Let’s save the world… prove Jesus

I’ve been given a vision, it’s been sanctified and verified by god himself, I claimed his gift of faith, and i have faith that it is so.

If the New Testament of the bible is ‘on the money’ then people really need to know about it, and quickly. You might say that there are plenty of people out there trying but the fact is that they aren’t very good at it. They’ve had 2000 years to do it, and there are still a large majority not realising what happened in Judea. If it’s true that there actually is an afterlife… and unless we tell Jesus we accept his sacrifice we’re doomed to hell… then, well the race to save peoples souls should be on the news on a daily basis - we need a daily updated on the souls saved - maybe involved some sort of tracking technology. So why isn’t it?

I think, in my not so humble opinion that it’s the way  go about telling others… it’s almost like we want to keep it to themselves. We’re happy to leave it to the shouty street preachers… who just come across as deranged and deluded. Or to manipulative and cheesy Alpha Course types.

So how do we do it? We need to find a Unique Selling Point, we need to focus on the things that are common to all of the other non-true religions and leave them to one side. There are millions of decent moral, right thinking, loving people who conscientiously adhere to their factually inaccurate faith. Everyone who has a faith is really convinced that they commune with their respective god, and that he answers them and guides them and has a plan for them (to some degree). Amount and depth of faith isn’t impressive at all… lest we’d all be turning to militant Islam. But they are all of course being deluded by Satan, except for Christians. Simply using manipulative phrases like ‘Jesus loves you, why don’t you accept the free gift’ gets seen for what it is…the religious equivalent of ‘when did you stop beating your wife’.

We must remember that if the NT is a reliable message from god then we know that he loves and wants us all to know about the Jesus salvation narrative. The most wonderful gift he gave us, something no other faith has, is the historical events that happened in Israel 2000 years ago. Let’s not get caught up in the mumbo jumbo and benign brain washing of the worlds churches - lets stop all this obsession with ‘faith’ - we don’t need to rely on faith, we have facts, that’s what Jesus gave us. He didn’t need to, the resurrection could have been a meta-physical spiritual battle or could all have happened in the middle of the desert so we’d never know.

We need to be confident in that, we need to put it all on the table. We need to accept that a loving god wouldn’t make it difficult for us, if we approach the evidence with an open mind and with our logical and rational heads fully screwed on then he will bless that. Logic and rationality are gifts which he gave us, and he insists we use it lest we fall for the devils seductions. In order to prove the truth to the world we have to be open to the idea that the Jesus stories aren’t in fact real, and that the Jewish messiah could still return and ask why we fell for the devils trickery re: the Jesus church.

Let’s not peddle this self-defeating nonsense that Jesus doesn’t want to make it too obvious too us so we can have free will. This belittles our lord, and threatens to be a barrier to salvation as it makes people rightly suspicious. Jesus could have been a lot more subtle if he’d wanted to - maybe appearing for a moment in each of our dreams and giving us the salvation choice. Instead, if we’re to believe the NT he appeared to lots of people doing magical signs to convince them - sometimes 5000 in one go. Are we saying he respected these peoples free will less than ours?

God won’t punish you for applying your reason and rationality and assuming Jesus wasn’t who it’s reported he was… until you’ve assessed the evidence and decided he was (or wasn’t).

It’s like when you were a kid and your dad said… don’t get into a car with any strangers even if they say they that I sent them to pick you up… make sure you are 100% convinced they are who they say they are. I’d rather you rejected someone I might genuinely have sent for you, than get into the car with the wrong person, that’s the actions of a loving parent.

I’m not talking about getting a bishop with a doctorate in theology and an obvious agenda to write a book packed full of ultimately true, but logically very dodgy assumptions. This is the definition of preaching to the choir - this will be accepted with the same open minds that we read Dawkins! Maybe we should sponsor a panel of the worlds smartest and most qualified people, a cross section of the intelligentsia (perhaps those who are currently non-aligned to any religion but who have proven themselves open minded) and get them to carry out a thorough investigation and publish the results at the UN for all to see, where they can be challenged and assessed.

How could anyone object to that? Let’s make sure they report back before the rapture.

What’s in a species?

Just a Monday morning nugget really. During a drunkin chat with a mate last week he brought up the (surprisingly) interesting topic of what makes a species.I would have assumed that these things are set in stone, but apparently no, different cultures have different rules on what differentiates a species.

In our culture we say that all creatures with sweat glands and give birth to live young are mammals (is that right?) , so therefore a whale and a dolphin are mammals. In other cultures they say, no, don’t be silly whales and dolphins are fish because they live 100% of the time in the water and have fins (say).

Just one of those things I thought was set in stone, only to find out that its not.

Interesting? Maybe not.

The End is Neigh!

Scientists at CERN are getting to the final stages of constructing the Large Hadron Colider. Forty years ago scientist Peter Higgs theorised about a boson particle which existed at the time of the big bang, the Large Hadron Colider is something to do with that…. that’s right specifically SOMETHING to do with that :).

No idea what all thats about. What im thinking is though, surely there’s a decent change than when they actually turn this baby on , that we’re all gonna disappear in a big bang (ala Debbie Magee). OK, I know that people always worry about things like that, and there was a decent chance of that happening at the time of the first thermo nuclear reaction tests. Always nice to have things to worry about.

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.

What I want from Billy Scientist

I want him to invent a method or a drug that guarantees a good night’s sleep. So good in fact that we only need 3-4 hours and when we wake up we feel totally refreshed and ready for the day. I would even be willing to enter some sort of pod. How hard can that be? Surely doctors, scientists and pharmacists have invented more complicated things

It would mean that we have more time in the day to spend doing what we want to do… be it working, relaxing, reading, whatever. You might say that you ‘like’ sleep and don’t want it to be shortened, but when you’re asleep you don’t know it, so it doesn’t matter if sleep lasts 3 hours or 8 hours. You could go to bed at mid night, wake up at 4am feeling GREAT, do the household chores with a whistle, go to work at 6, get home again at 3 and have 9 hours of free time to do whatever you want with your life - sort out the garden, help out at a charity, rock climbing or just watch TV.

Even if it meant we died at 80 rather than 90, I think I’d take it

You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.

The Story of Stuff

http://www.storyofstuff.com/

a bit preachy and bleeding heart… but really well presented.

Derren Brown can make you rich

This is at serious risk of becoming a TV review blog - which says worrying things about the content of my evenings. In saying that… on Wednesday afternoon I did manage to pretty much erase and destroy the main people/clients contact database at work… meaning I had to stay in late to get it sorted… then I celebrated my success by heading out with my bro in law and got really drunk… arriving in work late the next morning looking like Shane McGowan to confess my sins. A couple of quiet nights in front of the TV was necessary.

I love Derren Brown, he puts on a good show and his recent offering ‘The System’ was no let down. The essence is that he created a horse race gambling system which couldn’t fail taking a random member of the public on an emotional roller coaster as she bet her own money and won a fortune - but there was a sting in the tale. It turns out to be a bit of a comment on belief systems and world views - engaging, enlightening and very entertaining. I’d recommend watching it if it’s on again - or on C4 on demand.

Derren Brown - slain in the spirit

hmmm…. rings some bells for me

 

Voodoo 

I might have found myself an Existential Dilemma

I’ve been dying to get one of these for ages… and I’ve eventually found myself one - not offa eBay or anything, just lying in bed thinking - flip, this whole existence stuff is a bit weird.

I must admit this may be fueled by the fact that my learn-ed brother in law lent me a book of esseys by John-Paul Sartre, which I’m loving. 

In modern civilisation, lets say from the end of the last ice age 10,000 years ago, people have been born, lived for an average of lets say 50 adult years then died.

So I am born, try my best to learn the history of all those 200 or so generations that have gone before me, do my little bit to be involved in the process of moving humanity on a little further, get together with another person to create another generation of people who grow up and learn the history of human kind (including the addition made (and being made) by my generation), I then shuffle off the mortal coil, having done my little bit.

I suppose this is Nietzschean ‘death of god’ thing… the thought that there is no overarching ‘watcher’ of the whole of history happening, the players just nip in for a while, do their bit, then pass the baton to someone else. A very few make a mark which reverberates through history, I wonder if will, probably not, oh dear that’s a bit depressing

A prize for anyone who guesses the amount of commas

The nature of knowledge in the 21st century and beyond

OK, I thought of the title before I thought what it was going to be about. The idea I have in my head is the old put-down to thicko mate that goes something like hey! don’t learn anything new, there’s no room in your head and something important like how to walk might pop out the other end

It’s that … and it’s the fact that 8 year old kid can apparently instinctively pick up a Playststation remote and start playing in the 3D conceptual worlds that mystify adults or can text their chums on the mobile phone without a second thought to how the menu structure fits together.

My point (I think) that I’m driving at is … people today aren’t smarter than 10-50-1000 years ago, it’s just that we have a different kind of knowledge and about different things.

Maybe my point is that in the past knowledge about the things we use day-to-day was more fully understood by the masses. When you travel to work in a horse drawn carriage you were pretty much on top of the science that makes it happen, or when you played with a jack-in-box again even as a kid it’s not hard to fathom the mechanics, one period of physics the next day in school would suffice.

Today it would be impossible to be anywhere near on top of the technology and physics which we encounter on a daily basis, even the greatest scientists of our time won’t grasp all the physics, chemistry and micro-technology they come across by the time they get to work. This is a phenomenon which will only accelerate.

What does it mean for us? Does it actually make us more gullible to bad-science? Is this why L’Oreal tell us that their shampoo can alter the nature of our hair DNA? Do we now just accept things on anecdotal evidence (homeopathy worked for my mate, so there must be something in it)? It’s partly why I see no end to religion and superstition - if someone says they’ve had a vision from Jesus or the virgin mary appeared to them, the reaction is usually one of ‘ who am I to say it didn’t happen’.

It might just look like it to me, but are we the first generation who doesn’t really care how things work? Men of about 60 (my dad’s age) are all about taking things apart to see how they work, they assume they can self-mend things when they break. For my generation and younger the idea of trying to fix a Playstation or even a car when it breaks down seems ludicrous.

What are the implications?

You’ll gather it’s not an idea I’ve fully thought out, im just sending it out there to see if I can find any traction.

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.

Are there unaskable questions?

When the question monkey is hard up for something to write about, its always nice for something controversial comes up in the news.

The story is about Dr James Watson, world renowned scientist, Nobel Prize Winner and co discoverer of DNA. In essence he’s decided that black people aren’t quite as smart as the white man. Nothing of note there i hear you say - typical kinda thing you hear in the bar after a BNP meeting!

He says, to question genetic intelligence is not racism, which i think most people would agree with, as long as the result of that research is that everyone is equal - which is pretty much the basis for an open content and just society. The problem is, of course, some of his research is pointing in another direction.

He’s not saying its the end of his research, but is just publishing his early findings. The media and scientific scramble to condemn and excommunicate him has been immediate and ruthless. It’s understandable, if his research was to find out if Irish Protestants are genetically less than everyone else, i would be up in arms.

The problem of course is, by stifling the debate, the racists say, “see, they are hiding the facts from us, because its political incorrect, but we know the truth”.

Surely there can be no unaskable questions. Am i wrong?

The gardener of good and evil

What is evil? Don’t worry im not going to pretend that I have any sort of philosophical insight, I know that many have addressed this question and come up with smart and involved answers. But someone said to me recently that we shouldn’t defer our debates to others clever than us, it’s up to everyone to discuss the big ideas, no mater how inadequate we feel.

[jeepers! you know what I've just realised? I sometimes write this blog, with the voice of her offa sex in the city in my head. Very worrying]

People talk about things being evil, even non-religious people. It’s a given. But is it helpful to our common progress and that of our planet and our children. For such an important and basic element I think it is ill defined.

Maybe it helps to think about good things and bad things that happen and analyse what the causes are, and maybe the cause of that good thing, is ‘good’ and the cause of that bad things is ‘evil’. Is that too simplistic? Yes. But I like simple things, there lies beauty.

Here’s some good stuff. I think people could agree that things which help people live a healthy, happy, more comfortable and longer life are generally good. Also, I don’t think it’s promoting a hippy agenda to say that things which achieve harmony and common human agreement and respect are, in general, regarded as good.

So specifically, some examples; the ability to make fire; forging of basic tools; The Enlightenment; establishment of laws and social discipline; identification of germs (germ theory), invention of antibiotics; mass communications; industrialisation and efficiency of labour; economic theory and progress (the likes of Adam Smith); eradication of diseases; construction of housing; shelter and roads; generation and harnessing of electricity,

You know what… I’ve gone and got bored of this post already… so I’ll leave it at that, if anyone wants to add any comments and add to the list of good things/bad things then maybe I’ll come back with a post script to analyse the causes. And we can put the world to rights.

Defining yourself by what you aren’t

What is it with people calling themselves atheists these days (as if it’s new!). Why do people allow themselves to be labelled as the antipathy of something, rather that the positive assertion of something else. We don’t call Liberals unauthoritarians, or conservatives a-progressives, or dogs a-cats … it tells us very little about a persons world view. It also gives the upper hand to that which you are defining yourself against, as it then becomes your responsibly to justify why you don’t think something, rather than theirs to define why they do - which is logically lopsided.

It’s akin to a Christian, when asked, describing himself as a Gentile! It doesn’t really say much to say you are non-Jew.

That’s all I gotta say - annoys me a little… not a lot… but enough to get onto a blog post, which isn’t saying much.