What do we call Jesus' Bible?

My old friend Doug leads us through the linguistic and PC minefield. Oh, and I know there are problems with what I've termed it in the title, but I wanted something more-or-less recognisable that Doug hadn't already dealt with. Worth a look: it's more complicated than you might think
Naming the books we have in common

Just read: Coalescent (Destiny's Children) by Stephen Baxter

I don't report on all the books I read, but occasionally I'm so pleased by one I feel I want to. This is one. The reason is that it deals with themes that interest me, not least theologically. Now it is not a Christian book by any means, but the plot revolves around the possibility of 'hive' humans and so explores to some degree the tension between the individual and the collective. It presents the conditions for emergence and applies them to a human social scenario. This makes it a helpful way to introduce some of the issues that surround the Stringfellow/Wink approach to the Powers as I am trying to unfold them. For me the theological issue is about the balance involved in humanity between the individual and the collective. And if that is right, the way we image God as Trinity. The issue arising from the novel, and which I presume is further explored in the rest of the series, is the possibility of emergent entities which subsume human beings and turn them into cogs cells in the greater whole. It seems to me that this is part of the potential oppressiveness of the powers, and this picture begins to show why.

Lina Joy remains officially Muslim

I reported the prequel to this last year. "Malaysia's best known Christian convert, Lina Joy, lost a six-year battle on Wednesday to have the word 'Islam' removed from her identity card, after the country's highest court rejected the change." And was alerted to the latest news, interestingly enough, by noting that all of a sudden the traffic to the above posting had gone way above a normal hit-rate. My posting seems to be showing up in the top ten of google searches including the name Lina Joy. The newspaper report underlying the title on this posting is in the top three at present.
It deserves some comment especially when we go on to read;

The court's ruling helps define religious freedoms in multi-racial Malaysia, whose constitution guarantees freedom of worship but deems all ethnic Malays like Joy to be Muslims, subject to Islamic laws that bar her conversion to another faith."You can't at whim and fancy convert from one religion to another," Federal Court Chief Justice Ahmad Fairuz Sheikh Abdul Halim said"

I think that first bit should read "... helps define the limits to religious freedoms in Malaysia ..." However, was it ever going to go any other way. The three judges ruled 2:1 against her, the one being the only non-Muslim. To get a sense of the social and cultural uphill struggle read this blog comment from a Muslim Malaysian, and then read some of the comments for a really scary view of things. And yet they seem unaware of the problem. The legal 'fact' of her being Muslim doesn't change the spiritual reality of her allegiance. What they are assenting in creating is the equivalent of Messianic Jews: Musulman biMasih, or somesuch. That may turn out to be a shot in the foot.
However, let's not lose sight of the human cost.

She wants to marry her Christian boyfriend, a cook, but she cannot do so while her identity card declares her to me Muslim.

And of course, I imagine she would be happy to come away from the jurisdiction of "syariah" (sic) court. At least none of the commenters, as far as I read had called for the Shariah penalty for apostasy to be applied. Thank God for such mercies!
PS (written on 1/6/07) It could be that this is more a proceedural judgement about the proper way to handle a conversion officially in the Malaysian legal system. For a bit more detail note the comments on this blog entry. However, the proper route may be to apply to a shariah court to apostasize, perhaps this is not an attractive option as some may see it as applying to be hunted down and killed, in theory (again see the comments). I'm left wondering what protections there are for those who do that.
Malaysia's Lina Joy loses Islam conversion case�|�International News�|�Reuters.com:

Liberty under threat in UK

An interesting and concerning article in which these words caught my attention. "Those who lived through the last war still remember their identity cards. But they also remember a Britain that disposed of such state controls at the first opportunity. Your identity - and how's this for a right? - was your own affair. Not any more. Thanks to a threat less potent than that mustered by the Provisional IRA in a slow year, we find a Prime Minister deriding law, judges and the bleeding hearts - your servant - who worry over liberty and executive power. Tony Blair tells us that still more police powers are needed, whatever the police might think; that privacy is no longer a human right; that the civil liberties of the suspect - or the duties of a judge - are an impediment to our security."
I continue to be afraid more of the reaction than the 'threat'. In any case, such reactions make the threat more likely to manifest. Have we learnt nothing from Baader Meinhof and the Brigate Rosse?
The Herald : Features: MAIN FEATURES:

Gender-Neutral Translation difficulties

I just came across this article What's Wrong with Gender-Neutral Bible Translations? (in TheResurgence). It's written by Wayne Grudem and I admit that I approached this article skeptically. However, there is a good point made about the pluralising of singular third person pronouns in order to avoid using 'he/him/his' where gender is not at issue.
"The NRSV translators did not want to do this, so they changed the singulars to plurals instead:

Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them and we will come to them and make our home with them.

The problem is that Jesus did not speak with plural pronouns here; he used singulars. Jesus wanted to specify that he and the Father would come and dwell with an individual believer. "
I have to agree that I find this pluralisation a little irritating too but we do have to ask what's the alernative? All translation involves compromises of this kind. Though in this case I feel that a wrong-headed notion of 'proper' English may not have helped the translators. They could have used the singular indefinite 'they' as in

whoever loves me will keep my word, and my Father will love them and we will come to them and make our home with them.

It's a usage that is very common in spoken English and traces back to Shakespeare himself. In fact, Grudem points us to one place where this usage is taken up:

In Psalm 19, a familiar verse says, "But who can discern his errors?" (19:12, RSV). The NRSV changed this to, "But who can detect their errors?"

Grudem points out with some reason that this could be interpreted with 'the ordinances of the Lord' being taken as the antecedents. However, such ambiguities are already part of bible reading. It's why we engage in preaching and commentary, in part.

I think that the problem is that Grudem and others really don't get it that for many English speakers (but not all, so it's no good citing counter examples from contemporary English when it's not from the hand of someone who natively uses the other form; that's like citing A west-country accent to 'prove' the British English speakers really do pronounce post-vocalic r's), the generic 'him'(and 'man') has ceased to exist, it is a masculine pronoun and can only be heard in the way it was (presumably) in, say, Victorian times as generic with great difficulty and some training. In the meantime you have alienated hearers and readers who are conscious of the justice of gender equality. I think that they reckon its all a plot and that the rest of us are just pretending that the meaning has changed for us; like those English people who reckon foreigners really speak English when we are not around and just speak French to be awkward; they just can't imagine how different language really is. Add to that a radical lack of sympathy for trendy progressive identity politics and, well you get a grumpy article like this that offers no real alternatives.

In defence of my proposal I would use a piece of evidence Grudem mentions, albeit I make different use of it.

In Galatians 6:7, Paul wrote, "Whatever a man sows, that will he also reap" (RSV). Changing "man" to "person" would have been fine, since the Greek is not gender-specific. But to avoid "he," the NRSV says, "You reap whatever you sow."

I think that this may have been meant to use the indefinite 'you' (equivalent to 'one')? If we can use a more colloquial form in one place, why not another? Of course I may be wrong about how to take it, though I don't doubt that a number of readers will read it as an indefinite third person 'you'.

Perhaps we should recall that any translation that has dropped the second person singular pronoun 'thou' and its cognates throws up similar problems: all those 'you' in the epistles being interpreted as singular rather than plural is a common hazard for preaching and teaching the Bible in English but I honestly don't think that returning to 'thou' forms is the answer.

What I'm left concerned about is that the lack of acknowledgement that the kinds of things he criticises are already difficulties with other ('sound') translations albeit in different areas. I have lost count of the times I have heard or read expositors say something like, "The translation can be misleading here; what the Greek/Hebrew says is ...", I've even done it myself. Commonly the word 'righteousness' is not a simple translation in cultural terms, for example. I'm afraid, however, that insisting that ones own dialect of English (where it may still be possible to use 'him' and 'man' gender-neutrally) is the norm for the rest of us to follow is not going to be a strategy that will win friends and influence people. And indeed it will continue to alienate honest seekers and dialogue partners. There will never be a perfect translation and we will have to try to make the best of the various competing demands. However, I think that this gender neutrality thing will not go away however much the Grudems of this world wish it might, and so a better strategy needs to be offered than what appears to be on show here.

Politics in a wired world

A really good opinion piece because to the point, putting a lot of info very quickly and deftly. It's worth reading and the quote below may show you why I think so. Usual disclaimers: only might apply if civilisation can find its way through the environmental and global security challenges currently facing us.

Governments speak of consultation, but these are usually top-down exercises whose outcomes are tightly managed. If Wikipedia can assemble nearly 6m entries in 100 languages with just five employees, why would it not be possible to draft "wikipolicy" through a similar process, one that would then be voted on by elected representatives?

Technology could make the bypassing of traditional government institutions look very appealing. Witness the rapid action of MoveOn.org, which put together 30,000 evacuees from Hurricane Katrina and 10,000 volunteers ready to give them a bed. Or check out Kiva.org, which matches people with cash in the rich world to entrepreneurs in developing countries who need a loan. What these groups illustrate is not only a frustration with traditional government, but a way the internet can bypass government altogether.

I wonder too about the very units in which we now participate. Currently, geography matters a lot: we vote in the areas we physically inhabit. But if millions of people are linked by MySpace, why is that not a political community? I can foresee a future in which national diasporas, for example, operate the way territorial societies do now. If ever there is a peace agreement to ratify, perhaps the entire Palestinian people, dispersed across the world, would take part in a referendum. The current iron link between democracy and territoriality might grow weaker.

Put pessimistically, the internet could be reducing the very idea of a collective society.

The internet will revolutionise the very meaning of politics | Guardian daily comment | Guardian Unlimited

Revealing The Origins Of Morality -- Good And Evil, Liberal And Conservative

Interesting article called Revealing The Origins Of Morality -- Good And Evil, Liberal And Conservative: in it we are given a useful summary of scientific discovery so far germane to thinking about morals and ethics. "social-psychological insights are being synthesized in support of three principles:
1. Intuitive primacy, which says that human emotions and gut feelings generally drive our moral judgments.
2. Moral thinking if for social doing, which says that we engage in moral reasoning not to figure out the truth, but to persuade other people of our virtue or to influence them to support us.
3. Morality binds and builds, which says that morality and gossip were crucial for the evolution of human ultrasociality, which allows humans -- but no other primates -- to live in large and highly cooperative groups"
We ought, in my view especially note the ultrasociality of humans compared with other great apes. A fact which renders very dodgy some attempts to make moral comment (usually on sexuality) based on comparisons with chimps. It's also the potential clash set up by the first two principles that should concern us. Anything to worry Christians here? Not really unless you're a 144-hour creationist. In fact, I think that it can offer some help which fits with the spirit of Christ: "we each learn only a subset of the available human virtues and values. We often end up demonizing people with different political ideologies because of our inability to appreciate the moral motives operating on the other side of a conflict. We are surrounded by moral conflicts, on the personal level, the national level and the international level. The recent scientific advances in moral psychology can help explain why these conflicts are so passionate and so intractable. An understanding of moral psychology can also point to some new ways to bridge these divides, to appeal to hearts and minds on both sides of a conflict", and the Christian-theological suspicion of human motivation because it can so easily be subverted, as well as concern for the other and reaching out to enemies should help in accepting the potential tools this avenue of research could give us.

How to read a book

Hat tip to Steve Bishop for drawing attention to this rather excellent set of notes. It pretty much covers the same ground as the relevant chapter of 'The Distance Learner' and has some good advice linked to sound findings in terms of what we know about how we learn. So worth getting a hold of. Another thing I'm stashing away to offer students in college.
ecotheology: How to read a book: "David Field has a five page pdf on 'How to read' ... it's a handout for the 'Stating the obvious' module at Oak Hill  College.  It's well worth reading! "
I agree Steve. Thanks.

Urbanisation visualisation

A controllable timeline map of the world since 1955 showing urban growth. Another potentially useful teaching resource. I can see me using it as part of missions learning resources. Flash animation.
BBC NEWS | | Urbanisation

Visual History of Religions

This looks like a good potential teaching resource. History of Religion: "How has the geography of religion evolved over the centuries, and where has it sparked wars? Our map gives us a brief history of the world's most well-known religions: Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Judaism. Selected periods of inter-religious bloodshed are also highlighted. Want to see 5,000 years of religion in 90 seconds? Ready, Set, Go!"

See also an animated gif version.

The Worship Industry

Brian McLaren on the way that contemporary worship has become a cultural industry. Right on and the way the video is intercut with 1950's advertising footage is amusinga and sometimes clever.

Access To Alcohol Among Middle School Children

As far as I can tell, this study needs careful handling in terms of results. It finds "More than one-third of the alcohol consumed by these children came from their own or a friend's parents or guardians. " and links this to problem drinking later. But let's remember it's in the USA and the cultural context is important. There could be a huge difference between children who have been introduced to alcohol consumption in a European manner where its use is modelled in a controlled family environment and the illicit stealing of drinks to emulate the stupid binge drinking that treating it like a controlled substance reinforces. And that in a culture whose attitude to alcohol use is inherited, probably imho, from northern European warrior-feasting culture where excess and silly games and judgements of machismo are part of the deal. So, are there studies on the cultural contexts?

ScienceDaily: Access To Alcohol Among Middle School Children:

Why scientists need pomo

Following my earlier irritated postings, I came across this (via) " It is easy to get a computer to take a picture, much harder to get it to “know” what is in the picture.
How does a hornet with virtually no brain do it?
Today the language and modes of thought of computing dominate the biological sciences. One speaks of behavior as being genetically “programmed” or “hard-wired,” and of a brain’s “processing power,” of “integrating” information in “real time.” We are perhaps not always aware that we do this. When you think in terms of a particular scheme, you can begin seeing it where it isn’t, begin projecting it onto the world.
When I think of how the control of a hornet’s legs must work (except of course that it doesn’t have to work the way I believe it must), I think in terms of sensors of angle and force, of procedures to calculate this and that. Do hornets do it this way? Maybe not. Scientists as much as other people struggle to escape their preconceptions or, more usually, don’t struggle. Many don’t seem to know that they have preconceptions."
Just so, the lessons of perspectivalism need to be learnt.
And the comment from the blog that led me to Fred's musings adds this: "Brains are sites for thinking in those animals that have them. It doesn't follow that they are necessary for thinking. I am reminded of the claim that alligators cannot feel because they do not have a mammalian brain, and the response of a man who worked with alligators for years:".
And that reminds me of the work of Antonio Damasio, whom I have been referring to from time to time, whose collection of evidence seems to indicate that thinking is more emotional and more body-distributed than we tend to think. Thinking humanly requires an embodied brain. The brain in a vat would not produce human thought except, presumably if it was on cable like humans in the matrix.

What does this mean for incarnation? that's what's occupying my speculative theological thinking from time to time nowadays. It has implications too for the concept of God without parts and passions and what humanity might mean for God. It also impinges on the matter of suffering.

Fred On Everything:

Essential Tones Of Music Rooted In Human Speech

A former choir-master of mine used to say that he could teach anyone to sing because to speak used tonality, pitch and rhythm. Well he may have scientific investigation on his side too. ScienceDaily: Essential Tones Of Music Rooted In Human Speech: "'In about 70 percent of the speech sounds, these ratios were bang-on musical intervals,' Purves said. 'This predominance of musical intervals hidden in speech suggests that the chromatic scale notes in music sound right to our ears because they match the formant ratios we are exposed to all the time in speech, even though we are quite unaware of this exposure.'"

Why It Feels Good To Be Altruistic

Actually, strictly speaking, I'm not sure that this article or the research it's based on answers the implied question in the title. Why It Feels Good To Be Altruistic: "a similar pattern of brain activity was seen when subjects chose either to donate or take a payoff. Both types of decisions were associated with heightened activity in parts of the midbrain, a region deep in the brain that is known to be involved in primal desires (such as food and sex) and the satisfaction of them. This result provides the first evidence that the 'joy of giving' has an anatomical basis in the brain – surprisingly, one that is shared with selfish longings and rewards."
That's more 'how' we come to feel good about it. The why is a bigger question whose answers range from 'just do' to 'because God made it that way'. We have a big issue with confusing how and why in our culture...

Louis Farrakhan claims he is both a Muslim and a Christian

Louis Farrakhan claims he is both a Muslim and a Christian: "“A good Muslim is a Christian, and a good Christian is a Muslim,”"
So, if I say that I am dedicated to submitting to God's will, I'm a Muslim ... the word means 'submitter'... ???

Despite stresses ... prayer can help

This is in the USA, but this storyMoney really can't buy happiness, study finds | Chicago Tribune tells us:
"TOP OCCUPATIONS IN JOB SATISFACTION
1. Clergy
2. Physical therapists
3. Firefighters
4. Education administrators
5. Painters, sculptors ..."
Worth looking at the specifically Christian comment here. The question they end up asking there is "Are the statistics about pastoral burn-out and depression inflated? Do we overstate the hardships of ministry as a perverse way to make us feel more noble and courageous for continuing? Or, are most of us actually experiencing deep contentment, pleasure, and spiritual satisfaction in our labors?"
I think, in as far as this might play out in the UK too, that clergy actually tend to feel keenly the difference between themselves and their parishioners when it comes to employment, not least because, ultimately, they are paid by these parishioners. One response to the tensions around this is to retreat into self-justification (which presents as emphasising hours worked and specifically to try to show value for money by having a list of achievements). However, the dark side of that can be sudden 'snaps' and depression when things are not such as to produce ready markers of worthwhileness. And yet the ability to set own hours and goals, to a large extent, and to be dealing with a sense of fulfilling vocation is known to be worth a lot in terms of working against stress. I suspect the sets of figures are both true, just of different people at different times and products specifically of the questions asked, I suspect.

It's also worth having a look at this report from the Church Times. One of the interesting things reported there was, "A study by the Revd Dr Kelvin Randall of 340 clerics from England and Wales found that the younger clerics burned out more quickly, and felt more depersonalised. One reason the researchers gave was that older clerics had learnt to pace themselves. The Church needed therefore to introduce “strategies to care for and support its younger clergy.”" and even more interestingly and perhaps not surprisingly (but it's nice to have it confirmed) "In another study, of 1278 male stipendiary Church of England clerics who had responded to the burnout surveys and to a prayer survey, those clerics who had a “positive” attitude to prayer did better than those who had not."

UCCF Creation Matters

It is great to see UCCF putting this on."How should Christians respond to the global environmental crisis?". Some good speakers too so it should take the issues seriously. It's been a long road. I was partly responsible (?) in the late 70's for getting IVF to publish a book on environmental matters. However, it didn't do well. Let's face it, only some people, like me, were interested back then. It gives me no pleasure to say, in effect, "I told you so", but ... Anyway, celebrate the good.

Scientists divided over alliance with religion | Science | Guardian Unlimited

Martin Lord Rees apparently said this recently, in a speech about science and religion "'You can imagine eco-groups who imagine the world would be better off without human beings. We need to combat these new irrationalities and,..."
Now I'm not sure that this is irrational. It seems to me that it is a perfectly rational belief based on good evidence. What is not rational is to use the word 'rational' rhetorically, like that, as a way to maintain a fig-leaf of humanism. I'm seriously worried now that we can't have a rational debate with some of the scientific community because of unacknowledged comments to a-rational basic thinking tools and inadequately founded notions of morality.
Scientists divided over alliance with religion | Science | Guardian Unlimited:

Faith and science, again.

Dawkins, again:

"If we are too friendly to nice, decent bishops, we run the risk of buying into the fiction that there's something virtuous about believing things because of faith rather than because of evidence. We run the risk of betraying scientific enlightenment."

Yeh, yeh. Now he's moving into shooting himself in the foot territory. After all, the context is some scientists saying that alliances with moderate religious people is in the interests of scientific enterprise. Too right it is; quite a lot of scientists actually are 'religious', in fact science was, arguably, driven by religious convictions.
And Dawkins still seems not to have got over positivism: where is his learning that all human knowing rests on believing as the likes of Polanyi and Popper have shown and that the kind of certitude he has is not 'scientific' either, as per Popper (and to believe otherwise is faith, Hume would agree).
Scientists divided over alliance with religion | Science | Guardian Unlimited

Technorati Tags: science, faith, Dawkins, religion

Prime sites for nuclear power stations identified

Prime sites for nuclear power stations identified | Energy | Guardian Unlimited Environment: "The report highlights nuclear waste organisation Nirex's anxiety that the sites most prone to flooding from rising sea levels are in the low-lying areas of the south of England - exactly where electricity demand is forecast to be greatest."
It just seems that when we look into the details of nuclear power's proposed renaissance, it just gets worse. As a Greenpeace spokesbeing said:

"Scientists say the speed at which climate change is happening means that some of the sites suggested for new nuclear power stations are threatened by rising sea levels and storm surges. You have to question where the government thinks it's going to build these thing

Terrorism -a fuller story

Definitely food for thought, how come we hear a lot about Islamist terrorism and so little about the higher threat levels implied by these figures?

figures from Europol, the European police agency, reveal that Islamist terror attacks in Europe constituted 0.2% or all 'terrorism' throughout the continent in 2006.* Unsurprisingly, there has been little in the media about this interesting figure in the month since it was published. In their first report of this nature - European Terrorism Situation and trend Report 2007 - reports that across the EU there were 498 terrorist attacks in 2006. These include: 424 'ethno-nationalist and separatist' (mostly in France and Spain)
55 'left-wing and anarchist' (mainly Greece , Italy, Spain and Germany)
1 failed Islamist terrorist attack (in Germany, plus two more attempts allegedly foiled in Denmark and the UK)
1 right-wing terrorist attack (in Poland)
The figures appear to over report left and anarchist 'terror' by categorising some political demonstrations which result in damage to property as 'terrorism'.

Do note the imbalance, based on semantics of left and right wing groups, but even so ...
Spinwatch - The statistical invisibility of Islamist 'terrorism' in Europe

Technorati Tags: terrorism, Islam, figures

Ministers to press on with new nuclear power stations

Despite the fact that, we are told, ministers are to press on with new nuclear power stations, we can hope that the coalition of the unwilling are enough: "A group of Labour, Lib Dem and SNP MPs warn in a letter published in today's Guardian that 'we should not be politically panicked into accepting a technology that poses a continuing risk in terms of weapons proliferation and terrorism, produces a toxic waste for which no management solution is agreed, benefits from hidden subsidies and tends to undermine the prospects of renewable energy and efforts to increase efficiency'. The letter, also signed by Friends of the Earth, said it was a 'myth' that the lights would go out or that Britain would be far less dependent on gas imports without nuclear."
Apparently the figure in polls in the country show an interesting split. Overall it's 49% to 44% against nuke power. However if you separate out the genders, those in favour among men come out as 62% whereas among women it's 27%. Now why is that? Are men more 'macho' (raised knuckles in the air and grunt 'hunh, hunh') about technological fixes and the industrial scale solution? Are women more connected to the waste problem and empathise with the potential suffering? Can I be any more stereotyped? Could the stereotypes be true?

Anyway, a couple of other things to bear in mind. One is that the government have been forced by a Greenpeace legal challenge, to hold more public enquiry on the matter. The second is the proposed change in planning regulations. The sweetener for the latter is that ordinary people could find it easier to make changes to their houses and interestingly the sales pitch mentions solar panels and wind turbines (pause for raised eyebrow and clearing of throat). On the downside it would cut the time for nuke power stations, airport extra runways and more road to be proposed and then built. Hmmmm.
Thinking of emigrating to Ireland.
In relation to the cited article on planning regs, one commenter (Brian Drury, we salute you) wrote very wittily:

“someone in the audience should blow a raspberry and shout "hypocrite".”
And then they will be arrested, fingerprinted, DNA profiled and charged under the Prevention of Terrorism Act.
New Labour: Tough on freedom - tough on the causes of freedom.

You know, I fear he may be right.

Letters to The Daily Telegraph on ID cards

Via the No2ID website came this link toLetters to The Daily Telegraph. Among them (and they are worth reading) is this one that probably speaks for an increasing number of people.
"I am disgusted at the proposal to spend £6 billion and more on this project.
This Government threw away £1 billion on that stupid Millennium Dome, is ploughing untold millions into the Olympic Games, and millions daily into the Iraq war - while hospices and air ambulances in this country get a pittance and depend on kindly individuals going around rattling collecting tins.
Air ambulances do life-saving work and hospices give care and love to those with life-limiting conditions. Why do we let our representatives fritter our money away and not help those who need it?" (Emphasis mine -'nuff sed)

Top 5 misconceptions about Christianity

Unmasking the Goddess: "the Top 5 Misconceptions Pagans Have About Christians:

* The church is male-dominated and Christianity is a religion for men only.
* Christianity is only popular because it's the established religion of the U.S. It will die out as our culture becomes more knowledgeable, logical, and scientific.
* Christianity is a political tool that uses fear to gain recruits and control the masses.
* Christianity is a religion based on sin and guilt; if you don't keep the rules, you're going to hell.
* Christians are trying to shove their religion down people's throats"

But the problem is; you can see why they would have those misconceptions, because they all have elements of truth in them, sometimes quite large elements. To me it says that our plausibility is in part in living differently not just saying differently.

Court clears anti-war saboteurs

I think that this is basically a jury in the UK recognising that some actions undertaken in Iraq could be illegal under international law and that, therefore, those who attempt to make it hard to carry out those actions are in the right. As one of those involved said; "It is a great relief - and a huge vote of confidence for anti-war protesters - that a jury were convinced that our actions were lawful."Court clears anti-war saboteurs | Special reports | Guardian Unlimited:

Food for thought: Muslims and integration

Just a little food for thought. It raises a host of questions.

Andrew Kohut, president of the Pew Research Centre, told a press conference that the estimated 2.4 million Muslims living in the US were "decidedly American in outlook", believing that hard work could lead to advancement.
But the survey, called Muslim Americans: Middle Class and Mostly Mainstream, did disclose pockets within the community who are disaffected and sympathetic to violence and extremism.
The poll found that 8% of American Muslims regard suicide bombings against civilian targets as justified. Twice as many Muslims in Britain, Spain and France see such tactics as justified. But the poll showed that among American Muslims under 30, sympathy for suicide bombings jumped to 30%. In Britain it jumped to 35%, Spain 29% and France 42%.

Is this down to the kind of immigration and indeed migrants? I can't help thinking that the fact that Britain, France, Germany, Holland etc have been dealing with migrants from former colonies or allies is significant whereas, I suspect, US immigrants are more diverse and were more attracted to the ethos of the USA rather than it being a relatively easy place to migrate to, but I'm just hypothesising in some ignorance here.
US Muslims more assimilated than British | Special reports | Guardian Unlimited

Yoga Is A Possible Treatment For Depression

"According to the researchers, yoga has shown promise in improving symptoms associated with depression, anxiety and epilepsy. 'Our findings clearly demonstrate that in experienced yoga practitioners, brain GABA levels increase after a session of yoga,'"
What we need now, of course, is an explanatory hypothesis. I suspect that endorphins are involved. Culturally, this plays into the 'spiritual practice is good for you' thing and links to wholistic mind-body-spirit perspectives very readily. As Christians, again, we should note this, promote the more 'hebraic' anti-gnostic perspectives within the DNA of the Church and make positive links to body prayer. This is about plausibility as well as building potential ways-in for enquirers.
ScienceDaily: Yoga Is A Possible Treatment For Depression:

So that's what you call it

"'counterfactual thinking,' or the re-imagining of major historical events, with the variables slightly tweaked."
Interestingly enough, it's this kind of fiction that has made me more interested in real history. But on the basis of this article, I'm thinking that the computer game might be really interesting. Of course, such a game is only as good as the parameters fed in at the start: gigo is still the rule.
Why a Famous Counterfactual Historian Loves Making History With Games: MAKING HISTORY®: The Calm & the Storm is a true grand strategy game that puts players in control of global conflict,

People Often Think An Opinion Heard Repeatedly From The Same Person Is Actually A Popular Opinion

Another finding that seems to cohere with intuitions.

"This finding shows that hearing an opinion multiple times increases the recipient's sense of familiarity and in some cases gives a listener a false sense that an opinion is more widespread then it actually is."

Presumably this is reflecting a mechanism that produces plausibility structures and, I suspect, is strongly related to mimesis and the action of mirror neurons. That's my working hypothesis.
ScienceDaily: People Often Think An Opinion Heard Repeatedly From The Same Person Is Actually A Popular Opinion:

Secularism, the State and Turkey

Turkey is a very interesting country to keep an eye on if you are interested in the relationship between religion and power and equality. I first got interested as a HE chaplain involved in discussing policy on religious diversity. One of the models of secularism we referred to was the "hard" secularism of Turkey (and in the other corner, the "soft" secularism of India). This International Herald Tribune article gives some background and some surprising information too.

The position in Turkey since Ataturk has been this:

"Political power is to remain in the hands of the secularist elite. Thus the 'secular republic' equals the 'republic of seculars' - not the republic of all citizens. Moreover, the secular elite holds itself responsible for preventing religion from flourishing; it is the proper role of the state, they believe, to suppress religious communities, restrict religious education and ban visible signs of observance such as the head scarf."

So you can understand that we were not very happy about that model of secularity for a university: the feeling was that some recognition of religious identity was fine and was arguably the best interpretation of the EU regs which were bringing about the rethink about the place of religion in university life.
The interesting thing is how religious parties have responded in Turkey.

The AK party's evolution is an interesting story. Islamic circles in Turkey have long hoped for a return to the glorious Ottoman and Islamic past in order to rid themselves of the ruling autocracy, which they regarded as the West's evil gift.
However, since the 1980s, thanks to their growing interaction with the rest of the world, they have come to realize something significant: The West is better than the Westernizers.
Noting that Western democracies give their citizens the very religious freedoms Turkey has denied its own, Muslims of the AK party have rerouted their search for freedom. Rather than trying to Islamize the state, they have decided to liberalize it. That's why in today's Turkey the AK party is the main proponent of the effort to join the European Union, democratization, free markets and individual liberties.

In effect this is what a lot of Muslims in the West have come to think too. The problem for Islamic views, as I understand it, is that democracy and inter-communal equality are not really foreseen and legislated for in the Qur'an and Sunna. What that means is that some Muslims are trying to think beyond the usual categories of Muslim control of the state or another religion controlling which are the main situations envisaged by the Islamic sources. Are there resources in the tradition where the Muslims are regarded as partners, on a par with others? And if so, what effect do they have?
The threat is secular fundamentalism - International Herald Tribune:

Brown plans UK's nuclear future

Bad news: Gordie seems to be an afficionado of the split atom as a solution to the carbon conundrum. Slightly good news is that there is parliamentary opposition, and the reasons for it are based on just my fears. "Brown was given a taste of a potential rebellion by his own MPs last night when a former environment minister expressed unease. Elliot Morley, the MP for Scunthorpe, said: 'Nuclear may or may not have a role to play in the new energy mix. My worry is that this will direct resources and investment away from new low-carbon technology, growth in renewables and energy efficiency. I am not sure nuclear is the best investment at this moment.'"
Now, of course, the big argument is TINA:

Darling says he now believes that Britain has no option but to remain nuclear. 'I respect the views of someone who says they don't want nuclear in any circumstances whatsoever. Fair enough. Right, tell me what the alternative is. If there was an easy answer that had low carbon, no cost, no eyesores somebody would have found it.'

Which argument I feel is a little disingenuos. There are answers, and if we had invested and continued to invest the kind of money that has been pumped into nukes, then it would have been obvious. Let's spell out that the 'answer' is more decentralised and varied: efficiency, insulation, tidal, wind, solar, self-generation of these, cleaner fossils ... etc. These will add up, create jobs and give us skills for a global market.
Brown plans UK's nuclear future | Politics | The Observer:

Best soundbite on a nuclear future

"'Reaching for nuclear power to solve climate change is like taking up smoking to lose weight. Is it a simple answer? Yes. Is it an effective answer to the climate change crisis? Absolutely not.'"
-Greenpeace Spokesbeing on Gordon Brown's dedication to Nuke power.
Brown plans UK's nuclear future | Politics | The Observer:

Pan's Labyrinth

I was certain that I had blogged about this being one of my new favourite films, but having read this article by John Morehead and looking for what I thought I'd already written for cross-referencing, discovered that I must have imagined it. John has done us a service by examining the pagan and Christian underlays of this film. I left a comment which added what to me seems to be a vitally important cultural critique. But then maybe I'd seen something not really there? Here's what I wrote there.

My initial reaction was about the way that the film seems to be pulling the rug from under the myth of redemptive violence by showing the 'goodies' as engaged in violence just as brutally with no real good being achieved and the only response that is given a thumbs up appears to be that of self-sacrificial love. Perhaps the theme of (self-) sacrifice is one which works with both religious traditions far more powerfully and subliminally. So I enjoyed the implied cultural critique of the Hollywood mythos which was one which is friendly to central Christian theological motifs.

Of course, I also enjoyed the fact that the film is in Spanish!
TheoFantastique: Pan's Labyrinth: A Grand Fairytale and Key to the World of Wonder

Scientology and institutional religion

I have to confess that Scientology has not really been on my radar: it is not widely practiced (though with some high profile members, admittedl) and its beliefs are about as bizarre as you can get. I read science fiction, but I really don't think that most of it stands up to scientific scrutiny. And also, frankly, I've tended to distrust an organisation apparently started by someone with little moral character and who wrote what appears at the end of this section quoted from the referenced article.
"organised religions can be very lucrative - as L. Ron Hubbard himself recognised.
Giant photographs of Hubbard adorn the new London headquarters, and his many pronouncements (such as 'Man is basically good and it is this basic goodness we want to set free') are stencilled on walls.
A comment you won't find displayed, though, is the one Hubbard made to an author's convention before he invented Scientology.
'Writing for a penny a word,' he said, 'is ridiculous. If a man really wants to make a million dollars he should start his own religion.' Basic introductory sessions for Scientology cost up to £80. Then there is another course which costs £300, then another..."
The other thing this raises for me though, is that my initial reactions to Scientology, be they well-founded or otherwise, seem perhaps not so dissimilar to how people see my 'religion' (though to be fair, few people see Jesus as a charlatan). It gives me a glimpse into how distrust of the institutional may feel when we are looking at religion. Heck, why should people give churches the benefit of the doubt? It also looks to me like if anyone is looking for the subject of a conspiracy theory, these are the guys.
And on the other hand, the money made seems to indicate that there is a hunger that is being tapped into. Perhaps we Christians should note and offer free alternatives or more 'subsidised' courses on personal and spiritual growth. And what are the ethics of such enterprises?
Still thinking but any clues ...
'Tom Cruise's Church of hate tried to destroy me' | the Daily Mail:

White House promises to replace Wolfowitz quickly

"The White House said yesterday that it would work quickly to name a replacement for Paul Wolfowitz, who stepped down as president of the World Bank after a bitter and protracted dispute dividing European governments and America."
But it shouldn't be up to the USA; there should be a global democratic process. The principle of 'no taxation without representation' applies here. Okay not 'taxation' in this case but 'financial regulation'. Join the UN campaign for a democratic UN.

Conciliar fundamentalism

I find it abrasive and occasionally amusing on the internet to run into Orthodox, well, fundies. Doug Chaplin has drawn attention to it on Metacatholic, and given it the name I've entitled this post. The back-story is the take over of SPCK bookshops in the UK by an Orthodox trust who are now encouraging staff to work on Sundays citing a conciliar decision in Laodicea, and apparently doing so badly:

This kind of sloppy a-historicism, and naive non-interpretative quotation, is exactly a hallmark of fundamentalism, it’s just that in this case it’s a kind of conciliar fundamentalism. But then again what can you expect form a group who claim on their website: “Until the Norman Conquest in 1066 A.D., England was Orthodox.”

Metacatholic » Blog Archive » Orthodox Fundamentalism

Technorati Tags: Orthodox, Christian, conciliar, fundamentalism

The end of an era

For all my married life this soap has accompanied me. And it has sometimes been the 25 minute respite from a busy day in the parish when I could contemplate problems I didn't have to try to solve and feel free!

the BBC pulled out of the bidding earlier today, bringing to an end the corporation's 22-year association with the programme.

I have to admit that lately I've lost interest in it; I think I stopped caring about the characters, getting fed up with the way that the same plot lines were recycled through different characters and with the effects of pursuing the teen market. A victim of its own success?
Five scores Neighbours coup | Media | MediaGuardian.co.uk

Technorati Tags: culture, popular, soap-opera

Democratization at global level neededCampaign for U.N. Parliamentary Assembly launched | Campaign for a UN Parliament

"Boutros-Ghali argues. 'We need to promote the democratization of globalization, before globalization destroys the foundations of national and international democracy.' According to Boutros-Ghali, the establishment of a Parliamentary Assembly at the United Nations 'has become an indispensable step to achieve democratic control of globalization.'"
Remember, we already have global institutions like the World Bank and the WTC making decisions that affect the lives of billions, but they are not democratically accountable, least of all to those who are worst affected by their decisions. This is a campaign to bring about the democratisation of global institutions.
Boutros-Ghali: Democratization at global level needed
Campaign for U.N. Parliamentary Assembly launched | Campaign for a UN Parliament:

epetition response

HM government reply.

We recognise that there have been concerns about monthly allocations for Low Carbon Buildings Programme Stream 1 householder grants. However, the introduction of the cap provided us with an opportunity to manage the flow of funds with the aim of providing grants for householders through to June 2008.

Nevertheless, in the recent Budget, the Chancellor announced that a further £6 million would be made available to the household stream of the programme, taking the total available, including management fees, to £18.7 million.

lcbpcrisis - epetition response

Technorati Tags: UK, government, building, grants

I'm touched

Just yesterday I discovered that someone (Phil Johnson) considered nominating me as worthy of being considered for a thinking bloggers' award.
"I am required to nominate five other blogs that I deem to be ones that provoke the reader into thinking (irrespective of whether I agree with them or not).
So here are the five:
1. Steve Hollinghurst (UK) On Earth As In Heaven.
2. John Morehead (USA) Theofantastique.
3. Matt Stone (Australia) Journeys in Between.
4. Andii Bowsher (UK) Nouslife.
5. Paul Fromont/Alan Jamieson (New Zealand) Prodigal Kiwi."

I guess I may need to think of my five ...
circle of pneuma: A Generous Endorsement

Evidence of peer and status effects

The tobacco advertisers have known this for years, but now the rest of us have the evidence...
"- The more an adolescent perceived that successful and elite people smoke cigarettes, the more likely that adolescent was to smoke.
- The more strongly an adolescent perceived that his or her parents or peers disapproved of smoking, the less likely that adolescent was to smoke.
- The more an adolescent overestimated the percentage of smokers in the general population, the more likely that adolescent was to smoke. "
It supports more generally the intuitions that we are indeed strongly influenced by our peers, our perceptions of 'norms' and the behaviour of those we deem to have status. It's mimesis. It's human nature. It's a mechanism of the propagation of sin.
ScienceDaily: How Normal Is Smoking? Teens Don't Know, But Their Guesses Affect Their Habits:

It Is Possible To Meet Energy Demand And Stop Global Warming, According To WWF

ScienceDaily: It Is Possible To Meet Energy Demand And Stop Global Warming, According To WWF: "The report identifies six key solutions:

* Improving energy efficiency
* Stopping forest loss
* Accelerating the development of low-emissions technologies
* Developing flexible fuels
* Replacing high-carbon coal with low-carbon gas
* Equipping fossil-fuel plants with carbon capture and storage technology"

Switching to Linux

A slide show with a case study. Go on, look at it. Please?Switching family and friends to Linux

Support ogg not MP3

"The use of MP3 is restricted by patents, while Ogg Vorbis is not. Unlike MP3, there are never any licensing costs for using Ogg Vorbis, and you do not have to worry about anyone suing you for using it without a license. You might have heard about Microsoft's recent loss in a $1.5 billion suit over their use of MP3. These patent lawsuits might never affect you directly, but they create a culture where creative and skilled individuals cannot develop multimedia software without fear of being legally attacked. Using Ogg is one way to support them in their efforts and to encourage a better culture."
FSF - Getting started with Ogg and installing Ogg plugins:

University offers bespoke prospectuses

At first I thought that they were offering personalised degrees, but no, ...

"'The traditional prospectus has about 200 pages, of which around 120 are devoted to details about individual courses. Most students are only interested in four or five courses which means about 120 pages of a traditional prospectus are irrelevant to them.'
If a prospective student decides to order a hard copy, it will have their name printed on the cover and include a personal welcome message inside."

So it's just the prospectus. But the next step is to look at a personalised degree, don't you think? It'll cost, though.

University offers bespoke prospectuses | Special Reports | EducationGuardian.co.uk:

Globalisation facing a revolt of the middle classes?

Hmm, makes you think, eh?

"think of the programmers and accountants who got themselves educated and trained as they were told to do, and now find their skills don't make them any more employable than assembly-line operatives.
Blinder reckons 30 to 40 million American jobs - between a quarter and a fifth of the total - are potentially offshorable. Not all will go, but the threat will send a shiver down the spine of Middle America and, Blinder predicts, transform its attitudes to social safety nets.
Combine that with the rise of the super-rich. This is another effect of globalisation: capital can ignore international barriers and drive down taxation by setting one country against another. Under new Labour, Britain has become a tax haven for the very wealthy and, as we are slowly realising, the distorting effect on the London-area housing market is profound. A generation of middle-class youth is moving into its thirties without the smallest prospect of owning a home"

New Statesman - Revolt of the middle classes:

A world migrating

Noting that in addition to the current conflicts displacing people, climate change will displace even more. Christian Aid's latest report points out:

“The danger is that this new forced migration will fuel existing conflicts and generate new ones in the areas of the world — the poorest — where resources are most scarce. Movement on this scale has the potential to destabilise whole regions where increasingly desperate populations compete for dwindling food and water.”

I'm coming to the opinion that western governments have realised this for some time and that this may be a leading motivation for the policies by the USA and others (let the reader understand) for the projection of military power currently; it's an attempt to build dykes against the coming metaphorical deluge (one caused by a slow literal deluge).
Church Times - Christian Aid: Use force to help displaced people

Technorati Tags: climate_change, migration, policy, USA, UK, military

Vampires and the soul of the west

Steve Hollinghurst is almost always worth reading and he's just been writing about something that had been in idle moments passing through my mind. So it's with gladness I find he's thought it through much more systematically: here's the main question.

the Vampire genre as classically represented by the Dracula character, has within it Christendom assumptions. ...so what happens to vampire slaying in a post-Christendom world? Enter Buffy the Vampire Slayer,

It's all part of a co-operative blogging operation 'synchroblog' and so we are invited to look at other offerings in the series. But Steve, after taking us on a whirlwind tour of some of the major themes from the series germane to his interest, ends by posing the questions more sharply, inviting us to think more, and I think it's an important set of questions.

it is perhaps not surprising if Churches are simply scary places full of demons, evangelists are demonic forces praying on the vulnerably and priests are misogynist devil worshipers bent on brutality that it is to Pagan priestesses, Wiccan magic, mystic weapons, empowered women and good honest human spirit that we must turn to face the ultimate evil. it is easy to dismiss this is be angry with it, but this is how many see the church and Christianity, and we have bought some of this on ourselves. what kind of church might be a force for good in the Buffyverse where evil must be fought and redemption is so important and sensitively handled? on the other hand if we are to leave the modern world in which the demonic and the 'ultimate evil' are as much a fairytale as the Christan God. if we are to enter a world in which supernatural evil is real, how can we fight it? in the end some strange mystic light needs to come and finish off the job, indeed we need God by the back door. but which God in what form? unless the church can become something other than the caricature of the Buffyverse, then what God will come to fill this place?

On Earth as in Heaven: The Gospel according to Buffy (synchroblog)

Technorati Tags: Buffy, apologetics, culture

ID cards and NIR costs spiral up

There may be some hope that a PM who is concerned about costs and elecoral success may just find a way to pull the plug on this farce. So on one hand we have an independent academic study group finding vindication for their earlier findings which were poo-pooed at the time.

the LSE's Identity Project group - long-term critics of the ID cards scheme - has warned the government's report reveals "not a project that is progressing well but rather one that appears to be getting out of control, despite the best efforts of the Identity and Passport Service to minimise the risks and costs of the scheme". For example the dropping of iris biometrics and reuse of existing government databases should have had a noticeable effect on the costs of the scheme but this is not the case, the LSE report claims.

And so it seems to me that Charles Arthur is right to write:

Precisely what will it take for the government to abandon its pursuit of ID cards? Last week the Home Office issued its latest estimate of the cost of implementing this vast IT boondoggle, which has risen 12% - another £640m - in the past six months, while shifting £510m of past and future spending over to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. That means you and I will be paying £100-odd for an "e-passport" and ID card package which ... when did we ask for them again? The last Labour election manifesto called them "voluntary"... this summer a new face will appear at 10 Downing Street's door. Will he have the sense to kill a bad project before it becomes electorally terminal?

ID cards scheme "getting out of control" - Public Sector - Breaking Business and Technology News at silicon.com

Technorati Tags: ID_cards, NIR, UK, costs

Russia cyberwar with Estonia?

This is worrying because I suspect it is a kind of warm-up, 'proof of concept' thing, and as one commentator said, "it would be difficult to prove the Russian state's responsibility, and that the Kremlin could inflict much more serious cyber-damage if it chose to."
The more serious things would be disprupting IT controls relating to communications, water, power ... just think if orders can't be made for food, or your power is arbitrarily off and on ... This is the shape of things to come, I fear.
PS. This Wired interview-article has helpful perspectives germane to the whole cyber war thing.
Russia accused of unleashing cyberwar to disable Estonia | Russia | Guardian Unlimited:

Sounds like DNA

ScienceDaily: Molecular Biologists Convert Protein Sequences Into Classical Music

"Every protein will have its unique auditory signature because every protein has a unique sequence. You can hear the sequence of the protein."
"We assigned a chord to each amino acid," said Rie Takahashi, a UCLA research assistant and an award-winning, classically trained piano player. "We want to see if we can hear patterns within the music, as opposed to looking at the letters of an amino acid or protein sequence. We can listen to a protein, as opposed to just looking at it."

I like the idea, but it's not as new as you might think. It has been done before in that the Shamen -I think it was- used the molecular structure of Ecstacy/MDMA to compose a track (I hope I've got that right).

Technorati Tags: music, science, UI, molecular

Police chief agin NIR

A UK police chief has expressed skepticism about ID cards.

"In creating a national database you are creating a gold standard for ID [authentication]. It will be worth whatever it costs to hack it, to mirror it and subvert it. ... We are at risk from insider threats and card cloning. The idea the card can be used to fight terrorism is completely fatuous. This scheme is convenient for government, but not for citizens. .. " The police chief said that, if hackers can break into Nasa, then there is no such thing as total security, and that the cost of the scheme (£5.7bn) is "a huge cost to subject people to".

Police chief criticises ID cards scheme - ZDNet UK

Technorati Tags: ID_cards, police, UK, security, NIR

Anxiety and Injustice are physically bad for us

Anxiety really is measurably bad for our physical health. Correspondingly, calming techniques help our physical health.

Patients whose anxiety intensified over time were in greatest peril, while those who started out highly anxious but later found inner calm markedly reduced their risk.

It may be linked to a study on how a feeling of having been unfairly treated makes one more likely to have a heart attack. This latter is important because it is further evidence that great inequalities and injustices in a society affect a population's health.

the results still showed that the higher the sense of injustice, the greater was the risk of a heart attack or angina.

It also supports the view that the fear of crime etc will worsen health. So the new Labour idea of tackling crime as an issue of social justice does have merit, much to the chagrin of some of the traditional left.
However, we should recall that we are dealing with a perception, and perceptions can vary not only with objective things but subjectivities too. There is a place for helping people to reframe their experience in ways that can reduce the stress, anxiety and felt unfairness. Thus people who generally have a grateful approach to life are likely to be better off than those with 'chips on their shoulders'. The further difficulty, though, is that this catches us in a kind of cleft stick dilemma; greater contentment leads to less anxiety and sense of injustice but runs the risk of taking away the determination to deal with injustice.
Is hope a good health factor? Because there ought to be a difference between feeling aggrieved without hope of redress, and having a hope of redress. Is revenge about 'exporting' our sense of hurt and grievance as a way of dealing with the pain of being wronged? Is forgiveness the process of coming to terms with being wronged? Does forgiveness have positive health benefits? Anecdotal evidence says it does.
And the biggie is, how does all this relate to the wrath and forgiveness of God?
ScienceDaily: Over Time, Those Who Find Inner Calm Live Longer, Healthier Lives See also the article on unfair treatment.

Technorati Tags: health, meditation, justice, wrath, forgiveness

Vertical Workstations Could Help Obese Shed 30 Kilos A Year

"vertical 'walk and work' desk allows people to work at a computer while simultaneously walking on a treadmill at a speed of their own choosing. Designed by the authors, the steel frame of the device is shaped in the form of the letter 'H' and supported by four locking rubber wheels,"

The real killer app in this would be to use them to help generate electricity for the computer. Health and environmntal benefits.
ScienceDaily: Vertical Workstations Could Help Obese Shed 30 Kilos A Year:

Saving the rainforests is significant

It would seem that putting lots of effort into saving the rainforests would deliver a huge help in combatting climate change.

halving deforestation rates by mid-century would account for 12 percent of total emissions reductions needed to keep concentrations of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere at safe levels.

ScienceDaily: Brazil Demonstrating That Reducing Tropical Deforestation Is Key Win-win Global Warming Solution

Technorati Tags: climate_change, rainforest,

Fictive learning is actually real learning

'Fictive learning' is based on the 'what if' scenario-making we sometimes indulge in. As it says in this article,

"fictive learning" experiences, governed by what might have happened under different circumstances, "often dominate the evaluation of the choices we make now and will make in the future, " said Dr. P. Read Montague, Jr., professor of neuroscience at BCM and director of the BCM Human Neuroimaging Laboratory and the newly formed Computational Psychiatry Unit. "These fictive signals are essential in a person's ability to assess the quality of his or her actions above and beyond simple experiences that have occurred in the immediately proximal time."

So for me this tells me that asking students to review what they have done using, among other things, what if scenario-making, is likely to help their learning. Some people are impatient of that kind of thing but it would appear to make sense.
ScienceDaily: Considering 'What Might Have Been' Is Key In Evaluating Behavior

Technorati Tags: learning, fictive, scenarios, teaching

More on Atonement

Big thanks to Maggi Dawn for a post musing on the recent arguments about atonement and saying things that I want to be said, first off about the fact of plurality of understandings and what needs to be in there. You may recall my having said a few things a little while back, but here're Maggi's sage words.

A thoroughgoing theory of atonement needs to be multi-faceted. It needs to include an understanding of the rightful anger of God against violence, hatred, injustice, the abuse of power - in fact against all that mitigates against love. That's what sin means. An atonement theory also needs to include the idea that the cross is an inspiration and example to us to lay down our lives for our friends. (I'm quoting John quoting Jesus there, I didn't make that up). And further, it also needs a more universal view, something that reflects the idea that atonement is not limited to the sins of an individual, but that the world and everything in it is released not only from human sin, but from the grip of evil and the tendency for things to degenetrate into violence and destruction. An associated idea that should always be noted, I think, is the warning that anyone (Jesus being the first among equals in this regard) who devotes their life to justice and peace and love is likely to end up paying dearly for it. Finally, any discussion of the atonement needs to aknowledge an element of mystery - because however much sense-making our theology does of the atonement, there's always an added sense that we don't totally know "how it works", although that needn't stop us knowing it does work.

Quite so. The problem is, of course, when one finds a theory that makes some kind of sense and then commits oneself to it, it is hard to credit that some other people don't find something about it as explanatory or exciting as one does oneself. The temptation then is to hereticise the others because they miss vital things or somesuch. Of course, we should try to develop spiritual reflexes for such times that scream out to us "Motes and beams", but sadly we often don't and instead harden our oppositional stances and say things that are hard to back down from. We develop a stake in arguing hard one way and attributing bad stuff to opponents. That's why I'm with Maggi when she goes further to say,

I am so tired of liberals slagging off Evangelicals for being narrow; of evangelicals dismissing liberals for being woolly. It's so pointless. I hear the words of the Epistles of John echoing in my head - written, it would appear, by an elderly man who sums up the wisdom of his years by saying, "Children, you know the only thing that really matters in the end? - that you love one another. "

The longer I live, the more I believe that the beauty of the atonement is not that it only works if you believe it in the right way, it's that it works even if you don't understand it at all. I'm not going soft on doctrine - I love doctrine with a passion, and I spend a good slice of my life teaching it - but even I have to admit that we aren't saved by doctrine, and that God can be visibly and awesomely at work in the lives of people whose doctrine is well wide of the mark. The grace and generosity of God is, I'll grant you, completely outrageous.

Amen. And thanks Maggi for reminding us of all that in one relatively short post.
maggi dawn: Pierced for our transgressions

Technorati Tags: atonement, argument,

Fish may safely graze

Good news for fish and one of the potential objections to turbines.

Infrasound are acoustic signals characterised by frequencies below 20 Hz, too low for human hearing. Infrasounds are natural alarm signals for fish, and the intensity used by the infrasound fish fence of Profish Technology create literally shake the fish, creating an uncomfortable area that they always avoid, with no habituation. Consequently, this system has revealed in the scientific literature the best efficiency results on the largest number of fish species, as observed during the test on the cooling water intake in Belgium where a reduction of 85% of the fish entrained was observed. An adequate location of the infrasound units will thus induce avoidance trajectories of fish.

ScienceDaily: Deep Sounds Scare Fish Away From Turbines That Could Kill Them

Technorati Tags: hydro, turbines, fish, safety

Scientology and that angry outburst

John Sweeney has my sympathy. I have sometimes felt as angry as he obviously did when someone is asserting untruths and apparently willfully misunderstanding or refusing to hear what I have to say. Not recommended as a tactic, but, as I say, understandable. Here's the BBC's own report as I saw it this morning. I've never really given Scientology much thought before, I just can't begin to believe their mythos, but now I think I may watch, after all.

YouTube - BBC reporter losing it (unedited) + BBC defense
Technorati Tags: BBC, Scientology,

Naming: God or Adam's role?

The other day I came across this teaching in the Qur'an.

Allah taught Adam all the names of everything

( 2:31, Qur'an). And it seemed really significant in terms of the difference to Genesis 2 where God leads the animals to Adam to see what Adam will name them. I won't spell it out, but you might like to check out my comments on the Genesis story to infer my own thoughts (also here).
Prophet Adam

Technorati Tags: Genesis, Adam, language, naming, Islam, Christian

Temptation, mimesis and imagination

This is an interesting piece of research to look at with Genesis 2-3 in mind.

the researchers asked a group of actual college students how often they intended to skip class in the following week. Another control group of students was asked how often they intended to floss. Over the course of a semester, the group that was asked how often they intended to miss class ended up with one more absence, on average, than the group that was not asked. As the authors explain: "Despite very real negative repercussions, respondents to a question about their future class attendance engaged in the negative behavior (missing class) at a significantly greater rate than those not asked to predict their behavior."

Just by mentioning the posssibility of something, we then have it in mind, and it just sits there inviting us. This seems to corroborate the NLP assertion about negatives first requiring a mental positive. I commented on this as part of my 'Homo Loquens' series of posts, so I won't repeat the ideas here, merely refer you on. The point is that our mimetic drive pushes us towards embodying or responding to our mental images.
ScienceDaily: License To Sin: Asking People To Think About Vice Increases Their Likelihood Of Giving In

Technorati Tags: research, temptation, mimesis, psychology, NLP, language

Not all biofuels are good

I urge you to look at this and if appropriate make your voice heard.

The Government's Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation (RTFO) could see businesses producing biofuels by destroying rainforests and wetlands. This would threaten endangered habitats and species. It would also release far more carbon into the atmosphere than could ever hope to be saved by replacing fossil fuels.

Friends of the Earth: Campaigns: Biodiversity: Press for change: Good intentions lain to waste

Technorati Tags: biofuels, climate_change, campaigning

Heart and mind; ancient and modern psychology

A salutary reminder of the pitfalls of direct translation, sometimes.

In modern Western psychology, the heart is the seat of the emotions or affections. Thus, when most of us read that David was a man after God’s own heart, we tend to think that that meant that David had a profound love for God. They then wonder how it was that David was able to commit adultery and murder. Now, I have no doubt that David had a profound love for God. And it is possible for a man truly converted to commit heinous sins. But David’s being a man after God’s own heart had nothing to do with his love for God. Rather, it had to do with his, as it were, thinking like God, or thinking God’s thoughts after him, or seeing things from God’s perspective. Thus, when Jesus said, "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God," he was saying that those who have the mind of God to the greatest degree have the clearest vision of him.... As for the Semitic view of the seat of the emotions, that is always the "innards." The most common term used is the "kidneys" or "reins." "Bones" is another term used in this sense. These terms appear frequently in the Psalms when the psalmist speaks of his torment of soul. For example, Psalm 6:2 says, "Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am languishing; O Lord, heal me, for my bones are troubled."

This has interesting ramifications for the debate on headship. Since the head is not the decision making organ in this kind of metaphoric anthropology...
Aramaic Thoughts with Benjamin Shaw on StudyLight.org

Technorati Tags: translation, Bible, psychology,

Islamic and Christian agendas

I do think that it is useful for us to be aware of organisations like this one that Barnabas fund have brough to our attention.

In 1981 the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT) was established and registered in the USA. Working in the worlds of publishing and academia, the IIIT has three objectives, which are set out below in the Institute’s own words:
1. To provide a comprehensive Islamic outlook through elucidating the principles of Islam and relating them to relevant issues in contemporary thought.
2. To regain the intellectual, cultural and civilizational identity of the Ummah [worldwide Muslim community] through the Islamization of the humanities and social sciences.
3. To rectify the methodology of contemporary Islamic thought in order to enable it to resume its contribution to the progress of human civilisation and give it meaning and direction in line with the values and objectives of Islam.

I'm not on reflection surprised to hear of it and it is worth noting that we have arguably seen the effects of its work in the kind of apologetics we hear from Muslims and Muslim organisation. The have every right to do this. The interesting thing is to note that there are Christians and Christian organisations of various stripes with parallel aims. In fact, I imagine most ideological groups, religious or otherwise, have similar groups.

Because of that, I am a little less happy about the feel or tone of this report; it has a sense of militancy, perhaps of scare-mongering as if they have no right to be doing this. Perhaps I'm being a bit oversensitive. Of course, it is useful to know, but it's not as if we don't have Christians doing the same and aiming to counter the propaganda (for that is what it is).

I'd be happier too, if Christian organisations would be as concerned by the messages of TNC's and the like who have well-funded departments to do just the same kind of thing for MacDonald's, Exxon, Nestle etc etc and probably have more malign influence on public awareness than this group.

That said, I'm not a Christian living under an Islamic regime. So if you also look at this article from BF, then you should get an idea that some concern is warranted because at the other end of the process that the above organisation is engaged in may be the kind of thing that we are seeing in Iraq at the moment as it fragments into religiously affiliated cantons.

Since the war of 2003 the anti-Christian hostility in the country has increased immeasurably, and there is no longer the strong hand of Saddam to prevent the men of violence from doing as they please. In response to raging anti-Christian violence, huge numbers of Iraqi Christians have fled their homes. A few have chosen another option and converted to Islam. It is next to impossible to continue to live in Baghdad as a Christian.
Many Christians in Dora are now facing demands for the traditional Islamic tax on non-Muslim minorities, the jizya. This is not being imposed by the government, but by Islamist insurgents who are operating freely in Dora without any intervention by either Iraqi or American forces. In keeping with the teaching of shari'a (Islamic law), Christians are offered the choice of paying money (which will be used to fund the insurgent violence), converting to Islam, leaving the area, or being killed. The demands can come as written messages delivered to their home, or from militants knocking on the door. Sometimes the option of paying jizya is not offered - it is then a choice of convert to Islam, flee within 24 hours leaving their homes to be seized by the militants, or be killed. Christians in Mosul have also been facing demands for jizya.

It is worth recalling this when you hear in debates or presentations on Islam about Islamic tolerance in, say, Al Andalus. It came at a price, and often it was not as benign as presented (and to be fair, being other than Roman Catholic at that time in the rest of Europe was no cake walk either, I actually think that Islam learnt its worst habits from the worst of Christofascist' medievalism; so 'we' are hoist by our own petard, in a sense). It is worth looking at pages 8 and 9 of the magazine. In it we are told of some of the kinds of claims being made by some Muslims, and we are given another perspective. So,

Some of the “Islamised knowledge” is easy to spot as many of the newer assertions still appear ridiculous to most non-Muslims. For example:
• Napoleon Bonaparte converted to Islam.
• Muslim explorers reached America before Christopher Columbus did.
• Islam arrived in Australia in the ninth century.
• Offa, the eighth century Anglo-Saxon king of Mercia (in
the British midlands) was a Muslim.
But other examples have been around a long time and have become widely believed. Here is a selection.
• There was interfaith harmony in Islamic Spain.
For some of the time Christians and Jews were tolerated so long as they submitted to various humiliating rules. But in some periods they were severely persecuted e.g. killing, expulsion and forced conversion of Christians and Jews to Islam.
• Muslims led the field in science and medicine during the middle ages.
While much of the learning of the time was written down in Arabic, many of the scholars were Christians and Jews. This is often not apparent because their names may be Islamised and some became Muslims for various reasons. The firs Arabic medical book was written by a Christian priest and translated into Arabic by a Jewish doctor in 683AD. ...
• Muslims founded the first hospital. The first hospital was founded in Baghdad when this city was the capital of the ruling Abbasid caliphate. However it was not started by a Muslim but by an Assyrian Christian called Jabrail ibn Bakhishu.
• Muslims invented the Arabic numerals used in the West today as well as the useful mathematical concept of zero.
The numeral 1, 2, 3, etc came to the West via the Arabs but were originally derived from the Syriac alphabet. The Syriacs [sic] are a Christian people. The numerals now used in the Arab world ... were introduced from Hindu India in the seventh century by a Syriac mathematician...

The other day I was having a look round the university's ISoc exhibition for Islamic Awareness week. It's an interesting exercise to do to help Christians not only find out about what Muslims want us to know and what they think are the important things to get over, but also because it can expose us to the way it feels to be on the receiving end of some of the tactics we Christians use in similar circumstances. Very salutary. Anyway, we were approached and ended up talking for some time. I was interested in what we were told from the point of view of knowing more about Islam than our interlocutor assumed. So he presented us with the notion that the Qur'an is not changed and its message is consistent even though it was 'revealed' over several years. I mentioned abrogation because I said I felt that it contradicted what he'd just said. A bit of backpeddling and we ended up with a recognition that actually the the Qur'an did have to be interpreted according to the times and circumstances ... hmmm not quite the impression we were being sold earlier in the conversation. And that was without me getting onto the supposed textual consistency and invariance ... I wonder what he'd have said about the discoveries from that Mosque in Yemen of copies of the Qur'an which had significant variations from the official versions today. And what differences would we have seen in the ones surpressed by one of the Caliphs in order to come up with a unified text ... ?
As always I came away also thinking about the Christian parallels, I'm only too aware that there is a degree of throwing stones in, if not a glasshouse, at least the conservatory...
Copyright © 2007 Barnabas Fund | White Ants

Technorati Tags: religion, propaganda, Islam, Christian

Post Modern Ministry in the 21st Century

Thomas Hohstadt writes engagingly and often lays out the crux of the matter. You may like to ... "Take the following test to confirm where you stand. Select which statement in each group best describes your opinion. Then, at the end of the following five groups, we will discover the world in which you live and whether you are working with or against the Lord of History.

A. The Church will be ready for the future if it retains its vision of progress—if it continually improves what it is already doing.
B. The modern idea of progress is an illusion. The Church can no longer move into the future by simply improving itself.
C. Instead of focusing on the death of old thinking, we need to focus on the birth of a newly empowered and profoundly faithful way of thinking."
There are several other multichoice questions to follow. If you're 'on the ball' you'll probably unerringly pick the 'right' answers.!!!
Post Modern Christianity: The Future of the Church and Post Modern Ministry in the 21st Century: