a blog by howard jameson @ gatheringgrace.org

Being Human

Just had Baroness Greenfield speaking on the neuroscience of what makes us human. Mind blowing stuff.

Now sitting on the lawn with a Guiness trying to avoid the tennis. Once Borg is out I lose interest.

The fall and rise of Creationism

A strange article on the BBC yesterday about Creationism - apparently its on the rise in the UK and has something like 43% support in the USA.

I'm not sure how to understand this properly as, I suspect, there are different reasons for this on both sides of the Atlantic. In the US I would argue that historically they have been independent and wary of those trying to impose authority. When this is placed on top of a religious environment rooted, at least superficially, in more conservative Evangelicalism, then Creationism is a defence against ideas which threaten their historic world-view. (Their wrong, but its understandable. Contrary to Dawkins they are people, not victims of a virus).

In Europe I think we have a different history. Although the C of E is apologising to Darwin because of...Rowan, why are we apologising to Darwin? ("Charles, we are sorry that some people did not believe you first time round and a Bishop's wife made a bad joke about it". There, that's a load off my conscience). In our more European mindset I think any rise in Creationism is based on a seeping post-modern suspicion of Scientists, the men in white coats who have been wheeled out to sell us new washing powder or to assure us that thalidomide was perfectly safe. There are also those, like me, who feel cheated of the utopian future that we were promised on Tomorrow's World back in the 70's. The brave New World is as crap as the old one (IMHO).

However, has anybody ever met a British Creationist? I can think of one. Perhaps for many Creationism is something you believe, but doing other things is far more important (preaching the Good News or doing a soup run).

Imagine we woke up this morning with mighty flying saucers hovering over our cities. We have little chance other than to surrender, and part of the terms are that we destroy all our scientific equipment. Scientific orthodoxy is then beamed down from the ships onto our screens. One or two brave geneticists rescue copies of their books from the local branch of Waterstones and are immediately struck by a neon green ray causing them to disappear, leaving only a pile of dust and a few charred pages of text. This new science is based on the invaders' (I suppose I would have to call it) Universeview in which genetics and DNA and all sorts of Higgs-Bosons have come together to create a race designed and destined to rule the Universe. We, therefore, are unable to question this new truth.

I don't think this is a million miles from the place in which the exiled people of God found themselves. The invaders' story of creation, involving murder and the entrails of deities, justified violence and a pre-Darwinian survival of the fittest. How to fight back with no army or prospect of victory?

God's people started to fightback by telling a subverted version of the Marduk story in which companionship and a garden were central, not entrails, and in which violence was explained not as the inevitable but as the result of damage. That, for me, is the beginning of the book of Genesis. It tells us that God made the world, but not how. It explains why it is the way it is by story, not by science (how could they know?).

It reminds me of something Frank Schaeffer said at Greenbelt talking about his autobiography. For him writing this book Crazy for God was only an attempt at writing a bit of the truth - he could only write the bits he saw and understood. For him as an artist and creator, his fictional books were more truthful, therefore, than his "factual" auto-biography.

The building blocks of the Universe

Lots of apocalyptic end of the world stuff coming out of the USA regarding the LHC experiment soon to start up on the Continent. Most of this, I reckon, is because it is going on in Europe and not in the USA. They want the world filled with American-only technology like computers (hang on, didn't we make Colossus?) and iPods (just a minute, wasn't that us as well?).

So I wish the LHC success, and look forward to them announcing that they have discovered the true building blocks of the Universe; friendship, compassion and the occasional really, really good joke.

I want one...

...an air guitar T-shirt.

A T-shirt wired up so you play air guitar and it detects the motion and somewhere along the line it makes music. FAB!! I wonder if the Clergy outfitters will be licensing the technology.

I won't be holding my breath.

The values of faith and society: The God Delusion and other writings

I have been having a look around the net to see what is available by Richard Dawkins. Quite a lot by the look of it.

We had an interesting session here last week by a Professor of Entomology from the University. He is a Christian and, no surprise here, disagrees with Dawkins about matters of 'faith' even though he agrees with him totally about evolution.

What is interesting to me, as somebody who enjoys observing the interface between faith and the world, is to see the state of the debate between the atheism of Dawkins and the beliefs of those within the Christian faith. This latter category is a broad one, and so when Dawkins has a go at Creationism I don't disagree with him even though I might not like the sneer I detect in his tone. I was interested to read comments made on his site concerning an article by Alister McGrath. The criticisms of McGrath in the comment at the bottom of the article mirror almost exactly those I hear said about Dawkins; simplistic ideas are set up as the thrust of the argument, which can then be demolished easily. Certainly I have not yet read anything by Dawkins in which I recognise an accurate description of the Christian faith with which I identify, but its always easier to pick on the extremist oddballs.

Certainly Dawkins claims the moral and intellectual high ground. He states that he refuses to debate with Creationists because it provides them with the oxygen of publicity, which may or may not be the case. When he does get involved with those who disagree loudly with him, such as the Quicktime video on his site, he writes up a good account of his roundly seeing them off.

But the problem with the debate goes much deeper. When both sides rubbish the other for the simplistic caricature they sketch of their opponent then it is difficult to see how any meaningful progression can be made. This is sad.

I was challenged by another Dawkins article, though. In his short essay entitled The Emptiness of Theology he ridicules the idea of theology being of any practical use at all. Get rid of all theologians, he argues, and it makes no difference to the world at all; but rid the world of scientists and their work would still remain. He does acknowledge that some scientific advances are bad, 'at least they work'.

But of course the scientist in her white coat in a laboratory developing a vaccine or producing some new material is in splendid isolation. The value of her work is when somebody takes the vaccine and administers it correctly, or when I cook my sausages and they don't stick to the pan. The lasting value is provided by the development and distribution. Dawkins may not like to know, but for most people the correctness of Darwin's theories have made no measurable difference to my day today. The theoretical science of Einstein may be brilliant and true, but I can't recall that cropping up either.

Dawkins is disingenuous here. A theologian is probably also a developer of abstract ideas, the value comes when truth and practice come together, when the paper changes opinions and behaviours. Dawkins cannot, surely, dispute that many of faith have made sacrifices in order bring benefit to others (I'm not talking about proselytizing) and that religious thought has on occasions made a moral change in the view of the majority, such as Wilberforce's stand against slavery. Compared to this the amoral semi-justification of any science just because it works, feels decidedly cold and inhuman.

Of course there are many who commit horrors in the name of religion, but they often use science to achieve their ghastly aims, and the last century saw those who did sickening acts against fellow humans using cutting edge technology but without recourse to religion, certainly the scientific precision of the Nazis and the brutal atheistic materialism of Stalin cannot be ignored in this debate.

Perhaps the truth is a lot deeper and more complicated than Dawkins has yet acknowledged. The evidence would certainly seem to point towards humanity as a species capable of incredible acts of heroism and achievement, sometimes at immense cost to self, and yet also able to commit horror and sickening violence in order to advance selfish aims, and that is a truth which I find described and wrestled with in Christian theology and not in the realms of science.

Grace and probability

Reading Geoff's sock dilemma and his desire for research funding, may I launch my own plea for time and money to be allowed to investigate an interesting phenomena.

Being a lapsed scientist I find myself fascinated by the question; if you are sitting in a circle of Christians (let's say there are n of them, not to be confused with N which is only one person of unknown name), how many people does one typicaly actually make eye contact with whilst the Grace is being said.

Depending on the make up of the group this could be about 2/3 of those there, the rest bow their heads. Therefore I can only theoretically make eye contact with something like 2/3 x n. But significantly in order to make eye contact most of this 2/3 x n people will move their head from left to right and back again in a slow scan of eyes available to respond (a sort of loving equivalent of a drive-by). Thus it is not unusual for a reasonable proportion of the 2/3 x n to be looking in another direction at the exact moment I am available to make eye contact with them. I think it is entirely possible for something near a half of those in the room to be unavailable for eye contact due to being in eye contact with another person at that moment. This leaves me to the conclusion that in a group of Christians the time taken to say The Grace is nowhere near long enough to allow eye contact with any more than a 1/3 of those present.

Perhaps St Paul wasn't quite as smart as some people make out!

Horizon and the war on science

I found this article interesting about the British public's view on evolution, creationism and intelligent design. The research was carried out on behalf of the BBC 2 science programme Horizon (of which I have been a fan for decades).

Why should the British public be so sceptical about the theory of evolution? (I for one have no problem with accepting that as the theory which best fits all the available evidence and find no inconsistency with a Christian faith).

One of post-Modernism's starting points is the loss of faith in the men in white coats, a reaction against both the naivety of Tomorrow's World but also a suspicion of the arrogance of days gone by ("Don't worry...there is no danger of [insert here choice of malfunction leading to disaster]"). Certainly there is no real history of fundamentalism such as we may detect in the US media.

It is rather ironic though that the Horizon programme is titled "A war on science", when science has sought to use exactly the same means to eradicate issues of faith for the last two hundred years or so. If you can't take it, don't give it.

The start of a long goodbye?

I was upset to see that the White House has withdrawn funding for future maintenance and upkeep of the Hubble Space Telescope. Go and look at some of the most breathtaking pictures you may ever see...

God and suffering

Spooky moment. I finished the book Krakatoa whilst lying in bed on Sunday morning. When I eventually emerged and checked the news I read of the terrible earthquake and the resulting tsunamis in and round the Indian Ocean. I think the current estimated death toll is in the region of 20,000. Fatalities beyond imagining. My thoughts and prayers are with those bereaved and homeless.

pi and the meaning of life

Have been catching up with films that I have half watched. Have just finished pi telling the story of Max, a brilliant mathematician, and his search for the meaning of a 216 digit number.

Several others are on the trail of this number as well. One group are seeking a way of predicting a stock market crash, and so are willing to offer Max a super new computer chip to help his research. Meanwhile another group, strict Jews, seek this number as it apparently (when translated into Hebrew) reveals the actual name for God, which they need in order to herald the Messianic Age. For Max the search is also about the beauty of a number, and mathematics' ability to describe the world in which we live.