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Dawkins Delusion
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Saturday, 04 September 2010 12:44 |
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More comment on Stephen Hawking from the Times Letters pages:
The ‘god’ whom Hawking dismisses is far removed from the transcendant, immanent, personal and Trinitarian God described in some complexity by Christian faith…It is a pity that the debate about the relationship between science and faith is marred by attacking a deity whom no one has been worshipping anyway. Rev. David Baker
To posit that the Universe has come into existence through the ‘laws of physics’ simply pushes the debate back a stage but leaves the fundamental issue unanswered. David Palmer, Catholic Prison Chaplain – almost wouldn’t mind being an inmate in his prison.
If other universes are “touchable” they will simply be incorporated into the one Universe and bring their laws with them. A.Graham Hellier breaks off his regular correspondence with Life and Work, to dispatch a missive to the lesser journals of the Murdoch Empire.
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Dawkins Delusion
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Saturday, 04 September 2010 12:41 |
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 The Times is overblowing the debate provoked by Stephen Hawking’s most recent claims.
In his new book The Grand Design, Hawking argues that contemporary physics has done away with the need for God. I’ll have to read the book, but I think his central argument is that something can indeed come from nothing, and that Big Bangs don’t need some mysterious being to light the blue touch paper. Apparently Hawking has not just seen off the deity, but also alas “philosophy is dead”. The Times is anxious to milk this (after all, it gets William Hague and Andy Coulson off the front page) speculating that science teachers could face a tricky time in faith schools.
Away from the bunkum, there’s a great rebuttal by Paul Davies in today’s Guardian, he writes:
Our universe is just one infinitesimal component amid this vast – probably infinite – multiverse, that itself had no origin in time. So according to this new cosmological theory, there was something before the big bang after all – a region of the multiverse pregnant with universe-sprouting potential.
Some of my other favourite quotes so far:
“Physical laws … are about the regular relations between actual realities. I cannot see how they explain the bare fact that there is any reality at all” – the wonderful Rowan Williams (as close to omniscient as any mortal gets)
“Aside from what physics tells us, there are all sorts of logical fallacies with religious belief. A God that that could be everywhere all the time could eat itself for breakfast” A.C. Grayling – nonsense dressed up in sophisticated language
Cosmology
Genesis
Science
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Dawkins Delusion
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Saturday, 28 August 2010 09:32 |
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I am coming more and more round to thinking that the Atheism debate is not a logical or scientific question, but a moral one. Fundamentally it is that we, all of us, wish to apply for the job of "who is in charge around here", and in order to apply we must first create a vacancy. On Facebook this week read this comment "Ultimately it boils down to a choice between faith and science, and I choose to live by science". I want to spend a week on that statement, finding at least a dozen levels in which it is fundamentally flawed (queue the Fry and Laurie sketch: after watching a play Laurie says "I think there were there thirteen levels to that piece" Fry: "I spotted nineteen").
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Same Sex Relationships
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Sunday, 11 July 2010 06:33 |
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 From former Communard, and present-day sit-com consultant, game-show panellist and vicar, Richard Coles:
If the dean of St Albans has got it tough, spare a thought for the archbishop of Canterbury. Rowan Williams, Anglicanism's greatest asset in his efforts to hold the Communion together, is left looking like a liability. I cannot think of another archbishop who has so obviously shouldered his cross, but I wonder if, in the long run, that kind of sacrifice might be the only way to turn darkness into light. For this one is not going away and, when the present hoo-ha has died down, we are faced with the ineluctable necessity of hard theological and pastoral graft; first, to get some clarity about the moral status of homosexuality, and, second, to find ever more creative and imaginative ways of discerning the likeness of Christ in our ugly mugs.
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Same Sex Relationships
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Friday, 09 July 2010 10:12 |
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 This morning the Guardian has turned itself into the Church Times. It's leading on the possible appointment of Jeffrey John to the Bishopric of Southwark. The paper has clearly been heavily briefed by Jeffrey John's supporters: their characterisation of recent Anglican History on the subject is extremely one-sided and the Archbishop's attempts at dialogue are unfarily portrayed as weakness.
However, evangelical opposition to Jeffrey John's appointment remains highly dubious. Jeffrey John is not an iconoclastic "we've got to move with the times", cultural-conformity figure. He urgently believes that the Church needs to support gay and lesbian people; and he believes in the authority of the Christian teaching. His book "Permanent, Stable, Faithful" is an attempt to chart this middle course. Unfortunately it is influenced by the exegesis, prevalent at the time it was written, which held that the Bible said nothing about committed same-sex relationships. However John's integrity and intelligence are evident on every page. I suspect he may write a different book, were he writing now.
Most striking though, is Jeffrey John's insistence (and that of his partner) that their relationship is celibate. This is precisely what evangelicals have been demanding of gay and lesbian christians. When one of them does this, it is hypocritical to continue hyperventilating righteous fury.
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