Beltane
Nice to see that they’re getting into the spirit of Beltane in Manchester today, by igniting a 5-story building in their town centre.
Want More Alcohol Problems? Endorse This Policy
“Parents who give alcohol to children aged under 15 should be prosecuted, a charity has said.”
I’m thinking hard, and I’m really not sure if I can come up with a worse policy for reducing underage drinking. This policy could have been designed by the creators of Hooch it’s so terrible. Here are a few of the problems, just off the top of my head:
1. It won’t work - underage children don’t generally do their hardcore drinking with their parents anyway.
2. Those parents who wish to help their children to have a healthy attitude towards alcohol won’t get the chance. By the time that they’re 16, they’ll have already been introduced to alcohol by their peers.
3. Children just won’t talk to their parents about drinking - they’ll drink in secret, either alone or with peers, which is a pretty dangerous state of affairs. Parents who don’t particularly care about the wellbeing of their children will probably encourage their children to drink outside the house to avoid prosecution. Nice.
4. How the hell does anyone propose to actually enforce this law? Will the police randomly be able to break into people’s houses to do spot checks? Will it be dependent on others shopping their friends and neighbours?
I’m sure the writers of this report had children’s best interests at heart, but this is one of the most ludicrous policy suggestions that I’ve ever heard. Societies with fewer drinking problems generally allow their children to drink earlier not later. Even in the best possible circumstances, waiting for a child to turn 16 (not an age renowned for its clarity of thought) seems to be a route to 16-year-old binge-drinkers if you ask me. I think we have enough of those already.
(Pic of booze by Flickr user joshstaiger)
Are Scientists Who Argue About Religion "Arrogant"?
Lord Winston, it seems, has weighed in on the “is-Richard-Dawkins-arrogant?” debate. This debate, at some point in the dim and distant past, used to be the science/religion debate, but things have moved on since then.
Lord Winston has called Dawkins “patronising” and “insulting” and accuses him of “portray[ing] science in a bad light”. Indeed, tonight he’s delivering a lecture called “The Science Delusion”. Very clever.
“The reason I’ve called it the Science Delusion is because I think there is a body of scientific opinion from my scientific colleagues who seem to believe that science is the absolute truth and that religious and spiritual values are to be discounted,” said Lord Winston. “Some people, both scientists and religious people, deal with uncertainty by being certain. That is dangerous in the fundamentalists and it is dangerous in the fundamentalist scientists.”
Am I allowed to agree with some of this? For example, I don’t think that “science is the absolute truth”, but on the other hand, I do believe that it’s our best technique for moving closer to truth, certainly more so than the “religious and spiritual values” which sound far from appealing as an alternative route. Winston has a point, however, when he warns against “dealing with uncertainty by being certain” - it’s a common scientific trap.
However, I think the gist of his point is not a strong one. Why should Lord Winston be dictating what Dawkins or Dennett or Pinker might wish to say? When he argues that it leads to distrust in scientists, I’m far from convinced. Are there really people out there who have been put off science because a scientist suggested that religion might be bunkum? Would science be greatly wounded by the loss of such a closed mind? Are there really lots of religious people out there aching to become wonderful scientists who decide against it because Richard Dawkins disagrees with them about their god? I severely doubt it.
Lord Winston is, of course, entitled to his views. I think though, to suggest that scientists shouldn’t be allowed to put forward their views on religion in case it’s felt to be “insulting” or “patronising” is, in its own right, insulting and patronising. Winston should not be telling scientists what they can and can’t talk about whether he thinks it’s for the public good or not.
I’m with AC Grayling on this one. He calls Winston’s arguments “tiresome guff”:
“Belief in supernatural entities in the universe … is false, and in the light of increasing scientific knowledge about nature has definitely come to be delusional,”
Blogroll Updated
I have, at long last, updated my links section. There are a couple of additions, and The Brothers Brick link now, eventually, goes to the right place.
If you too would like the enormous traffic that this site receives bearing down on your blog, then give your petitions in the comments. It’s worth remembering, and being prepared for, the good couple of people a month that might visit your site because of this.
Einstein and Faith
There are a couple of quotes from this Time article about Albert Einstein and religion that I wholeheartedly agree with:
“Try and penetrate with our limited means the secrets of nature and you will find that, behind all the discernible laws and connections, there remains something subtle, intangible and inexplicable. Veneration for this force beyond anything that we can comprehend is my religion. To that extent I am, in fact, religious.”
And
“The most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead, a snuffed-out candle. To sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is something that our minds cannot grasp, whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly: this is religiousness. In this sense, and in this sense only, I am a devoutly religious man.”
And an answer to the question “Do you believe in God?”
“I believe in Spinoza’s God, who reveals himself in the lawful harmony of all that exists, but not in a God who concerns himself with the fate and the doings of mankind.”
And, finally, this:
“The fanatical atheists are like slaves who are still feeling the weight of their chains which they have thrown off after hard struggle. They are creatures who–in their grudge against traditional religion as the ‘opium of the masses’– cannot hear the music of the spheres.”
There’s a fair bit in there I’d quibble about, but seems like he was a pretty smart guy. Who have thought it?
