Putting some spirit into spiritual

I read a good article by Robin Ince on the subject of spirituality this morning; it's a subject that I find incredibly slippery and it would seem that Ince has the exact same problem with it. Like me he often hears people say things like "I'm not religious, but, I am spiritual", in the article he examines what this word really means.

It's clear from the infinite variety of documented "spiritual" experiences that the word means completely different things to different people, but I suspect Ince has nailed the real underlying meaning, he concludes that "spirituality" is a word people use to give the illusion of depth and understanding to some experience that they find impressive but do not fully understand. Like our primitive ancestors standing on the ridge observing the moonrise or at the graves-edge contemplating the life of a loved one, many experiences challenge our comprehension, they may be beautiful or terrifying and may have the potential to harm or benefit us but it's almost always a fallacy to assume there is a master plan that involves the observer.

Our brains have evolved to seek meaning and look for purpose in the world, it's how our species gained the upper hand over other species that are faster, stronger and more agile than us; it's how we made it through the Pleistocene to become the most dominant animal on the savannah. When we reach the limit of our ability to rationalise something some of us throw it in a bucket labelled "spiritual". I think this urge to label stems from an instinctive dislike of the unlabelled, Human beings would much rather have a bad explanation for something than no explanation at all, the hardest words for us to utter are "I don't know".

Since the invention of science the spiritual bucket has been emptying fast, science punctures holes in the fabric of this vessel like nothing else, providing practical and deep explanations for things seen and unseen. However, many people still cling to the old ways of thinking about the unknown, they maintain a vice like grip on the ever lightening spiritual bucket for fear that by releasing it they will lose something inspiring or wondrous in their lives. I believe this fear is an illusion; the feeling that is craved is just the feeling we all get when our comprehension is challenged; this experience is equally accessible via a rational approach to life as it is a spiritual one, in fact I would argue that even though harder, the former is by far the more fulfilling.

If "spiritual" is simply the word some people use to describe what it feels like when their neural pathways reach the edge and can go no further then Science is a proven way to extend those pathways. On the other hand, simply labelling the experience "spiritual" and quitting at that point seems to me to be much less satisfying.

Judgement

Don't you find it uncanny that the demands of "God" are invariably aligned to the petty parochial interests and prejudices of his followers, funny that.

I recently watched the film 12 years a slave which won a BAFTA last week (highly recommended). This excellent film is a very precise telling of a book written by a man called Solomon Northup who was a (free) black man living in New York, America in the 1850s its a first person account of a family man being kidnapped into slavery and forcefully transported to the cotton fields of Mississippi and Louisiana; it left me feeling numb. Even if you don't see the film you can download the book for free from here it's short and makes for an eye-opening read. Both the book and the film are replete with God fearing white men wielding perverse interpretations of their "holy" books to justify the suffering of slaves for the purposes of self-enrichment. Much like the current-day religious right, they drink heavily from the well of confirmation bias and were complicit in a world-wide trade which one could argue was the rule and not the exception at that time, there was clearly lots of blood on lots of hands.

It's a risky business to "judge" the actions of people from history, their moral landscape was different from ours, what counts as moral behaviour evolves as we learn more about the world we live in. I think the best we can do is educate ourselves and ensure that useful lessons learnt are not lost. In my travels I often find that religious apologists often prefer to defocus the role of religion in slavery by claiming that these people just didn't interpret scripture correctly or that the abolitionists were also Christians (interpreting the same texts!), however, regardless of your faith or otherwise it's indisputable that people of all strokes are capable of sustained evil of the highest order. Such people always gravitate toward unfalsifiable ideas and theologies in order to justify their actions, break this spell with accountability, reason and enlightenment and things invariably improve for all.

Things that boggle my mind

People (as we would recognise ourselves) have been around on this planet for quite a decent period of time, certainly in the order of a quarter of a million years or so; we invented agriculture around 10,000 years ago and started to develop organised societies with cities, systems of government, religions and writing some 5,000 years ago; the Romans rose up around 2100 years ago and disappeared a few hundred years later. 500 years ago printing was invented and as early as 300 years ago we were making maps of the night sky using early optical telescopes. We had the beginnings of what was necessary to truly understand our place in the universe and a mechanism to communicate it widely. It took another 200 years to grasp the true size and scale of our cosmic back-yard and throughout the Enlightenment as we discarded our primitive paranoia about magic deities in the sky who governed our thoughts, we've been improving our knowledge at an ever increasing rate.

This year we have a brand new European space craft in an L2 orbit 1.5 million km from the Earth called Gaia. The two tonne space-craft will remain in orbit for 5 years mapping around 1% of the 100 billion stars in our galaxy with an unprecedented degree of precision. The camera on board the ESA Gaia platform has around 1 billion pixels, that's a lot of pixels! It can resolve objects to 1/3600th of a degree, which is equivalent to resolving a mobile phone on the surface of the Moon and is several thousand times what the Hubble space telescope can do. Over the years Gaia will measure the change in positions of the stars as well as their apparent motion as the Earth moves around the Sun (parallax) it will also look at what the stars are made of via their electromagnetic spectra as well as their Doppler shift which tells us their precise motion through space. The data should enable us to understand our place in the universe much better than before and who knows, just like the early star charts, this data may be used by some future explorer as a navigation aid on some pioneering cosmic voyage, I wonder if I'll still be around to see it.

Snake oil salesmen

I came across this little story this morning, it's about one of those hell fire and brimstone preacher types in America who think it's a good idea to juggle rattlesnakes in the name of their so called "faith". This particular guy had a number of run-in's with the law and also a number of bites, one of which was so bad it caused one of his fingers to drop off. Eventually his luck ran out and he died of a snake bite last week for which he had refused medical treatment, what an idiot.

Anyway, I don't want to dwell on this person and his reptile fetishes what struck me more about the story was just how awesome snake venom is, a true marvel of the evolutionary process, a specialisation that allows animals with severely restricted mobility (i.e. snakes) to capture prey that can easily out run, out swim or out fly them. In evolutionary terms venom seems to be a highly modified kind of saliva and contains a complex mixture of proteins, enzymes and other chemicals some of which are adapted to particular biological functions within particular prey species. Generally venom knocks out the capability of the prey to escape or fight, usually this means by paralysing the victim or at least slowing it down enough to enable it to be tracked and followed by the snake. In some cases the venom also acts as a digesting agent, helping to convert the hapless prey into organic mush prior to being eaten by the predator.

It's these specific biological actions that makes some venoms useful to medical science. Pharmacologists have discovered that by isolating certain chemicals from the venom of certain species of snake it's possible to cherry pick desirable characteristics such as suppression of blood clotting that helps people with high blood pressure etc. In addition to this they have also discovered that it's possible to trigger an immune response to venom by extracting and diluting it and then injecting it into a person who then becomes able to resist the worse effects of the real thing. Many lives have been saved through this research in places like Australia and India where a staggering number of people are bitten (around 400,000 per year!)

It's amazing that this fascinating product of evolution can be exploited by humans for such diverse purposes, on the one hand we have a completely perverted and dishonest side-show, designed to convince people of imaginary powers and extract money from them. On the other hand we have truly useful and practical scientific research that has saved hundreds of thousands of lives regardless of race, creed or culture; the contrast between our past and our future could not be greater.

Cnutism

I notice that the Twitter-sphere is alight with angry voices after Tory grandee Nigel Lawson appeared with Brian Hoskins (PHD climatologist) on radio 4 this morning to talk about climate change. You can listen to the programme here, but the opinions expressed by Lawson were predictably like the sediment deposited in people's homes by the Thames this week, i.e. stubbornly immoveable and malodorous. On the whole I don't think people are upset that Lord Lawson holds such anti-science, anti-evidence views, he is after all entitled to hold whatever opinions he chooses and is (fortunately for us) not accountable to the general public any longer. The problem people seem to have is that he was presented by the BBC as a credible voice to counter the cautious, reasoned views of a life-long climate scientist and world renowned expert in the field. No mention was made that Lawson has precisely zero qualifications in this area and is funded to make noise by the industries that stand to lose the most from changes in government policy on green initiatives like wind and solar power generation. Regardless of the evidence for man-made climate change (and there is lots) and regardless of your political leanings surely it makes better strategic sense (from the point of view of sustainable economic growth and security) to be investing in new forms of power generation technology and to lead those fields rather than focus on shaving ever leaner fillets from the rotting carcass of big oil? Seeking sound information on climate from lobbyists like Lawson is rather like seeking recommendations for Christmas lunch from turkeys, you have to ask yourself, who stands to gain most from avoiding the issue?

Never a truer word...

A classic dark coloured cooking utensil situation... and there was me thinking this was a free country..

New Brew

I had a free hour on Saturday afternoon so I took a trip to Finchamstead to visit a new brewery that opened last year, its called "Siren Craft Brew" and is located in a little industrial unit on the outskirts of the village about 3-4 miles from my house. I'm a big fan of small scale brewing initiatives like this, especially local ones and was keen to try a few beers and see what they could offer, I'm glad to report that I wasn't disappointed.

The company has what they call a "core range" of 4 beers and also produce experimental and seasonal brews that you need to snap up when they become available. I tried all of the core beers which were called Soundwave, Undercurrent, Liquid Mistress and Broken Dream. I liked all of them but my favourite was Soundwave, an American style IPA which was fruity, bitter and hop filled. Broken Dream, their stout, was also nice and flavoured with coffee, a little gimmicky perhaps but very complex flavours and probably nice in small quantities with food since it was also quite strong (6%) I bought some bottles directly from the little shop there but the man also told me that they had started supplying Laithwaites and Majestic with mixed boxes, certainly not a cheap beer (£2.50 for 330ml) but definitely not run of the mill.

Knotty theological problems

In news yesterday we learn of a terrorist trainer in Iraq who thought it would be a good idea to have some "live ammo" practice with his students. He strapped himself into an explosive belt and proceeded to detonate himself and 21 other hopeful suicide bombers, I guess since he's now covering the class with his subject he won't be covering that subject in his class again? Delicious irony perhaps but I bet the residents of Baghdad will be overjoyed to learn that these extremists won't now be sharing their ideas and their vaporised brains with the general population. The more important theological question for the year below is, will they still get the virgins?

Double speak

Two things struck me today, #1 it was the first day in ages that I actually wanted to go outside, blue sky and winter sun, lovely walk around Frensham pond, and #2 where the heck has January gone?

Time seems to pass faster than ever these days! Yesterday I had a visit to my front door by a Jehovah's Witness dropping off his little leaflet exclaiming "the truth!" and crammed with Bible verses thereby proving it was true. I did point out that being a bit of a traditionalist I felt using a book to prove the validity of that same book seemed a little circular to me but the young lad doing the "witnessing" (who looked about 12 years old) clearly hadn't yet grappled with the broad sweep of Human relationships, reproduction and personal hygiene let alone the finer points of logic and reason. The conversation and the leaflet put me in mind of the above cartoon, with faulty logic like this people can't fail to feel safe and self righteous (unfortunately, only in their heads), but then again on a day like today (no rain!) the only resistance I could muster was a smile and shrug. It's sad that there seem to be a lot of people for whom the realities of life on beautiful day in a beautiful place aren't enough.

Proportionality

Jesus and Mo. on the money as usual.

Heartland fruitcake

If one thing is as certain as death and taxes it's that religion eventually inspires otherwise normal, intelligent people to do and say incredibly stupid things. Yesterday I read about a perfect example of this. Henley on Thames UKIP councillor David Silvester (a keen Baptist) thinks that the recent flooding in the UK is because of gay people and the latest UK equality legislation. I suppose that UKIP will now be lobbying for us to quit spending money on meteorology and climate research since their members are able to forecast the weather based on interpreting a bronze age book of Hebrew myths! How long before the Caprinae slaughter begins, we wonder.

Like many others before him Mr Silvester has a habit of allowing ancient religious dogma to cloud his reasoning abilities, he's previously on record as claiming that UK abortion laws are equivalent to the Nazi Holocaust and that homosexuality can be "cured" by prayer. Most reasonable people could easily come up with dozens of reasons why such claims are ludicrous but then if, like Mr Silvester, you don't respect reason then using an evidence based argument doesn't usually make any difference. I suppose in some ways Silvester is doing everyone a favour, i.e. by scratching the surface of organisations like UKIP (and Baptists) and allowing the rest of us to see the true colour of the metal underneath he is allowing voters to make more informed decisions, hopefully marginalising views like his to where they belong, i.e. the past.

Praise be unto He

Is this how religions get started?

Drink anyone?

January sales are here with a vengeance, the shear weight of SPAM in my inbox is simply amazing I reckon it's dropping in at a rate of around 3 messages per minute!

Most of the time I ruthlessly junk and shred (electronically) such messages simply from their subject lines however one did catch my eye today. It was from a wine merchant advertising their January sale, one of the wines on the list was reduced by a whopping £4,800 for a case of 12 bottles. Down from £96,000 to £91,200 what a bargain!

Admittedly this is a rather special wine, a rare Burgundy that has a very limited production which is normally snapped up by greedy bankers before anyone else can get a look in.

Can't help wondering what it tastes like though..

Confirmation bias...

Two kinds of "knowing"..

Listen to this American Christian "preacher" (John Hagee) He claims to "know" about a lot of things; things that are profound, deep and complex, things which I would not dare claim to "know" according to my own definition of the word "know". This man clearly has a definition of "know" which is not the same as mine, by my reckoning his is a far less scrupulous and less honest definition. What I think he really means is that he "believes" these things based on no evidence whatsoever, in his parlance he has "faith" and this faith is utterly shaped by his narrow interests, ethnicity, culture and upbringing rather than the reality of the wider world or the communities of people he claims to "know".

"Knowing" is certainly not the word I would use to describe the kinds of thing that this particular religious man is claiming to know, in fact the word I would use to describe his state of mind is "deluded". How can I be so sure that this is delusion? Well, let's take a look at his claims and see if there's any evidence that would show his faith based assertions to be false...

"Atheism does not paint masterpieces", but atheists have.
"Atheism does not heal the sick", but atheists do.
"Atheism has never dispelled fear", but atheists do.
"Atheism has never given anyone piece of mind", but atheists have.
"Atheism has never dried a tear", but atheists have.
"Atheism has never given an intellectual answer to the creation", but atheists have.

I have to question whether or not this preacher has ever even met an atheist? Not that I suspect this would ever stop Hagee from pretending to be an expert on us. Lying to people about subjects he knows next to nothing about seems to be pretty much what he and most other clergy do for a living.

Tradition

Only two of us left in the office now, me and one other colleague (who happens to be Chinese and therefore doesn't really "do" Christmas) hopefully I'll be shutting up shop around midday and heading out into the frenzy that is last minute shopping. The stillness of our normally bustling, noisy office offered me a moment to reflect, so what is Christmas supposed to be about anyway?

Well I think that depends on your perspective, like most cultural phenomenon there is no hard and fast definition and the whole thing seems to be a mash up of all the different elements and traditions that have sprung up and evolved alongside us as the Homo-British-sapiens species has moved through time. Personally I like most of the things in this diagram, vive la difference! would be my philosophy, just be wary of any particular community who claim to have sole ownership of the season, no one really does and that's probably why it persists.

Conspiracy theories

J&M sums up the secular conspiracy pretty well; just watch out all you religious folk, we're coming to GET YOU... not until after the Christmas break of course, no point in starting a revolution when Waitrose isn't even open!

Special treatment?

When is it OK to make exceptions?

In life we make exceptions all the time, we don't force family members or work colleagues to eat things they don't like even though no harm would come to them if they did; we are tolerant of different choices in entertainment, sport and all manner of interests and hobbies even when sometimes those activities impinge on others; even in the thorny area of politics we celebrate diversity and equate it with the health of our society. Organisations and societies make exceptions for people all the time, so why then would some people get upset about a Muslim shop worker refusing to serve someone with alcohol in M&S, isn't this just another justifiable reason for exception making?

There are of course two sides to this story, some of us look at it and think how trivial, what's all the fuss about, a classic "non-story", exceptions are made for things like this all the time. On the other hand some look at it and think, is this a slippery slope?, should a line in the sand be drawn? Personally I think this is an overreaction by some, there are clear precedents for dealing with certain goods such as alcohol, cigarettes and pornography in most shops. In most supermarkets there are already procedures in place for under 18's to sell products only intended for over 18's, i.e. a supervisor comes over and authorises the purchase, in a well run shop this needn't delay the customer at all. I don't understand why M&S couldn't employ a similar process if certain employees have "problems" with certain products.

I guess a slight delay in buying Christmas Champagne brings the clash of cultures into sharp relief for some middle class commentators, shame it took so long.

Reasons to be cheerful pt 3

Continuing on the "war on Christmas" theme I came across this article today. The right-wing news station Fox News (owned by Rupert Murdoch) ran a piece by the well known American Christian Theologian/Philosopher William Lane-Craig titled "A Christmas gift for Atheists - Five reasons why God exists". Now, WLC is supposed to be (according to many Christian commentators in the USA) the leading Christian light in terms of rational, philosophical debate, he is pitched as some kind of "Atheist's worst nightmare". You can imagine my excitement when I saw this headline, perhaps finally, the theistic side of the house will be presenting some decent arguments, something that isn't just the usual strung out, circular dribble of wish thinking, scientific ignorance and moral cherry picking, something we can all get our teeth into.

I've copied and commented on Craig's 5 points below, so let's have a look..

1.  God provides the best explanation of the origin of the universe.  Given the scientific evidence we have about our universe and its origins, and bolstered by arguments presented by philosophers for centuries, it is highly probable that the universe had an absolute beginning. Since the universe, like everything else, could not have merely popped into being without a cause, there must exist a transcendent reality beyond time and space that brought the universe into existence. This entity must therefore be enormously powerful. Only a transcendent, unembodied mind suitably fits that description.

Hold on a minute, these assertions are based on a flawed premise, this is just the old cosmological argument, the assertion that everything has a first cause is unjustified, it's an argument from intuition. You'll need a lot more than simple "intuition" to convince the theoretical physicists on subjects such as infinity and causality. Where's the Maths WLC? And why would an "unembodied mind" be the only possible explanation, why not an as yet undiscovered natural phenomenon, or the multi-verse, or quantum fluctuation?

2.  God provides the best explanation for the fine-tuning of the universe. Contemporary physics has established that the universe is fine-tuned for the existence of intelligent, interactive life.  That is to say, in order for intelligent, interactive life to exist, the fundamental constants and quantities of nature must fall into an incomprehensibly narrow life-permitting range.  There are three competing explanations of this remarkable fine-tuning: physical necessity, chance, or design. The first two are highly implausible, given the independence of the fundamental constants and quantities from nature's laws and the desperate manoeuvres needed to save the hypothesis of chance. That leaves design as the best explanation.

But, the universe isn't "fine-tuned" for intelligent life (like Human beings)? It may have escaped WLC's attention but 99.99999999 (and so on) % of what we currently know as our "universe" is totally uninhabitable for our kind of life, in fact most of planet Earth is the same, too cold, too hot, too dry, too wet or simply devoid of the essentials for life. In addition to this fundamental point, I have to ask, with what is Craig comparing our universe, how many universes were sampled to come up with this assertion?

3.  God provides the best explanation of objective moral values and duties. Even atheists recognize that some things, for example, the Holocaust, are objectively evil. But if atheism is true, what basis is there for the objectivity of the moral values we affirm? Evolution? Social conditioning? These factors may at best produce in us the subjective feeling that there are objective moral values and duties, but they do nothing to provide a basis for them. If human evolution had taken a different path, a very different set of moral feelings might have evolved. By contrast, God Himself serves as the paradigm of goodness, and His commandments constitute our moral duties. Thus, theism provides a better explanation of objective moral values and duties.

But we do have an objective moral source, it's us, homo sapiens sapiens! We would not have thrived so long as a social species unless we developed our own moral values and cultural frameworks (of which Christianity is but one example). Atheists can be demonstrably good without God, Christians can be demonstrably bad with him and our moral standards change over time, so a much more likely explanation is that Atheism is the correct position and simply that people will be people, the good the bad and the psychopathic.

4.  God provides the best explanation of the historical facts concerning Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection.  Historians have reached something of consensus that the historical Jesus thought that in himself God’s Kingdom had broken into human history, and he carried out a ministry of miracle-working and exorcisms as evidence of that fact.  Moreover, most historical scholars agree that after his crucifixion Jesus’ tomb was discovered empty by a group of female disciples, that various individuals and groups saw appearances of Jesus alive after his death, and that the original disciples suddenly and sincerely came to believe in Jesus’ resurrection despite their every predisposition to the contrary. I can think of no better explanation of these facts than the one the original disciples gave: God raised Jesus from the dead.

So WLC can't think of a better explanation for the disappearance of a body from a tomb than divine intervention? really? (Roman medical experiments?) Assuming Jesus even existed (and that's a stretch) all the work still remains ahead of Craig in terms of proving that this person was in fact a God and that his legend was not simply created after the fact, like Craig must think all other religious myths were, there is nothing remarkable or exceptional about the Christian one. Does Craig's God explain how Mohammed flew to heaven on a winged horse or how Krishna was the eighth incarnation of Vishnu?

5.  God can be personally known and experienced.  The proof of the pudding is in the tasting. Down through history Christians have found through Jesus a personal acquaintance with God that has transformed their lives.

And so says every other religious person throughout history! Atheists do not claim that religious people don't experience subjective psychological phenomena that can affect how they see the world, this is well known. Our brains are predisposed to such phenomena through a myriad of chemical interactions and environmental effects. The essential ingredient missing from Craig's analysis is some critique of the nature of the experience, simply stating that "I had a dream" or "I felt warm and fuzzy whilst singing hymns" is simply not enough to prove anything beyond normal (natural) human experience.

How disappointing, I guess I'll stay an Atheist then, merry Christmas WLC..

War on Christmas?

Is the Anglican Church starting a war on Christmas?

I read today that Wiltshire Canon, Simon Tatton-Brown spilt the beans to a group of primary school pupils attending his "festive address", causing a furore of angry parents and leaving a sobbing crowd of upset youngsters. Apparently the good Canon told his audience that Father Christmas was based on the legend of St. Nicholas and not a cherubic fat man dressed in a red suit that lives at the North Pole surrounded by elves and reindeer! I can't help but sup deeply from the cup of irony here, I sympathise with the chap since it's an easy slip to make, but, having spent a life-time in the Church he of all people he should have been well versed in perpetuating mythology and going with the flow because it makes people feel warm and fuzzy inside.

I would suggest a more honest course of action in situations like this, simply tell children what we know and what we don't know, teach them to take the risk of thinking for themselves; much more happiness, truth, beauty and wisdom will come to them that way.