mmoa_writes

I'm not really feeling up to much at the moment. Partly because of exam results and partly because my brain is difficult like that. I really have to start doing more physics, but for some reason I can't quite bring myself to look at the wretched textbooks anymore yet alone work from them.

Anyway, have been very cultural of late - started some new writing and a painting - and went to the cinema over the week. I've been trying to make it more of a regular thing buthaven't got round to posting all my thoughts. Yes, I did go to see the Princess and the Frog and yes, I will put my thoughts on that up soon as well as on BBC's Gormenghast which I recently had the privilege of watching. But for now...

( Alice in Wonderland )

Overall though... I would have to say it was worse than Avatar which at least never made me want to go to sleep (though as that was as much due to the annoyance it generated, I'm not sure if that's entirely a good thing!). A bit of a shame, really. Personally I think Burton's suffering from the same syndrome as Tarantino - a growing streak of self-indulgence with an increasing lack of charm to carry it off.

A Single Man, however, was incredible. ( A Single Man )

Well, I lol'd.

And I am very surprised that any magazine that has the audacity to call itself 'Reason' has managed to hang around for 40 years.

*

Oh look, Hitchens has said something interesting and intelligent. OK, if he writes like this for Vanity Fair, why does he seem to let himself go for UK publications? Maybe it's that thing of being able to walk around in one's underwear when at home, when you wouldn't think of doing so elsewhere. Maybe they just pay him better. Now that, I could completely understand.

*

How the Scientist Got His Ideas; if there's one thing this got me thinking about, was just how much I despise IDers, who have transformed the debate into one purely for or against. This is stupidity incarcante because it means if someone - who is clearly an evolutionist - talks about the 'problems' of evolution (usually meaning the problem of finding an answer to ome feature of life/existence/whatever using what we know about evolution) not only are they usually snapped up by the IDers, but they are also subject to attacks from fellow evolutionists who haven't quite taken the time to read everything they were actually trying to say.

I tink it's partly due to the fallacious tecnique employed by IDers and others of their ilk wherein any little gap or problem or issue is immediately taken as a reference to the existence of God. Not only is this bad theology (which is embarrassing enough) it is bad thinking full stop. It's sad, because there are very interesting implications - maybe more from a philosophy of science perspective, admittedly - concerning the 'failures' of evolution (which have nothing to do - as ever - with God's existence or lack thereof) just as there were about quantum mechanics, which I sometimes worry won't be fully discussed about because we have entered the discussion already wired up for the 'God or Not' argument, even when we think we're being quite open minded.

But what would I know. These are just impressions. Shared impressions, however, which is a false comfort at the best of times, I know but a comfort nonetheless.

One of my pet peeves in discussions about the Big Things - God, Ethics, Consciousness etc etc - is a lack of coherence. What I mean is that a person on a particular side will use every argument at her disposal rather than arguments that form a coherent viewpoint. The best example is seen in the online 'culture wars' (yes, the American cultural hegemony strikes again - another rant for another time) whenever religion is being discussed. An evangelical Christian will use proofs and arguments formulated by a variety of non-atheists (regardless of whether they were deists, adherents to a 'philosopher's' god or to completely different theology) and in response, the militant atheist will cut them down with a series of counter arguments (dreamt up by agnostics, atheists of a different philosophical stripe or even - and ironically all too often enough - theists of a completely different theology), that whilst alone may well work effectively, certainly don't form any sort of coherent view and often illustrate a self-contradictory one. This is not really the fault of either combatant - I suppose that's just what you get from several millenia's worth of dialogue. So much to say and in so little time.

It also doesn't help that you get a lot of she-said-he-said in these sort of discussions. An atheist might critisise a theistic argument only to be greeted with the usual chorus of 'not all theists believe that'; ad hominem attacks meant for the fallacies of a particular atheist are used by a theist to apply to a whole group of them, in spite of the fact that individually, each person might hold to a different philosophy.*

The final straw came more recently, with the issue of wrong done by religious institutions, particularly on the charge that the spectacular cruelty exhibited by the religious in, for example, pre-Christian sacrifices, the Inquisition and the Wars of Religion etc etc is one only religion can boast of.

( And on she goes... )

Everyone please take note of the Medieval Review and the Classical Review. I am way lower in the rankings than even the most amateur of amateur historians but so far, thanks to these two services, I've learnt more about medieval women doctors, law-keeping (and making) in late Antiquity Russia, Political thought in Ancient Rome and acoustic science/philosophy in Classical Greece than I ever thought possible.