The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.
I am currently watching an excellent series on the BBC called The Story of Science. The third episode, which I have just watched, is called 'How we got here'.
It of course raises all the red herrings and difficult questions surrounding geology and biology, but one observation from the presenter hit me squarely between the eyes.
The episode ended on a geological note, Dr Mosley talked about how violent Earth is, with the volcanic eruptions and earthquakes caused by continental drift, and the tsunamis that occur when those events happen underwater.
His point was that the development of life is not in spite of Earth being so violent, but is actually helped by it. Some catastrophic events do wipe out entire species, but most of the time the violence actually encourages life to flourish by giving it new opportunities. His best example was the Rift Valley in East Africa, which is home to hundreds of thousands of animals and birds.
I found this a fascinating argument, that natural 'disasters' help and encourage life to flourish far more often than harming it. And it made me think – well that's exactly how God operates, bringing life out of death, even totally dead and arid places like the deserts of East Africa, transformed into lush savannah by the violent separating of two continents.
It should not surprise us that he created the world in such a way – that no matter how dreadful the catastrophe, life always survives, somehow, somewhere. Even at its most harsh and devastating, creation does exactly what it says on the tin.
I have long disliked the central place that 'chance' has in modern scientific theories, particularly the 'random' mutations that drive evolution forward. As a Christian I don't like the idea of utter randomness, of chance being the determining factor in the development of life.
I am also aware that as a concept it is lauded by many of the new atheists as the final nail in God's coffin: there is no need for God, there is no proof for God's existence in nature; everything is down to chance, and therefore there is no creator, and no ultimate purpose to life.
A good friend pointed me recently to this article, by Paul Ewart. It is one of those articles that forced me to look at something from a slightly different angle, which is no bad thing.
Paul Ewart argues that – maybe – chance is a necessary aspect of theology, because it helps us to understand the relationship between a sovereign creator and human agency (often called 'free will' – I'm not sure humans actually have free will, but that's another argument).
Perhaps life is like a game of chess, with God as 'an infinitely wise grand master.' No matter what we do, which moves we make, God always wins, the outcome is always good, in the end: 'God adapts his actions in sustaining the world in existence to take account of whatever happens.'
Of course, we would want to argue that God also knows which moves we are going to make, before we make them. We don't 'catch him out' with our wickedness. We mustn't take the chess game analogy too far; instead it is perhaps a helpful way for us to understand how the world appears sometimes (that there is no benevolent almighty God in ultimate control) with what the Bible insists is the case (the Lamb is on the throne).
After my recent post about journalism, I was surprised to read this. It was made worse by the Daily Mail (of course). The Mail's article says:
But now, to the horror of the purists, the game's makers are throwing out the old rule book and allowing proper nouns.
Worse still, not only will the names of places, trademarks and people be permissible, but even words spelled backwards or placed unconnected to other pieces.
Now, it seems that actually this is what's actually going on:
Mattel, which owns the rights to Scrabble in England, is going to release a completely new version of the game there called Scrabble Trickster, in which anything goes, including the use of proper nouns, spelling words backwards, stealing letters, and so on.
No 'throwing out the old rule book' after all then.
Thanks to CNET for sorting out the problem. Shame on the BBC for shocking reporting – it relegates the the true story almost to the end of the article:
[Mattel] will continue to sell a board with the original rules.
Compare these two press reports very carefully. The first report is the original, from the Telegraph, the second was reported subsequently by V3.
The company interviewed 1,317 people – 57 per cent of which described the street mapping service an ‘intrusion' while 24 per cent said that they believed it was simply ‘a service for burglars’.
Seventy-three per cent of the people polled who called the service an ‘intrusion’ said that they were most angered by the fact they have not given permission for the publishing of images.
Just over a third of those interviewed believe that the expansion of the service, which rolled out yesterday, was a positive move.
According to the report 57 per cent of those interviewed described the service an ‘intrusion' while 24 per cent said that they believed it was ‘a service for burglars’. A staggering seventy-three per cent labeled the service an ‘intrusion’ and said that they were most angered by the fact they have not given permission for the publishing of images.
Just over a third said they thought the expansion of the service, announced on Thursday, was a positive thing.
Is it me or is that really bad journalism by V3?!
I wish these posters weren't hoaxes.. it would certainly make the election more interesting.
I never thought I'd enjoy something done by The Grauniad..!
I use a couple of movie review sites to get a flavour for a particular film, and I'm starting to think they are actually quite pointless.
Most of them allow you to rate a film out of 5 or 10 stars – or even using a percentage. Very useful you might think, until you realise that the sheer volume of people using them (1000s) mean that they are pretty much useless.
For example, I just looked through 100 film recommendations on Love Film.com, and almost every single one of them had three stars. On other sites, I've noticed that movies tend towards exactly that – around 60%. Why? You can't give no stars in a rating, so the median rating will always be 3 – and over such a huge number of people, the mean will tend towards that number too.
The best site I've found is Rotten Tomatoes, which collates critics, who are usually a bit more discerning. The scores there do differ much more. But even there, you still get wildly different reviews.
All of which tells me, you can't tell how good a film is going to be unless you've seen it. How profound.
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