Francesca Stravrakopoulou - Think Week

Of the events that I attended in Oxford Think Week, Saturday afternoon's talk by Professor Francesca Stravrakopoulou was the most interesting, comprehensible and entertaining.  (Peter Atkins was a close contender though!)

She explained how much she loved studying the bible.  As an atheist she claimed that anyone suggesting that the bible should only be studied by religious scholars was doing a disservice to it.

She started with an amusing tale about a conversation with her grandmother who told her that the classical demi-gods, the Greek heroes, were the offspring of a god and a human.  She said "Oh, like Jesus then?"  Apparently though, the suggestion that Jesus is a demi-god doesn't go down well with Christians, and this was the beginning of her rejection of Christianity and fascination with the bible as a human-written book.  After some years of study in Oxford in the minority position of being an atheist in a community of theologians she has risen to the position of Professor of Biblical Studies in Exeter.

From this position she was asked to host a short BBC series called The Bible's Buried Secrets, (e.g. here) which I remember enjoying.  The seemingly controversial claims of the series led to something of a furore.  The BBC was inundated with complaints that it was not appropriate for a series about the bible to be presented by an atheist.  She received a lot of personal hate mail which was rather disturbing, but on balance the 'love mail' was even more disturbing!  She has also been accused of being anti-semitic, anti Israeli, and more amusingly, 'really stupid' because she has read the bible and knows it well but apparently hasn't understood it.  I think she has understood it very well!

Worse still, some have said that she was 'too young-looking', complained about what she was wearing, that she was a woman and worst of all an atheist!  One fellow scholar claimed that she had 'betrayed the guild' and another said that she had 'discussed things on TV that should only be examined in the safety of the lecture theatre'.

She likes to show her students the core and difficult stuff in the bible, like the partly hidden presence of a wife of Yahweh, namely the goddess Asherah.  In particular she is interested in the tension between biblical views and historical realities.

For the remainder of the talk she moved on to the subject of Think Week's theme - namely 'Death'.

The concept of hell has only become so widely believed because of Christianity.  Before that time it was believed that you would go to the underworld and you would be united with the ancestors or 'gathered to the ancestors'.  The way that material remains were treated was important.  The very idea that the dead are unclean is a modern one.  In ancient times the period of decomposition was an important part of confirming your place in the underworld, and your bones would have been gathered into an ossuary some time after your death.

Furthermore, death was not regarded as breaking the bond with the living, and rituals were important to maintain this link.  Now we are increasingly segregating the living and dead and she teaches that this is completely different from the ways of ancient people.

In one special case, namely that of Jesus, his resurrection and the lack of a verifiable tomb to venerate diminishes the value of what it is to be human.

Summarising, she emphasised again that biblical texts are incredibly alien to modern eyes, but that, on the other hand, the bible and religions that gave rise to the bible are incredibly important to human society.

I suppose that last claim is a matter of opinion, but it is one that I can respect and not reject out of hand. 

All told, this was the best Think Week event that I attended.  How sad that the audience was only 29 people.  I for one am looking forward to any new TV series involving Francesca's fascinating insights into the bible.

BBC might resist controversy . . . 

Go to Channel 4!

Sex and Death

Another Oxford Think Week activity, on Saturday 16th February included a talk by Professor Beverly Clack about Sex and Death.  Before the talk started I wondered what the title might mean, and I was only there to be sociable while I was waiting for the event that I really wanted to attend later in the afternoon.  (It did not disappoint - see my next blog post.)  By the end of the talk I was left in the same state of confusion, but then again I'm only a sort of scientist.

She talked a lot about the Marquis de Sade and feminism, but for me it was not clear what her message might have been.

We had been invited to 'Pre-Read: “Sex and Death – Reappraisal of Human Mortality”, Polity Press, ISBN-13: 978-0745622798.'  I must admit that I hadn't felt compelled to do so.

From the back cover: For centuries people have debated the nature of the human self. Running beneath these various arguments lie three certainties – we are born, reproduce sexually [is this a certainty?], and die. The models of spirituality which dominate the Western tradition have claimed that it is possible to transcend these aspects of human physicality by ascribing to human beings alternative traits, such as consciousness, mind and reason. By locating the essence of human life outside its basic physical features, mortality itself has come to be viewed as a problem, for it appears to render human life both meaningless and absurd. Complex connections have then been made between the key features of life: sex is linked with death, and birth becomes the event that introduces the child to the world of decay – and ultimately to death itself.

Personally I see no link between sex and death but perhaps that just shows how I am depraved in some obscure way.  In fact, the suggestion that human life might be meaningless and absurd is far more believable to me.

One good thing that I can say is that she stuck to the theme of Think Week quite well.  The theme was 'Death'.  The talk was suitably morbid.

I had almost lost the will to live.

Small note:  I should have stayed in the kitchen to help with drying the cups and plates!  Sorry, but that was more fun!

Richard Dawkins and Stephen Law - Think Week

On Friday 15th February as part of Oxford Think Week, Richard Dawkins and Stephen Law met on stage in the Sheldonian Theatre.

The discussion was generally an interesting revision of the sorts of things that I hear on scientific and skeptical podcasts, week in and week out, and I write about here.  A few of the audience were a little disappointed that there was nothing very new in it.

However, I can listen to these two men for a very long time without getting bored, and you have to admire their dedication to their cause.  They give up their time (and indeed money by sponsoring the event) in order to be visible to another audience - predominately of young people. 

Getting the message of rationalism and science out to the public takes a lot of effort and they show little sign of tiring.

As usual, the questions asked by the audience varied in quality.  Some were thinly veiled angry responses from a religious world-view that had clearly found itself on the back foot.  Others were more statements than questions in spite of the chair imploring people to keep their questions short.  Also as usual there were questions which were politely answered, but could have be met with simple advice to go and read a book.

Asked about objective morality and how one should address the competing requirements of different moral values we learned that RD claims to be a consequentialist.  SL agreed that he had got the description correct.  I doubt that the questioner felt satisfied with the answer that he got as he was clearly under the impression that he had deal the knock-out blow.

I for one thought it was the best answer available.

When the video of the event is posted I will link to it here.

Monopoly provides the answer to the question "What does a retired pope do next?"

In general terms this is a virtually meaningless question because most popes do not abdicate and retire.  No doubt it will be a while before we hear the real reason for the retirement of Pope Benedict, even if we ever find it out.  The Roman Catholic Church could hardly be say to be famous for its openness.

Like his brother, Pope Benedict has been accused of quite a number of misdemeanours during his professional life.  It is asserted that he has personally been responsible for covering up the nefarious child abuse activities of many Catholic priests.  Although it is not implied that he was actually involved in the rape of children, it would be regarded as a very serious crime in any civilised jurisdiction to take actions intended to impede the police in their investigation of crime.  And yet this is exactly what he has been accused of.  Aiding and abetting one criminal would be serious enough, but it if is true that Ratzinger's Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith activities have been systematically confounding law enforcement then someone should take personal responsibility for it.  That someone should clearly be the head of the organisation.

Now that Ratzinger will no longer be acting as 'The Pope', and therefore no longer the head of state of that 'non-country' called 'The Vatican', one might hope that he is getting rather worried.

Please think about that and feel some satisfaction at my optimism.

His immunity to prosecution must surely have been rescinded along with the other responsibilities of the position.

Surely, just like that other notorious European tyrant Mladic, Ratzinger should be arrested and denied bail while his alleged crimes are thoroughly investigated and he is ultimately brought to trial. 

Therefore the answer to the question of his retirement plans should come directly from the Monopoly board!

Ratzinger - 1st March - Go to Jail. Go Directly.

Go to jail.  Go directly to jail. Do not pass go. Do not collect £200 (or whatever currency or culture you prefer).

After all this is a man who should know more about morality than anyone else on Earth if the claims of his church are true.  If God really set the standards of objective morality, then the Vicar of Christ (and his older brother) should have been able to tell that it is immoral to shelter his fellow priests from justice (or whatever his older brother is accused of).

There is little evidence that they have grasped that concept yet.

Go to jail.


Update: 22:30.  This evening I attended an event in Oxford, where Stephen Law and Richard Dawkins were in discussion as part of 'Think Week'.  One of the questions from the audience was on exactly this topic.  RD has been involved in a previous discussion about an attempt to prosecute the pope and together with Christopher Hitchens had paid a top lawyer to look into the idea.  Sitting in the audience this evening and knowing that this post was scheduled I felt quite amused.

Peter Atkins talks about absolutely nothing

No really . . . he was talking about the absolute nothingness before the beginning of the universe, as part of Think Week in Oxford!  The talk was so popular that people had to be turned away from the door.  This event was held in a teaching room in the famous Ashmolean Museum. 

Atkins is of course a popular speaker and people expect to get good value from any talk that he gives and he did not disappoint.  This time he included a number of his usual (witty and pithy) atheistic comments but he was aiming to explain a possible view of the origin of the universe to a bewildered audience.

The point of the talk was to demonstrate that the creation of the universe from absolute nothingness might be open to scientific elucidation, contrary to the view that religion offers the only answers.  As he said, unlike religions, when different branches of science intermingle there is support rather than conflict.  He also re-stated his assertion (which I find very reasonable) that the 'why' questions should really be rephrased as portmanteaus of 'how' questions that science can answer.  When theologians claim that science can't answer the why questions, his reply is to shrug and say "So what? There is no valid question beginning with 'why'".  By asking how questions, we get rid of the need for omnipotent beings, and the supernatural has no place in science.

He went on to show some different models of families of universes, and mention that our notion of time might be far too naive.  Time might be circular but for today he wanted to assume that there really was an instant in time when the first universe came into being.  Following similar lines to Lawrence Krauss in his book A Universe from Nothing, Atkins went on to explain how the universe might look as though it is full of energy but in fact the positive energy, including that which exists as matter, is exactly balanced by the negative energy associated with gravitational attraction. When questioned about why gravitational energy is negative he used a nice analogy that I had never heard before.  Take two objects.  One distorts space-time to make a gravitational well, and the other rolls into the well to reach a lower energy state.  I like it!

Getting gradually deeper into the science of origins and carefully pointing out that he was not telling us that this is the answer, but only a possible answer, he went on to talk about conservation laws.  Taking as his first example, the law of conservation of energy might be inferred from the observation that the universe has no net energy.  If it came from nothing then the simplest explanation is that 'the nothing' had no energy, and that state has been preserved.  He invoked Noether's (first) theorem which states that any differentiable symmetry of the action of a physical system has a corresponding conservation law. In the case of the conservation of energy, the associated symmetry is the uniformity of time.  Similarly, conservation of momentum is associated with the uniformity of space, and angular momentum with the isotropy of space.  In fact almost all laws of physics probably imply the uniformity of the 'nothing' that was there before the universe, and he gave some examples of how the alternative to the physical laws would lead to virtual anarchy.

Concluding the first part of the talk he pointed out that at the creation almost nothing happened.  There is still nothing here, but it is a much more interesting form of nothing than it was before nothing happened.

The second part of the talk became much more abstract, getting into set theory and some other mathematics and without admitting where I lost the plot I'm not going to describe it in detail.  Someone was recording it, and if it is published on the web I will link to it so that you can listen for yourself.  My short summary of it is that time may be regarded as a dimension, but that it is a very special kind of dimension.  The idea that there is only one dimension of time (when there are three spatial dimensions) implies that you can't turn around in it.  (Eeek!  How?)

He then concluded that the whole point of his talk was to show us that science is not afraid to confront the concept of nothing at all, and that the properties of nothing at all can be discussed quite rationally.

In the Q&A there was a question about how (a) god (the creator) might not have been god at all, but that aliens might have seeded the Earth with life and having realised that it was all going wrong had gone away leaving no sign of their involvement.  Having tried to answer the question politely, the questioner persisted with a little rant about how he wasn't being taken seriously.  He refused to stop even when asked by the chairman. 

In his typical politely assertive way Atkins answered that if there was any evidence at all for that idea then it would definitely be worth considering, but that there isn't any evidence.  The questioner picked up his coat and left, much to the relief of all of us.

All in all, it was an entertaining evening with a great speaker and a great chance to meet some very interesting people, older friends and newer.  I will be attending more Think Week events, (although unfortunately not all of them).

Stephen Law on The Malcontent's Gambit

One of my favourite philosophers was interviewed recently on one of my favourite podcasts.  I don't know how Alan Litchfield pulls it off to get such good guests on his podcast, 'The Malcontent's Gambit', but he seems consistent in that ability.

This podcast features Stephen Law, who is author of a number of books including 'Believing Bullshit' and a former speaker at Oxford Skeptics in the Pub.  Stephen will also be noticeable in the annual Oxford event called Think Week, where he will be in discussion with Richard Dawkins.  Tickets sold out quickly, as is common for these Dawkins events in Oxford!  (Yes - I have got one, thank you.)

Given his track record, being acknowledged as one of the few people who have significantly defeated William Lane Craig in a debate, I think the discussion with Dawkins will be interesting.

Without having to speculate about future events, I highly recommend The Malcontent's Gambit podcast.   In this interview, Law dismissed the Euthyphro Dilemna before going on to talk about the 'evil god hypothesis', which turns out to be difficult to contest.