Thérèse de Lisieux

According to an item on today's BBC breakfast news, something like 3/4 of the population of Ireland visited the relics of Thérèse de Lisieux when they were taken around the Island. They are now in England - currently in Liverpool Metropoliton Cathedral.

There's lots in Catholic doctrine and practice that's daft, offensive and dangerous, but there's nothing wrong with veneration of the relics of a saint. Or there needn't be anyway. We need things to help us focus outside ourselves - or maybe I mean focus inside ourselves - think about 'deeper' concerns anyway. It's like viewing an original rather than reproduction of a painting, or standing among the stones of stonehenge, or visiting the site of a famous battle; there's something in the 'physical' presence that makes a difference. Or that we think makes a difference, and if we think it does then it does - like placebos.

Of course it could be used, manipulated by the unscrupulous, but then most things can.

Suffering, and Darwin's loss of faith

Alerted by a tweet from Richard Dawkins, I read this is the Guardian:

Darwin's complex loss of faith

It wasn't evolution that led Darwin away from religion, but nor was it simply the loss of his beloved daughter

[...]

In reality, Darwin's loss of faith was, as he recognised, gradual and complex. The reasons were not new – suffering always has been and always will be most serious challenge to Christianity – but they were newly focused. Plenty of Darwin's scientific contemporaries, men like John Stevens Henslow, Charles Lyell, Asa Gray, George Wright, Alexander Winchell, and James Dana, could accommodate their Christian beliefs with the new theory. Indeed, as historian James Moore has remarked "with but few exceptions the leading Christian thinkers in Great Britain and America came to terms quite readily with Darwinism and evolution."

But Darwin, brought up on William Paley's harmonious, self-satisfied vision of creation, could not.

(My emphasis.) I'd go along with that, but also note that suffering is at the heart of Christianity in Christ's suffering on the cross. Sort of obvious, and yet somehow it gets forgotten.

Susan Blackmore on Peter Singer

Susan Blackmore in her Blog in the Guardian, says Peter Singer is wrong

Singer is right to point out the psychological differences in how we respond to the toddler in the pond as opposed to the distant starving child, but wrong if he concludes that we ought to be as generous to one as the other.

There are lots of reasons for not giving money to try to save the life of someone you have never met, in a country you have never visited, and in a culture you do not understand

It sounds like an excuse to me.

(My thoughts on what Peter Singer is saying.)

Isaiah Berlin, and difference

From Adam Phillips' review of Isaiah Berlin, Enlightening: Letters 1946-60 in the London Review of Books:

All of Berlin's writing is an attempt to pesuade people not to talk on other people's behalf.

This links, in my mind anyway, to arguing that geography is not history. It is about acknowledging differences.

Updated my personal webpage

I get a little pleasure from poking around in a most amateur way with my personal webpage.

Today I used a nifty facility, the Google AJAX Feed API to put in feeds from my blogs.

One thing that was almost spookily neat, was that on the AJAX Feed page it was sufficient to type 'intropy' and 'nutshell truths' for the wizard to find the URLs for my two blogs.

Armed forces day

Yesterday was armed forces day. I was wondering why we should have a day for the armed forces but not, say, social workers*, medical workers, police, or whatever.

Maybe it is because the armed forces risk their lives for their country? But so do others - albeit to a lesser extent. Police certainly do at times, and don't underestimate the risk faced by medical staff or even social workers.

And of course we already have a day to remember all people killed in armed conflict - remembrance day.

The unique thing about the armed forces is that we ask them to kill for their country. That's a pretty big thing to ask of someone, so maybe it is right that we have special day for it. But maybe we need to be clear that that's what this day is about.

* I mention social workers especially because I happen to think they do a particularly thankless task. They are poorly paid, they get all the flack when something goes wrong and precious little appreciation for the good they achieve.

Humans prefer cockiness to expertise

From the New Scientist:

Humans prefer cockiness to expertise

EVER wondered why the pundits who failed to predict the current economic crisis are still being paid for their opinions? It's a consequence of the way human psychology works in a free market, according to a study of how people's self-confidence affects the way others respond to their advice.

This is one of those things that rings true. There are a few people I could point to...