Soylent Red

From Salt on Everything, it's The Passion of the Christ 2: Judgement Day:

• Permanent Link
• Toggle Comments [2]

Anyone else watch this yesterday? I really wish I had enough confidence in other people to be able to sit back and laugh at Liddle in the comfortable knowledge that no-one could fall for his deranged ramblings, but unfortunately I don't.

Nearly everything he said was wrong in at least one important respect. But I really got quite annoyed when I realised this simple truth: Liddle interviewed a number of prominent atheistic intellectuals, including Richard Dawkins and Peter Atkins. He must have posed them the same questions he spouted in his commentary, including questioning how science is supposed to provide moral guidance. This is such a frequently raised question, and so easily answered by any thinking atheist, that they cannot have failed to provide a satisfactory answer. That he continued to pose the question, and left it unanswered, in the show means that he is either too dumb to grasp it--which I find highly unlikely--or deliberately ignoring it and knowingly broadcasting a deception.

I won't try to talk about all of the rest of the show, but it was all similarly absurd. You can watch it online at The Richard Dawkins Foundation.

• Permanent Link
• Toggle Comments [1]

I'm using the new headline writing technique of writing something ridiculous and controversial and then putting a question mark in so I can get away with it. No Stephen Hawking isn't and idiot. But he's doing something that I disagree with, so I'm going to call him one. That's how the Internet works.

Hawking intends to jump back in the popular science book arena in early 2008 with a new book on his favourite subject: the origin of the universe. Hawking is certainly qualified to write such a book, and his previous successes lead me to expect that it will do quite well. So why is he an idiot?

He's only gone and called his new book "The Grand Design"! Let me be clear here. Stephen Hawking is clearly and evidently not a theist in any meaningful sense. Yes, he uses God as a convenient metaphor throughout his writing for a popular audience (at least; I haven't read any of his academic writings so I can't comment on them). But it should be clear to anyone familiar with his work that he is, at worst (or best, if that's your perspective) a deist and most probably an atheist.

So why muddy people's thoughts by using as a metaphor an idea that many people take to be literal truth? Even moderate religious people will no doubt interpret this title to mean that Hawking literally believes that the universe was consciously designed by some self-aware entity. Which will of course fuel the popular perception that there are a great many educated and influential scientists who hold such parochial views. They don't.

Albert Einstein is often trotted out as a key figure in such an appeal to authority. While the argument from authority, familiar as it is to many believers, is fallacious, in this case it's based on a faulty premise to boot. Like Hawking, Einstein used the metaphor of God extensively. But in his case it's even clearer what his true views were. Citations and quotes abound that demonstrate beyond all doubt that Einstein did not believe in a personal god. But, like Hawking after him, he failed to realise the damaging effect of facilitating this misconception.

Metaphor is a powerful literary tool. And it is often based on myth. But surely it is prudent to wait for a myth to die before resurrecting it to spruce up book titles?

Finally, on a slight aside inspired by comments I have read about this story, when is someone going to write a book addressing the really difficult question: why do people have such trouble with Hawking's name? It is Hawking, with a G. Not Hawkins. This has been a public service digression.

• Permanent Link
• Toggle Comments [4]

They'll get their knickers in a twist over just about anything these days, won't they? It seems a bunch of Shite—excuse me, Shi'ite—Muslims in Iraq are up in arms (figuratively if not literally) about an image of Buddy Christ from Kevin Smith's Dogma. The AFP reports that the Sadr City Muslims are offended by "a picture of a grinning Jesus they mistook for a Shiite holy figure."

That picture abuses our Imam Mahdi and his holy character, and mocks our sacred figures.

Well it mocks someone's sacred figures. Is this an implicit admission that one bearded dead guy is much the same as another?

• Permanent Link
• Toggle Comments [2]

My giddy excitement at the arrival of The God Delusion this morning led to that all too familiar feeling of wanting to share it with all of you but not really having all that much to say. After all, there isn't a huge amount I can really say about a book that I haven't read yet.

You'll understand then, I hope, the envy I feel for Ben at "Back off, man; I'm a scientist." His own pleasure at seeing the book is prompted by that fact that he is quoted in it! This is a remarkable honour, especially as the quote is accompanied by the description of Ben as an "eloquent blogger". Of course I agree, but my judgement of a person's eloquence is presumably worth somewhat less than Richard Dawkins'.

• Permanent Link
• Toggle Comments [4]

My copy of The God Delusion is in transit from Amazon, and I expect that many of my readers are in similar circumstances. While we all wait, there's a video on YouTube of Jeremy Paxman interviewing Richard Dawkins about the book.

Interestingly, I find it very difficult to tell what Paxman's own beliefs might be. He doesn't go easy, but neither does he appear to simply feed Dawkins the questions he most happily address. I suppose that can stand as a testament to his journalistic integrity, something that begins to stand out for me as I see more videos of American interviews. Dawkins makes a typically sturdy defence of his position. Not terribly surprising given the strength of the position he's defending.

Paxman gives some time to the question of whether the sense of worth and happiness that many people derive from their faith should be ignored. Dawkins, quite rightly in my view, maintains not only that that question has no bearing on the truthfulness of religious claims—which is inarguable—but also that to him truth is more valuable and more desirable than comfortable ignorance.

A brief TV interview obviously can not address the entire topic of the veracity of religion. I doubt even that a whole book can make a serious dent in the subject, vast as it is. But Dawkins is most certainly the person I would favour in framing our side of the argument, and I look forward to reading what will be his first book solely dedicated to the subject.

• Permanent Link
• Toggle Comments [2]