Various

[poliphilo]

1.The wooden fence on the other side of the back alley has been replaced by heavy duty wire mesh. Two advantages. One: the kids won't be able to set it in fire. Two: standing at an upstairs window, I can see through it to the lawn beyond and it's almost as if our back garden had been extended.

2. My first attempt at growing tomatoes has been a dismal failure. I've got three plants and they've produced five nuggety green fruits- about the size of strawberries. My father in law- who gave me two of  the plants- says it's been a bad year for everyone. Blame it on the weather.

3. My latest jigsaw is a picture of a village wedding by one of the younger Breughels. I don't suppose I've ever spent more time poring over an old master. The posh people are sitting under a tree in a meadow and their retainers and bodyguards and poor relations are standing behind them watching them eat. One or two of the faces seem to be portraits. I haven't counted the faces but there must be getting on for a hundred. Differences in style suggest this is a studio work and all the apprentices took turns at painting faces and areas of foliage. "Here, Jacob, you're not doing anything important. Come over here and do me a wedding guest." 

4. Professor Dawkins was bashing the New Age last night. And, yes, it deserves to be bashed. But I'm not easy.  He was testing dowsers and this poor woman who had scored no better than average was genuinely distressed- suggesting that normally- out in the field with the wind blowing free- she gets results.  Is she a fraud or a self-deceiver or is it just possible that application of the scientific method causes psi abilities to freeze?  "Which side are you one, boy?" Well neither, actually. Put me down as a conscientious objector. Science on one side, superstition on the other? No, I just don't think it's as simple as that.

Comments

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I think human beings naturally peel off into gangs, tribes, nations etc. Religion may help define the divisions but it doesn't cause them.

Are the gangs who are shooting it out on the streets of Manchester defined by religion? Of course not.

Religion and the gang mentality are both hard-wired into human nature. Maybe we can outgrow them. It would be nice if we did.

But I'm afraid Dawkins and co are just creating another gang.

Is the War on Terror a new Cold War? Not really. That was a stand-off between nuclear superpowers. This is something rather different.

[manfalling.livejournal.com]

Yeah that's what I thought about Dawkins also- he's just starting a new fundamentalist group that is intolerant of others. I read about it ages ago in a copy of the magazine Wired, and it made me uneasy.

He says he's not a fundamentalist because he'd change his mind in a second if the evidence was presented to him.

Cold War- fair enough, it's not quite the same. I was rather thinking about the effects of fear, and the way Islam vs Christianity separates countries and mass groups in a big culture clash in a similar way to Communism vs. Capitalism.

In that sense, it's pretty similar, with Iraq being much like Vietnam- a place to make a stand and keep the red tide/war on terror at bay.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I wonder what it would really take to make Dawkins change his mind? God and the supernatural can always be explained away. I think he's pretty safe, actually.

[manfalling.livejournal.com]

I don't think it's possible to change his mind- because it's not so much a war on religion he's waging, as a war on faith. And the whole point of faith is that there is no proof for it. So if there ever was proof, then it wouldn't be faith any more, and he wouldn't need to attack it. So yeah, he wins either way.

Faith, he thinks, is an evolutionary hang-up that maybe once had relevance, but no longer does, and is something we need to grow out of and let go of.

I tend to agree with him about this.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

My problem with Dawkins is that I believe there really are things out there that his brand of materialistic science doesn't account for. I wouldn't characterise this belief as "faith" exactly. I mean, does one have faith in ghosts?

[manfalling.livejournal.com]

He`d brand it a kind of faith, I`m sure, since it requires belief and cannot be proven.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

It annoys me that anecdotal evidence- of which there's a huge amount- counts for absolutely nothing. If it can't be replicated in a laboratory it's worthless.