Tag Archives: religion

Creation

September 25, 2009 Tim Jones 5 Comments

The film Creation went on general release in the UK today, and as I’m just back from a lunchtime viewing, here are a few thoughts on the movie while it’s still fresh in my mind.

finch — Finch with fig, California (Tim Jones)

To cut to the chase: enjoyable film, with great performances from Paul Bettany as Charles Darwin and Jennifer Connelly as his wife Emma. I’m giving it 4 out of 5 stars.

Very odd start though. I arrived at 12.10 for a 12.15 showing and had the theatre entirely to myself. By 12.30 ish, when the ads were over, the final audience had grown to six people. I know most folk can’t just knock off for the afternoon, but I found it surprising all the same; clearly not one for the pensioners.

I’ve made a point of not reading most of the Creation reviews already out there; just one or two quickly once over. So I’m relatively untainted but sufficiently informed to pick up on some of the obvious criticisms.

One of those criticisms has concerned the film’s factual accuracy. But as few viewers will have read the various biographies and letters, it strikes me that the emphasis should be more on identifying only serious material misrepresentations – and overall I don’t believe there are any (an exception is Huxley’s character – read on).

I was pleased to see certain events included: the failure to ‘civilise’ the Fuegan kids, the water cures, the influence of Hooker & Huxley, Darwin’s animosity with his local church, and Wallace’s letter.

At times though, I felt some incidents and issues had been slotted in because they had to be there – as if the director had a check list of ‘leave that out and the Darwin aficionados will play hell’. That’s how I felt about Huxley’s appearance anyhow. Arguably, Huxley came in to his own in the affairs of the Origin only after its publication – exactly the point at which this film ends. But the filmmakers have done T.H. an injustice all the same; the take-away impression of the man is just wrong. Richard Dawkins wasn’t overjoyed with the portrayal, and I can see why; the character is out of kilter with the historic record, and may as well have worn a ‘new atheist’ sash. (I find New Atheist a silly term; what is an old atheist? – Quiet?). Intellectually, the portrayal is overly one-dimensional and aggressive. Physically, Toby Jones is too short to portray a man whose height and presence in reality matched his intellect. They got Hooker’s whiskers down to a tee, so why not Huxley?

The core narrative revolves around Charles’s relationship with, and thoughts about, his daughter Annie. I don’t know the actor who played Annie, but she has an obvious future in Hollywood. We don’t get to know the other children anything like so closely as we do Annie; and the intellectual, as well as emotional, bond between Annie and Darwin is particularly well developed. There is something of the co-conspirator about Annie – a sense of allegiance lacking in Emma until a reluctant appearance in the final scenes.

The various ghost sequences have been criticised, but again, I just saw these as a device to illustrate Darwin’s pre-occupation. I don’t think he actually ran about the streets chasing his dead daughter (but please correct me if you know different).

All the themes in the movie ultimately link back to the Origin and what it stands for. One of the more human incarnations of that influence is the Emma – Charles relationship. Here I’d liked to have seen Emma’s philosophy explored a little more – even if the detailed story-line were credibly fabricated (biographers do this all the time). I guess we can never know someone’s innermost thoughts on life, the universe, and everything – no matter how many letters we read; but I felt the middle ground that our two protagonists must have found could have stood a little more exploration.

And never mind the movie, I find this theme of different fundamental philosophies within a relationship fascinating. I wonder how many couples today mirror Charles and Emma? This is a personal blog, so I can say that I would, for example, find it challenging at best to live with a partner who I knew was going to hell. That said, I have friends in atheist/Christian marriages who appear to get on just fine.

Which brings us to the big issue: is there a conflict between science and religion? Back to Huxley, I suspect the director intentionally set him up as the fall guy on this score; he can safely be hated for his total lack of religious accommodation early on in the film. Hooker does pop up now and again to reinforce the atheist line (the word is not used – nor is Huxley’s later derived ‘agnostic’), but never with Huxley’s brand of enthusiastic venom.

So what will a religious person make of this movie? After all, wasn’t it the possible religious reaction, and associated reduction in box-office $, that was behind the recent stink over US distribution (the film now has a US distributor).

There is nothing in Creation more offensive than a portrayal of the facts of evolution as they were understood in Darwin’s day. And Darwin’s encounter with Jenny the orangutan, which is beautifully represented in the film (well it’s not really acting is it) leaves little more to be said on the question of our own evolution. I’m not about to dive into a lengthy science-religion debate, suffice to say my position is that there are elements of religion as defined by some that are – on the evidence – incompatible with some definitions of science; and that the science-religion debate is an important one with practical consequences for us all.

God’s official in Creation, the local vicar, is played by Jeremy Northam. In one memorable scene, Northam tries to comfort Darwin in his torn anguish, which only sparks a sarcastic tirade from Darwin on the delights of the God-designed parasitic wasp larvae and the burrowing habits of intestinal worms. Northam’s sincerity and Bettany’s losing his temper are both convincing.

I live within an hour’s drive of the real Down House, and know it pretty well. While the house in the movie was not Down, the exterior feel – with large bay windows and patio doors opening to the garden captures the right flavour.

Down House - rear from the garden (photo Tim Jones)

The study has a similar feel to English Heritage’s reproduction of the real thing at Down – even down to Darwin’s screened-off privy. Likewise, the lounge and dining room, while never visible in wide-shot, have an attractive homely ambiance. The village road and church scenes are consistent with the feel of the real Down.

It’s not the end of the world, but a sandwalk scene was noticeable by its absence. The sandwalk for those who don’t know it is a gravelly path leading into the woods near Down House. I tend to imagine Darwin pacing down the sandwalk, under the trees or sheltering from the rain; to be sure – it’s a nice spot for thinking.

Interesting angle on the sandwalk (photo Sven klinge) — Interesting angle on the sandwalk (photo tks Sven klinge)

To wind up, this movie contains all the main factual, scientific, cultural, and emotional elements I associate with Darwin in this important period in his life. Issues around the compatibility of science and religion are met head on through illustration (if a little caricatured) rather than tedious debate, and we get to see the human, sensitive and fragile side of a scientist.

There is plenty here to enjoy in the theatre, but also much to take home and mull over – with your partner perhaps :-).

Go see it ! 4/5.

biology, Philosophy of Science, religion

Darwin, Dennett and Dumbo’s Magic Feather

March 29, 2009 Tim Jones Leave a comment

Since I posted this blog, the BHA have issued a video of the whole event. So for a summary – read the blog; for the whole smash…here it is!

Disney’s Dumbo the Elephant got rid of his magic feather. He realised it was just a temporary crutch that gave him the courage to be all that he could be.

For philosopher Daniel Dennett, speaking on ‘A Darwinian Perspective on Religions’ , religion is just like Dumbo’s feather – a crutch we can do without. This is a summary of the British Humanist Association (BHA) event I joined earlier this month at South Place Ethical Society’s Conway Hall in London.

Daniel Dennett speaking at the BHA event at Conway Hall (photo Tim Jones)

Chairing this second lecture in the BHA’s Darwin 200 special lecture series, Richard Dawkins introduced Daniel Dennett as the scientists’ philosopher; someone who takes time out to keep up to date with the scientific literature. And strangely perhaps, it is Dennett the philosopher, not Dawkins the scientist, of these two champions of atheism, who tends to take the more studious, less obviously attacking, line on religion.

Daniel Dennett with Richard Dawkins at Conway Hall (photo Tim Jones)

Taking to the podium in cheerful good humour, prompted in part by the obvious similarity between his own bearded visage and that of the cardboard Darwin cut-out standing stage left, Dennett launched enthusiastically into the reverse engineering of religion.

What was in store for the world’s religions? Would they sweep the planet? Would they die out rapidly or drift out of fashion – like the smoking habit ? Or would they transform themselves into creedless moral entities – keeping up the good work but without the mumbo-jumbo? Whatever the future holds for religion, Dennett’s mantra is that if we are going to have any steer over it, we had better understand it – from a scientific point of view.

A Darwinian Perspective on Religion (Photo Tim Jones)

Dennett treats religion as a Darwinian phenomenon. Human beings put a lot of energy into it – so what’s the biological justification behind it?

Religions, Dennett argues, are the inevitable product of word evolution. He see words simply as memes that can be pronounced. Memes – the name coined by Dawkins to describe units of cultural information transfer that are in some ways similar to genes. Further, words and letters represent a digitisation of language, meaning they can be accurately replicated – even without understanding, because of their consistency with a semantic alphabet. So however crazy an idea expressed in words might be, it can still multiply irrespective of its meaning being understood or making rational sense.

How might the first word memes have come about? Using a Darwinian analogy, Dennett likened the first word memes to wild animals evolving through natural selection in which “evolution is the amplification of something that almost never happens” . As such, it would only have taken someone to give an arbitrary name to a strange noise in the woods one day (fairy, goblin, monster etc.), for that name to eventually get around a wider community. The seeds of superstition would have been sown. Some notable memes, by virtue of a special repulsiveness or attractiveness, would have survived into folklore. It is these memes, Dennett said, that are “the ancestors of the gods” at the core of the world’s religions.

Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett (Photo Sven Klinge)

But that was only phase one. When these ‘wild memes’ are purposefully looked at, studied, and manipulated by people, they become more powerful. Some humans (e.g.priests) might dedicate themselves to keeping such memes alive and thriving, even when by themselves they are no longer very convincing. The modern religions resulting from this process and that still survive today represent a tiny fraction of all past religions, and are analogous to surviving languages or species.

Good design means these husbanded memes have inbuilt mechanisms for survival. For example, many religions make man a ‘slave to the meme’ – it’s called subservience.

Dennett described an interesting possible influence of the placebo effect in our cultural religious development. Human susceptability to ritual may be a result of our reproductively successful ancestors being the ones who – through receptiveness to placebo – enjoyed the health benefits of shaman ritual. Other self-maintenance devices built into modern religions include the glorification of incomprehensibility, warnings not to engage with reasonable criticism (on the basis that you’re talking to the Devil, and he’s a better debater than you), and the idea that a belief in a god is a pre-condition for morality.

And that brought Dennett near to his close, and us full circle to Dumbo, and the argument that we have religion because we need it. Dennett argued we no longer need the crutch represented by Dumbo’s feather. Indeed, it’s harmful to hang on to religion, what with the likes of cult suicides and death sentences for blasphemy. But religion is most harmful as a threat to a rational world view. And how does religion differ from other factors that disable rationality, such as drugs or alcohol? Only religion, Dennett said, “honours the disability”.

Also Interesting – Dennett’s debate last year with Robert Winston

Books, Philosophy of Science, religion

Run Over From Behind By A Bus

January 28, 2009 Tim Jones 2 Comments

Run over from behind by a bus. That’s how physicist and skeptic Professor Robert Park wants to go when his time is up.

Professor Robert 'Bob' Park and Jo Marchant, NewScientist (Photo Sven Klinge) — Professor Robert 'Bob' Park and Jo Marchant, NewScientist at the Royal Institution this evening (Photo Sven Klinge)

I joined Bob Park at the Royal Institution this evening to hear him talk about his new book – ‘Superstition: belief in the age of science’.

To be candid, I’m not sure we got much of an insight into the book, and with a good showing of the ‘usual suspects’ (purely based on my memory of familiar faces – National Secular Society, British Humanist Association, Brights, and atheists of other flavours no doubt – not to mention scientists) in the audience, this was pretty much preaching to the converted. But it didn’t matter; Bob came across as a great guy – gentle and sharp at the same time; but most of all – human.

Following an introduction by Jo Marchant from New Scientist, Bob launched straight into the tale of how two catholic priests had given him the last rites, having stumbled across him, unconscious, under a fallen giant oak. He had photographs to prove it, and that pretty much set the tone for the evening.

We, Bob explained, as homo-sapiens, had only been around for 35,000 years when he was a lad; but today we were 160,000 years old. How come? There’s just more evidence today – we have the 160k skull. And as we’ve only been civilised (read post-hunter/gatherer) for 10,000 years of that, it’s fair to say our brains aren’t exactly wired to watch TV, never mind cancel the irritating offer of a wi-fi connection that repeatedly popped up throughout Bob’s PC presentation. Yet despite our brains being rigged to escape tigers and seek out elusive berry bushes, those same brains do a pretty good job of enjoying concertos, fine art, and solving complex differential equations. So we are somehow managing to get along with less than fit-for-purpose equipment. The secret now is to understand it (the brain) sufficiently so that we can explain and counter some of its more noisome excesses – like war for example.

But getting on to superstition now, Bob explained that as early as 585 BC, Thales of Melitus had understood how solar eclipses came about, if not how to predict them. And yet armed with this and doubtless many other supportive evidences for causation, we failed to declare the rational age of man, but rather continued, as we still do, to be superstitious.

Religion is a superstition, Bob maintained. And with 90% of the global population subscribing to some form of religion, doesn’t that make most of us superstitious? In Bob’s reckoning, that should be a concern.

There followed a variety of God-Delusionesque arguments around the illogical multiplicity of christian and other religions, what I thought was a somewhat confused description and use of the anthropic principle, and a potted history of John Templeton and the Templeton prize. The prize is given to individuals who do research that advances ‘spiritual discovery’ – and is big bucks; the last one was £820,000 to Michael Heller – a cosmologist and catholic priest. We learnt that Templeton’s only dictate on value of the prize was that it should always exceed whatever Nobel is offering. Bob shared the results of a Templeton funded study that must be seen as an own goal in some quarters: a controlled trial to assess the value of prayer on the recovery rates of coronary bypass patients. No effect was found. Interestingly, there was a negative impact on the health of a sub-group of patients who were told up-front they would be receiving prayers.

We moved on to a debunking of the ten commandments as the basis for our moral code, and an appeal instead to the Golden Rule of ‘do unto others as you would have them do unto you’ , which Bob put down to sensible evolutionary development rather than any biblical dictate. (As it happens, A.C.Grayling challenged the attractiveness of the Golden Rule earlier this week – but that’s another story….).

On the role of science, Bob believes that if there is one thing science has to offer over everything else, it’s openness – a reference to open data sharing and peer review.

So what are we left with? A questioner from the audience asked what we all wonder now and again – ‘does life have any meaning?’

But Bob had already answered the question in his slides. There is no plan, and if there’s no plan, there’s no purpose beyond that we give to life ourselves. But, as Bob continued, “that doesn’t mean that we can’t have good lives, enjoyable lives, and part of doing that is the way we treat other people”. There’s nothing more to say.

Also of Interest

Professor Robert Park interview at the Guardian HERE

psychology, Rational, religion, Reviews, science communication, Visits

Dogs Are Spies From Venus

January 17, 2009 Tim Jones 6 Comments

Contrary to popular belief, dogs are in fact spies from Venus. So maintained University of London philosopher Steven Law at today’s Centre for Inquiry London ‘Weird Science’ event at Conway Hall.

Ben Goldacre (left) and John Law — Ben Goldacre (left) and Stephen Law at ‘Weird Science’ today. Photo:Tim Jones

In doing so, he applied the same faultless logic and interpretation of evidence used by young earth creationists, defending their belief that the universe is only 6000 years old. Say no more. And that was pretty much the tone for a day of talks on the science of the weird, wacky, and flaky variety, from Ben Goldacre (”Bad Science” in the Guardian), Professors of anomolous psychology Richard Wiseman and Chris French, and philosopher Stephen Law.

Before sharing what a great show this was, let me digress for a bit on CFI London itself. CFI London are at pains to explain in their FAQ that they don’t see science and reason as the be all and end all, but their positioning, and the topics they choose to discuss, for me at least force the issue of the incompatibility of science and religion. Once you engage in a discussion on human psychology and the concept of what it means to be rational, the polite separation of science and religion becomes difficult to maintain. It will be interesting to see how CFI’s event programme and various potential allegiances with secular interests develop.

Anyhow – it was a great show. Richard Wiseman, hotfoot from an evening debunking mediums with his mate Derren Brown, illustrated how easily our perceptions can be fooled and our attention directed. Familiar gestalt switch examples, like the rabbit-duck picture, made an appearance, along with excerpts from Richard’s various TV appearances, including a hilarious debunking of firewalkers, and these clips: the amazing floating cork, and the colour changing card trick.

You might remember Chris French, a psychology professor from Goldsmiths, as the guy who organised the dowsing trials on Richard Dawkins’ ‘Enemies of Reason’ TV show. French re-lived with us that demonstration of the refractoriness of dowsers’ belief in the face of out and out debunking, and shared the results of a study that aligned personality traits with the likelihood of belief in conspiracy theories. Those more prone to belief tend to (a) have low trust in people, (b) feel alienated from society, (c) are quick to make assumptions from partial evidence.

Writer, broadcaster, and medical doctor Ben Goldacre, while outspoken and opinionated, sticks to subject areas he knows something about. That’s why he doesn’t address environmental issues and such like in his column and blog; their complexity not lending itself to case-based, winnable on evidence, 650 word analyses.

Ben shared his trademark disgust at alternative medicine and quackery, but majored on the rise and demise of medicine – through the Golden Age from the 30’s to the 70’s – after which the low hanging fruit dried up and major breakthroughs fizzled out. His point – we should all get real that our level of understanding of much desease and suffering is still pretty minimal and (my words) – shit happens. Although Ben’s book ‘Bad Science’ is still hot off the presses, his words reminded me of another honest text with a medical flavour – ‘The Rise and Fall of Modern Medicine’ by doctor and Telegraph columnist James Le Fanu; check it out.

Mainstream newspapers, and particularly their ‘humanities graduate’ editors (I’m sure he’s not talking about scientifically trained SciComs Grads here) got it in the neck big time, as did the various PR and press agencies that feed them. Why, when literary criticism of the highest intellectual level gets column space, do we not see science coverage of the same professional calibre? Goldacre also, admirably, subscribes to the BBC Horizon dumb down theory. (There are still Horizon dumb down deniers out there – believe it or not.)

Ben’s closing comments were encouraging – but not for mainstream conventional print journalism. He saw no solution to the dire journalistic picture he’d painted – it’s simply what the market wants. But the rise of the blog is changing everything, cutting out a middle man who is adding less and less value. And if we doubt a blog’s content? – check the source references; all good blogs provide the links.

education, News, Politics, Rational, religion

Reverend Reiss Causes Stir At Science Festival

September 13, 2008 Tim Jones 1 Comment

Two real hoo-hahs have gone down in the world of UK science this week. At the British Association Festival of Science in Liverpool, the Director of Education at the Royal Society, Rev.Prof.Michael Reiss, appeared to support at least some discussion of creationism in school science classes. At the same festival, embryologist and TV science star Robert Winston stirred up journalists and festies alike with further criticism of what he sees as the irresponsible behaviour of the super-atheist clan (Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens et al). This post relates to the Reiss storm; here is a podcast featuring Reiss that accompanied his entry on the Guardian Science Blog on 11th September, and Reiss’s pre-presentation press brief from the BA.

Reiss’s comments are surprising and, given his position and the ammunition he is handing to less moderate interests, politically puzzling. The arguments for and against debate of non-scientific, non-evidence-based, and logic-deficient world views in school science classes have been done to death (the comments on Reiss’s statement on the Guardian Science Blog say it all).

My personal stance is that it is important in schools to explicitly state what science is not, as well as what it is. Science is not a methodology for analysing non-evidence-based beliefs, which includes most religious beliefs as self defined. It is a separate issue if a student wants to argue a religion is evidence based; that’s a good discussion topic for the religious studies class. There would be less angst all round if boundaries, rules, and definitions were more clearly defined in this way.

It is the duty of the educational authority (in the broadest sense of the term, but here including Michael Reiss) to agree the ground rules, and to instruct and enable teachers to relay them to children at the start of term. It boils down to making sure kids know up front what science is and what it is not.

There are two reasons this has not happened. First, the authority setting the rules is itself confused over what science is; and second, there is political comfort in maintaining that ambiguity in an atmosphere where the setting of any boundary is seen as an implied attack on anything lying outside it. The first weakness may be countered with a relentless appeal to reason, defense of the scientific method, and political lobby. The second requires political courage from our leaders, faced with the inescapable truth that the intellectually honest position, without vindictive or malicious intent, will be painful to some.

Communicate Science