Battle Lines @rickygervais

This is trending in the twittersphere (via @rickygervais who else?)

Post – My son is 15 he gave his heart to the Lord when he was 4, but now he claims to be an atheist. I’ve been praying for him day and night I don’t know what else to do. PLEASE help.

Response (example) – Let go and let God. At 15 he is still at that age where uncertainty is at its best. Keep praying for him and lead by example. If you force him to believe in God he will move further away. Ask God to soften his heart. Keep praying for him. take care.

What atheists should notice is that even unsophisticated theists understand how to make progress with other human beings. You can always pick a fight if you want one – but unless war is your objective, it pays to use more subtle “co-evolutionary” tactics.

Uncertainty is best, lead by example, don’t force, care … it’s all there.

Society has always needed “court jesters” and we need Ricky to poke fun at the expense of theistic madness. The point of the court jester IS to point out things that those actually responsible for progress probably shouldn’t say. A court made up entirety of jesters is not the optimum solution.

Anyway, I’ve made enough points about being pissed at the BHA for being a stream of simply one negative campaign against another. Atheists need to up their game for the sake of humanism / humanity. Listen to the poets (as well as the jesters).

You must go, and I must set you free,
Only that will bring you back to me.

Neil Hannon (Divine Comedy)

Refreshing

Saw this clip the other day – Craig Bellamy being interviewed about being in the GB Olympic football team – and thought as well as being surprisingly articulate, his school-boyish enthusiasm and all round good humour made such a change from all the usual earnest and corporately correct punditry and commentary.

I wasn’t the only person to notice.

[Post Note – And ironic that Welshman Bellamy should score the opening goal, only to have the Daily Express report him scoring for “england”.]

Imperfect Knowledge

If we will disbelieve everything, because we cannot certainly know all things, we shall do much what as wisely as he, who would not use his legs, but sit still and perish, because he had no wings to fly.

John Locke – “On The Understanding” (1670-80ish)

Been looking for this quote. Two purposes; firstly the general idea of pragmatism – ie it’s better to do something than sit and worry about rules and definitions, and secondly the more specific god vs science – proven / not-proven stalemates, where each holds up an impossible (disingenuous) truth test to the other. All truth – except our immediate personal empirical experience –  involves some faith in the current state of authority and some level of creative metaphor, or both. There are no absolute facts in theology or science.

Couldn’t remember where I’d come across it or even that it was John Locke, and actually gave up when searches for the key words on quotation sites failed to find it. Then noticed it was the motto I’d seen on the BrewDog web pages. Funny old world.

In vino veritas, well, craft-beer anyway.

Stunning Correlation

Flavour of Christianity vs 10 year bond spreads, relative to German rates.

No joke. Austerity = fiscal protestantism.

@BHAhumanism Creationism in Schools

I’m against the teaching of creationism in school. Teaching about it in social / cultural / religious studies is a different matter of course. Teaching its content as factual is a no-no. But then the balance of good teaching is not pedagogical anyway – it’s about learning how to learn and think.

I’m also totally fed up with campaigns that are always against things – see my reference to the BHA below. It was of course the recent “free schools to teach creationism” scaremongering headlines to which I was reacting in part in that post. It is naturally suspect that the headline is actually true, but no smoke without fire I guess. Hence this post to confirm what I am actually against, lest there be any doubt.

Better though to see much more intelligent comment from Tom Chivers in The Telegraph, and Tom taking the time to moderate and comment on the comment thread generated. Real debate takes effort, not 140 character knee-jerk tweets.

Soccer Mad

Why would anyone want to play or watch football in a sh*t-hole like that ?

It’s bad enough it has a running track, but there’s about another track and a half width on top of the track itself between the pitch and the supporters – utter madness.

Pullman on Blake

Been reading around Philip Pullman since discovering earlier this year he was a beacon of hope in the BHA (British Humanist Association) and that he’d received the BHA award for services to humanism in 2011. (I guess in that context Dawkins‘ award in 2012 counts as balance?)

I’ve been a humanist since I recognised the word used by my first mentor back in the early 80’s. I’m a BHA member, a non-theist / atheist, but sick and tired of their monotonous cracked-record of one campaign after another against just about anything religious; faith-based schooling, creationism, the lords-spiritual, etc, with barely a hint as to what they might actually be for apart from science, scientific knowledge, scientific truth, evidence-based choice, etc. A literal god is not great – we get it already. What else? Beginning to despair that humanism had redefined itself entirely as scientism set against theistic faith.

If humanism is to be more than scientism the BHA must redress this balance in the messages it promotes. Finding things to fight against is all too easy, or poke fun at (fair game) if you’re the recognised court jester like @rickygervais, but what is BHA’s vision of a better future ? That’s not in fact a rhetorical question, but I digress from the point of this post. Pullman has a wiser vision.

Rather than murder by my analytical dissection, just read this and weep.

Recognising “the system” that makes you “twice-born” rather than clinging to the belief that you operate within a baggage-free neutral absence-of-belief-system. Better a good value system than the neurotic pretence of none. Beautifully argued. Twice-born(*) = Wise. Hallelujah. Nuff said.
[So close to Nick Maxwell’s scientific neurosis thesis too.]

[More – And so gently but skilfully effective in damning (Dawkins and Hawking) with genuinely-respectful-but-faint praise for being half-right – as in 100% right but barely half the humanist story. On a par with Wittgenstein – who came to bury logic, not to praise it. So many more good articles here too.]

[(*) Not to be confused with born-again.]

Who’s This We ?

Free will, or quantum indeterminism ? (Hat tip to PsybertronJr)

Police State ?

Stevie’s right when he asks,

When did Britain become a police state?

Little people (the people holding the event license) hide behind applying rules, to apply objectivity rather than sound judgement. It’s what gives “health and safety” and a lot more a bad name. The only point he has wrong, is in blaming the police, he should be blaming us for wanting clear application of blame. The blame game wins. More’n my job’s worth, to do anything where I could be blamed for overriding objective facts. Where he is right is that UK and Europe are much worse than US.

Somatic Stomach

Never been any doubt that the workings of our minds reside throughout our entire electro-chemical system, not just the hemispheres of the organ we call the “brain” confined to our skulls. Gut feel is no joke. Case in point.