T,bate or not t’bate. William Lane Craig (Oxford) and Dawkins
Today I’m going to see the William Lane Craig talk at the Sheldonian in Oxford. This will be the second time I have been to that venue this year, previously in April I saw Sam Harris discuss his book ‘The Moral Landscape’ with Richard Dawkins. This was rather interesting as he had just come off the back off a debate in the US with William Lane Craig.
There has been some interesting and amusing discussion regarding Dawkins’ reluctance to debate Craig, and in fact, from all sides of the argument. Plenty of atheists, agnostics and Christians alike have chastised Dawkins for refusing the invitation. Likening it to shutting off the argument and being antithetical to his own supposed regard for free thought and inquiry. Read more 
Thoughts on the DC Comics universal reboot
Whilst in no way am I new to the world of comics, I am not a seasoned veteran by any means. I have dipped in and out of the trades over the years, however whilst really enjoying what I’ve read, the DC universe always seamed so massive and convoluted that I never knew where to begin in order to seriously get involved with it.
Working out update
I think I’m going to have to come to terms with the fact that no matter how good my intentions are to blog, I’m always too busy (read: lazy) to keep it up for any length of time! Oh well, I’m here again, let’s see how long it lasts this go around 
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Dawkins and PZ Myers in discussion – trip to London
I’ve been really lucky recently in that talks and debates by authors and scientists I admire have fallen on either my holidays or days I just haven’t had to work in those days
Sarah had spotted this one, and for £4 I couldn’t pass it up. I also hadn’t really been down to London much since Sarah moved to Leeds, and I do miss it in many ways.
I spent the afternoon at the British Museum (I desperately wanted to go to the Natural History Museum again but number of times I have been there outnumbers the visits I have made to the British Museum by 20 to 1, so I had to restrain myself) and whilst the Rosetta Stone was predictably awash in flash photography, I did find the Islamic gallery and a few other more secluded areas of interest.
I also hired an audio guide, but for the sole purpose of setting the language to Arabic to do some listening practise. Now, however smart and clever I may make that sound, it actually backfired on me because I was listening so hard to translate I didn’t really take in the galleries as well as I should have.
After getting kicked out the museum at closing time I made my way over to the Institute of Education and met up with Sufian Ahmed who I’ve tweeted with back and forth at these events before but not actually hooked up in person with until now. Meeting fellow tweeps in the real world is always fun.
We got pretty good seats, but as the second half of the audience started to file in, a group of protesters forced there way into the auditorium and took to the stage chanting about spending cuts, job losses and protested against Richard agreeing to lecture at A.C Graylings new £18’000 per year private college. It was all a little surreal really, and it took rather longer than I expected for the police to escort them out so the evening could begin. I’m not exactly sure how I feel about what they did, and this is not the post to ponder it over in either. But regardless of my position of their ethical and social stance, they aggressively forced (one member of staff was physically overpowered by thea sob) their way into a room that they had no right to be in. Peaceful protest, this was not.
Camera phones were obviously everywhere and amusingly Sarah messaged me to say she had seen me on YouTube before the discussion was even finished!
So after the rather poor warm up act Dawkins and PZ took to the armchairs and basically chewed the biological and religious fat for 30 minutes before opening up to questions.
It was nice as ever to hear Dawkins, and he was certainly wittier than I have ever heard him before, but the real treat was PZ. The guy is extremely likeable and despite being fairly quietly spoken, articulates himself unapologetically and with good humour.
The discussion began speculating about life on other planets and on the necessity of a DNA like replicating molecule and enzymes molecules that can build proteins. They also discussed the predictable probability of what sort of features life might evolve based on how many times things like eyes, echolocation etc have independently evolved on earth. This is rather fascinating as it gives somewhat of a hypothesis on what real alien life could be like, as opposed to what science fiction so often postulates.
PZ said that he personally thinks intelligent life would be extremely unlikely to have evolved elsewhere, again due to the fact that self awareness has developed only once so far on earth.
The conversation eventually moved on to the perception people have of them as angry, strident, fundamentalist, needless to say their thoughts on this were more than a little amusing, especially PZ, as he is more at the cranky end of the spectrum than Dawkins.
PZ May looks like Darwin’s Big Furry Teddy Bear, but when it comes to tackling creationist nonsense and religious encroachment, he is more like a roaring Grizzly. Of course it should go without saying that this is metaphoric in that he unapologetically challenges religion with strong words. Not that he goes around ripping people’s faces off and scavenging food out of Forrest park bin bags.
As ever with these things the questions were hit an miss, but they both did a good job of making the most of them. I had a good time and it took my mind off of work for a day, which is simultaneously a good and bad thing!
Now I really need to win some money so we can go to Australia next April for the Four Horsemen all on the same bill.
dD
Sam Harris Part III @ Cambridge WordFest – Post talk thoughts
Quick thoughts on Cambridge, I will wrap up the weeks events more conclusively tomorrow evening when we get back to Leeds for the last time!
Today after wandering around the rather beautiful city of Cambridge we met with Sarah’s family for tea before the final Sam Harris talk.
As I had figured, the format was to be the same as before; overview of the book, quizzing by a third party then Q&A with the audience. Ian McEwan did a good job teasing issues not in the opening talk, and he also led discussion on how the early reviews are misrepresenting both the book and Sam’s views in general.
Ultimately though, with all the quizzing and probing it was coming from people who largely agree with Sam. So I began thinking this afternoon, after skimming the headline of a Guardian article clashing Robert Winston with Sam on the compatibility of science and religion, whether someone like Winston would have been better on stage to ask really hard questions. After reading said article however, I see why that would be a complete waste of time. A) I suppose the idea of someone ripping into the work sitting next to you is not conducive to pimping your book! And B) a lot of the criticism TML is receiving is either undeserved or simply nonsensical.
Please don’t mistake the above paragraph for a unanimous approval of TML. Quite the opposite, it has it’s flaws as a book. What can’t be said of it however, is that it doesn’t pre-empt and quash the multitude of objections that currently being raised in the literary press. Sam bends over backwards, conceding where he may be misconstrued and of the points that may be intuitively troubling. But he does deal with them. In light of this, many reviewers appear to have either picked the book and put it down mid way through chapter one, or have not read it at all, writing reviews based solely on what others have written.
This isn’t the place to go any further with this, as I’m going to be reviewing the book (and it’s positive and negative reception) in depth over the course of the next week, so I will get back on to the talk itself!
The talk this evening was even shorter than Bristol, there must have been severe time constraints with getting the next speaker/audience into the chamber. This was worsened by two rather lengthy introductions (considering the allotted time for the whole event was 1 hour) and a few wrap up comments by the organisers. The latter came at the expense of audience questions, which whilst I suppose I’m never a big fan of the Q&A thing, it was stingy for the people that wanted to ask questions as they only got through 3 of them!
It was interesting that this was the first time we didn’t have to que for signings for long, as it appeared most people were there for Ian McEwan, and needless to say, they were rather disappointed as this was Sam’s event. WordFest marketed this as an Ian McEwan talk (posters and billing didn’t even feature or mention Harris) and more than a few grumbles were overheard on the way out of the chamber. I can’t imagine what a good percentage of the audience must have been thinking, coming out to listen to a fiction author and getting an hour of the scientific underpinnings of morality!
I was most interested to get the opinions of people who were going into the talk and the premise cold, with either little or no knowledge prior to the talk. Again, I’m going to go into this later in a fuller review, but needless to say, healthy debate was had over the curry afterwards!
Great end to a fantastic strange little week. Finally got our picture with another of the 4 Horsemen!
More pics on my flickr
