Starting points

The reason that there is so much obscurity and lack of understanding in discussions of God (one of them anyway, and an important one) is that each side assumed it is the other that has to prove the truth of its position, and this causes a complete separation of ideas which is responsible for the not getting anywhere. To the believer, the existence of God is so obvious that it is the atheist who has to give well-founded reasons to challenge it, while the atheist finds the idea of God so strange that it must be the believer who provides the arguments. Each assumes that theirs is the default position and that the other has the greater responsibility to defend his position. (In the case of Arthur C. Clarke’s teapot the default position is unquestionably the assumption of non-existence.) thus they argue past each other, each expecting the other to provide evidence which will not be forthcoming, because the need for it is not understood. This is the nature of belief, it is based on what strikes us without examination as obviously true, and we like to imagine that our belief is reasoned and the other chap’s is not.

Those Olympics

I am a bad person. There are many people who wouldn’t question that assertion, and a few who would, at least for the sake of form. I can be friendly, sociable, generous, considerate, understanding, magnanimous, accommodating, encouraging, optimistic, entertaining, and a number of other desirable things, as long as there’s something in it for me and I have my instruction booklet handy. On the other hand, I have been thinking impure thought about the Olympic Games.

There, I’ve said it, a non sequitur slipped in at the end of a paragraph, almost hidden from sight, but I have said. I think bad things about the Games.

My impurity of thought has nothing to do with beach volleyball or Yelena Isinbayeva; it is a deeper, less human impurity. More or more I find myself hoping that they will be an abject, humiliating failure.

That they will be a crashing economic failure is taken as read, these things always are. That there will be utter chaos in London for weeks and a lifelong bill for the British taxpayer likewise. That the media will be full of self-important officials and inarticulate has-beens telling us (well, not me, I won’t be there) how to behave, and preening themselves over how much of our (your) money they’ve managed to spend and how they deserve get special traffic lanes and police protection and all the best seats that everyone else will have to pay through the nose for, because they matter and you don’t, is also a given. Such people are nothing to me, and don’t even notice when they are laughed at and ignored. Only humiliation is good enough for them.

The idea that they represent some kind of national pride or symbolic unity is utterly risible, of course, a marketing notion invented for the occasion, no more. It’s useful for getting people to put up with in and persuading thousands of children to work for nothing in the preparation, but it isn’t real.

But in most Olympic sports the Games are the highest prize there is, the culmination of years of work and dreams. That for decades the event has been organised purely for the glory of politicians and bureaucrats who care nothing for the people who create the show is not their fault, and I desire them no disappointment in the pursuit of those dreams or in the search for reward for their labours. I once had sporting dreams and I won’t crush those of others.

On balance, therefore, I see that the Games are of great importance to a lot of people, some of whom don’t deserve to be disappointed) and they won’t affect me one way or the other, beyond providing a bit of entertainment if I watch a bit of them, but, even so, a part of me, a part that will not be excised, would love to see the music files get lost at the opening ceremony, the terracing collapse on its foundations, the Zil lanes blocked by broken down buses, empty stadiums, bored journalists called home by their stations  because no one was interested, the right-on finding contradictory ways to denounce some aspect of the event, add your own if you wish.

I know it would give me pleasure, even though it shouldn’t, if it were a failure, and a lot of people deserve it to be.

Btw: when looking for the image that accompanies this post I googled ‘Lisa Simpson blowjob’ (for reasons which I hope are obvious). I can state without reservation that this is a bad idea.

On The Proving of Negatives

Longrider and others both at his place and at Orphans of Liberty have been arguing about the existence of God. They were supposed to be arguing about whether religious people are entitled to proselytize and exactly how much tolerance they should be granted. At least, that’s what the original post was about, and the hosts made a couple of attempts to get it back on track. Inevitably it became an argument, almost a slanging match, about God yes, God no.

I didn’t get involved in the argument. I tried that recently and, as a wise man pointed out at the time, ‘These things never get anywhere, do they?’ So I didn’t intervene. But there are a few points that are worth making about how these arguments are conducted, and why they don’t get anywhere, all of them exemplified in that discussion.

It was asserted several times that, ‘You can’t prove a negative.’ Longrider himself, on the side of the non-believers, said that he could not be expected to demonstrate the non-existence of God, because to prove a negative is impossible. It probably is impossible in practice to demonstrate the non-existence of God, but not for that reason. This is often heard, in this and many other types of argument, and is stated as though it were an iron law of logic. In fact it is complete nonsense. It is folk logic, and it matters here because Longrider, particularly, makes frequent appeals to logic when criticising the arguments of others.

That it is nonsense becomes clear when you consider that any proposition in logic, and most in natural language, can be expressed as a negative. The proposition itself, ‘There does not exist a proof of a negative statement,’ is expressed as a negative, and thus, if it were in fact true, could not be proven. This isn’t just a quibble, and it’s more than an example. It is perfectly simple to state negative propositions which can be proved to be true.

The confusion stems, I think, from the fact that it is often difficult, or impossible, in theory or in practice, to prove the non-existence of some postulated entity. I can prove that there is no albino parrot in my living room by simultaneously observing every subset of space in which such a creature could be. In practice it would involve moving some furniture and fending off men in white coats (it’s quite all right doctor, I’m just looking for a non-existent white parrot), but it can clearly be done. To prove that there is no albino parrot in the world cannot be done by the same means, due to practical limitations, but it is possible in theory. To prove that there is no horse with 21-trisomy in the world is possible, however, through the observation that the same mutation which causes Down’s syndrome inevitably causes spontaneous abortion.

To prove the non-existence of God is certainly possible in theory. If it’s true, of course.

On Prettiness

This post is the top Google entry for the search string "what's the difference between beauty and prettiness"

I'm glad to have solved that little probloem on behalf of the world.

What Ape Means Again

I wrote a few months ago about the horrible mess that was the Ape page at Wikipedia. To sum up, it had been taken over by a group of people so terrified of appearing to leave a crack open to creationist interpretation that they refused to recognise the easily verifiable fact that ‘ape’ is used by most people in a way that excludes humans.

If you ask ‘Is Richard Dawkins an ape’*, you introduce a context in which most people, but by no means all, would say yes, but the fact remains that in general use it does not include Homo sapiens. The real point is that it isn’t a technical term, much less a taxonomic one.

It looks as though the neurotic editors at WP have finally been persuaded to relax and think intelligently about the problem. I won’t go over the points I made at the time- anyone who wants to can follow the link- but to refuse to explain what the article is actually about, and to insist hysterically that it is only allowed to mean what you want it to mean, is at best to render the article worthless (people go there seeking information, after all, and if you refuse to give it to them you might as well not bother writing it), and at worst it is umbilical subduction unworthy of anyone who calls himself a scientist.

No one at all involved in trying to make some sense of that mess was disputing the taxonomy of Homo sapiens**. The whole debate was about the meaning of the word ‘ape’ in English. Dictionaries, we were told, are not a valid source for the meanings of words. Hmm. The writings of experts in the field of palaeoanthropolgy, we were told, are not valid evidence of how experts in the field use the term. Hmm. Curiouser and curiouser.

I checked a considerable number of papers written by said experts, and I found that my memory was not faulty. Most of them use ape in different ways, depending on the context of the discussion. They are quite relaxed about switching between ‘humans and other apes’ and ‘non-human apes’, ‘apes, including humans’, and other formulae, in which the word ‘ape’ is to be interpreted in different ways, sometimes within the same paragraph. Only when rigorous clarity is required do they explicitly state what they mean by ape in a particular case or, more usually, they will switch to taxonomic terms to avoid ambiguity.

So even among those who work in the fields of biology, primatology, palaeoanthropology etc, usage is free and relaxed, and this fact is easily shown to be true.  Among the general public ‘ape’ is most commonly used in a sense exclusive of humans, and this is also easily shown to be true. But try arguing that with a band of true believers who are determined that no crack will be left open by which the infidel may enter. I didn’t try to argue, I’m not stupid, but a lot of people did, and had to retire- or were banned- confused and amazed by the closed minds of those who were claiming to represent scientific truth,

John Hawks, whose blog I follow assiduously, both for his own articles and the resources and links to other papers that he provides, went even further the other day. He declared that he doesn’t think of ‘ape’, or even ‘monkey’, as including humans at all. And Palaeofreak (in Spanish), who was, as I recall, one of those who was reckless enough to try to make the same points I was making, on the WP discussion page itself, and got banned for his pains, also comments on the same subject, leading to an immensely long comment thread which is quite interesting at times although it falls into some of the same errors as the original WP thread. It's further complicated by the fact that they are actually discussing the Spanish word 'simio', which is much broader in meaning than the English 'ape', as though it meant 'ape'. Strange, but true.

*I don’t have a Dawkins fixation, it’s just that he was used as the example in the article.

**There is actually a great deal of doubt about the taxonomy of Homo sapiens, but the general relationships between extant anthropoids are clear.

The Spirit of Holy Week

During Holy Week many Spanish towns and cities are filled with processions remembering various bits of the story of the Passion, and parading figures of Our Lady, Christ or representations of some of the mysteries through the streets. In Seville, Murcia, Málaga and a few other places the Holy Week processions are a religion, as it were. Here in my small city they aren’t quite in that league, but they are of great cultural and social importance.

There were twenty-six different societies which went out this week, the majority between Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. There is considerably variety: some date from the 15thC, though most were formed less than a hundred years ago. Most of the figures are carried on great platforms, beautifully dressed and ornately decorated, surrounded by candles in silver sticks and protected by exquisitely embroidered awnings. All of this weighs about a ton (very roughly, I haven’t heard any accurate figures, but the things are HEAVY) and is borne on the shoulders or backs of 40-50 big strong types who train all year for it. They nearly all bring a band with them. A few have their own, but they mostly hire a band to accompany their procession.

 

Some of these societies have hundreds of members, although not all will process, some being old, infirm, lazy or otherwise engaged, but those who do, the visible ones, will accompany the image in long lines, wearing a long cape and tunic in the colours of the particular society, with a long pointy hat covering their head and face, and carrying a large candle. These, like the ‘costaleros’, are penitents, and they do their penance anonymously.

The religious significance is clear, but there is far more to it than that. People who have no particular residue of devotion, or none at all, often belong to one or more societies and carry or accompany their Virgins and Christs each Easter because something moves them to do so. Families, groups of friends, the members of trades and professions, often belong to the same society and it is a part of their identity. Thousands of people, a significant proportion of the population here, belong to these societies and are involved in some way in the processions.

But many thousands more watch them. Those who don’t understand what motivates people to do this, practical atheists or those who haven’t been inside a church in years, recent immigrants from China or Morocco, line the streets or crowd the balconies to watch the processions go past. They are a public spectacle, treated as such, but also with great and instinctive respect. Each time an image is raised in the air to continue walking (they have to rest a lot and the coordination to lift it all together without it falling sideways- it happens occasionally- is not easy to achieve) the public applauds. When the image is stopped by someone moved to sing a ‘saeta’ to the statue, the image is raised and danced by the bearers, and there is complete silence until the song has ended.

El Cristo del Cachorro

Mrs Hickory belongs to a society which goes out on Good Friday evening, and has as its patron a Virgin of the Sorrows, a beautiful image kept in the Cathedral during the year. They’ve been unlucky with the rain in recent years, but this year they were able to parade her proudly through most of the older part of town, and bring her back safely. Mrs Hickory is one of the pointy hats and candles. I am her cornerman, following with water, carbohydrates, aspirin, tobacco, camera, lighter and anything else she might require.

The image was brought out of the Cathedral at 9 PMish, to the sound of the National Anthem. The bearers bring Her out on their knees because, with the fixed canopy above Her, She is too tall to get through the doors otherwise. Then the whole procession, a couple of hundred people I would say, makes its way through the streets for five hours, observed by the crowds on the pavements. They take Her to visit the other two historic churches, and She passes through the Main Square where she is greeted by a figure of Christ who’s also out and about at that time.

The whole procession lasts about five hours until, at about 2 o’clock in the morning, they reach the Cathedral again and, to the accompaniment of music which changes from cheerful over the last few hundred yards to atmospheric and dramatic as She reaches home again. Then the exhausted bearers turn Her around so she can salute the crowd once more, and take her into the Cathedral, backwards, on their knees. Despite the cold and the lateness of the hour there are always a few hundred people waiting to see the Virgin, and a Christ which also lives in the Cathedral, and in most cases I don’t think it is faith that took them there or the spectacle that attracted them, but mostly the sense of being present at something which is part of their lives, part of the place they belong to.

Rousseau

I have recently been reading the Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. From the beginning it is clear that the world needs a lot more people like him. Not for the political philosophy which, as I recall, is a bit authoritarian and statist for my taste (I’ll take another look), but as a model of how to live life, and how to write about the life he lived. When our young wonder how they should live their lives so as to get the very most out of them, a good answer would be that they should read Rousseau and, I would not say act like him in every way, but they should think like him, become like him, and act in consequence.

He cared nothing for anyone else’s judgement of his actions, but he had his own morality by which he judged himself, often rather harshly. Not for Jean-Jacques the fear of what people might think, the cringing with shame as he goes against fashionable morality, the kowtowing to other people’s prejudice. He sets out to live, and he does so, on his own terms, in a very successful and wonderfully free and refreshing manner. At least, that’s the way he tells it.

The book is full of instructive anecdotes. While at Venice as secretary to an incompetent ambassador he considers the question of women. After a couple of prostitutes leave him with a horror of syphilis, and his deep regard for his friends leads him to stop sleeping with their mistresses, he decides he’ll just have to get one of his own. Lovers, however, being expensive and inconvenient, he finally arranges to share one with a close friend. Thus, they shop around a bit and finally invest in a 12-year-old girl whose mother was a bit short of cash just at that moment.

Lovely and charming was this child. She sang well and they provided her with a clavichord and a singing master, she entertained them and they were all happy. Theirs was a happy household while they waited for her to be of an age when they could seduce her (nothing suggests that seduction would have meant rape or any other form of coercion, they would have expected to win her by the usual means). They both came to love her, as one does a lovely, charming and talented child, in a way that quite excluded the purpose they had originally formed. They determined that their child would be found a good husband, and a portion settled on her, as good fathers, surrogate or otherwise, do so determine. Rousseau left Venice before she reached puberty, but he gives us to understand that his friend did what they had both considered to be right.

I wouldn’t recommend the purchase of a prepubescent mistress, it just doesn’t feel right, but if you do find yourself in that position, the actions of Jean-Jacques, as he describes them, anyway, are an excellent guide to what your subsequent behaviour should be.

I haven’t finished the book yet. I look forward to being further instructed.