Autumn Colours

We’re all at my folks’ in Norfolk for the kids’ half term. And the colours are breathtaking – it’s almost New England in the Fall, except for the simple fact that it is Old England in the Autumn.

So here are a few…

Check out more on my Flickr Photostream

Wordle on what makes me tick

Wordle is just great. Here is a compilation of everything that makes me tick

Dawkins is now saying more than ‘probably not’

Well, well, well. Melanie Phillips has written an excellent article in this week’s Spectator (nicely called ‘Is Richard Dawkins Still Evolving?’), having attended the second Dawkins/Lennox debate earlier this week. This was quite a remarkable event in that Dawkins never normally allows himself to get into debates with Christians – but here he is doing it with a fellow Oxford scientist for the second time, not in the Bible belt like last year, but on home turf, in Oxford Town Hall.

I’ve not heard or seen recordings of the debate, and have only so far read Phillips’ reflections. But according to her, there are some startling revelations:

• Dawkins stated (at the start of the Oxford debate with Lennox):

A serious case could be made for a deistic God.

• Well, that’s interesting. I’m not sure that is quite the same thing as atheism (or have I missed something?). Or is that also simply another ‘God delusion’, just like garden fairies or The Flying Spaghetti Monster? This presumably now puts him in the ranks of many of the greats who founded the Royal Society and The United States – which is a very different community to belong to from the one lays claim to. As Phillips points out, this rather undermines his previous assertion that:

…all life, all intelligence, all creativity and all ‘design’ anywhere in the universe is the direct or indirect product of Darwinian natural selection…Design cannot precede evolution and therefore cannot underlie the universe.

• Dawkins ‘vehemently denied’ that he had changed his mind. But Phillips came back to him with a number of challenges, including a telling exchange on creation out of nothing, and some key points about using historical evidence. But as she says:

Even more jaw-droppingly, Dawkins told me that, rather than believing in God, he was more receptive to the theory that life on earth had indeed been created by a governing intelligence – but one which had resided on another planet. Leave aside the question of where that extra-terrestrial intelligence had itself come from, is it not remarkable that the arch-apostle of reason finds the concept of God more unlikely as an explanation of the universe than the existence and plenipotentiary power of extra-terrestrial little green men?

It is a brilliant article and worth reading in full…

don’t you just love the word ‘probably’

It’s all a bit of a gag, i think. The bloggers have blogged and columnists columned (eg Ariane Sherine, whose idea it was and Ruth Gledhill). And Richard Dawkins is doubling the money raised. Good for them, I say.
But what i love is the use of the word ‘probably’.

Carlsberg had made it their very own (HT ads of the world):

It sounds so reasonable and humble. But it is a façade. Carlsberg were only saying probably because they have to. After all, how do you PROVE that Carlsberg is the best lager in the world. But despite their tongues being firmly rooted in their cheeks, of course they believe it is. Which is fine.

So the bendy-buses are to parade atheism, after the Christians parade the Christmas story. And that’s great. I have no problem with anyone advertising their worldviews on buses. That’s what democracy and free speech are all about. I just love the use of the word ‘probably’. Because it’s quite hard to enjoy life in this way, when there is the scintilla of doubt…

The greatest West Wing episodes (Season 1)

Indulgent but important! This is the start of a little blog series, season by season.

TWW is seminal television. And let no one dissuade you of the fact. It is not just because Season 7 was an almost word perfect prediction of the 2008 US Presidential race; nor because it’s essentially left-of-centre political fantasy; nor even because it (still) seems to be at trendy thing to be in to. [I’d just like to point out, as i do frequently, that i was THERE, hooked from the VERY FIRST episode on Channel 4 way back in 1999.] No, the reason is that it is just great drama. It is television at its best – it’s entertaining with great characters, it’s thought-provoking on serious issues without preaching (well not that much); Aaron Sorkin’s dialogue is just a feast for the ears (pacey, brittle, witty, concise and even occasionally hugely informative – in short, just brilliant). And it manages to make me laugh – sometimes a lot.

Now there are of course nay-sayers. They usually object to the rosy-tinted view of the world where earnest, well-motivated and essentially honest people try to do their very best for their fellow man and woman. We all know that life just isn’t like that. I remember a good American friend describing Washington (and he might easily have described the worst corners of Westminster as well) as ‘a white-washed tomb’. But hey – a bit of escapism never did anyone any harm, surely? Then, because it is American TV and because I’m a cynical world-weary Brit, there are definitely moments of American schmaltz and sentimentalism which even a diehard like me can’t quite stomach. But truth be told, there’s a part of me that wishes we weren’t always so cynical.

So here is my list from Season 1 – in airing order because I can’t think of any other order to put them in. The reasons for inclusion range from being dramatic to dealing with real matters of substance, from being downright hilarious to being genuinely poignant. Do let me know what you think and what you’d add/subtract.

• 1:5 – THE CRACKPOTS & THESE WOMEN – One of Leo’s big block of Cheese days. Some great dialogue and especially good to see CJ trying to take the wolf highway people seriously. Also, quite poignant when Josh gets the Secret Service card admitting only him to safety in the event of a nuclear attack.

Toby: It’s “Throw Open Our Office Doors To People Who Want To Discuss Things That We Could Care Less About… Day”

• 1:14 – TAKE THIS SABBATH DAY – The death penalty one. Mixes both high drama (will Bartlet commute a drug-pusher’s death sentence?) and almost slapstick humour (Josh wearing Sam’s all-weather sailing dungarees, after a boozy stag night, at his first meeting with the wonderful Joey Lucas). But the final scene with Karl Malden (cameoing as Bartlet’s old priest, Fr Cavanaugh) is simply amazing. As Martin Sheen himself said of this episode: To see the most powerful man in the world get down on the floor of the Oval Office and ask forgiveness for his sins – finally I got to do something personal.

Father Cavanaugh: You know, you remind me of the man that lived by the river. He heard a radio report that the river was going to rush up and flood the town. And that all the residents should evacuate their homes. But the man said, ‘I’m religious. I pray. God loves me. God will save me.’ The waters rose up. A guy in a row boat came along and he shouted, ‘Hey, hey you! You in there. The town is flooding. Let me take you to safety.’ But the man shouted back, ‘I’m religious. I pray. God loves me. God will save me.’ A helicopter was hovering overhead. And a guy with a megaphone shouted, ‘Hey you, you down there. The town is flooding. Let me drop this ladder and I’ll take you to safety.’ But the man shouted back that he was religious, that he prayed, that God loved him and that God will take him to safety. Well… the man drowned. And standing at the gates of St. Peter, he demanded an audience with God. ‘Lord,’ he said, ‘I’m a religious man, I pray. I thought you loved me. Why did this happen?’ God said, ‘I sent you a radio report, a helicopter, and a guy in a rowboat. What the hell are you doing here?’

• 1:21 – LIES, DAMNED LIES & STATISTICS – The FEC campaign finance one. All about the machinations involved in getting the people you want into the positions you want. Seeing Barry Haskill’s face as he gets ushered into the Oval Office in the Leo-prompted assumption that it’s ‘where we keep the drinks’ is a peach. Also good is the moment where Bartlet asks an old businessman friend (Mitchell) to hire an ambassador:

Bartlet: Let me just tell you, I need a favor. I need you to hire a guy.
Mitchell: Who sir?
Bartlet: A former ambassador to Bulgaria.
Mitchell: Who is that, sir?
Bartlet: Ken Cochran.
Mitchell: Well, isn’t Ken Cochran the current ambassador to Bulgaria?
Bartlet: Not for long. Look, he’s a good man, a smart man, I think he’d make a very good corporate officer.
Mitchell: Why is he being fired, sir?
Bartlet: Gross incompetence. I’ll be right back.

—–

On a separate but not unrelated note, here is the transcript from an imagined conversation between President Jed Bartlet and Senator Barack Obama from the New York Times last month.

The leaning tower of pizza … (sorry)

Groan. Boo. Get ’em off. (I know, I know) Sorry, but it was an opportunity too good to pass up. The result of about 60 people having pizza for lunch. Thanks Chris & Nate…

Spot the difference (HT)

Lost there, Felt Here

An amazing ad, for all kinds of reasons (HT bookofjoe taken from the New Yorker)

Revelation unWrapped on iTunes

Yes, I know the title is unoriginal – John Richardson’s excellent introduction to the Book of Revelation was, I think, the first one to use it – but it’s so clever that it seemed a waste not to nick it.

But anyway – thanks to the hard work of Fiona in the All Souls audio centre, here are the talks from a 4-week course done at All Souls last summer.

Download it as an iTunes podcast HERE. For those interested, this is how I broke the book up.

1. Meeting with the Heavenly Jesus (Rev 1)
2. Living with the Worldly Church (Rev 2-3)
3. Rejoicing with the Heavenly Church (Rev 5)
4. Enduring the Cosmic Cycles (Rev 6-19)
5. Conquering the Cosmic Fraudster (Rev 6-19)
6. Millennium Mania (Rev 20)
7. Awaiting the Descending City (Rev 21-22)

I suspect that devotees of various millennial position will be frustrated by the inevitably cursory nature of this survey – after all it was done in less than 40 minutes (in session 6). But ho hum. The key thing was to avoid getting bogged down by details in order to get a sense of the whole book.

Here are the handouts:

• Revelation unWrapped (talk outlines for all sessions)
• Chart: Overview of Revelation 2-3 (7 Letters to 7 Churches)
• Chart: Exposing the Fraudster’s Activity
• Chart 1: Cracking the Revelation Code(adapted from John Richardson’s book)
• Chart 2: An Attempt at a Chronology of the Cycles!
• Chart 3: The Seals, the Trumpets & the OT
• Chart 4: Overview of the Book of Revelation

queen of the surf

makes you proud, n’est-ce pas? what’s more, it seems that great minds think alike.

Confidence in a Credit Crisis

At our fortnightly prayer gathering last night, the boss, Hugh Palmer, gave some really helpful headlines from 1 Timothy, to help us put these troubled times into some sort of perspective. So for those who weren’t there, here are those headlines…

He started with a summary from somewhere of the cultural characteristics of the last decade or so, where we have been obsessed with the following:

• Freedom of choice – we are presented with a huge array of choice, but we not only take that for granted, we assume it is our right.
• Tolerance of choice – if life is just a matter of choice then we have no excuse not to tolerate the choices that other people make.
• Hard work for choice – people sweat and strive to earn to enjoy the choices that their rights have enabled them to be free to make.

As the credit crisis kicks in to the street, with job losses, inflation and general recession, we will find that we have less freedom because there is less work. So how to put this into perspective:

17. Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. 18. Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share. 19. In this way they will lay up treasure for themselves as a firm foundation for the coming age, so that they may take hold of the life that is truly life. (1Timothy 6:17-19)

In the light of these verses we should aspire to and pray for 4 things (and they all begin with ‘Co’!):

• Confession (v17): we must recognise the idolatry of wealth and repent of our wealth-obsession. After all this crisis was proof, if ever it were needed, that ‘wealth is so uncertain’.
• Contentment (v17): Can we really trust God to be good and our provider God? Well because of Jesus, we can. We need to learn to trust that he really is enough…
• Compassion (v18): a credit crunch is no excuse to stop being generous (even if the financial value of gifts goes down). We still need to be generous in good deeds and time, as well as our resources.
• Confidence (v19): we should have a perspective that changes how we view everything. And that is found only through the one who came to bring us treasure that is not earthbound or primarily material.

GBG to Colossians just out

These things often take a long time to emerge – but at last, a little booklet I worked on months ago has come out – a little group of studies on Paul’s great letter to the Colossians in the Good Book Guides series.

I really enjoyed working on it and only hope that those who purchase one (for the princely sum of £3!) will also enjoy using it as much

The Good Book Co obviously thought it so good that they were too embarrassed to put the author’s name on the cover! Happy Days.

For those who like this sort of thing, here is the breakdown of the letter:

1. Jesus our confidence (Colossians 1:1-14)
2. Jesus our Lord (Colossians 1:15-23)
3. Jesus our Rock (Colossians 1:24 – 2:7)
4. Jesus our fullness (Colossians 2:8-23)
5. Jesus our lifestyle (Colossians 3:1 – 4:1)
6. Jesus our ministry (Colossians 4:2-18)

Blonde Roots: the slave trade turned upside down

Blonde Roots is a remarkable book. That should be reason enough to check it out – but of course, most will need more than that to go on. I spotted a Saturday supplement review of it and so picked it up – and couldn’t put it down.

It was one of those books that got under the skin and provoked a response – so i ended up reviewing it for Damaris, here on their CultureWatch site. But to give you a hint of why it stuck in my mind, here is an excerpt from the review:

How on earth do we help an ethnic majority to understand the realities of racism? What needs to be done to expose any lurking prejudice?

Bernardine Evaristo’s answer was to write a novel. Blonde Roots is the daring and shocking result. Her premise is simple. What if it had been Africans who enslaved Europeans for 400 years, and not the other way around? What would that have looked and, more importantly, felt like? As someone who is half-English, half-Nigerian, she is perhaps more well-suited to write this book than most.

The book depicts a universe that is both eerily alien and yet also unnervingly familiar. Geography and place names are familiar but in the wrong place or spelled differently; history is not so much revised as ransacked – and yet the way she does it leaves one in no doubt about the horrors of ‘real’ history.

But the reason I found this book so challenging in the end was not its utterly reasonable attacks on racism and slavery. No instead, it is the fact that Evaristo makes a pretty well crafted case for dismissing all truth claims on the grounds that they tend to be at root power claims. And that is a challenge that is not easy to dismiss.

To find out more, read on… Even better, read the book.

“The Rival to the Bible?” Nice line but shame about the agenda…

I don’t know if you’ve seen this report on the BBC News page about the Codex Sinaiticus. But i spotted it this afternoon, and I’m afraid i felt the need to respond. Sure it gives the story a bit more oxygen, but then, BBC online gets more readers than I do, so this isn’t really going to make that much difference.

OBSERVATIONS OF BIAS?

But here are some observations from the article:

• The title is nice, isn’t it? Has a nice ring and rhythm. It even rhymes, sort of. I bet the bod who thought it up was pretty pleased. I would be. But it’s a bit of an exaggeration, surely?
• Then look at the statements at the end of the opening paragraph: It is markedly different from its modern equivalent. What’s left out? Well the article only touches on one or two things – nothing justifies use of the word ‘markedly’ in my opinion.
• But take this: the thrust of the article. Roger Bolton writes: For those who believe the Bible is the inerrant, unaltered word of God, there will be some very uncomfortable questions to answer. It shows there have been thousands of alterations to today’s bible. Well, it’s true that there are many questions to answer about the Bible – i will certainly never exhaust them, and nor will the greatest scholars. And some are perhaps uncomfortable. But so what? It seems to me that the purpose of the article, far more than to inform about an exciting technological and academic development, is to make faithful traditional believers feel uncomfortable.
  

Now it is a short article – and perhaps on the accompanying Radio4 programme, Bolton will give more evidence and explanation – but let’s take the discrepancies he does pick on. Apart from the inclusion of the apocryphal Shepherd of Hermas and Epistle of Barnabas (don’t get me started on what the article muckrakes with the inflammatory comment about the Jews – yes I KNOW there are issues here about antisemitism but a quick dab in an article is surely not the way to deal with them), about which more in a mo, the main textual observations are these:

• Missing mentions of the Ascension and Resurrection
• Jesus was angry at a man’s leprosy, and not filled with compassion as otherwise reported.
• The story of Jesus rescuing the woman about to be stoned in John 7 is missing

Well, hello! This is not news. In fact the New International Version is quite open about these facts. It mentions that some manuscripts do not include either Mark 16:9-20 or John 7:53-8:11 – and please note, this point is not tucked away in some footnote – these clarifications are right there, unmissable in the main body of the text.

One reason that i like the NIV is that it has nothing to hide – so WHENEVER there are variants or textual issues, they are always explicitly mentioned in footnotes. As someone who read Classics at university (and had to read the whole of Homer’s Iliad in Greek), it is incredible how FEW footnotes there are for the NT, in huge contrast to other ancient texts. But the task of scholarship is always to hone our understandings of texts and original manuscripts. Which is why the making of the CODEX SINAITICUS online is such GREAT news – and why I’ve had a link from my resources bar on the right for months! I’m not embarrassed or concerned by this. It is a HUGE STORY.

But notice the implication of appealing to one scholar, Prof Bart Ehrman:

Mr Ehrman was a born again Bible-believing Evangelical until he read the original Greek texts and noticed some discrepancies. The Bible we now use can’t be the inerrant word of God, he says, since what we have are the sometimes mistaken words copied by fallible scribes.

Oh well – that’s OK then. Anyone else who is a born-again evangelical will now obviously read this article on BBC online and they will give up their faith too (beause presumably, most people do not have the ability to read ancient Greek texts). You’d have to be an idiot not to. But of course there are some people who are Christians who don’t believe all this ‘Bible is true’ rubbish – because as the last interviewee said, ‘the Bible is a living text’. Whatever that means. So if you have to be a Christian, at least take a more relaxed line.

SOME SCHOLARLY RESPONSES

Now, this is not the place, and nor am I the sort of expert who is able, to go into all the textual stuff here – and I really don’t want to get bogged down in all the talk about inerrancy, infallibility etc etc. I’m just so frustrated by the blatant agenda behind the headline. At least I’ve got a blog to spill it out on.

For those who want a bit more sense and academic integrity in all this, I can at least recommend stuff by FF Bruce. He was Rylands Professor of Biblical Criticism and Exegesis at the University of Manchester for 20 years until 1978. He was no amateur in this field. But he was also an evangelical who read the original Greek texts A LOT, but that certainly didn’t seem to make him his faith.

In fact he was a profoundly gifted interpreter of the Scriptures, and was justly regarded as a leading scholar in this area – which means he simply had to understand all prevailing and opposing views to his own. In one book, The Canon of Scripture, he deals, in passing, with all the different original texts that are available to us and deals with some of the nitty-gritty questions of detail. His explanations of how it all came together are brilliant (including dealing extensively with The Shepherd of Hermas and the Epistle of Barnabas).

Another, more approachable book, is his classic ‘The New Testament Documents: Are they Reliable?’ This is a great place to start and will certainly answer some basic questions with authority, knowledge and openness. I just wish that those who read Roger Bolton’s article had the chance to read some of Bruce’s scholarship for themselves. But that’s of course far too much to ask from an online article. After all, we don’t want anyone actually believing this stuff, do we? Where’s the story in that?

Q marks the spot – Treasure Map 1 (Oct 2008)

Having said that one of the values of blogs is that they can be like treasure maps to give pointers to the morass that is the internet. So here be launched the more or less monthly Quaerentia Treasure Map.

Sacred Treasure

• 6 wise words for Freshers – from Ed Goode’s DELIGHTED.
• 6 tips for living with singleness – from Ros Clarke’s CONVERSATIONAL THEOLOGY
• 10 Commandments for Bloggers – c/o the Evangelical Alliance.
• On iTunesU – RTS has made available FOR FREE some excellent lectures. Lots of treasure here but I’m working through ‘Preaching Christ in a Postmodern World‘ by the double act of the late great Ed Clowney and Tim Keller. Fantastic stuff.
• Palestinian Mosab Hassan Yousef, the Son of one of Hamas founders becomes Christian: an extraordinary story.

Topical Treasure

• Atlas of the Real World – some fascinating maps based on a range of data other than geography.
• Amazing photos showing what’s involved to the the Space Shuttle ready for a flight
• George Orwell’s ‘Ironic Poem about Prostitution‘
• How to hide an aircraft factory from the air

Quirky Treasure

• Get your head around this photo.
• Quite fun National Flag site: we are multicolored (including make your own).
• Some mad animal hybrids
• This is old news (last July) – but have been meaning to link to this unfortunate story: woman runner-up in one horse race.
• The Front Fell Off – this is old now and has been doing the rounds – but it had me in stitches: an Australian version of Bird & Fortune.