Some late night TV watching brought me to Robin Ince's "Nine Lessons and carols for godless people".  I didn't stay for Messrs. Dawkins and Gervais, but caught Professor Brian Cox of Cern who was on at the start.

He showed some remarkable photos, including the famous earth-rise from the moon.

He also showed this stunning photo of Saturn,

Was in Pollokshaws yesterday for the launch of Church of Scotland Priority Area's strategy for working with young people, referred to as the Option for the Young.

Urban geographer, Betsy Olson, introduced her research which has been foundational to the strategy.  She noted some perceptions of young people towards the Church in Scotland

• "Crayon" culture - Church is where you go and people get you to colour in- something there about being infantilised and not taken seriously.
  
• Church people are judgmental about who you are
• Restricted hours and access to buildings
• Concerned about evangelism - young people concerned about being told about what they have to believe
• Possibility for hostility towards faith communities from young people
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The Celtic Five P’s

Leonard Sweet talks about the Celtic Five P’s (there emerges a sixth) for beginning to think about any moment in life:

These are:

Pause: Stop

Present: Be Present to what is around us

Picture: Mentally picture the thing in our minds

Ponder: Spend time thinking about the thing

Promise: Make some kind of contract with the future

Sweet adds a sixth which is Protection, to deal with the evil which many of us encounter in the world.

Sweet adds that he was recently disturbed to discover that NASA had lost the original tape footage of Neil Armstrong landing on the moon.  That this tape had just been taped over with some other random content.  This may have saved some money no doubt, but one of the key moments of the twentieth century had been lost.  He decided to apply these P’s to this moment, so he

Just back from a fantastic weekend conference with the folks from my previous congregation of Fitzroy Presbyterian in Belfast.  It was just a wonderful thing to be able to reconnect with so many stunning people who have influenced me in an enormous number of ways.  When I was a member the minister was the legendary Ken Newell, and the congregation are now looking to the future with new minister, U2 interpreter and charismatic maverick, Steve Stockman.

I was responsible for three sessions, and the notes are here:

1. Creation
   
2. Kingdom and Handout
   
3. New Creation
   

I had mentioned research that suggested that reading to children was unrelated to their test scores, but the number of books in they have in their home was.  That was from Freakonomics and hopefully I can get the quotes up soon.

Currently reading Nudge.

It's about the ways that we respond to suggestion, and how those who design environments ("choice architects") have to be aware of that.

Nudge's suggestion is that we can't tell people what to do ("authoritarianism" or "big government" if you're American) nor just leave them to decide (since people left to themselves make poor decisions).  Instead Thaler and Sunstein advocate "Liberal Paternalism"

I have just finished the chapter on Temptation, which suggests we have a cold state (clear thinking, rational) and a hot state (tempestuous and aroused).  The planner in us (the cold state) tries to manage the doer (the hot state) by reducing the choices that we are exposed to.  An extreme example of this is the clocky alarm clock which reduces our temptation to over-snooze by running away to random part of the bedroom.

This is George Monbiot and Ian Plimer debating on Australian TV.

I watched this and had some sympathy for the evoltionists who had to argue with Creationists, because the debate seemed to be happening on equivalent terms.  Facts and research from one side, equivocation and a refusal to hear any of the evidence on the other.

Monbiot repeatedly challenges Plimer on his claim that volcanoes emit more CO2 than humans.  Monbiot quotes Amercian research which states that human emissions are 130 times that of volcanoes.  Plimer is uninterested and states that this number does not include underground volcanoes.  When Monbiot states that it does, and whatsmore that Plimer has been told this on countless occasions, Plimer goes off on a rant about Monbiot not being a scientist.

It's shocking to see someone with the title "Professor", who is courted by the likes of Nigel Lawson and James Delingpole of the Telegraph (where else).

The Wikipedia review of this debate records the opinion that Plimer had been "soundly thrashed".  The Wikipedia moderators have written "opinion needs balanced", but it's difficult to see what balancing opinion might be out there.

I was present at the last meeting of Glasgow Presbytery, after a fairly straightforward presentation on climate change, when an elder whom I know and respect got up to suggest that the science behind anthropogenic climate change was dodgy, and that there was far from a consensus on the issue.  The brave elder in question would probably have had a warmer response if he had been suggesting there was scientific evidence for leprauchins (or indeed, as Gordon has put it, for a flat earth) or proposing Annabel Goldie as moderator.

I was delighted to meet the presbytery's most vocal climate denier a few days later, and he's been kind enough to send me the newspaper articles behind his counter-consensual anti-warmist views.

They mainly arise from Telegraph-columnist Christopher Booker, a contrarian in the mould of Christopher Hitchens, whom you imagine started out defending the indefensible as a public demonstration of his own cleverness (the sort of "Stalin-was-a-sweety" revisionism so deplored in Alan Bennett's The History Boys) and by process of narcissistic self-hynopsis became convinced that he was amongst the last of the enlightened.  Booker, like Hitchens, is at his best when doing literary criticism (his talk on the seven plots is one of my favourite ever Greenbelt talks) but makes no gesture of equivocation or humility when straying far from home base (however Booker his happy to castigate IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri as a railway engineer).

So, in the interests of self-education, and in hopes of producing a brief guide to "climate-scepticism and its achilles heels", I'm intending to spend a little time getting to the bottom of Booker's arguments which seem to be:

This is Andrew Brown in the Guardian on Marilynne Robinson, the winner of this year's Orange Prize.  Robinson is an apparently rare combination of Calvinist and exquisite writer.  The Orange Prize was for Home, but here are some quotes (part one here, and part two here) from her previous offering: Gilead.  For a slightly more dispiriting example of what Manses can do to you, check out The Testament of Gideon Mack here.

As a taster of Robinson's writing, try this from page 141 of Gilead.

When you encounter another person, when you have dealings with anyone at all, it is as if a question is being put to you. So you must think, What is the Lord asking of me in this moment, in this situation? If you confront insult or antagonism, your first impulse will be to respond in kind. But if you think, as it were, This is an emissary sent from the Lord, and some benefit is intended for me, first of all the occasion to demonstrate my faithfulness, the chance to show that I do in some small degree participate in the grace that saved me, you are free to act otherwise than as circumstances would seem to dictate.

This is the marvellous Rowan Williams (can we find a loophole in Ecclesiastical Law that would allow him to become Moderator of the Church of Scotland, indefinitely if possible) on moratoria and why you need them for conversation.  This is from Simon Mayo on Five Live, the 16th December if you're after the podcast.

In reference to probable election of Mary Glasspool as Bishop Suffragen of Los Angeles, Williams begins by saying that the reaction in many parts of the Anglican communion will be very troubled…:

Williams: Partly, of course because we have asked the Church in America, very specifically, again and again, to slow the pace of change, so that we can actually talk these things through together.  The problem is that if one bit of our family goes ahead too fast with certain issues and assumes everyone’s going to go in the same direction sooner or later then it has the effect of shutting down real discussion, open discussion in other parts of the Church family.  And I don’t think that’s good for us.

Later…

Mayo: She [Mary Glasspool] says, and I quote, “You don’t get a headline which says ‘Well qualified priest elected Bishop suffragen of the diocese of Los Angeles.  You don’t get Fabulous Preacher or great joyful person elected.  What you get is Lesbian Priest.  Do you accept that that’s a source of profound irritation.

This is Rob Bell speaking on "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied."

Bell starts with a reflection on ache - the ache for a nuclear free world, or for a marriage to work.

He then deals with a traditional understanding of the beattitudes and "exemplary attitudes", and quotes one commentator:

"Those who intentionally devote every aspect of our lives and every molecule of our being to embrace, adopt and become morality upright without guilt of sin." (16 mins)

But Bell, being a good disciple of Dallas Willard, rightly rails against this interpretation as "new law", "Blessed are those who get it right."

Instead he talks about those who have the ache for something more, and who sense they are far from it; who do not have the righteousness, but yearn with physical desperation for something more.

There is a section on this in Habakkuk.  Talks about having a Habakkuk day.

He talks about friends unsure of whether to buy a sofa or donate to Developing world water projects.  One understanding is that once they get the right answer then God will bless, but Bell says that God blesses us in the tension, in the place of not knowing.

Blessed are you when you ache because the world isn't as it is supposed to be

Blessed are you when you come to the end of yourselves

Blessed are you when you get frustrated enough to throw up your hands and say "God, I can't do this."

Blessed are you when you can't make the tension go away no matter how hard you try

Blessed are you when you run out of willpower, ideas, self-control, hope, fortitude and energy

Because it's in that place

In that state

In that pain

In that ache

In that longing

In that desire

In that awareness

In that  hunger

In that thirst

That Jesus announces

"God is with you"