Rantings of the Biscuitnapper

2012-01-20T17:50:00.001-08:00

'...but then, tyrants are like that: they confuse sentimentality for compassion.'

Terence Davies

2012-01-20T10:09:00.000-08:00

The Ugley Vicar: Holy Communion: Jesus Christ Inc.

2012-01-19T06:52:00.000-08:00

The Ugley Vicar: Holy Communion: Jesus Christ Inc.

2012-01-19T03:04:00.000-08:00

"If I profess with the loudest voice and clearest exposition every portion of the truth of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at that moment attacking, I am not confession Christ, however boldly I may be confessing Christ. Where the battle rages, there the loyalty of the soldier is proved, and to be steady on all the battlefield besides, is mere flight and disgrace if he flinches at that point."

Martin Luther

2012-01-19T03:03:00.001-08:00

Dude, Where's my Lifeboat?

It's a Girl! Documentary Film - Official Trailer

2012-01-19T02:57:00.000-08:00

Cuttlefish changes colors like chess!

2012-01-18T13:08:00.000-08:00

Chelliah Laity: Stop Calling the Disabled 'Scroungers'

2012-01-12T10:30:00.000-08:00

Chelliah Laity: Stop Calling the Disabled 'Scroungers'

12 Days of Christmas Special

2012-01-05T19:12:00.000-08:00

via LutheranSatire

Tea at Trianon: Mayans in Georgia

2011-12-30T09:46:00.000-08:00

Tea at Trianon: Mayans in Georgia

Just in case...

2011-12-23T02:05:00.000-08:00

Skepticblog » Shroud of Turin Redux

In light of oncoming exams and assignment submissions, blogging will mostly take the form of links to interesting things rather than the usual ranting.

2011-12-17T16:47:00.001-08:00

Politicians -- more interested in their own careers than in sincere public service, ambitious to gain their personal ends, unwilling to rebuke foolish voters with harsh truth until it is too late to save them, forced to lead double lives of misleading public statements and contradictory knowledge of the facts, yielding, for the sake of popularity, to the selfish emotions, passions, and greeds of sectional groups -- contribute much to mankind's history but little to mankind's welfare.

Paul Brunton

2011-12-17T16:40:00.000-08:00

In light of the death of one famous person, here is a prayer for the countless infamous, those who died anonymously with no family or friends to notice or to grieve:

O merciful God, take pity on those souls who have no particular friends and intercessors to recommend them to You, who either through negligence of those who are alive or through length of time, are forgotten by all. Spare them, O Lord, and remember Your own when others forget to appeal to Your mercy. Let not the souls You have created be parted from You, their Creator.

Amen.

IDLE SPECULATIONS: Blessed Hildegard of Bingen

2011-12-16T13:33:00.000-08:00

IDLE SPECULATIONS: Blessed Hildegard of Bingen

Yay! This is in fact a timely reminder to get on with my reading. Still struggling with Aquinas (after whom will definitely come some Palamas and then some good old fashioned Aristotle) but once I get through that lot, I can turn to our sisters in eccentric faith, Hildegarde von Bingen, Julian of Norwich and of course, Margery Kempe (who happens to be my birthday saint - even though technically she isn't a saint, but a 'blessed' one).

A Week of Unintended Marian Devotion

2011-12-16T05:24:00.000-08:00

Madonna and Child by Marianne Stokes

Wednesday evening saw myself and some members of our church visit the local Russian Orthodox congregation with some figures of the Holy couple and the holy donkey (I have decided that any beast bearing that particular burden is well deserving of the epithet) who are currently on a journey throughout the parish as they make their way to 'Bethlehem'. What we didn't know was that the congregation were celebrating the liturgy of supplication to the Theokotos in which they prayed to her for her intercession, that we might be kept safe and free of sin until the Nativity of our Lord.

Of course it was very beautiful. The liturgy hadn't been learned in English yet, so they celebrated it in old Slavonic, breaking into English for the Gospel and the Lord's Prayer so we could join in. I particularly liked the singing, which reminded me of the services at the church I attended when I was much younger (it was attached to my C of E primary school and I sung in the choir) and I liked that we all faced the same way, including the priest. It made it seem much more communal and rather less like a lecture. It occurred to me that the slightly 'reverentially haphazard' approach, apparently common to Orthodox masses (well, Armenian and Russian at any rate) works as well. Things can be changed as you go along if appropriate which made it feel like a real act of sacrifice and worship rather than a well polished ceremony for our entertainment.

Obviously not understanding a word of old Slavonic (apart from the odd words like 'gospodi' and 'slava tiebe' from Taize chants), I found the icons particularly helpful in focusing oneself and the physical discomfort in remaining standing for so long always brought me right back to the object of our prayers. Not just to she whose heart heart would be pierced by a sword, but ultimately the Creator of the Multi/Universe, born to this vale of tears, suffering just as we suffer and indeed, because of our suffering.

That we should pray and ask those saints who have passed to pray for us to live through Advent and witness the culmination of our fasting in the celebration of our Lord's birth reminded me of a conversation between the vicar at my mother church and a young muslim man who had come to visit us with his family and some friends. Upon being asked what Advent was, the vicar rather surprised me - being a broad sort of mainstream Anglican ie neither high nor low - by initially responding that it was a season where we look towards the end of the world. My first thought was something shocked and incoherent along the lines of, "whoa - deep!" as it wasn't the usual packaging of Advent but now, having celebrated the liturgy of supplication with our Orthodox brethren, his explanation rings truer than ever.

Yes, we are looking back to the uncertainty before the event of the Incarnation, wonderful event that it was, but we are also looking to the next coming that sees the end of this world as imagined in Revelations 21:1, 'And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea.' Our hope is that we will eventually see the culmination of the (much, much, much) longer Advent that is the span of the Multi/Universe's existence. Once again, it dawned on me just how delicately balanced our faith is and how bizarre/awesome our hopes are. For all people talk about the certainties of religion, it seems to me that when one considers what the Christian faith is actually hoping for, our 'certainties' (death-resurrection-ascension) are really quite small, almost insignificant if not for the fact that, even if only allegorically true, they are equally mind-blowing. All this nonsense - which is all religion, even at it's best, can ever be. Something about fallen humanity's inevitably inadequate response to the experience of God and Creation - goes beyond wanting to have a nice, if indeed any, afterlife, or not going to hell. That's petty trifles in comparison. We are looking to a whole new cosmology, a resurrected Multi/Universe where the divide between things as they ought to be and how they are, won't exist anymore.

And what the liturgy reminded me of, was that this is something we should be working for, praying for, begging for, because we have no certainty that this will actually be.

Everyone was extremely welcoming and the priest was always careful to let us know we could sit down if we wanted to (hopefully we overturned the stereotype of the weak-kneed Anglican!). We were shown some of the icons, including the pride of the church which was an 18th century icon of the apparition of the Virgin at the battle of Constantinople in AD 911 at the church of Blachaernae.

Later that evening we prayed the Rosary together. Wednesday is the day of the Glorious Mysteries, the last decade being devoted to the Coronation of the Blessed Virgin (by tradition alluded to in Revelations 12:1 and 14:1-5), which I thought wrapped up our evening of devotion - intended and unintended - quite well.

A very different sort of Marian Devotion: “Mary” by Philip Appleman

Christopher Hitchens 1949-2011

2011-12-16T05:21:00.000-08:00

Christopher Hitchens 1949-2011

A moving tribute from his brother Peter Hitchens here.

I never actually finished 'God is not Great' and, as all I knew of him was his position as one of the 'four horsemen of the apocalypse', at first I was rather dismissive of him in comparison to the likes of Richard Dawkins or Daniel Dennett. Then I came across this article 'Christopher Hitchens and the Battle of Beirut', and the account of his bravery and integrity made me reconsider my opinion of him. Since then I've always enjoyed reading his articles for Vanity Fair and such like and he is definitely my favourite of the four. In fact these days, I tend to be rather dismissive of the other three in comparison to the likes of him.

It's funny how these things change.

2011-12-14T14:38:00.001-08:00

On Defending Our Neighbour

'Tis the Feast of...

2011-12-13T11:16:00.000-08:00

...St. Lucy, she who had her eyes put out with a fork.

Technically, she is also a saint I should pay more attention too as apparently she's the patron saint of eye problems and my eyes, dear reader, are appalling.

From Siris comes this post: The Foe of Every Cruelty

I love Science...

2011-12-13T08:17:00.000-08:00

...even when it's going at 100 miles per hour! (yeah, I watched the entire live webcast like a cool dudette and I think I could even understand some of it).

Some links on the results announced by CERN today:

Higgs boson: One Step Closer?

ATLAS and CMS experiments present Higgs Search Status

2011-12-12T19:32:00.000-08:00

Focusing on the Jewish Story of the New Testament - the bit on the wise men actually makes perfect sense when one considers the story. For such wise men, they did a really stupid thing in telling the current King (Herod) that there was another King predicted to be that wasn't his son/heir. Talk about political naivete! I wonder if that's a case of intentional irony on the part of Luke, an irony that may be lost through the foggy lenses of Gentile piety.

Anxiety

2011-12-12T15:50:00.001-08:00

From the sisters at iBenedictines, a timely post on Anxiety.

Some Thoughts on the Whole Anglican Covenant Thing

2011-12-12T15:00:00.000-08:00

So this evening at church we got into a discussion about stuff. Stupid stuff, silly stuff, irrelevant stuff, funny stuff and of course important stuff. What is it about a glass of flavoured red wine that makes you realise just how much stuff there is to talk about? It's a pity it also makes you less coherent.

I don't quite know how it started off but we got to talking about the Anglican Covenant. Well it initially started with discussing the Roman Catholic Church and the various groups (Opus Dei, SSPX, Old Catholics etc) and then we got onto the whole Anglican thing. I must say, it always strikes me as ironic how it's often Anglican Anglo-Catholics who feel like we have a unique right to comment on a church that certainly doesn't see us as part of a valid church and even more of a right than former Roman Catholics themselves (I did have the decency to shut up when she mentioned it! Well, just about). It also strikes me that I am much too fair to the old Roman foe for any proper Anglican but I suppose that comes from, well, knowing some and trying to understand all perspectives on the current issues of the day (the abuse scandal for one). I'm also too cynical about liberal Christianity to get particularly judgemental about 'conservative' ie, actual, Roman Catholics (I will be honest and admit I get a little tired of the liberal pro-womens-ordination, anti-compulsory celibacy types because there's a part of me that wonders if they're so desperate to be part of the One True Church that they'll stay there even though they're as Protestant as we are. I mean, that's what the Anglican Church is for, honestly. Then I remember that I'm still an Anglican rather than, say, Greek/Ethiopian Orthodox and for similar reasons to those the liberal would give for remaining part of the RC church. Ah, religion. One of these days I'll become a proper atheist again. At least I'll have something to laugh about).

Anyway, so we finally got onto discussing the Anglican situation which didn't last that long because let's face it, we're just not as exciting as the Roman Catholics. It's interesting how many of us just aren't aware of what's going on within our own church - myself included of course - but could probably talk for Queen and country on the scandals of an entirely different church from which we've been long excommunicated. Again, oh the irony. Religion. Heaven help us.

Then we got to discussing the Anglican Covenant and the raison d'etre of this post. The reason I'm wasting time writing about it now is because I was remarkably able to put across my opinion in a way I doubt I would have been if sober. So here goes.

Now as it should be clear, I've never really cared much for the buzzwords like diversity and such because I've spent most of my life being the subject of them. It is of course the old, sinful me talking but whenever I hear a load of white middle-class right-on-vaguely-liberal people talk about diversity, a sneer instantly creeps upon my lips. I've never understood diversity to mean anything positive, merely a condescending sort of 'tolerance'. We tolerate each other, all the while being careful to perpetrate the usual stereotypes amongst ourselves, and that's about it, seeing as we rarely make an attempt to genuinely understand each other (without the assumption that if only they'd listen to us they would eventually become like us). Thus it always sounds like self-congratulation for something that we haven't actively worked towards. 'Diversity' is something that just sort of happened and as it didn't cause much trouble, we just kind of let it be. That we've arbitrarily turned this breed of Diversity into some sort of idol is actually rather hilarious.

Thus my issue with the Anglican covenant is not that it would kill off diversity per se. For me the diversity is simply a result of our commitment to the Reformed nature of the Anglican Church, where we allow for individual interpretation of scripture - even to the extent where it appears to override tradition (and scripture too more often than not), in which case you simply have to trust that God is enough of a Reformed Christian that He is in fact speaking to everyone including the people you entirely disagree with, and He'll eventually lead us all to the truth (or maybe He's just being playing the prankster. I wouldn't blame Him). It does result in a mess, but then what on earth were we expecting? If we wanted the authority to create a final arbiter of truth, we wouldn't be Protestants. We lost that authority when we split from Rome. Too bad.

Most importantly, however, my real source of contention with the proposed Covenant comes from my personal philosophy of what the Law is. No doubt as a result of having a father who worked in this sort of area and has no doubt passed on this rather grand way of thinking about such things, but it seems to me that the thing with the Law is that it binds not just those whom it governs but also those who use it to govern others. I am not convinced that there would be any body within the Anglican Church with either the ability or desire to pass the sentence on those who would break the terms of the Covenant. Certainly not any meaningful sort of sentence that wouldn't result in everyone simply carrying on as they were. Although the Law always has a symbolic role within the makeup of any society, a Law that is only symbolic is a mockery. What is the point of it if those who contravene it aren't either punished (in this case, excommunicated I suppose) or rehabilitated? If there is neither the capacity nor the will to do either, then there is no need to create the possibility for either option to become a necessity, lest said needlessness is revealed, thereby working to discredit that particular and any other feature of the Law.

So what is the future for the worldwide Anglican Communion? Probably schism and perhaps this is simply my alcohol-clouded judgement, but that's honestly fine. At the moment we are united in name only; post-schism we'll be united as siblings in Christ and probably have more patience for each other as ecumenical brethren, without that onerous burden of duty to bear. I suspect that the Church of England will be disestablished in my lifetime, hopefully at the insistence of our own bishops rather than Parliament which at the very least would help us save face. It has certainly been an interesting 500 years and there aren't many other social experiments that could be said to have lasted so long. Each will go their own way and by God's grace we'll either come round together again or... not.

I'll let the covenant speak for itself. Funny really, the first section alone and I can already see us getting into severe difficulties. I'm sure every Anglican could agree to it in her own way, but somehow it's whether Anglicans would agree with each other that's the real issue...

EDIT: An infinitely better argument against the Covenant via Revd Lesley.

What hasn't changed...

2011-12-10T16:31:00.000-08:00

AncientBriton: "We are all in this together." (18): A view from the past: David Low, Evening Standard (October, 1943) Nearly 70 years on Directors award themselves almost 50% increase...

On Learning Slavonic

2011-12-10T15:42:00.001-08:00

How interesting:

The grammar has the same logic as other European languages. It works almost like Latin! It’s inflected with noun and adjective case endings, an elegant way to set up a language, as well as conjugating verbs, which students of modern European languages are familiar with. One difference is there’s the aspective, the difference between one time only and a state of being. (Black American English has it too: he workin’, ‘he’s at work’, and he be workin’, ‘he has a job’.)

2011-12-10T09:09:00.000-08:00

Bravo! About time, what!

Musings on Question Time and Such...

2011-12-09T17:13:00.001-08:00

So. Trying to catch up on my political watching/reading and the first stop was yesterday's Question Time. Now I know, I know, it isn't really any good for actual politics, but it is a good source for references, a bit like a poor man's political New Scientist in televisual form. It was actually quite good this time round. There was very little shouting or panellists talking over each other. Or at least, very little in comparison...

Firstly, it made me realise just how little I understand about anything but also how little I suspect the politicians do (which of course is understandable as that is what comes with a democracy. Our rulers are chosen from a very wide pool and well, if that pool includes people like me, it's no wonder we have problems...). I found it interesting that the only person who spoke in terms of figures and financial mechanisms was the CEO*, rather than the politicians (on either side) who tended to use wonderful but ultimately empty rhetoric. For example, did you know that the euro being overvalued in Southern Europe, means the euro in countries such as Germany and France is undervalued which actually undercuts British exports and contributes to the decline in British manufacture? Alright well maybe it's just me being an idiot, but I didn't know that and I found it fascinating. It didn't lead to any further gnosis, but it did give me something concrete to ponder as opposed to whether Cameron is being an Essex/British Bulldog and Eurosceptical (which of course he is but I'm not sure that actually means anything unless you give examples of what policies he is conceiving based on that philosophy) and tittle tattle about which politicians are disagreeing with each other in which party.

Speaking of rhetoric, I will say I hate it when politicians start using media soundbites. I think it's alright for plebs like me to talk about things like the 'robin hood' tax, benefits 'scroungers' or whatever but it sounds idiotic when it comes from a politician who is meant to be a bit more knowledgeable than we are, even if they actually aren't ('the welfare state has stopped being a trampoline and started being a mattress' - I mean that's fine for a newspaper editorial and even then only for a headline but for a politician just makes me think, really?). But that's probably me being a bit of a fogey. I just think if you're going to be paid so much for never quite succeeding at anything, you might as well sound like it. Say what you like about the bankers, but at least they can dress well. They actually look like people who deserve a drubbing.

Anyway.

I know I am a bit of a scrooge but... is anyone else feeling a little uncomfortable about the London Olympics? Obviously I am biased, as I thought the bid was a ridiculous idea anyway, a convenient opiate dangled in front of the public to distract them from genuine grievances with the then Labour government (and I was admittedly curious how Paris would do it, if they won the bid). I don't like the way politicians are using it as a sort of panacea for all social problems. There is a lot of talk about legacy and boosts to the economy but these are the very things I find problematic. For example, when I think about the 'poor' areas of London that I know best - Brixton, Lambeth - one of the things I've noticed is that as the area has become richer and more fashionable, the people who used to be able to live there have all moved to other areas that they can afford. It's not exactly a superficial development (though the view from a DLR train through East London certainly makes it seem that way: the river Thames is lined with glittering buildings, providing a glass facade which works to hide the deprived brickwork of old Chinatown) - I'm sure it's real enough on paper in terms of average wages and property value and things like that - but it certainly doesn't feel like a genuine sort of regeneration. Indeed, regeneration in such areas essentially seems to mean getting rid of the unsightly and replacing them with people who can buy more overpriced and useless things to keep a service based economy afloat.

It doesn't seem particularly stable in the long term. Unlike just about everyone else, I still can't get over how quickly we seem to have forgotten just how insane everyone went. When the property market was booming, I kept on hearing people talk about doing up a new house then flogging it for a million or so and moving on to the next and I couldn't help but wonder what was wrong with just getting a house to live in. Apparently, it was this boom in property prices is what at least partly led to first time house buyers taking out mortgages that they couldn't really afford. I'd also talk to fellow students who would take out proper - rather than student - loans from banks to pay for things they didn't really need and certainly couldn't afford even if they were in full time employment. People would even get credit cards from highly reputable stores like Topshop; indeed, that people with no minimum fixed income could get credit cards at all surprised me. I didn't even think it was allowed.

We were all encouraged to spend beyond our means and though I was a little incredulous about it at the time, I realise now that it makes sense because that's what our economy is apparently based on. What's more, did we not enjoy it? It seemed to be great fun for everyone involved, apart from some people who don't really matter.

So whilst I agree that the banks were beyond unscrupulous and took advantage, it wasn't as though they made it mandatory to join in with this culture. Yet, bizarrely enough, we are once again encouraged to forget ourselves to restart an economy because apparently such spending is what it needs to get another push. It's all very interesting, this being encouraged to save a system that perhaps isn't worth saving to begin with.

That leads me to another issue that I have been pondering lately, in light of the OWS protest in the US and copycat demonstrations throughout the US and - thought not to as large an extent - the UK. Although I am not convinced that the politicians really get it, it increasingly seems as though we are all realising that things can't go back to the way they were, or at least they could but then a similar thing would happen all over again in the distant (or not so distant) future. I think part of the problem is - as ever, to be fair - that we don't have an adequate vocabulary to discuss another solution. We know there is a problem, we might even have a solution, but it's hard to frame it using what we already have as a reference. An example of this is how often one hears - well alright, I hear it a lot, but then I live in Manchester where even the conservatives are Red - things like 'capitalism doesn't work' as though capitalism were some coherently designed, fully fledged philosophy rather than a system evolved and still evolving out of the primordial slime of the Industrial Revolution and the human ability to abstract that which is concrete (and make concrete that which is abstract). It's hard to find ways of talking about this without referring to the political language formulated a century ago (it's a little like people who seriously quote Freud and talk about the 'subconscious' in a non-metaphorical way in matters of psychology. This is probably just me being the snooty hard scientist but I find that truly bizarre, like a geneticist quoting the Origin of Species), a language I think - though I am probably wrong - has been shown to be fairly inadequate for our times.

As with Climate Change, Peak Oil and all these other fashionable sort of concerns, it does sometimes seem that on the rare occasion we might know what to do, we just don't want to do it, because it will hurt. I still say it's very hard to take 'Green' anything seriously when we're increasingly using more energy - we're developing technology that may be more efficient (if it even is), but still uses more energy to produce and run, the vast majority of cars run on petrol and so on. If this is a Crisis, we're being remarkably cool about it, I must say. Watching the strike a few days ago and I couldn't help notice that we are only equipped to talk about how unjust the cuts are and the damage they will do, but not about how we can fix the problem or even whether we really want to (it brought to mind an interesting nugget I learned in History that the first pensions and unemployment benefits were as much a result of public shame concerning the fate of it's old and those out of work due to seasons and/or cruel fate, in a country that was one of the richest in the world. Now, Britain is still one of the richest in the world but I do wonder about it's reserves and the very nature of it's riches: if it's just numbers in a computer, that's hardly very comforting. She has no Empire, nor the manufacturing wealth she once did and the services rendered via welfare are becoming increasingly expensive particularly in the medical sector. All the more so when the government still has to spend so much money on things like the military, in order to perform it's duty as an international state with a conscience. It was pretty clear where the money for welfare would come from the first time round. I'm not sure that's the case anymore).

Like I said, I am no economist - I don't understand how this works and the only options ever explained were cuts, by both the Conservative and the Labour parties - but it does seem we have a choice to re evaluate and shift the priorities of how we spend and how we make the money we spend, or to carry on as before and simply prepare ourselves for the eternal cycle of boom and bust. If it's the former, as it seems the conservative party - for all it's flaws - is committed too, then there will be painful and dark days ahead and the risk that nothing better will come of it. If we choose the former, then we go on as were, but we need to go on with eyes wide open.

Speaking of a convergence of topics, but one of the questions asked by the audience concerning diminished public sympathy for those on welfare benefits brought up the need to generate more jobs in the UK, particularly in manufacturing. As I learn more about the Eurozone financial crisis and the challenges faced by other first world democratic economies - all very similar, but due to different approaches and cultures - what has always been a cynicism about the role and ability of an elected government has blown into all out despair because I just don't believe that there is anything a government can do - beyond the political equivalent of a reaction shot - on this scale. In order to prevent this sort of problem - the passing on of toxic bonds, unscrupulous lending and borrowing - it seems we'd need a body at the level of the UN to control how banks do business with themselves and each other, overcoming whatever loopholes they might take advantage of due to their global presence, if we want transparency and accountability. I will be honest in that I am not confident that even more regulation will help: a crisis in ethics cannot be solved by new legislation.

The way we still look to governments - who are after all made up of ordinary people with the limitations and quirks of the electorate - to provide us with things we're not even sure exist and if they do we're not too clear about how they can be provided is just so outmoded in a world where these issues seem to be out of the hands of a bunch of mouthy middle-class University graduates with four years to sort it all out, as though we're patients asking for a blood letting to cure a case of the flu. It's bizarre and more than a little bit tragic.

But that's me being very very cynical. Maybe it's the weather. You know it was hailing the other day with a clear sky? It was the weirdest thing ever. It's no wonder I can't think coherently about politics when I'm living in such a strange city. I swear, Manchester must be the only city in England to have five different climate zones.

*

I do wish people would stop talking about 'Africa' though, especially people from Africa (ha). We really should know better because it just encourages this idea that it's some monolithic entity of darkness, corruption and famine (which, and I feel this is very important to stress, only happens in countries where it hasn't, you know, rained. England'd be getting famines too if it stopped raining and it couldn't afford to import enough food. And the next person who says 'overpopulation' will get a virtual steel chair to the back of the head. Seriously. Don't. Even).The only reason I mention this is because there was a suggestion from someone in the audience that perhaps Britain should look away from Europe and towards Africa which I previously would have agreed with, but then I remembered the Chinese have already made the first moves and I think that'll do for now. Britain can carry on with the aid thing and leave the Chinese to create the infrastructure.

There are problems with their involvement, of course - a great deal of said infrastructure is apparently done on the cheap, with little local involvement and heavy levels of discrimination but it's the opportunity that counts and these are post-colonial days. I think 21st century Zambians know how to deal with racist Chinese businessmen. Countries like Zambia and the Congo might not have the qualified force to pick up the pieces (I'm sure they do), but other African nations such as South Africa, Kenya, Ghana and - you guessed it - Nigeria certainly do. They're stuffed with engineers and architects etc etc who are falling increasingly out of love with Europe (though there's a lot of Nigerians in places like Poland and Russia which I still find odd. Must be the cold...?), the UK and even the US. I'm sure they'd take full advantage of an opportunity for business right on their doorstep.

I am probably being far too optimistic, but I'll be happy to be proved wrong - a return to the usual status quo as it were. Well, not happy as that would imply something quite horrible had happened to said countries, but you know what I mean.

*Indeed, it was the same last week as well. It was the businessperson who spoke in terms of things one could actually argue with and the politicians tended to stick to the "Well, if you remember the mess we inherited from the former government..."

At least the audience had the decency to audibly groan.

Teetering again...

2011-12-09T16:29:00.001-08:00

Here is a lovely quote from Maggi Dawn:

Dear Lady Georgiana,
Nobody has suffered more from low spirits than I have done – so I feel for you. 1st. Live as well as you dare. 2nd. Go into the shower-bath with a small quantity of water at a temperature low enough to give you a slight sensation of cold, 75° or 80°. 3rd. Amusing books. 4th. Short view of human life – not further than dinner or tea. 5th. Be as busy as you can. 6th. See as much as you can of those friends who respect and like you. 7th. And of those acquaintances who amuse you. 8th. Make no secret of low spirits to your friends, but talk of them freely – they are always worse for dignified concealment. 9th Attend to the effects tea and coffee have upon you. 10th. Compare your lot with that of other people. 11th Don’t expect too much from human life – a sorry business at the best. 12th. Avoid poetry, dramatic representations (except comedy), music, serious novels, melancholy, sentimental people, and everything likely to excite feeling or emotion, not ending in active benevolence. 13th. Do good, and endeavour to please everybody of every degree. 14th. Be as much as you can in the open air without fatigue. 15th. Make the room where you commonly sit gay and pleasant. 16th. Struggle by little and little against idleness. 17th. Don’t be too severe upon yourself, or underrate yourself, but do yourself justice. 18th. Keep good blazing fires. 19th. Be firm and constant in the exercise of rational religion. 20th. Believe me, dear Lady Georgiana,Very truly yours, – SYDNEY SMITH

Dim Ojukwu

2011-12-09T06:01:00.001-08:00

First Among Equals

I've always been a bit conflicted when it comes to Biafra but this post reminded me of a rather cool discovery I made over the summer holidays. Whilst tidying up the general bookcase in the living room, I discovered a pocket sized copy of the Biafran Constitution, printed a few months before the end of the war. It turned out to belong to my father who had been a pro-Biafran Revolutionary (alright, so he was living in England for most of the conflict but he had even got some of his English friends to join him on the marches in London including our shy adopted grandmother).

Reader, from that moment on, I couldn't look at my father the same way again. Sad as it may sound, but that was quite possibly one of the best moments ever.

Thinking thoughts about...

2011-12-09T04:03:00.000-08:00

...the feast of the Immaculate Conception and here is a post from The Pittsford Pereniallist on Henry Adams and the Virgin Mary.

DNA in a haystack

2011-12-07T11:53:00.000-08:00

DNA in a haystack - applying techniques from particle physics to genome sequencing? How intriguing...

Thoughts on Firefly (i)

2011-12-06T19:47:00.001-08:00

In that great and noble tradition of science students everywhere, due to the fact I am currently running an experiment (a really cool little simulation of linguistic evolution), I will use my time explaining in mind numbing, petty detail just what I thought about the last thing I watched instead of doing data analysis or catching up on sleep.

So, my initial impression of Firefly was that it was rather mediocre. On the whole not very good, but not especially awful. I watched the entire first series, after all, and unlike, say, 'Outcasts', this was because I wanted to see where the series would go rather than because I felt it would be dishonourable not to watch the entire series before being mean about it. It piqued my interest, and that is one of the good things about it. It's intriguing.

Other good things included the acting and the special effects. Perhaps I'm just reading too much into it, but I got the feeling that the cast all enjoyed working together and exploring their characters which I've always thought helps to make the audience more emotionally involved. Even if you think a particular work is bad, if there's a sense that it's something precious to someone you're willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. Like I said, the effects were fine though I'll be honest and say I don't care much about special effects in general. If they're great, that's amazing, but one only notices they're bad when the story is bad first.

On the other hand, probably because I'm English and am used to special effects that would look out of date in the 80s, but perhaps I just have my standards set too low.

The actors - and the actors alone - were what saved Firefly from being utterly abysmal. They were brilliant, bringing life to sometimes fairly clunky dialogue and rendering new dimensions to what were essentially 2-D cutouts. There's the main crew who include a captain who's dark and conflicted and realistic except that he isn't, a loyal subordinate who's loyal (and definitely one of the better characters there), her husband who pilots the ship and likes dinosaurs (again, one of the better characters though it was hard to forget the memories of his earlier incarnation in 'A Knights Tale'), a spunky engineer and the buff dumb heavy weapons guy (minus a Russian accent) who are joined by a runaway doctor (who can't even swear! How gosh darn upper class!) and his ca-raazy (CRAZY!) sister and a Shepherd (this particular future's version of a priest of the Christian faith. Which tradition? Who knows. His theology is too woeful to be C/catholic/Orthodox and he's too bearable to be a Reformation-hopping anabaptist). Nothing particularly original which should mean the writers would have more time to deal with the interesting bits as we are pretty familiar with these types but unfortunately not.

Ah, well.

I will also say that I did find the basic idea behind the world of Firefly very interesting. Though the idea of a Chinese dominated futuristic culture is actually rather dated in terms of futurologist speculation, it is an idea that hasn't been put into consideration in a futuristic sci-fi TV show to the extent that Mr. Whedon has done, and for that, as they say on the streets of Lagos, I dey salute-o Mr. Whedon. It was an interesting premise, not particularly well delivered but admirable nonetheless.

Now, the main point of criticism I have concerns the world-building, but before I get onto that, I'm going to ramble on some other things I had a bit of a problem with.

Firstly, the script. I know I said the actors did an amazing job at selling it, but no one is so good that even a borderline illiterate peasant such as myself couldn't tell the script was fairly woeful. It sounded rather like the dialogue from a certain type of YA science fiction/fantasy novel, where someone has to explain some quirk of society/history in a manner that would be fine if that person were a trained anthropologist or historian except they aren't so it's just weird and embarrassing like they've admitted to having piles or something. Even more annoying, people had the tendency to explain themselves as though they were case studies from a textbook of Psychoanalysis 101 rather than real people. I think the last straw came in episode 7, 'Jaynestown', where the overseer of a clay plant not only thought it necessary to tell us that most of the workers were indentured (*gasp!*) but explains why he has indentured workers (what would you know, it's something to do with maximising profits. Who would have thought? I mean, really? My mind is blown by this insight into capitalism in action, Mr. Whedon. Blown), as though it weren't obvious from the general demeanour of the workers that these aren't exactly people with a pension plan written into their contracts.

Reader, I died.

In general I found the script to be much too 'on the nose', an expression I have never really understood - and still couldn't explain precisely what it means to be honest - until I watched this series. The use of Chinese peppered here and there should have been good in theory but just didn't quite work for me. Firstly, I could have done with some subtitles but barring that, I don't think it's much of a success when you make another language sound like nonsensical babble, even to someone who is used to listening to (though alas not quite comprehending) said language. Indeed, my other problem with the Chinese was that it seemed to be used by the wrong type of people, but that's an issue I'll cover when I get to the world building ~~fail~~, sorry, aspect.

The direction and the score did not help matters either. I got the impression - and I could have been mistaken - that Firefly was meant to be taken seriously as a piece of 'realistic' science fiction drama. Now, an inadequate script is one thing, but coupled with a fairly appalling score and you have a farce, not a drama. It was hard not to start giggling - in fact, I often did - at a bit of dialogue apparently played straight that came across as spoof thanks to music that better suited Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman than a bit of pseudo-steampunk drama.

Which was awesome by the way. You heard it here: Dr Quinn Medicine Woman>>>Firefly. 'Tis truth!

The direction was occasionally very good and innovative but generally pretty staid which is fine for bog standard television drama but could have been used to greater effect to highlight the sense of realism.

However, realism, like so much else, is in the eyes of the viewer. As is what makes a good character. On this issue I, as with just about every single issue I had with Firefly, am definitely in the minority, but what am I to do? In for a penny in for a pound.

To cover the good things first, I really liked Zoe and Wash. I could have had a show with those two as the central characters and everyone else with a bit part for an episode or two (Mal would be the sad ex-comrade that Zoe would meet in the penultimate episode, with a bionic leg and cyborg eye, drunk on cheap gin to escape the nightmares that he suffers as symptoms of post-traumatic stress syndrome. No, I'm not really being serious as that would have been terrible and exploitative but still better than anything they thought of... *grumbles*) it would have been amazing. Perhaps Kaylee could have been thrown into the mix and maybe even Jayne, but only for a shoot out that would end after two seconds with a bullet from Zoe's gun in his cranium.

Jayne was the usual adult-geek fantasy of all the jocks who were mean to them at school (it's a very American sort of thing isn't it? This sort of nerd revenge fantasy is rather tiresome, I have to admit, but I suppose we all have to get our jollies somewhere, even if it is in writing boring stereotypes) who came complete with a hat knitted by his mum (aww...?) and a gun with a girls name. Inara (who I also liked, by the way, though the Companion aspect is not only problematic but makes no sense) is the high class prostitute type who occasionally pop up in these liberal Western male fantasies of what a sexually enlightened culture would look like. River is the stock CRAZY slip of a girl with the body mass of a stick insect who's a bit of a savant (but a CRAZY savant) - like a poor man's Luna Lovegood but in space where everyone is dressed like cowboys. I mean, bloody hell but SHE EVEN DOES CARTWHEELS - and says weird and creepy things in a dreamy tone of voice because it's weird and creepy and as she is weird and creepy she has to do that in order for you to know she is weird and creepy (or creepy and weird. Whichever works best for you).

Mr Whedon is an intelligent guy but River is very much a stupid persons idea of what a smart person sounds like. Considering her strangeness - depicted as an inextricable accompaniment to her 'intelligence' - has been there since she was a child, I couldn't tell if River was Mr. Whedon attempting - and failing - to portray an autistic woman or a woman turned 'autistic' by the torture/procedures of mystery performed upon her in the Academy. Either way, there was just so much... wrong with it, it spread over everything the character touched. Indeed, the real mystery is how Simon could tell there was something wrong with her at all. Girl-River seemed just as otherworldly as Woman-River complete with the irritating ability to regurgitate dictionary entries and speak in anagrams and riddles.

Perhaps that's what the Academy wanted from her brain. Clues for the next hundred years worth of cryptic crosswords.

I have a real problem with these sort of female characters by the way. They are usually priestesses or seers in fantasy films where they are less disturbing if only because those tend to be the sort of works with other more problematic aspects to worry about. These days, such characters tend to be the stock 'quirky' female character in low budget indie films. It's all rather redolent of the 'woman in the attic' trope without the context (and thus sympathy) of the original setting. The fact that they tend to be written by men makes me wonder if the problem here isn't just the usual miscommunication between the sexes - no my good man, she isn't being mysterious and quirky, she's being polite and finds you boring. She just says weird things because she needs to entertain herself and/or wants you to shut up. Sorry but it's true. Now leave her alone.

There's also her brother, a doctor by the name of Simon who is stuck up and, you know, a bit of a snob (probably as a result of watching 'A Game of Thrones' beforehand, I thought he and River were incestuous lovers for some reason. There was just something a little off about their relationship that I found interesting and genuinely uncomfortable but alas that turned out to be a red herring or, most likely, due to severe issues on my part) and the Shepherd who is religious and incidentally was God's cousin in 'Teen Angel', a criminally underrated comedy that used to be on the Disney channel a few years back.

I personally thought that Firefly missed a very good opportunity with River and Simon. There was a chance to explore the tension that can exist in a group made up of people with such different backgrounds, in terms of race/culture (the actors are Caucasian which was due to the audition tests but in terms of the series, the Tams could be read as an originally Han Chinese family, in the same way as you get people in England with French surnames due to a Huguenot great-great-grandwhatsit), class (the Tams are distinctly upper-middle class with the mercenary streak of the innate social climber. It takes one to know one) and politics (Tams==Alliance. Mal/Zoe==~~Confederates~~Browncoats). I was expecting the Tams to be much more Chinese (or at least Firefly-future Chinese), representative of the apparent dominant culture to a larger extent than the itinerant pirates (who, incidentally, really should have had their own dialect rather than the occasional Chinese swearword. In fact, I'd expect the Chinese to come from the Tams and other middle-/upper class characters rather than Mal and his motley crew, and even then more than just a few rude words).

The Tams are Firefly's resident fish out of water types, and Shepherd the naive man of God who goes into the real world for which he is ill equipped (and, if it had continued, halfway through the second series would get his faith 'challenged' and/or lose it). Personally, I thought Shepherd was a good example of just why writers should stick to writing what they know as it seems people really do have a problem with writing a character with a perspective that they just don't share. Shepherd was unnecessary anyway but I could have done without the secular humanist interpretation of a non-fundamentalist religious person as it was pretty irritating.

There's a marvellous bit in Jaynestown where River is ripping out sections of the Bible as they contradict each other/don't make sense and when Shepherd catches her he says something like "You don't fix Faith; Faith fixes you." Now, ignoring the fact that Faith!=the Bible and the question of why, for someone who's read so much, River isn't even slightly acquainted with traditional biblical hermeneutics, (yes, believe it or don't, traditional is not the same as fundamentalist) I completely understand that as religious-speak goes, to someone who isn't religious, that's about as sensible as anything else us lot come out with but then, why not just have Shepherd being struck dumb as befits an idiot religious person by the idea that oh no the Bible contradicts itself and then we can all high five each other and rejoice in the awesome

wisdom of Mr. Whedon, philosopher and man of letters. I mean, we already had the fundamentalist cult people who were willing to burn River for being psychic (Reader, I laughed) without a trial. I don't especially need any patronising attempts to writing a 'good' religious person. It's fine, really.

Throughout the series, I did find Shepherd's sheltered naivety and foolish as opposed to good-hearted (a la Kaylee) optimism (there's a shootout where he says, pre-gunslinging, "nobody's going to die" and I was so exasperated, I farted. Honestly, Shepherd, don't you know it's a sin to lie or are you really that out of it? He should have been preparing for performing hasty last rites en masse and getting a medical staff organised, what the hell. I'm surprised they let him out of the monastery) off-kilter with his no doubt shady past and his role as a sort of pastor. I mean, I do understand that one might initially think someone trained in a monastery would be that type but that's the sort of idea typical of someone who hasn't actually spent much time around people in those sort of religious roles. From experience, if anyone gets just how messed up the world is, how horrible and nasty people can be, it tends to be them.

The only genuinely original character is Kaylee who I grew very fond of because it's a refreshing change to have a character who is simply nice and whose niceness and overwhelming generosity informs every aspect of her personality from her skills as an engineer to her sexuality. But, as with Inara and the whole institutionalised prostitution thing, I found Kaylee to be an example of a very specific level of empowerment. For someone who so frequently complained about not having enough sex, and never expressed any desire for emotional intimacy or any negative opinions about Inara's line of work, I found it interesting that apart from an initial observation that there were some rather nice looking male prostitutes available at Nandi's ranch in episode 13, 'A Heart of Gold', she isn't shown as taking up the opportunity. Now of course, maybe she just wasn't interested but not only would it have been a contrast to Jayne with his smiling and squealy (but conveniently mute) obedient blonde with a naff corset and show us something about her character rather than hearing her simply telling us about it, but it would have helped take her as some supposedly sexually liberated character a bit more seriously rather than a signpost of Mr. Whedon's awe inspiring feminism. In fact, speaking of a specific level of sexual empowerment/enlightenment, it's interesting how we're never shown Jayne paying for services rendered. No doubt he was just too irresistible.

Talk about blind spots.

As for Inara, that can be hashed out in the next post which will probably be titled ''Biscuitnappers-101-insignificant- contradictory-and-petty-problems-with-the-world-building-in-Firefly' but I thought she was overall decent as a character. Her crush on Mal was a bit embarrassing but what crush isn't? We've all been there, amirite?

Anyway. I think I've spent too long talking about things that, of all the things that bothered me, didn't really bother me that much. I'm going to toddle off, run more simulations and try and catch up on the past few lectures on Superconductors and whatnot.

And yes, I didn't go much into Mal's character because he was such a pain in the derriere, just thinking about it sends me into such a tizzy I couldn't write any critique in an even moderately coherent fashion.

MYSTAGOGY: The Life of Saint Nicholas the Wonderworker, Archbishop of Myra in Lycia

2011-12-06T14:52:00.000-08:00

MYSTAGOGY: The Life of Saint Nicholas the Wonderworker, Archbishop of Myra in Lycia

On Holiness and the C of E

2011-11-30T11:46:00.000-08:00

Elizaphanian: Of Strategy, Smallbone and the Spanish Train

Yes, I'm cheating. What he said.

'Tis the feast of...

2011-11-30T11:12:00.000-08:00

...St. Andrew, patron of my mother church in London and the church we attend in Enugu. Also claimed as the apostle who spread the word to the Armenians (which is especially interesting because we have an Armenian Orthodox church a few minutes away from ours).

Seeker: Mediation and St Andrew

Cave of the Apostle St. Andrew in Romania

St Andrew the Protoclete

2011-11-30T07:07:00.001-08:00

During the 60s, I think, people forgot what emotions were supposed to be. And I don't think they've ever remembered. I think that once you see emotions from a certain angle you can never think of them as real again. That's what more or less has happened to me. I don't really know if I was ever capable of love, but after the 60s I never thought in terms of "love" again.

Andy Warhol

2011-11-27T13:12:00.001-08:00

It's the start of Advent and I've got nothing. I made breakfast for my best friend and her other friend when I got back from Mass and we set off down to the station, saying hello to Stan, the Museum's resident T-Rex, eating pancakes at the German Market and getting politely kicked out of Costa's before stopping off at Yo Sushi for paupers dinner of bottomless miso soup.

It was nice to see her again and I am glad I was in a better frame of mind than the last time we caught up. I feel privileged to be part of someone's life, especially someone who is so focused and kind and funny and very very clever.

I never realised how happy I am for my friends. It's a remarkably warming sort of feeling, knowing that I know such good people.

*

Thinking about whether I should go and watch von Trier's 'Melancholia' before it finishes it's run at the local cinema (answer: HELL NO) and the unsteady balance on the edge of the abyss, put me in mind of other astronomical analogies for depression.

My mother, absolute angel that she is, has taken it upon herself to text me inspiring messages every day or so and whilst it doesn't help make anything better, I think it does help prevent things from getting worse (there is nothing that snatches you out of the depths of self-inflicted misery like an early morning message from a full time working mother of four and wife of one).

Musing on the inadequacy of even this sort of sacrifice, or any other reassurance of love and affection, to completely haul one out of the pit made me wonder if depression is really nothing but a force dragging you towards your inevitable fate, a black hole that is utter despair and suicide, a force that requires the same energy to overcome by an inch that it does to succumb by a mile.

*

I think that's it, really. And now back to work.

MYSTAGOGY: Better To Be A Faithful Christian Than A Social Bu...

2011-11-25T12:58:00.000-08:00

MYSTAGOGY: Better To Be A Faithful Christian Than A Social Bu...: “It is essential in these days to be able to protect ourselves from the influence of those with whom we come in contact."

2011-11-25T07:26:00.001-08:00

Found via Stuff Fundies Like

Making a stand: Violence against Women @Rest0red

2011-11-25T04:58:00.000-08:00

Making a stand: Violence against Women @Rest0red

Calendar of 16 days of Action Against Violence Against Women throughout UK

From Fear.co.uk, here's an order of events for Manchester specifically

...

2011-11-25T04:31:00.001-08:00

A beautiful Taize chant I hadn't heard before, gospodi vozzah, healing the nullifying combination of a project that isn't working, money woes and general melancholy.

2011-11-23T17:14:00.001-08:00

Before I disgust absolutely everyone who stumbles upon this blog, let me add that I have nothing against the Occupy Whatever movement and consider it a legitimate and necessary display of public anger in a world where there isn't any way other way to show it. I don't care if there isn't any coherent message or cause behind the protests or that they don't attempt to offer any solution themselves - the fact is no one really understands what's going on and everyone knows that this stuff is hard and impossible and that there isn't really anyone in control, but it's still worth showing ones anger lest the powers that be think no one's watching them.

Right. That's out of the way.

Having said all that, here's one for the lols.

'Tis the feast of...

2011-11-23T16:10:00.001-08:00

...St Clement.

Patron saint of metalworkers, blacksmiths. Not very interesting. That the feast in honour of him baptised the festival of Wayland the Smith is much more interesting.

Details of traditional practices in celebration of St. Clement's day.

2011-11-23T06:28:00.001-08:00

'Science opens a window on an invisible world more fantastic that we could ever have imagined. This is the world that I believe God made...I immediately turned to my daily Bible reading in Luke’s gospel about Jesus’ healing of a dead girl. With my imagination still in the invisible world of science, I saw Jesus as the one who knows that invisible world inside out and – more importantly – spoke it into being.'

The Compatability of Science and Faith - Science and Belief

Tea at Trianon: The Tigress of Forli

2011-11-23T04:24:00.000-08:00

Tea at Trianon: The Tigress of Forli

From wikipedia, an entry on the Codottieri. I find it fascinating to think they also trained their women how to use arms (even if one might argue it was only for hunting, it obviously left them capable of holding their own against an unfriendly army!).

And then along comes a snowball

2011-11-22T21:11:00.001-08:00

I learned something new today. At one point in Ian Hislop's documentary 'When Bankers Were Good', there is a point when Lord Sacks, the chief Rabbi, explains the concept of tzedakah and it's place in Jewish ethics, particularly concerning charitable giving.

What piqued my interest was how it explained that although it technically could be translated to mean charity, it also meant justice. I found this fascinating, particularly in light of reading through the Prophetic books such as Isaiah as it explains so much of the way justice - and judgement - is defined throughout the Old Testament. It has always intrigued me that whenever someone is talking of judgement in the Bible, they will always describe it as a levelling of sorts - the rich becoming poor and the poor becoming rich; the barren woman becoming the mother of many and the mother of many becoming the mother of none and so on.

'Tis the feast of...

2011-11-22T15:27:00.001-08:00

...St Cecilia, she who died with songs of praise on her lips.

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Quodlibeta: Debate on Science and Religion

2011-11-22T15:27:00.000-08:00

Quodlibeta: Debate on Science and Religion

The Reality of the Christian Life

2011-11-22T05:35:00.001-08:00

During one of the coffee breaks between the discussions and debates, a friend and I were discussing the whole Anglican identity (and lack thereof) thing and the effect it has on how the Church prepares young people within the church for actually living as a Christian in the real life. The way it's presented every Sunday is as though newspapers and the internet, politics and other stuff aren't really there. Which is sort of true if you want to be mystic about it, but isn't particularly useful.

Either that or its a world of fornication and bad language and pornography. Which is also true in away and also not particularly useful.

For example, in my case there's this religious vocation thing - if there had just been one person who had even casually mentioned the possibility to me it would have been genuinely useful as I could have started thinking about how I should be preparing - if indeed I should be at all - beforehand (I'd always imagined there were only Roman Catholic orders so when I wasn't a secular humanist, I was wondering how I'd tell my staunchly Anglican Nigerian parents that their eldest daughter was joining the Roman Catholic church). So, let's say I'd known about it when I was around 15-16 - I would have probably taken an Open university course as opposed to going to the university I'm at now as it would have been cheaper and meant less debt to clear before I could be eligible to join an order. On a personal note, I would have probably spent more time getting over my anti-social nature and getting my hands dirty in the real world - there's no point spending a lifetime of prayer if you don't know what to pray for, after all - learning useful, practical (vocational!) skills that could support my future religious community and the secular society to which I owe so much (you know, things like free education, free health care etc), maybe even getting a spiritual advisor (*shudders*) along the way.

Another example. One of the things I've realised from being friends with medical students who also happen to be deeply religious, are the difficulties surrounding ethics as someone living and working in the real world. I recall attending a Christian Medical Fellowship talk about abortion and IVF and so on, and it was the first time I'd ever heard anyone challenge us about just what our priorities as Christians should be and how we live out our priorities, both those towards God and towards our neighbour (ie, still being a 'person of peace' so being a help to ones patients and not an absolute pain to ones colleagues). The field I am particularly interested in has little in the way of such challenges and I am fortunate that the research arena is relatively unpoliticised in the UK compared to the USA. The closest example I can think of is that of stem cell research - fortunately most research in the UK is with adult stem cells (mainly because it actually works) and there isn't as much of a 'don't-want-to-be-seen-as-anti-science' culture to be countered (due to the fact that Christian fundamentalism doesn't quite the same visibility), but I now know it's something that needs to be carefully considered beforehand in order to avoid the hypocrisy that comes with short-sightedness and a lack of (intellectual, spiritual etc) preparation.

In the news today, there's an awful lot of noise about Christians refusing to perform gay marriages etc from all sides of the polygonal fence but what I find interesting is how little noise is being made within the Christian community about just what a Christian who is morally opposed to these sort of things is meant to do. The laws in question are not going to change - the principles behind them will remain (or at least until the next societal paradigm shift). I never thought I would agree with Albert Mohler, but I think he's right when he says that Christians have to seriously start thinking about how they should live their lives in a society that shares none of their values.

Everyone will have different answers of course - I personally prefer the way of peace. If you know your job will put you in a position of such difficulty, avoid it. If it means you have to accept lower wages or a job to which you are not as suited for, take that as a sacrifice and don't be the one to complain about human rights or conscience. Accept the judgement of the state and move on. It might not be fair, but who said it should be? The fact is, this world isn't really our home and we have to start thinking about the reality of this fact. Whilst I agree that the Church has a duty to speak up for what it believes to be right and true, I think that the way we do that is by living it ourselves first. As with the pagan world of the first and second centuries, if it's any good, it will be obviously so and might inspire others to incorporate it (just think of poor Julian the Apostate trying to get the temples to give free aid and set up free hospitals and schools) or think twice about their reinforcement of the law - but, regardless of the potential variety of answers, I think the Church does need to be more active in how it supports its members when it comes to living in the world.

Perhaps it means looking back to the example of the persecuted Christians in the ancient world, or learning from our persecuted brethren in other parts of the world today. However we do it, I do think it's becoming increasingly necessary that we do. I've always found the conspiracy of silence surrounding the every day issues such as personal ambitions a bit weird, especially when compared to the overwhelming noise on 'obviously' spiritual things. It can be very isolating being a person of somewhat reasonable faith and it's especially isolating when you don't feel you can talk about these more complicated issues with members of your own family.

This support goes beyond being towards Christians who agree with you, by the way. I may not have a problem with civil partnerships or gay adoption but if my sibling in Christ has, rather than be their stumbling block, I ought to be able to see things from their perspective and be able to help them continue to live the life they feel called too, to live in the world whilst not being of it without compromising on their integrity or sullying their sincerity (I might also say it's even more important, so that one can remind them of the compassion they're meant to hold to any they believe to be in error).

But as we were discussing on that day, I think this can only come from being completely honest with ourselves, about who we are and what we stand for, either as a Faith or denomination or whatever. There's no point trying to catch people in our net without being able to keep them. One can only keep them by being a family to them and surely part of being a family is that we communicate with each other, we encourage, rebuke, chastise, comfort and protect each other, even if they're really irritating and always try to talk to you when you've finally got to sit down and watch something on the television.

Or so it seems to me. It's funny that a few days ago, I found that link to Church being too easy for men (though as I added, it's too easy for just about anyone with two brain cells to rub together) and maybe this has something to do with it as well. It's all very easy, particularly when one is on the side of the current zeitgeist, but such ease is not a worthy foundation when the storms come and the rains fall. It doesn't help to make this faith thing seem real.

Reality is hard and the reality of what we are called for even harder. Religion is the wound, not the bandage. Ultimately, who wants to be caught out when it gets tough, with no extra oil. I've read that parable and I for one don't want to get left out in the cold.

Additional:

A more political take from Archbishop Cranmer. Which does nothing to cure my political apathy.

2011-11-22T03:34:00.001-08:00

The most reliable callings are born from reflecting on a situation that is more or less imposed on us. A vocation is nearly always a way of accepting a situation that was first of all considered a limitation.

-Roger Mehl

via Eve Tushnet and Wesley Hill

1 Peter 1 13

2011-11-22T02:02:00.001-08:00

'Therefore prepare your minds for action; discipline yourselves; set all your hope on the grace that Jesus Christ will bring you when he is revealed. Like obedient children, do not be conformed to the desires that you formerly had in ignorance. Instead, as he who called you is holy, be holy yourselves in all your conduct; for it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.”... Now that you have purified your souls by your obedience to the truth so that you have genuine mutual love, love one another deeply from the heart. You have been born anew, not of perishable but of imperishable seed, through the living and enduring word of God.'

Our love for one another comes from our shared love of Christ. If we fix our hearts on him, love, fellowship and understanding for one another should come.

Well. That seems to be the idea at any rate.

A prayer of St Thomas Aquinas

2011-11-22T01:52:00.001-08:00

Grant, Lord my God, that I may never fall away in success or in failure; that I may not be prideful in prosperity nor dejected in adversity. Let me rejoice only in what unites us and sorrow only in what separates us. May I strive to please no one or fear to displease anyone except Yourself. May I seek always the things that are eternal and never those that are only temporal. May I shun any joy that is without You and never seek any that is beside You. O Lord, may I delight in any work I do for You and tire of any rest that is apart from You. My God, let me direct my heart towards You, and in my failings, always repent.

2011-11-21T03:36:00.001-08:00

From the Pittsford Perennialist - Let us Pray for our Syrian Brothers in the Faith

A weekend - and CEYC meeting - in review

2011-11-20T14:03:00.000-08:00

On my way to London this Friday, I couldn't help but muse on the fact that a week before, I'd gone down to London for a weekend where I was very much in the world - Friday evening saw me at the Cafe Paris near Leceister Square, enjoying a cabaret show hosted by the ever insatiable Dusty Limits and then staying the night over at an old school friend's place before heading off back south of the river to see the family. Of course there was Remembrance Sunday - another of those 'thin' days - but for the most part it was a thoroughly - and pleasantly - worldly weekend: (not quite) blade throwing magicians, peacock feather fans and barely dressed beauties tottering on ballet shoes coupled with ghosts of dead soldiers and treaties and memories of blood and hell.

Friday was also the feast day of St. Hilda, who I remember being taught was one of the conciliatory voices between the Celtic and the Roman churches in England at the Synod of Whitby. She was also a wise and holy woman who governed the spiritual and material well being of men and women who lived in her monastery. I've always had a soft spot for her because her symbol is the ammonite and I am a bit of a paleontology nut.

The days reading from 1 Maccabees 4:36-59, where Judas goes about rebuilding the temple that had been desecrated by Gentile nations during the exile of the Hebrew nation, was particularly striking. Reading how the priests deliberated over what to do with the profaned altar and their eventual decision to tear it down and rebuild it in the manner set by the Law, I couldn't help but be struck by inverse parallels and echoes to the situation the church finds - and will always find - itself in. If the old has been profaned, there comes a point where one has simply has to strip it down and rebuild anew by the same measure of the old (the Law for the ancient Hebrews and Christ for us).

Omens if ever there were any - unity between the different members of the body (1 Corinthians 12: 12-26) and moving beyond disagreements within the church being a key theme of the following event.

This weekend was the CEYC (Church of England Youth Council) Residential Meeting. The reason I'd started the journey on Friday was so that I could get to the conference centre just after breakfast. It was a good thing too, as almost every rail-based mode of transport was out of service. On the plus side, I got to travel by rail replacement buses (well, coaches really) which made the day considerably cheaper. This will sound a little silly, but it felt like I'd completed some rite of passage; I've never traveled by rail replacement bus before, or on a day when all the convenient tube lines (ie the Victoria line) were closed. It certainly put the internal London navigation system (available to all true Londoners and Londonaphiles, I believe) to good use!

The morning's discussion was about being part of a Church which you disagree with, in light of (but not solely due to) issues concerning women becoming bishops and the Anglican Covenant. There were three main questions that we were given to discuss within small groups and then altogether - (1) what does it mean to be part of the Church of England, (2) how would one feel being in a Church where one disagreed with the core values and (3) what we thought about the Ordinariate: was it a good thing to have it as an alternative?

I think we mostly answered the last question with a yes, though it was mentioned that perhaps the CofE should have created an alternative that would mean we could still be in communion with each other. Personally I think the Ordinariate is more of an issue (and a blessing - it'd certainly up the ratio of organs to acoustic guitars and liturgical dance at any rate!) for English Roman Catholics. The supposed horror that we were supposed to feel at the idea of Anglicans stepping out of communion with the CofE was somewhat dulled and turned a little disingenuous firstly by the fact that it's been going on since the establishment of the CofE and secondly that the CofE is not so desperate for said communion that it's going to recant decisions to allow women in the episcopate, the ordination of women and sundry such matters.

In general the discussion around the second question tended to focus on how the church should deal with those who disagree with it, which I suspect was because no one present had actually been in a situation where they had had a profound disagreement with their church or the Anglican Church as a whole. Indeed, it struck me that we were really quite a boring group* for all our supposed diversity. We were all standard, moderate Anglicans and anyone who wasn't, (ie, occasionally yours truly) weren't particularly willing or didn't consider it worthwhile/important to stand out. Returning to our responses, of course someone made the point that remaining in such a church was surely null and meaningless, apparently without being aware either of the concept of personal sacrifice for a cause you might believe to be more important than you own comfort or that such a person might stay in the hopes they can avert the direction their church/The Church is going in.

I think the inadequacy of the response was in a way linked to how we dealt with the first question. I missed the Friday evening discussions on Anglican identity but it was reported that for most people, there was nothing about being CofE in particular: they considered themselves as Christians first and foremost, not necessarily Anglican (something our Methodist guest commented on as something a little strange. Who would have thought it, but Methodists actually like being weird and Methodist - that's my Anglo-Catholic superiority complex dashed!)

This, I think, is part of the problem. If all this church-y nonsense stuff simply comes down to being a Christian then we should act as though we believe it. Disestablish the Church; get rid of the Synod; the institution of the Church of England, the denomination that is Anglicanism, is dead. It has no meaning other than as a general description of the Christians who happen to be resident in England, beholden to nothing except what they want to be beholden to, be that Scripture, Tradition, the State or the FSM.

Now obviously, the fact no one was advocating this suggests that perhaps we do still care about being Anglican, we just don't have the vocabulary to express it. By we, I mean English Anglicans. After all, some Anglicans in other countries (especially in the Global South...) still do things like teach the Anglican catechism (I learned mine from the same book my mother learned hers - Truth!) and thus the importance of the Anglican identity is more obvious, though not necessarily greater. The fact is, a lot of the issues the C of E faces are faced because we are Anglicans, not because we are Christians. To talk about mere Christianity is in this case a shirking of ones duty, a possibly dishonest - or maybe just naive - way of avoiding the reality of ones actions.

Those for whom the identity meant something in particular (beyond a general sense of family) tended to talk about unity in diversity** in a way that just seemed bereft of meaning. Unity in diversity is only a positive within a denomination so long as the diversity is superficial and yes, though it pains me to say it, the tendency to sing hymns vs naff worship songs, incense vs air freshener, vestments vs buddy Jesus t-shirts are superficial for Anglicans at the very least as implied by the 39 Articles. If the diversity is in theology, then there can be no true unity. That's just the way it is. We are of course unified by our nature as the body of Christ, the body of believers saved by his redemptive work etc etc, but we are not unified as a denomination. We can't be.

A lot of the time there was talk of provisions being made for and the importance of understanding those who disagreed with the ruling of the Synod in the usual liberal Anglican way which didn't mean anything at all (ie, no mention of what these provisions would actually entail). However, one rep was brutally honest in that - in her opinion - we spoke too much of provisions for those who had shown by their actions and beliefs to be outside the main body of understanding and not enough about what the church actually stood for. She quite forthrightly said that she would feel very uncomfortable going to a church where people didn't agree with womens ordination and taking communion from someone who she knew to be against the ordination of women because their reasons for doing so - their theology - would be anathema to her (not her precise words. She didn't say anathema but that's the word she was looking for. Pernicious was the precise adjective used for such theology) just as her theology would be to them.

In essence, there would be no unity of denomination. There would be unity in Faith (well... by belief in Christ at any rate), yes, but we have that unity with other Christians too and it's not considered strange that we might not be in full communion with them. The physical definition of a denomination, however, is the minimum boundary of believers who are in communion with each other. You must be of one somethingness to be in communion with each other and theology really is the minimum somethingness.

The fact is, you can't keep on making provisions for people who disagree. It was interesting how someone cited the formulation of the Nicene Creed as an example of the Church responding to a crisis of differences between believers, without realising how inappropriate that example was - it's not like there were any provisions made on that occasion. Why? Because there couldn't be. You either agreed with it or you didn't. The response to the crisis within the Church at that time was to set a guideline, not to make everyone feel included but for everyone to know by what the Church was being defined.

To be equally honest, I would also say that a lot of this wishful thinking originated from what I saw as an anti-holistic and dare I say it, post-modernist, understanding of the Christian religion. The rep (and might I add, God bless she who shall remain nameless, because thanks to her I learned it is possible to speak honestly and still be an Anglican - who would have thought?) who spoke about the difficulty of being in communion with someone you disagree with on profound rather than shallow levels, was coming from a theology in which ordaining women priests was absolutely on par with the ordination of men. It was simply a consequence of her theology - it wasn't an amendment, it wasn't an allowance or something tacked on to make the church more palatable, which I suspect was the case for the more moderate amongst us and thus was the reason people kept on talking about making provisions without explaining what those provisions were or how those provisions would even work. This will sound typically angry young person-ish but I also suspect this is the case for the older generations and those who don't really care about anything so long as they'll get a church funeral at the end of it (and I say that without judgement because I was once one of them). It's mostly them who will make the case for such things on the basis of equality (or relevance) rather than theology, and when it comes round to bite them, they often seem fairly clueless how to deal with it, if not surprised that it should be an issue at all (for example, I would have thought the whole women bishops thing would be pretty damn obvious the moment you allow women to be ordained and it was clear we needed a new theology of sexuality and marriage when we approved the use of contraception yet alone with the state loosening of divorce law).

The other rep who brought up the example of the Nicene Creed, also made a point about what authority we as a Church should turn to, be it Scripture, Tradition or whatever. I suppose he said this as a way of indirectly giving a hint as to how we could solve such problems (obviously not too well versed on the history of Christianity, then). The thing is, as wonderful as it sounded, it was not only hollow (neither authority would be any help as we are discussing matters on which we have technically departed from both) but he said this so often that I nearly got up to remind him that Tradition and Scripture are not separate entities. It is not one or the other. Tradition is birthed by Scripture and Scripture cannot exist without Tradition.

However, this weird dualism perhaps explains what I initially took for intellectual dishonesty. If you don't have a monist theological outlook and instead have a theology of piecemeal and amendments, where orthopraxy and orthodoxy are seen as separate options, rather than reinforcing each other, it's no wonder you can't recognise a profound disagreement for which there can be no accommodation made, not if it danced naked in front of you.

Maybe both reps understood this and the latter was trying to be diplomatic but I got the feeling that, out of all those who spoke, it was only the former who understood the depth of the problem. The brutal fact is, if you don't agree with the 'rules' of the church then, until you do, you are not part of the church. You simply can't be. You are a 'heretic'. If you are a member of the 'mainstream', then either you must suck it up and do your duty ('the one who passes the sentence must swing the sword' after all - besides, you don't patch an old cloak with cuttings from a new one) or change whatever it is you've decided to introduce to prevent the 'heretics' from remaining so.

If you can't do either, go set up a free church or something and stop being such a... well, such a wimp. All this talk of making provisions when you can't actually make any is insulting to say the least. It is very hard to take such offers seriously and in good faith, when we're still determined to plough ahead with the very decision that requires such provisions to be made at all.

From that time up until the moments I am writing these words, I will honestly say that a lot of the inner turmoil I've been experiencing is ultimately down to personal prejudice. As I've said before, the Anglican church is simply the one I feel most at home with, not one I feel I am really part of. I don't feel represented, I don't feel there's anyone I can genuinely talk to about anything concerning my faith - partly why I started this blog to be honest - and that's honestly fine. I know I would feel exactly the same, but to a greater depth, were I in any other denomination.

Anyway. My prejudice makes me view people within the church with suspicion. I see disingenuity and hypocrisy when really it's just a holy (or at least potentially holy) people living in a fallen world, trying to make the best of it. A lot of the inner turmoil I've been experiencing since yesterday is ultimately due to the feeling that I have only managed to get myself further embroiled into something that's just plain ugly. I have never - even when an atheistic religious humanist who was actually more drawn to Orthodoxy than anything else - thought it was a possibility to leave the Anglican Church until yesterday. Up until Communion at this morning's Mass, there were moments I could feel tears welling up in my eyes at the rather nasty feeling that gnawed away at my guts. Looking back, it was ridiculous and typically self-centred, but that's just the body echoing the soul within, I suppose (yes, we still have a lot of work to do if I'm ever to go religious! I could always become a hermit: I hear there's some caves still going spare up north...).

So. Now I am over my self-loathing phase which always happens when I am forced out of my comfort zone, I am going to share some musings on the problem of this apparent - but no doubt mistaken on my part - inability to understand or deal with this diversity appropriately, the source of this impotence and maybe some ideas as to how we should deal with it. I like to think I'm writing as an Anglican proper - not Anglo-Catholic or Evangelical, liberal or conservative etc or etc - but if I fail and I start calling upon any saints for aid, well, it won't be the first time I'll have been wrong.

Returning to the issue of authority, the more I thought about it, the more I realised how absolutely right that particular rep was. In order to solve these type of disagreements within the church, we do have to decide what our authority is. After all, ultimately, it is the authority to which you are subordinate that describes which denomination you're a member of. He was just wrong about what possible authorities we as Anglicans have.

The truth is that for Anglicans, our authority is not Scripture or Tradition. They are important, yes, vital but they are not authorities as they exist in service to and are beholden to something else.

That is the needs of the people.

Our denomination proper was born from the - perhaps misplaced - needs of an admittedly despicable man who happened to be king and didn't want his kingdom - and thus his people - to be torn apart by a potential civil war. Unlike the Orthodox (or Roman Catholics depending) Lutherans, Baptists and many other denominations besides, it wasn't born of theological disagreement or religious reform - it was born of the needs of the state***. If the church of England stands for anything beyond a collection of Trinitarian Judaeo-Christian theists who happen to live in England, it is surely for a church that interprets and prioritises Scripture and Tradition through the lens of the needs of the English people.

Indeed, sometimes I think it's our failure to live by this authority that has contributed to the state we are in (and other times I am repelled by this line of thought. As is probably no surprise, I am at heart a Scripture, Tradition and Reason sort of gal but it seems balancing on the tripod, as it were, isn't an option if I am to remain in the Anglican Church of England. Oh well. Hopefully I'll change my mind. It would at least make things easier). As I said, history alone betrays the fact that we cannot own to the same integrity as our fellow Reformed brethren can. Maybe the real problem is that up to now, our inability to subject ourselves to what's always been our true authority has led to a church that is essentially playing catch up to standards set by the state, rather than existing beyond it and being any sort of refuge for the people of the state.

*

The rest of the day was amazing though. I have a tendency for dramatics, so it probably doesn't come across (...) but believe it or don't, I actually really enjoyed it and I learned so much. I attended an informal talk on New Monasticism (can I also add here that if there's one thing I'm grateful to CEYC for, it's the safe space for cynicism. Too often it feels that to be a Christian, one has to be sweet and gentle and nice even about things you know are just plain ridiculous/evil. That's all I'm saying.... EDIT: not that New Monasticism is either ridiculous or evil. Maybe just a bit fuzzy) and a Lectio Divina session which was really special as well.

In a way, the message that I received then and have been receiving from God (if any) since is that I really should just calm down (speaking of serendipity, even my mum sent me a text message this morning with a meditative quote on the dangers of worrying. Ha ha, God, too funny) and keep on doing what He has already said to:

~ Do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with your God ~ Though it cost you your all, get wisdom ~ Love the Lord your God with all your heart with all your mind and with all your strength and love your neigbour as yourself ~

~ Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you ~

*

For now, because this post is long enough, I will finish with a question I asked myself this morning, prompted by pre-Mass prayers:

If the Church has lost the ability to see, has it lost the right to speak?

No, I later realised. We are not compelled by our rightness, but by the Truth that is [in] Christ.

*

Some links (old and new) that make me feel I'm not a complete idiot after all:

Live Blogging Synod from An Exercise in the Fundamentals of Orthodoxy - I was going to give some examples of just why there can be no provisions made, but then I realised this post was already pretty nauseously sanctimonious. Thankfully I found this post and I say thankfully, because it has renewed my faith that there are some perceptive people who happen to attend the Synod.

Women Bishops and the Church of England - most of the relevant goodness is in the comments, but again, it's reassuring to find others who see this as an impossible situation.

*Furthermore, there was this idea - so common amongst liberals (whereas conservatives like to think anyone who disagrees with them is doing it to personally insult them) - that if only those poor benighted conservatives would just listen and put up with the changes, they would become liberals too! All doubt and fears would be done away with and they would realise just how wrong they were and we could all be happy and skip off into the sunset.

The idea that someone might go in the opposite direction never seems to occur to liberals, just as it never seems to occur to conservatives that ideological disagreements aren't always personal. It's the strange belief that if they don't see it, it doesn't exist. Because they are all-knowing and right, there couldn't be anyone who really really disagreed with them. That just isn't possible. Maybe they just haven't read enough books. Or listened to enough podcasts. Or something.

**Eurgh. Sorry. I really can't stand these sort of Stalinist slogans, especially in matters of religion. To quote, I've been baptised, not lobotomised.

***I would say it's the bit of our inheritance that hearkens back to the church's roots in the Celtic orthodoxy of saints the -burgas, -berts, -reds and -wins, but that's just some historical dilettantism on my part.

2011-11-20T13:03:00.001-08:00

Due to the fact I'm working on a linguistic modelling project, I'm always on the lookout for interesting stuff in this area. Here is a fascinating lecture on childhood linguistic development called 'The Birth of a Word':

found via this new site of win: The High Definite

Christ the King Sunday

2011-11-20T12:07:00.001-08:00

As I will go on to explain in the next post (if I don't just give up) I was at a rather low point with respect to this whole Anglican Church thing at the start of the day. Then there was a beautiful Mass, followed by a warm and hilarious lunch with fellow congregants and a Benediction that - though bereft of any lost and bewildered blue tits - actually felt like a blessing.

The first of todays readings (Ezekiel 34. 11-17) was just plain comfort food. Nothing challenging or thought-provoking or anything. Just pure comfort - like the hugs I get from my godmother every time I go back home for a visit: 'Thus says the Lord God: I myself will search for my sheep, and will seek them out... I will rescue them from all the places to which they have been scattered, on a day of clouds and thick darkness... I will seek the lost and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured and I will strengthen the weak... I will feed them with justice.'

Of course there's the last line about judgement but on my part, the comfort came from the certainty of what I will be judged by as illuminated by our Lord in the Gospel reading that followed:

'Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me...'

I am still at the rather low point but at least I understand better what it means to have Christ as ones King. He's the reason I am doing this and it's His example I am following. If in doubt, He is ultimately my compass.

Screw everything else.

*

EDIT: Today is the Transgender day of Remembrance

St Mary Magdalene, St. Joseph, St Jude, St Protus, St Hyacinth and St Martin de Porres, pray for them.

*

Music for my own personal pathetic fallacy, apropos of the amazing Liz Green:

Opinionated Vicar: Is Church Too Easy for Men?

2011-11-17T15:44:00.000-08:00

Opinionated Vicar: Is Church Too Easy for Men?

Oh wow. A lot of the comments describe exactly why I was - and still am - drawn to Catholicism (Anglican in my case). That and New Atheism.

Stranger things have happened.

EDIT: I will add that similarly the Church is getting too easy for women as well. It has been noted (probably by BRIN, but it was picked up by the F word and various newspapers) that the numbers of women joining the Church are decreasing at the same time as those interested in religions such as Wicca or the Reconstructionist Pagan movements, and movements like the Humanist and National Secular societies, is growing.

What's with all these Scholars?

2011-11-17T13:20:00.001-08:00

Today is the feast of St Hugh of Lincoln and Robert Grossetest, two more notables of piety and learning. I have to say, theirs really was the age for it, wasn't it? To think of us now, it's rather embarrassing, actually.

Hugh of Lincoln was also exemplary for another reason - he was nice to the Jews*, even going so far as to 'put down popular violence against them'! Hurrah! At last, we've got one!

Apparently, he is known as 'Protector of the Oppressed' and had a swan who followed him everywhere. Sweet.

On that note, in today's evening Mass, he was mentioned for his standing up against the corruption within the State. I particularly like how the wikipedia entry goes on to say how he '...softened the king's anger by his diplomatic address and tactful charm...' Much like yesterday's St Edmund of Abingdon, who worked (albeit unsuccessfully) against what he saw as corruption within the Church, here we have someone who knew how to stand up to the State without being too much of a pain (or at least avoiding assassination). Food for thought, more on that later.

Actually, the thing that really caught my eye was the fact there was an earthquake in Lincoln in 1184. Lincoln. I know we do get earthquakes in the UK occasionally but even so. Gosh.

*

Holy God, our greatest treasure, you blessed Hugh and Robert, Bishops of Lincoln, with wise and cheerful boldness for the proclamation of your Word to rich and poor alike: Grant that all who minister in your Name may serve with diligence, discipline and humility, fearing nothing but the loss of you and drawing all to you through Jesus Christ our Savior; who lives and reigns with you in the communion of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Source: Hugh of Lincoln

*

Also we pray that we strive to be Protectors of the all Oppressed in our daily lives too, no matter who we might need to oppose to do so.

*Amazing considering our plain awful shared history in Europe

2011-11-17T07:41:00.001-08:00

I don't know what's happened to the linking facility on blogger, but here's a link to a fascinating article from The Pittsford Perennialist:

The Terror of God

I quote:

"Long before the New Atheists, believers – from Job to Heinrich Heine – were picking fights with the Almighty," says Jonathan Rée of a book of that title by an Iranian-German orientalist "calling for big doses of humility and self-doubt amongst Muslims as well as their critics" and "criticising the idea that the modern West is the immaculate child of a so-called Renaissance and Enlightenment – as if it had a direct connection with ancient Greece and Rome, unsullied by the turbulent languages and cultures of the Middle East..."

Matthew 18

2011-11-17T06:30:00.000-08:00

Woe to the world because of stumbling blocks! Occasions for stumbling are bound to come, but woe to the one by whom the stumbling block comes!

Today... one prays.

New patron saints

2011-11-17T04:59:00.001-08:00

St Cajetan, patron saint of the unemployed

What do you know, it turns out St. Mary (I'm assuming the mother of God) is the patron saint of the city of Manchester.

Awesome. London has three saints but really, if you have the mother of God on your side, what more could you want?

...

I hope she's not into football. Because that would be too unfair.

And would also explain a lot.

EDIT: St Maurice - apparently the one to pray to against menstrual cramps. I have no idea how that even happened, but I suppose if there was any saint to pray to for incredibly inconvenient internal contortions, it would have to be one geared up like this:

EDIT II: Some others I rather like:

St Teresa Magaret Red - actually meant to be my saint for the year, but I've failed miserably. Mea Culpa.

St Hyacintha Mariscotti - she seems like a good one when I get in my self-pitying moods.

St Ferdinand III - rather controversial. I've forgotten why I even had a link to him, but oh well. Controversy can be fun sometimes.

Blessed Margaret of Costello - pretty much the Tyrion of her family. One for the Outcasts!

St Gemma - patron saint of the poor and unemployed, found via Archbishop Cranmer

Blogs of win

2011-11-16T13:54:00.001-08:00

Theo-Sophical Ruminations (not to be confused with theosophical. Haha, no) - mostly for his biblical archaeology and being an overall interesting blogger (not that I agree with him on everything...)

Ruth Bancewicz at Science and Belief

A fellow ranting biscuit at Biscuitfeatures blog

A blog packed full of saints and recipes at Widow's Weeds

Before I go back to work...

2011-11-16T11:42:00.001-08:00

Today - one of those days of strange serendipity - is the feast day of St Edmund Rich of Abingdon who worked tirelessly against corruption within the English Church during his tenure as Archbishop of Canterbury, and ended his days in a monastery in France.

More on St Edmund here. As with so many of his saintly contemporaries, he was a man of piety and learning and contributed to making the university of Oxford what it is today.

It just made me think. In an age where the duties owed to, say, Church and State, Conscience and Legislation are becoming ever more entangled and muddied, here is someone who we can look to for some sort of an example. Oddly enough, not because he was particularly successful but perhaps because he wasn't (hence his leaving the rainy shores - or not so rainy, actually. I do recall that sometimes it used to be warm enough during the Medieval age to grow grapes in Southern England - for France).

The fact is, anyone who adheres to a code or philosophy or faith that is not made up of whatever opinions are deemed correct by the current political or intellectual authorities will find themselves forever on the losing side. But then, perhaps such ideals aren't meant to win. Perhaps they're just meant to be served, whatever one might endure as a result of doing so.

*

From A Reluctant Sinner, here is the chorus of the triduum dedicated to St. Edmund:

O Beate mi Edmunde,
O Beate mi Edmunde,
Sic pro me ad Filium Dei,
Cum Maria preces funde,
Cum Maria preces funde,
Ut per vos sim placens Ei

O my beloved Edmund,
in union with Mary, pour out your prayers for me
to the Son of God, so that through them,
we may always be found pleasing to Him

1 Maccabees 3

2011-11-16T06:17:00.001-08:00

'It is better for us to die in battle than to see the misfortunes of our nation and of the sanctuary...'

Today, cynicism gets a slap around the face.

Latin and Classical Greek resources

2011-11-16T04:16:00.001-08:00

Prompted by finding this amazing collection of works by St Bonaventura, I've been looking for some Latin and Ancient/Classical Greek resources online. I am illiterate in the former but pretty proficient in the latter so really I was looking for free Latin lessons and resources to keep my Classical Greek sharp.

Here be links:

Learn Latin Online (free!)

Ancient Greek online

A great website from Berkeley: much improved from when I was doing my A-level *grumbles*.

A rather nifty website that helps with learning vocabulary.

2011-11-02T18:12:00.001-07:00

Stanley Hauerwas on Reformation Sunday

My first reaction to this was, what the hell is Reformation Sunday? My second was that this is quite a good article, though apologies for being slightly out of date!

EDIT: A brilliant t-shirt to commemorate the occasion, found via I think I believe.

Did you know...?

2011-11-02T11:13:00.001-07:00

According to Wikipedia, photodynamic therapy has been in use for 3000 years...

From the frontiers of laser photo-medicine...

Winchester

2011-11-01T18:24:00.000-07:00

I stayed in Winchester over the weekend, visiting younger sister numero uno. She's in her first year studying some wussy humanities subject, but I've made my peace with that...

It's a great city and definitely somewhere I'd like to visit again. It's one of those places that just reeks of history - it was the historic capital of Anglo-Saxon England, the centre of the unified kingdom under Alfred the Great, the 'home' city of Jane Austen, the home of the Hussars... Woverly castle is closed until March which is when I'll probably be visiting again what with Winchester being only an hour or so away from London. Although ye olde Londinium is as ancient a city as they come, the fact is that it's still a city in use as it were, and the history gets buried all too easily. It is there and not even particularly difficult to find but it's well woven into the fabric of every day life. In Winchester, history juts out, piercing the cloth of the contemporary. It's a different thing entirely.

I spent most of Saturday visiting the Museums and the city centre, ending up at the cathedral for sung evensong, which was slightly spoiled by the fact that I made the mistake of sitting in the main section rather than up in the choir stalls but I won't make that mistake again (usually it wouldn't be so bad but the rood screen is an imposing mess of ornately carved wood and blocks sound as well as sight).

It occurred to me that it's actually quite beautiful being able to join in with the order of service in just about any mainstream Anglican church - all those years of weekly service leaves the liturgy indelibly printed on ones brain, with the modernised/retro versions kept in separate drawers ready to be unarchived with barely a second's notice or a moments warning. It also occurred to me just why people get annoyed when things get changed around for no particular reason: it's not just because it's unfamiliar, but it does suggest a rather parochial view of the liturgy as opposed to the catholic ie as something to suit one's personal tastes, (a victim of relevance, almost) as opposed to a ritual act of binding between members of the church wherever and whenever they may come together.

Still, the balance between the communal and the individual is one that is probably impossible to reach - though our Orthodox siblings seem to do alright (and don't get me started on the liturgy at the average Roman Catholic church. All I can say it's a good thing it's the One True Church because if the services are anything to go by...*

Acoustic. Guitars.**

'Nuff said.)

*I am being uncharitable, I know, (it's not like they're in every service I've attended) but really there's no excuse for even a single RC parish to have them. We Anglicans have got Reformed Evangelicals who had to lose taste to make way for sola scriptura en extremis. They have no such excuse.

**Oh and liturgical dance which I had no idea was a real thing and not a spoof until I discovered it's an affliction amongst our Lutheran brethren too...***

***Actually, I don't care so much about the acoustic guitars, I just don't get why the music is always so naff and boring. It's like these people have never heard of Isaac Albeniz, Scarlatti or Antonio Rubira and think that inserting 'Jesus', 'Lord' and 'Love' every which way means I have to turn my ears off and smile vapidly because it's so worshipful, I should be grateful and like it regardless of whether it's just plain bleargh.

Chords are the enemy of good taste, you heard it here.

I'm on a roll...

2011-11-01T12:40:00.000-07:00

Another amazing inspiring (and also Igbo!) woman and nun: Sister Joseph Therese Agbasiere, author of Women in Igbo Life and Thought, who studied and worked as an anthropologist following her taking vows.

I didn't even know she wrote the book in question (I've read a few chapters of it scattered about on the internet). How interesting!

The Passive Aggression of Christianity

2011-11-01T11:58:00.000-07:00

I don't really believe in Ecumenism.

Personally, I quite enjoy fellowship and discussion with Christians from other denominations and traditions. Sometimes it hurts, but a lot of that is to do with pride and how personally you decide to take it. I like to think I've learnt humility in doing so, but that's probably as much due to the realisation of how much I've changed, how my ideas and beliefs have evolved, than anything else.

But sometimes, I'm just not sure ecumenism really exists. Sometimes, I am an a-ecumenist.

What I've observed is that there is a weird passive aggressive play we do amongst ourselves. Sometimes it's cute and one can brush it off - it doesn't matter, they are part of the Church but not part of my church so whatever, sticks and stones won't break my theological bones, ya-boo sucks to you - but other times it just seems entirely disingenuous, as though we have forgotten that we are actually part of the same body, the same faith.

This disingenuity tends to display itself when one church or intra-church group is dealing with some internal crisis. It's fascinating how suddenly, ones allies, fellow brothers and sisters on the Way, cross the road and walk on by, determined to protect themselves lest they are in turn beset by robbers and thieves. We are very quick to point out just what it is that the staggering sibling has done wrong and how it should have come as no surprise that it would have happened, but we have nothing to say about how to fix the problem. Why? I don't think it's simply out of a respect for the freedom of one's fellow believers. Sometimes, I suspect the truth of the matter is that it's because we actually don't know how but don't want to admit it. Our ineffectual finger pointing, smugness and lecturing seems to conceal the barely decipherable sigh of "well, I'm glad that isn't us!"

Other times I think it's because only upon realising the depth of another Christian's problems that one realises how utterly your rightness depends upon the Grace of God. It could so easily be you in that persons shoes, suffering under the weight of their heresy and their spiritual blindness. No, we don't have the answer but to genuinely admit that would be to genuinely confess how much we are in debt to God's Grace, to realise what it means to trust that there is a god, or that there's even a Way to follow when one sees how ones' fellows continuously stumble and trip and invent new ones/cling to old ones. To truly believe that there is a god who is inspiring anyone and everyone with even the slenderest fraction of a toenail dipped in the waters of the Church would ultimately imply that we have to truly forgive when our brother offends us. And keep on forgiving. Not seven, but seventy times seven...

But one of the things I learned (and learned the hard way I did), is that the offense will continue without understanding. In a way, the understanding is part of the forgiveness. It's often said that God can forgive us because he knows our feeble natures and in a way this applies in our lives too. How many times have I found that when I see things from the offenders perspective, it's not so much that the wrong goes away (it most certainly doesn't) but it does become forgiveable. I can see why they would do what they did, say what the said, think how they thought and though it's still irritating and hurtful and humiliating, it's easier for me to forgive them and to cast aside the weight of the offense.

Over the past year or so, I've become increasingly interested in the history of the Church. To be honest, for all the saints and wonders and miracles and sheer amazingness of it all, it does tend to read as the story of a load of spoilt brats who don't have the decency or thankfulness to bestow the charity onto their brethren as has been bestowed upon them by their parent. This ungratefulness has been carefully refined over the ages. It no longer exhibits itself in the form of burnings at the stake, for example, but the disingenuity, that delicious passive aggression remains.

Sometimes, I think we should get an award for it.

The issue of women's ordination/episcopate in the Anglican Communion is one major example, the abuse scandal in the Roman Catholic Church another. It's funny how some of our brethren are quick to point out and warn about the dangers of departing from tradition, but it's interesting how little they acknowledge the problem to which this was considered (however wrongly or rightly) a solution. How does one adequately deal and repair the charge that not allowing women to be ordained stems from a misogynistic (rather than complementary, though some see that as equally misogynistic albeit disguised) understanding of the roles women can undertake in worship when women have been told that the reason they cannot be ordained is that they are of a lower order to men, that they are intrinsically unclean in comparison to men. When Mary Daly died last year, it was interesting reading the response from various blogs about this dangerous heretical feminism/feminist theology and it's impact on the Roman Catholic Church. But no one discussed how much of her feminism and theology was based on a childhood experience when some - no doubt poorly catechized - young boy told her that that men were better than women as proved by the fact that they could become priests and women couldn't.

In the case of the abuse scandal, it's funny how some were quick to point out that if the Roman Catholic Church allowed married priests, it wouldn't have happened (because that was precisely what God had in mind when he pulled Eve from Adam's side. That's right, the power of wo-man, saving men from their innate paedophilic instincts since a couple hundred thousand BC) as though the vast majority of child abusers in general weren't hetereosexual men (fathers, uncles...) themselves and those in this case seemed mostly to be troubled gay men (hence why the tern ephebophile would perhaps be more appropriate). Other chatterers waxed about the dangers of allowing gay men to become priests or religious, or accused them of seeking such positions to avoid dealing with their sexuality but then didn't bother discussing what unique vocation a gay person could expect to occupy within the life and worship of their Church if they are so inherently dangerous or just how they should deal with their sexuality with no ready examples within the Church.

Those are major and contentious issues but there are the smaller ones like how one deals with divisions within/between denominations and so on (what do you mean there might be genuine disagreements in how one understands Scripture and theology? I just thought you were trying to be funny...). Whatever the issue, that hollow-smiling persona quickly comes along to take it's pride of place. It's brotherly love (but not as we know it) to be sure.

Now if this passive aggression stopped at the boundaries of the Church Militant, it wouldn't matter so much. We're held together by God's grace, after all, and the shared love we are compelled to own for Christ Jesus. Our unity has very little to do with us. Chances are if we had a choice, most of us wouldn't even sit next to our brethren if it was the only seat on an overcrowded bus yet alone be in communion with them.

The problem is that it infects the way we deal with the outside world as well. Take the debate over gay marriage for example. I've read all sorts of interesting articles on why gay marriage is wrong and theories as to where this new notion has come from. There is talk about sentimentalism and deviancy but it's interesting how no one (actually I take that back - there was one commenter on an ancient Mercator article) was aware of just why a large proportion of the LGBT community would now consider marriage a right they should have a share in. No one mentioned the lack of protection if one partner dies, or is suffering from illness and relies on the other for care and how this has been taken advantage of by State and prejudiced family members. The little humiliations at the hands of pernickity officials such as hospital visitations and rights thereof. All these things one wouldn't be aware of if one was not part of or had no link to the community, only to be woken up when a solution is announced and bluster in, all knowing and ever disapproving, too late as ever. One allows oneself to be distracted from thinking about the real problem that needs to be tackled first and instead wastes time and energy, heeding neither compassion nor sense, on the ephemeral.

It's the same for so many issues in society as well and the challenge of evangelism especially. To paraphrase Matt Jenson, it seems that if the Church isn't willing to take it's solution, it's calling, it's commission seriously, it has no right to give the world the Gospel. We're great at keeping a wary eye on the world and/or ignoring potential problems, only to predictably leap up and decry other people's solutions when something flares up (and if we find said solutions particularly offensive, we've got a magnificent vocabulary - Natural Law, Liberation/Feminist Theology, Scholasticism, you name it - to condemn them) as though we have a better idea. We're not so great on actually coming up with any solution ourselves.

However, perhaps the reason for that is because it is not actually necessary for us to come up with a solution: that, like our salvation, has already been accomplished on our behalf. The way we bluster on, however, I'm not sure anyone, including us, would know it. It's as if we don't really believe in what we are offering and the proof of it is in the fact we are telling people to do something that can only be demonstrated by living it. The infamous Chesterton quote comes to mind: Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried. It can come across as dishonest, the way we are quick to condemn as though we have an obvious and easy trick up our sleeve only to real we've got nothing(!) but Grace and hence the apparent disingenuity of the Church.

Maybe it's not the offering of a solution - because there is none that we as humans can offer, really - so much as the clarity (and indeed, charity) of vision to see the problem in the first place that is important.

What do you think?

EDIT: Ha! Talking of passive aggression, what about this blog post? Actually no, I did say we just have to keep living the Way (the one exemplified by Christ, the apostles and the Saints Departed in case you weren't sure). Slightly more passive, less aggressive.

EDIT II: I just found this wonderful quote via Opinionated Vicar -

“You cannot cure the souls of others or ‘help people’ without having changed yourself.

You cannot put in order the spiritual structure of others so long as there is chaos in our own soul.

You cannot bring peace to others if you do not have it yourself"
Alexander Elchaninov, Orthodox priest.

Today...

2011-11-01T11:45:00.000-07:00

...the Feast of all the Saints is the Feast Day of the New City of Jerusalem, the kingdom of Heaven, proclaimed the priest during this evening's short homily. It's the day we celebrate our adoption, our citizenship in the Kingdom of God. I thought this was a nice way of putting it, where each of us militant on Earth is a living colony of the new creation, supported by the prayers of the invisible cloud of saints departed:

Therefore seeing we also are surrounded with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which does so easily ensnare us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us... (Hebrews 12:1)

Today is one of those near days, when one can truly believe that the divide between Heaven and Earth, God and Man has been crossed, the gulf bridged. The world becomes saturated with God's grace, the Church bursting with the testimonies and prayers of the saints departed mingled with those of us still running the race beside them, spilling over to engulf all mankind departed and travailing. Today is one of those days when one can put off the weight, the burden of sin and human nature and rejoice in the new creation that is coming and that right soon, the new creation that is testified to in the lives of the saints, those who who walk among us and those departed.

One can breathe again and rest awhile and then continue with patience in the hope that has been set before us, the hope that is evident in the communal life of the holy Church.

Serious God-bothering part (i): Thoughts on Lane Craig vs Professor Atkins

2011-10-31T18:14:00.000-07:00

Last week a debate between William Lane Craig and Professor Peter Atkins was held in Manchester and one of my housemates happened to be amongst the audience. I must confess I had no idea that it would be Lane Craig and Atkins who would be duking it out, though I had been informed of a 'God' debate via facebook. As you may have guessed, my initial reaction was to ignore it. Unless held by philosophers of religion, such debates are - aside from being unevenly stacked. I mean, who thought it was a good idea to get a philosopher to debate a scientist? It has to be between philosophers as they'll have roughly the same training and won't fall for the usual tricks. It's stupid to play a player. That and they might have something genuinely insightful to say - often little more than a form of mental masturbation.

For such an important question, you would think people would have learned something from the fact that we're still, some however many thousands of years after our brain reached its current size, arguing over this ie, perhaps we should try understanding what it is we and those we disagree with actually believe and why we believe before we start jumping on each other for being wrong (because we already know they're wrong, but that doesn't seem to have stopped them. In fact, it seems they've just become even more wrong as the ages roll by). As I've mentioned before, I am particularly uneasy when it comes to Christian Apologetics. Whilst I think it is one's duty to be able to defend the Faith, I'm not sure what I think of these theological boxing roadshows. Seems neither charitable nor modest, if you ask me.

On the other hand, if you feel that is the way you are called to evangelise, who am I to say anything? It's more than I could ever achieve. When I'm not writing fanfiction or ~~nitpicking~~, *erhum, critiquing various works of fiction that other people have slaved away on, I'm doing mediocre programming. That and lying awake at nights talking to myself.

Anyway, I did not attend the debate but my housemate did and we had a rather interesting discussion/rantage session when we next bumped into each other. Not so much on any of Lane Craig's points (my housemate is a mainstream pentecostal-evangelical Christian so probably didn't have as many qualms with Lane Craig's points - or at least how he expressed them - as I might have had. Or not, of course. I admit I would have been equally biased towards him at least initially) and not even so much on any of Atkins' points but just general arguments that we're used to hearing and have never quite understood.

For example, one of Atkins' first points was on the necessity of God, or more precisely on the lack of it. He actually split this up into about six sections which my friend couldn't quite remember but included Purpose (or the lack thereof), Miracles (I suspect ditto) and the problem of Evil.

Now this whole issue about the non-/necessity of God is always confusing to me, particularly when I hear it from a scientist (atheist or theist) because to me (of admittedly little brain) it doesn't really make any sense. The only way one can scientifically deduce whether God is necessary or not is by running identical experiments in one environment where God exists and another in which He doesn't then comparing the results. If they are identical, hey presto, you have proved God isn't necessary, though technically, you've also simultaneously shown that God exists. This isn't a triumph, of course: it's a load of nonsense.

In the world of philosophy it's a different matter, though one has to first start by deciding what a world in which God exists would look like and then matching it up with this one. However, I am not a philosopher so I'm not sure if that would even be a sensible place to start. What I think, however, as someone who is slightly better versed with the scientific method is that from the scientific perspective arguments about necessity and even probability are a bit strange. They don't really make any sense, certainly not when it comes to determining the nature of existence - they can certainly tell us about the nature of human opinion on the nature of existence, but that's something slightly different (unless you are one of those people who believes in a truly relative Universe such that ones beliefs can create an objective reality to which all I can say is God bless you and keep the dream alive). This isn't some inherent fault with the scientific method either - as is the case with all the sciences (and by this I don't just mean the physical, material sciences but also the humanist sciences), this is the fault of the object under observation. The nature of the methods of analysis are intimately linked with the nature of the object being analysed. A different 'thing', be it an object or phenomena requires different approaches.

Another quibble I have is with the charge that religious faith is based on revelation whereas scientific fact is acquired via repeated experiment. Now, as I have argued before, I think this argument relies on a translation error, as it were. Revelation sounds mystical and woo-ey but in reality it's just another way of talking about the evidence one receives concerning the existence and nature of the Divine. After all, how else do we find anything about the material world but by revelation? The only difference is in the nature of the thing that is being revealed. It just so happens that Divine things get the big R and material things the lower case (but we can always change that round if you want). All science is is the process of gaining information - seeking revelation - about something by setting up certain conditions and observing the something in question to see how it works. If possible, you repeat it and that enables you to find all sorts of useful things like variance and skew, error bars and so on and so forth. Sometimes, however you can't so you essentially have to do proofs by induction. Religious beliefs - or the facts we have each personally acquired about the existence/nature of the Divine - fall into this category. It isn't possible for one to go back in time and repeat the experiment, to hear the voice of the Divine again, or to repeat the prayer that was never answered to see if it will be this time. One simply has to keep on moving forward in the stream of time, doing hundreds of similar experiments and having twice as many debates and discussions to ensure ones analysis (and thus ones final theory/ies) makes sense.

The idea that all there is to Religious belief is Revelation ie someone said something and someone else believed it does not seem to based on reality. For one thing if that were the case, there'd be no such thing as theology or things like heresy and orthodoxy and heterodoxy (and their analogies in various Religious traditions). In order for there to be 'correct' beliefs, one can't simply rely on believing something someone has said. There would be no schisms if there were no reason involved. That simply isn't the way things work (and note, this is not a necessarily logical statement, but it's true in that it's based on observations via things like history and sociology on how people actually work).

The real problem then is surely not so much a lack of reason but rather a lack of sufficient reason which is a different thing entirely. Most people who hold beliefs that completely contradict mine are not being irrational. Their reasoning and more often the not, their reason for their reasoning, is simply not sufficient (as they would no doubt say about mine). The idea that being irrational and wrong are synonymous is fine for hyperbole but not much good elsewhere. There are facts to the world that are perfectly true but are not logical (in that they are not facts one could have deduced by the power of reason alone. They are logical in that they are formalised using the laws of logic but only after the evidence which has been analysed as best is possible according to the nature of such evidence which depends on the nature of the thing that one is finding the evidence about *breathes*) and there are facts that are logical but have been shown to be flawed, if not false.

Thus, I have never understood the argument that the cosmological argument (which was essentially Lane Craig's initial argument as he used the fact of Creation as proof) for God's existence is illogical. It might not be sufficient, it might even be disingenuous and self-affirming but that does not mean it is not logical. It is perfectly logical to suggest that in order for the material world as we know it to be created, there must have been something that transcends it to provide the initial impetus for creation. One might then argue that there doesn't have to have been a transcendent something for the material world to be begotten, that we are only arguing there must have been using our knowledge of the material world as we know it (and indeed, why should whatever was there before the Universe as we know it now conform to our ideas of reality) but that doesn't make the initial argument illogical or even wrong. It simply means it is not sufficient to prove God's existence. It doesn't even make it unjustified to think that whatever was there before our Universe must have had something in common with it in order to give birth to it (a point Ed Feser more ably makes in his post, 'Magic versus Metaphysics').

Otherwise one risks the danger of deciding what is logical and rational, not by whether they were ascertained in a logical fashion (even if that logic is faulty ie, the philosopher in question had set up false, or at least not-necessarily-all-there-is-to-it, dilemmas en route) but whether they line up with an appeal to authority. Not that this would be a problem per se. The difficulty only comes when it isn't clear what we mean.

Well. That's a bunch of random thoughts that popped up over the course of our shared ranting. Like I said, the thing that irritated me was that fact that Lane Craig ended up debating a scientist as opposed to a philosopher of religion (thought I doubt that was his fault). On the other hand, it only irritated me because I'm not that impressed when someone from one field argues with someone from another about something they have nothing in common over. It's bad enough when this happens in physics, yet alone across entirely different disciplines.

Furthermore, to be perfectly frank, I just don't give a damn about this cultural paradigm we've landed ourselves in. It's just people trying to make fetch happen (you can tell by the way none of our arguments have evolved much over the past however many thousands of years. Empires have risen and fallen, dynasties have taken power and been overthrown, revolutions had taken hold and been defeated in turn and yet, none of our arguments over the existence of God have gotten much further beyond "That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard") and I find this fetish for getting famous theists to ~~indulge in glorified verbal wankage~~, sorry, debate famous atheists about as much of a turn on as week old haddock. Professor Atkins himself revealed his disdain for philosophy towards the end of the debate, which couldn't have helped matters but did serve to explain a lot as well as to pretty well insult everyone from his opponent to anyone who has decided to get themselves into at least £9000 worth of debt for the sake of said apparently ridiculous subject (of which, this being a University city, there would be plenty) or even those genuinely interested in philosophy.

Ah, well. C'est la Vie.

EDIT: Ey! Reports from someone who actually attended the darn thing:

The Thirsty Gargoyle: Reasonable Faith: A Dialogue of the Deaf, Part 1
The Thirsty Gargoyle: Reasonable Faith: A Dialogue of the Deaf, Part 2
The Thirsty Gargoyle: Reasonable Faith: A Dialogue of the Deaf, Part 3
The Thirsty Gargoyle: Reasonable Faith: A Dialogue of the Deaf, Part 4

I can't help also wondering if it wouldn't have been more worthwhile for everyone to go the pub instead.

Anglo-Catholic whatnot

2011-10-30T14:37:00.000-07:00

After the confirmation service this evening, I somehow - by pure, bizarre coincidence - got involved in a what-would-you-know-it-was-completely-by-chance conversation (well, more of a monologue to be honest) on one of my favourite topics ie Science/Religion/Jazz and following a two minute long rant after which I almost keeled over blue in the face (I really need to get some lessons in oratory. Shame there isn't an agora nearby) someone made the suggestion (again! But that's a rant for later times) that perhaps I should become a priest rather than a nun - apparently, and I quote, you don't get to set the world to rights if you're a nun.

Now reader, let us be clear. If your initial response to this would be to retort, "Catherine of Siena did," then I have good (well, dubious) news and bad news for you. The bad news is that you have a problem. The good (or dubious) news is that so do I.

I also discovered I'm not the only one with the rather questionable tendency of measuring the worth of every temptation and trial (and ensuing penance) in terms of hours in Purgatory. However, I doubt anyone else has bothered to draw up a chart...

The all important question

2011-10-30T03:10:00.000-07:00

Beaker Folk of Husborne Crawley: What Would Jesus Do?

Matlab/Octave programming notes

2011-10-29T11:00:00.001-07:00

Matlab-Octave notes

Clearly I have no soul...

2011-10-29T05:43:00.000-07:00

...because I find myself, yet again, completely unmoved by something that it seems the world, his wife and their pet dog are in love with.

Firefly.

I never watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV series, though I did like the few comic books that I found in the local library and I adored the sci-fi comic series, 'Fray'. Whilst I'm not au fait with Joss Whedon's output, I'm certainly not out to unjustly rubbish anything.

However, I'm still stuck at the point, 8 episodes into the first series where I genuinely don't understand what the fuss was about (actually, that's a slight exaggeration. The show isn't good, but I can't imagine why it deserved to be cancelled, as though there was some other piece of Shakespeare that needed the airtime. TV should be entertaining and Firefly sort of is - for me, its entertainingly bad but for others it was clearly a lot of pretty decent fun. It's interesting too, which is more than you can say about most TV sci-fi). But then, perhaps I'm used to cliched 'gritty' dramas and dark 'conflicted' heroes who aren't actually that dark or particularly conflicted. All the right character types are there, the right lines, the right plots and backstories. Heck, even the soundtrack hits all the right chords at all the right times. I personally find the world building fairly woeful but one's vision of the future is as much influenced by ones personal politics and ideas so perhaps I should stop minding that so much.

Anyway. More when I finish the series. In the meantime, back to reading up on superfluid Helium...

HURRAH!

2011-10-27T09:19:00.001-07:00

It's taken 4 weeks and 400 lines of clunky, ugly code but I have finally got the first draft of a selection based linguistic model done. Now to mess around with some objects and slightly more interesting networks... The clean up doesn't usually take too long so hopefully I'll have lovely clever code in another two weeks. After that perhaps a cute little applet to show the evolution in realtime....

A/N: And what's this? Some rather nifty looking ideas over here.

Aside from my personal vanity, the reason I'm mentioning this is if anyone out there has any recommendations for the realtime animation bit: Should I start fretting over Java or just use a library like Allegro?

how many slaves work for you?

2011-10-25T05:50:00.000-07:00

If you've ever been curious, go over to Slavery Footprint and take the survey.

Sor Juana

2011-10-24T07:39:00.000-07:00

Gosh. An inspiring woman and nun.

It makes me wonder - every time a historical figure like Sor Juana comes to the fore, the chatterers will always remind us how astonishing such a woman would have been for their time. However, the fact that we keep on finding out about women like her (from all walks of life, cultures, faiths, politics etc) seems to make such a claim increasingly redundant. Perhaps it's not so much exceptional women who are rare (well obviously geniuses of either sex are so perhaps what I mean is 'women who don't conform to the ridiculous faux nostalgia/oppression driven narrative fulfilling ideas about the past - not that gender stereotypes and gender based oppression didn't exist at all), but whether they get remembered or not.

Found - funnily enough - via Take Back Halloween (a site with great costume ideas for every occasion) thanks to Feminist Philosophers blog.

The original Tintin

2011-10-20T13:16:00.000-07:00

A fascinating article on the original Tintin.

On the Church, Christianity and Africa

2011-10-20T13:14:00.000-07:00

White Christians planted their religion in Africa expecting to import as well the entire social and economic order of Europe. When this didn’t pan out, the religion was left, but the other institutions were left in shambles.... It is no surprise that with a lack of European cultural context, Christianity would come to play an entirely different role in society. In some ways it is reflective of what happened in Europe, in some ways it is grotesquely the opposite. But to think that they are somehow “carrying the torch” of European Christianity is tendentious as best.

Arturo Vasquez

I used to agree with the infamous quote that goes 'when the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said "Let us pray." We closed our eyes. When we opened them, we had the Bible and they had the land'. It's a favourite of my fathers and was said by the former Archbishop of Cape Town Desmond Tutu (though is not original to him). I used to agree with it until I realised that technically we don't even have the Bible. Furthermore, I was never sure if it was so much the missionaries as it was the European military and commercial powers that had the land in the first place and surely owing to the innate classism of most African cultures, the upper classes and social climbing middle classes probably didn't actually get such a bad deal...

In my most cynical moments, I would agree with Chine when she says (on Christianity in Nigeria) 'we are rightly considered to be one of the most religious societies in the world, but I wonder if this is only because we protest too much. We loudly proclaim our faith as if volume could compensate for the secret place in our hearts that the new God has not touched.'

Frankly I'd agree with it in my less cynical moments too. I found it very illuminating that the initial response of the Nigerian Anglican Church to the persecution and slaughter of Christians by Islamic extremists in the North were, though not calls for vengeance had little in common with the response of say, African-American leaders like Martin Luther King or South African leaders like the aforementioned Desmond Tutu. The stern denunciation of the Christian militias who extracted vengeance upon Muslim civilians wasn't forthcoming either. Strange, really, as it's stern denunciations that we Nigerians are so good at. The idea that a Christian leader should at the very least condemn vengeance and retaliatory violence (so trying to claim self-defense won't work) was something that even my irritatingly skeptical parents (irritating because they are usually right even when they're wrong) didn't consider.

Not of course that they are somehow representative of Nigerian Christianity.

More recently, I wondered if this development owed something to another aspect of it's origins. Obviously the Christianity that the majority of Africa inherited was a divided and defensive creature, being the Christianity of a Europe post Reformation, Counter-Reformation and the Enlightenment. It's no wonder that something borne of such a mess would end up as it is now.

So, what then? The reason that some denominations within the Church have taken certain interpretations and understandings to their un-Christian extreme is because the original missionaries hadn't got their doctrinal differences sorted out? If I'm honest, even then I found that line unconvincing and when I read more articles (mostly on late Classical and Medieval Christianity) and learned that actually, Christianity hadn't been that much more organised the first time round, I understood why. As with the Christianity of the 19th century, there were various opposing groups, Arians and Gnostics galore that were as equally bent on and sometimes as successful at proselytizing as their Catholic-Orthodox counterparts. Yet, owing to a series of twists and turns (and of course the grace of God), the Arian majority died out, the Gnostics retreated to the Elsewhere and the theology we consider authentic lived to see another day. It might have started off as chaos, but from that chaos we got a whole new cosmology complete with an as of yet still dominating metaphysical structure on which to hang our lovely ethical reasoning and systematic theology. Who would have thought?

At the moment I'm stuck on the fact that I simply haven't read enough so I can't go into much depth about the state of African theology or anything grand like that. As ever, I can only ever speak as a layman observer and there are things I've observed that I always found interesting but could never put into words.

Reading this post by John C Wright, as well as mulling over the above linked post by Chine at Dark Matters, made me wonder if one of the contributions to the distorted image of European Christianity that exists in Africa (but please note, is by no means all that exists as many churches and Christians are testament to) was the inability of a 19th century Christianity, which had never faced anything like the pagan religions and philosophies it's 2nd-11th century antecedent had, to contextualise the Christian faith in light of the traditions and religions of the peoples it encountered.

Now obviously that's a generalisation - the sheer numbers of Christians amongst certain African ethnicities is testament to the fact that in some areas, some missions were more successful than others. However, it's interesting judging from the stories I've heard about fondly remembered missionaries, priests and religious that their success was often due to the ability of said evangelist firstly to understand the indigenous culture and religion and then to find and explain the place of Christianity within the cocoon of ritual and taboo (or vice versa as the case may be) spun from the accumulated strands of tradition (accumulated strands that, thanks to being spun in the place of homo sapiens' origin are amongst the oldest and most tightly binding you'll find).

I think part of the problem could have been the inability of your average bourgeois liberal/evangelical 19th/20th century Christian to take such religions seriously. Even C. S. Lewis would describe Africa as full of 'thick religions' ie, religions that were stuck at the Ritual stage described in Mr Wright's article above. Although Fani-Kayode was speaking about the Yoruba religion, I think the statement that 'Yoruba cosmology, comparable in its complexities and subtleties to Greek and Oriental philosophical myth, is treated as no more that a bizarre superstition...' could be brought up to explain most attitudes towards indigenous African religions. They were - and still are - seen as the religions of fetishes and weird masks and nonsensical taboo, not part of a transcendent view of the destiny of man in the cosmic sphere.

If all you think a religion is are the masks and the costumes and the sacrifices and the crazy dancing and the taboos that make the natives' eyes widen like saucers upon their contravention, then of course you'd think once you'd got rid of that, you've got rid of the religion. But those very features are borne of something deeper, a philosophy if you will that has been borne, tried and tested and found to be true enough to warrant the necessity of such actions.

As I've admitted, I'm not qualified to give some deep and grand analysis. I can only think about what I've seen. So, as an example, I would say there are hints of this disconnect to be found in the aesthetics of African Christianity. Images of angels, for example, are always riffs on Renaissance paintings, rather kitsch* and certainly much safer than the terrifying figures of both Testaments who would perhaps be more appropriately depicted by the respective indigenous traditions of spiritual art (which are still uncomfortable even to rational, modern sensibilities as I discovered when my mother was going through some sketches I'd made during our last stay in Nigeria. At the sight of a masquerade I'd drawn she laughed uneasily and said "nne, there are some things that even you shouldn't draw."). But for that very reason, to do so would be seen as going too far. In the same way, I can't imagine anyone depicting the Virgin Mary with jigida waist-beads or ivory anklets/ bronze ankle discs. Not that I'm trying to argue that people should do it, but it's interesting that they don't. Perhaps it would make this (not so) new religious narrative all too real.

But I've also observed where the successes are. I do think it made a great difference to how I saw Christianity in that the real lesson I was being taught as a youngster, beneath the catechisms and proverbs and prayers, was that Christianity was at it's heart the fulfillment and ultimate context of the old ways. It was why the nastier traditions like murdering newly-born twins or desecrating the corpses of stillborns, or ritually humiliating widows so they'd prove they hadn't murdered their husbands could be done away with whilst at the same time and (most importantly) for the same reason, traditions like masquerades, honouring/praying for ones ancestors, breaking kola nut and celebrating the New Yam harvest festival could be kept. In that sense, the lesson I was being taught was that in a way Christianity was not a new religion at all - it was the ultimate interpretation of the old. Instead of watching humanity and approaching/being approached by humankind via one of his spirit underlings, the Creator God, Chukwu, had decided to become a human and make himself known for himself and by himself to all humanity (those alive and dead. Bear in mind He is supposed to have descended into Hades on Holy Saturday which means I might even get to meet my lion killing great-grandfather! That'll be one for the books...), which of course was rather strange but no stranger than the decision to create humanity in the first place**.

Thus one has nothing to fear from spirits, not because they don't exist (why shouldn't they?) but because they are created things too and in this new chapter of the creation narrative, one is now on equal standing with if not greater than them. Before they needed to be placated or were messengers, usually bearers of bad news. Now if anything, they are ones brothers and sisters. All has been created anew after all.

So I wonder. From observations whilst in Nigeria and hearsay from those in other African countries, I do think Christianity in Africa actually has a lot of challenges ahead. These challenges aren't always so obvious to outsiders (so I'm not really talking about militant Islam which seems more of a virulently nasty sort of fad), for all they see is an apparently growing and thriving congregation, all of the same un/fortunate militant stripe depending where your theological convictions lie (and I suppose if your problem is general decline, one would naturally assume rapid growth on the other side of the fence to be the non plus ultra of success). It is probably just me being the terribly arrogant/naive Diasporan, but I think part of that challenge will be healing the disconnect between the proclamation and the realisation of the creed we say we confess. It's happened several times before, after all, so I suppose there's no reason one shouldn't expect it to happen now.

*And I say this as someone who loves kitsch but you know, kitsch is still kitsch.

**A slightly geeky aside, but I find it fascinating that in some traditional Igbo accounts of the Creation (I will try and find some links), some of the spirits were as apparently nonplussed by this obtuse decision as some of the angels were meant to be in the Hebrew mythology.

Nsibidi

2011-10-20T07:37:00.000-07:00

One of the things that has always frustrated me is the charge that throughout the long (longer, in fact, than anywhere else might I add) history of homo sapiens in Africa, there has never been a written script indigenous to the population (Ancient Coptic/hieroglyphs don't count). Now as it happens there have been, but the one I am most interested in - for obvious reasons - is the one that would have been used by Igbos of bygone times.

Nsibidi.

It just demonstrates the amazing thing about the internet, how new information can be spread so quickly and is there just waiting to be discovered if you're open minded enough and brave the wilderness of counter opinions and barbarians. Sometimes you don't even have to brave that far. Wikipedia will do it for you.

What's particularly interesting is that the last I'd read, the nsibidi script had been used by religious cults and their initiates. I had no idea that, similar to other scripts such as Hiragana, there was also a public version which could be used by women and those outside the boundaries of the cult. This confirmed a suspicion of mine - in traditional Igbo society, women were charged with the responsibility of making money for the family; they would trade with other women in the markets and their profits would go towards the upkeep of the family (A/N: This is actually a pattern typical of pre-industrial settled ie. non-nomadic societies) and, for all even today we're brought up expected to have prodigious memories (...), I couldn't see why no merchant wife would have never thought of setting accounts, debts and deals on tablet/stone/animal skin as it were.

Obviously once the status quo changed and it became more important to be able to read and write in Roman script, knowledge of Nsibidi dwindled. It would be interesting to find out if there's anyone left in the family who can still read and write it.

I also find the fact it was widespread amongst several different ethnic groups rather intriguing. It certainly reveals that disparate peoples traded and had some means of communication that transcended their linguistic and cultural differences.

Back again...

2011-10-20T07:17:00.000-07:00

This morning I fell into the trap I - and anyone else who is susceptible to the particular variety of vanity called sensuality - usually do which was, having woken up at a respectable time, to spend several ensuing hours thinking and debating with the imaginary caucus that exists somewhere in some metaphysical plane instead of, you know, studying or - heaven forefend! - praying. Part of the reason is the current bout of depression (same old same old...) as well as the programming which is pretending to be impossible (and there is nothing more depressing than programming which is syntactically fine but doesn't do what you want it to do) and it occurred to me that the solution was there all along. The blog.

So here I am, exorcising all the stupid and involved, opinionated and ridiculous discussions me, myself and I have been having of late. I apologise in advance. One day I'll become funny and interesting again and perhaps even a vaguely nice and well rounded person.

In the meantime, behold the magnificence of... BEARDHEADS!

EDIT:

THE FACT THIS EXISTS

MEANS MY LIFE IS (almost) COMPLETE

Interesting Theological/Biblical stuff I find interesting (iv)

2011-10-20T07:06:00.000-07:00

The Paul We Think We Know

The metropolitan archbishop of the Eastern Orthodox Church in the U.K. on evangelism, evangelicals, and the Orthodox Church.

Mohler: We Have not Loved Gay People as We should

What's the Difference Between a Sin and a Mistake? - someone should come up with a good punchline for this.

Why Orthodox Christians Prefer the Septuagint (1 of 2) - followed by Why Orthodox Christians Prefer the Septuagint (2 of 2) and then, to round things off, we have Protestant Myths About the Deuterocanonical Old Testament Books .

Yet more from Sanidopoulos on Monotheism and the Origin of Religion - timely because I recall how the resident neo-atheist in the Halls I was staying at was very fond of a quote that went something along the lines of "First we had many gods, then we had one, now (or soon) we'll have none". As someone who comes from a culture that during it's pre-Christian incarnation was pagan in the loosest sense of the word (henotheistic would be a better description. The role of the 'gods' - who were really spirits serving the Creator/God in whatever realm they were assigned - was more akin to that of angels and dead saints within Catholic Christianity than Greek/Roman style paganism or the 'Aspect' model of certain schools of Hinduism and modern Wicca) I always found this rather trite.

Guidelines on Fasting

For the lols:

Celibacy and the New Testament- Not to be mean, but as much as it is an insightful and wonderful etc etc article, if I'm honest, this is really one for the lols. I mean, how fantastic: you've basically reached the same conclusion as the vast majority of the Church Militant and Departed. w00t!

Charity, charity...

15 Animals You Won't believe Aren't Photoshopped

2011-10-20T06:38:00.000-07:00

ZENIT - Patroness of Depressed Enthroned in Argentina

2011-10-20T06:24:00.000-07:00

I think the Christian way is doing quiet acts of mercy for the poor, without fanfare. Perhaps more, the Christian way is actually to be poor. I find any expectation that the Church join or support human political movements deeply suspect, especially when the movement, like this occupy whatever one, is founded on only the vaguest sense of injustice and motivated by the profoundest self indulgence. The Church exists to preach to the world its deep need for a relationship with Jesus Christ, revealed in the Bible, not to put the crown on the latest political cause.

2011-10-16T15:46:00.000-07:00

During Benediction, something small and winged fluttered about the altar and would occasionally rest on the window ledges, taking a good look at the likes of both St. Augustines, St John and St Ambrose as it did so.

As the host was taken from the altar, this small and winged thing was revealed to be a blue tit. Rather appropriate, we thought, considering that apparently the blue tit represents the Theokotos.

She Lives!

2011-09-26T11:09:00.000-07:00

Sort of.

I am now back at University and getting to grips with my newfound position as a society secretary, 4th year Physics student, resident cartoonist/illustrator/comics artist and all too prospective graduate. As such, I will probably take some more time before I blog anything more than updates on the weather.

Your prayers and thoughts, as ever, will be much appreciated!

Mortys

2011-09-03T09:43:00.000-07:00

Found via the Mary Sue. Awesome stuff.

A Beautiful Thing for the Day

2011-09-01T15:33:00.000-07:00

Though I'm a huge Mao Asada fan, part of me will always hail Yuna Kim as supreme.

Wow.

Cool Science

2011-09-01T07:49:00.000-07:00

Future Firefighters Could Fight Fire with Flame Bending Electricity

Thoughts are Free

2011-09-01T07:40:00.000-07:00

Thoughts are free, who can guess them?
They flee by like nocturnal shadows.
No man can know them, no hunter can shoot them
with powder and lead: Thoughts are free!
I think what I want, and what delights me,
still always reticent, and as it is suitable.
My wish and desire, no one can deny me
and so it will always be: Thoughts are free!
And if I am thrown into the darkest dungeon,
all this would be futile work,
because my thoughts tear all gates
and walls apart: Thoughts are free!
So I will renounce my sorrows forever,
and never again will torture myself with some fancy ideas.
In one’s heart, one can always laugh and joke
and think at the same time: Thoughts are free!
I love wine, and my girl even more,
Only I like her best of all.
I’m not alone with my glass of wine,
my girl is with me: Thoughts are free!

Hans Litten

**

To my regret, I missed the BBC drama on Hans Litten and his infamous trial of Adolf Hitler, though I did catch the documentary and via that, this lovely poem he wrote (ironically enough for the occasion of Hitler's birthday) whilst incarcerated.

What an amazing man. I can't believe I'd never heard of him until now.

More on the UN Bombing, Abuja

2011-09-01T07:36:00.000-07:00

Abuja Bombings: Single Source or Unholy Alliance?

UN Bomber Known

Nigeria Government was Warned of UN Bombing

United Nation Abuja Bombing: Boko Haram Claims Responsibility

US, Britain, France, Germany Cancel Activities in Nigeria

***

I think if anything will wake the administration up to the depth of corruption within the Nigerian forces, hopefully it will be this. It's one thing for the terrorists to blow up police HQ and post offices but to attack the symbol of Nigeria's presence on the international stage is a different thing entirely. Whatever one might think of it, the UN represents nations working together for the greater good of all people. If anything reveals the depth of the problem with the security services, it's that the terrorists were able to target the building and attack it as they did.

Furthermore, considering the unlikelihood of the terrorists originating from the FCT state, it certainly strips any pretensions that the infamous and frequent 'security checks' one is bound to meet on any major road in Nigeria, are for any purpose other than the greasing of police officer's hands.

2011-08-31T13:02:00.000-07:00

I had no idea but today is International Overdose Awareness Day

St. Maximilian, pray for us.

2011-08-31T10:52:00.000-07:00

Free sci-fi - and it's legal!

Higgs Boson has less than 5% probability now across energy range - the leading alternate theories are Technicolor

2011-08-30T14:31:00.000-07:00

Higgs Boson has less than 5% probability now across energy range - the leading alternate theories are Technicolor

On the Nature of Justice

2011-08-29T09:58:00.001-07:00

Having just finished a plate of my mother's stew and some new yam fresh from Nigeria (you can keep your potatoes, New World) it occurred to me that I feel rather sorry for the squeamish Westerner.

They will never experience the strange and exquisite joy that comes from knowing that you, great-great-(however many greats) granddaughter of anonymous primeval rodent-like mammal are enjoying the feet of the great-great-(however many greats) granddaughter of a Tyrannosaurus Rex*. Particularly when one imagines how often said mammalian ancestor's fellow shrew-like creatures were probably squished by the very feet of said dinosaur.

It satisfies.

*Alright, maybe a raptor. It still satisfies.

Abuja Bombing

2011-08-27T12:32:00.000-07:00

Abuja Bombing: UN Offices Hit By Deadly Blast

Abuja Attack: Car Bomb Hits Nigeria UN Building

Abuja Bombing: Ba Ki-Moon Dispatches Deputy Security Chief to Nigeria

Damn.

EDIT: Al-Qaida Franchise: the Nigerian Case

C++ on the mac

2011-08-27T12:05:00.000-07:00

I have just under a month to go until I'm back at University so it's officially time to cram, study and revise (on this point I might add thank God for Creationists! Thanks to them, I've already revised more physics than I have all year*).

One of the main things to get back on top with is my programming, specifically C++ (my Allegro plan stopped at the download. Alas) and as I have a new mac instead of a PC, I can't just make do with Visual Studio unless I install a parallel thingmajig (yes, that is the technical term). Here be some links I've found useful:

Setting up a new project in Code::Blocks. - I've decided to stick with Netbeans, but I had Code::Blocks originally.

Xcode is supposedly the thing I need to download but that's being a real pain and refuses to cooperate. Even when I quit iTunes.

So I am now downloading the G++ compiler (which - according to the urban legends within the class that was Programming in C++ - is even tougher than the one that came with Visual Studio) and hopefully that will serve my purposes. More on that as it comes and any advice will be much much much appreciated!

*Again, no. The British taxpayer has spent far too much money on my University education for me to be getting it thanks to Creationists.

On Creationism (ii)

2011-08-27T09:26:00.000-07:00

Talk about an education! I think I've done more physics in the past few days than in my entire third year!*

Having gone through the chapter on Astronomy, it seems my initial impression was essentially correct. There's a lot of information about problems with current cosmological theories but nothing about the alternative that's being offered. It would help a great deal if there were some data they had to suggest an alternate theory but there isn't any. There is an interesting sounding book called 'Starlight and time' by Dr. R Humphreys (more on that below) which seeks to provide a theoretical framework that could back up a six day creation from the Earthbound perspective.

However, I was - unsurprisingly - wrong about Creationism. There has been a lot of effort made to answer the critics, though many of their findings have been debunked. For example, I was complaining that there wasn't any direct evidence for a 6000 year old Earth, but upon searching, I found they had been much more than the armchair dilettantes I imagined them to be. They even provided an error margin! Hurrah!

Unfortunately, the article has been corrected (in fact, let's just say debunked) here.

Nonetheless, part of me wishes that the RATE team had also been given an opportunity to re-date dinosaur/human/etc fossils as well, if only for thoroughness. Someday, someday (EDIT: Apparently they have, according to Answers in Creation, but that was also debunked. Still, I would like to read the original article, if only as a character building exercise).

Yes I am anal, what of it?

Now, if I'm honest, none of that really gets my heart racing. I chose to study theoretical physics for a reason, after all and it's my inner mathematician who just isn't satisfied. She wants to know, if the RATE team are correct (which admittedly they're not, but that's not the point), why the decay rate may be accelerated in the initial stages of radioactive decay and by how much this might vary with differing radioisotopes. According to their theory anyway. Perhaps, in the dark recesses of the Internet, there is a creationist nuclear scientist (EDIT: yes there is and the recess really wasn't that dark after all) who can give a consistent theory of why this happens.

Impressed as I am by their efforts**, it still gives an impression of a group of people who do not have a coherent theory and can only provide answers in piecemeal rather than as an alternate narrative. They still have not provided any positive evidence for their theories or any explanation that has an adequate theoretical basis.

But then I found more about Dr R Humphreys who, for all I think he's wrong, seems to understand what's at stake here. I found a condensed version of his alternate theory here, and then an article from the sceptical crowd in New Mexico debunking him. As ever, there is the issue of proof, both evidentiary and by contradiction (even if one drops the Copernican principle, for example, does that really leave room for the theory Humphrey's describes?). Already, the thought experiments are giving me headaches.

Or maybe it's just the thought of the thought experiments. Or maybe...

I'm probably not going to go back to this issue properly for a while (a long while...) and instead will just collect links and information besides studying like hell and doing a lot of math. Like I said, I still have a lot of reading to do, particularly with regards to Creationist Nuclear Physics/Theoretical physics/Mathematics/Logic, but at least most of my initial qualms have been answered, though not really at the same time.

And yes, where have I been? I don't know really. Maybe getting on with developing skills to become an amazing (ha!) biophysicist in the field of bio-nanotech and not a professional YEC hound (Damn. I've even started using the jargon! HELP ME! STOP ME NOW!!). I suppose I imagined once the theologians had got it all sorted that would be it. I had no idea the Young Earth crowd were actually trying to do science.

EDIT: Some general links because I can't think where else to put them:

Debunking of common Young Earth claims

Tracks showing man and dinosaur walking side by side also debunked

A good post with an even better link from Stuart at eChurch blog

And from scientia et sapientia, this lovely little cartoon:

*Joking.

**I tell a lie, now I think about it. I'm not entirely impressed. They haven't even got a reason why no human/other contemporary-species-apart-from-things-like-ants-and-cockroaches-who-no one-cares-about fossils have been found within the same geological levels as dinosaurs and other creatures from eras pre-hominid/etc evolution apart from "Well maybe we just haven't found any yet..." which is - irritatingly enough - technically true, but considering the amazing, incredibly unlikely stuff that pops up on a daily basis within the field of paleontology, is genuinely puzzling.

And it still bothers me no one has suggested why the dating would suggest billions of years rather than thousands. This is really important! Really important!! So important that my inner voice has risen to a hysterical shriek by this point!!!***

***I just used three exclamation marks.

That does it. No more Creationism until I finish my degree.

Saint Albert the Great, Pray for me!

"There go the ships, and Leviathan, which You formed to play in it."

2011-08-27T06:17:00.000-07:00

Inspired by Nicholas to Myra's post on Mythical Creatures in the Scriptures and the Fathers (and also because I am killing time until the rain clears up), here are some of our own more recently Leviathans and denizens of the deep...

Real Life Sea Monsters

...and the less sensational reality of one.

An interesting albeit short entry on deep-sea gigantism