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The Two Richards
"And tonight I will be playing the part of a Quaker Buddhist Anglo-Catholic Agnostic . . ."
". . . and I will be playing an evolutionary biologist with laryngitis."
Opinions differed in advance on whether Messrs Dawkins and Holloway would be thoughtful and polite, or would go at it hammer and tongs. My money was on the former, which is exactly how it turned out.
Aubrey Manning introduced the pair, and then left them to it for 45 minutes or so. The topic was Science and Religion, and broadly covered what it is reasonable to believe, what Richard Holloway believes, and whether it's reasonable of Holloway to consider himself a Christian given how little of it he has no doubts about or considers relatively unimportant. He did most of the talking - unsurprisingly given Dawkins' sore throat - and made a lot of what I thought were very good points. There were a couple of big video cameras there, so I imagine it'll make thee ackurssed Intarweb eventually, at which point I recommend you watch it.
Holloway said he stepped away from the church about ten years ago after finding various debates over homosexuality in the church unpleasantly intolerant, but found after a while that he still considered it his family. He also said that, to quite reverse Pascal's Wager (he cited someone here, but I didn't recognise the name), he thought it odd that a God would care deeply about whether we believed, and thought that actions (and in particular compassionate actions) for him trumped orthodoxy and religious law. I felt there was some danger here of him giving religion a good name.
Dawkins, as I said, was a bit quieter, and said more than once that he found Holloway's brand of belief very close to unbelief1 while questioning him on how he would distinguish it, and why he still considered himself Christian. Various people I'd spoken to thought he'd stridently attack religion, which he absolutely didn't, although he had various things to say about how he thought religion might have arisen and what use it might have been. There was a lot to think about, overall, and I'm rather hoping that the video's available so I can see and hear it all myself. I already have some of Dawkins' books, so I got one of Holloway's instead - Godless Morality. I've had it recommended to me two or three times.
Outside, in spite of it not being a biology lecture, Creationists were giving out glossy 50-age booklets on how Darwinism is apparently in crisis. I've just noticed (cheap shot ahoy!) that on the inside cover page it says "Five evolutionests think again". The first page - the introduction - contains (as best as I can tell) a blatant whitewashing of the facts, claiming someone had embraced Intelligent Design about ten years before that agenda had been defined. The five ex-evolutionists all changed their minds when they adopted a particular brand of Christianity; none adopted young-Earth Creationism independently of a religious conversion, which implies to me that their reasons for rejecting evolution did not come from their understanding of evolution itself. From a brief skim , it looks like the usual misconceptions.
I note that the same publisher puts out a volume called Angels of Light: 5 Spiritualists Test the Spirits. Doubtless this is an account of a whisky-tasting session with Michael Gira. I will buy a copy forthwith.
In other news, the plan for the Cowgate fire site has finally been revealed. I don't know yet if it's shite, but it wouldn't be unprecedented. At least they won't be levelling existing stuff to build on top of this time.
1: And he wasn't the only one - an atheist in the audience pointed out during questions that she could agree with everything Holloway had said - "join us" he replied.
". . . and I will be playing an evolutionary biologist with laryngitis."
Opinions differed in advance on whether Messrs Dawkins and Holloway would be thoughtful and polite, or would go at it hammer and tongs. My money was on the former, which is exactly how it turned out.
Aubrey Manning introduced the pair, and then left them to it for 45 minutes or so. The topic was Science and Religion, and broadly covered what it is reasonable to believe, what Richard Holloway believes, and whether it's reasonable of Holloway to consider himself a Christian given how little of it he has no doubts about or considers relatively unimportant. He did most of the talking - unsurprisingly given Dawkins' sore throat - and made a lot of what I thought were very good points. There were a couple of big video cameras there, so I imagine it'll make thee ackurssed Intarweb eventually, at which point I recommend you watch it.
Holloway said he stepped away from the church about ten years ago after finding various debates over homosexuality in the church unpleasantly intolerant, but found after a while that he still considered it his family. He also said that, to quite reverse Pascal's Wager (he cited someone here, but I didn't recognise the name), he thought it odd that a God would care deeply about whether we believed, and thought that actions (and in particular compassionate actions) for him trumped orthodoxy and religious law. I felt there was some danger here of him giving religion a good name.
Dawkins, as I said, was a bit quieter, and said more than once that he found Holloway's brand of belief very close to unbelief1 while questioning him on how he would distinguish it, and why he still considered himself Christian. Various people I'd spoken to thought he'd stridently attack religion, which he absolutely didn't, although he had various things to say about how he thought religion might have arisen and what use it might have been. There was a lot to think about, overall, and I'm rather hoping that the video's available so I can see and hear it all myself. I already have some of Dawkins' books, so I got one of Holloway's instead - Godless Morality. I've had it recommended to me two or three times.
Outside, in spite of it not being a biology lecture, Creationists were giving out glossy 50-age booklets on how Darwinism is apparently in crisis. I've just noticed (cheap shot ahoy!) that on the inside cover page it says "Five evolutionests think again". The first page - the introduction - contains (as best as I can tell) a blatant whitewashing of the facts, claiming someone had embraced Intelligent Design about ten years before that agenda had been defined. The five ex-evolutionists all changed their minds when they adopted a particular brand of Christianity; none adopted young-Earth Creationism independently of a religious conversion, which implies to me that their reasons for rejecting evolution did not come from their understanding of evolution itself. From a brief skim , it looks like the usual misconceptions.
I note that the same publisher puts out a volume called Angels of Light: 5 Spiritualists Test the Spirits. Doubtless this is an account of a whisky-tasting session with Michael Gira. I will buy a copy forthwith.
In other news, the plan for the Cowgate fire site has finally been revealed. I don't know yet if it's shite, but it wouldn't be unprecedented. At least they won't be levelling existing stuff to build on top of this time.
1: And he wasn't the only one - an atheist in the audience pointed out during questions that she could agree with everything Holloway had said - "join us" he replied.
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I'm a little confused by the BBC story that the development will also be linking Guthrie Street and Chambers Street - I thought that Hastie's Close and College Wynd were between the site and Guthrie Street.
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While the prospect of a new hotel doesn't really get my pulse racing, it could be good to improve the passage between Guthrie Street and the Cowgate to something more than the piss-soaked broken-glass-strewn trek it is now. A South Bridge-Cowgate link would indeed be interesting, too.
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Ah well, those Quakers you know...
Re: Ah well, those Quakers you know...
Most of what I know about Quakers I learned from
Re: Ah well, those Quakers you know...
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If there is no god, then we lose nothing if we do not believe and only very little if we do.
If there is a god, then we lose everything if we do not believe, and win everything if we do.
Hence, it is safer to bet on God, and believe.
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I wish I'd caught the name of who he was quoting on that point.
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Now, how many different religions are there again?
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Plus, I'm not sure about this whole "not losing much" business - staying in bed on a sunday morning is a pretty big sacrifice if you ask me, and bacon, or even beer?
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Frustrating as it can be to be an aetheist, I often think it must be much more anguishing to be a careful, thoughtful theologian working within some kind of meaningful hermeneutical tradition. Then the quick-fix "fundamentalists" would really drive you nuts.