Living in the Future (Trailer)

Living in the Future (Trailer)

Still

Undercurrents Alternative News: Stand Still

Meet meat

YouTube - Film School NYFA - They're Made Out Of Meat

A note to creationists ..

Gunter Wagner is reported here commenting on more recent research on mutation in Evolution Gets a Boost: No Cost for Complexity | Wired Science from Wired.com: He says, "'I would say the only intellectually interesting argument that the creationists are using, at least the scientifically more sophisticated ones, is that random mutation can not lead to the evolution of complex organisms. And there are interesting mathematical arguments that have been made to support that. But our results show that organisms found a way around that problem by restricting mutational effects on very narrowly confined parts of the organisms.'"

Here we go again: the 'enabling act'

You may recall worries about something like this a couple of years back, what is it with this government and seizing arbitrary powers? "It looks as if we will have to again go through all the fuss and lobbying that we saw over the wretched Legislative and Regulatory Reform Act 2006, the previous attempt by this Labour Government to neuter Parliament by Order of a Minister."
Spy Blog - SpyBlog.org.uk: Danger ! Draft Constitutional Renewal Bill Part 6 tries to remove even the limited constitutional safeguards of the "destroy Parliament" Legislative and Regulatory Reform Act 2006:

Running Words Together: The Science Behind Cross-linguistic Psychology

A bit more info for mulling over in respect of the debate on linguistic relativity and determinism. This piece of research written up briefly here Running Words Together: The Science Behind Cross-linguistic Psychology tells us, among other things: "Despite the vast differences between the four languages, however, all participants used distinct words to describe when the student was walking and to identify precisely when she began running. These results indicate cross-linguistic commonalities in naming patterns for locomotion and help to support the notion of certain universal rules and constraints in all languages.
“We found that converging naming patterns reflect structure in the world, not only acts of construction by observers,” Malt stated. “On a broader level, the data reveal a shared aspect of human experience that is present across cultures and reflected in every language.” So the first bit of the article shows how language can affect thinking, the latter shows how reality tends to form language. I think that this is still coming up in favour of critical realism.

Compassion Meditation Changes The Brain

Worth noting this article: Compassion Meditation Changes The Brain: perhaps not surprising at one level, but it's good (again) to have back up for the benefits of filling our minds with good stuff. If learning the streets of London changes cabbies' brains, it is not perhaps such a leap to "Cultivating compassion and kindness through meditation affects brain regions that can make a person more empathetic to other peoples' mental states"

International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) Chart Unicode “Keyboard”

This is great; an online IPA generator. əʔlæst
International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) Chart Unicode “Keyboard”

Technology and learning

In a piece of research that showed that good use of ICT in teaching can actually increase learning as measured by test results, we are told that the real insight gained is more nuanced and already known. "The key to success with instructional technology is to keep the focus on student-related outcomes and learning." That goes for all teaching and learning.
The news item is here: College Students Score Higher In Classes That Incorporate Instructional Technology Than In Traditional Classes:

food aid runs out of money

This is a first: Threat to millions as food aid scheme runs out of money - World Politics, World - Independent.co.uk:
The World Food Programme for the first time in its history is appealing for funds. "'This is the new face of hunger,' she [Josette Sheeran, the organisation's executive director] said. 'People are simply being priced out of food markets. It's the first time we have been hit by a dramatic market surprise. We have never before had a situation where aggressive rises in food prices keep pricing our operations out of our reach.'"
I think that this is partly down to oil price rises (which affects transporting food and the production of fertilisers and pesticides) and partly due to China's increasing demand for meat as their population becomes more prosperous (meat requires grain and a redeployment of land both of which take food away from human consumption) and also the effects of climate change. This is the shape of things to come (and I reiterate; one of the reasons Christians should cut back on meat consumption as an immediate personal mitigatory response as global citizens).
See also this article about one effect of the increase in prices: crops are being stolen in south east Asia -or at least that is the rumour. And as a counterweight, check out this article on how biodiversity is more productive according to research fully explained in the article; "This is the most comprehensive evidence that biodiverse ecosystems are more productive. As the observed productivity showed no sign of levelling at the highest species number"

How to deal with the Heathrow fingerprinting slippery slope

You might want to guard your privacy by acting on the information here. How to deal with the Heathrow fingerprint system: "BAA, the operators of Heathrow, have decided to illegally fingerprint all domestic travellers. Privacy International has come up with a privacy 'travel guide' to advise you on how to deal with Heathrow's illegal actions." To be seen how long it is before this is dealt with...
More in this article in the Torygraph.

Language Feature Unique To Human Brain Identified

A brief write up here: Language Feature Unique To Human Brain Identified tells us,

"'The human arcuate fasiculus differed from that of the rhesus macaques and chimpanzees in having a much larger and more widespread projection to areas in the middle temporal lobe, outside of the classical Wernicke's area. We know from previous functional imaging studies that the middle temporal lobe is involved with analyzing the meanings of words. In humans, it seems the brain not only evolved larger language regions but also a network of fibers to connect those regions, which supports humans' superior language capabilities."

. This may explain why it is that other primates don't seem to 'get' syntax; they don't have the means to deal with it.

Holy Week and Easter pictures

Crucifixion and transfiguration by Jo Sykes: “I produced this as part of our version of Stations of the Cross, with contributions from other members of the congregation. The purpose of the painting is to help the viewer reflect on that critical moment in the crucifixion and, comparing it with the moment of Jesus’s transfiguration, reach a more profound understanding of Jesus’s purpose and message"
Worth clicking the title for some of the other pictures.
Church Times - Holy Week and Easter

Resurrection

Church Times - Easter Sunday: "Church of the Resurrection, interior Strong sunlight pouring through the dome over the empty tomb in the Church of the Resurrection, Jerusalem. Ulrich Noetzel: “A light that cannot be extinguished, greater than any Paschal candle”"

The new atheism isn't serious

A year or so back I had to briefly explain to a fellow teacher trainee why it was that I didn't rate Dawkins' case for atheism. As we were trainee teachers I thought it best to put it in terms that I thought the arguments wouldn't pass muster in a A level exam and possibly not a GCSE; there were too many gaps and failures to deal with the hard cases. So it is with gladness I can point you to an article that does the work of elucidating that position somewhat. Here's a chunk to whet your appetite.

Students might have been titillated by the recent writings of Dawkins and others who profess to give a biological, evolutionary explanation of why people believe in God. But they would have learned in our course that there is no good theological reason to object to any scientific attempts to understand religion, even in evolutionary terms. The course would have made it clear that religion can and indeed should be studied as a natural phenomenon. After all, this is the only way science can study anything, and its insights are completely compatible with any good theology. And my students would have rightly wondered whether evolutionary theory, or any natural or social science, can give a complete and adequate understanding of religion. During our one-semester course students would already have encountered in Freud's thought the claim that science alone is a reliable road to true understanding of anything. And they would have learned from other readings that this claim is a profession of faith known as scientism, a modern belief system that is self-contradictory. Why self-contradictory? Because scientism tells us to take nothing on faith, and yet faith is required to accept scientism. What is remarkable is that none of the new atheists seems remotely prepared to admit that his scientism is a self-sabotaging confession of faith. Listen to Hitchens: "If one must have faith in order to believe in something, then the likelihood of that something having any truth or value is considerably diminished." But this statement invalidates itself since it too arises out of faith in things unseen. There is no set of tangible experiments or visible demonstrations that could ever scientifically prove the statement to be true.

What drew me to this article was the contrast it draws between a kind of weak atheism represented by Dawkins et al which is essentially parasitic on contemporary mores ultimately rooted in Christian morality (and which atheist philosopher John Grey castigates) and the keen unflinching purpose of 'classical atheists',

The classical atheists, by contrast, demanded a much more radical transformation of human culture and consciousness. This is most evident when we consider works by Nietzsche, Camus and Sartre. To them atheism not only should make all the difference in the world; it would take a superhuman effort to embrace it. "Atheism," as Sartre remarked, "is a cruel and long-range affair." Like Nietzsche and Camus, Sartre thought that most people would be too weak to accept the terrifying consequences of the death of God.

Of course this is precisely where the new atheism doesn't want to go: it wants both to eat its cake and to keep it in front of them. Indeed, there are fighting words in this article:

new atheism is very much like the old secular humanism that was rebuked by the hard-core atheists for its mousiness in facing up to what the absence of God should really mean. If you're going to be an atheist, the most rugged version of godlessness demands complete consistency. Go all the way and think the business of atheism through to the bitter end. This means that before you get too comfortable with the godless world you long for, you will be required by the logic of any consistent skepticism to pass through the disorienting wilderness of nihilism. Do you have the courage to do that? You will have to adopt the tragic heroism of a Sisyphus, or realize that true freedom in the absence of God means that you are the creator of the values you live by. Don't you realize that this will be an intolerable burden from which most people will seek an escape? Are you ready to allow simple logic to lead you to the real truth about the death of God? Before settling into a truly atheistic worldview you will have to experience the Nietzschean madman's sensation of straying through "infinite nothingness." You will be required to summon up an unprecedented degree of courage if you plan to wipe away the whole horizon of transcendence. Are you willing to risk madness? If not, then you are not really an atheist.

The article towards the end mentions a point I also recall making in a different and more recent conversation about Dawkins' thinking.

Dawkins declares that the biblical God is a monster, Harris that God is evil, Hitchens that God is not great. But without some fixed sense of rightness how can one distinguish what is monstrous, evil or "not great" from its opposite? In order to make such value judgments one must assume, as the hard-core atheists are honest enough to acknowledge, that there exists somewhere, in some mode of being, a realm of rightness that does not owe its existence completely to human invention, Darwinian selection or social construction. And if we allow the hard-core atheists into our discussion, we can draw this conclusion: If absolute values exist, then God exists. But if God does not exist, then neither do absolute values, and one should not issue moral judgments as though they do.

Quite so.

Link back to original article.

Delegated Vote

This is an interesting idea about reforming democracy. I quite like the greater proportionality it introduces. Here's the article introducing it. Democracy from first principles: The Delegated Vote � OurKingdom: "In many corporations shareholders hold a different number of votes depending on the number of shares they own. My proposal (the Delegated Vote or DV), works under similar principles. Instead of an MP’s vote in parliament having a value of one, its value would be equal to the number of votes they received in the last election. If, in a constituency of 1000, the vote split 700/300 the constituency would return two representatives, with voting powers of 700 and 300 respectively."
I guess my problem is that it seem to make it even more obvious that 'my delegate' may not represent me on particular issues. I don't like the idea that 'my' vote gets aggregated into a block vote which may then be used for things I disapprove of. So unless there is also a way to help a parliamentary delegate (which is what an MP would become) to touch base with her voters on particular issues, it may be that people like me become rather more wary of using our votes lest the delegate misuses their block vote. On the other hand, that wariness could translate to a more robust hustings and a greater sense of accountability and use of MP's surgeries etc.

The Reality of Sex

John Stackhouse writes a nice presentation of where I think I'd got to with thinking about a Christian approach to sex. The Reality of Sex � Prof. John Stackhouse’s Weblog:

"Sex, therefore, is a particular kind of something, not whatever we prefer it to be. And the definition of mental health is dealing with reality properly as it is, not as we wish it were.
God tells us that sex is good and we are free to engage in it. God also tells us, however, that full-on, naked, total sex is reserved for the one relationship that is full-on, naked, and total: marriage. That’s the only context in which the mystical unitive power of sex can do its work without damage, namely, in the one relationship that is all about lifelong union.
Having sexual intercourse outside marriage, therefore, is like misusing Crazy Glue. You’re not supposed to pull apart what you’ve bonded together, and when you do, damage inevitably results.
The “sex only in marriage” rule isn’t, therefore, some weird, totally arbitrary rule God made up just so we’d have something to practice self-control on. No, it’s a frank statement of the way things are: the way we are and the way sex is. We ignore it or flout it in the same stupid way in which we ignore our car’s owner’s manual or flout our physician’s advice. We’re free to do it, of course, and we’re free to suffer the consequences."

Of course, the interesting thing in this is that it could apply to homophile relationships too. Some would see that as and advantage, some would see that as damning. Just at the moment I find that intriguing.

It's also worth checking out the comments; particularly #7, 13,

Christ is risen. A summary of the state of scholarly play

This seems to be a pretty useful summary of where things are up to. Not as sure as some Christians would like, but far more positive towards Christian claims than the likes of Richard Dawkins would have us believe.

Despite the arguments of some Christian apologists, most mainstream scholars do not treat the resurrection as belonging to their field of inquiry. It is similar to Jesus' healings. Historians would not say that Jesus actually performed miracles - that would be to turn from history to philosophy and theology. They can only say that he did things which those around him interpreted as miraculous. So, too, with the resurrection. No historian wearing his or her historical cap would say that God raised Jesus from the dead. That is a theological interpretation of the evidence. What most scholars do affirm is more modest, though not without significance: Jesus' tomb was empty shortly after his crucifixion and significant numbers of men and women experienced what they believed to be appearances of the risen Jesus. These are the historical facts of Easter Sunday: an empty tomb and resurrection experiences. They are accepted not only by serious Christian scholars but also by leading Jewish historians such as Vermes and self-confessed agnostics such as Professor Ed Sanders of Duke University, who once wrote: "That Jesus' followers (and later Paul) had resurrection experiences is, in my judgment, a fact. What the reality was that gave rise to the experiences I do not know." This is typical of the responsible historian's approach to Easter: whatever the explanation, something extraordinary happened.

Give away your money and be happy

Today is clearly altruism day for research findings. Give away your money and be happy - being-human - 20 March 2008 - New Scientist: "'Moving into a bigger house will give you a happiness boost, but you then get used to the house,' says Lyubomirsky. The same goes for other types of possessions. Acts of kindness, by contrast, are more likely to produce unexpected positive outcomes, such as a favour performed in return. Prosocial acts also enhance our self-perception in a way that possessions do not, adds Lyubomirsky." So the significant factor could actually be the renewing of the spending rather than the spend-focus; that is the same dynamic as seems to drive rampant consumerism. Though it would be significant that giving it away does make for happiness. And, actually the research (though with only a limited sample) does seem to indicate altruistic 'spending' may be more happiness-inducing. Good to think about.

Brains: Hardwired To Golden Rule?

I'd have to see more of this but it's intriguing an idea. Brains Are Hardwired To Act According To The Golden Rule: however it is a kind of promo article and the reasoning in this bit isn't encouraging.

"Donald Pfaff, the author of the new book The Neuroscience of Fair Play: Why We (Usually) Follow the Golden Rule, thinks he has the answer. Our brains, he says, are hardwired to do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Individual acts of aggression and evil occur when this circuitry jams. “If it’s really true that all religions have this ethical principle, across continents and across centuries, then it is more likely to have a hardwired scientific basis than if it was just a neighborhood custom,”"

There are a lot of non-sequiturs in that. Perhaps it is a likely outcome of considered reflection? A by-product of being able to think about social consequences and to put observations into some kind of order? Perhaps there is an element of revelation involved? The fact that it needs to be said seems to indicate a degree of it not being innate, I'd have thought. Though I'm happy to think it might be innate but not determinative, that would be easy to reconcile with basic theological ideas in the Christian tradition ...

Electronics manufacturers; greenest and worst

A guide to who seems to be the best and the worst, courtesy of Greenpeace. How the companies line up | Greenpeace International

Christ rose again, say 57%

It's only a brief report; Church Times - Christ rose again, say 57 per cent in British poll and I can't see things like the size or composition of the sample being reported. Though I've saved you the trouble of finding the actual article. (The Church Times really ought to consider putting links into their online offerings). It's here. "57 per cent of respondents said that they believed Jesus had been executed by crucifixion and buried, and had risen from the dead. More than half of these (30 per cent of the total) believed in a bodily resurrection, while 27 per cent of the total believed that Jesus had risen in spirit form. Asked about life after death, 44 per cent said that they believed their spirit would live on after death. Only nine per cent believed in a personal physical resurrection."
Nothing unpredictable about the 'distaste' for bodily resurrection, the main thing is the amount that would go with a statement that sounds reasonably consonant with Christian ideas. Even more bizarrely;

of the 250 or so atheists interviewed, 14% thought Easter was about Jesus dying for the sins of the world, 12% believed he rose again from the dead, and, bizarrely, 7% thought he was son of God. However confused Christian opinion is, atheist opinion beats it hands down.

It begs the question of how we can move people individually and corporately along a version of the Engel Scale. I suspect it is about addressing the lack of seeing implications other than the ones they have already drawn, and of encouraging a sense that it is about a new creation and invites our fuller participation. In other words getting beyond the comforting reassurance about life beyond death which is where it starts and stops for most, I would guess. I suspect, though, that having an approach which links spirituality and personal development (à la new age) and draws cogently and coherantly on things that can be traced back to the Resurrection of Christ would be worth pursuing further...

Public does not trust government with personal data

A report in Computer Weekly entitled Public does not trust government with personal data | 18 Mar 2008 | ComputerWeekly.com: tells us some interesting stats.

"Only one in 10 adults in the UK trusts the government with their personal data, an online survey reveals. ... The survey found 41% were in favour of introducing ID cards in the UK, 40% were against, and 19% undecided."

Presumably the 31% who were in favour of introducing ID cards but didn't trust the government were in favour of introducing them to other people!

Flights of Fancy

Hmmm. An interesting idea. What do you think? Flights of Fancy � Celsias: "imagine the effect if a large group of committed environmentalists bought all of the cheapest tickets when an airline had a cheap offer, and then refused to fly. Airlines would eventually see the effect on their bottom line of flying planes with fewer paying passengers; airports might have to close, people might eventually drift back to more sustainable forms of transportation. As well as penalising airlines for flying empty aircraft, we need to make those that do fly considerably less profitable."

The atheist delusion

Now, this article is written by an atheist philosopher. One of the better in my opinion, writing today. It may be worth bookmarking this article: The atheist delusion by John Gray. He starts by asking what is going on with the new Atheism:

"Dawkins, Hitchens and the rest may still believe that, over the long run, the advance of science will drive religion to the margins of human life, but this is now an article of faith rather than a theory based on evidence."

I read this guy's book Straw Dogs a couple of years ago. I was particularly interested in his frank expose of the way that much western atheism is parasitic on the Christianity it rejects. He tries to offer another approach that is without the philosophical nostalgia for Christian faith. This shows up in this review article, which therefore can be used as something of a summary of his thesis.For example, mentioning one of the major themes in the Northern Lights trilogy,

But the idea of free will that informs liberal notions of personal autonomy is biblical in origin (think of the Genesis story). The belief that exercising free will is part of being human is a legacy of faith, and like most varieties of atheism today, Pullman's is a derivative of Christianity.

It is an error for western atheists to critique religion (in general -as if that is possible, really) for not being proto-scientific theories,

religions do not consist of propositions struggling to become theories. The incomprehensibility of the divine is at the heart of Eastern Christianity, while in Orthodox Judaism practice tends to have priority over doctrine. Buddhism has always recognised that in spiritual matters truth is ineffable, as do Sufi traditions in Islam. Hinduism has never defined itself by anything as simplistic as a creed. It is only some western Christian traditions, under the influence of Greek philosophy, which have tried to turn religion into an explanatory theory.

. Gray takes a pot at memes, rightly but combatitively:

the theory of memes is science only in the sense that Intelligent Design is science. Strictly speaking, it is not even a theory. Talk of memes is just the latest in a succession of ill-judged Darwinian metaphors.

And he also makes the point that many others have criticised Dawkins and others by;

Dawkins makes much of the oppression perpetrated by religion, which is real enough. He gives less attention to the fact that some of the worst atrocities of modern times were committed by regimes that claimed scientific sanction for their crimes. Nazi "scientific racism" and Soviet "dialectical materialism" reduced the unfathomable complexity of human lives to the deadly simplicity of a scientific formula. In each case, the science was bogus, but it was accepted as genuine at the time, and not only in the regimes in question. Science is as liable to be used for inhumane purposes as any other human institution. Indeed, given the enormous authority science enjoys, the risk of it being used in this way is greater.

This atheist is making 'our' points for us; refreshing eh? In fact, I was delighted to find that he makes a point I have often made informally in discussions about secularity and religion, when I have pointed out the strange way that atheism comes to ape 'religion'

demonstrating what happens when atheism becomes a political project. The invariable result is an ersatz religion that can only be maintained by tyrannical means.

Another point that I really liked, partly because as a child who was interested in science and the meaning of evolution, I was struck by how (to phrase it in terms I didn't then know) people seemed to turn a 'blind' process into a teleology, science-fiction was full of it as were elements of popular discourse. I think that the blindness of the process which made me precociously aware of the lack of meaning and of foundation for morality with atheism. So for me this was good to read;

One does not want to deny anyone the consolations of a faith, but it is obvious that the idea of progress in history is a myth created by the need for meaning.

And he helpfully expands the point in relation to morality and ethics in a way that resonates with my early teens ruminations which eventually drove me towards investigating spiritual 'answers'.

The problem with the secular narrative is not that it assumes progress is inevitable (in many versions, it does not). It is the belief that the sort of advance that has been achieved in science can be reproduced in ethics and politics. In fact, while scientific knowledge increases cumulatively, nothing of the kind happens in society. Slavery was abolished in much of the world during the 19th century, but it returned on a vast scale in nazism and communism, and still exists today. Torture was prohibited in international conventions after the second world war, only to be adopted as an instrument of policy by the world's pre-eminent liberal regime at the beginning of the 21st century. Wealth has increased, but it has been repeatedly destroyed in wars and revolutions. People live longer and kill one another in larger numbers. Knowledge grows, but human beings remain much the same.

And what he says next highlights one of the more frustrating aspects of much contemporary atheism;

Belief in progress is a relic of the Christian view of history as a universal narrative, and an intellectually rigorous atheism would start by questioning it. This is what Nietzsche did when he developed his critique of Christianity in the late 19th century, but almost none of today's secular missionaries have followed his example. One need not be a great fan of Nietzsche to wonder why this is so. The reason, no doubt, is that he did not assume any connection between atheism and liberal values - on the contrary, he viewed liberal values as an offspring of Christianity and condemned them partly for that reason. In contrast, evangelical atheists have positioned themselves as defenders of liberal freedoms - rarely inquiring where these freedoms have come from, and never allowing that religion may have had a part in creating them.

Quite so. Atheists may point to the fact that many of them live morally, but the fact remains that their choice to live so is a kind of existentialist brute choosing without any real ability to say why anyone else (Hitler, say, or Stalin) should choose similarly. Self evident truths may simply be genetically-programmed dispositions or the outworking of 'memes'

Matthew Arnold wrote of believers being left bereft as the tide of faith ebbs away. Today secular faith is ebbing, and it is the apostles of unbelief who are left stranded on the beach

Hmmm. I wonder if he's right.

Green Patches: Prayer is for life...

Just showed up on a search feed; someone recommending an article of mine on rules of life. Green Patches: Prayer is for life...: "From emerging church info, Andii Bowsher explains what a rule of life means, and uses the Lord's Prayer as a guide for drawing up your own."

Inside the slave trade

I recall a handful of years ago my shock as I discovered that slavery still went on. It almost breaks my heart to discover how widespread it is and what a horrible, horrible thing it is. The article is here: Inside the slave trade - Asia, World - Independent.co.uk and this is how it begins. "This is the story of the 21st century’s trade in slave-children. My journey into their underworld took place where its alleys and brothels are most dense - Asia, where the United Nations calculates 1 million children are being traded every day. It took me to places I did not think existed, today, now. To a dungeon in the lawless Bangladeshi borderlands where children are padlocked and prison-barred in transit to Indian brothels; to an iron whore-house where grown women have spent their entire lives being raped; to a clinic that treat syphilitic 11-year-olds."
Have a look and think about what we should do.

MoD loses 11,000 ID cards

This is disturbing. "The Ministry of Defence has lost 11,000 military ID cards in the last two years, the government has admitted to parliament." After all aren't the military supposed to be more interested in security. And if they can't handle it with 200,000 people, what hope is there that the government can deal with 60million. That would equate to 1.5m of us a year having our cards lost, I think. Tell me that this isn't a very bad idea. MoD loses 11,000 ID cards:

Effects of language on color discriminability

A very interesting set of experiments if you are at all interested in the matter of linguistic determinism, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis or the notion that language determines thought. At first this paper, Effects of language on color discriminability might seem to be saying that it does; language seems to affect our colour discrimination. But be careful; linguistic determinism says that the actual perception is determined by the language. The results here or more commensurate with seeing language as a secondary level beyond the basic perception:

"Because the effect of language can be altered by linguistic interference, it seems that
language is acting a secondary process in the color discrimination tasks used in these studies. This secondary process can alter the results or speed of a color judgment,but it seems more likely that this interference happens at a decision stage rather late in the processing stream."

That's not to say that language may not channel thought in some cases or make certain perspectives more likely among a language community, merely that it does not control fully. There is room for perceptions at variance with the language's predispositions. In the Genesis story of Adam naming the animals, God brings the animals to Adam to name and whatever name Adam gave, that was its name. I think that this is saying that there are boundaries: that God makes it that there are some things that are 'given' but within that we have a degree of freedom to 'name' (taxonomise, represent, divide and combine etc) and God is willing to let that stand, may even be enjoying what we make of 'it'. This seems to me to allow for linguistic determinism in a weak form in that it can be overturned by human creativity.

Taxonomic language

This is a fascinating little article by Borges (my interest is that I've just started to read Funes El Memorioso from Ficciones) El Idioma Analítico de John Wilkins: It's an article on John Wilkin's taxonomic language. It ends with a point that touches on my theological concerns labelled on this blog 'homo loquens'.

La imposibilidad de penetrar el esquema divino del universo no puede, sin embargo, disuadirnos de planear esquemas humanos, aunque nos conste que éstos son provisorios. El idioma analítico de Wilkins no es el menoos admirable de esos esquemas. Los géneros y especies que lo componen son contradictorios y vagos; el artificio de que las letras de las palabras indiquen subdivisiones y divisiones es, sin duda, ingenioso. La palabra salmón no nos dice nada; zana, la voz correspondiente, define (para el hombre versado en las cuarenta categorías y en los géneros de esas categorías) un pez escamoso, fluvial, de carne rojiza. (Teóricamente, no es inconcebible un idioma donde el nombre de cada ser indicara todos los pormenores de su destino, pasado y venidero.)*

I think I'd agree and add that while it's a great attempt at scientific language. But it wouldn't do well for poets: where are the plays on words, the stretching of word classes, the playing off connotative meaning? In any case, because of all those things it would quickly be hijacked and the messiness of linguistic change would set in. People would use words to mean something else, instabilities would set in.

Anyway, Borges is right about the penetrating of the divine pattern and planning human patterns. In fact, it seems to me that giving names to the animals (which is just what Wilkins' schema seems set on doing) is precisely a divine-sanctioned endeavour. The point is to bear in mind their provisionality and likelihood to be contradictory. And they have to be vague, specifying everything would defeat the point of naming: you'd never be able to refer and make connections that were not immediately evident. It is this issue that the aforementioned Funes el Memorioso explores: a man who could remember everything in detail and so began to name everything individually ...

Wilkins was a Church of England cleric as well as a proto cryptographer (at both Oxford and Cambridge), he was Bishop of Chester at one point. I wonder what he made of the naming of the animals?

*[The impossibility of penetrating the divine pattern of the universe cannot stop us from planning human patterns, even though we are concious they are not definitive. The analytic language of Wilkins is not the least admirable of such patterns. The classes and species that compose it are contradictory and vague; the nimbleness of letters in the words meaning subdivisions and divisions is, no doubt, gifted. The word salmon does not tell us anything; zana, the corresponding word, defines (for the man knowing the forty categories and the species of these categories) a scaled river fish, with ruddy meat. (Theoretically, it is not impossible to think of a language where the name of each thing says all the details of its destiny, past and future).]

Another mythbuster: heliocentrism

Nice little piece at Design of Life: showing that the myth that the heliocentric view of the solar system was a 'demotion' for the earth. "In fact, ancient and medieval Arabic, Jewish, and Christian scholars believed that the center was the worst part of the universe, a kind of squalid basement where all the muck collected. One medieval writer described Earth's location as 'the excrementary and filthy parts of the lower world.' We humans, another asserted, are 'lodged here in the dirt and filth of the world, nailed and rivetted to the worst and deadest part of the universe, in the lowest story of the house, and most remote from the heavenly arch.' In 1615 Cardinal Robert Bellarmine, a prominent persecutor of Galileo, said that 'the Earth is very far from heaven and sits motionless at the center of the world.' [ ... ] By contrast, heaven was up, and the further up you went, away from the center, the better it was. So Copernicus, by putting the Sun at the center and Earth in orbit around it, was really giving its inhabitants a promotion by taking them closer to the heavens."

Mission Shaped Liturgy?

Matt Stone picks up a nice section from Andras Lovas on Mission-Shaped Liturgy, in which there is this:

worship leaders, being preachers in a more traditional setting or musicians utilizing contemporary songs, are put in the centre, in front of the congregation. This placement on the stage might bring the false notion that worship is the act and performance of the leader for an audience. It happens even more drastically when worship is confused with evangelism. When the church's worship is put into the service of evangelism it becomes people-centred and loses the correct focus, which is the glory, love, grace and justice of God. The church does not worship God because it wants to attract non-Christians, even if worship does have a missionary dimension.

The problem is so often the slide from recognising that there can be a missionary dimension to worship to trying to build on that. As soon as that happens, it is only a short hop to turning worship into a presentation to 'outsiders'. We have to recognise the principle of obliquity applies here -there are some things that you can't 'get' by aiming at; they are only by products of something else. So the secret is to design liturgy/worship to enable Christians to honour God and to renew our commitment to God, and to do so in a way that connects with the wider cultural context. If we do that, the oblique result can be that it is worship that 'makes sense' to outsiders and which enables them to glimpse the reality of God in their Christian friends and companions. Of course, we need to be wary of the difficulty that any group of people can develop a set of in-house norms and behaviours which can begin to lose connection with the wider culture. That's where a danger sets in which can give rise to worship sliding into presentation -that is from God focus to non-Christian people orientation. This happens, I suspect, because there starts to be an awareness that 'full-on' Christian worship in the subcultural idiom as it has evolved, may not be as culturally resonant with outsiders as to make an easy-enough understanding of (or at least comfort with) what is taking place. So the urge to explain and to invite them starts to take centre-stage and Christians find themselves being 'fed' by a string of evangelistic messages. No wonder we have a problem with developing disciples!

Of course, this does not mean we should 'design' worship without a mind to the wider cultural context. But we should not design with a view to speak to that wider cultural context. We are supposed to design worship to enable people to relate corporately with God and to receive, corporately, from God (whether that be a word or a gift or some other boon or rebuke). The implication of the latter perspective is that we recognise what people bring into worship, including from their cultural formation, and try to help them to 'speak' their culture before and with God. This in turn helps the formation of mature Christians who have a 'vocabulary' for relating to and understanding God which can resonate in the beyond-church culture. That is probably the most important obliquity. And note, it comes from seeing worship's place in Christian formation and by keeping the central focus on relating to God.
Journeys In Between: Mission Shaped Liturgy:

Ps. The Hopeful Amphibian post referenced in my original post, if you follow back to it, seems to have disappeared. 'Obliquity' has a couple of meanings, there's an astronomical meaning (the 'proper' one) and the sense I'm using it in this post and can be seen more fully explained here.

ID cards -the ultimate identity theft

I am grateful to Ian Angell for articulating well the problem with the National Identity Register (that's the database that is supposed to be the 'oomph' behind ID cards): in this article,
ID cards are the ultimate identity theft | Ian Angell - Times Online he shows how the problem is that the NIR will remove us from our possessions:

"In effect, your identity won't reside in the living flesh and blood of you, but in the database. You will be separated from your identity; you will no longer own it. All your property and money will de facto belong to the database entry. You only have access to your property with the permission of the database. Paradoxically, you only agreed to register to protect yourself from “identity theft”, and instead you find yourself victim of the ultimate identity theft - the total loss of control over your identity."

In effect, the state appropriates our goods and chattels and our earning power, and leases them back to us.

And to make matters worse, the government seems to be falling for the myth of technological infallibility and missing the real worry:

a persistent warning from the law enforcement authorities was that criminal gangs had placed “sleepers” in financial sector companies, and they were just waiting for the one big hit. The perpetrators of 80 per cent of all computer security lapses are not hackers, but employees. Cryptographic systems don't help if the criminal has been given the keys to the kingdom. Why should the ID centre be immune, especially when there will be nearly 300 government departments logging in. Furthermore, the register will be the No 1 target for every hacker on the planet: the Olympic Games of hacking.

And the government are going for the soft targets: students (who they hope to persuade to volunteer), airport workers (who will be compelled) and immigrants (who will be compelled with a big stick). I hope that the NUS will get behind a campaign to dissuade students.

The bidge is broken ...

More years ago than I care to admit just now, when I was training for ordination, I wrote a dissertation which critiqued the traditional evangelical proclamation package. I find it amusing and affirming (and annoying: why didn't I write something more publishable?) that various other authors and leaders have been picking up the same sort of ideas and critiques in the last few years. First John Finney produced a study that did in big what I had done as a preliminary study into how people came to faith; and came to a similar conclusion; that our 'crisis' model based on guilt alleviation is note really what people appropriate nor does it represent the main reasons people become active Christians in the life of churches. Now I discover David Fitch is critiquing the bridge illustration for a set of reasons that echo my own concerns going back years: mainly that it doesn't have a dimension of initiation into the missio Dei and so has no real connection to discipleship. Here's a sample of the kind of things he's saying.

"What's wrong with the Bridge's 'transaction' approach? It has the effect of initiating the unbeliever into a salvation 'for me' in the worst sense of those words. For in a consumerist society, the words 'for me' can longer mean what they meant when Paul spoke them or Luther spoke them. Consumerist society has trained all of us to think, feel and breathe all things as products to be consumed 'for me.' Jesus, Son of God, very God, has been reduced to an object to be used for some benefit. At this point this simply is no longer a salvation recognizable by Paul, Luther or the Christian church."
Yep. Amen.

Reclaiming the Mission :: The Weblog of David Fitch:

Emotions, Cultures and mind-reading

"Mind reading" in the title refers to our inferring the emotional state of others through contextual clues. Apparently, When It Comes To Emotions, Eastern And Western Cultures See Things Very Differently: "

'East Asians seem to have a more holistic pattern of attention, perceiving people in terms of the relationships to others,' says Masuda. 'People raised in the North American tradition often find it easy to isolate a person from its surroundings, while East Asians are accustom to read the air 'kuuki wo yomu' of the situation through their cultural practices, and as a result, they think that even surrounding people's facial expressions are an informative source to understand the particular person's emotion.'

So now you know...

YouTube - Christian Pat and his Charismatic Cat

Love it. Mainly because I love Postman Pat, and I went to theological college when it had a lot of Charismatic influence and Postman Pat was cult viewing.
YouTube - Christian Pat and his Charismatic Cat

Fair trade really is fair

For a while now the Adam Smith institute has been criticising the Fair Trade movement. In last week's Church Times, Giles Fraser reported the criticisms thus;

The Adam Smith people argue that it is all a con. First, most of the farmers who are helped are in relatively wealthy places such as Mexico rather than in poor places such as Ethiopia. Second, it benefits a few farmers at the expense of their non-Fairtrade neighbours, who then have to compete on unfair terms, and can be left worse off. Worst of all, that “little extra” that kind churchgoers are happy to spend actually works to keep poor people poor. It sustains uncompetitive practices, and discourages farmers from diversifying into areas of more profitable economic activity.

This week, Paul Vallely gives a nice rebuttal which is worth bookmarking when it comes off subscriber only into general release, just to send to the silly s*ds who think that the Adam Smith Institute is the last word.

"The first fairly traded coffee was exported into the Netherlands in 1973 from small Guatemalan co-operatives. Third World goods were first imported into the UK at “fair” prices in 1974. The quality of the products was poor at first, then it became variable, and now most of it is good, and some of it is of gourmet standard. [This is replying to the factual inaccuracy of the ASI claim that fair trade is a 1990's thing]
The idea that Fairtrade benefits a few farmers at the expense of others misunderstands the nature of the arrangement. Fairtrade offers not a fixed price, but a minimum one as a safety net. When prices are above that, as now with coffee, all farmers benefit. When it falls, the safety net ensures that the most vulnerable people in the supply chain can cover their costs in time of crisis. There is no meaningful sense in which others lose.
It is not true that most of the farmers who are helped are in relatively wealthy places such as Mexico rather than in poor places such as Ethiopia. In 2007, from a global total of 63 Fairtrade producers [I think a few noughts are missing in the light of the following figures, I suspect 2 or 3 noughts], just 50 were in Mexico, compared with 242 in Africa. Nor does the system favour middle-income landowners over poor landless labourers. Fairtrade works with smallholders on coffee, cocoa, sugar, nuts, and cotton, but it concentrates on strengthening hired workers’ rights in larger commercial farms in tea, fresh fruit, and flowers, where markets are more diverse."

Sometimes the myth of perfect competition seems to intrude and feed the criticisms, prompting the response.

The idea that Fairtrade prices sustain uncompetitive practices (by discouraging farmers from giving up on poor products and growing something more profitable instead) is fine economic theory. In practice, poor farmers simply do not have the additional resources, knowledge, or markets to diversify instantly.

The real injustice of the ASI position is captured in Paul's remark towards the end of his article, as usual it amounts to the west asking the rest of the world to do what it does not do itself.

free trade is not on offer at present, only trade weighted towards the rich. Fairtrade is a useful corrective in that — and a growing one. Fairtrade projects now touch the lives of seven million poor people. They cannot be abandoned while the ideologues of free trade argue for a truly free system that never seems to arrive.

And of course, let's not forget the irony:

The idea that small vulnerable producers need to be sheltered in their early years from the harsh winds of full competition from big business is not a Fairtrade notion; it was first enunciated by that high priest of free trade, Adam Smith.

Touche.
Church Times - Paul Vallely: It is not perfect, but it helps millions:

Church leavers give their reasons ...

There are a great many ex-churchgoers out there. When I was in parish ministry and even in chaplaincy, I kept being surprised by how many people I met who seemed to have some kind of Christian faith but simply could not abide church as they had experienced it. I also went through a period myself where I could well understand how that could be. Here's what the research said.

One in three said that their loss of faith was a key reason for leaving. Other reasons given were:
• Excluded by cliques (about half)
• Churchgoing was part of growing up (two out of five)
• Moving to a new area and family commitments (main reason for one in three)
• Tensions with work (one in four)
• Church was too feminine for some men, and too difficult for those sexually active outside marriage
• Inadequate return for time and money (two out of five)
• Disillusionment
• Hurt by pastoral failure (14 per cent)
• Church irrelevant (high proportion)
• Disliked change, e.g. of hymns (one in five)
• Worship too formal/informal and teaching too high/low (one third)
• Church leader was too authoritarian (RCs) or too unclear (Anglicans) (one in four)
• Church was too conservative (one fifth to one third)
• Lack of boundaries between the Church and the world (one in four)

Of course some of those things are contradictory, so there is no one 'answer'. Some are things that could be dealt with by existing churches 'raising their game' (in relation to people moving and having family commitments for example). I'm interested that in a time when a number of conservative churches are growing, that up to a third of leavers cited that as a reason for leaving. Now, there's a whole other discussion to be had about that, but I'm wondering about it more and more. Most importantly is the high proportion of leavers who reckoned that church was irrelevant. This we kind of already know. Isn't it about time we addressed it? Do we know what that means, though? Irrelevant in what way? Is it the same 'irrelevancy' for all the leavers or are there different kinds of irrelevancy?
I'd be interested in any ideas readers might have about what constitutes irrelevancy.
More than ever I find myself haunted by a Mike Yaconelli phrase; he used to say he was involved in a church for people who didn't like church. I thought, and still think; "yeah".

A brief anatomy of brutalisation

"When I killed the first person, I was afraid, I was scared. I killed the first person just to see if I could. But there is an obligation to kill. If you don't, they kill you. That's why the first was very hard, because the person I killed was kneeling down begging, crying and saying, 'Don't kill me. I have children.' That's why it was difficult and sad. But if you don't kill that person, someone else from the AUC will kill you. After the killing, you keep trembling. You can't eat or talk to anyone. I was at home, but I kept imagining the person begging not to be killed. I shut myself inside, but with time I forgot everything. The superiors always say, 'Don't worry, that was just the first time. When you kill the second one, it will all be OK.' But you keep trembling.
"The second time is only a bit easier, but as they say here, 'If you can kill one, you can kill many more. You have to lose the fear. Now I am still killing and nothing happens. I feel normal. Before, I had an obligation to kill, I was sent to kill. But once I left the organisation, I was not obligated. I now only do the job for money.

Boys And Girls Brains Are Different: Gender Differences In Language Appear Biological

Hmmm. Very interesting.

"If the pattern of females relying on an abstract language network and of males relying on sensory areas of the brain extends into adulthood -- a still unresolved question -- it could explain why women often provide more context and abstract representation than men.
Ask a woman for directions and you may hear something like: 'Turn left on Main Street, go one block past the drug store, and then turn right, where there's a flower shop on one corner and a cafe across the street.'
Such information-laden directions may be helpful for women because all information is relevant to the abstract concept of where to turn; however, men may require only one cue and be distracted by additional information."

Is this why men don't ask for directions? Worry about being told loads of stuff they don't need to know ...? Actually, I found this example worrying: I'm hopeless direction-giver because I tend to give more info than needed. In my case because I'm unsure what others may find significant or noteworthy ... which makes me female-brained?
Boys And Girls Brains Are Different: Gender Differences In Language Appear Biological:

Je ne regrette rien: phonetics

Beyond the voice and the passion of the line in the famous song, typically, I find the linguistics of the song fascinating. So it was great to come upon this posting Language Log: Je ne regrette rien: phonetics and phonology: which draws attention to one of the things I notice, partly because I've been trying to imitate the words as la Piaf sings them: "she sings je ne regrette as something very much like [ʒnʁgʁɛt], although the first two consonants are certainly soft and indistinct".
It's the reason I find Parisian French so hard to understand compared with, say, southern or West African: the Parisian version seems to have a principle of removing schwa as much as possible, often resulting in Piafesque strings of consonants. (And getting the 'light touch' on the consonants is also not easy). I spend loads of processing time working out which consonants belong with which morpheme or word ... clearly I need more practice. That's the reason to look to visiting Paris on Eurostar ...

Go With Your Gut -- Intuition Is More Than Just A Hunch, Says New Research

Being involved with coaching and spiritual direction has made me respect intuition more than some of my upbringing and early Christian formation would do. And it has to be noted that this study on intuition seems to focus on 'snap decision' intuition (I wonder if this is like in 'Blink'?) So the metaresearch precised in this article Go With Your Gut -- Intuition Is More Than Just A Hunch, Says New Research is interesting to me. "Through analysis of a wide range of research papers examining the phenomenon, the researchers conclude that intuition is the brain drawing on past experiences and external cues to make a decision – but one that happens so fast the reaction is at a non-conscious level. All we’re aware of is a general feeling that something is right or wrong." It makes me feel that encouraging people to pay attention to their gut feelings really is justified. Usually I'm noting there is an incongruity between their words and their tone or body language. And drawing attention to it unlocks a partially repressed gut feeling which can then be named and examined and weighed up; sometimes bringing out a vital set of perspectives; sometimes carrying the word of God.

The Future of Money: and the latest deflation

My last listing of this book was £180. Amazon.co.uk: The Future of Money: Creating New Wealth, Work and a Wiser World: B.A. Lietaer: Books Well some other seller has entered the frame and my first 'competitor' has dropped their price (from £360.52 to £106.12 -still the odd pennies, which may be due to calculations being done in dollars, it occurs to me now). So we're not it double figures yet (still triple), but it can't be long now.

Water Shortages Cause Saudis to Cease Grain Production

This is disturbing news, pretty much as the heading states. It's the implications that are worrying.

"growing national interdependencies will increase international tensions. Some might assume that as the need for a reprioritisation of basic food needs become more pronounced, the world will adjust its production systems to suit (think ‘the invisible hand of the market’) — i.e. that people will begin to reduce the strain by moving away from meat based diets, for example. But, I would venture to say that the more likely scenario is that those who can afford to continue with the lifestyle they now have, will do so, and those that cannot afford to outbid wealthy nations like Saudi Arabia, the U.S., China, etc., will simply go without. We’re seeing this already with food, oil, and climate change issues. People on the bottom rungs of the ladder are falling off while the wealthy continue lifestyles of excess."

Sorry to keep banging on about this, but responsible Christian global citizenship in a world such as the one outlined in the article that the quote is taken from,
Water Shortages Cause Saudis to Cease Grain Production, Celsias, must mean we change our diets to eat much less meat. Ronald Sider said it in the 70's and it's still true. Meat is a justice issue, and now it's also an environmental one too.

Men Have A Harder Time Forgiving Than Women Do

How interesting a piece of research is this? Men Have A Harder Time Forgiving Than Women Do:

"Men have a harder time forgiving than women do, according to Case Western Reserve University psychologist Julie Juola Exline. But that can change if men develop empathy toward an offender by seeing they may also be capable of similar actions. Then the gender gap closes, and men become less vengeful."

So much in that little bit: the place of empathy in forgiving, the implications for theological reflection on atonement and forgiveness (including on gender constructions and Deity), gender itself ... Not to mention that it seems to validate Jesus' approach about recalling our own sins and being forgiven as a help in forgiving (the parable of the unmerciful servant is a major example).
To explain a bit more

people of both genders are more forgiving when they see themselves as capable of committing a similar action to the offender's; it tends to make the offense seem smaller. Seeing capability also increases empathic understanding of the offense and causes people to feel more similar to the offenders. Each of these factors, in turn, predicts more forgiving attitudes.
"Offenses are easier to forgive to the extent that they seem small and understandable and when we see ourselves as similar or close to the offender,

It certainly seems to forground empathy and self-knowing humility as key building blocks to the ability to forgive.

Fair trade communion wine

One to celebrate: "a Staffordshire wine-merchant has imported what he claims is the world’s first Fairtrade communion wine. It has been created for him by the Los Robles Winery, in Curic�Chile." Reported in Church Times - A fair wine for the vestry cupboard. I must draw the attention of our college chaplain to this.

s/t/he/y

In a nice taking-apart of a bit of grammar-marmery, Geoffrey Pullum in this article: Language Log: Lying feminist ideologues wreck English, says Yale prof gets a lovely counter example in, which I must hold in reserve for one of my colleagues.

it is claimed that purported sex-neutral he ('a student who lost his textbook') 'has no pejorative connotations; it is never incorrect.' White's claim seems to me quite untrue. Consider how weird this sounds:
Is it your brother or your sister who can hold his breath for four minutes?
Why would it sound so weird if forms of the pronoun he could be sex-neutral? They can't. He is purely masculine in reference. The claim that it can be sex-neutral is not in accord with the facts.

In fact, I'd be surprised if the majority of English speakers didn't use 'their' at that point, like Shakespeare did (e.g. A Comedy of Errors, Act IV, Scene 3:
There's not a man I meet but doth salute me / As if I were their well-acquainted friend ). And Pullum links to examples of the latter and also of a very full listing of Jane Austen's usages of the same.

PS Nice post on the same topic at A Billion Monkeys Can't be Wrong And a follow-up at Language Log.

The Lord's prayer bodily sequence 01 - Pixton™ - The User-Generated Comic Strip

While I noted this on AbbeyNous, I didn't signal it here. If you're interested in body prayer, you might like to look at this.
The Lord's prayer bodily sequence 01 - Pixton™ - The User-Generated Comic Strip