Progress In Spirituality

Aubade - Philip Larkin

2011-12-16T02:53:00.000-08:00

On hearing of the death of Christopher Hitchens I immediately thought of Philip Larkin, one of Hitchens favorite poet and what is arguably his best poem, Aubade

Aubade

I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.
Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.
In time the curtain-edges will grow light.
Till then I see what's really always there:
Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,
Making all thought impossible but how
And where and when I shall myself die.
Arid interrogation: yet the dread
Of dying, and being dead,
Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.
The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse
- The good not done, the love not given, time
Torn off unused - nor wretchedly because
An only life can take so long to climb
Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never;
But at the total emptiness for ever,
The sure extinction that we travel to
And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,
Not to be anywhere,
And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.

This is a special way of being afraid
No trick dispels. Religion used to try,
That vast, moth-eaten musical brocade
Created to pretend we never die,
And specious stuff that says No rational being
Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing
That this is what we fear - no sight, no sound,
No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,
Nothing to love or link with,
The anasthetic from which none come round.

And so it stays just on the edge of vision,
A small, unfocused blur, a standing chill
That slows each impulse down to indecision.
Most things may never happen: this one will,
And realisation of it rages out
In furnace-fear when we are caught without
People or drink. Courage is no good:
It means not scaring others. Being brave
Lets no one off the grave.
Death is no different whined at than withstood.

Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape.
It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know,
Have always known, know that we can't escape,
Yet can't accept. One side will have to go.
Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring
In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring
Intricate rented world begins to rouse.
The sky is white as clay, with no sun.
Work has to be done.
Postmen like doctors go from house to house.

The Mysteries of Mormonism

2011-12-12T04:41:00.001-08:00

A Transition Fossil of the Moral Zeitgeist

2011-11-15T00:41:00.001-08:00

A transitional fossil is any fossilized remains of a lifeform that exhibits characteristics of two distinct taxonomic groups. Because the conditions necessary for fossilization to occur and for those remains to be subsequently recovered are so improbable, the number of specimens of transitional fossils is limited.
Nonetheless we do have some.
Archaeopterix, the most famous species preserved as a transitional fossil, lived approximately 150 million years ago in the late Jurassic period. It’s famous fossils, discovered in a slate mine in southern Germany, contain features of both birds and Meozoic dinosaurs. Tiktaalik, the subject of the Neil Shubin’s book, “Your Inner Fish”, was discovered by the research team of that author in a specific location the north of Canada which was chosen because it contains rocks of the appropriate age. The fossil has both fish and tetrapod features and is an example of the type of animal that existed close to the time when vertebrate organisms began to colonize dry land – approximately 380 MYA.
Archaeopterix and Tiktaalik, existed on the border of enormous evolutionary niches. The ability to take to dry land and the air, respectively, allowed their descendents to exploit new environments and resulted in an explosion of diversity as their descendents expanded and adapted to these niches. These descendents, however, were highly adapted to the new rather than original environments and it is likely that they outcompeted the transitional-like descendents. An amphibian, fully adapted to life in and out of water is likely to be more successful than a half fish, half land animal. One inevitable consequence of this model is a temporal limitation on the existence of transitional organisms that once the expansion on dry land or the air has occurred.

Which leads us to today’s topic – the transitional fossil of moral change.
Albert Mohler is the ninth president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. Mohler is one of the leading voices in evangelical theology and is known for his outspoken views on conservative evangelical doctrine, such as an opposition to homosexuality and his promotion of a literalist interpretation of the (King James version!) bible.

Mohler takes a firm line on the science/religion question. The bible is taken as the foundation upon which the edifice of human knowledge must be built. As such the scientific consensus on evolution MUST be false since it contradicts Genesis, moving Adam and Eve from column A (history) to column B (myth) – with all the subsequent consequences for the Jesus narrative.

Mohler, as a conservative Christian, is big on Church doctrine and authority, frequently denouncing other Christians as promoting heretical views.

And yet even Albert can change his mind.
Sometimes the environment shifts beneath our feet., we gain a new perspective and realize we cannot go on as before.

The post today captures such a moment.

The background to the shift is the ongoing scandal at Penn State. In a story sadly reminiscent of the Catholic child abuse scandals, the discovery of official cover-up of child abuse provides the impetus. As in the Catholic incidents it appears that relying on figures vested with moral authority – bishops, cardinals and popes in the case of Catholocism and University football coaches and directors in the casehttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif of Penn State – fails dismally to protect the interests of children.

http://www.albertmohler.com/2011/11/10/the-tragic-lessons-of-penn-state-a-call-to-action/

"We all need an immediate reality check. I discovered yesterday that the policy handbook of the institution I am proud to lead calls for any employee receiving a report of child abuse, including child sexual abuse, to contact his or her supervisor with that report. That changes today. The new policy statement will direct employees receiving such a report to contact law enforcement authorities without delay. Then, after acting in the interests of the child, they should contact their supervisor.
In a real sense, the whole world changed today. We all know more than we knew before, and we are all responsible for that knowledge. The costs of acting wrongly in such a situation, or acting inadequately, are written across today’s headlines and the moral conscience of the nation. The tragedy at Penn State is teaching the entire nation a lesson it dare not fail to learn."

It is a pity it takes such events to enact change.

An Unholy Alliance

2011-09-30T08:42:00.000-07:00

The UK based online magazine, ‘Spiked’, arose in the year 2000 from the ashes of its predecessor, Living Marxism, following the bankruptcy of that publication due a libel case brought against it by the news organization ITN. Despite its name, “Living Marxism” was more noted for its promotion of a corporate libertarian stance – a position continued under its current guise under the editorial leadership of Brendan O’Neill. ‘Spiked’ is known for its promotion of free speech, criticism of hate laws and strong support of the pro-choice position in regards to abortion. If one imagines that such an organization may not be a suitable ally for the arch conservative wing of Roman Catholic Church then perhaps it’s time to remember the old phrase “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”. The common enemy of both Roman Catholicism and Spiked in this case is not totalitarian dictatorships, or unfettered capitalism but is, of course, “new atheism”.

For instance ‘Spiked’ senior writer Tim Blacks rant against Oxford chemistry professor Peter Atkins recent book, “On Being – A scientist’s exploration of the great questions of existence” provides a good picture of how dangerous they feel are the ideas of the new atheists. The piece, entitled “The tyranny of science” summarizes their take on Atkins book:

“Atkins’ faithless, shrunken world of energy and entropy is almost triumphant in its nihilism. ‘We shall have gone the journey of all purposeless stardust’, he concludes, ‘driven unwittingly by chaos, gloriously but aimlessly evolved into sentience, born unchoosingly into the world, unwillingly taken from it, and inescapably returned to nothing. Such is life.’ Nietzsche, so wrong when it came to many things, has it right for Atkins and his crew of scientistic New Atheists. In the absence of a will to something, there is only a will to nothing.”

And the consequence of such new atheist induced nihilism on society as a whole?

According to Brendan O’Neill:

“Secularism is in crisis. In Enlightened times, progressive secular movements, those which eschewed the guidance of God in favour of relying on mankind to work out what his problems were and how to solve them, were all about having a positive view of humanity. Their vision was both terrifying and extremely liberating: that man alone could master the complexities of life on Earth and improve it for himself and future generations. Today, however, we live in misanthropic, deeply downbeat times, where mankind is looked upon as a greedy, destructive, unreliable force whose behaviour and thoughts must be governed from without.”

Any talk of secularism in crisis is, naturally, music to the ears of the religious, especially when accompanied by a sneering criticism of new atheists such as Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins, whose “campaign to arrest the pope is the product of an increasingly desperate secularism, which can only find meaning through ridiculing the religious.”

Defending the pope and insulting new atheists?

Perhaps an alliance is not so unlikely after all. In any event O’Neill’s ruminations on the terrible new atheists won him an invite to speak in front of the paramilitary wing of the Irish Catholic Church, the Iona Institute in Dublin on the 29^th of September.

The Iona Institute describes its role as promoting “the place of marriage and religion in society”, as well as defending “the continued existence of publicly-funded denominational schools and promoting “freedom of conscience and religion.” It is, however, best viewed as the Irish equivalent of Bill Donohue’s ‘Catholic League’. It seeks to promote a blend of conservative values, both religious and economic, under the guise of “religious freedom”.

In contrast to the Catholic League – famously described by comedienne Cathy Griffin as “one guy and a computer” - the Iona Institute, however, has very strong ties with its targeted political and media establishment, with several senior members regularly publishing articles defending Catholicism and attacking secularism in the major Irish newspapers. Its director, David Quinn famously claimed to have defeated Richard Dawkins in an Irish radio debate about atheism – you can judge for yourself whether that was really the case by reading the transcript here. Just last Summer the Iona Institute was instrumental in organizing a conference “Religious Freedom: East and West” which was held at the Irish College in Rome. To give a small example of how religious and political power is enmeshed within the Irish state it is worth noting that the conference was itself chaired by a senior Irish government official, Dermot McCarthy, the ‘Secretary General to the Government of Ireland’ and was attended by Mary McAleese, the President of the Irish republic.

O’Neill’s talk, entitled“'The New Anti-Catholicism; why it's fashionable, why it's gone too far'” allowed him to again target the dreaded New Atheist menace.

“The New Atheism regards not only religious faith but any view which considers mankind as more than a monkey as suspect, strange, deluded.”

“New Atheists' real problem with religion is its treatment of mankind as special and distinctive, as the governor of the Earth, as having ‘dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and every other living thing that moves on the Earth’.

"At a time when we are increasingly seen as mere bundles of genes, little more than DNA, sharing 90 per cent of our genes with bananas, religion's sanctification of man is seen as perverse.”

While it is little surprise that faitheists like O’Neill (yet again an example of an atheist who seems to love belief) are willing to join with arch conservatives to slander and impune the integrity of outspoken atheists, it is interesting to see how far the religious establishment itself has moved to embrace such erstwhile allies in its ongoing battle with the modern secularist movement.

Crocus - Stockholm, September 16th

2011-09-16T08:23:00.000-07:00

How short is our springtime,
a crocus flower-like story
of dream and longing rich.
Alas, soon followed by the summer's minnows
as the spring flowers fade
Your first youth is short

Tore Strindberg