Busy, busy, busy. What with working 9 – 5 (I don’t know how you non-shift worker types handle the daily grind, it’s ridiculous) and trying to get through a bit of Sam Harris and the tangents that’s led me on, time for writing has been at a premium. Nonetheless, I think it’s time I penned a missive concerning one of my favourite hypocrisies concerning modern religion, especially where your more fundamental believer is concerned.
You see, the books that make up the collection that include the Torah, Talmud, Bible and Koran seem to contain many references that could easily be construed to be close encounters of one kind or another. Well, especially if you’re into that sort of thing, but more about that later. First I need to say that personally, I put UFOs and ET firmly in the same basket as God, which is to say that I’ll believe it when I see some firm and testable evidence. Unlike my attitude toward God however, I am at least prepared to admit that there’s enough evidence at this point to suggest that it is at least possible, if not as yet probable, that we are not alone in space.
That said - as it needed to be - I found some “stuff” by way of history that I thought you might find interesting. I was poking around at SETI and got sidetracked by this article by Seth Shostak, the senior astronomer there, that speaks about the theoretical number of planets we might find in our galaxy. Here’s another one that talks about a possible “earth like” planet that’s recently been discovered. It got me to wondering just how far back the whole UFO/alien thing goes and why the bible itself might seem to contain a few tales about such things.
Well, it seems that it goes back quite a ways indeed. Here are some images that have no words to accompany them so really, we can’t be sure. I think you’ll agree however, that some of them do bear an uncanny resemblance to what we would call “aliens” and/or “UFOs” today:
Here’s an image that dates back to about 10,000BCE. It hails from Val Camonica in Italy and is a rather amazing image. They could be wearing some sort of costume and carrying some kind of ceremonial or practical implements, as yet unidentified. Some might say however, that they look a bit like ET, which explains nicely why the implements reman unidentified, but little else.
Then there’s this one from Tassiliin in the Sahara, North Africa which dates to about 6,000BCE. This one’s just freaky! It may be ET or it may be a costume of some kind, who’s to say, but the classic disc in the upper right might just make you wonder.
From my neck of the woods (Aus.) we have the Wandjina petroglyphs from the Kimberly. These lads date to about 5,000BCE.
This interesting looking chap was found in Kiev and dates back to about 4,000BCE.
There are many more than just these, of course. It’s unfortunate that the sites that have the most images seem to be concerned more with conspiracies and what have you, but that seems to be difficult to escape when you go looking for “ufo history” or “ancient ufo”. Nonetheless, drawings and statues like these are found all over the world and date to all eras and as we know, rumours and stories continue to persist today.
Is it any wonder then that there may also be stories of such things, as there are images, that have come to us through the folk law of ancient cultures? Given that the phenomena of the humble UFO could possibly be as old as man himself, I don’t think so. It was after all, the ancient stories, artwork and monuments that led Erich von Däniken to draw the conclusions that he did, erroneously or not.
But then there’s some of the distinctly christian art:
We’ll start with this one by Flemish artist Aert De Gelder in 1710. A classic disc beaming light down on John the Baptist and Jesus. “Beam me up Scotty!” Hehe…:)
Here’s a fifteenth century painting by Domenico Ghirlandaio (1449-1494). Note the detail in the UFO, port holes and everything. One might wonder why so much time was spent on such a small feature, but there it is, plain to see.
This one’s my favourite though. "Glorification of the Eucharist" was painted by Bonaventura Salimbeni to commemorate the Christian Jubilee in 1600 but it does not appear to contain a UFO. It contains, of all things, the humble Sputnik, albeit with only two antennae. Now correct me if I’m wrong here, but I’m sure that Sputnik wasn’t launched until Oct. 4 1957. Why then are Jesus and God respectively, each holding one of it’s antennae back in 1600? It’s a conundrum and no mistake.
But, and there’s always one of them, I think it’s an established fact that your more fundamental Christian is not particularly enamoured with the idea that we may not be the only intelligent and sentient beings in the universe. We are after all, supposed to be the pinnacle of God’s creation and the only one like it. “Unique in all creation”, as they say. I find this notion to be quite odd, especially when we begin to read the bible.
We’ll take a little look at Ezekiel here, just as an example:
1:4 I looked, and I saw a windstorm coming out of the north - an immense cloud with flashing lightning and surrounded by brilliant light. The centre of the fire looked like glowing metal
1:16 This was the appearance and structure of the wheels: They sparkled like chrysolite, and all four looked alike. Each appeared to be made like a wheel intersecting a wheel. 17 As they moved, they would go in any one of the four directions the creatures faced; the wheels did not turn about as the creatures went.
This chapter has an example of just about everything we’ve invented names for today; lenticular clouds, spinning lights, ring lights, classic “flying saucers” zooming around, etc. It seems a bit weird to me now, but there was I time I’d read this and see it all as evidence of God’s power and all round mightiness. Now I find I’m turning the page in anticipation of a description of the resulting crop circle, which viewed from the vantage of that hill over there, bears an uncanny resemblance to King Jehoiachin, alas…
But as I said earlier, fundamental Christians do not tend to believe that ET is a possibility. There’s no room for it, you see. Once every spare nook and cranny is filled with Jesus, there’s just not enough space left for anything else, not even “common” sense, or so it seems. Even so, it does seem a tad hypocritical to me to ridicule someone else’s belief in ET while at the same time subscribing to a book that has no less than 362 descriptions of what in today’s language would be nothing more than first, second or third hand reports of UFO sightings and rather dubious ones at that.
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
The Various Chariots of God
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Fact Becomes Myth?
Every culture not only has a creation story of some kind, but they also share a myth or legend that concerns a great flood. Everywhere from the ancient stories of Scandinavia, through Egypt and Mesopotamia, China, Australia, North America, South America etc has one. Basically, name a place and you’ll find a similar legend. All these legends have another commonality in that at least one human being was somehow spared and managed to repopulate the race somehow. They all speak of purification of one kind or another and in every case it was caused by some god or gods, and it was these gods that saw the righteousness of certain individuals and saved them. Usually by getting someone to build a boat of some kind. Or, in the case of one story from China a couple just happened to find a canoe and managed to paddle around until they bumped into a mountain. Now how lucky’s that? The only real point around which some differ is that a few provide that a great deluge (an extended period of rainfall) was the cause, while most tend to lean towards the oceans rising or vast volumes of water coming out of nowhere. I think there is a good reason for that and that an historical case can be made.
Despite what some may think, the old testament as we know it is a reasonably good historical reference where ancient history is concerned, so using the old testament as an historical record rather than a spiritual one, science can prove that there’s absolutely no geological record to support that there was a great flood as written in the story of Noah. This is where we run into a bit of a problem, I think.
The general consensus is that there’s about 4000 years of human history tied up in the old testament one way or another. That means that Noah existed only about 2000BC. The problem I have with this is that we can only trace Yahweh back about 5700 years, which actually places Noah at about 1700BC. Of course, there’s evidence to suggest that monotheism of sorts (the God of Gods, Lord of Lords thing, the singular rules over the plural, etc) goes back much further than that. Every pantheon has it’s top god after all, but that doesn’t change the fact that around the time of Noah as it’s interpreted from the bible, things were pretty stable and there probably wasn’t any flood at all.
Given what we know of earth history though, this could also indicate that we may have made a mistake in estimating how old some of the old testament stories actually are. If that’s the case, and I think it is, then the reference in time we attribute to the historical data contained in the old testament is hazy at best, even though the data itself can be reasonably accurate. It could very well be that the stories were actually written down for the very first time about 2 – 3 thousand years ago, that seems to be about when written languages started becoming popular, but man has been around a hell of a lot longer than that. The problem with what we call pre-history is that it wasn’t written down, or if it was it’s been lost, hence the term.
We know that the earth came into existence about 4.5 billion years or so ago, via the interplay of astronomical forces, and that man is a relative youngster at about 400,000 years in one form or another due to evolutionary change and upheaval. Modern man however, we can say has been around for about 30 - 40 thousand years. We can also prove, via geological records and records locked in ice cores, that the earth suffers from an extended cycle of ice ages, with periods of major glacial activity where glaciers grow and retreat quite rapidly every 11,00 years or so.
The popular theory is that we are currently still in the grips of an ice age that began around 40 million years ago, or so the above records would seem to suggest. The problem with ice and particularly glaciers is that they scour the landscape and make interpretation of the data collected from the these sources difficult. We can’t be sure for instance, that the ice caps have ever truly disappeared once they formed for the first time, but that’s the benchmark we use to denote an ice age. One thing we can be sure of however, is that the last major glacial period ended about 11,000 years ago.
When the earth experiences a major glacial period, a lot of water is locked into ice, some land becomes uninhabitable but ocean levels drop markedly which causes other land, closer to the tropics, to be exposed. Naturally, when the glaciers melt, the opposite occurs but with some changes evident afterwards. Generally, what used to be high ground has been ground down a bit by the relentless action of the ice and the tailings of the grinding get deposited elsewhere, sometimes hundreds of miles from their point of origin.
The evidence that exists in cores and the geological record from both the start and the end of the last glacial period, would suggest that both events happened fairly rapidly by geological standards. 25 to 50 years for both events. This means two things: That the ice forms in about half a single lifetime when the freeze begins, and about 11,000 years later, water inundates the lower lying regions in less than half a single lifetime (once again, 25 – 50 years) when the melt occurs.
Evidence also suggests that sea levels rose 150 metres at the end of the last glacial period. So considering the size of the planet and the amount of ice and water involved, that much melt in that short a time will make for some very large and fast moving volumes of water that will spend very little time filling and devastating any low lying areas. Consider also that man has always felt the need to settle near water (for very good reason) and I believe we find the source of this particular and very common tale. Massive volumes of fast moving water are going to make for devastating floods in coastal areas all around the globe. The other result of course, what with all that moisture having been released in such a short time, would be that in some parts of the world, there’d be a hell of a lot of rain where there probably wasn’t much before.
What this probably means as far as the legends go is that Noah, Gilgamesh, Deucalion and his wife, the survivors from Samothrace and a myriad others are all one in the same. They are simply the survivors of the great melt that occurred in a very short period about 11,000 years ago and caused massive upheaval in many human settlements around the globe and the story itself I think, was just meant to serve as a reminder.
So in conclusion, I think it’s fairly obvious that the story of the flood is entirely plausible. I also think that science has proven the plausibility of it, just not in the biblical context and time frame that certain factions might have us believe.
Wednesday, June 6, 2007
Take the test
I just had a bit of fun over at Dikkii's Diatribe where I found this test. I was pretty chuffed with the result, so I thought I'd better post it here.
| You scored as Scientific Atheist, These guys rule. I'm not one of them myself, although I play one online. They know the rules of debate, the Laws of Thermodynamics, and can explain evolution in fifty words or less. More concerned with how things ARE than how they should be, these are the people who will bring us into the future.
What kind of atheist are you? created with QuizFarm.com |
Just don't ask me to do what it says I can.
I do like the 33% "angry atheist" though. It sounds like a good name for a band...:)
Sunday, June 3, 2007
The Hitler Youth
Here’s a short video titled “Aim lower, think smaller”. Some call it a “short video showing how we can better fulfil the great commission”. Personally, I’m not so sure…
Now, unless you are a Christian of both dubious and devious nature, I’m sure you will agree that that was a nasty and insipid little video that probably belongs in the archives of the Hitler Youth, despite its being dressed in nice, friendly language that even a child can understand. I mentioned as much when I saw it posted on a blog a while ago and was immediately jumped on by a Christian crying foul and quoting Godwin’s Law. It’s a sad fact also that those that didn’t argue later admitted that they’d simply ignored the comment. I must admit though, that the guy was probably right but then, so was I.
First, a little history: The first group of young members of the National Socialist German Workers Party was organised in 1926 by Kurt Gruber. Rudolf Hess suggested the name be changed to “Hitler Youth” (Hitlerjugend) and later that year, leadership transferred to Franz von Pfeffer of the Sturm Abteilung (“Storm Section” or “Storm Troopers”). In 1936, membership was made compulsory for all boys aged 15 and 18 and Baldur von Schirach formed the Jungvolk which had a compulsory membership for all boys aged 10 to 14.
The children in these groups were subjected to exactly the same kind of indoctrination that the video above advocates. They were taught Nazi dogma, how to be intolerant of those that don’t meet the Nazi ideal, to spread the doctrine and to teach Nazism wherever they went. They were also encouraged to report those that spoke out against Nazism. There were even cases of kids being so brainwashed that they were happy to pull the trigger themselves when it was their own parents who were the victims.
So how is the ideal preached in this video any better? In short, it isn’t. What the video asks us to do is to teach our children that an unfounded belief is the truth and that they will suffer for eternity if they don’t believe it. We’re also to teach them that they have no privacy, that God is looking over their shoulder and can see everything they do. They don’t even have the luxury of private thought, because God knows what they are thinking, every minute of every day. Then, if that’s not enough, we’re to send them off, armed with the three mainstays of religion - ignorance, fear and guilt - in to the world to “spread the word” and continue with “the great commission”. It really is quite disgusting.
I brought up Hitler in that comment in the hope that I might goad someone there into thinking about it, but alas. The fact that most of them managed to simply ignore the remark and dismiss it out of hand really only shows just how narrow minded, out dated and blinkered the Christian view of the world really is, and indeed needs to be in order to be able to believe in any of it it at all.
Saturday, May 26, 2007
Secularism, almost...
The trouble with Australians is that the majority of us, in my experience, are a tad apathetic where religion is concerned so we’ve never really had any real burning issues in this area. Well, not to the extent that say, Iraq is experiencing burning issues in this area. But as the “National Day of Thanksgiving” approaches and in response to it, it’s obviously time to examine the subject once again, if for no other reason than I’ve been tagged to do it…:)
The Australian constitution does not and never has formally separated church and state. As far as religion goes, the only thing our constitution guarantees is freedom of and/or from religion which is nothing like the same thing. The section that people (like those that edit Wikipedia and Answers.com for instance) sometimes confuse as a formal separation is section 116 and it reads thusly:
116: The Commonwealth shall not make any law for establishing any religion, or for imposing any religious observance, or for prohibiting the free exercise of any religion, and no religious test shall be required as a qualification for any office or public trust under the Commonwealth.
As you can see, there’s plenty of room to move in that section. It seems that what it does is prevent the Commonwealth from meddling in church affairs, but there’s really nothing in it to prevent the church, any church, from meddling in the Commonwealth’s affairs. So what we have here is a separation of state and church, not the other way around.
The last statement – and no religious test shall be required as a qualification for any office or public trust under the Commonwealth – may be seen by some to mean that a lack of belief is perfectly acceptable in any person taking office, and they’d be right. But it also means that it is perfectly acceptable for anyone who is a Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu, Christian, etc, fundamentalist or otherwise, to take a public office as well, if elected. No religious test is the key phrase here. So, the Commonwealth cannot tell me what religion to practice, nor can it prohibit me from practicing any religion I choose and that religion cannot be a barrier to me were I to seek a public office or trust, where I can peddle my beliefs (as Tony Abbot and others are want to do) to my hearts content. That almost makes a degree of interaction inevitable, if not desirable.
Consequently, our parliament has a limited amount of religious representation in The Christian Democratic Party and Family First, and our more mainstream politicians (Labor and Liberal members) seem to spout forth their religious rhetoric whenever the chance presents itself. Of course, Tony Abbot will call it a “moral” stance, but because he keeps talking about God and the fact that he’s catholic, it’s obvious that morals have nothing to do with it, he’s taking a Christian stance.
Fred Nile of the Christian Democratic Party tells us that Australia is a Christian nation. Many, including our current Prime Minister would disagree with him, but unfortunately, he’s right. His reason for believing it though, is mostly because he thinks 70% of Australians are Christians and in that I think he’s very wrong. Simple math catches the mainstream churches in yet another lie here, because if you were baptised a catholic for instance, don’t believe in God or attend church but have never formally been excommunicated, then as far as the Roman Catholic church is concerned, you are a Roman Catholic. It’s an easy ploy to use to help boost your numbers and it seems to work well enough. But what makes Australia a Christian nation really has nothing at all to do with how many people worship Christ.
Fred also likes to think we have a Christian constitution and Christian law but I really don’t know where he gets that from. Perhaps he’s never actually read it, I don’t know. Our constitution, as I’ve already mentioned, makes the point of being adamant to the exclusion of no religion or lack of it and our law is based in common (and at times uncommon) sense. Just because “thou shall not kill” makes sense (as Ingersoll said, people object to being murdered) doesn’t mean we use it because it was one of the commandments.
There is one thing that Fred doesn’t mention though, which I find quite astounding, and that is that via the auspices of legislation, the good people of this nation are forced to take public holidays on Good Friday, Easter Sunday and Christmas day. These particular days are days of observance in the Christian calendar and the Christian calendar only, and they are holidays for no other reason than they are days of Christian observance which to my mind is in direct contravention of section 116.
Remember this bit? or for imposing any religious observance. Our constitution expressly forbids the Commonwealth from imposing any religious observance, yet here we are with three days of distinctly Christian observance, enshrined in legislation. It’s a travesty and no mistake…
Thursday, May 24, 2007
Blog Against Theocracy - National Day of Secularism - May 26.
Eeek! I’ve been tagged by Beep over at Beep! Beep! It’s Me. It’s the National Day of Secularism on 26th May, so this one has a deadline, of sorts…:)
To the rules…
Tagging stage:
If you are tagged by the meme, then it’s the same old format; mention this entry so people can see the rules and then tag five other bloggers (preferably Australian given the nature of the NDoT.) You can link back to these rules and display the banner.
Blog against theocracy stage:
If you have been tagged then in addition to tagging others, it is also hoped that you will write a blog entry about the separation of Church and State in Australia. It could be a critique of Pell’s “normative democracy”, the historic anti-democracy sermonizing of Archbishop Daniel Mannix, inevitable discrimination by the funding of (approved) chaplains in public schools, the state backed imposition of bans on forbidden women’s dress or whatever Church-State issue you find important.
Preferably, such a blog entry would be published on the 26th, but there is no deadline as such. Just a couple of caveats:
1) the church-state anti-theocracy blog entry should mention the phrase “National Day of Thanksgiving”, possibly mentioning that the entry is a response to the NDoT, and
2) feel free to add the (again admittedly modest) banner.
Now I have to tag someone. I hate this bit because there's always someone I want to tag that's already been tagged. Damn! Oh well, here's a couple for starters...
1. Day By Day
2. Chicken Scratchings
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
The Clan Forsyth
Well, after all that reading through the records and hanging all the pictures, I fear my pride and interest in all things Scottish, has once again been piqued. So this time, instead of just reading about it, I’ll regale and bore you all with some of the more interesting bits of my clan’s history.
The Clan Forsyth is a “true blood clan”, which means that the entire clan can be traced back to a single founding father. That lad was a fellow by the name of Viscomte de Fronsoc who accompanied Eleanor de Provence to London where she married Henry III. The tradition is that Viscomte had settled in France, having moved there from Scotland. No-one can really be sure about that however, for reasons that will become apparent further down. What we can be sure about is that he was the last male de Fronsoc. After accompanying Eleanor across the channel however, he lived at the English court from 1236 to 1246 and his family obtained lands in Northumberland and thence to the borders of Scotland.
The first record of the name in Scotland however, is William de Fersith on the Ragman Roll (registered 28th August 1296), which was a document signed by all the nobles, prelates and those of lesser standing in Scotland which forced them to subscribe allegiance to Edward I of England, who then proceeded to abscond with the Honours of Scotland, The Stone of Sconce and just about anything else that wasn't nailed down, back to London. Over the years and what with all the trouble with the damnable Picties (I see there’s another push for independence recently. It’s been 700 years but they’ll get it back one day), the vast bulk of those records were lost, stolen or otherwise misplaced (the ships carrying the entirety of the clan records were sunk by the Spanish, for instance), which really sucks because now, everything that went before is lost, which is the apparent reason for the above. But that’s the way it was in those days I suppose. When you lost, you lost everything. All we really know is that the clan crest is much older.
Anyway, the next record is of young Osbert, son of Robert de Forsyth (son of William de Fersith) who whopped some serious Pommy butt alongside the mighty Bruce at Bannockburn. He did so well that Robert I (Robert the Bruce) chartered him lands in 1320 and officially recognised the clan’s ancient tartan, crest, badge and motto. Osbert’s son Robert went on to become the King’s macer in 1364 and also became Constable of Sterling Castle in 1368. His brother, “Fersith the clerk”, rendered the accounts of the “Customers” of Sterling. And so begins a long line which now includes every single Forsyth, Forsythe, Forsyte, Fearsyth, Fersith, etc, on the face of the planet and of which, I am one.
In case you can’t tell, I’m rather proud of that heritage. Who wouldn’t be? It's an amazing feeling to be able to trace your ancestry back so far. But now I’ve bored you with the details, it’s time for the regalia…:)
A more modern version of the clan crest, which we can all use, is the one heading this post, but I prefer this one. The motto on it, "Instaurator Ruinae", means "Repairer of ruin". The Armorial Bearings on the right can only be used by the chief and is the banner under which Osbert led the clan at Bannockburn. It's describe thusly: "Argent a chevron engrailed gules between three griffins sergeant azure armed and membered sable, crowned or"
We have an ancient tartan (left), and a modern tartan (right).
No, I don't own a kilt. Do you have any idea how expensive they are? Sheesh...:)
Friday, May 18, 2007
The Cult Of The Ancestor
I’ve recently had a very interesting experience. My mum has had to move into an aged care facility due to crippling arthritis and unfortunately, in order to afford it, we’ve had to sell up and divide the spoils of our collective childhood and take what mum said we had to take. Being a bit of a history nut, I scored all the old photos.
Personally, I didn’t think that cameras had been around that long, but on further investigation, I proved myself wrong. It seems that the first permanent image was created by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce in 1826. The first wet plates were invented in 1850 and dry plates not until 1855, but it was the gelatine dry plate in 1871 that did the trick. No more tricky emulsions, just grab one off the shelf. Marvellous.
Anyway, I digress. The folk who’s piccies I found myself hanging were mostly born between 1840 and 1875, which means I now have a photographical record going all the way back to my great-great grandparents and to the very beginnings of photography itself. I’ve even got one that’s a framed glass plate negative. Brilliant! My kids share a sense of history, if not an active interest in it and were seriously impressed when I told them that “those two on the end there are some of your great-great-great grandparents - paternal.” Wide eyes indeed…:)
Anyway, as I began to hang the lads and lasses on my beautiful wall, I noticed a couple of things. Firstly, great-great ma-ma (paternal), Elizabeth Kay, was an absolute stunner! Secondly, I began to feel some sort of affinity with these people and that was a bit strange to me. I’d seen these guys on the wall every time I’d visited mum over the years and it had never happened before. I’d felt an affinity with certain bits of history before, but not the actual people themselves. Strange…
By the time I’d finished, I had an amazing sense of pride. Not in the job I’d done hanging them (that was crap and needs to be revisited), but simply in the fact that they were there, presiding over my entry way. I almost felt that these guys should somehow be revered. The idea of putting them high on the wall where they can peer down with their stern authority on those passing beneath seemed, all of a sudden, to be the right one. All this made me wonder a little, as you can probably imagine. So, for what it’s worth, here’s my little theory on why.
My ancestry is entirely British. No, I don’t mean just English. My father’s history is entirely Scottish (Pictish if you want to be pedantic), whilst my mothers is a mixture of Celtic, Anglo Saxon and Gaelic. That means that somewhere in the deep distant past in my family, there is a very rich history of pagan belief.
One thing among many that all the pagan religions of the isles had in common, was “The Cult Of The Ancestor”, or Ancestor Worship. Another thing they all have in common is that they are unimaginably old. We’ll never know exactly how old places like the various henges we find about the place are, or how far back the religions go, all the records were destroyed or lost when Christianity came, but that’s a different story. It’s presumed however, that the cult of the ancestor was in practice thousands of years prior to the advent of Christianity, which at a mere 2000 years is just an upstart by comparison. My theory revolves around the age of the older pagan religions however, and the length of time that they were practiced.
Could it be that the want to revere, or at least afford my antecedents a respected place in my house may be a genetic thing? How long does that take and was ancestor worship practiced long enough for it to happen? I don’t know, but if you read my blog regularly you’d have recently read about a genetically programmed belief in supernatural beings, so why not?
Well, probably because they are my great (+) grandparents and it’s just that I have an exaggerated sense of history where these guys are concerned, simply because of the various legacies they’ve left me.
I caught my son gazing at them earlier too. All of a sudden it seems, they’re not just photos anymore. He had to know who fit in where and who begat whom and he kept me at it until he’d memorised them all, all the way down to himself. Now, if only we can get him to apply that sort of dedication to his school work...:)
Monday, May 14, 2007
From The Pulpit
In this series I intend to post speeches, or snippets of speeches that I’ve found that were never intended to be sermons but nevertheless, turned out that way.
First, a little bit of background about our speaker…
Clinton Richard Dawkins, ethologist, evolutionary biologist, writer and holder of the Charles Simonyi Chair for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University.
He was born on March 26, 1941 in Nairobi, Kenya and moved to England with his parents at age 8.
Education, Positions and Degrees
1954-1959 Oundle School
1959-1962 Balliol College, University of Oxford
1962-1966 Research Student, Oxford University (D.Phil., 1966)
1965-1967 Research Assistant to Professor N.Tinbergen FRS
1967-1969 Assistant Professor of Zoology, University of California, Berkeley
1969-1970 Senior Research Officer, Department of Zoology, Oxford
1970-1990 University Lecturer in Zoology, and Fellow of New College, Oxford
1989 D.Sc. (Oxford)
1990-1995 Ad hominem Reader in Zoology, University of Oxford
1995- Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science,
University of Oxford, and Professorial Fellow of New College
This speech was given at TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) and was titled “The Design Of Life”. I’m not sure what they were expecting, but what they got was a brilliant sermon on the virtues of atheism. In it, he explains why it is he’s so adamant about his disbelief, among other things.
It’s a 30 minute clip but is well worth the watch, so you’ll need a bit of time. Download it as an MP4 here and view it at your leisure, or grab a cuppa, hit play and enjoy…
Thursday, May 10, 2007
Atheism - What it means to me
I found myself watching a documentary series over at Beep’s the other day, concerning the history of atheism (“Atheism – A rough history of disbelief” by Jonathan Miller). It was a brilliant series which I seem to have gotten quite a lot out of. It caused me to think about some of the many facets of atheism (and belief) and wonder about what it really means to me to be an “atheist” or if indeed, I am one at all. There’s no doubt that I’ve certainly thought of myself as an atheist and have definitely been labelled as such from time to time but to be honest, I’m not sure I really fit the mould any more.
Early on in the first episode he said something that made me take notice and a mild sort of umbrage; “for those of us that enjoy the luxury of thoughtless disbelief.” I’m sure however, that most of my fellow bloggers, believers included that may read this post will probably agree with me when I say that there’s really nothing thoughtless about our disbelief (or belief) at all. Rather, it’s because we’ve thought about it that we’ve come to the conclusions that we have.
But so it seems to me when I see things like this and read Dawkins or Harris, that atheism has gained an air of staunch disbelief which I’m not sure I share quite so completely as some.
You see, if you were to ask me if I believe that God does exist, I would simply say that I do not know. If however, you were to ask me if I believe that God does not exist, I would simply say that I do not know. That does not mean that I’m not of the opinion that He probably doesn’t though, but I’ll get to that. To me it’s quite simple and logical and it was part of the process that lead me away from religion in general, not just Christianity.
In examining and discussing whether or not God exists, we soon come to the stark realisation that the argument has no tangible, or at least no observable evidence to support either side. So therefore once again, viewed in the stark light of logic and common sense, if there can be no firm case made for either the affirmative or the negative, then the answer, obviously, lies somewhere in between. To me, what lies in between “yes” and “no” is “I don’t know”, the rest is pure conjecture.
As I said however, that doesn’t mean I don’t have an opinion. I am the sort of person that likes to see a bit of evidence before I believe something is implicitly true after all, and I don’t think there’s any reason why that same rationale should not be applied to God. And so it is that I’ve arrived at my opinion that due to a serious lack of evidence, God, and everything that goes with Him, probably does not exist and probably never did.
I’m also of the opinion though, that if God does exist and should deign to provide us some direct evidence of his existence, then I would certainly change my opinion to the affirmative. But this is where I seem to differ with people like those I mention above. I find I simply cannot be as adamant as some are when it comes to pure “disbelief”.
Dawkins will quite happily tell you “God does not exist”. To me, that claim seems a little outlandish. We all know, Dawkins included, that he cannot furnish any proof of that claim, so what that statement is, is pure assertion and is nothing more than an opinion. One that I happen to agree with, but an opinion none the less. That said however, I’m sure that like me, if god should meter out a bit of personal smiting in the Dawkins direction, he’d pretty soon change his tune I think. But I think the only real difference here is that I am quite happy to admit to ignorance and say “I don’t know” whereas Dawkins needs an answer.
Admittedly, “I don’t know, but I doubt it” isn’t really much of a stance to take on the whole God thing is it? But the way I figure it is this. If God really wanted me to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that He exists, then He would tell me so in no uncertain and very godly terms, I’m sure. So it’s obvious to me that at this juncture, He would very much like me to remain ignorant of His Devine person, and probably His Devine plan as well, and so I shall until He (or it) deigns that I need to know.
The other problem I have with God is that if there is such a thing, I think it would have to be much bigger and better than any of the models we’ve come up with so far. It seems to me, as I look at different religions and try and make sense of the why and how of what they believe, that most deities seem at best to behave like petulant children or at worst, like “senile delinquents”, as Tennessee Williams puts it. To be honest, I don’t really think a god that has the power to create a whole universe out of nothing needs the likes of us to worship him “or else”, nor has he any business behaving the way he has in the past. No, if a god does exists in the context of being the kind of god that can create a whole universe out of nothing, then I think it’s more likely to be something so unutterably alien to us that we probably wouldn’t recognise it as such anyway. Do I worry about what might happen to me when I die? Well, here's a tip…;)
That leaves me just one more question. So what’s the bible all about? Well, it’s a fantastic collection of extremely ancient stories that carry a common theme. I think some of them, especially the Pentateuch, are much older (the stories themselves, not the texts) than we give them credit for and that others may be much younger than we give them credit for. It doesn’t matter though. As Jonathan Miller said, my life would have been much poorer had I not been exposed to those stories and the magnificent works, in all aspects of art and literature, that they have inspired.
