How others see us ...

An interesting remark on what Chinese students see of UK culture when they come here to study.

"There is an emptiness in nightlife - party, party and nothing else. I thought there would be something special in culture - people would speak about plays or stories. I thought it would be a garden of thinking."

It's part of a piece looking at the fact that arguably,

We are in the middle of the biggest educational movement in history. Hundreds of thousands of young people are travelling to be educated abroad. They are led by the Chinese, for whom a foreign education is highly prized. There now are over 50,000 Chinese students in Britain - mostly the children of the elite and the rich - and the numbers studying abroad are predicted to double.

But the criticism is not all one way, as comments by Chinese students reveal, by the by, truths about life back home and its struggles.

The students noted that the British also had the ability to have a good time and relax, while in China people worried incessantly about their children or their parents. Part of the reason for this difference was the success of the British system of welfare and social care, said the students. There were many comments along the lines of "you can feel confident when you are old". These statements hinted at a deeper truth, in that they were all made by women.

This is also a peak into our global future, if we do the thinking needed on the raw material of these opinions with the thought that China is likely to be economically very important in years to come and that we have an aging population and need a younger workforce to pay the taxes to run the welfare ...

Technorati Tags: culture, china, UK, education, students

under-rated, under-appreciated, or under-valued

It's enough to warm the cockles of my heart: a list of "under-rated, under-appreciated, or under-valued" emerging church bloggers. And I made that list! I was just having to admit to myself the other day that my writing is unlikely to win me a wide readership: I suspect I'm far too eclectic and use a challenging range of vocab and draw from a wide range of subject areas to ever be 'popular'. So nice to have a little recognition. Anyway here's what it's about. Htt Matt Stone, The Blind Beggar and ultimately to Brother Maynard for starting it all off.

Brother Maynard has come up with the interesting suggestion of circulating a list of  under-rated, under-appreciated, or under-valued
emerging/missional blogs to help promote them in the wider blogosphere. Below is the list I picked up from The Blind Beggar.

• Emerging Grace



• Robbymac


• Lily


• Nathan Colquhoun


• John Smulo


• Todd Hiestand


• Theopraxis


• Chuck Warnock


• John Lunt


• Webb Kline


• Mark Wilson


• Rick Meigs


• Brother Maynard


• MakDaddy
  
  


• Glenn Hager


• Paul Mayers


• Jamie Swann


• Paul Walker


• Jerry Frear


• Phil Wyman


• Rainer Halonen


• Shannon


• Matt Stone


• Erika Haub


• John Santic


• Colin Lamm


• Julie Clawson


• Phil Johnson


• Andii Bowsher


• John Moorehead


• Paul Fromont & Alan Jamieson


• Steve Hollinghurst

To participate, copy this list into a new post on your own blog, and
add the names you have to the bottom of the list, and encourage others
to do the same. They should be people with under 150 links so we can truly scew the Technorati rankings. When you’ve done that, leave a
comment at Brother Maynard’s blog so he can keep track of who ends up participating.

Incidently, if you want to repro the list, you might want to view the source of the page and scroll down to the relevant bit to do a cut and paste. Certainly Firefox has that facility. Dunno about that other browser (ptui).

Technorati Tags: blogging, emerging-church, missional

I am a mirage that perceives itself

Hmmm, here's something to ponder. On the nature of the soul and the self.

One good prototype is the Escher drawing of two hands sketching each other. A more abstract one is the sentence I am lying. Such loops are, I think anyone would agree, strange. They seem paradoxical and even strike some people as dangerous. I argue that such a strange loop, paradoxical or not, is at the core of each human being. It is an abstract pattern that gives each of us an “I,” or, if you don’t mind the term, a soul.

Seems to me, to fit the Damasio ideas about the way that self consciousness arises/ emerges.
Wired 15.03: PLAY: Filed in: soul, identity, brain, mind, model

Learning is best by working out for ourselves

Informally I discoered this for myself as a teenager reflecting on my own learning. Later I discovered that the educational research was suggesting engagement made for better learning. Now some further evidence to suggest it is true.

"While we know that active engagement is the key to rapid learning," he said, "Meredith's result suggesting that knowledge gained via a child's own inferences is sometimes more powerful and longer lasting than knowledge gained through instruction may have powerful repercussions for how we teach new material. These implications have yet to be explored, but this first result is tantalizing."

It really should have us reviewing the way we are 'delivering education' (note the instructional bias of the terms, which are borrowed from the commercial world and seem to indicate an unhelpful metaphoric underpinning to contemporary educational policy).

And while we're on the subject, I loved what Caroline Ramsey wrote recently,

But, for me, learning is not about moving towards one correct answer, it is not about discarding wrong or less-than-best practices. Learning is about adding repertoires to our human living, refining our living practices in such a way that we, and those we live with, are happy with the outcome of those living practices.

Very much where I am in the matter.
ScienceDaily: Kids Learn Words Best By Working Out Meaning: Filed in: learning, research, psychology, instruction, education, teaching

Research on prayer; further twist

Not new research but a meta-analysis, seeming to indicate prayer probably does have a measurable effect.

"Some have found positive results for prayer. Others have found no effect. Conducting a meta-analysis takes into account the entire body of empirical research on intercessory prayer. Using this procedure, we find that prayer offered on behalf of another yields positive results."

Of course this does not tell us how or why in scientific terms and that would be the next area for debate and research, but it is certainly suggestive.
ScienceDaily: Does God Answer Prayer? Researcher Says 'Yes': Filed in: prayer, research, intercession

How we hear the Word depends on where we hear it from.

This looks like a really nice piece of practical theological research written up.

"everyone who reads and teaches the Bible needs to read Mark Allan Powell’s What Do They Hear? I think this book is solid gold.
Why? Because Mark seriously asks what it is like for preachers to address an audience and know (1) that what they “hear” is not always what the preacher “said” and (2) that what Christians “read” is shaped by their “social location.” "

It's gone on my 'must get sometime' list. HTT Scot McKnight.
Jesus Creed � The Big “You” and the Bible 1:

Using Linux reduces e-waste by 50%

A new research report [PDF] from the U.K. says that Linux machines are used for twice as long as Windows machines. If many people switched to Linux, this would prevent millions of tons of waste from overstuffing landfills. Every computer not needed would prevent the use of 240 kg of fossil fuels. Spread that out over the 17.5 million computers that wouldn’t be going obsolete every year and Linux could deliver the world a much more sustainable future.

Using Linux reduces e-waste by 50% � Linux and Open Source Blog: Filed in: linux, sustainability, waste, CO2

Slavery and the textual battle of 200 years ago

This is a must read. I'd been aware of the fact that there were Christians arguing both sides of the debate on slavery and could understand the reason why. What is really helpful about this article for me is the way that it does a really good job of laying bare the basic interpretive strategies that are still being fought over today. In this case, though, part of the interest is that the conservatives have largely accepted the principles of the abolitionist argument despite the fact that 200 years ago they were denouncing the abolitionist case as unbiblical and selling out biblical authority. Kind of sounds familiar, doesn't it? Excellent edition of the Bible Society's 'Bible in Transmission' and the article in question is here.

THE BIBLE IN THE AMERICAN SLAVERY DEBATES: TEXT AND INTERPRETATION - CARL SANDERS
In the period leading up to the Civil War, Christians in the United States were engaged in intense battles over the issue of slavery. American evangelicals’ opinions on slavery were divided into two broad categories.
The first party regarded slavery as intrinsically evil. Radical abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison believed in the evil of slavery despite biblical teaching which seemed to contradict that belief. Less extreme abolitionists like Albert Barnes believed the spirit of the Bible opposed slavery, despite the appearance that Scripture tolerated the institution.

You gotta read it. I'm thinking of using it as an introductory article for students looking at hermeneutics in practical theology. It's brief and to the point and likely to be topical both in terms of the original referents and the contemporary applications.
THE BIBLE IN TRANSMISSION: Filed in: slavery, hermeneutics, justice, text, interpretation

Religion Irrational? Ask a Preeminent Logician.

a world class logician was a personalistic theist who even believed in the afterlife, what is one to make of the carte blanche claims of the New Atheists that religious belief is irrational? Now, in my opinion, there are religious beliefs that are irrational. In fact, prominent theologians throughout time have fought that irrationality. However, when committed logicians (of which there are many besides G�del) support the rationality of some religious beliefs, the so called defenders of rationality will have to take them on before their rhetoric should be taken seriously.

Religion Irrational? Ask a Preeminent Logician. - Telic Thoughts: Filed in: belief, rationality, Godel, theism, personalism

On doing what we don't want to do and vice versa: the biology of temptation

I've always reckoned that the real trick to resisting temptation is actually recognising it in the first place. Perhaps help is at hand.

The funny thing about being vulnerable to saying, eating, or doing the wrong thing is that humans are typically unaware that they are in a moment of weakness, unlike the strain and fatigue we feel in our muscles after a workout. Fortunately, new research conducted by University of Kentucky psychologists Suzanne Segerstrom and Lise Solberg Nes suggest that there may be a biological indicator to tell us when we are working hard at resisting temptation and consequently when we are vulnerable to doing things contrary to our intentions.

I suspect wearing a heart monitor isn't really going to help most of us. There'd be too many other issues and false positives. So I think we're just going to have to keep working on self-conscientisation. Still it's good to know that spotting temptation is really a difficult task.

seeing in colour

Now, not a lot of people know that. Primates are a select bunch of creatures. We see three basic colours. Most mammals only distinguish two.

Trichromacy is dependent on three types of photoreceptor cells in the retina that preferentially absorb lights at different wavelengths. These are known as cone cells and each type contains a particular kind of light-absorbing sensor protein. Short-wavelength-sensitive (S) cone cells are most sensitive to blue lights, medium-wavelength-sensitive (M) cone cells are most sensitive to green lights, and long-wavelength-sensitive (L) cones are most sensitive to red lights. When light strikes the retina and activates the cone cells, the brain compares the responses of the S, M, and L photoreceptors, and it is the brain's assessment of their relative levels of activation that we perceive as color.

An interesting recent set of experiments managed to give mice the ability to see in three colours rather than two. Scientist predicted that it would take several generations before the mice might begin to use the ability but, apparently, brain plasticity is such that almost immediately, they began to be able to use their new ability.

Previous experiments with the visual, olfactory (smell), and gustatory (taste) systems have suggested that introducing a new sensory receptor can expand the range of an animal's sensory perception, altering both its behavior and nerve activity, Jacobs noted that the new study is the first to demonstrate that these simple genetic changes can have even more profound effects. “By simply changing receptor proteins, not only can you extend the range of information that an animal might be able to sense, but if the nervous system has the plasticity we've seen in these mice, you can extract a new dimension of experience,” he explained.
“Our observation that the mouse brain can use this information to make spectral discriminations implies that alterations in receptor genes might be of immediate selective value not only because they expand the range or types of stimuli that can be detected but also because they permit a plastic nervous system to discriminate between new and existing stimuli,”

Is this related to the ability of human subject to 'see' by fitting sensory equipment and wiring it into their existing neurological system. I suspect so. It may have interesting implications for the philosophical debates on epistemology and perception.

Technorati Tags: brain, plasticity, perception, genetics, vision, trichromacy, plasticity

V for Vendetta

Out on DVD, and as a result of one of my sons' good taste in films, I saw this last weekend. It's one of those films that I would not have looked at normally because the genre and style don't normally grab me. But I'm glad I did see it. It's one of the best films I've seen for a while. In trying to work out why it got under my radar, I think I would have to say that it is probably a combo of the characters who I really liked, the plot which had a rather sardonic humour about it, lots of interesting bits of symbolism, and the rather chilling portrayal of where I think that the kinds of policies our present government is pursuing would take us. It's a kind of comic-book-hero meets a revamped-"1984" scenario. The only thing I didn't really like was the (inevitable?) Warchowski bros balletic violence towards the end and the fact that this was yet another replay of the myth of redemptive violence at that point. However, in respect of that last point; it should be noted that the revolution was non-violent and the blowing up of the houses of Parliament was actually, mostly a firework display. The best moment was where troops were about to fire on huge crowds of civilian demonstrators converging on Parliament dressed in Guy Fawkes costumes and where the commanders' humanity won out and they did not give the order to fire and a huge repeat of the Peterloo massacre was not played out. That was a really positive moment celebrating non-violent resistance and mitigated the nod to redemptive violence which was, in any case, not really redemptive but came out at vengeful and something to be put aside having no place in the new world that would emerge from that night.

I loved the symbols and am still musing over it on that level. The use of the Croix d'Alsace for the fascist regime is interesting (given it was the symbol adopted by the Free French under De Gaulle). The symbol of V is rather like the Zorro symbol in some ways but evokes the wartime V for victory and yet uses a fascist colour set which could also be read as anarchist, and given that the symbol is pretty much an upside down anarchism symbol, I suspect that the latter association is the one we are expected to see first. The way that the leader is only ever seen on screen until his last scene is interesting too, provoking the musing up till the end of the film that he is a kind of big brother symobl, not real but a kind of personalised cipher for the reginme. I also liked how not all the baddies were irredeemably baddies.
A film I think I will see several times.
V for Vendetta
Filed in: film, politics, review

Sensations into symbols

If there is some kind of onomatopoeic 'something' then it seems to me that there is a basis for thinking that some forms of sounds will tend to have certain connotations unless syntax or semantics overtake them. This would seem to be the basis for some of the phenomena of poetry relating to things like the use of voiceless plosives to 'echo' things like wood chopping, or sibilants for water. This is related to the idea of motivated signs in semiology. So it's interesting to see research adding credibility to what we might begin to think ought to be the case.

There is, none the less, a growing body of evidence that colours, shapes, sounds and smells do have meanings. Wolfgang K�hler's delightfully simple 1929 experiment asked volunteers to match a pair of abstract figures to one of two nonsense words, "maluma" and "takete". Immediately, and virtually without exception, people matched maluma to the soft round figure and takete to the sharply angular one. Some sort of shared symbolism related the sounds to the shapes.

Perhaps Kandinsky was barking up the right tree, after all.
Sensations into symbols | Guardian daily comment | Guardian Unlimited: Filed in: language, universals, research, colour, symbolism

ID and Naturalist evolution

Whatever your perspective on intelligent design, it does seem to me that there have been some irresponsible charges and a huge rhetorical effort directed against it which seems to almost willfully set up aunt Sallies. If you want to see what ID'ers actually think and propose and how it fits with the whole Darwinist debate, then look at this response to an article in the Torygraph /Telegraph which reproduces the original but adds comments in-text from an ID perspective. Thus you get the idea rather well. A good reference article. I think that many evolutionists have simply assumed, on the basis of the rhetoric, that ID is creationism rewrit. I think that this riposted article shows otherwise.
ID.Plus: Richard Fortey rants at straw man of ID

Filed in: ID, Darwinism, evolution, theory, debate

Contextualization vs Syncretism

When Christian missionaries speak of 'messianic Judaism' or 'messianic Islam', they are basically referring to Christians engaging in deep level contextualization, so deep that at first glance the followers may not even seem Christian as you'd normally recognize it. But when you look deeper Christ is at the core of everything. In this respect I would quite happily accept the label of 'messianic New Ager' or 'messianic Occultist' amongst those who understood the term, though in truth this sort of language is generally reserved for the deepest forms of contextualization. I can't claim to go quite that deep, though I do prefer to call myself 'an initiate of the Jesus mysteries' to 'a Christian' if the truth be known.

For me that is really helpful.
Doubly so as the post goes on to flag up some sites of interest in contextualising the gospel in neo-paganism.
Journeys In Between: Contextualization vs Syncretism:Filed in: contextualisation, syncretism, Christian, neo-pagan, culture

Why impose on me what you know when I want to learn what's unknown?

I just found this and found it really helpful and inspiring. The tranlation for non-Hispanologues follows.

¿Por qué me impones lo que sabes si yo quiero aprender lo desconocido y ser fuente en mi propio descubrimiento?
El ruido de tu verdad es mi tragedia; tu sabiduría, mi negación;
tu conquista, mi ausencia; tu hacer, mi destrucción.
No es la bomba lo que me mata;
el fusil hiere, mutila y acaba, el gas envenena, aniquila y suprime,
pero la verdad seca mi boca, apaga mi pensamiento y niega mi poesía,
me hace antes de ser.

No quiero la verdad, dame lo desconocido.
Déjame negarte al hacer mi mundo para que yo pueda también ser mi propia negación y a mi vez ser negado.
¿Cómo estar en lo nuevo sin abandonar lo presente?
No me instruyas, déjame vivir viviendo junto a mi;
que mi riqueza comience donde tú acabas,
que tu muerte sea mi nacimiento..

Me dices que lo desconocido no se puede enseñar;
yo digo que tampoco se enseña lo conocido
y que cada hombre hace el mundo al vivir.
Dime, que yo tejeré sobre tu historia;
muéstrate para que yo pueda pararme sobre tus hombros.
Revélate para que desde ti pueda yo ser y hacer lo distinto;
yo tomaré de ti lo superfluo, no la verdad que mata y congela;
yo tomaré tu ignorancia para construir mi inocencia.
¿No te das cuenta de que has querido combatir la guerra
con la paz, y la paz es la afirmación de la guerra?

¿No te das cuenta de que has querido combatir la injusticia con la justicia,
y que la justicia es la afirmación de la miseria?
¿No te das cuenta de que has querido combatir la ignorancia con la instrucción
y que la instrucción es la afirmación de la ignorancia porque destruye la creatividad?
Tu conocimiento nos muestra el mundo o lo niega, porque es la historia de tus actos,
o lo negará porque despertando tu imaginación te llevará a cambiarlo
Deja que lo nuevo sea lo nuevo y que el tránsito sea la negación del presente;
deja que lo conocido sea mi liberación, no mi esclavitud.
No es poco lo que te pido.
Tú has creído que todo ser humano puede pensar,
que todo ser humano puede sentir.
Tú has creído que todo ser humano puede amar y crear.
Comprendo pues tu temor cuando te pido que vivas
de acuerdo a tu sabiduría y que tú respetes tus creencias;
ya no podrás predecir la conducta de tu vecino,
tendrás que mirarlo;
ya no sabrás lo que él te dice escuchándote,
tendrás que dejar poesía en sus palabras.

El error será nuevamente posible en el despertar de la creatividad,
y el otro tendrá presencia.
Tú, yo y él tendremos que hacer el mundo.
La verdad perderá su imperio para que el ser humano tenga el suyo.
No me instruyas, vive junto a mi;
tu fracaso es que yo sea
idéntico a ti

FAntastic; though a strong critique of the instructional mindset, but perceptive, given that the author was young. Here it is in English.

Don't impose on me what you know
I want to explore the unknown
And be the source of my own discoveries.
Let the known be my liberation and not my
slavery.
The world of your truth can be my limitation;
Your wisdom my negation.
Don't instruct me; let's walk together.
Let my richness begin where yours ends.
Show me that I can stand
on your shoulders.
Reveal yourself so that I can be
Something different.
You believe that every human being
Can love and create.
I understand, then, your fear
When I ask you to live according to your
wisdom.
You will not know who I am
by listening to yourself
Don't instruct me; let me be.
Your failure is that I be identical to you.

An abridged translation of a poem in Spanish, originally written by the young son of the Chilean Biologist, Umberto Maturana.

Of course there is the challenge too, to much Christian 'education' which has been adapted from the instructional and mass models of our surrounding industrialised approaches. But if we rethought our educational strategies with discipleship, the emphasis on experiencing the Divine and the example of Christ, the theological valuing of the person and their uniqueness and the example of the very early church in mind, we would be making far more room for personalised approaches focusing on the individual's learning journey. This is actually vitally, crucially, related to the issue of contextualisation and enculturation, ultimately inspired by incarnation. Again, I am struck by the similarity between what is happening in education at the cutting edges and what is happening in emerging church circles.

fridge gadget that could slash greenhouse emissions

The patented cube mimics food and is designed to fit around a fridge's temperature sensor, which usually measures the temperature of the circulating air.
Because air heats up much more quickly than yoghurt, milk or whatever else is stored inside, this makes the fridge work harder than necessary. With the cube fitted, the fridge responds only to the temperature of the food, which means it clicks on and off less often as the door is open and closed.

Technorati Tags: gadget, fridge, efficiency, CO2, electricity

Violence and the growth of peacefulness

There's a few contemporary myths biting the dust if Stephen Pinker is right. And he may well be.

Pinker tells us, “Our ancestors were far more violent than we are.” We’re probably living in the most peaceful time of our species’s existence, a statement that seems almost obscene in light of Darfur and Iraq.

The decline of violence, he tells us, is a fractal phenomenon - we see it over the centuries, the decades and the years. That said, we see a tipping point in the 16th century - the age of reason - particularly in England and Holland.

Until 10,000 years ago, all humans were hunter gatherers. This is the group that some believe lived in primordial harmony - there’s no evidence of this. Studying current hunter-gatherer tribes, the percent of male adults who die in violence is extraordinary - from 20 to 60% of all males. Even during the violent 20th century, with two world wars, less than 2% of males worldwide died in warfare.

The interesting thing biblically is that the spread of sin in Genesis is accompanied by a rise in violence. And violence is clearly a major underlying issue in the older testament more generally.

It all prompts a further consideration, viz.

why is violence becoming less common? He offers four explanations:

1) ... In anarchy, there’s a temptation towards preemptive violence, hurting the other guy before he hurts you. But with the rise ... the State - there’s a monopoly on violence. ...
2) In the past, we had a widespread sentiment that life was cheap. As we’ve gotten better at prolonging life, we take life more seriously and are more reluctant to take life.
3) We’re seeing more non-zero sum games, as people discover forms of cooperation that can benefit both parties, like trade and shared peace dividends. These zero-sum games come with technology, because it allows us to trade with more people. ...
4) ... By default, we empathize with a small group of people, our friends and family. Everyone else is subhuman. But over time, we’ve seen this circle expand, from village to clan to tribe to nation to other races, both sexes and eventually other species. ...

I think I would add that we should not discount the 'leaven in the lump' and the salt and light effects. With the rise of religions that promote the 'sanctity of life', and their secular derivatives, cultures of violence are challenged and the peace dividend can be seen and potentially shared. Justice, therefore is part of the picture as well as the expansion of the notion of who is our neighbour.
A further interesting reflection is to be had, however, by comparing the levels of violence among our nearest genetic relatives, chimpanzees. Chimps, I gather, would be unable to live in cities because the levels of routine violence among them would threaten the infrastructure requiring co-operation. Maybe it's not only the state's nationalising of violence but the necessities of co-operation and neoteny?

Theologically, I think we have to take the idea of corporate humanity more seriously if we are to take on board this kind of debate. But that's my pet project and I won't bore you with it now.


Technorati Tags: violence, history, fall

Biblical Seminary - Embark - Online Learning

In my forthcoming role as a mixed mode tutor and lecturer in practical theology, I suspect that I may be wanting to develop stuff online and so I'm interested to note this. Scot McKnight's new online course.
Biblical Seminary - Embark - Online Learning

Filed in: learning, online, theology, training, web2.0

The slave trade's African roots

One downside of the commemorations is that the emphasis on enslavement reinforces the belief that there was no African history before European domination. In many ways Africa is still a "blank space" in most European peoples' consciousness. The media carry images of conflict and famine, but there is very little coverage of the continent's history. Before slavery devastated vast areas of the continent, however, several European travellers recognised that, in terms of architecture, trading and systems of government, African societies were as advanced as their own. The west African empire of Mali, for example, was reputed to be one of the largest, richest and most powerful states in the world during the 14th century.

A consequence of the ignorance about pre-slavery Africa is that it is hard for Africans and African-Caribbeans to have an open, honest debate about the role of African traders in enslavement. Some questions are rarely discussed publicly, partly for fear of the use to which such debates may be put by those anxious to direct attention away from the brutality of Britain's slave-trading history.

Thanks to the Guardian for running the piece.

Technorati Tags: slavery, Africa, transatlantic, abolition

Food waste

As a child who was brought up by a mother whose formative childhood experience of food was growing up in wartime austerity, I carry with me a deep-seated abhorrance of food wastage. I hear an inner voice reminding me that I should clear my plate, reminding me of the plight of the many on our globe who do not have enough. I feel guilty for taking more than I can eat and I have in the past felt badly for the way that we have been seduced from time to time into overpurchasing. It is this latter dimension of the issue that seems strangely absent from this otherwise helpful report.

"Our research has found that about half of the food we throw away could have been eaten," Jennie Price, the Wrap chief executive, said. "There is a real opportunity here for us to both save some money and help the environment by making a few small changes.
The striking point which emerges from the research is that only 10% of those asked realised they were throwing much food away."

The thing that I think needs to be kept before us is the marketing of food by supermarkets. They are interested in selling as much as possible to get as much money circulating into their own internal economies. So BOGOF may look good but unless we have proper strategies for actually eating the stuff we end up wasting the food but having only paid for one (ostensibly) we don't really notice. And then there are all the seductive messages about the healthy food we can buy, so we buy it alongside all the fatty treats we normally buy and naturally fail somehow to eat the good stuff, but feel better at the checkout for having done so: guilt-alleviation purchases that rarely get eaten.

So here's my suggestion for something to do at least at Lent and Advent: do a stock take of your food throwaways and use that to replan your shopping strategies. If you are throwing away certain foodstuffs, ask yourself what the practical psychologies of obtaining and usage actually are. Are you buying stuff like some of us tend to buy books (on the basis that you hope to get round to reading it someday)? Are you actually finding that you feel too tired to prepare it and so end up in the junk-food end of your fridge and freezer, or reaching for the takeaway number?

In a world where many of our brothers and sisters find it hard to discern the positive answer to the prayer they pray for daily bread, those of us who throw 'daily bread' away, should consider how the world's systems of food distribution have become distorted and take more responsibility for restoring God's purposes. Our 'your kingdom come' might then be their 'daily bread'.

And that's before we think about the environmental impact of unnecessarily transporting the stuff in the first place, and then the costs of disposal... our waste of food is not an insignificant factor in costing us the earth.

Technorati Tags: food, wastage, UK, daily_bread

Celebrating Wayside pulpits

I have to confess that I have a great fondness for

laborious puns and facetious wordplay

and so the announcement of a national competition has brought a delighted sense of anticipation to tickle my forebrain. I am hoping to find some masterpieces along the lines of these:

"Come in for a free faith lift"
Fight truth decay
Ch..ch - What's missing? UR
Rooney shoots but Jesus saves.
Adam blamed Eve, Eve blamed the snake and the snake didn't have a leg to stand on

Apparently entries can be texted in and the winning slogan gets a £500 donation to a church or charity.

Technorati Tags: humour, advertising, wayside-pulpits, puns

Reading the claims carefully with TM

It's been going on for thirty odd years; TM's claims of health benefits as if it is unique. I'm quite happy to believe that TM helps reduce stress. But we should note that TM has a history of investigating TM practitioners, quite understandably, but I don't so often see comparisons with other meditation techniques, and this is significan because ...

TM most likely improves heart failure by reducing sympathetic nervous system activation associated with stress that is known to contribute to the failing heart.

In other words the same kinds of benefits are likely to accrue from other regular meditative practices. What I'm annoyed about is the amount of money the TM empire makes by presenting this kind of claim selectively when people could find similar benefit from more 'generic' meditation techniques. Don't pay for the brand, folks.
ScienceDaily: Transcendental Meditation Can Help Combat Congestive Heart Failure: Filed in: meditation, medical, heart, stress, TM

My news of a job

I can now make it public; follow this link to a page where in about 3 or 4 months time my name will appear as lecturer in Practical Theology and course leader for the mixed mode training pathway (or some such wording).

I was interviewed a week ago and told the same day that I was to be offered the job subject to the usual checks. The most important of those was dealt with yesterday and so the announcement is now in the public domain...

more later, probably as I limber up to it.

Technorati Tags: post, theology, lecturer, job, St Johns, Nottingham

Trident and parliament

Ironic that the government was given permission to start developing the new generation of its nuclear 'toys' by the votes of the opposition. Apart from the obvious comments about Labour MPs voting against their own government, or about the 80% (I think it was) polling against Trident, or even about the real Tory tendency being given an outing, there is the less-obvious comment about the tendency for sitting MPs not to favour PR voting systems. One of the arguments is against coalitions and relying on cross-party support to get legislation through. Well ... see where I'm going? It seems to me that the actual nature of bipartisan systems (which tend to be the result of FPTP systems of voting, I suspect) is to make the leading parties into rolling coalitions, but with the instability of the decadal make-overs as the inner alliances change. A PR system merely swaps the less accountable and transparent 'broad-church' nature of parties under bipartisan systems for a more transparent, coherent and focused set of parties.

Back to the vote itself, we're told this, which is some comfort, at least.

Mr Blair told wavering rebels that although they were being asked in principle to maintain Britain's independent deterrent, in practice they were merely being asked to sanction two years' work on the design and concept phase of the new system. He also contended that no parliament could bind another, in effect suggesting the final decision on signing the expensive contracts could be revisited by a government in 2012-2014, led either by David Cameron or Mr Brown.

Technorati Tags: nukes, weapons, NPT, Trident, UK, parliament, democracy, voting, PR

ID cards -they can't resist a quick quid or three

Some time back I made a prediction that government with such a valuable database would find it hard to resist the temptation to sell the info. This is the Daily Mail's perspective (normally, I don't touch it but on some causes ...)

Banks and other businesses are to be sold access to personal information stored on the Government's ID cards database.

You may consider following up the issue by searching this blog for "ID_cards"

Technorati Tags: ID_cards, UK, costs

Just so you know

Channel 4 are about to broadcast a prog giving an outing to the views of global warming denialists. George Monbiot does a nice job showing why we shouldn't let ourselves be taken in

Cherry-pick your results, choose work which is already discredited, and anything and everything becomes true. The twin towers were brought down by controlled explosions; MMR injections cause autism; homeopathy works; black people are less intelligent than white people; species came about through intelligent design. You can find lines of evidence which appear to support all these contentions, and, in most cases, professors who will speak up in their favour. But this does not mean that any of them are correct. You can sustain a belief in these propositions only by ignoring the overwhelming body of contradictory data. To form a balanced, scientific view, you have to consider all the evidence, on both sides of the question.

Technorati Tags: climate, warming, denialism,

Them bones, hear the word of the Lord.

Some nice pithy riposte to the whole Jesus family tomb thing from Scot McKnight on God's Politics.

they have failed to report the fullness of the facts. Poor people didn’t have ossuaries and tombs in Jerusalem, because they couldn’t afford such extravagances. Galileans, when their bones were stored in ossuaries in Jerusalem, almost always wrote on the bone box their “address”: e.g., Yeshua from Nazareth. The names found on these ossuaries are so common that they are non-identifiable markers; the authors of this news story can only claim some statistical odds by necessitating that the "Mariamene" of one of the ossuaries be the Mary Magdalene of a 4th century non-Jewish, semi-Christian, apocryphal gospel. These aren’t facts the authors of this new story are willing to explore, and it undermines my confidence in their objectivity. (And some of the scholars they use to support their case are now denying the claims attributed to them.)

A succint, to the point rejoinder on the best of the case. And of course there is the credibility of the matter in principle, too.

We are being asked to believe that a Christian movement – shaped from beginning to end by the claim of both resurrection and ascension (no bones, therefore no ossuary) – was started by a family dynasty of the same faith (Jesus, Mary Magdalene, Judah), and carried on the secret of actually having the bones of Jesus buried in an extravagant and public place while they encouraged early Christians to go to death because of their faith in Jesus’ resurrection and ascension.

Quite so.

Technorati Tags: ossuary, Jesus, Mary_Magdalene, bones

People, money and ...

A further consideration for Lent from a secular source. At one level, nothing new. However, it does endorse the wisdom of 'plotting against yourself' as my former college principal once called the discipline of planning to bypass or work round our worst tendencies.

left to our own devices, he said, many of us would spend all of the money each month, and not exercise the self-control it takes to invest it ourselves.
Thus, we commit to a monthly payroll withdrawal because we intuitively understand our tendency to discount. We know that we are likely to take a smaller, immediate reward rather than wait for the larger, long-term reward that comes from saving for retirement.
The researchers' work helps in understanding the factors that influence choices involving certificates of deposit, retirement plans, health-club annual memberships, Social Security, automatic investments and so on, and also helps in the identification of weaknesses in people's decision-making processes.
The researchers suggest that such understanding may enable people to make better choices — those that lead to greater benefits in the long run.

Technorati Tags: money, motivation, saving, self-control, temptation

'Bolder' subject teaching needed

Huge sympathy with this as I reflect on the handful of occasions just this week when I have knocked back good and legitimate religious questions from my students because the curriculum /syllabus can't let me follow where the interest leads.

Education ministers should first decide what the national curriculum is for and spell out the learning achievements it wants schools and teachers to meet, says John White, emeritus professor of philosophy of education at the school of educational foundations and policy studies at the Institute of Education in London.
It should then be left up to individual schools how they meet those statutory obligations - freeing them from the current restriction of delivering them within strict subject boundaries,

'Bolder' subject teaching needed | News crumb | EducationGuardian.co.uk: Filed in: education, UK, schools, testing

interspecies service mentality could be beneficial

I'm intrigued that looking at things and operating things by taking the perspective of another life form -in other words servicing it- could actually be the way forward... not least because it is congruent with a Christian ethic of service and dying to self, but applied to creation...

The farm produces an amazing yield of meat on only 100 acres. It gives lie to the myth that meat cannot be sustainable and that organic meat farming can’t be profitable - the key may be to go far beyond organic and into very complex permaculture. Salatin, he tells us, doesn’t consider himself a chicken or cattle farmer, but a grass farmer, which is what makes the remarkable system work.
Pollan tells us that we have to get over the idea that we get more for us, and less for nature - at the end of the season at Salatin’s farm, there’s more soil, more biodiversity, more for everyone.

WorldChanging: Tools, Models and Ideas for Building a Bright Green Future: Michael Pollan Gets Duped by his Lawn. And We Get Duped by the Corn?: Filed in: sustainabl., permaculture, organic, grass, meat

Myths, Lies, and Truths aboutLinux

Basically this post is here so I can find this article again, but also some readers who may be considering Linux may be interested too.
linux kernel monkey log
Filed in: linux, myths, reality, plug'n'play, support

'Wanting' And 'Liking'

Hmmm, how about this interesting science-based reflection for Lent? It seems to me to contain the seeds of useful reflections relating to temptation and consumerism.

"It's relatively hard for a brain to generate pleasure, because it needs to activate different opioid sites together to make you like something more," Berridge said. "It's easier to activate desire, because a brain has several 'wanting' pathways available for the task. Sometimes a brain will like the rewards it wants. But other times it just wants them."

ScienceDaily: Why 'Wanting' And 'Liking' Something Simultaneously Is Overwhelming: Filed in: desire, pleasure, brain, temptation

not all of life's slings and arrows are created equal

Seems to me that these findings are interesting corroborations of some Christian values in terms of human 'utility' ie welfare and happiness.

most people adapt quickly to marriage, for example -- within just a couple of years, the peak in subjective well-being experienced around the time of getting married returns to its previous levels. People mostly adapt to the sorrows of losing a spouse too, but this takes longer -- about 7 years. People who get divorced and people who become unemployed, however, do not, on average, return to the level of happiness they were at previously. The same can be said about physical debilitation. Numerous recent studies have demonstrated that major illnesses and injury result in significant, lasting decreases in subjective-well being.

It seems to suggest to me that working for stable relationships and health are important.
And there are some interesting further details too. Naturally, we have to note the word 'average' in the above.

There's a lot of individual variation in the degree to which people adapt to what life throws at them.

But then there seems to be a dividend for a certain degree of predictability and security, if I understand this bit aright.

What's more, individuals destined to experience certain life events actually differ in their subjective well-being from those not so fated -- even well before the occurrence of those events. People who eventually marry and stay married, for example, tend to be happier even 5 years before their marriage than those who are destined to marry and get divorced.

So working for a stable society in relation to these kinds of things would seem to be helpful.

Technorati Tags: happiness, welfare, resiliance, marriage, bereavement

Reasons Why the Linux Desktop is a Complete Blast! � Linux and Open Source Blog

Yep. This really rings bells for me. At school I have to use Windoze machines and it really frustrates me that I can't have the several desktops my Ubuntu Linux machine at home or the Linux cluster machines at the University allow me. It really is the case that it gets tiresome to be maxing and mini-ing the windows. So I nod sagely at this:

Have you ever gotten tired of maximizing one window, doing something, minimizing it, and hunting for the button on the taskbar to bring the next window up? In Linux, you open a program on desktop one, maximize it, and hit a key to go to desktop two and keep another program maximized there, and so on - as many desktops as you want. Never settle for anything less than full screen. And as if that weren’t enough, you can also hit another key combo to bring up the console - your desktops are still there, undisturbed - while you can flick back and forth between multiple consoles as well.

Reasons Why the Linux Desktop is a Complete Blast! � Linux and Open Source Blog

Interesting dilemma ...

The case of the double is well known in ethical debate and this partcular version, of giving morphine to alleviate pain even though it is likely to shorten life, is even in A level syllabi. But it turns out it's not a good example.

Evidence over the past 20 years has repeatedly shown that, used correctly, morphine is well tolerated and does not shorten life or hasten death, he explains. Its sedative effects wear off quickly (making it useless if you want to stay unconscious), toxic doses can cause distressing agitation (which is why such doses are never used in palliative care), and it has a wide therapeutic range (making death unlikely).
The Dutch know this and hardly ever use morphine for euthanasia

Which leads me to the question: what happens if a well-read A level student attempts to put this over and is marked down by the marker because the latter hasn't got this research in front of them?

Technorati Tags: education, morphine, double-effect, ethics, euthanasia

After the Dawkins deluge...

I think this is worth noting as a response to a response to a response to The God Delusion. I like it even more because the author is an evolutionary geneticist; Allen Orr.

In the end, my assessment of The God Delusion is unchanged. Long on colorful anecdote and short on rigorous argument, it does much to reveal Dawkins's hostility but little to convince that he's thought deeply about the object of that hostility. It's one thing to express one's impatience with fundamentalist nonsense; it's another to think that one has accomplished significant intellectual tasks— like showing "Why There Almost Certainly Is No God."

Technorati Tags: Dawkins, God, evolution, religion

Good news on Trident from the Cof E

The Secretary of the APF reports on the synod debate on Trident:

Note on the Trident debate at the General Synod on 26th February 2007
Background paper
The debate was informed by a report of the Mission and Public Affairs Council entitled The future of Trident. Appended to this was (1) the Council’s submission to the House of Commons’ Defence Committee’s inquiry into the Governments White Paper on ‘The future of the UK’s Nuclear Deterrent’. They are available on the Church of England’s website (January 2007) and (2) a statement by the Archbishop of Canterbury on the White Paper (December 2006). The latter called for ‘a genuine debate in which Christians, and others whose consciences are disturbed by these proposals, will want to play a full part’.
The papers are available on the Church of England’s website.
The motion and outcome of vote
The motion for the debate was as follows.
‘That this Synod recognising the fundamental responsibility of Her Majesty’s Government to provide for the security of the country:
1. welcome the response from the Mission and Public Affairs Council to the House of Commons Defence Select Committee’s inquiry expressing serious questions about the proposed renewal of the UK’s minimum deterrent;
2. call on Christian people to make an informed contribution to the issues raised in The Future of Trident in the light of Christian teaching about Just War; and
3. urge Her Majesty’s Government to consider further whether and how the proposed upgrading of Trident lies within the spirit of the United Kingdom’s obligations in international law and the ethical principles underpinning them.’

There was just one amendment to the motion. Following debate this was carried by 165 to 149 votes. It changed paragraph (c) to:

c. suggest to Her Majesty’s Government that the proposed upgrading of Trident is contrary to the spirit of the United Kingdom’s obligations in international law and the ethical principles underpinning them.
So, after the amendment, the motion is a little stronger than the original. It was carried by 206 votes to 38. It has been interpreted by staff writers as ‘a strengthening of the Church of England’s opposition to the renewal of Trident’.

Some points from the debate made before the amendment

Bishop Tom Butler, Vice-chair of the Mission and Public Affairs Council drew members attention to some points in the council’s report. These included reference to the Government’s obligation to provide security for the country; the importance of using the Just War to make an informed contribution to the debate; and the UK’s obligation to the Non-proliferation Treaty pointing out that upgrading nuclear weapons is not in the spirit of the treaty.

Bishop Peter Price (who is APF’s Bishop Protector) said that nuclear weapons were unjustified and inimical to the gospel of peace; UK should not break with the Non-proliferation Treaty; and that the atom bomb hides the cross. He said he would support the motion but wished that it could have been more radical.

Archbishop Rowan Williams argued that the deterrent argument should not outweigh the moral inadmissibility of nuclear weapons. He said, ‘I am sorry that the original motion was not rather stronger. I support it as a way of putting down a marker about the tactics of modern war, about that category of weapons which cannot be morally approved. I believe that the least a Christian body ought to do would be in these circumstances to issue the strongest possible warnings and discouragements to our Government.’

The Revd Moira Astin (APF member), argued against nuclear weapons and said that ‘we are being too parochial in our definition of peace. We have a responsibility to protect life which goes beyond the UK.’

Many other views were expressed with slightly more supporting the Trident replacement that rejecting it. Some believed that the motion was not specific enough to be of particular value. Several said that the UK should break out of the cycle of nuclear enhancement and risk insecurity. Two retired army officers argued strongly for nuclear deterrence and one said that the Chiefs of the General Staff had given their agreement in principle to the Trident replacement. There were criticisms of members of the Defence Select Committee in that it did not take a lead on a non-proliferation strategy by rejecting the replacement. Most of the arguments against centred on the uncertainty of future of international developments and the need to be prepared for all eventualities.

One member referred back to the Lord ’s Prayer which was said at the beginning of the session and said that the need for security has led us into temptation.

Mr Justin Brett (Oxford) moved the amendment and just a few statements were made on this. Most supported it while a few others thought it did not go far enough – the word ‘suggest’ was thought to be too weak.

Ban Illegal Timber

I think this should work. Go to this page and input your email and you can get your own details on lobbying the EU about illegal timber sales.Ban Illegal Timber

Filed in: timber, EU, environment, FoE

Shipping's ecological footprint.

Shipping is responsible for transporting 90% of world trade which has doubled in 25 years. Donald Gregory, director of environment at BP Marine, said ... "We estimate carbon dioxide emissions from shipping to be 4% of the global total. "

So what's the fuss about? Why is the Guardian getting its knickers in a twist over this? After all, that seems a pretty good total considering the other uses of fossil fuels in our so-called civilisation. Well the answer is that this total is likely to grow hugely:

Ships are getting bigger and every shipyard in the world has a full order book. There are about 20,000 new ships on order

in fact

Separate studies suggest that maritime carbon dioxide emissions are not only higher than previously thought, but could rise by as much as 75% in the next 15 to 20 years if world trade continues to grow and no action is taken

I was surprised and found this comment pertinent to my surprise.

Yesterday Caroline Lucas, a Green MEP, said: "[Shipping] has got away with doing nothing and maintained a clean image which it does not deserve."

Interestingly there are designs around that could make a difference. I guess it will take higher fuel prices to start to get them considered. However, it does look like a candidate for retrofitting ...


Technorati Tags: shipping, footprint, carbon, emissions

Buyer beware

A couple of years ago, I was looking to buy a Palm Tungsten PDA. I decided to look at Ebay. I found a deal that looked pretty good, but being a little concerned by the whole thing of 'if it looks too good to be true, it probably is too good to be true', I decided to check out the buyer a bit more. Chinese; okay that might explain the price (or not). Good ratings, so who from? Other Chinese buyers. Hmmm, well okay. Check a bit more and find ... these seem to be a mini cartel buying stuff from each other and giving each other great ratings (I mean, too good, really). So I decided not to risk it and also reported it as a potential scam to Ebay. So interesting to find someone's done a study and found the same.

common on eBay... more than 6,000 examples of buyers and sellers engaging in transactions solely to boost one another’s scores. These auctions frequently had titles like “100+ Feedback” and a price of 1 cent. Often, the item for trade was a booklet explaining how to increase feedback by reselling that same booklet.

Worth looking at some of the other things going on. It's a jungle out there.

Technorati Tags: Ebay, research, scams, buying, selling, ratings, wisdom_of_crowds

Once more into the ghetto dear friends ...

I saw this and thought of you dear reader ( :-d ).

Conservapedia brands itself on its main page as "a much-needed alternative to Wikipedia, which is increasingly anti-Christian and anti-American."

. Which is an interesting reaction, given that if that's how they feel, they can actually rework the material and there are mechanisms for mediating long-running battles over content and even the possibility in genuinely contested areas to present both viewpoints. What this seems, to me, to really represent is a discomfort on the part of some conservatives with the fact that their view of the world is contested, and that imposing authority is not always the way to resolve dispute and disagreement. It seems to be a rather petulant reaction to the fact that not everyone is wowed or convinced by their arguments. The insularity of some USAmerican opinion is also on display, I think. For so long the internet has been dominated by the economics of digital access hardware that many Yanquis seem to have forgotten that there really is another world out there and that when other people get to write the scripts, the cowboys ain't always the heroes. So some of this reactions seems like the fit of pique involved in taking your bat and ball home when you can't use the power of ownership any longer to cajole others into playing by your rules.

Personally, I think that this reaction shows that the impetus behind this brand of conservatism is that which drives bullying, and like most bullies, when their power-base is threatened they retreat and create a ghetto. Understandable, but sad that they don't feel able to truly work by civilised values. Perhaps I'm being a bit harsh but this morning that's how I feel. Perhaps as I think about it more I'll get a bit mellower.

Technorati Tags: conservatism, wikipedia, bullying, internet, globalisation

Fundamentalists of all faiths and none

I usually feel a sense of satisfaction when I see someone writing something that I've been saying for ages and it is being said to a wide audience. Colin Slee, the Dean of Southwark, says.

"We are witnessing a social phenomenon that is about fundamentalism. Atheists like the Richard Dawkins of this world are just as fundamentalist as the people setting off bombs on the tube, the hardline settlers on the West Bank and the anti-gay bigots of the Church of England. Most of them would regard each other as destined to fry in hell. You have a triangle with fundamentalist secularists in one corner, fundamentalist faith people in another, and then the intelligent, thinking liberals of Anglicanism, Roman Catholicism, baptism, methodism, other faiths - and, indeed, thinking atheists - in the other corner. " says Slee. Why does he think the other two groups are so vociferous? "When there was a cold war, we knew who the enemy was. Now it could be anybody. From this feeling of vulnerability comes hysteria."

I think that it could be that last bit of analysis which is worth chewing over a bit more. I don't know yet whether I think it may be right, but I do think that it is plausible.
The article is a good read, and includes this rather nice soundbite from Alistair McGrath,

"We need to treat those who disagree with us with intellectual respect, rather than dismissing them - as Dawkins does - as liars, knaves and charlatans. Many atheists have been disturbed by Dawkins' crude stereotypes and seemingly pathological hostility towards religion. In fact, The God Delusion might turn out to be a monumental own goal - persuading people that atheism is just as intolerant as the worst that religion can offer."

There are a number of interesting and even provactive things in this article. And here's another one.

Slee argues that low (below 7%) church attendance is a result of Christians being revolted by "the church presenting itself as narrow and non-inclusive".

. Again I find myself wondering whether that is true or plausible. I suspect its plausibility is more a function of ones viewpoint: more liberal types think it must be true. But, I can't help wondering whether the fact that it looks just as plausible to more 'signed up' religious believers that the low figures are about not being definite enough producing communities where belief is not strong enough really to be sufficiently distinctive to propagate itself.

On another point, we find Children's author, Philip Pullman, arguing atheism should be taught in schools.

"What I fear and deplore in the 'faith school' camp is their desire to close argument down and put some things beyond question or debate. It's vital to get clear in young minds what is a faith position and what is not, so that, for instance, they won't be taken in by religious people claiming that science is a faith position no different in kind from Christianity. Science is not a matter of faith, and too many people are being allowed to get away with claiming that it is."

As someone currently teaching in a Catholic school, I can say, with reasonably experiential authority, that atheism is taught, and reasonably fairly and that the science department is happy with evolution as are the RE department. I would reserve a comment to say that science does involve a degree of faith, and if Mr Pullman had a better grasp of epistemology he might agree and not see that as somehow threatening the endeavour we call science, at its best.

Of course it is an article written in a UK context, so international readers may need to recall that Britain has schools that are overseen by faith communties which are part of the state school provision. However, they all have to follow the national curriculum, so that considerably narrows the scope for 'indoctrination'.

The reason this matters to me is pretty much summed up with the words of the Archbish of York,

"The aggressive secularists pervert and abuse any notion of diversity for the sake of promoting a narrow agenda.

I came to that view working in a secular university that seemed blind to the fact that 'secular' did not really mean 'neutral'. I did manage to get that changed to some degree, so that secular views were also recognised as on a par with religious in terms of having values and world-view issues attached which could be challenged by religious views. And in fact, because this was in Bradford, I came to a view about the matter remarkably similar to this.

Tamimi contends that this was not quite what happened. Rather, he suggests that Christians were complicit in their marginalisation from power. "Christians did that to themselves - they allowed religion to move to the private sphere. That would be intolerable for Muslims." Why? "Partly because secularism doesn't mean the same for Muslims from the Middle East. The story of secularism in the Middle East is not one of democracy, as we are always told it was in the west. Instead, it is associated with tyranny - with Ataturk in Turkey, for instance. Islam is compatible with democracy, but not with this secular fundamentalism we are witnessing."

. And my view on how to handle that in public life came to be one that is remarkably similar to this one

set out by Yahya Birt, research fellow at The Islamic Foundation. "One form of secularism suggests that religion should be kept in the private sphere. That's Dawkins' position. Another form, expressed by philosophers suc has Isaiah Berlin and John Gray, is to do with establishing a modus vivendi. It accepts that you come to the public debate with baggage that will inform your arguments. In this, the government tries to find common ground and the best possible consensus, which can only work if we share enough to behave civilly. Of course, there will be real clashes over issues such as gay adoption, but it's not clear to me that that's a problem per se."

So I'm well pleased to see my thinking over the last few years affirmed.

Technorati Tags: fundamentalism, religion, atheism, culture