the cosmological argument, 3

You next claim that only matter and mind exist, and that since something exists now, something eternal must exist (a conclusion you reach via the first law of thermodynamics, that the sum total of mass-energy must be conserved). You then claim that since you have proven that matter ‘had a beginning’, and is therefore not eternal, only mind can be eternal.

It’s pretty obvious where this is heading, but your statement about the existence of mind, for which you claim there is irrefutable evidence based on the work of Dr John Eccles, is misleading. According to your essay, Dr. Eccles won the Nobel Prize for distinguishing that the mind is more than merely physical. He showed that the supplementary motor area of the brain may be fired by mere intention to do something, without the motor cortex of the brain (which controls muscle movements) operating. In effect, the mind is to the brain what a librarian is to a library. The former is not reducible to the latter.

This is a very bold assertion indeed. While it is true that Eccles was a dualist in his approach to the mind-body problem, it is simply incorrect to claim that he won the Nobel Prize for showing that the mind had extra-material properties. Eccles shared the 1963 prize with two other physiologists. The lengthy and detailed presentation speech explains that Eccles received the prize for his part in the understanding of how nerve cells are excited and inhibited through synapses. The processes described are purely material.

You end the main body of your essay with the confident but naïve assertion that, ‘The evidence speaks clearly regarding the existence of a non-contingent, eternal, self-existent Mind that created this Universe and everything within it.’ In fact you have produced no such evidence.

Your concluding remarks about Stonehenge move us towards an argument from design, and I will make no comment on them here. However, your swipe at evolution strikes me as completely absurd, and I cannot refrain from comment. You quote R L Wysong, writing in 1976:

Everyone concludes naturally and comfortably that highly ordered and designed items (machines, houses, etc.) owe existence to a designer. It is unnatural to conclude otherwise. But evolution asks us to break stride from what is natural to believe and then believe in that which is unnatural, unreasonable, and...unbelievable.... The basis for this departure from what is natural and reasonable to believe is not fact, observation, or experience but rather unreasonable extrapolations from abstract probabilities, mathematics, and philosophy.

The theory of evolution is accepted by scientists within the field because of its enormous explanatory power and because it accounts for all the observable evidence. To claim that it is based on ‘unreasonable extrapolations from abstract probabilities’, etc, is as completely incorrect as it is possible to be. The fossil record is accounted for by evolution and is not accounted for by any alternative theory. The only alternative theory to evolution that I know of is creationism and the fixity of species, a theory completely discredited by the evidence, or lack thereof. That is why the theory had to be abandoned in the nineteenth century. Any theistic argument for the existence of God has to account for the theory of evolution – it cannot credibly be rejected.

the cosmological argument, 2

However, I’ll stick to your arguments. You assert boldly that ‘the scientific evidence states clearly that the Universe had a beginning – something eternal things do not have’. I’m not sure that the majority of cosmologists, who are, after all, the people who gather and interpret this evidence, would feel comfortable with this way of putting things. Most would probably agree that the evidence tends to support the occurrence of a ‘big bang’ which brought into being the universe (I prefer not to use a capital here, and this is important) as we currently know it, but I doubt if many would consider that this is an end of the matter, and I’m sure there would be some discomfort about your bringing in of the term ‘eternal’. Again, it must not be forgotten that cosmologists deal with space-time values. When space and time are combined in multidimensional formulations as is the case with the current theories and speculations of cosmological physicists, ancient notions of eternity become arguably less viable.

Further to this issue of the beginning of the universe. I note that many cosmological physicists have taken to referring to the big bang as the cause of ‘our’ universe, and in fact there is plenty of speculation as to the cause of this explosion, as a glance at a recent article in New Scientist, devoted to string theory, indicates: String theory suggests that our universe may be a three-dimensional island or ‘brane’ moving through 10-dimensional space, and that the big bang might have been caused by a collision between two such branes (New Scientist, 18 Dec 2004, p31).

The central point here for your argument is clear. We have no real evidence as yet, nor is it clear that there ever will be evidence, to prove that the Universe (as opposed to our universe) had a beginning in any way we can comprehend.

Your second point, that the universe is not self-causing, suffers from similar problems to the above. I agree that self-causation makes little logical sense, and scientists and theorists are ever on the hunt for external causes – hence the speculation about the big bang and its causes. We do not as yet have evidence for a limit to the universe, in time or space, so the issue of self-causation simply doesn’t come up. There is always an external cause to be posited, and there is no reason to suppose that these are anything but naturalistic causes, however weird and wonderful they may seem at first glance.

Of course this succession of external causes may yet return us to some final antecedent cause, which may be God, but if this were so it must be said that this first-cause God seems very remote, increasingly so as we push back the limits of our knowledge of the universe.

Your claim that every cause must be superior to its effect is not one that I’m entirely familiar with. A little reflection immediately problematises the claim. For example, I may decide to kill someone by shooting her. Causation immediately becomes complex. The immediate cause of death is the bullet and its effect upon human tissue, though the ultimate cause is my execution of a decision to shoot. In any case it isn’t at all clear that the cause, whether my decision, my action, the bullet itself or a combination of the above, is ‘greater than’ or ‘superior to’ the effect, a person’s death. The cause must be ‘adequate’ as you say, to create the effect, but this doesn’t indicate superiority in any meaningful sense.

the cosmological argument

The cosmological argument: in its simplest form it goes thus, that everything existent has a cause, and that the universe exists, so it must have a cause, and that cause must be God. Accepting this argument leaves us with a causeless, or self-causing, God, while rejecting it leaves us with a causeless universe. Either way you’re stuck with a problem of original cause. Of course, if you argue that God doesn’t have a cause then the simple form of the cosmological argument is unsound, as the first premise is false.

There are two modifications of this simple cosmological argument, both designed to avert this sort of refutation. They are the kalam (apparently this is Islamic) or temporal cosmological argument, and the argument for contingency. Both treat God as a special case. In the first case, God has no beginning in time, unlike everything else, so you modify the argument’s first premise thus: everything that begins has a cause. In the second, similar case, God is non-contingent, unlike everything else, so you alter the first premise to say that everything that’s contingent has a cause. Of course, these special qualities of God are assumed rather than proven, so it’s not on the face of it too convincing.

I’ve just read a defence of the cosmological argument by one Bert Thompson which is plainly written enough (far from always being the case with theistic writers), and quite thought-provoking in parts, especially early on, but which makes quite a few startling and unconvincing leaps towards the end. I think I should address these philosophers and writers directly.

To Bert Thompson. Your defence of the cosmological argument contains, I think, some serious flaws. The basis of your argument is that since the universe is not eternal, and not self-causing, it must have an antecedent cause, which you describe as ‘superior to itself’ since all causes must be superior to or greater than their effects. You then claim that this cause must be mind rather than matter.

My first difficulty is that the universe is not really defined in your piece. Dictionaries variously define it as all existing things, the cosmos, all of creation. I myself have no difficulty with the assumption that the universe exceeds the current and perhaps future powers of science to measure and define it. For this reason I have an open mind on the debate, still very much a live one, as to whether or not the universe is eternal. Most cosmologists, as far as I’m aware, accept the big bang theory, and they accept that what is generally described as the universe is expanding. Of course the issue of temporality with respect to the known universe is profoundly affected by the theory of relativity which explains this universe as a space-time continuum. The argument goes that with the big bang, beginning began. That’s to say, there was no before. Of course, this is counter-intuitive, along with so much of modern theory in physics and cosmology, and I’m not satisfied at all with the explanation that the big bang ‘just happened’, but I also believe that it’s quite plausible that far more exists out there than the known universe (though I see no reason to believe that what is out there is anything other than ‘matter’). In short, I tend to agree that what we currently know as the universe must have been caused, but I cannot see that as any warrant for the existence of a deity, rather it suggests to me that what we currently know of the universe is more limited than some of us care to admit.

Popper, mostly

This is how I’ve always seen the god-concept, as an invention of almost infinite flexibility and vagueness, allowing each and every believer to conceptualise the ur-concept in their own personal way, something like the concept of ‘table’ allows everyone to draw from it in their own way, so that they can fashion a particular table or tables to suit their own particular needs, and I know that this analogy has its limitations, tables being real things, particular instantiations of a general concept. Yet I think there is something similar going on with the god-concept – on first coming across it, we all probably tend to concretise it in our own way, usually as something near-fleshly and patriarchal, and with characteristics that are extensions of and improvements of our own. In any case, so far as the ur-concept is concerned, Sue may be right, it’s the same god (but then there are non-monotheistic religions…).

I’ve been reading lots of philosophy online, including Theodore Drange’s ‘Arguments from evil and non-belief’ and ‘Arguments from the Bible’ (a thankless task but maybe someone’s gotta do it), and an immodest but enthusiastic theist (Christian) philosopher Shandon Guthrie’s various attempts to refute the argument from evil and a new cosmological argument. Probably the most interesting essay I’ve encountered though has nothing to do with religion. Rafe Champion, very aptly named, has championed the work of Karl Popper against a neo-positivist critic, David Stove, who, along with various allies, has tried to accuse Popper of being a leading figure in the modern or post-modern retreat from science into relativism and pseudo-science, essentially because Popper, Stove claimed, negatively portrayed scientific endeavour in his The Logic of Scientific Discovery. Though I’m no great expert on Popper’s philosophy of science (or anything else) I have had a working acquaintance with it over the years, and I think Champion does a good job. I’ll confine my comments to the postscript of Champion’s article, in which he points out that the claim that Popper more or less initiated the anti-scientific silliness still prevalent in modern social science academia should be substantiated by concrete examples – has anyone developed an irrationalist or relativistic view of science on the basis of reading (and comprehending) Popper’s philosophy of science? As Champion writes: ‘I cannot understand how a person who has understood Popper's ideas on critical rationalism and the critical method in science could possibly move in that direction. Unless of course they repudiate the logic of Popper's position, for good reasons or bad, in which case they can hardly be said to be acting under his influence.’

Elsewhere Champion contends that Popper wasn’t primarily concerned with meaning (unlike the logical positivists, who were concerned to rule out ‘meaningless’ metaphysical statements), so he didn’t write that unfalsifiable claims were meaningless claims. He was concerned to distinguish between true scientific theories and pseudo-theories. Even this I may not have right – I may need to go to the source. A key to his interest was an attempt to understand what made science grow as a body of knowledge, as opposed to pseudo-science (and perhaps also philosophy). All of which indicates his profound, and surely justified, admiration for the scientific process. That in itself makes his ideas worthy of pursuit.

personal and philosophical

Christmas Day began slowly, hung-over. Mat, who’d shadowed me all the previous night, confirmed that I’d eaten too little and drunk too much. So much for the exemplary foster-carer. He caught a taxi around ten to visit his father for Christmas (I gave him $40), after which he’s to visit his mother in the pm. I shuffled off my sloth eventually, wrapped my presents and took Sarah and Courtney to her mother’s for family dinner, the last one this eighty-one or –two year old is giving, she promises. She’d prepared an impressive spread, it must be admitted, and she started out on her best behaviour, helped by the fact or miracle that everyone turned up on time.

Turned out a pleasant afternoon, in spite of the Matriarch’s later tetchiness, and some funny glitches. At lunch, Catherine mentioned the ‘Les Gentilhommes’ video, done some months ago, but first viewed by me the previous night. The matriarch hadn’t a clue what we were taking about, so I was asked to explain, how Les Gentilhommes was a group of men who meet regularly to cook meals and drink wine under the tutelage of Yanni the chef, and we recently catered for a wedding, and a video was made of this occasion… and I was just getting into my stride when Matriarch interrupted with some concern about her own meal which indicated that she wasn’t paying the slightest attention to what I was saying, so, distracted, I limped to a quick finish, and the matter died. I did get a sympathetic/ironic look from Catherine at least.

A restful afternoon also perhaps because the Matriarch’s a Tedious Teetotaller who won’t let alcohol cross her threshold. We probably all benefited from the alcohol break in the middle of the day, though I was still dead tired by home-time at 9.30 (we went to John and Debra’s in the late afternoon).

Returning to philosophy, I spoke to Sue, one of our friends, on Christmas Eve, about my interest in arguments against the existence of God. She was interested if not exactly sympathetic. I spoke briefly about the problem of evil, considering that God supposedly had all these positive attributes, depending perhaps on which or whose god you were referring to… ‘But I think it’s the same God, that they’re all referring to, don’t you?’ she responded. Before I could answer, I was whisked away to rescue my baked fetta from the oven. Such are the hazards of hosting, and I spoke no more philosophy that night, though Sue did mention that she’d like to pursue…

Now, this claim of Sue’s is certainly not accepted by Theodore Drange, who considers that different theists refer to different gods. He differentiates and discusses the gods of Evangelical Christianity, Liberal Christianity and Orthodox Judaism, but why stop there? Even within the Judeo-Christian tradition you can divide and subdivide into an almost infinite variety of believers and their personal gods.

the night before christmas

‘A few good men’ was about abuse within the military (all set in Guantanamo Bay – but this was the early nineties, when they were only so far as abusing their own). A military courtroom drama, starring Tom Cruise(!) as a flash young lawyer on the ‘good’ side, though I was never quite sure who if anyone he was defending. Fact is I missed the beginning so I was always behindhand and I got a real shock when General Jack Nicholson walked into the courtroom ten minutes from time. Certainly worth waiting up for but I was intrigued enough without him. The pace and sophistication of the dialogue was a surprise for Hollywood, though praps familiar now to those who watch those improbable CSI shows with everyone spieling out a careerful of forensic expertise at the drop of a dodgy sample. Cruise handled all this surprisingly well, even if he had been promoted beyond his level of competence, and even if we can’t quite swallow his getting one over on General Jack. Might take this one again from the top and concentrate next time. A bit predictable though, in that what never happens in real life and what always happens in the movies happened again, the big nasty brass got sprung. Old Mister Rumsfeld would get a real belly-laugh out of this one.

Post-Christmas exhaustion setting in (determined to catch up). Schedule for Christmas Eve and Christmas day. Shopped in the morning-afternoon for green salad materials and the last of the presents – books for Isabelle and Olivia. Took it easy, and bought a copy of ‘The Australian Rationalist’ which appears to be a leftist political/social mag with a more or less tenuous link to philosophy. I’m a bit worried that my philosophy mag will be a one-off as I can’t find copies of it anywhere else. May actually have to subscribe. Returned and worked on salads, with avocado, spring onion, green capsicum, butter and mignonette lettuces, baby spinach and rocket. Made a dressing, and also one for the brown rice salad. Helped set up the stereo, though that was done mainly by Mat. Helped Sarah with various bits and pieces in the setting up. Enjoyed the evening, twenty-six people sitting at four tables in the ‘secret garden’ down the back. Ate hardly a grain but drank too much. My good friend Michael was a guest but I hardly had a chance to speak to him. Someone brought sixties-seventies dance music which was much enjoyed. Avoided Catherine successfully enough. A beautiful young family friend gave me a welcoming Christmas kiss and another beautiful woman a goodbye one, and the memory of those warm silky youthful cheeks against my grizzled jowls provided the warming highlight of the evening. Sadly I didn’t say another word to the first, but the second praised me fulsomely for my foster-caring. A Frenchwoman, Nicole, a friend of friends, arrived late, apologised, and didn’t stay, though we managed to exchange some French pleasantries, and I’m sure we’ll meet again.

reviewing

Continuing The road to Tunis. This really brings the allied struggle in that part of the world to life. The climate and conditions, the attitude of the natives, the entanglement of the Gaullists, the Vichy military and the French colonials, the battle strategies, the equipment and supplies, the men of the various allied nations, the qualities of the commanders, the exhilarating, gut-wrenching physical and emotional ride of it all. Many things will remain with me, moments of death and glory, and one of the most interesting was the behaviour of much of the German military immediately after surrender – joking and relaxed in dealing with those they’d been trying to kill only hours before. As a person who could never join up with a military outfit for the simple reason that I just would not be able to shoot at people under any but the most exceptional circumstances, I’m intrigued by those who are able to inure themselves to such activity, presumably to achieve some higher good.

I think what I would find difficult would be shooting at other people who are just caught up in something, like the military machine of their own country – and you’d never know if the person you’d just shot was fighting you out of hatred, out of more or less misplaced patriotism, for mercenary motives, through testosterone overload, or with some reluctance. If it was Himmler or Goering in my sights I wouldn’t hesitate, knowing what I know, but of course it’s almost always the ‘common’ foot-soldier, an unknown quantity, who comes into your sights. That’s the most horrible element of war, it’s the innocent or the duped that end up killing and being killed. And they can do their job with incredible proficiency, sometimes. They take pride in the mastery of small but deadly tasks.

I’ve spent much of the morning reading John Quiggin’s blog. A post entitled ‘Howard’s record’, written to mark the fact that Howard has just overtaken Hawke to become Australia’s second-longest-serving Prime Minister, has generated some 42 comments, many of them longer than the original post. The post reviews the period of Howard’s tenure and concludes that it has largely been a do-nothing government. The various comments elaborate, argue, point out omissions and so forth, and though they inevitably tend to become tetchy point-scoring slanging matches as I scroll to the end, they’re for the most part well-informed and well-argued. Reading them through gives me a renewed sense of the passion and the quality to be found in Australian political debate, and in the blogosphere at its best. Quite apart from agreeing or disagreeing, I don’t follow all the lines of reasoning, especially those based on economics, and I still don’t know what the CGT is and how it might have affected housing prices, but all in all if you want to reflect on Australia’s political history over the past decade you couldn’t do better than to start here.

Last night, watched a Hollywood movie, ‘A few good men’, which was remarkably good, by which I mean the language was rich, fast-flowing and smart and the story often went over my head (which isn’t surprising, I tend to vague out with movies). More tomorrow.

bits and pieces

A new young man, Matt, sixteen, has come under my foster care, at a slightly difficult time as it’s the school holidays and so he has a lot of time on his hands. Suggestions have been made about activities, apart from going to the movies together (expensive, my finances are at their lowest ebb in months). they include helping him to get his bike fixed so we can go for a ride together, perhaps even to the beach, and a trip to the Port where they have boat trips for dolphin-spotting, quite inexpensive unless you include the lunches on offer. Energy levels low as the temperature rises.

A review of Theodore Drange’s book, Nonbelief and Evil: two arguments for the non-existence of God,
points out that the academic philosophers who have devoted much of their effort to opposing theism have been relatively few – fewer than those on the other side. Never will be able to work out why that is, haven’t we got all the good arguments? These heroes are mentioned, so I can seek them out: Michael Martin, Richard Gale, Paul Kurtz, Kai Nielsen and J L Mackie. I’ve read and have a high regard for Mackie’s work on ethics, but the others are unknown to me. I should also mention William Rowe, interviewed in Philosophy Now, issue 47. Kurtz has edited a book, Science and religion: are they compatible?, which’ll be one to watch out for.

I’ve just been reminded that the lad’s name’s Mat, so-spelt.

On the home front, blue day, not enough steps, acted as dogsbody but did receive some pay, prepared the lawn for Christmas Eve, to be spent with someone else’s family, though Rachel and family sent me a separate card, which was promising (and undeserved since I never send cards myself), also socialised with two women still keen to be a part of our co-op, keep forgetting the co-op, getting way behind with things, recently asked by a stranger about my grandkid when I was with Courtney, so there, I look old, might as well let it go, the battle of the bulge, battle against ageing, though must admit the exercising and stepping out, when I do it, fills me with a prideful energy, funny how that comfort you have in your body, in your skin, which you realise with exhilaration, maybe about twenty, a sort of coming into the age of invincibility, it doesn’t last, it slowly ebbs, though the realisation that it’s gone, that comfort, might come quick, or not, as the case may be.

It’s unusual for me these days to finish a book, but the one I finished recently was longish, by Alan Moorehead, and called The road to Tunis. Started reading it at Victor Harbour, that fateful holiday. Picked it up because Moorehead’s The Blue Nile was such a ripsnorter, his writing style fluid, detailed, immediate and unflashy. Page-turning. The road to Tunis recounts the allied campaign in North Africa between 1941 and 1943, when the Germans and their allies were finally kicked off the continent

patriotism 2

Nicholson rejects Rorty’s claim that patriotism should be seen in terms of the Aristotelian mean, instead claiming that it is itself an extreme. One of her reasons for making this claim is that she assumes, perhaps glibly, what I’ve been putting into question, that love of country implies a sense of its superiority, and pretty soon she’s talking about ‘fanatical delusions about the superiority of [one’s] country’ and the terrible things it can lead to.

Yet it seems that, though Nicholson describes ‘country’ as an abstraction, most people don’t see it that way. Certainly not when their country comes under attack, or feels itself subjected to external threat. I think more needs to be done to understand the feelings underlying patriotism. It seems to me that one of the elements of patriotism is simply love of ‘home’, and all that this implies in terms of the familiar and comfortable. If one thinks, for example, of the feelings a person has for his home town, the town of his birth, of his first memories and so on, one can see that love, or attachment, does not necessarily entail a sense of superiority. We may be able to see quite clearly that the town of x is not a beautiful town, or a sophisticated town, or a town that has produced anyone or anything of lasting value, but we may place a special value on it for all that, and we often feel wounded when it comes under verbal attack. In a complicated way it’s a part of us, and we’re a part of it.

I accept though that patriotism is more than simply love of home, and that it’s very much open to abuse and manipulation – the last refuge of the scoundrel. I also accept to some degree that ‘country’ is an abstraction, at least it has always felt that way to me. When in the past I’ve asked myself if I love my country, I’ve never been able to come up with a clear answer, partly because I’m an emigrant and so don’t even have a clear idea of which country is my own, and partly because I can’t clearly define what country is. Landscape, laws, culture, history, institutions, boundaries? Australia in particular has had a long struggle and debate, often self-conscious and cringe-making, about what constitutes Australianness, though it’s often said that Australians abroad are an instantly recognisable cultural type. I can say, with Nicholson, that I love many of the physical beauties of Australia, but I accept that there is beauty of landscape everywhere in the world. As there are laws and institutions elsewhere equally worthy of respect and of defending against attack. I also feel that the down-side of nationalism is a huge worry, and that internationalism is a more worthy ideal. However, arguments by philosophers or dilettantes such as myself that patriotism is ethically dubious and shallow aren’t going to make it go away. Nicholson’s claim that she doesn’t feel patriotic ‘at this point in time’ indicates, I think, that her grievance is more with a particular US administration and its interpretation of the national interest. My own sense of patriotism, such as it is, has always been tempered by the fact that national governments often act in a way I strongly disagree with, though I’ve always made a distinction between national governments and the nation itself, a complex, probably indefinable entity of which any particular government is but a small subset.

patriotism

It’d never really occurred to me that patriotism as an idea might have any kind of intellectual pedigree, in fact I’d always bumptiously considered it too flaky (an apposite Americanism) to be worthy of philosophical consideration. Yet Carol Nicholson, in her Philosophy Now article (47, pp23-25) points out that arguments in favour of patriotism go back at least as far as Plato’s Crito.

The Crito uses two analogies, both of which strike Nicholson and myself as weak, if not fallacious. The first analogy, favoured by conservatives, is of the state as benevolent parent or master, to which we children or slaves owe a duty to honour and serve, while the second analogy is that of the contractual agreement, naturally favoured by liberals.

The weakness of the first analogy is obvious, especially to me as a foster carer trying to deal with some of the problems caused by neglectful or inappropriate parenting. Besides, child abuse is now the hottest of topics and much is made of the rights of the child. And the master-slave relationship is so respected these days that it’s more or less universally illegal.

The second analogy goes thus – ‘he who has experience of the manner in which we order justice and administer the state, and still remains, has entered into an implied contract that he will do as we command him’. This will be news to many. For starters not everyone’s free to leave the state in which she grew up; there may be financial or political constraints upon her choices. Also, a person may be critical of and hostile to some elements of the state’s justice system or health system or whatever, though she might feel that on balance there are more reasons to stay than to go. What keeps a person in a particular place in any case often has much more to do with ties of family, friendship, language, custom and familiarity of locale than with the laws and constitution of the state.

These weak analogies are, according to Nicholson, used to argue a ‘backward-looking’ defence of patriotism, that we owe our country a bucketload of devotion ‘in virtue of debts incurred in the past’. Most modern defences of patriotism, however, are ‘forward-looking’ in that they suggest that if we pragmatically choose patriotism our future will be brighter.

Nicholson takes issue with Richard Rorty’s defence of patriotism on these lines. Rorty apparently takes patriotism to be a natural, positive quality akin to self-respect, and follows Aristotle in claiming that both qualities (self-respect and patriotism) are essential, in the right quantities. We’re talking here of the Aristotelian mean. Too much patriotism would lead to zealotry, bellicosity and imperialist ambitions, while too little would result in a breakdown of social cohesion and ‘positive unifying spirit’. Ultimately it might lead to the breakdown of nationhood itself.

Without wishing to go right now into the very important question of the consequences of a great diminution of, or even an absence of patriotism in the world (almost as unlikely in the real world as an absence of religion), I will simply point out that Rorty’s formulation suffers from all the vagueness of Aristotle’s original idea of the mean between extremes. For what really is ‘appropriate’ love of country and what kinds of actions truly express that love? If your love of country entails a belief that it is better than other countries, how does this express itself in action? Can you love your country without believing it is better than other countries?

gods and the limits of the imagination

We imagine our gods along the same lines as aliens, we always give them human qualities of one sort or another.

My thoughts on how evolution has left little space for the particularities of religious belief are echoed by Stewart-Williams, who also believes that evolution provides a direct, and in fact insurmountable challenge to belief in a deity, however characterised. One of the most interesting points he makes is that evolution provides a special case of the problem of evil, in that it’s nasty, cruel and wasteful, since only the fittest survive and the rest fail and perish miserably. Actually this made me think perhaps irrelevantly, about Shakespeare, who tried so hard to keep his line provided for into the following generations, dying (miserably?) without realising that that line would be snuffed out within a generation or two. I suppose the point is that there’s more than one way to ensure that your ‘sort’ will flourish into the future. Then there’s me with no heirs, no legacy, ergo a completely wasted life.

Evolutionary theory can account for some of life’s arbitrary cruelties. For example a mother (I’m not talking of humans here) will let an unhealthy child die a lingering, agonising death, while putting all her efforts into healthier offspring. Such suffering will seem arbitrary and needless from a creationist perspective, and will seem to contradict the idea of a benevolent deity, but it’s accountable within highly competitive evolution, which calls for an abundance of offspring of which only a percentage can be expected to reach maturity.

Theists can rescue the belief in God by arguing that evolution doesn’t account for life itself, the ‘breathing of life’ into the first organism, as Darwin himself put it. Nor does it account for the origin of the universe. However, theories about the formation of life from inanimate matter are being developed and refined as I write, and though we may not have the complete picture for some time, there’s no reason to suppose that it won’t simply be a matter, pardon the pun, of physical and chemical organisation. No need to invoke a god to explain the process. As to the origin of the universe, that’s admittedly a tougher nut to crack, but I must say, the idea that a god was involved in this origin is further beyond my imagination than any other explanation.

This brings me to the vital question of imagining God. In the Judeo-Christian tradition at least, we’re generally asked to think in terms of certain attributes, such as Supreme Goodness, Omniscience, Omnipotence, all wrapped up in Perfection. But these attributes, so blithely enumerated, are actually not so easy to conceptualise. I have no real trouble conceptualising Superman’s x-ray vision or ability to leap tall buildings at a single bound, but Divine Perfection’s a bit more of a stretch to my mind. In any case the apparently universal view that this god demands to be feverishly worshipped and eternally thanked seems to me to reduce him, her or it to something so embarrassingly egomaniacal as your average human being. If the thing really exists, can’t we be more respectful than that?

towards philosophy

I don’t think Moore’s exposure of the Republican politicians who colluded in declaring the Iraq war as being more than reluctant to put their own children in harm’s way was in any way gimmicky. It underlines a real issue, which we don’t seem to have learned from since the Great War. The gap at that time between the pollies and military brass and the common foot-soldiers has since been heavily criticised, but we have returned to this situation. The American soldiers were unprepared for the basic physical slog and stench of war, but even more unprepared for the reception they received from those they had ‘liberated’. Someone forgot to tell them that the Iraqis belonged to a proud and ancient culture and that they wouldn’t take kindly to foreign invaders telling them how to run their affairs.
So Moore’s film doesn’t tell me anything much that’s new (apart from a few specifics), it just reinforces my sense of outrage at what I already know. The domestic homeland security stuff was both funny and depressing, but the sense of fear so successfully generated has prevented people from uniting against the regime’s insidious practices. It all seems a lot more grim now that the regime has been re-elected, but life goes on. For some of us at least.

I weigh, according to a very untrustworthy but internally consistent set of scales, about 77.5 kilos, butt naked. Just had toast with butter at Sarah’s, tsk tsk.

Weather’s hotting up, making the garden a less pleasant place. Began the major job at Sarah’s place of digging paving stones sideways into the earth to create an edging for the lawn path.

An important meeting between myself, Esther, Shane from CYFS, and Matt, the new lad I’ll be looking after. Hopefully this’ll be a lengthy engagement. Matt’s sixteen, just, and had been described to me by Esther as withdrawn to a fault. He also has learning difficulties and attends a special school in Windsor Gardens. He’s also been described as having limited domestic skills. He’s a slightly-built lad, answers questions very briefly but enthusiastically, and wasn’t too withdrawn at interview. He had a good time fondling the kitten, and he’s moving in next Tuesday. My worry is that we’re clearly poles apart, and I’m not sure what I’ll be able to provide for him apart from the basic safe haven. He may be bored witless by what will seem to him thoroughly unadventurous company. But he’s into computers, games and doing stuff on his own. Not reading.

Philosophy Now magazine has made me neglect New Scientist a little. This issue deals largely with that current bugbear of mine, gods, religion and the truth. So I’ll revisit some of my previous comments in the light of this new reading. For example, Keith Ward’s claims about God’s attributes in NS (Nov 27, p19) would be described as traditional and anthropomorphic by Steve Stewart-Williams (see Philosophy Now 47, p21). Theists generally attribute to God our best qualities, to the power of infinity. Supreme goodness, omniscience and omnipotence are extrapolations from our own experience, but we have no real option, for a non-anthropomorphic god would simply be too remote, and possibly unimaginable.

ends with the beginning of a film review

I can’t seem to recall anything much of yesterday. Did some more gardening work at Sarah’s, clearing away the last of the potato vine, and collecting it all and dragging it down to the back of my yard. Made a pasta sauce, with zucchini from my garden, lots of zucchini sprouting at present. Also finally started composting, in a very small way.

I noted that in spite of good pedo work, a definite improvement in general activity, my belly really is hanging out, and sit-ups and Pilates, which I’m really not into currently, need to be a big focus. Sarah kindly tells me I’ve surely lost weight, which the scales don’t corroborate. It probably really does seem so, because my greater air of confidence and energy may make me look slimmer. Perhaps I should do another graph (I’m only doing a pedo graph presently, my sit-ups graph hasn’t really happened) for my weight, as part of a more serious focus on shifting some of my belly flab.

Probably the most interesting activity yesterday was the viewing of Michael Moore’s ‘Fahrenheit 9/11’, which I got out on DVD at the insistence of Sarah. Unfortunately she fell asleep before the end of the film, as often happens, in fact more often than not. It’s strange to me that Sarah insists on watching movies at home rather than at the cinema (I much prefer the cinema), as she’s much more liable to fall asleep while watching them at home, which pains me, even though I understand that she’s not a night-time person, that she might be exhausted after running around after Courtney etc etc. Also there are so many distractions and interruptions at home, the screen isn’t so dominant, you can’t lose yourself in the experience. Cinemas are set up solely for Viewing, like churches for worshipping, organised to so focus the mind. There’s an element of secular ritual about it that’s deeply satisfying. I honestly think that it’s the very lack of ritual in watching a film at home that allows Sarah to tune out, though she would always insist that it’s just through sheer exhaustion.

Fahrenheit 9/11 definitely hits more targets than it misses, though some targets really were unmissable. For example, I think it’d be much harder for any documentarian to present George W as a person of even reasonable intelligence than it would be to present him as what he clearly is, a clueless fool. Much of what Moore covers too is old ground, though not always old to me. The hasty, state-supported flight of the Bin Laden family immediately after the attack, the unseemly focus on Iraq when in fact the Saudis could be argued to be the real harbourers of terrorists, since most of the hijackers were Saudi citizens, the recruiting of the poor and disadvantaged as cannon-fodder in the regime’s foreign wars, the securing of the oil pipeline in Afghanistan, the exploitation of Iraq’s oil, all of these things have been observed before, yet even so the outcry, especially from the media, has been minimal. And Bush is in again. I think Moore’s right in pointing to this regime’s exploitation of fear as being one of the keys to its success, though he largely left out another major element, the simple bible-thumping patriotism so bewildering to the rest of us.

a birthday

In two days’ time I meet another young lad, Matt, who will most likely come to live with me. Since he has communication probs, and I do too sometimes, Anglicare’s facilitation will be an essential component here. The holiday period is fast coming to an end even though Christmas approaches.

It’s Sarah’s birthday – I’m still a day late. Will have to go over there in a minute to do some of the birthday things – breakfast and the like. And I’ve not yet bought her a gift. I did take her out to dinner last night, the whole hog, if they have hogs in Thailand (we were a couple of doors down from a Hog’s Breath Café). An expensive (by our standards) viognier, entrée and main course, and another drink for dessert. A major outlay, more or less entirely spontaneous. We shared the entrées of Thai fish cakes and tempura vegies, and I had coffee duck as my main course (in a roulade of minced shrimp and whatnot), while Sarah had a snow pea salad, with minced chicken and chilli. A late dinner, not too heavy, but not good for the tummy. I think Sarah found it all a bit steep, and perhaps lacking in something, it not being too busy considering the festive season. She wants to make the Royal Oak her dining out place henceforward, with the jazz and the comfy atmosphere and the shifting colourful clientele.

Definitely feeling more energised, it’s an energy breeds energy thing – the pedo has been great because I love to measure things, and to beat my own records. Have to transfer that to sit ups, and Pilates and the Carnegie abs stuff too. And another factor has been the weather. Despite global warming the past few days have been mild enough to make wandering about and shifting furniture and garden-pottering a breeze.

And speaking of wandering, it took me a full hour to find my car-park at the Arndale Shopping Centre after buying Sarah a CD (K D Lang) and a card (a 75th birthday card for her 57th – dyslexia rules KO? Yeah, weak I know). I also bought a philosophy mag. Special edition on religion and science, simply irresistible).

Sarah has given her daughter a relatively brief, deceptively light-toned note asking that she no longer sleep or shower in her house, that she no longer bring her friends there, and that she take Courtney out of the house when she visits, to give her (Sarah) some quiet time to refresh and to get her place in order. She’s done well, avoiding useless confrontation and recriminations, just making a set of requests which can’t really be quibbled over. It may not work entirely, but it should work partially, and small victories are really all that can be expected at this stage.

desire and avoidance

A very active day today, smashing the pedo record with over 18000 steps, and very heavy steps too some of them, left the house at nine am, got home after eight pm, the whole day spent shifting Karen into her new La Luna house, loading trailers, guiding the route of whitegoods and wardrobes, while noting and wondering at the splendid growth of tomatoes and cos lettuces. I felt better for it too at the end, useful and relaxed and communitarian. None of this is going to help my belly though, sorry to dwell on this but it needs special exercising.

Returning to yesterday, also a physical day, I’ve done the bulk of ripping up Sarah’s super-rampant potato vine, and thrown most of the vines over into my yard. My vague idea was to mulch all this stuff, though it’d take ages to do so manually so I’m thinking of buying a shredder. Can’t really afford it of course. And with the shredder, starting a compost pile. Just a simple ‘cold’ pile at first, till I develop expertise and confidence. Will I need a bin? Not necessarily, but it’s perhaps neater. Try to ensure a mixture of nitrogens (grass and manure) and carbons (leaves, dried hay, twigs), and if you’re creating a ‘hot’ pile, the ratio should be as much as 30 to 1 carbon to nitrogen. No mention, very surprisingly, of adding soil to the mix. Anyway, composting and mulching will be big-time outdoor activities for me from now on.

My most recent New Scientist informs me that there’s ‘astounding variation in response to exercise’, with a minority apparently obtaining no benefit in terms of fitness. This seems incredible, but for now I’ll assume I’m not in that, surely tiny, minority. After being put through a strict 20-week endurance training program, 742 volunteers, many of them related (so they looked at genes too), improved their maximum oxygen consumption (just the sort of area in which I need to improve) by an average 17%. However there was a sliding scale from ‘most trainable’, which is to say most subject to improvement through exercise, and least trainable. The most trainable got a forty-plus percent improvement, the least trainable got nowt.

You pass by behind her, silently, she’s bending over searching for something, retrieving something from her car, your eyes graze over the exposed flesh of her lower back, capillaries just beneath the surface, slight discolorations, – but what is the right colour? – folds of fat. She’s no spring chicken. But these features are not familiar to you, it’s all unexplored territory, full of new occasions for devotion, you’re delighted to revel in a body others would encounter with indifference, but you know you can never express this fervour, or can you? Face it, you’ve never really given up, that would be death. And you feel very much alive, and focused, utterly concentrated in your desire. And you revel too in your ability to hide all this, to seem indifferent, to pique her sense of wonder, her endless desire to be desirable, it’s this that enfolds you in hope, flimsy and pathetic though it might be…

my own suffering doesn't stack up

Cassandra Wilson’s ‘New Moon Daughter’ may act as a catalyst for melancholia, caveat emptor. After a day spent largely in the mindless task of ripping up potato vine from the fence dividing mine from Sarah’s (I can proudly produce my raw and aching hands to prove it), I had to endure a visit from a couple of unmentionables (not visiting me bien sûr, I was at Sarah’s), as well as lots of tearabout kids (Courtney and her cousins, Olivia, Zachary and a surprisingly badly-behaved Isabelle). I felt stressed at the idea of certain presences, and avoided by yanking at the vines, not showing myself when I heard the womanly welcoming communion, the shrieks, the laughter, the jolly hockeysticks. When finally I was forced inside, Sarah grabbed me in a spot of quiet, saying, ‘now come on, get into the spirit, after all your favourite woman is here’. Yes, I really must get out more. Anyway, I stayed for the Thai takeaway and some sauvignon blanc, participated minimally in some bantering chat, and escaped to my house, within about an hour of their arrival. Too much noise and clutter and pressure. I spent the rest of the evening with Cassandra Wilson.

In a sworn affidavit, former South Australian resident David Hicks has claimed that he was forcibly injected with sedatives, regularly deprived of sleep, and tortured on a number of occasions before, during and after interrogations by his military captors at Guantanamo Bay. He also claims to have witnessed the torture of other prisoners, with the aid of attack dogs. The litany of claims was summarised in The Weekend Australian’s ‘The Nation’ section, page 2. The response of Attorney-General Ruddock was also summarised, though no mention was made of the smirk on Ruddock’s face, there for all to see on the TV news. It was the smirk that got to me, more than the response. It’s not the first time I’ve seen this smirk from Ruddock when answering questions on the Hicks issue. Foreign Minister Downer and Defence Minister Hill are also given to smirking at the mention of Hicks’ name. Is this a co-ordinated plan?

I don’t of course have any problems with our government’s reps questioning the veracity of Hicks’ claims, yet it sits a little uncomfortably with me that anybody of sound mind would consider that a person who is on the record as having been detained for almost three years without trial and without charges being laid against him, one year of which was spent in solitary confinement in a cage 2m by 2.5m, has been treated humanely. This could only be acceptable in a world in which up is down, black is white and Philip Ruddock is a genius.

The claims made by Hicks are very much in line with a growing number of claims made by independent observers regarding the treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. I doubt if this whole sordid business will be brought fully into the light of day until the Republicans are thrown out of office.

house and garden

Can’t quite shake myself from a languishment. Not helped by a day of barely supportable humidity, yet it’s noteworthy, even fascinating, that I came most to life outside in Sarah’s garden, even though I did very little creative, just mainly hacking at a lot of kikuyu, and filling in a great hole I’d made months ago, for transplanting the albizia from the courtyard to the back of the garden. We changed our minds after pruning the thing to within an inch of its life, and the regrowth since has been spectacular. I also prepared the ground for mowing the back circle of lawn, while entertaining Courtney with the picking of unripe plums. Perhaps it’s worrisome that time seems to stand still for me as a gardener more than as a writer these days.

Spent much of the morning online, looking at the blogger template, trying to work out how to add links to my site, how to network for comments, how to link within posts, and came away having learned nothing and achieved nothing. The help offered is way too skimpy. I need to be treated like a three year old with learning problems. Take absolutely nothing for granted.

News about a new lad to be looked after. Turns sixteen today, is almost profoundly withdrawn, and attends a special school. Very unskilled, nothing easy about him. Will know tomorrow whether he’s joining the program and if so I’ll meet him next week. Don’t know if he’ll be joining me before or after Chrissy.

what kind of blog am i?

The summer rain makes a sweet evening music, the rainwater tank’s filling, so unexpectedly handy in these usually dry months, and the murk in the fishpond’s diluting. Now for a bit more cultivation and a few more plants, but all my current green focus is on Sarah’s garden, coming along nicely. I’ll be staying home again tonight, catching up with the blog, going against the after nine pm grain, but trying not to keep my bottom parked for too long. A bit ashamed to admit this, but the Rumsfeld doco inspired me in one odd area – he works standing up, his desk specially fashioned to suit this purpose. I want a desk like that, of the same expanse as what I’m sitting at now, but about 30 or 40 cms taller.

Having divested myself of the Tenancy Officer’s role (no I’m not going to talk about it, except that I really am still in the thick of tenancy stuff), I’d like to focus, inter alia, on getting this blog properly linked up to the blogging community. Currently, it’s nowhere. I worry, though, that this will mean exchanging my private reflections for public positioning. I’m not at all sure where I want to put myself in the mix of wistful-ironic domestic-style reflections and philosophical-political analysis and pronouncements, and this is captured by the fact that my two favourite blogs of the moment are John Quiggin’s very public, very political, ideas-based blog, with its stream of responses from the commentariat, and young Rhea’s brilliant, apolitical, idiosyncratic, personal stories blog. My own writing feels sometimes like an awkward amalgam of these two fields of interest Oh well, just best to forge on forging the same old character anew.

Spent some time reading the commentaries on Quiggin’s blogsite re the ongoing Keith Windschuttle furore, with much het-uppityness, grandstanding, incoherence and occasionally cogent reflection, and so much that it’d take a week to wade through it all. So much theoretical reflection with such a small basis at times – the best stuff actually quotes from statements made in the past, on the rationale of the White Australia Policy, for example, and leaves us to work it out for ourselves, though of course there’s always selectivity… Got to get ourselves back to the garden. What I want though is to learn how to link the way some of these guys do. Have to set some time aside.

Flat time. Think I need some help to pull myself out of the anti-social, self-indulgent trough. See, others ring people, they reach out and make contact, but I never do. Haven’t spoken to my mother for years now, and that’s too raw an issue to touch upon. Think about it with the festive season coming on. You know, I don’t think I’ve ever in my life rung up a friend and suggested, say, going to see a movie. Or perhaps not since my teen years, and possibly not even then.

hawks, hookers, housing and other hassles

Onto the right day again, and determined to see it though.

The danger period for me is after nine o’clock at night. That’s when I need to do night classes, go to the gym, visit friends, take long walks, go to the cinema, the pub, write in cafés, anything. And yet yesterday was a record pedo day.

Watched ‘Rumsfeld’s War’, was largely appalled at the fellow’s bustling presumptuousness. From the start he’s been a highly motivated hawk in an administration that invaded Iraq under false pretences, on the pretext that it possessed weapons of mass destruction which threatened to harm America and the world. It behaved with extreme aggression and intimidation towards UN weapons inspectors who were telling a story which has turned out to be far more accurate than that told by US ‘intelligence’. When their pretext for war-mongering was undermined by the facts on the ground after the invasion, they shamelessly rejigged the story as one of liberation of the Iraqi people. Murderous humbuggery, even taking into account the repulsiveness of Saddam’s regime, for we all know of regimes that profoundly oppress their own people, regimes that won’t be visited by US ‘wrath’, either because it would be too messy and hazardous, or because it isn’t sufficiently beneficial to US economic interests to do so. Considering Rumsfeld’s approval of harsher interrogation methods and the disregarding of the Geneva convention for all those people languishing in American and Iraqi prisons without charges being preferred against them (and a percentage of whom are surely innocent of any wrong-doing), any claims made by this administration about the upholding of human rights should be treated with the contempt that it deserves.

Have handed over the role of La Luna Tenancy Officer, and should now be able to concentrate more on Treasury matters, though there are some loose ends to tie up, particularly in regard to Jenna and her Father’s tenancy at Young Avenue, but I won’t clog the blog with this stuff, from now on La Luna matters will be limited to another unblogged journal.

A drizzly day, little opportunity for gardening, but yesterday did a great deal towards making Sarah’s essential lawn path presentable, and that has made a huge difference. With John and Debra visiting the other day, we did a whirlwind transformation of Sarah’s living room, and all these things have made her more positive about staying put, but...

the power struggle, inter alia

As is so often the case, I work hard to catch up to the proper day, and then when I’ve made it, as yesterday, I suffer a relapse. A strange old day, with a fair amount of footslogging, and probably unnecessary spending, for which I’ll blame Sarah.

Don’t know if I mentioned that I lost my pedo a couple of days ago, at a pub naturellement, and have felt a blank powerlessness since, but Sarah has loaned me hers, which goes like a rocket, so I can graph my progress anew, and be encouraged without exerting much effort. Did about 11500 today. And will branch out into regularly graphed sit ups.

Made a vow to get on top of Sarah’s garden before Christmas Eve, when she’s having a do. Lawn-mowing, whipper-snipping, weeding, digging over, mulching and pruning required, on quite a scale.

The Luna housing situation continues to change complexion. Corey has decided to stay put, meaning that Browning Street will be offered to James first. Also means that Sarah will not be able to take Corey’s place, and she has just been in here in tears about that, feeling unable to cope with the present circs, which is a worry as there’s nothing clearly in the offing La Lunawise. She’s looked into getting some home help from the council, but their policy, get this, is that they only offer such help to people who own their own homes, for otherwise, in cleaning the house and tidying the garden, they’re actually helping the landlord(!!?). Seems a minor consid, when folk are unable to bend over without assistance. But hey those folks aren’t ratepayers, why should they get a free ride? Uhh maybe because the landlords pay their rates with the tenants’ rents.

It’s been raining intermittently all day and there’s a forecast for much the same all week, so the focus on gardening is blurred by intervening water molecules. Spent an absolute fucking age trying to wind nylon cutting wire onto a B & D whipper-snipper spool and to thread said wire into the eyelets without having the whole shaboong unravel and entangle into a purple scribble. Glad I don’t have to work with DNA.

Yesterday, foodwise, I sliced blade steak into Chinese bite sizes, and stir-fried garlic, capsicum, pumpkin, and a little bit of garden zucchini, as well as the meat, in a wok with peanut oil. I added some oyster sauce and a butter chicken sauce, presumably bought in the days of Ben. Continue to do without butter, with difficulty. I should keep more supplies of cream cheese, to compensate, but I’m not being very efficient. Rest of the day, can’t recall what I ate, though muesli’s certain.

fish, glaciers and the multiverse

The heat toasts me on my grey-black overdressed left side, which faces the window to my inner courtyard, in which the teeming fish are gradually losing their gloopy water, in which mini-dog Poppy awaits and watches me with doggy patience, sometimes switching her stance and half-switching her tail. This computer is way too loud.

As well as the plausibility-of-god essay, which I’m slightly avoiding, probably nothing new to reflect on it, – but how do I know what I think before I see what I say? - there’s at last a little something on global warming, in an indirect way, in this week’s NS. An article on the formation of a large glacier, in the crater of Mount Saint Helens, formed when it erupted in 1980. Hah, I remember reading about in SciAm. Seems that the formation of glaciers is rare these days, a product of local peculiarities, whereas deaths of glaciers are easily witnessed. Thanks to global warming, most glaciers today are in retreat (Nov 27, p33). A few other comments of the sort, suggestive of a certainty about warming, but where’s the concern? In an accompanying giveaway, 101 Things To Do Before You Die, they mention visiting Tuvalu before it sinks. More touristy than conservational, but I suppose they’re largely preaching to the converted. Sorry, no preaching here, we’re about evidence mate.

Okay then, let’s return to Keith Ward and his ‘interested and interacting god’. Okay, he uses big G, I’m being churlishly misrepresentative. To the surprise of more than a few scientists, I’d suspect, Ward writes that science has long offered an alternative hypothesis [to the materialistic world-view] in which fundamental reality is more like mind than matter, and the material world is dependent on mind (Nov 27, p19). No doubt he’s talking about the weird world opened up by quantum mechanics, in which there’s a fundamental observer-dependence, but does this represent ‘fundamental reality’ for a start? We have to get our fundamentals clear. Something of a leap here from the indeterminacy principle to a mindful materialism.

I find nothing in the piece too objectionable, I mean irritating, because Ward keeps tidily to abstractions. Considering his god (I just can’t use big G) in the light of Everett’s possible worlds theory of 1957, he takes up the notion of a multiverse of which our universe is one. The multiverse contains every possible set of laws and conditions, making our particular universe one of an infinite set of inevitabilities. Now, consider this set of infinite possibilities and hey presto you have God. Apparently. Or at least a definition of God. Cosmic consciousness (just add consciousness). Next, though, Ward divines God’s attributes – omniscience and omnipotence, well sure I suppose so, but Supreme Goodness? Why, because this consciousness ‘contains an indefinite number of forms of beauty, intelligibility and bliss’. But of course these forms are human inventions – which isn’t to say they’re not useful and valuable, like many a human invention. Supreme goodness is also a human invention, though less useful, I’d contend. Of course if you attribute the invention of supreme goodness to this cosmic consciousness, you’ll also have to attribute supreme evil to it, as well as any and every other attribute you can think of, good bad or indifferent. To be everything is to be nothing, basically. There just seems no point to the thing.

the housing shuffle

I’ll get to the plausibility-of-god issue later, now to spend some time catching up with the diary, before heading off to buy a new pedo, etc etc, I didn’t get to Orang Utang last night, followed the path of least resistance once more, but at least I was out and about yesterday and tonight maybe I’ll go to see a film like I promised myself. It’s taken me some time today to shake off various commitments, interferences, interactions as well as some sluggishness to get back on track, much time and energy spent on the housing front, considering the permutations for the tenancy of our housing stock old and new, and the situation should be clearer by next Wednesday when we will be handed we hope the keys to two newly built houses, on Browning Street on the site of two old demolished houses which latterly belonged to La Luna, one of which I even lived in briefly. The La Luna housing shuffle involves various complex steps from our various complex members, but I’ve managed to eliminate a couple of participants through a couple of very potent phone calls. We now know that Karen’s taking Wilkins Street and that Nikki’s taking Nieass Place. We know that Jenna’s taking one of the Browning Street properties, so the property she’s vacating in Young Avenue will probably go to James. However, the other Browning Street property is at issue. Chris has changed her mind about taking it, preferring to remain in Mackay Street. Corey’s mildly interested in it, and if he does, his place at Blight Street will be taken by Sarah. That will mean me moving in next door, and my place at Exeter Tce becoming available to all those on the waiting list. It’s quite possible that either Isabella and family or Alex and family could be interested in it, which would make one of the Wilkinson Court houses available. I doubt if Serina would be interested in any of these places though she wishes to remain on the waiting list, and could conceivably be interested in Exeter Tce if the above don’t want it.
Now there’s a fair likelihood that Corey won’t take Browning Street, and no other member wants it as far as I’m aware, so it may be offered to prospective member James, and if he accepted (though I suspect he’d prefer to take up the more modest offer of Young Avenue), then that would bring our current guest Ralph into the picture. He’s keen to join La Luna and has housing difficulties as I write. Even if James refused Browning Street, Ralph could be offered it, and everyone would be more or less happy except Sarah who’s finding her place too big to manage, but that sense may change as the junky’s junk is cleared out. Still, she’ll have little Courtney indefinitely and that will make keeping up with the housework and garden well-nigh impossible. And with this little dance recording I’m almost up to date with my diarising. All hinges on Browning Street, which should be resolved by next weekend.

food of various sorts

December is the slackest month, full of parties and indulgence and needless expenditure and occasional unexpected adventures, and right now I’m under the influence of free champagne and Footsteps Verdelho, after finishing off the SACHA Chrissie drinks and new policy launch with a loopy car drive and a spectacular dinner at the pressed-tin-ceilinged Royal Oak, barramundi steak with a superb mango aioli, skordalia and fresh greens. Distracted by beautiful women, including the slim servitor with the impish welcoming smile, I still managed to keep up conversation about Elizabeth 1’s nerve-wracking childhood and John Shakespeare’s contretemps with the authorities. On more recent matters, Sarah was delighted at Jan Sundberg’s praise for her mediation skills, referring to Sarah’s recent outing at an internal appeal for another co-op, and felt that even John S, who she’s convinced doesn’t like her, pricked up his ears at the eminently respectable Jan’s fulsomeness. Not bad, thinks she, for a mere husswife and muddling mother. Sarah wasn’t as thrilled with her wild mushroom tart as I was with my slight but totally tasty main meal, but then I can’t even remember what I ate there last time, an occasion she still raves about, so now we’re even. It was a wrench leaving the place, the fresh lively faces, the dj’s jazz, but I have white hair and wouldn’t be missed.

Keith Ward, Gresham Professor of Divinity at Cambridge College, London, would undoubtedly take issue with my claim that science’s success in explaining and, in a sense, expanding the material world has left little space for the metaphysical realm that provides oxygen to religious belief. His view is that, on the contrary, modern physics is more than amenable to godly speculation. Almost every popular science book has a final chapter about God and the creation of the universe, he writes, surely more hopefully than accurately. Indeed, modern physics makes belief in God more plausible than it has ever been since Kant.

Now, before examining more closely this plausibility, I need to make the obvious but nonetheless very pertinent point that even if our current theories in physics did render a deity more plausible, this would in no way provide evidence for a particular model of the deity, in the Koran, the Bible, the Talmud or whatever, being true, and it is the pushing of these particular models of deity, with all their pronouncements, characteristics and creative or destructive acts, that causes all the anguish, consternation and hostility in the world (between religions and between the religious and the not), not mere belief in a deity an sich.

losing it in the festive season

Religion and science again with a theologian enthusing in New Scientist on the new physics’ possibilities for a renovation or reinforcement of the god notion. More anon perhaps.

I lost my pedo last night during a stint with a coupla cronies at the BBC, a bottle of la biondina and reflections on junkies, houses, music, work and the future. Not really worth it, I’ll probably have to expend another $20, it’s important to maintain the impetus, I’m moving on to sit ups, did ten today, have to graph that too. Difficult during the festive season to do more than swan and imbibe and indulge and agree, and someone told me today she barely recognised me, my hair has gotten so white, so it really is a battle, for one so old and wizardwhite, to pull my pear of a stomach into shape, to give it a new toughness, but must soldier on, we were at a SACHA affair, I mean Christmas drinks, with the CEO putting a positive spin on past and future and good luck to him, he talked in generalities, and we received a show bag full of pleasant little nothings long with the newly developed standards and policy statement, more generalities, but positive, and it’s true there’s been an improvement in SACHA over the years, an increased accessibility, though when I mentioned this to Jan Sundberg their housing manager my old mate John S piped up with the view that attitudes to SACHA varied greatly depending on which side of the fence you’re on or where you are on the scrap-heap or in the pecking order, and I felt though I didn’t say that this went without saying, that some people have unrealistic expectations of government and will always slag off at bureaucracies simply because they exist and interpose themselves between them and what they want to have or think they’re entitled to. Which isn’t to say there aren’t problems and I broached one with Jan, while John S went off rudely wandering, which was the issue of ceiling rents, the fact that they have risen so sharply of late with the spiralling valuations of houses. Sarah had by this time joined us and together we impressed upon her the difficulties encountered by members who had been say studying for some years and paying low rent and contributing to the co-op, who suddenly, due to landing a plum job, had to pay astronomical rent on one income with a partner and two young kids. We’ve had one person leave the co-op for just this reason, and another not wanting to take on that person’s highly valuated house for fear of finding herself in a similar position. Jan was all ears and suggested we put our concerns in writing, so the trip to the Oxford wasn’t wasted by a long shot. I really felt confident enough to talk, to a few people and I’m sure the pedo had a little to do with it, though John S’s presence facilitated things.

not very chatty

The news from the chat forums isn’t inspiring. One clear finding: don’t go into just general chat rooms, the conversation’s inane and full of smiley symbols and acronymic clichés, and with forty-plus chatters it’s hard to even get noticed (even harder if you don’t write anything, but you have to find something that inspires you to respond).

The best I could find was a so-called arts and literature room, still too crowded, and full of yanks and poms. They have a ‘local’, Australia/New Zealand room of this kind, but it was empty, make of it what you will. I threw in a couple of remarks upon remarks, plodding and late, and received responses, which was exciting enough to exit with. The level of chat was certainly a step up, but that still isn’t saying much. Ideally I’d prefer a room with a half dozen chatters, no more, and I get the impression that most of these characters are equipped with cams, so they can actually see each other, though not all at the same time, who knows how it works. Think I’d be better off visiting a pub. Still, I may try again, it’s cheap.

The fantasy side, the evening indulge, I don’t feel like elaborating too much but to say it’s so easy and tempting, there’s so much, so many, amazing some of it, and deliriating fun, with women of gape-making beauty who can some of them also look smart, and sassy, and happy, and intense of feeling, and thoughtful, and open, and kind, anything you care to imagine. But it really is better off visiting a pub, or anything, I need regular reality checks, perhaps every single night.

I’ve tried to organise for myself a visit to the cinema, Somersault’s playing at the Nova, right at the heart of the action, but it was going to be on my todd, Sarah’s not interested, she’s a little unadventurous, it ticks me off because always, always if she can be dragged along to see a good film she wonders aloud what it was she could possibly have had against seeing it, but when the next opportunity comes along… and now, an opportunity to head off instead to the pub for some chit-chat with nobody new, and I’ll probably take the line of least resistance. At least it means heading out.

Had a useful bike ride around the Hindmarsh Bowden Brompton area, doing some banking. Planned to hitch it like a horse and head into a saloon for some chardonnay and Proust, but no lock for it. Bike-riding’s better for the legs than the belly I suspect, and the arms particularly require attention, with dumb-bells and the like. Time to monitor my progress to superspecimenhood before I cark it, with dumb-bells, Pilates, and the Carnegie ultimate abs kit.

Food intake very reasonable. Usual breakfast, with cream cheese replacing the avocado, usual lunch, bacon and salad, and identical dinner to last night (lots of bacon to get through). An apple and a banana. Breezy blue day, the weather hugely affects my sense of fitness (in all senses of that word), hate temperature extremes.

avoiding the issue

Well, yesterday I cooked dinner for myself, Sarah and Courtney, that’s my social life and it could be a lot worse. Sarah brought over a couple of frozen burger-meat and some chubby fingerlike chipolatas, which I speed-defrosted and fried in peanut oil. I also mashed too many potatoes with sour cream and a smidge of parmigiana, and shredded some cos from the garden and doused it with lemon. Sarah steamed some broccoli next door, and it all came together – I made up a sauce for the meat, chucking hoi sin into some milk, with a tablespoon of tomato sauce and some Worcestershire, thickened with cornflour. Odd but it went down as well as I knew it would. We love being mongrels. Too much of the carbohydrate though, watch that.

The pedo – see how empty my life has become? Where’s the pabulum? Where’s me mates? Where’s the sacrificing work for others? – has registered five figures three days in a row again, after a three-day lapse following six days of excellence. I feel great, going through a period of high motivation, in spite of some nights in thrall to the unhealthy because isolating fantasies spawned by the net.

Nights I now have to work on. These are the times when I’m best not alone. As to the progress I made, with Yahoo Chat – a start. Nothing to report. Filled out a form, saying I wanted to enter chat rooms (Australia and New Zealand, at least that’s my base) about science, politics, arts, film, French-speaking, literature. Opened a general chat room, stood listening in for a while, then returned to fantasy. Hate the silly reductive symbology, smiley faces, lol and such shite. Okay I’ll try again, try for something less general, really make contact. And no, I’ve not yet decided on courses. Nor swum. Nor really exercised, strained. Remember superspecimenhood?

The possibility of hopping next door has receded slightly, which rather relieves me, I think I’d rather be here, with Sarah next door. Think that if the junky crap subsides she might reconsider. Clear out the carport, the debris, some of the La Luna pile, simplify life down a bit, and she might settle again. And I’ll go on with developing this place from scratch. Today I bought a shapely aluminium vase, which I stuffed with near-blown pink roses from out the front. Sarah loves to come here, it’s been so orderly these past few days. Keeping everything Bristol fashion helps to up my steps. Also bought kitchen scales and a new garden hose, to couple with the other so that together they can stretch to the end of my backyard, where the leaves of the wrongly placed shade-lover, the gingko biloba, and of the spiky lemon, are turning yellow-brown, most worrisome before even the start of a long hot summer.

Today’s food, the usual muesli and yoghurt breakfast, with toast and avocado. Late lunch, bacon and lettuce and cream cheese sandwich. Dinner from out of my herb cookbook, bacon and egg salad with a lovage dressing (the lovage has sprouted magnificently, three seasons in a row now, in Sarah’s garden). All the lettuce, cos, radicio, others I know not what, from my garden and there’s more there than I’m likely to consume all through summer, who’d have thought I would be capable of growing my own like this, please forgive me for harping on it but it’s a tiny miracle.