Einstein and Atheism

Yes, I'm in the middle of exams. 4 down, 5 to go, the next one is in a bit over 3 hours. But I thought it was worth posting this quotation, which I got stuck in my head for one of yesterday's exams.

Beyond all the discernable concatenations, there remains something subtle, intangible and inexplicable. Veneration for this force beyond anything we can comprehend is my religion.
Albert Einstein

You know, I kind of get Einstein's religious views. He essentially believed that there was an impersonal god underlying the regularity of natural law. I think that if you ignore the possibility of divine revelation, then Einstein's views seem eminently sensible as a starting point (except for the whole determinism thing and the universe needing to be unchanging thing).

But what I don't get is "rational" atheism. How can someone plausibly discount the existence of the sort of god that Einstein believed in? Or are they being less rational than they think?

Eurovision and Ethnic Minorities

I watched Eurovision last night. Two entries were so funny I cried. I'd heard beforehand the theory that voting was determined largely by ethnic miniorities voting for their home countries. Russia won, and their 12 points were from Israel, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine and Armenia. There could be something in that...

Germany were really really bad - four women who couldn't sing in tune, which became painfully obvious when they tried singing together. And they got their points from Switzerland and Bulgaria.

Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill

I know it's a few days since the bill was passed, but I'm still busy revising.

I found praying about the bill immensely difficult after it was passed (though I guess it still has to get through the House of Lords). As far as I can tell, the majority of MPs voted for a bill which will probably result in the deaths of thousands of innocents who cannot defend themselves. So what should we pray about it?

The first thing, it seems to me, is repentance for all the times we haven't spoken up, and for our complicity in electing them. As a student, I have two MPs, but only one vote. One of my MPs voted against some aspects of the bill, the other one has been known to campaign for a removal of all time limits for abortion and the legalisation of euthanasia. Did I speak publically against him at the last election? No. Am I therefore complicit? To an extent. And I need to repent of that.

The second thing, which quite surprised me, is how refreshing it can be to pray Psalms about God's justice at times like these. We are witnessing the government largely go against the will of the people, and taking a course of action which they know may well lead to large numbers of innocent deaths. Passages like Psalm 10 just seem so appropriate...

12 Arise, LORD! Lift up your hand, O God.
Do not forget the helpless.
13 Why does the wicked man revile God?
Why does he say to himself,
"He won't call me to account"?
14 But you, O God, do see trouble and grief;
you consider it to take it in hand.
The victim commits himself to you;
you are the helper of the fatherless.
15 Break the arm of the wicked and evil man;
call him to account for his wickedness
that would not be found out.
16 The LORD is King for ever and ever;
the nations will perish from his land.
17 You hear, O LORD, the desire of the afflicted;
you encourage them, and you listen to their cry,
18 defending the fatherless and the oppressed,
in order that man, who is of the earth, may terrify no more.

Psalm 10:12-18 (NIV)

This link is great for confirming the right-wing bits of my prejudice. 92% of Conservative MPs voted for children needing a father. 82% of Labour MPs voted against, with only slightly weaker patterns on the abortion issue. I prayed, and I think I was right to pray, that every single MP who voted against the unborn would lose their seats at the next election.

Dave Walker Cartoon

There's a great cartoon entitled "the Vicar's Study" here. It's on the Church Times Blog. I'm not usually a great fan of the Church Times - it seems almost relentlessly anti-evangelical, but Dave Walker's cartoons are generally great.

Ah yes, and exams start a week today, so don't expect much in the way of posting.

UNESCO World Heritage Sites

Random stuff here...

One of the ways I like to look at where it'd be nice to visit on a holiday is by looking for UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Now I haven't been to that many of them, but all the ones I've been to have been really good and worth visiting.

Full List.

Abortion - The Choice

I watched this documentary following 5 women going through abortions, with lots of interviews. Wow. I don't think the makers take either side, but it is very powerful. It's available to watch online for another few days.

Just watch (except for the bits where you have to look away), and just think about the word "conscience"... I think people know whether abortion is right or not...

It's really good seeing the BBC producing something sensible like this for a change!

Two Books on the Reformation

An interesting contrast here, between two books on the Reformation, of a similar length, published at a similar time. Reformation - Europe's House Divided, by Diarmaid MacCulloch, and The Reformation World, edited by Andrew Pettegree.

To my mind, Pettegree is better in almost every single respect. It's easier to read, it's at a higher academic level (the people writing each chapter are experts in their field and the chapters are helpful summaries of the field; MacCulloch is an expert on England in the 1500s) and Pettegree is generally better reading for academia, for revision (my current concern) or for pleasure. Don't get me wrong - MacCulloch is a superb lecturer, and his book is a good overview of the European Reformation - it's just that Pettegree's book is better.

Except in one aspect - price. On Amazon.co.uk, MacCulloch's book is currently £25.60 in hardback or £8.99 in paperback. Pettegree is an astonishing £142.50 in hardback or £29.99 in paperback. Why the difference? I can only assume that the publishers are aiming one at the academic library market and the other at the popular market. But I can't see any reason for it.

I bought MacCulloch's book, but I keep getting Pettegree's out of the library.

Einstein on Jesus

I am a Jew, but I am enthralled by the luminous figure of the Nazarene... No one can read the Gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus. His personality pulsates in every word. No myth is filled with such life.

Albert Einstein, 1929

The Problem with Cars v Public Transport

The discussions on several recent posts seem to be heading this way. It's worth saying that I tried to cope without a car for several years (10 after leaving school, including 5 in full-time employment). I then gave up, learned to drive, bought a car and now drive more than I should.

The problem with huge and unnecessary car use seems to be in several parts.

1) The way society is (or, more likely, isn't) designed means that people often need to have a car. Visiting family in rural areas, transporting furniture or weekly shopping, etc. I suggest this issue is very difficult to deal with, but its force would be weakened by tackling the others.

2) The cost of a car is heavily split into three categories - initial cost, yearly required stuff (servicing, tax, etc) and incremental cost (fuel, etc) that depends on distance. For convenience, we can split these into owning cost and driving cost - how much it would cost to own the car anyway, and how much it costs to drive it that bit more.

3) Public transport almost always seems to try to compete (if it competes at all) with the total cost of owning a car, whereas to persuade people not to drive, it needs to compete with the driving cost. If I get the bus to my girlfriend's house, it might cost me about £1.50 and take 30 mins or so. If I drive, it costs me about 60p and takes 10 mins. If I walk, it costs me very little and takes about 50 mins. I can't see why a car owner would want to use public transport for that journey. In fact, with things the way they are at the moment, I don't see why a car owner would ever use public transport, except for going somewhere with very poor parking.

4) I used to do a lot of cycling. Again, it's much harder to be motivated when it's competing with the cost of driving rather than owning a car. When I cycled regularly around South Manchester, the main problem was consistent lack of good cycle parking. Yes, there would be places to lock it, and then bits of my bike would get stolen, which was kind of annoying.

Things that Seem Obvious - Biofuels

Back to more stuff that seems obvious...

Biofuels are a good idea, primarily for two reasons. 1) We can grow more of them a heck of a lot quicker than we can grow more oil, which also then gives us better control of prices. 2) The CO2 they release into the atmosphere is CO2 they took out of the atmosphere only a short while before.

However, growing biofuels on land previously used for agriculture is a less good idea because 3) the conventional ways of making biofuels (grow complex plant, harvest it, crush bits of it, maybe ferment them for a while and purify) is pretty inefficient, it would force the price of food up and it would take an awful lot of land to grow enough fuel to make a significant difference. So I'm not sure why sugar-based biofuels, for example, are being touted at all.

What seems much more sensible is something along the lines of GM algae (small organisms, photosynthetic), which either produce the fuel directly, or which do the first stage of an integrated, single-site process. Algae make sugar, yeast change sugar into alcohol, distillation of the alcohol by energy produced on-site.

And the obvious places for this are on land we are not currently using - i.e. deserts or ocean.

Hydrogen fuel cells are nifty, but they just store energy, so shift the producing problem elsewhere.