The Algebraic god

To early man, the sun rises from its hollow in the ground, processes over his head before submerging into the earth in the other direction. The wind randomly gathers and calms to power his fishing boat to feed his children. Flowers and vegetables emerge magically from the soil every spring bringing with it nurturing life and sustenance. All tempered by the random terror of earthquakes, volcanoes and hurricanes.

Not only where there unknown unknowns like nuclear physics, but there were lots of known unknowns such as basic anatomy, circulation and respiratory as well as the ins and outs of animal and human reproduction - the miracle of life itself.

How did we as a species, summon the courage to even leave the cave never mind to survive and thrive? I read a book some years ago now, by the anthropologist Pascal Boyer - I don’t think it would be too much hyperbole to say that it was a turning point. It is called ‘Religion Explained’ and I read it to learn more about how ‘other’ religions emerged. The can of worms was probably open before I read it, but this book spilled them out all over the floor.

He riffs on the idea that ‘Blind Faith’ is a healthy and natural human phenomenon. It’s perfectly acceptable and desirable that before Galileo worked out how earth isn’t the centre of things, and in fact the earth rotates around the sun… that people had to just have faith that the sun would rise every day (some still did a morning dance just in case). They had no tools or knowledge to rationally determine how or why it would. They had to make some assumptions just to get on with the business of living. It’s completely helpful and normal to see it as a mystically defined ‘black box’ or even personify it as a deity.

The point is I suppose that this is blind faith, and it’s ok, and in fact helpful. The Greeks gave names to the black boxes (Aphrodite, Apollo, Thor, and Zeus). The problem surely comes when after a few generations people start to take these gods too literally, develop dogmas and then when a bright mind inquires how the stars fit in the sky - people call him a heretic for daring to deny the authority of Apollo.

Likewise Adam and Eve is a perfectly helpful algebraic black box until it causes people to
limit their investigations into the origins of man. The ‘universe instigator’ god is helpfully algebraic until it colours our investigations into universal origins.

Perhaps the unhelpful kind of faith is that which allows for acceptance of supernatural claims based on less than convincing evidence rather than the kind that helped Newton explain the natural world. It’s the kind of faith which a makes a suicide bomber believe that he communicates intimately with a loving Allah or for a Christian who lives his life in the light the resurrection and virgin birth of Jesus, not because he is necessarily convinced by the evidence but because he has faith in the dogma.

I don’t see this kind of faith as a virtue; it’s not blind faith, its blinding faith.

Larry David Norman (4/8/1947 – 24/2/2008)

The American ‘Dylan-esque’ singer songwriter Larry Norman died last week. He’s a man I’ve seen in concert more than a few times, and had the honour of sharing a limo (people carrier) back from a gig to a hotel in Eindhoven one time. I didn’t know him personally so wouldn’t pretend or assume to write a homily, but I’ll write about my experience of him.

Underrated by the main stream? Certainly. Overrated by the Christian music scene? Most definitely.

It feels disresepectful to write what I’m gonna write next, but I know there will be loads who think the same when they hear he died. They’ll say, seriously! You mean he’s not dead yet!? I remember going to a concert with GrumpyMan in the Assembly Buildings in Belfast circa 1990, everyone was in their seats waiting expectantly about half an hour before Showtime when the promoter came out and told us that he was actually still in Holland, pretty much at death’s door. Over the next, well 18 years I guess he had been rumoured to be almost dead. I wonder how it would have changed his life to know in 1990, than actually death wasn’t just around the corner. Maybe that’s a great way to live, or maybe it’s not.

Next time I met Larry was in 1997 when my little band of musicians were sharing main stage at a festival called Flevo in Holland. He held the crowd of thousands in awe as he stumbled through his repertoire, like an aged price fighter, every anthem felt like it could be final. Afterwards myself and Vox were waiting in the back stage drivers area waiting to be shipped back to our hotel - the drivers were having a bit of banter with us, talking in dutch of course and probably taking the mick, so we were in the boisterous mood pretending to be jack-the-lads ourselves. A knock game to the door and for some reason I thought it would be funny to pull the door open really quickly and shout YES?! WHATAYAWANT! At who ever it was. It was of course Larry. “I need a drive, man” he mumbled. I felt really daft and said…. “ur, um I’m … an artist not a driver” (I’m going red, as i did then).

Of course now that Larry was wanting a lift the drivers swung in to action, yes larry, no larry. So we were told we could share a car with Larry. Memory fails me, but I think I jumped in the front seat, just for the laugh of seeing Vox have to make small talk with the big man, but it didn’t mater, all Larry wanted was a McDonalds. At 1am! In the outskirts of Eindhoven! The legend is that Vox made some comment under his breath re: Cheese Burgers causing his heart problems… but I can’t remember if he actually did.

An hour or so driving round looking for a Micky D’s and suddenly Vox and I were less in awe of him and more in a ‘ can we, the heck, get back the hotel please’. So we talked him into the idea that there would be food at the hotel and he seemed happy.

I’m doubting that story tells much about an important and sincere artist like Larry Norman. But it’ my story, it’s my addition to his legend.

For a real obituary jump here - http://www.stocki.ni.org/news/item/127

Got to admit, it’s getting better

 

Again this is just a nugget of a thought, non parsed, ill thought out and under researched. What t’internet was made for! It’s a topic I’ve touched on before a little bit, so you’d think I’d have worked out what I was trying to say, but alas…

A week or two ago we’d some Jehovah’s Witnesses or something come to our door to tell us the good news that the world was going to pot, all we have to do is turn on the news to see what a state the world is in.

That kinda attitude disproportionally annoys me… how can someone claim that the world is getting worse? Bad things happen, but they always have and to say that the world is somehow ‘getting worse’ shows an embarrassingly naive knowledge of history.Never mind world wars, work houses, slavery, plagues… for goodness sake, its only 20-30 years since the world was on the cusp of complete nuclear annihilation… now that the threat of this has somewhat receded, can Mr Witness at least admit that a spate of stabbings on the local Points West news (the example he gave), while tragic, is small bananas… and the very fact that it makes the news, is a positive.

TwoBigYellowCranes (regular commenter) brings to light the tragic case of the man who was killed last week in Belfast, in front of his pregnant wife. I’m not saying that TBYC isn’t right to highlight this, but i remember the days, all too well when this wouldn’t even have got a mention on the local news, because of all the other tribal killings, shootings and punishment beatings. We do ourselves a disservice by not recognising progress. Sometimes the glass IS half full.

Reasons to be cheerful:
Child mortality at record low
Gap between crime rates and fear of crime
UK homicide rates failing (note that the 2000-2003 jump is seen as largely down to better recording)
Life expectancy set to soar

Pro Human Life

Not that I’m chasing hits and controversy!!… 

Some people hold all life as sacred, I however do not.  I hold that human life is sacred (unsurprisingly given that I am one), but by proxy I kill and eat animal and plant life for food.

So what then IS human life, what make us human? Is there a difference between an acorn and oak tree? Grape juice and wine? A maggot and a fly? is a tadpole a frog? Is an egg a chicken? More importantly do I consider an non-viable foetus to be a human, with equal rights as any other human?

Well, I actually don’t know. Sometimes I think yes, sometimes I think no.  All I’ve managed to do is distil my ethic from life=good/death=bad to ‘at what point do a consider the item inside a pregnancy to be human’. Stem Cell? Embryo? Foetus? moment of birth?

At whatever point that is then it must have the same rights as me, before that it’s just part of the carrier’s body which if left unharmed by medical intervention or indeed natural miscarriage, has the potential to be human.

I really don’t consider the ‘morning after pill’ to be the killing of a human, and when someone miss carries in the first few months i’m not sure of the need to mourn…hmmm…easy to say i guess

I’m what the American press call a flip-flopper, if my list of quotes on this topic were put together over the last 5-10 years … well let’s just say no one could every accuse of me of being intransigent.

What price truth?

It’s revealed this week that the Bloody Sunday enquiry has now cost £180m! One of the relatives was quoted as saying “You can’t put a price on it” Well, I think you can. We could have given the families £12m each in blooming compensation, if I was the family of one of those killed I’d far prefer that to hearing some judge saying ‘ok, looks like they were unlawfully killed’.

Is every other killing in Northern Ireland going to be investigated in the same way? Are the lives of these 14 somehow worth more? Somehow more tragic and more in need of investigation?

To compare - how much of the Iraqi tax payer’s money would we recommend they spend in 30 years time investigating the 950 Shiites who died in the bombs and stampede tragedy a few years ago - I work that out at £12billion. The sad thing is that large killings and bombings in Iraq don’t even make the news these days - yet the truth about 14 killings 40 years ago during a de facto civil war is worth £180m to people - i don’t get it.

Osama Jones

Its poor blogging to chat about stuff you saw on TV, it says something about a life wasted. But i am what i am.

There were two nice happy happy documentaries on last night, both set in the late seventies. The first was a Storyville special about the Jonesville Suicide death cult and the other was a historical look at America’s involvement in Afghanistan - which is topical I suppose with the release of the movie ‘Charlie Wilson’s War’.

First to Jonesville - this was one of the most depressing things I’ve seen. To give some background, Jim Jones was a cult leader/preacher in America in the late 70s who led a church called the People’s Temple. It was thousands strong, multi racial and counter cultural. A lot of the services were filmed, giving us lots of material of ‘healings’ and conversions and euphoric people selling their homes to give money to the church. Jim Jones then had a great idea to set up a new town in the South American rain forest and bring all his followers there. To cut a long story sort it all went sour when a congressman flew out there to investigate them (with some reporters)… all seemed idyllic until a couple of the members started passing notes to the reporters asking to be rescued… when they tried to leave Jones’ men shot and killed them along with the congressmen. This was all caught on film as one of the cameramen who died left his camera running.

It was gruelling to watch, especially then Jones then gathered up the 1000 people and told them that they would all have to die, and supplied the cyanide. There were no pictures of this but everything was taped through the PA system, letting us hear babies being wrestled from their mothers and poisoned, people pleading for their lives and ultimately the silence when everyone was dead. Three people survived by running into the jungle, and they told the story as we listened to the soundtrack. Gruelling. I’m not all that emotional or sentimental but I had to go and wake my baby son up to give him a hug after watching it - of course making him cry for the next half hour, doh!

Next was the retrospective from Afghanistan. This got my gander up a bit (always helpful when it comes to blogging). Some people have such a selective remembering of history, and are so accusing and self-righteous when using their 20/20 hind sight. In the late 70s when the world teetered on the brink of a nuclear holocaust which would have rendered the entirety of human progress and charity meaningless, the USSR invaded Afghanistan to set up a puppet communist regime. America decided to fund and assist the Afghan freedom fighters, a no-brainer really. But the narrative of this program seemed to be that American was stupid and immoral for backing the likes of Bin Laden and are now reaping a deserved whirlwind. Most of the interviewees were from countries who decided to spend their money on nicer hospitals and social welfare, and let bad old America step up to the plate of saving the world (hyperbole a go-go).

Anyway… this is too long a rant. All I’ll say is… if you travelled back in time to 1980 and told people that the Afghans they funded in the war against the USSR will turn on you after the year 2000, and you’ll get some problems with terror attacks, and a few thousand will be killed in New York. They would have run around the pentagon high-fiving saying… you mean we averted nuclear war!!?

The morality of meat

There is quite a push at the moment, on TV at least to encourage us to be more ethical in our consumption of meat and eggs. The latest sermon was given by Jamie Oliver last week in a live audience presentation and debate about battery chicken farming. It’s unfair to call it a ‘sermon’, I like Jamie Oliver and think its great when a star like him is willing to trade in a bit of his credibility to draw attention to causes he believes in, even if it does mean that arm chair sitters like me get to call him preachy.

My better half is a veggie, which you’d think would make for much debate in the house, but it doesn’t really. QMonkey isn’t as narky and argument-baiting in real life (I hope), if it’s not too cheesy to say - we respectfully disagree. The only thing she insists on is that I buy ‘quality’ meat, preferably organic and certainly free range. I’m happy to do this as I do subscribe to the moral of treating animals with respect. At least I think/thought… you sense the unsurity don’t you?

The problem with the TV show is that I was troubled by something, not by the images of the battery hens (although that was shocking in some cases), but I was more troubled by the audience reaction. People were hiding their eyes and shrieking at the scenes of substandard farm conditions, wincing and ugghging at the sight of processed meat. Then came the real revelation for me anyway. Jamie had with him an organically farmed chicken, the kind he is promoting, he had been recently trained and qualified as a slaugherman and was kitted out with state of the art equipment. He showed the humane method of killing the chicken with an electric shock to the neck, then cutting its mouth to let it bleed before butchering.

Here’s the reveal… THIS was the event the audience were most shocked by, they turned away, and some yelped and shouted. I was honestly taken aback by this. The audience were all meat eaters who I presume have no problem dicing a nice chicken breast for their stir fry or tucking in to a tikka masala. They seemed almost surprised that an animal needs to be killed in order to make this happen.

This completely undermined the rest of the program for me, or at least turned the message on its head. In my view if you eat meat then you should be willing if necessary to do the killing yourself, and certainly should be able to watch without feeling any sorrow or guilt or squeamishness. If you don’t like killing animals for meat then become a vegetarian. I have to admit to having never killed a chicken but I have killed fish and eaten them and although I don’t want to, as it’s a bit gruesome and messy, I would have no moral twinges about killing an animal for food.

So having come to the conclusion that these audience members needed to either become vegetarian (for which I think there is a decent moral argument) or harden-the-f***-up, then what is the moral with regards to the treatment of animals before we kill them?

Jeepers, ‘her indoors’ isn’t gonna be happy … but I think I might actually be moving in the opposite direction to Mr Oliver. I think there’s a reasonable case that if these animals are bread for food, the life experience we give them is the life they know, are they really distressed/disappointed to find out that they aren’t wild birds (where a fox will mercilessly tear it apart anyway)? Isn’t the moral question - to farm and eat animals or not to?

Is it right to spend say £1 extra on your chicken fillets to give them a slightly more sanitized 54 days before we slit its throat… as opposed to using that £1 to keep an African child alive for a day longer? I don’t know the answer to that, I’m the question monkey, but if it’s a choice between keeping my child alive for a day or giving a battery chicken a foot more space in his cage, then it’s less of a difficult moral to wrestle with.

Some nice pod casts

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/culturevulture/podcast.xml

Paste that into your iTunes postcast bit… the best one, i think, if the Stephen Fry/Hitchens one on blasphemy - interesting as always. The theos among you will like his references to CS Lewis. If only that tw*t Hitchens would shut up a bit, which he does, after someone in the crowd shouts at him .

I think Stephen Fry is great but i think, as i say, Hitchens is on of the most annoying arrogant people on earth. Even though i agree with the large part of what he says - which just shows that sometimes it about ‘how you say it’.

You can listen to the MP3 here.  The first ten mins and the last ten mins are the best.

It’s not exactly a ‘debate’ as both are in more or less in agreement. It reminds me somewhat of those Greenbelt ‘debates’ i used occasionaly attend (but in the other direction).

Blessed with faith

Last week I was walking down High Street minding my own business, when I was stopped by David Blaine and his ‘Street Magician’ camera crew (not really). He did his trick, the one he does on his TV show, he levitated before my very eyes. Like everyone I had the ‘whoa, that’s amazing’ reaction. Blaine walked on down the road, leaving in his wake his mesmerised audience.

I thought about it later in the day and for a moment thought - did he actually do that? Is he actually magic? Only for a moment though, because I know it’s impossible, and even though I’d seen it with my own eyes, I knew it was more than likely a trick, not a phenomenon. Not to say that impossible things don’t become possible, but Joe Normal tends to need a lot more evidence than one performance, under the circumstances of the performers choosing.

So, I don’t believe, or have faith that he really levitated, because it’s impossible according to the laws of physics. Yet I have friends and family who believe that a guy known as Jesus of Nazareth was born of a virgin, walked on water, raised people from the dead including himself. Why do they believe this? Because its written in an the Bible. In Gospels written decades after the reported events by guys who were trying, lets say for altruistic reasons, to get their religion up and running.

I recently met a lady on a couple of occasions, a friend of my wife’s, who literally believes EVERYTHING. You name it, she’s into it. Acupuncture, Reiki, homeopathy, astrology, cupping, Feng Shuiand that’s only the ones she mentioned in the 2-3 hours approximately I’ve been in her company. I’ve no doubt that she’d have no problem accepting the Jesus miracles as a positive probability. However, most people I think are open minded but heavily sceptical about miracles and physics defying events unless they are proven beyond reasonable doubt. For me, it’s really the only way to get on with your life - we can’t assume every claim of magic to be probably correct - the world would completely unpredictable - I wouldn’t want to get out of bed never mind get on a plane, in case aerodynamics suddenly changed its nature.

So why do intelligent people believe the Jesus stories? Let’s make no bones about it, smarter and more thought intensive people than me have decided in their heads that Jesus walked on water, turned water to wine and in some cases they believe that he guides them in their day to day life! (though obviously Gabriel only appeared to Mary, not Mohammad - THAT would be ridiculous). The answer is faith. I think it’s the same with most religions, but in my culture, Christianity is the major force, and a lot of my family and friends would describe themselves as having a faith in the god of the bible. I have recently had some interesting debates with them, and when it comes down to it, they don’t usually focus their argument on trying to convince me that the bible is reliable when it talks of physics-defying events, they say its at this point in your journey you need faith, and faith is the key.  An intellectual discussion usually turns into a theological discussion, and sometimes I get the feeling they are dancing and gloating in the space between that which we know and that which we don’t yet know. It goes… we don’t know everything, therefore anything is possible, therefore my position is intellectually sound - all i need is to declare my faith!! As soon as they proclaim that it comes down to faith, they admit that they can’t convince me that its true with evidence based enquiry alone - I need faith. In fact if it could be shown to me in an convincing manor, then it would no longer BE a faith.

The problem is I don’t have faith. I could pretend that I do, I could try to talk myself into it, but deep down I don’t have faith and I can’t help it. You can’t make a decision to have faith, I can’t decide in my head that I believe that David Blaine levitated in front of me - even though THAT happened before my eyes! So how can I believe the heavily processed story of a man 2000 years ago who apparently did some physics defying stuff. You can talk someone into believing facts through evidence based inquiry but whether I’m Joe Bloggs or Pope Benedict, faith is something you have or you don’t.

Debating the probabilities and possibilities of various iconic events and the evidence thereof, is destined to lead nowhere. Because depending on what religion you’re talking to, your faith has to be different. It’s not ok when talking to a Christian to say you have faith that you will be re-incarnated when you die, or to a Muslim that you have faith that Jesus was the son of god. To be a Christian you have to have been blessed with the ‘Christian’ faith - I wonder how many little children in Surrey wake up one morning and say mummy, I’ve just been given the faith to believe that Mohammad was a prophet of god.

So either you’re A) lucky and were brought up as a Christian and pretty much taught the bible as fact, so the need for faith is minimal, or you are B) someone who believes absolutely every extra-physical hoodoo, without extended inquiry, or C) god decides to bless you with faith in later life.

This is a dilemma, because it’s not my fault that I don’t have faith. If you believe in the god of the bible then the only outworking of this is that some are blessed with faith, faith is god given. If it is something that some are given and some aren’t then why do Christians try to convert people and tell them the ‘good news’, they might have some success with the lady I know who believes everything from astrology to Reiki, and obviously a child will believe pretty much everything a trusted adult tells them, but as for the likes of me, according to John 3:16 I’m doomed to a fiery eternity because I don’t have faith, which is a smidge unfair I think.

There are of course valid attempts to explain the quandry, but the logic seems quite circular - usualy about ‘letting god do the work’… but there’s a big assumption which has been breezed past - which is of course his/it’s ultimate existance and involvement. Most times when i hear people stuggling with these questions - i fear they have missed the elephant in the room, that it might just all be in their heads.

The Cult of Princess Diana

What would it take for Diana to be regarded as a prophet from god?

My answer is, as you’d expect is not very much (otherwise it would be a more rubbish post).

I saw a picture on the front of a newspaper recently of a man on his knees at the gates of Buckingham palace praying  in front of a picture of Diana, surrounded by flowers. The notion occurred to me, was Diana a goddess of sorts, or at least in less enlightened times, could in 50-100 years have a reasonable religious following.

How far would things need to be exaggerated for it to be said that she healed people with AIDS, and preached love and understanding? How hard would it be to find apostles who said that she changed their lives for the better? And that she was persecuted for her beliefs and cast out of the royal family etc

A guy called Joseph Smith claimed to have dug up some gold plates in America in the early 1800s, and said that it was a message from god, and revelation about the way forward. A man, who believes this, is now in with a reasonable chance of becoming President.

Maybe in these days of 24 hour news and intimate inquiry into every part of celebrity the Diana Cult wouldn’t last long - but who knows  (see scientology)- I wouldn’t be surprised if King William IV’s son is head of the English Church of Diana

food for thought, or at least a curly wurly for thought.

People who died on the same day

I was reading something in Wikipedia (as is my occasional want) about Mother Teresa, and found out that she died within a week of Princess Diana, I’ve no hard feelings about Diana, but perhaps she was handier to mourn than Teresa. (Incidentally my own mother died a few months before Diana - so it did seem a bit strange to see grown people weeping in the streets for someone they never met).

Another one of these occurrences is CS Lewis, the eminent British scholar and writer, who died the same day as JFK. And talking of Presidents, Jefferson and the first Adams went to that great rose garden in the sky within hours of each other in 1826. It is still unclear whether it was Frankie Howard or Benny Hill who had the last laugh as they died within hours of each other in 1992: Benny’s publicist issued a statement in his client’s name regretting the other’s death - ‘We were great, great friends’ - not realising that Benny was, in the deepest sense, unavailable for comment.