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.

This is all well and good, and in principal I do agree that it is better to not settle an argument having discussed it, than to settle it without discussing it, or however it is that old saying goes. But in practise, with these two imposing characters, I really don’t think it is that simple.

Let me be clear, I am pretty much a 6.5 on the The God Delusions scale of unbelief, and I do not think they should debate.

However the reasons are not down fear of ‘my precious Dawkins’ losing (he is not), or because because he will be cast in a cowardly light for refusing. I have no personal investment in Dawkins, winning a debate. I either agree with the views he puts forward or not, and this is not an exclusive arrangement. I respect him as a scientist, a writer and a populariser of secularism. He has certainly made it somewhat mainstream to “come out” so to speak as someone who does not subscribe to the supernatural. He is human however, and I don’t believe something to be the case just because he uttered it.

The reason I believe he should not debate Craig is because it would be utterly pointless. It would amount to nothing more than posturing on both sides, and a serious case of talking past one another. Both Craig and Dawkins are at such vast extremes on the spectrum of belief, they bring to the stage presuppositions that render any debate on the existence of God moot before they begin.

For example, Dawkins entire outlook is based upon evolution being true. This is his jumping on point. If you do not except that evolution by natural selection is a factual account of the origins of life, then nothing Dawkins could possibly say on the existence of God is going to sway you.

Craig has always skirted around the issue of evolution, creationism and intelligent design. His position is deliberately murky. Now, If ground rules were set that they both agree on the fact of evolution and the topic of debate was on the existence of a deistic god, or even a theistic god that ‘works through’ evolution, I would imagine Dawkins may not be so reluctant. I believe in ‘debate format’ he would indeed still lose due to a lack of debate experience and little training in philosophy.

I really don’t see how Craig would agree to the above ground rules though, because it would explicitly undermine his biblical worldview. He would fall off of the tightrope he walks between a scholarly liberal/agnostic world where he is respected (feared), and the literalist believers that make up his fan base.

The only topic other than this, or the topic that must be settled before any other can begin, is whether or not evolution is indeed a factual account of the origins of life. However when we drift onto this, well, of course…there is no debate. Craig is massively out of his depth and even with all his style and rhetorical skill, could not present evidence or argument to the contrary that convinces anyone that doesn’t already disbelieve in evolution on theological grounds.

So why am I going to hear him speak? Well because I want to hear Craig himself. I want his arguments unconstrained from the battle of beating an opponent. I genuinely want to hear his arguments and ideas outside of the ring. I am prepared to set evolution to one side for a moment to hear his philosophical objections to The God Delusion.

I hope that every atheist and agnostic criticising Dawkins for not debating is attending one of Craig’s talks, and yes I said talks, not debates.

This is more interesting to me than a debate between two enormous ego’s to find myself sitting in the Dawkins camp rooting for him to win an argument they are not even having.

There is nothing worse to blunt the mind than to only ever surround yourself with people and ideas you already agree with.

Being a DC guy I was very interested with the news that their entire universe was being rebooted back to issue #1. This seems like the perfect jumping in point for me as I have been watching Justice League Unlimited a lot lately on DVD and want to break out past my Superman infatuation.

So I’ve emailed my local comic book store with a list of the books I’m going to start with, and it goes as follows.

Action
Detective
Justice League
Superman
Batman
Batman: The Dark Knight
Superboy
Supergirl
Flash
Green Lantern
Wonder Woman
Storm Watch

Now I will probably drop off from the ones that don’t get me hooked, but the intention is to get a good feel for the universe and how the books inter-link. I have so far read the #1′s for Justice, Action, Detective and Storm Watch, first impressions are positive, but I’m going to review them all individually in other posts as I go along.

The really cool thing is that you don’t have to get the paper to keep up. With the revolutionary day and date digital release it makes it possible to follow along the stories of other titles relatively painlessly, without having to go to the effort and expense of physically collecting comics. I have already read Swamp Thing #1 this way, however it was really good and I’m kinda wishing I had got that one in print now!

I know that there will be no monetary value in having the #1 issues of the reboot, like the very original Action #1 has. Far too many people will have the same idea to pull any potential value out of them and many thousands have already been printed. But nonetheless from a geeky point of view I have 2 copies of all my favourite #1′s, one to read and one to seal, plus the variant covers. There are some very sexy ltd edition b&w pencil variant covers that are priced very high (around £150). And it is these will most likely be valuable in the future, however I really can’t justify them!

So, any once else excited or annoyed by this?

I haven’t made the great progress with my work out goals in the last 6 months. Work has been busy (I’m just about to launch a business that has been 3 years in the making!) and moving house, and thus father from the gym, makes it easy to be lazy and not go so often.

I have made a concerted effort over the last 6 or 7 weeks to get back on track, my diet has improved once more, and I am managing all my gym sessions. It’s really just about better organisation of time. I have also come to terms with the fact that I can’t do 5 sessions a week. I have decided to pair up my muscle groups again so I can get through my whole body in 3 sessions per week. Any more I do manage to fit in is a bonus cardio/leg session.

I dropped back 8 or 9 pounds to 12 st 5 ish, however with my efforts reignited I have clawed my way back up to 13 stone. My body fat stays a pretty much consistent 16%.

So once more I find that I’ve hit 13 stone (182 pounds/82.5kg) with 14 more pounds to go to hit my original goal weight. I’m trying to be realistic about it, and I’m aiming to get there by April next year. In that time though also want to begin dropping my body fat with the end goal for that being 9%.

Looking further into the future I hope to maintain the lean mass and from there build strength, endurance and take up a sport I can do with other people. Whilst I love my solitary confinement to the gym, doing something energetic in a group would be a welcome break I think, especially when it comes to cardio as I lose my mind on the dread mill.

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

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

I assume it will be the same setup/format but again with a different probing from Ian McEwan. I have to be honest and admit I haven’t read any of his books, however I’m well aware of his position and advocacy.  I should at the very least watch the film versions at some point

I think I have my question sorted now, you watch though because I’ve taken so long to formulate it, I won’t get the chance to ask it! Serve me right!

We are about going to hit the A1 in about an hour, and spend the day in Cambridge, as it’s another place I have never been, and then meeting Sarah’s father for the talk later on.

I’m going to finish reading the Blackford Moral Landscape review on the way down in the car, and perhaps listen to another chapter from TML again.

Stay tuned, I’ll be bloggin and tweeting and posting pics through the day

David

Opening talk

Well weather wise it couldn’t have been more different to Oxford! Bristol certainly wasn’t selling itself to us meteorologically, however the Festival of Ideas talk by Sam Harris more than made up for it.

It wasn’t a packed house at St Georges, but it was comfortably filled, (Festival of Ideas tweeted 350 were in attendance) which considering the big draw would have been for the Dawkins talk the night before, is still quite a large number for a talk on morality and neuroscience.

Sam presented the same introduction, which as he told me at the signing afterwards  I should be able to give for him by now! He had however obviously revised things here and there, and in general is sounding far slicker as a condensed 20 minute presentation than it did as the original TED talk he gave.

For some reason I was expecting a different format to the previous evenings talk with Dawkins, and so was surprised to see the same set up on stage indicating that Sam was to be probed by a third party on the book. This worked well with Dicky D and despite initial disappointment that Sam wouldn’t be expounding The Moral Landscape for a full hour, it worked very well in this case too. Again, as with the Oxford talk, it was probably the most interesting segment. The questioner asked great questions of Sam and provoked more seemingly improvised gems that answered some of the objections.

The Q&A was better this evening. One guy asked if there was to be a follow up to The Moral Landscape, perhaps a map as to navigate it! This was only a little facetious (and humorous), as what it’s really asking is when can we expect any of what Sam talks about to be practically useful for civilisation.

Signing my copy of LTACN

We waited in line to get LTACN signed and to get a quick picture, but as you will see they kinda blurred. I think I’ll just ask to pose for one with him on Saturday as Sarah’s father can take a picture for us.  I managed to get a quickly ask him if given enough time, does he think he could reason William Lane Craig out of belief in the resurrection. He said that more than likely not, as WLC isn’t logically reasoning in the same set of tools in the first place. This really makes me think about the utility of Sam’s position on more serious matters like scientific objective morality. Hopefully this little book signing exchange can form the basis of a decent question I hope to ask at the final talk in Cambridge.

Unfortunately there were some sound issues again like in Oxford, which persisted through most of the talk. I’m not sure if this was entirely a technical problem as perhaps the rather drafty cavernous nature of St Georges compounded the sonic problems. I didn’t struggle to hear anything however, as I was nearer the front, I wonder how things were for people in the balcony.

Excellent evening followed by a good thai curry in town. Saturday we go to Cambridge to meet Sarah’s father and his wife for the final stop on his UK visit. This gives me a few days to read through the Blackford essay on the Moral Landscape and to start re-formulating my question.

Feeling good this morning! I got a night of much needed sleep, and now we’re off to the Bristol science museum before heading north once more.

More pics on my flickr

dB

I really enjoyed last nights chat between Harris & Dawkins. There wasn’t too much in the way of new material, but it was still great to see the ideas of TML being articulated to a UK audience.

Tonight should be different though, as far as I’m aware this is an hours lecture from Sam alone. This will hopefully be in the vein of the google author talk he did last year. The extra time given in this format helps get into some of the details that can preempt some of objections that occur in the Q&A.

I’ve been thinking more and more about the potential limits of reason and it’s application in the discourse of religion. Does Sam sees any practical use for reason in conversation with people who hold a faith inspired world view.

I suppose I would want to know that if given sufficient time, and baring in mind that despite protestations to the contrary people aren’t reasoned into faith, could he, Harris, reason William Lane Craig out of his belief in say, the miracles of Jesus.

Cant decide how to word it, we’ll see how it goes.

dB

* Overall, Sam was as lucid as ever. Great to see in person

* 20 mins of Sam peddling TML with the usual talk, however each time I hear it he has adjusted things slightly, giving emphasis to different chapters of the book.

*I feel like I’m 80% with him. There are a number of things I have issues with, but as I think about the concept more and more, and source the end notes of the book, the clearer what he is saying becomes. I want to get to the end of the week of talks, re-read the Russell Blackford essay on TML, and then properly write out my thoughts as they currently stand.

* 30 mins of Dawkins probing Sam on potential issues people may take with the books central claims. Also added his own qualms, which seemed developed and genuine. This was the highlight of the evening, as it gave Sam room to manoeuvre around the topic loosely. I find he speaks just as succinctly and poignantly off the cuff as he does with his prepared speeches. I do feel this section could have been even better though. I would have liked to have seen more of a disagreement between the two of them on “ought/is” distinction amongst other things. A genuine back and forth dialogue would have been even better I think. But its not like I’m really complaining, if I’m going to sit through anyone probing/interviewing Harris on his book then its gonna be Richard! Strangely Dawkins started out by reading a few paragraphs from the rather large section in the book where Harris goes off at length re: Francis Collins debacle. Whilst I agree entirely with what Sam has to say, that section simply goes on disproportionately too long for the significance it has on the premise

* Q&A: Without wishing to offend anyone, the questions were pretty poor. I understand that it’s not easy to quickly articulate a question at the microphone, and I don’t really believe I would have necessarily asked anything better, however most of the questions seemed to come out as statements or opinions. “I agree with you but…” The questioner would then wait for Sam to try and explain why he disagreed with their opinion. What this really amounted to was a sort of “bet you haven’t thought of this”. In almost every case, he had thought of that and had even referred to it in his opening remarks. This was the only time Sam seemed ro ramble, and appear slightly lost. For several questions he ended up responding vaguely to the given opinion, then referring back to his earlier introduction. This could appear like a weakness in his argument, maybe it is and perhaps I’m doing people a disservice, maybe when I see the DVD it will seem different again. Or maybe it’s a hard thing to do, get out a question on this tricky subject, and maybe people just haven’t yet read the book and were solely going by what they had heard tonight or from YouTube. :/

* After the Q&A there was a book signing. I got TML and EOF signed. I’m saving LTACN for tomorrow when Sarah will be with me and we can get a cheeky picture taken.

* Speaking of pictures sorry for the appalling shot. I was a good boy and didn’t take my 550d in to the theatre thinking it wouldn’t be allowed. Well turns out it was, and so all I could manage was this from the iPhone. Tomorrow I shall take in the dslr for better pics

One final note, Oxford is gorgeous. A little strange as it seems it is entirely a littlebig student world unlike anything I have ever seen! The Sheldonian theatre was smaller than I was expecting and a great intimate venue for the event.

Right I’m battered, g’night. See you all tomorrow.

dB

For now though, in this universe I will have to make do with living vicariously through intellects far greater than mine.