Theological truth is too deep for the likes of us

From a week ago (this is a bit of 'catch up' to help initiate the new blog):



Thought for the Day for 17 May on BBC Radio 4 was another example of 'theology being too intellectually demanding for popular criticism.' The Rev. Dr. Giles Fraser, Vicar of Putney, starts off with a self-deprecating anecdote, but by the end of this abstruse three minutes and fifteen seconds it's clear that he reveres theology as the ultimate intellectual endeavour.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/today/listenagain/ram/today3_20070517.ram
(Thought for the Day starts about 16'50" in.)


Download RealPlayer here, or read the transcript, from which the following is excerpted:

What about the sort of truth that's less about accuracy and more about the call to imagine more, to feel more, to think more, to love more. Faith, for me at least, is so much more about this order of truth, than the question of whether my opinions are merely correct.

He seems to be saying, "What about the sort of truth that...isn't true?"

Which is why I think the best theology is always pausing and stuttering, always not quite able to express itself, always mounting unsuccessful raids on the unspeakable.

Quite. I think I get it now: theology is about the kind of truth that transcends 'mere' correctness -- the kind of truth that doesn't actually have to be true. Fine, just don't expect to have a rational discussion about it any time soon. (I've got this pinhead here, and according to what I can see through my magnifying glass I'm an angel short....)

Repost: "Another Out" (from the RD.net forum)

It's been a few months since I discovered RichardDawkins.net, but it didn't take me long to add the site to my newsreader, and not much longer to register for the discussion forum (though to be honest I haven't been very active there). But I did make a 'new visitor' post, and was delighted with the welcome I found. For anyone reading the posts here at Evil Burnee who is curious how I came to my present position on the issue of faith, I can do no better than repost my first message (from 17 December 2006) on the RD.net forum.

Reposted from: http://richarddawkins.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=52516#52516

After years of silent scepticism (mostly out of 'respect' for close family members who profess religious belief in varying degrees) I've become more and more appalled by what is perpetrated throughout the world in the name of faith.

Though I was brought up as 'Anglican' I harboured doubts about the whole business of God and faith, until it became time for me to be 'confirmed'. For me this was rather late, at age 14 or 15 (I don't remember exactly when), but I was doing physics and chemistry at school, and was aware of some incompatibility with what I was being asked to believe. But I dutifully went each week to our local vicar for one-on-one 'catechism classes' -- with the result that each week I became more and more confirmed in my belief that it was all bunk. Our vicar was patient with me, and attempted to answer my queries and counter my doubts. But it was clear to me by then that I could not in all honesty declare a belief I didn't have.

So I consider my confirmation classes a success -- in convincing me that my doubts were legitimate, and freeing me from the skygod's oppression. From then on I was happy to apply reason and logic to any of life's problems, without recourse to a supernatural overseer. But it was a private matter; I saw no reason to declare my rejection of unquestioning faith. Those who know me are aware of my thinking on this, but I don't tout it around.

I wonder just how many of us -- closet atheists -- there are.

I watched Jonathan Miller's TV series A Brief History of Unbelief when it was first broadcast, but only recently have I been able to see the second part of Richard Dawkins' Root of All Evil? I was aware of Dawkins' views (I remember seeing the broadcast of his Richard Dimbleby lecture, and cringing as he talked of spoon-benders while the camera cut to another Dimbleby in the audience), and I shared the unease others have expressed at his 'militancy'.

I'm now about two thirds through The God Delusion, and I now see that what I thought of as militancy is actually a healthy disrespect for blind faith, and I agree that from holy wars to religious schools, it's time to make our views known, to counter the tacit assumptions about the 'sanctity' of religious belief.

My awareness that there was any kind of organised collection of like-minded people in this sphere came when I discovered Derek & Swoopy's Skepticality podcast. Now I also listen each week to the Point of Inquiry podcast, and have recently subscribed to Free Inquiry and Skeptical Inquirer magazines.

Coming across The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science has been the latest discovery in a refreshingly eye-opening journey.

A theory with the intelligence designed out

Reposted from: http://witteringon.blogspot.com/2007/02/theory-with-intelligence-designed-out.html

While many of us in Britain have looked on in horrified fascination at the Intelligent Design debate currently in full swing in America, we may have become a little complacent that something like it is unlikely to happen here. But slowly, insidiously, it is happening here. Supporters of Intelligent Design are attempting to have Intelligent Design taught in UK school science classes. Search around a bit and you'll find plenty of evidence for this (though none for the theory itself).

I maintain that Intelligent Design -- as promulgated by such organisations as the dishonestly-named Truth in Science -- isn't actually a theory. Any argument that attempts to 'explain' observed phenomena by invoking a supernatural entity, about which we can know nothing, isn't explaining anything.

The ID-ists' arguments, when challenged by those who back evolution as a science-based or evidence-based theory, seem to be a combination of the following:

1. "You say ID is based on faith, but so is evolution. Evolution is based on assumptions about 'the unobservable past', and is therefore not scientific -- not susceptible to observation and experiment."
2. "You say that ID cannot admit of evidence because a theory that is faith-based springs from the pre-supposition that there is a creator/designer. But evolution is based on the pre-supposition that there isn't a designer."

These arguments appear to be attempts to place ID on an equal footing with evolutionary theory. But is seems to me that in order to assess the equality of these views one must look at the reasons for the respective pre-suppositions (if you accept that they are pre-suppositions).

On what basis can one 'pre-suppose' that

1. there is a creator, or
2. there is no creator?

(Note that these are mutually exclusive.)

Even if you find no evidence for a creator, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. But as Richard Dawkins lucidly demonstrates in The God Delusion, the existence of a creator is extremely improbable.

The ID-ists' tactics more often than not are to try to turn the evolutionist argument back on the evolutionists, without actually answering any of the evolutionists' criticisms. It's a tactic that can be effective -- until recognised, when it becomes obviously transparent.

This table-turning is likely to happen to the argument about 'Middle World' perceptions, which explains why so much of modern scientific thinking seems to go against common sense. An ID-ist's attempt at refutation might go something like this: "Just as our middle world perception cannot comprehend the very large or the very small, it also cannot comprehend the very transcendence of the other-worldly -- such as God. A rational approach to theism, therefore, is simply not valid."

The very large and the very small, however, are susceptible to rational analysis, whatever our common-sense perceptions tell us, whereas the transcendence of a creator is not, remaining an assertion of faith, without evidence.

Intelligent Design isn't a theory -- it's an intellectual cop-out.

Time to stand up and be counted

Okay. I appreciate that some people don't care to read about politics and/or religion, especially if they're expecting some geeky tech-rant. So that's why I've split off my posts about belief, or the lack thereof. You can still find my opinions on technology and other stuff over at witteringon.blogspot.com, but anything to do with crazee fundees, creationism, secular humanism, scepticism (British English will pervade here, note) and rationality will appear on this new blog, to be known as Evil Burnee (because, you know, I'll surely roast in hell).

I shan't remove any of my previous posts on these subjects from witteringon, but I will repost them here.

Never thought I'd see the day... (repost from other blog)

I've read the UK edition of Computer Shopper from the very first issue, when it came on saddle-stapled newsprint and cost only 50p. Since the passing of all those fondly remembered home computers such as the ubiquitous BBC Micro and Sinclair Spectrum, and the not-so-ubiquitous Oric, Memotech and (one for the uber-geeks) Jupiter Ace, Shopper became -- and has remained -- PC-centric.

So it was with surprise bordering on disbelief that I spied this page of buying advice in the latest (July 2007) issue:



Look at that recommended PC in the bottom right-hand corner. If you think your eyes are deceiving you, here's a blow-up:



Yes, it's a Mac.

This tech stuff is too hard (repost from other blog)

I use three computers on a regular basis. My PC is a full-tower monster with two hard disk drives and two DVD rewriters. It's not new, and over the past few months it's been giving me grief (other than the usual...). But that didn't matter too much, as I've been enjoying using my MacBook since last June. I also have a G4 Mac mini, which was my introduction to OS X and the modern Mac. (I've had a second-hand MacPlus for a few years, complete with maxed-out RAM -- all four megabytes of it -- and the legendary programmer's switch, just to prove my genuine geekness.)

I have only one printer in use, an Epson Stylus Photo R300, and until last weekend it was connected to the PC. But as I said, the PC has been giving me grief -- refusing to boot until the box had been powered up for five minutes or so, and even then shutting down a second or two after turning on. Sometimes it didn't shut down, but just sat there shouting at me (yes, really, the damn thing actually spoke -- something about CPU test failure). Other times it would begin its boot-up sequence but then stop with an 'overclocking failure'. This I could cope with, simply going into the BIOS settings and immediately saving and exiting -- it would then boot up okay.

But as you can imagine, this was getting to be a pain, especially when I wanted to print something. The PC is on my home network, and that's how I printed stuff from the Macs. Recently the PC has refused to boot up at all, and I've had to wait until the next day. I had already done some research to establish what the problem was, and had decided that the most likely culprit was the power supply. My PC has a good ASUS motherboard and a decent graphics card, but the manufacturer really skimped on some other components. The keyboard and mouse were utterly repellent. I replaced the keyboard within a week and the mouse within a month. It seems the PSU was a similarly cheap unit, and replacing it with a Jeantech 600W unit completely solved the boot-up problems.

So I could again print relatively easily from anywhere on the network using the shared printer connected to the PC. But if the PC wasn't on, I had to wait for XP to start before anything appeared on paper. I had already looked at print servers some time ago, and nothing seemed suitable (or reasonably priced) until I noticed that Linksys made a USB Print Server with a 4-port Ethernet switch, which looked like a good deal. I read some reviews on Amazon and elsewhere that made me think twice -- especially the point about the status monitor not working, which would mean you could run out of ink and not know which one of the six cartridges to change. I then found the manual on the Linksys website, in which it was pointed out that it's in the nature of network printing that two-way communication with the printer is lost -- it's not specific to Linksys.

During the course of my deliberations the printer did run out of ink when I was printing from the MacBook, and I realised that because the R300 has a small LCD status screen, the software status monitor isn't strictly necessary.

I decided to risk the purchase of the print server, given its price. It installed okay, using the supplied setup CD on the PC, and it worked fine printing from the PC.

There's no Mac software provided, but how hard can it be? Answer: very hard.

Following Apple's guidelines for installing a network printer did not work. The best I could get was page after page of Postscript commands. Other times I ended up with page after page of garbage. Trawling various forum posts, and the aforementioned Amazon reviews again, led me to believe that very few users had managed to make this thing -- the Linksys PSUS4 USB PrintServer -- work with Macintosh.

However -- and this is the purpose of this post -- I did get it to work, from both the MacBook and the G4 Mac mini, and here's how to do it:

It shouldn't be necessary to use the Linksys setup CD, as the PrintServer has a web interface accessible from a browser, but I'm assuming your setup is similar to mine (Windows XP PC and Macintosh OS X Version 10.4.9 on a home network using a wireless ADSL router). Here's what to do:

1. Install the PrintServer according to the Linksys instructions, using the supplied setup CD on the PC.
2. Using the Linksys utility change the PrintServer to static IP addressing, choosing a suitable address within the subnet.
3. On the Mac, open the Print & Fax system preferences pane.
4. Click the '+' button to add a printer.
5. At the top of the Printer Browser window, click 'IP Printer'.
6. In Protocol, select 'Line Printer Daemon - LPD'.
7. In Address, type in the static IP address you chose for the PrintServer, such as '192.168.1.8'. While you type, the Printer Browser will verify that you have typed a valid address.
8. In Queue, type 'lpd'.
9. You'll find that the IP address has been entered into the Name field. You can change this to something more meaningful.
10. Location can be left blank.
11. In Print Using, select the make of your printer from the list, then select the actual model of your printer from the model list, and click 'Add'.
12. Close the Printer Setup Utility.

(I'm not certain all the above steps are absolutely necessary, but they worked for me.)

You should now have the network printer on the list when you next want to print something from the Mac. For me, this has worked on both the MacBook (Intel) and the Mac mini (G4 PowerPC). I can't vouch for any other set-up, but reading the tales of woe in the Amazon reviews has prompted me to make this post, to show that it can be done.

Tech, TV, Apple, DivX (repost from other blog)

I was fascinated when Steve Jobs announced the Apple TV. I like the idea of watching on TV media that has so far been confined to my computer.

There appear, however, to be a number of snags.

• First, my TV is an old Toshiba 4:3 CRT with SCART and phono sockets. No way would the Apple TV interface to it without an expensive conversion box of some kind. But what about a widescreen LCD computer monitor? -- these can be quite cheap, even with a DVI input, and Apple are already selling reasonably priced HDMI-to-DVI cables. That might work. Maybe.

• Second, some of the media I'd like to watch on my TV is intended for Windows Media Player, and I've installed various codecs into QuickTime so that I can watch this stuff on my MacBook. Couldn't I install these codecs on the Apple TV's internal hard disk? Highly unlikely. (I could transcode the files so that they play in standard QuickTime, but the idea is to make them easier to watch, not more difficult.)

But I've found a way to watch .avi files on my old Tosh TV.

Last week I bought from a local Argos Extra store, for £29.99, a Bush DVD2054DIVX DVD-player. So far it's played every .avi file I've tried in it, and I also found on the web a remote-hack to convert it to multi-region. It not only plays all my region 1 and region 2 DVDs, and my .avi files (whether on CD-R or DVD-R), but also mp3s and jpegs.

The 2054 is not listed in the current Argos catalogue or on the website. I went to the store to buy the 2051, which has an entirely different, compact form-factor. The 2054, however, is the conventional width, and fits better with other equipment. They told me when I paid that it might have 'some cosmetic differences.'

"Fine," I said, "as long as it does DivX."