Land of the Long Sermon

It is a little known fact that Abraham Lincoln was never actually intended to speak at the dedication of the Gettysburg Civil War graveyard. Indeed, the organising committee for the event only asked Lincoln as an afterthought, indicating that he should make a few "appropriate remarks" at the dedication ceremony.

The main speaker for the event was Edward Everett, a former politician and minister, who was considered at the time to be America's foremost orator. Lincoln was scheduled to speak after the "main event": his role was entirely perfunctory. How curious are the motions of time and circumstance! Had Lincoln not been invited, or even asked to speak, then history would have been denied one of the greatest speeches of all time.

For, of course, Lincoln's "Gettysburg Address" has become synonymous for elegance, eloquence, and as a premier example of the art of public speaking. The speech itself was only three hundred or so words long, and lasted scarcely two minutes. However, that has not stopped it being compared to Pericles' monumental funeral oration, recorded for posterity by the ancient historian Thucydides, which was spoken over the bodies of Athenian soldiers killed in the Peloponesian War. By contrast, Everett's oration, which last approximately 2 hours and consumed over 13,500 words, is practically forgotten today.

Not that Lincoln got much credit for his words at the time. He himself didn't like the speech, and the crowd reaction was muted. One newspaper, the Chicago Times, declared: The cheek of every American must tingle with shame as he reads the silly, flat, and dishwatery utterances of the man who must be pointed out to intelligent foreigners as the President of the United States.

Ironically, it was Everett who recognised the speech's genius, for he wrote in a letter to Lincoln: Dear Mr President - I should be glad if I could flatter myself that I came as near to the central point of the occasion in two hours as you did in two minutes.*

A consciousness that would have come in handy last Sunday, which became the day of enduring long sermons. The first took place during the regular Sunday morning service at my local Uniting Church; the second that evening, at the service for the opening of the Uniting Church's Victorian-Tasmanian Synod, and induction of the new Moderator. I won't go into details, except to say that both sermons were too long (approximately half an hour each) and tried to cover too much ground. Which is a pity, because both sermons contained some excellent ideas that, in and of themselves, would have made for a great sermon: concise, pithy, to the point. But crowded into the one sermon, they required not so much attention as endurance.

I am presently reading a book entitled Necessary Heresies: Alternatives to Fundamentalism by the Scottish minister, Peter Cameron. They are a collection of his sermons, and I think they serve as a model for what good sacred oratory is about. None of Cameron's sermons are any longer than a few pages, and yet they are both packed full of ideas and exemplars of concision and brevity. Regardless of what individuals may think about the content, the structure and pattern of these sermons is ideal.

I only hope that weekends of the long sermon are few and far between - and that, if and when it comes to my turn to be delivering sermons, I can practice what I preach!

Talk to you soon,

BB

Quote for the Day: The best sermon is not that which makes the hearers go away talking to one another and praising the speaker, but that which makes them go away thoughtful and serious and hastening to be alone. (Gilbert Burnet)

*For details about the Gettysburg Address and its background, see the Wikipedia entry or the website for Ken Burns' magisterial PBS documentary, The Civil War.

Cop Out

Is it just me, or are "police dramas" and murder mysteries set in sleepy country towns really stupid?

No disrespect intended, but I frankly find it impossible to believe that some tiny hamlet could have everything happening in it ranging from a terrorist attack to a serial killer, and every other form of disaster in between. Not that stuff doesn't happen in country towns, hell, I know for sure that every now and then serial killers and other assorted nasties do turn up in the boondocks. But week after week, and with such consistent regularity and variety? I don't think so!

And, yes, I know, it's meant to be fiction, and fiction involves the suspension of disbelief. But part of being able to facilitate that suspension is making the overall scenario sufficiently realistic that the viewing audience can thus accomodate any "fantasy" elements. It's a tricky, but nonetheless necessary, little paradox. And I'm afraid that asking me to believe that there's a country town where, week in and week out, dramatic and powerful events take place (sufficient, at any rate, to warrant the attention of the wallopers and result in someone being killed) is just stupid.

I mean, let's look at a couple of these scenarios. The first is the country town where people seem to be dropping like flies, only for the local plod or some other inbred denizen of the region to work out that it was murder, whodunnit, and why. Now, a couple of issues arise. Firstly, if you lived in a place where all this concentrated fatality was happening, wouldn't you just get the hell out? I know I would. Hey, call me a coward if you like, but I'd prefer to have a complete skin than be valiant and deceased. And how come these killings always relate to some long-kept secret, such as an illigitimate child or a lost inheretance? Doesn't anyone just kill in a blind fury anymore? On second thoughts, if these people were my neighbours, I think I'd kill them all in a blind fury just for being so unutterably tedious.

The second scenario is the country town which seems to have such an awfully bad run of luck, what with the bushfires and floods and toxic waste spills, not to mention the escaped criminals and run-away illegal immigrants, and all those pesky children of media moguls who've decided to go into hiding because they just can't hack the high life any more. Fortunately, the crew of local coppers are on hand, keeping everything in order and sending those nasty city types packing, just like they deserve. Never mind that the local sergeant looks more like a sumo grand master, and the perky young blond thing is about as convincing a copper as I am an Elizabethan dandy. Those cunning crims and annoying natural disasters are no match for our dynamic duo...hell, I'm convinced, aren't you?

Look, I know it's not meant to be serious, but why can't they at least credit their audiences with some measure of intelligence? Especially these whodunnits where everyone gets bumped off - except the one person who's actually trying to solve the mystery! Gimme a break! And no, there's nothing "charming" about the whole farce just because it's set in some pretty country village or swish European locale; that, if anything, just makes it all the more tedious. Afterall, hasn't the dark-deeds-lurking-behind-beautiful-exteriors motif been pushed just a tad far?

Never mind Murder, She Wrote - try Boring, She Wrote, or Tedious, She Wrote, or Obvious, She Wrote, or Formulaic, She Wrote - or Boringly Tediously Obviously Formulaic, She Wrote. At least you'd know you weren't being asked to accept the unbelievable.

Talk to you soon,

BB

Quote for the Day: Television is a medium - because it's neither rare nor well done. (Ernie Kovacs)

Blog For A Slow Day III

I’ve got the go-slows here at Comfy Couch Central, so instead of saying anything intelligent (or, at least, pretending to say anything that could reasonably described as vaguely approaching intelligent), I thought I’d hit you with another couple of lists of Top Tens. Enjoy (or not)!

Top Ten Film/TV Soundtracks

1. Bladerunner - Vangelis
2. Conan the Barbarian - Basil Poledorus
3. The Lord of the Rings - Howard Shore
4. Going Home - Mark Knopfler
5. Cal - Mark Knopfler
6. Saving Private Ryan - John Williams
7. Last Exit to Brooklyn - Mark Knopfler
8. The Sea Kingdoms - Phil Cunningham
9. The Celts - Enya
10. The Princess Bride - Mark Knopfler

Top Ten Books About Religion/Religious Issues*

1. The Problem of Pain - C S Lewis
2. The Sins of Scripture - John Shelby Spong
3. The Great Transformation - Karen Armstrong
4. Necessary Heresies - Peter Cameron
5. Freedom and Fundamentalism - Peter Cameron
6. Buddha - Karen Armstrong
7. Surprised by Joy - C S Lewis
8. A History of God - Karen Armstrong
9. Salvations - S Mark Heim
10. Heretic - Peter Cameron

Well, that should just about do it for another lazy day. I’ll get back to the couch and leave you to get on with your no doubt much more productive life.

Talk to you soon,

BB.

Quote for the Day: Laziness is riding a bike over cobblestones to knock the ash off a cigarette. (Les Dawson)

* As indicated, this list concerns itself with books about religion or religious issues, and not the actual texts that are sacred to particular faith traditions. I have therefore quite deliberately not included texts such as the Bible, the Qur’an, the Dhammapada, etc.

The Bright Side

My act of contrition in the post Mea Culpa caused me to think about the history of Islamic and Christian relations, and whether or not there were, in fact, examples of people from both faiths living not just harmoniously, but actually working together to achieve something that was greater than the sum of their individual faith identities. I started down this path of thought, not merely in order to try and find some antidote to the present "controversy" surrounding a recent speech by Pope Benedict, but because it occurred to me that only the negative and destructive aspects of faith relations seem to get much press these days. I wanted to make my own contribution, however humble, to healing wounds and forging bonds, as oppossed to creating divisions or causing tension.

It should hardly be surprising that it did not require much thought or enquiry before I was able to find a number of examples from history to illustrate my point. Moreover, a recent encounter of my own brought home the point in a powerful and inspiring manner.

First, to the history, and for the sake of brevity, I will rest content with drawing on two examples from European history:

1. Moorish Spain. After the initial conquest that overthrew the old Visigothic kingdom of Spain, the North African Moors who overran the Iberian Peninsula proceded to create one of the most cosmopolitan, tolerant, progressive, and dynamic societies to have graced human history. Moorish Spain was a powerhouse of the arts, science, architecture, history, commerce, philosophy, and education, and was responsible for much of the lost knowledge from Greece and Rome being re-transmitted back to Europe. Scholars from all over the Mediterranean world flocked to cities like Granada and Cordoba to avail themselves of the riches flowing from this fountainhead of Islamic, Christian, and Jewish intellectual ferment and cross-fertilisation. If ever inter-faith relations had a "golden age", Moorish Spain would come close to being at the top of the list of candidates.
2. Norman Sicily. In what was possibly one of the most unlikely civilisations in human history, the aggressively and piratically militaristic Normans created a splendid and tolerant kingdom in Sicily and southern Italy in the late 11th and early 12th centuries. Drawing together the very best of Byzantine, Arabic, Jewish and western Christian traditions, the Normans forged a society that became a centre of commerce and learning, in which Jews, Christians, and Muslims all actively participated in freedom and security. Sadly, this "kingdom in the sun" (as it has been called by the English historian, John Julius Norwich) lasted less than a century, destroyed by the dynastic squabbles associated with the Holy Roman Empire.

Clearly, if history tells us anything, it is that co-operation and mutual respect and learning between faith traditions is not only possible and desirable, it in fact contributes greatly to the sum of human happiness. Indeed, that human beings are frequently less happy when this kind of mutual co-existence and cross-fertilisation is absent. Nor does this kind of enlightened cosmopolitanism require the adherents of any faith to either abandon their particular claims to religious truth, or insipidly accept the claims of other faiths. Rather, each faith community is able to co-exist in a mutually enriching dialogue, a kind of "spiritual dance" in which they are held together by the ties of respect, humanity, dignity, charity, and hope.

And this was brought home to me by my recent encounter with an incredible young woman from Sudan named Faten. She is a Muslim from the north of Sudan; and together with David, a young Christian from the south of Sudan (as well as other young Sudanese of a like mind) they are working together to bring hope, peace, and reconciliation to their troubled country, irrespective of its political future (a refurrendum will be held in a few years' time to determine if the country should remain a single unit or divide into separate states). Drawing on the reconciliation processes they have observed in other societies (such as South Africa) they will shortly be travelling to Sudan to organise a series of meetings, workshops, and conferences, which they hope will kick-start a process of peace-making at the social level, above and beyond the merely political. In particular, they hope to empower the young people of Sudan, to enable them to take charge of their own future and steer their country in new, co-operative, mutually respectful and mutually enriching directions.

Faten and her colleagues will be facing considerable difficulties and dangers in order to achieve their purpose. But their desire for peace and reconciliation is driven by their faith - Muslim and Christian - united by their humanity. It is hard not to be both moved and inspired, especially since it is my fear that faith will become the battleground of a new global "cold war" in which religious sensibilities are manipulated by both religious and secular vested interests. Indeed, the example provided by Faten and her friends is not only that this ought to not be the case, but that we should, in fact, be undertaking the kind of co-operative and constructive ventures that enhance our human dignity through the mutual care and respect that is actually and in truth implicit in faith.

They are showing us not merely what we ought not be, but what we can and should and must be.

Talk to you soon,

BB.

Quote for the Day: No task, rightly done, is truly private; it is part of the world's work. (Woodrow Wilson)

Mea Culpa

As a "recovering Catholic" (a phrase utilised by a friend to describe her own alienation from Catholicism) who is now a member of the Uniting Church in Australia, it would be fair to say that Pope Benedict XVI and I would not see eye to eye, theologically speaking, on many issues. Certainly, I was a trenchant critic of Benedict's predecessor, John Paul II, and I have not hesitated to be pointedly critical of the Catholic Church in the past; I dare say I will have occassion to be similiarly critical in the future.

This criticism, I hasten to add, is not motivated by any personal antipathy toward either the office of the Pontiff, or toward the Catholic Church in general. My own alienation from Catholicism arose for reasons that have to do with my understanding of the relationship between the human and the divine, and how that relationship can be expressed both individually and within a faith community. But I don't bear any grudges, even if I do find much within the structure, teaching, and exercise of authority within the Catholic Church that leaves a lot to be desired. Afterall, I recognise that this is also true of every church, regardless of denomination, because churches are inherently human structures and communities that are necessarily as flawed (and as profound) as the humanity by which they are composed.

Just how flawed is illustrated by the fact that, when I read media reports on the weekend of a speech given by Pope Benedict XVI, in which he allegedly drew on the comments of the medieval Byzantine Emperor, Manuel II Paleologus, to describe Islam as a faith of "evil" and "violence", I must confess that I rolled my eyes and muttered darkly to myself about bigotry and intolerance. Not that I had actually read Benedict's speech; I was simply prepared to believe the worst.

Now, this was both stupid and unjust. Stupid because, as a theology student, a person who has a keen interest in both science and philosophy, and a trade union official who has more than once defended an unfairly accused employee, I should simply have known better. Theology, science, philosophy, and trade unionism have all taught me the need for careful reasoning and examination, for asking questions and holding received information and scepticism in a necessary tension. Yet I promptly forgot that very lesson and jumped to conclusions. And this propensity to condemn before I knew the facts was unjust because, even if the media reports turned out to be true, I owed it to myself and to the seriousness of the issue, to make a proper enquiry into the matter and reach my own, evidence-based conclusions. Only by doing so could I have tested my own assumptions, measured the extent of my ignorance, and proceeded on a basis of justice.

And, of course, it turned out that, while the initial media reports were technically "correct" in that they did accurately report the quote from Manuel II Paleologus utilised by Pope Benedict in his speech, the media also failed to report the context of the speech or the reason why the Pope had used the offending quote. In other words, the media reports were incomplete and, ultimately, dead wrong.

Just how wrong is illustrated by thoughtful and revealing articles by Waleed Ali and Barney Zwartz in The Age newspaper. For the truth is, Pope Benedict had simply used the quote as a minor point illustrating his wider theme of the place of reason in faith. The quote itself asserts that the use of violence in religion is contrary to the will of God, and therefore irrational, and was made by Manuel II Paleologus as part of a conversation between himself and a Persian Islamic scholar. True, the quote is specifically aimed at Islam, and references the existence of "jihad" in the Islamic faith, but two things need to be noted. First, given the conversation from which the quote arises was between a Christian emperor and an Islamic scholar, it is hardly surprising that one should be critcising the other (and, presumably, vice versa). Secondly, and more importantly, as Waleed Ali points out, all the quote does is actually demonstrate what a poor grasp Manuel II Paleologus had of Islamic theology. Moreover, it seems the principal reason why Benedict used the quote was that he had only recently read the text from which it derives, and thus it was fresh in his mind.

To the extent that Benedict was guilty of anything, both Waleed Ali and Barney Zwartz illustrate that it was naivity, lack of clarity, and a failure of judgement. Naivity, in that it appears not to have occurred to Benedict that his words not only get reported around the world, they get reproduced in "soundbite" form that conveys none of the complexity and subtlety of the issue he is addressing. Lack of clarity, because he did not make it plain that his use of the quote was for illustrative purposes only, and did not represent his own views concerning Islam. And failure of judgement because it appears that Benedict did not allow the speech to be vetted by those officials within the Vatican who may have been more alert to its problematic aspects.

But this post is not a criticism of Pope Benedict; it is a criticism of me. Because my failure in this regard was much more serious. It was the rush to judgement, the failure to check my sources and make my own enquiries, the willingness to make assumptions and cast aspersions. The failure, in other words, to be a person of both reason and faith, to have allowed myself to adopt a sub-Christian response. It is not Benedict I accuse of bigotry and intolerance, but myself.

Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

For those who may be interested, Benedict's speech can be located here.

Talk to you soon,

BB

Quote for the Day: Originality consists in thinking for yourself, and not thinking unlike other people. (J. Fitzjames Stephen)

The Achilles Effect

I have come to the conclusion in recent years that the underlying existential malaise by which most people in the industrialised West are beset is insecurity. This is the apprehension - ranging in intensity from a nagging doubt to debilitating paranoia - that we are somehow not good enough, that we don’t measure up to expectations, that we are wasting our potential and are not sufficiently accomplished or successful. It is the desire for recognition, both in terms of acknowledgement from the rest of the world, as well as the signposts of that acknowledgement - material goods and wealth - that indicate we have fulfilled the expectations of others and been rewarded accordingly.

In its simplest form, this insecurity is the mistake of living in a state of dependency; that is, of being dependent on the regard of other people. It is the addiction of measurement and comparison: if we have achieved x, then we should receive y in return; and if this formula does not come about, then we have somehow “failed”. Moreover, we have not only “failed” in our own terms, we have “failed” in comparison to others. That is, compared to the accolades and accomplishments and material rewards which we imagine signify the “achievement” or “worth” of others when compared to ourselves.

Of course, this is not to say that it isn’t pleasant being well-regarded, or possessing a measure of financial security or material comfort. The problem is, however, that we tend to see these things not in terms of “goods” whose “value” is limited to and in themselves, but as somehow possessing a “value” which is indicative of our “worth” as human beings. Therefore, if we are not well-regarded, if our achievements don’t attract acclaim and recognition, if we don’t attain the material and financial indicators of success, we imagine that this is somehow a reflection on both our character as individuals and our quality as human beings. Thus, achieving an objective for its own sake is insufficient; unless the achievement coincides with wealth, or acclaim - or, preferably, both - we hold ourselves as somehow deficient.

This is not a modern phenomenon, but I do think it has been greatly intensified as a consequence of the immediacy of modern communications technology, and the vast wealth to be attained because of the scope and scale of the industrialised global economy. I forget who said it, but a quote I heard in my teens has stayed with me ever since: a genuinely technological society is one in which every new invention is immediately superseded. I think a similar thing has occurred within the sphere of human achievement. Whereas previously, it was only within the remit of the relatively few educated elites to achieve any significant measure of fame (or notoriety), this opportunity has now extended, by virtue of mass education and technical literacy, to the bulk of the population. Moreover, because there is such a sheer mass of means by which “ordinary” people can became famous or infamous, the durability of any noteworthiness they might achieve has become similarly brittle. The five minutes of fame have been whittled down to thirty seconds - if you’re lucky.

Moreover, it now appears as though fame or notoriety need not rest on achievement, but on publicity - that is, the ability to put oneself before, and promote oneself to, a mass audience that acts as a consumer of the “product” of the self. The transience of pop groups, for example, the proliferation of “one hit wonders” who are essentially manufactured for the purpose of releasing a single song or album targeted toward a particular consumer group, and who then disappear forever, are indicative of this condition of perpetual cultural vagrancy. There are innumerable other examples.

Ironically, it appears that permanence of achievement now largely occurs in those fields where there is virtually no media coverage, or only a limited - or non-mainstream - “consumer” audience. Science, literature (“pop“ literature excluded), the performing arts (Hollywood "blockbusters" aside), and sports without a mass media coverage all fall within this category. Because the pressure for constant publicity and “achievement” to sustain both media and audience interest is absent, the practitioners within these fields tend to produce a sustained record of achievement over long periods; the actual “incidents” of achievement may be widely separated in time, but the overall record is impressive in both its duration and output.

But this is precisely the kind of process that is both repellent to the ratings-driven media, and unsatisfactory in terms of helping most people cope with the problem of insecurity. And that's because the people who both operate and consume the products of media tend to be extremely short-term in their thinking. Achievement is not important; immediacy is. Now is the thing. Forget what is coming over the horizon; it hasn’t happened yet. Forget what is in the past; it is irrelevant. True existence occurs only in the present.

Which brings us back to the problem of insecurity, a malaise that essentially arises because we confound the present for the future and demand today what we hope for tomorrow. And if we can’t achieve this impossibility, if we can’t have now those things which others have attained through hard work or good luck in the past, we assume that there is “something wrong” with us, that we have somehow “failed”. In a cultural environment in which fame or notoriety are substituted for achievement, everybody wants to be “somebody”, to have somehow left an imprint on society, no matter how fleeting or ephemeral. Even if it means behaving like a prat or exposing our genitals on a nationally televised “reality” TV program, this is preferable to having been a “nobody”.

I call this the Achilles Effect. In Greek mythology, Achilles’ was given a choice: either a long and prosperous life, after which he would be forgotten; or a short, glorious life, and everlasting fame after death. He chose the latter, and after a brief existence spent slaughtering innumerable hapless opponents, was killed before the walls of Troy. This seems to be the choice that people increasingly make today: fleeting, even ephemeral “fame” in preference to anonymity, because they somehow equate fame with worth. But they are kidding themselves: just as Achilles spent his whole life spreading misery and destruction, only to fall senselessly in someone else’s war, so the modern-day wannabes discover that even fame cannot quench their sense of insecurity; once their moment in the sun has passed, the anxiety remains, the thirst is unslaked. The answer to insecurity lies not where they sought it, but within themselves; unfortunately, they have expended their inner reserves chasing a phantom.

And the impact of the Achilles Effect? In his seminal book, The Psychopathic Mind (Jason Aronson Inc, Northvale, 1988), J Reid Meloy makes the following, chilling observation: It is my impression, and fear, that psychopathy, and psychopathic disturbance, is a growing clinical and therefore sociocultural phenomenon...I cite (the) higher proportion of stranger homicides in the past decade...and the increasing incidence of serial murder in the past several decades...(Researchers suggest) that children reared in a predominantly image-based, nonlinear, multimedia, briefly attentive society may not develop the deeper, unconscious levels of identity and meaning and therefore manifest a low level of empathy and a higher level of generalized anxiety. (p. 6-7, parenthesis inserted).

Achilles was a psychopath; the last thing we need is to be breeding a generation of latter-day equivalents.

Talk to you soon,

BB

Quote for the day: Nature's wants are small, while those of opinion are limitless. (Seneca)

The World of Woof

When I was a child, I had a cat.

Or, to be more accurate, the family had a cat of which I was particularly fond. He was an ugly, scruffy, dopey lump of a cat called Sylvester. And, yep, you guessed it, he was piebald.

Sylvester’s mum, Samantha, was a sleek, lithe tortoise-shell with soft fur and sharp teeth. She belonged to no-one except my father. Samantha came and went as she pleased, and on cold winter evenings settled herself comfortably on Dad’s lap (probably because his chair was closest to the lounge-room heater). Samantha was smart.

Sylvester, by contrast, was not only dumb, but looked like he’d gone ten rounds with a rock crushing machine. His fur was patchy and disordered, and his skin was lumpy and flaky – a kind of feline dermatitis, I think. He was constantly getting into fights with neighbourhood cats, a fact evidenced by the red welts that would occasionally appear on his nose, a raking scar of which the most stereotypical Prussian duelist would have been proud.

I called him Woof. I called him Woof because I didn’t have a dog. Well, there was a dog – Danny, a Welsh corgie – but he belonged to my mother. So Woof was Woof because I didn’t have a dog. But if you think that’s stupid (and, remember, I was only a kid), you should have seen this cat.

Woof loved sitting on things. All you needed to do was put a scrap of paper on the floor, and he’d be sitting on said scrap within instants. Woof also loved sitting on my lap – but not when I was wearing trackie daks made out of parachute silk. Try as he might (including inserting his powerful claws into my flesh), Woof just couldn’t keep a grip if I was wearing my silky, shiny TDs; he’d get on my lap, settle down, then slide off. But he kept on trying, no matter how much I was convulsing with laughter.

Woof was also forever getting his tail caught in the heater. We had one of those old things with the three squares that could be ignited all together, or just the outer two, or just the middle square. It also had a guard rail that was supposedly meant to keep things out. But not Woof's tail. Whenever warming himself in front of the heater, he invariably managed to singe his tail. There'd be a sudden smell of singed hair, then a squeal, then Woof would fly out of the room like a blazing comet. You would have thought he'd learn after the first time - but he never did.

Woof wasn’t much of a hunter, either. Samantha regularly deposited birds and mice on our back doorstep. The closest Woof came to the call of the wild occurred one morning when he was sneaking up on a bunch of birds in our front garden. They were feeding at the seed-bowl my father had placed on the lawn, and Woof decided they were too tempting a treat even for him to pass up. Gradually, painfully, he slunk up behind the birds, belly to the ground, ready to pounce…

Suddenly, the birds took off. I suspect the wind shifted and they literally caught wind of Woof. Whatever the reason, they took off in a blizzard of feathers and flapping wings – leaving Woof staring at the now bird-less seed bowl with an expression of comical exasperation. I cracked up – but what really killed me was Woof’s response. With an almost visible shrug of the shoulders, he decided to make the best of a bad situation and moseyed on over to the seed bowl – and started eating the bird seed! It was one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen, a touching combination of incompetence and endless optimism.

But what I remember most about Woof was his affection. Every morning, without fail, as we stumbled into the kitchen for breakfast, Woof would leave his own feed bowl and come and say hello. Just a quick brush up against the legs, then back to his own food; but it was more than Samantha ever did. Woof was a people pussy.

I said in an earlier post that I’m a dog person – and I am. But Woof was almost a dog; he certainly had enough character. Cats are, by most measures, the psychopaths of the animal world, utterly self-absorbed and indifferent to others. Woof was different; no Lone Wolf he, just a big, silly cat who liked being around others. He grew old and died many years ago, but I’ve still got his photo on the fridge. He was a cool dude, and I miss him.

Talk to you soon,

BB

Quote for the Day: Cats are a species that will tolerate humans until the day when someone invents a can opener that can be oprated by paws. (Terry Pratchett)

The Moral Environment

I recently read an article in Crosslight, the newspaper of the Uniting Church in Australia (Synod of Victoria and Tasmania), on the issue of climate change. The article detailed a report by the Uniting Church’s Justice and International Mission Unit which stated that climate change was “not only” an environmental crisis, but a humanitarian issue, as it will mean suffering and death for millions, especially in the Third World. This being the case, there was a moral responsibility to undertake the necessary changes to prevent the worst effects of climate change from occurring.

I certainly agree with the assertion of moral responsibility, especially since the First World has historically caused much of the pollution over the last two hundred years that has precipitated climate change. But I am puzzled - and frankly frustrated - by the apparent separation of the fact of climate change - “only” an environmental crisis - from its moral dimension. As if the impact of climate change - the death and displacement of millions - was somehow separated from its advent; or, at least, was separated until such time as the effect started impacting on humans.

A quote attributed by the Crosslight article to the director of the Justice and International Mission Unit encapsulates this point: Climate change is as much a humanitarian issue as it is an environmental one.

But this immediately raises the question: when was climate change never a humanitarian issue? Was there ever a time when climate change was “only” something that impacted on the environment? How is it that we see ourselves as somehow separate from the ecosphere in which we live - which is, indeed, responsible for our being here (and for our continued survival)?

It seems to me that this dichotomy, however unintentional, exposes the great fallacy in the thinking of many Christians (and, indeed, of most humans, irrespective of their faith perspective). This is the fallacy of human “superiority” over (ie: separation from) other forms of life. Most often, this superiority manifests itself debates over abortion and euthanasia, wherein it is posited that human life under all conditions and circumstances is “sacrosanct”. However, it more insidiously manifests itself in this notion that humans are somehow “above” the natural world, and that life on planet Earth exists solely and exclusively for the benefit of humankind - indeed, that life on Earth somehow could not exist without human life.

But this is a fatal delusion, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, climate change was a humanitarian issue from the moment human actions started disrupting the natural weather systems. Mass technology combined with mass population has resulted in mass pollution; and that has overwhelmed the environment’s ability to rid itself of human-produced pollutants. Thus, while the quality of human life may superficially have improved vastly over the last two centuries, the truth is, we have been all the while rushing headlong toward ecological disaster and all that implies for the dignity and ongoing integrity of human life - in other words, the humanitarian issue was there from the very beginning.

Secondly, it is simply nonsense to conceive of the effects of climate change as “only” environmental, or “only” limited in its scope to non-human life. Humans might very well “sit on top” of the food chain, but that only means that we are utterly dependent on every other form of life on this planet. Remove enough of those life forms through climate change, and the “food chain” collapses, even if extinctions “only” occur among those species upon which humans are, generally speaking, not directly dependent (such as insects and small amphibians). The result will be the inevitable extinction of the human species, because the plants and animals upon which we are dependent will have lost their sources of food and life.

Thirdly, the continued pollution of the environment and its consequences represents a failure of humanity’s moral understanding of our relationship to creation. The earth does not exist for the purposes of our unlimited exploitation or “dominion”; we exist as part of the creative expression of God, as part of the cosmic act of loving creation that brought the universe into being. This does not mean that the advent of the universe and its life forms was just a “creaturely event”; rather, it implies that creation, being an act of love from God, was also a moral occasion, an ongoing process of inter-relationship that has an unfolding moral narrative. We can choose to respond to that moral narrative by understanding and entering into our relationship with the rest of creation; or we can reject that narrative. And this rejection, as with any rejection of any other moral narrative in our lives, has a necessary consequence: in this case, the destruction of our environment and, ultimately, ourselves.

This moral narrative of creation was brought home to me when I watched a television interview in the 90’s between Clive James and the renowned evolutionary scientist, the late Stephen Jay Gould. Gould stated quite specifically that life on earth - indeed, life in the cosmos as a whole - is not dependent on the continued existence of the human species. If we annihilate ourselves through nuclear war or environmental destruction, life on earth will continue. We cannot wipe out micro-organisms, for example; and there are creatures living on the bottom of the sea and in the depths of the earth for which events on the surface have no meaning whatsoever. The failure of the human species to enter into the moral narrative of creation will result in our annihilation; but life will continue, and maybe, evolve one day into a species that does grasp the invitation God has issued through the universe.

The choice is ours.

Talk to you soon,

BB

Quote for the Day: Human consciousness arose but a minute before midnight on the geological clock. Yet we mayflies try to bend an ancient world to our purposes, ignorant perhaps of the messages buried in its long history. Let us hope that we are still in the early morning of our April day. (Stephen Jay Gould)

Hair Of The Dog

I’ve been thinking for the last week that I’ve got a dog hair stuck to the tip of my tongue.

Now, before you start suggesting weird or perverted reasons as to why this should be the case, let me state quite categorically that, in my household at least, having dog fur gumming up the works is par for the course. This arises from the fact that, when I first started going out with my Dearly Beloved, I also entered into a relationship with a pair of black-furred mongrels whose business it is to moult all year round. The upshot is that we don’t have any carpet; we don’t need any, as the puppies are busy supplying their own dark-hued deep pile shag.

Unfortunately, they don’t restrict their activities to the floor. They need only jump up on the bed for the barest instant for them to leave dark strands all over the sheets and pillows. Which is why I’ve banned them from the bedroom. Of course, my Dearly Beloved, being the sweet, tender-hearted creature she is, constantly ignores this ban on the grounds that the “doggies only want a cuddle”. And don’t think they don’t know she’s a soft touch, either. I might have put the fear of me into them, but they know she’s a safer haven than your average embassy. Forget political asylum; with my Dearly Beloved, our dogs have diplomatic immunity.

Not that I want you thinking I’m not a dog person. I am. In fact, as a general rule, I like dogs much better than cats. But only certain kinds of dogs. I mean, if you’re going to get a dog, I figure you might as well get a proper dog. An Irish Wolfhound, for instance. Or a Great Dane. Or a Rhodesian Ridgeback. That’s my idea of a proper dog. A creature with stature, with gravitas, with presence. Not one of your piddling, yappy little toy dogs, like the detestable Pomeranian or Poodle. Erich Maria Remarque, author of All Quiet on the Western Front, may have observed that little men are so often the cause of the world’s troubles, but I reckon with dogs it’s pretty much the same.

Okay – that’s a slight generalization, I admit. Afterall, I like some smaller breeds like Staffies and Bullies and Westies. But that’s only because they’ve got character. They’re big dogs who just stayed (physically) small. Still, it’s true that every dog has its drawbacks. Crap all over your backyard is one; and, with certain breeds, dog hair is the other.

Which brings me back rather neatly to my original point. I’ve been trying for the last week to ascertain the precise location of the dog hair I’m sure is stuck to my tongue. But probe and poke and scratch and search though I might, the blasted thing remains damnably elusive. Obviously, at some stage during my sleep in the last week, I’ve rolled over and ingested a hair deposited by one of the mutts while they were being coddled by my Dearly Beloved. Not that knowing the source of said hair has relieved my torment by one iota; if anything, it’s just made matters worse. Afterall, if it was my Dearly Beloved who invited the dogs onto the bed, why hasn’t she been the one to suffer the consequences? I tell you, sometimes the cosmos isn’t just indifferent, it’s downright vindictive!

In fact, I’m beginning to wonder if the hair I think is floating around in my mouth isn’t just a phantom, the echo of a doggy follicle with which I may have once come into unwitting oral contact, but which has long since departed, leaving only its memory on my mouth’s sensory receptors. Which, if you think about it, is actually even more depressing: I can feel the benighted thing, but it just ain’t there anymore to be extracted, thus ensuring my irritation continues. Therefore, I won’t think about it; or, at least, I’ll stop thinking about it as soon as I can convince myself that I haven’t got a hair stuck in my mouth and that there’s no need to twist my tongue into a pretzel trying to dislodge it…

Anyhoo, that’s the explanation I’m offering for my recent silence on this page. Beats me when normal service will be resumed.

Talk to you soon,

BB

Quote for the Day: Dogs feel very strongly that they should always go with you in the car, in case the need should arise for them to bark violently at nothing right in your ear. (Dave Barry)

Fools, Damned Fools, and Creationists

The Australian media recently reported a statement by the federal Minister for Science that she was not in favour of “intelligent design” (ID) being taught alongside evolution in Australian public schools. Her reasoning, according to the reports, was that “Christian ideology” does not equate to scientific fact.

Whilst the Minister’s decision is laudable, the sentiments upon which they are based are troubling. Afterall, how “Christian” is ID? Indeed, is it at all fair to characterise ID as “Christian ideology”?

Many proponents of ID would agree with the Minister: “intelligent design” is not about Christian belief. Instead, the “intelligent designer” alluded to by ID is merely a “higher intelligence”, not necessarily the God of the Bible, and ID is not so much concerned with identifying this “intelligence” as ascribing the existence of the cosmos to their activities.

The truth, however, is that this is just an attempt by ID apologists to gain secular “credibility” by (nominally) eschewing any notion that ID is aligned to any one faith. The reality is that the proponents of ID are almost entirely Christians – that is, they are conservative, literalist Christians, people who regard the Bible as the product of God’s “divine authorship”, and the Book of Genesis as a factual description of the formation of the cosmos and the development of life on earth. Indeed, they produce books and DVDs and television programs which purport to “scientifically prove” the literal truth of the Book of Genesis.

The problem with tackling ID and the theological and scientific sham which it represents lies in understanding what it actually argues. Simply put, ID rests on an appeal to “irreducible complexity”. This notion states that examination of even relatively simple biological structures such as human cells reveals within them further, smaller structures that are too complex to have been formed through the process of natural selection. In other words, the very intricacy of these structures suggests, not that they evolved over millions of years through random processes of biological change, but that they were deliberately designed with their complexity “built in” from the beginning.

In other words, the creation story in Genesis is literally true because evolution by natural selection cannot explain the existence of such complex structures within supposedly basic formations such as human cells.

It’s an impressively elegant argument built around apparently unassailable logic. Unfortunately for ID – or, more relevantly, for those who might be taken in by ID apologetics – this elegance derives not from its concise explanation of natural phenomena, but from its simplistic and misleading reading of biological science.

To begin, the proponents of ID are, to an extent, correct: evolution by natural selection can’t explain all the observable phenomena of the biological world, nor can it provide a complete account of the presence of life on earth or the emergence of the human species. But here’s what the ID-ologues don’t tell you: no biological scientist worth their salt claims natural selection is the “be all and end all” mechanism underpinning life on earth.

The essence of natural selection, as proposed by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace, is that those species which are the “best fit” for their environment leave more offspring, whereas those who are not leave fewer offspring and, eventually, become extinct. If the environment changes, those species who are coincidentally better suited to the new environment flourish, whereas those adapted to the old environment decrease.

However, Darwin and Wallace proposed their theory of evolution by natural selection a whole generation before Gregor Mendel uncovered the process of genetic inheritance. Mendel (who, ironically, was an Augustinian monk) discovered that the process of genetic inheritance in individuals can lead to atypical variations that were not representative in the wider population. These variations occurred independently of environment, and could be beneficial, detrimental, or neutral in their effect. Moreover, such variations were transferable across individuals within a species through breeding, thereby enriching (or weakening) the genetic structure of the species as a whole. Over time, the accumulation or diminution of such variations has as significant an impact as environment on determining the survival or otherwise of entire species.

In other words, while evolution through natural selection might be the foundational mechanism through which biological sciences explain the existence and variety of life on earth, it is not the only such mechanism which science has identified as meaningfully involved in this process. Thus, the suggestion by ID apologists that evolutionary theory is fundamentally flawed because of its reliance on natural selection, conveniently and misleadingly ignores the richness of biological science and the discovery of the multiple processes – such as genetic inheritance – which impact on species evolution.

But what about this supposed “irreducible complexity”? Actually, as an argument, it’s a non-event. Scientists have known for decades about the various structures within a cell, such as the nucleus, and the even smaller structures contained therein (such as DNA). Indeed, there are even smaller structures than the average human cell called prokaryotes which exist in the human body in enormous numbers. And as physicists and chemists have discovered, the atomic structure that underpins all material being is far more complex than we imagined; there are sub-atomic particles even smaller than the electrons, neutrons, and protons with which most people are familiar: strange beasts with exotic names such as fermions, leptons, neutrinos, bosons, and so forth. The point being that there is no such thing as a universe in which a point of “irreducible complexity” occurs; as human understanding of the cosmos expands, so the richness and amazing subtlety of natural phenomena becomes increasingly apparent. This is complexity, pure and simple; to assign “irreducibility” to it is not only ignorant, it is the height of arrogance: it is reducing God to human dimensions.

So how “Christian” is ID? Is it fair to describe ID as “Christian ideology”? I would argue that ID is nothing of the sort. To be sure, it does represent an attempt by certain Christians to re-package their literalist interpretation of the Bible in “scientific” terms and offer it as a viable alternative to biological science; but this very fact strips such attempts of their “Christian” status. For ID is, supposedly, an attempt to explain the existence of the material universe, not a means for articulating the relationship between the human and the divine. It is an attempt to de-legitimise science by utilising, however incorrectly (or ironically), the language of science.

Christianity is not concerned with the language of science or explaining the natural underpinnings to the cosmos. Instead, Christianity is a “theology” – it is concerned with the language and Word of God as the ultimate and authoritative articulation of the relationship between humanity and God. Granted, these must necessarily be conveyed in human terms and through human means; and these terms and means will contain the flaws inherent in our broken humanity. But the point of Christianity is not to explain how we got here but why we are here, and why our presence necessarily involves us in a relationship with God.

To be sure, as science brings us closer to a deeper understanding of the natural processes underpinning the cosmos, the experience of majesty and sense of wonder these discoveries generate can provide a useful insight into the human relationship with the divine. But in many respects, ID is an attempt to shrink away from this majesty, to turn our backs on the vast horizons scientific discovery opens to us; it is an attempt to reduce God to a kind of paternal cosmic tinkerer who slapped the universe together and manipulates the outcome like a puppet master. But this is neither the language of science, nor is it in any sense Christian.

Ultimately, ID neither accurately describes the universe as it exists, nor does it point to that vaster, greater communion to which God wills all creation; it is just a petulant child, arms crossed angrily (and defensively) across its chest, its hostile frown a scared and self-indulgent rejection of an approach to both the cosmos and faith which is vast, deep, timeless, and always growing.

Talk to you soon,

BB

Quote for the Day: If you think education is expensive - try ignorance. (Derek Bok)