy with your social life? Or, to put it another way, are you unhappy with your social life?

Your answer, you may be surprised to learn, is astonishingly sensitive to which way the question is phrased. People asked if they are happy, rather than unhappy, with their social lifes report greater satisfaction. Responsibility for this peculiar irrationality in our self-knowledge lies with what is known as 'positive test strategy'. As we contemplate that fascinating inner tangle of our attitudes, personality traits and skills, we ask our internal oracle questions to divine what we suppose to be the truth about ourselves. Am I happy with my social life? Do I want to stay married? Would I make a good parent? You then trawl through your store of self-knowledge searching for evidence that the hypothesis in question is correct. You remember that party that you enjoyed last weekend. The touching interest your spouse takes in the small potatoes of your life. Your remarkable talent for manipulating balloons into the shape of animals.

Phrase the question the other way around, however, and your memory throws up a very different pile of evidence. Am I unhappy with my social life? Now you remember what bores you find most of your friends. Do I want a divorce? You think of that dreadful silent meal on your anniversary. Would I make a bad parent? Suddenly your unfortunate tendency to leave valuable possessions behind on public transport comes to mind. That's why people asked if they're happy (rather than unhappy) with their social lives believe themselves to be happier on that front. (The positive test strategy is also the reason you should never ask someone 'Don't you live me any more?').

Cordelia Fine, A Mind of Its Own, pp.62-63