Long lost brothers?

Are Tom Wright and Martin "Wolfy" Adams long lost brothers. I've never seen them in the same room together. I wonder.....

Noted theologian


World Darts Champion

Empty chair syndrome

Last autumn, there were a couple of stories going round the blogosphere (though rarely hitting mainstream media) that seemed to me very similar, though with some holding apparently contradictory views. The link between them is an empty chair on a stage. During his recent speaking tour of the UK, William Lane Craig invited Richard Dawkins to a debate. Craig was already booked to speak at the venue in Oxford, so Dawkins would not have as far to travel as the visiting American. Dawkins declined this invitation, though apparently Craig left an empty chair on stage to signify Dawkins’ absence.

More recently, another empty chair was left on stage, at a test for Sally Morgan. Led in part by the science writer (and now something of a libel law expert), Simon Singh, Sally Morgan had been invited to take part in a test of her psychic abilities. Like Dawkins, she declined this invitation. Unlike Dawkins, though, Morgan chose not to write an ad hominem attack on Singh to be published by a national newspaper. There were however, some letters sent between Singh and Morgan’s lawyers, which, in spite of being marked “Strictly Private and Confidential” Singh thought appropriate to publish online. I will leave it to you to consider whether it was appropriate to publish the letters.

What struck me was the reaction from the “pop science” or “science journalism” section of the blogosphere, who seemed to consider that in the case of Dawkins/Craig, that the person declining the invitation was right in declining and that the empty chair was a bullying gesture, while in the Morgan/Singh case, Morgan was considered be the slippery one who was rejecting a perfectly honest invitation.

My personal opinion is that in both cases, the invitation should have been accepted. My reasons are as follows: Both Dawkins & Morgan have made personal financial profit from their relative claims. As such, there is some duty of responsibility to defend their claims. In contrast to this, had an anonymous blogger (such as myself) been invited, I think there wouldn’t be a duty as no one has paid me for my writing or for a tv show (which is probably a fair reflection of the value of my thoughts!). Both have considerable media experience and so would not be flayed in an environment where they are far less experienced and uncomfortable than their critics.

On the other hand, I do have sympathy for them both. In both cases, there was an underlying theme of trying to portray the non-attendee as being in some way scared or unwilling to appear on a platform with their critics. The empty chair is loaded symbolism, somewhat akin to giving them a white feather, in an effort to shame them. This is, I think, an act of bullying that should not be encouraged.

In the case of Craig/Dawkins there was also a phrase banded about to the effect of “[this would look good on your CV, not mine]” in reference to the merits of one having debated the other. I think various other commenters have made as much of this as can be made, so I will offer nothing further.

To the best of my knowledge, no one has ever invited me to a debate or a test of my claims in a public arena. I certainly do not recall ever having declined such an invitation. If such an invitation were to come, I think in all probability that I would decline. I am not a skilled debater. One of the reasons that I choose to write is that I have a mild stammer, which always makes me appear to be even less intelligent than I actually am. The trouble is, my mind moves faster than my mouth, so when I come to speak I can usually think of 2 or 3 ways of saying the same thing, and I often get muddled. By writing, this can be slowed down. So when it comes to oratory, I prefer to write word-for-word and then either read or memorise what I am to say. This makes such events as those Dawkins & Morgan were invited to something of a problem for me.

But if such a case were to arise, I would dearly hope that no one leaves an empty chair for me on stage. It is an act that I think is ungracious and, if you will allow me to be a little quaint, a rather poor show. If I were to go further into old parlance, I would say it is “ungentlemanly” or “unladylike” though I hope you do not infer this to be sexist; it is not meant to be.

It is rare for me to pick a fight. I do not go out of my way to present challenges to others that I demand they meet. I may ask questions of them to clarify their views and I may respond to articles, blog posts, etc. that others have written. Anyone is, of course, welcome to write responses to anything I write. If such a response is included, I would hope that they inform me and I am very willing to provide a link to any such response in my blog. I do not like the empty chair and would hope that I never stoop to such a cheap level as to do anything like it. Debate and the free exchange of ideas should not be about point-scoring, but should be constructive and proactive; something I always try to achieve here, though I could not necessarily say that I always succeed.

2011 in books

So another year has passed, and I’ve managed to read quite a few books in that time. In fact, when I compiled the list below, I surprised myself at seeing I had gone through them at a rate of almost one a week; and that included some fairly weighty 500+ page volumes. I try to maintain a balance between what I tend to identify as my 4 main genres of reading, though as you can see I have been far biased towards the christianity end of the spectrum. There are still some books I received for my birthday in autumn and for Christmas which I have not read. In all, I currently have 4 books on the go at present, with a further 24 on my dining table awaiting to be read (including some of the “books of shame” which I want to finish at last). Of these, there is definite bias towards the fiction side, not least a large number of the less well-known works of Thomas Hardy.

So here's the list, along with a couple that I'd started. Every one should have a link to the relevant review.

Christianity (18+2)

Letters & Papers from Prison – Dietrich Bonhoeffer
If you want to walk on the water, you’ve got to get out of the boat – John Ortberg
Why men hate going to church – David Murrow
A Place for truth – ed. by Dallas Willard
The Resurrection Of The Son of God – N.T. Wright
The Crucified God – Jurgen Moltmann
The Reason for God – Tim Keller
The Didache: a window on the earliest christians – Thomas O’Loughlin
Why God Won’t Go Away – Alister McGrath
The Problem of Pain – C.S. Lewis
The New Testament & The People of God – N.T. Wright
A Grief Observed – C.S. Lewis
The New Testament Documents: Are they reliable – F.F. Bruce
Lost Christianities – Bart Ehrman
Jesus and the Eyewitnesses – Richard Bauckham
Heresy – Alister McGrath
Surprised by Hope – Tom Wright
Did St Paul Get Jesus Right? – David Wenham
*The Historical Reliability Of The Gospels – Craig Blomberg
*Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes – Kenneth Bailey

Science (10)

Bad Science – Ben Goldacre
Boffinology – Justin Pollard
Three Roads to Quantum Gravity – Lee Smolin
Cycles of Time – Roger Penrose
Gaia – James Lovelock
The Origin of Species – Charles Darwin
The Meaning of it all – Richard Feynman
You Are Here – Christopher Potter
The Logic of Scientific Discovery – Karl Popper
God’s Philosophers – James Hannam

Fiction (12)

Love in the time of cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Chosen Ones - Alister McGrath
The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
The Shadow of the wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
Tess Of The D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
The Master & Margarita – Mikhail Bulgakov
Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
The Curious Incident Of The Dog In the Night-Time - Mark Haddon
Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
The Return of the Native – Thomas Hardy
One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Kokoro – Natsume Soseki

Other (8)

Captive State – George Monbiot
The Borgias & Their Enemies – Christopher Hibbert
Begat – David Crystal
No Logo – Naomi Klein
Treasure Islands – Nicholas Shaxson
Wired for God – Charles Foster (this could be put into christianity or science, though it doesn’t fit very well in either)
Churchill’s Empire – Richard Toye
Map Addict – Mike Parker


Total = 48+2

* = currently reading (i.e. unfinished)

Book Review: Map Addict by Mike Parker

I can’t remember how I came across this book, but I do recall a great desire to read it as soon as I saw it. I have long loved maps and could spend ages just perusing them for all their detail. My love is for ordnance survey (OS), and when I went on holiday in 2010 to the Alps I found the maps they provided to be substandard and was really missing an OS equivalent. The main reason for this was that instead of putting on there all the paths that existed, the only paths that were put on the map were the recommended ones. So if you knew you were looking to go left at a fork in a path half a kilometre ahead, then you might well be forgiven for taking the left route when you come to a fork half a kilometre ahead. But no, the first left turn is not a recommended route and so wasn’t on the map. It was only when you go down the route for about a mile that you realise why it is not a recommended route.

So anyway, with that aside, I thought it would be interesting to read a book by someone with the same kind of passion as me. However, I was wholly unprepared for the level of enthusiasm that Parker has for his subject matter. He begins with a little autobiography where he describes how, as a child he used to initially save up to buy OS Landranger maps and even steal them on occasions. His ambition was to obtain all the maps for the whole of Britain. This is certainly a long way beyond my level of enthusiasm; indeed, I would expect very few readers would have such a level of fanaticism as is on display here.

The book encompasses a wide range of topics, from the history of the OS, the actual geography of the land, the politics of what goes into a map and what is excluded, etc. All through it, however, there is an exuberant sense of old fashioned British eccentricity. The first 200 pages are excellent and I would heartily recommend to anyone who has planned out a walk in their head, using a map, before setting foot outside the front door.

The latter half of the book goes even more esoteric and with it, some of the quality is lost. While there is a very interesting interlude about war and European politics, Parker then goes off on a tangent about the influence of christianity on maps and the author’s own mild paganism. This is certainly the low point of the book, with some lackadaisical history and a failure to understand the purpose of ancient maps; they were never meant to be navigational tools, and anyone who used them as such would never have been able, say, to trek to the crusades. Such sloppiness is epitomised when the author writes “the suppression of scientific understanding by ultra-zealous Christianity began in about the fourth century AD, and it is something we are still struggling with seventeen centuries later.” As one might expect, there is no reference or firm supporting evidence given to back up this assertion.

The last couple of chapters are slightly more redeeming than the previous couple, but by the end I was just looking forward to finishing the book. Overall, read it for the first 200 pages, but you needn’t bother with the rest.

Justice is a delicate thing: reflections on the Stephen Lawrence case

Yesterday, 2 men were convicted of the murder of Stephen Lawrence, 18 years ago. Today, the newspaper headlines are themed by the notion of justice.

The Times: "Convictions mean justice at last for Lawrence"
The Independent: "The moment Doreen Lawrence's 19-year wait for justice ended"
The Guardian: "Stephen Lawrence verdict delivers justice after 18-year wait"

I am not convinced that everyone is agreed on what the notion of justice means. To me, it is something entirely different from retribution, though some less savoury aspects of the press seem unable to make this distinction. It has been noted (e.g. by The Sun & the Daily Mail) that at an earlier trial 3 others were declared 'not guilty' of Stephen's murder. There are now some calls for a re-examination of the accusations made against them.

The BBC had a particularly ill-judged section on this in the 10 o'clock news last night, when one of their camera crews and a reporter turned up at the home of one of these 3 men demanding that he answer their questions. If any further convictions are to come about, then the appropriate judicial process has to be followed, not trial by media.

I cannot speak for the innocence or guilt of these men, as I do not have access to all the evidence. Yet, in this country at least, the idea of presumed innocence until proven guilty is under threat.

It has to be remembered why Gary Dobson & David Norris were made to face a second trial. It was because there was new evidence which was not available at their first trial. This was the idea behind the repeal of the double jeopardy law. If there is no such new evidence against the remaining 3 men, then it would be a great injustice to make them face trial again, as that indicates that the only reason is a presumed guilt and that the original trial verdict was incorrect.

It may be the case that the trial verdict is incorrect and that they did perpetrate the crime. But without evidence to support this, the default position has to remain the presumption of innocence, nomatter what our gut instincts may be.

Book Review: Kokoro by Natsume Soseki

I wanted to branch out some of my reading and get into some Japanese literature. So I asked around for where would be a good place to start. I got 2 suggestion: Kokoro and The Tale of Genji. The latter was quite long and seemed a bit of an investment for a first foray, so I opted for Kokoro. Upon reading the description about the book, I was expecting something that would be broadly similar in themes and style to one of Thomas Hardy’s Wessex novels. What I found was very different, but still extremely good.

The first thing to strike the reader is that the book is all told in the first person, although there are two different viewpoints. The second thing is that no one is actually given a proper name throughout the entire book. Indeed, there is a paucity of characters which gives the book it’s distinctly “sparse” feel. The first narrator, through whose eyes we see the first half of the novel, is a young man, studying at college. He spies an older gentleman and instantly decides to follow him. This older gentleman is referred to as Sensei, though that is not his real name.

The author becomes, as it were, disciple to this reluctant rabbinic figure and they form something of a friendship. Here, it is worth saying something about the translation. My Japanese is appalling; I can say about a dozen words and even then my pronunciation leaves a lot to be desired. Throughout the first part of the book, I couldn’t escape the feeling that the translation had left the book a little staccato. The sentences were often short, simple and did not feel to have much flow to them. However, in hindsight, I think this may have been excellent writing from Soseki as the second half (which is narrated by Sensei) is much more fluent. Therefore, I think the punctuated writing pattern of the first half reflects the relative immaturity of the first narrator.

The central theme of the book is one of self-loathing. In particular, in all of the first narrator’s discussions with Sensei, there is a nagging sense of something in Sensei’s past which not even his wife knows about. This is brought out early in the novel when it is revealed that Sensei regularly visits a certain grave, though the identity of the grave’s occupant is not revealed until much later on, though I shan’t spoil it.

The change in narration comes about when the first narrator constantly questions Sensei as to why he is the way he is: aloof and withdrawn from the world, with a distrust for everyone in it, including his own wife. Throughout the first part of the novel, Sensei avoids these questions, but decides to write a letter to his disciple laying out much of his personal history in an effort to ensure that at least somebody knows what his reasons are. It is this letter that forms nearly half the book.

There is much more that I could write about this, but I shall refrain for fear of spoiling it for you. Needless to say, I would really recommend this to you. In fact, I wish I had read this when I was in my early 20s, around the same age as the first narrator. If I could describe it as a piece of scenery, it would be of a handful of people on an open moor, separated by wide open spaces, calling out to one another, but always just on the boundary of being out of earshot. It has a bleakness to it, but not in the fatalistic sense of Hardy. The bleakness is in the outlook on life that Sensei possesses, based on his own past and the things he blames himself for, though it is slightly open-ended as to how much of what he has piled on his own shoulders is his own fault.

Book Review: God's Philosopher's by James Hannam

When I first saw this book (I forget where) it seemed just about as ‘up my street’ as a book could me. My main two passions are christianity and science. So books that cover the two (without being needlessly antagonistic towards each other) tend to end up on my reading list.

In his introduction Hannam sets out his aim which can be summarised as “myth-busting.” Some may regard it as revisionist, though I think that would be a little harsh. The central myth is that the latter middle ages did not contribute much to scientific thought, and that the Enlightenment emerged out of a medieval intellectual vacuum of The Dark Ages; the latter two terms Hannam regards as prejudicial and which are then subsequently rarely, if ever, used again.

Hannam also goes so far as to cite the particular examples which he considers have given rise to popular misconceptions, with John William Draper’s History of the Conflict between Religion and Science being probably the most famous example.

The structure of the book is one of multiple mini biographies. These are given in pretty much chronological order. The timeline covered is roughly A.D. 999, when Gerbert of Aurillac became pope, through to 1642 which saw the death of Galileo. Given this time period and the number of figures involved, it can be hard to keep track of who is who, though the appendix does contain a very helpful timeline as well as a list of characters with a 2-4 line summary of why they are important.

At the start of the book, one could be forgiven for questioning whether or not it’s a science book, as much of the discussion is theological in nature, and could be considered a summary of medieval church history, particularly given the inclusion of several popes into the discussion as well as Thomas Aquinas, famous for his Summa Theologica. But that’s kind of the point. As the book progresses, we get more and more towards what our modern 21st century sensibilities recognise as science, but it is a gradual process with no sudden great leaps.

I know from having read some other reviews of Hannam’s book that his viewpoint is not universally accepted. I myself am no expert in this period of history so cannot really comment on its validity. The strength of the book is its meticulous cross-referencing, where original sources are preferred over secondary and an extensive bibliography is also included. So any time a claim is made that may go against one’s preconceived notions, the author gives the reader all the help they need to check the relevant facts. But this is not merely a scholarly book; it’s written with evident enthusiasm for the subject being discussed, like a highly energetic tour guide taking you round an exhibit for which they have a passion. It’s this exuberance that comes off the page which makes it pleasure to read, as well being highly informative.