The Guardian
We must learn morality from each other, not God | Mary Warnock
10 hours 10 min agoThe latest outbreak of hostilities between atheists and believers rehearses the same old confusion about what God stands for
Thursday's headline in the Times, "Hawking: God did not create the Universe", reached new depths of absurdity. It provoked an immediate outbreak of hostilities between atheists and believers, raising again the question of the status of religion in an age of scientific advance that has been accelerating since the Enlightenment. Hawking appears to believe (and so far I can judge only from the extracts in the Times magazine, Eureka) that he has proved the nonexistence of God. But the trouble with his proof, as with so much religious discussion, is that he takes the name "God" to be used to refer to an object that exists (or does not exist) in the world as other natural objects exist.
And most people who are religious believers fall into the same confusion. They assume that God the Creator is a being, albeit supernatural, to whom can be ascribed other praiseworthy attributes, who can be identified with God the Loving Father, or God the Founder of all Morality, who literally, at one and the same time laid down both natural laws and moral principles.
It would be as well if people could take time off from the battle to read Section XI of David Hume's Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. It isn't very long. But it contains the argument that even if we could infer from the nature of the world that God must have created it (a fashionable form of theology in the 18th century), this would be a useless inference, since we would have no grounds for ascribing any other characteristics to this creator. All the characteristics usually attributed to the deity – that he is morally perfect, that he loves his creatures, that his human creations are images of himself – all these are quite gratuitous additions to the inferred creative function. We would be landed with a God about whom nothing could be said except that he made the world.
The antagonists in the present engagement might prefer to read Kant, who denied that God's existence could be either proved or disproved, but held that all our language about God must be metaphorical. To think otherwise, he wrote, would be grossly anthropomorphic. Whence could we get the idea of perfect goodness or infinite forgiveness except from our knowledge of human goodness and human forgiveness?
The great monotheistic religions are powerful works of the human imagination that have woven themselves deeply into our culture. To some people, their imagery still appeals most strongly; their narratives convey truths and insights not elsewhere available. To others, they no longer have any but historical significance. The mischief done to science and religion by the current battle lies in the belief that all truth must be literal truth. One thing is certain. Just as, if Hawking is right, we do not need the idea of God to teach us the origin of the universes around us, so we do not need the idea of God to teach us what is good and what is bad. We can learn this from society itself, not from tablets of stone handed down from Mount Sinai.
Whatever the continuing role of religion today, in philanthropy, in education, in ceremonial, in music, in personal comfort and hope, there is no obligation to believe. We can value things without God to tell us what is valuable. We know, without faith, that love is better than war.
Mary Warnock's Dishonest to God, on keeping religion out of politics, will be published by Continuum, £16.99
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Dr Gerry Mander: the therapist the stars trust | rafael behr
10 hours 10 min agoHelp! I love wearing baseball caps but it's got me and my friend into trouble
Dear Dr Mander
I am a middle-aged man with a successful political career. But I have an embarrassing predilection. I sometimes wear baseball caps. It is not a new thing. I wore one many years ago at a carnival. But there was a great press hoo-ha, so I resolved never to don one in public again. But then I found a baseball cap that fitted me particularly well. And, since I was not in government at the time, I saw no reason not to sport it in the company of a young friend.
He and I have often exchanged hat tips. His advice on the subject was vital during the election campaign, so I appointed him my milliner-in-chief at the Foreign Office. But these events have been distorted by the media into crude smears. I have been forced into a humiliating public account of my headgear preferences. My hatter has resigned. Surely, what a man wears in the company of his friends is his own business.
W Hague
Dear Mr Hague
There is no shame in wearing baseball caps, but it is worth recalling how recently they have been accepted as part of a grown man's wardrobe. Such tolerance is always slower in reaching figures in public life. An unspoken law demands that politicians shield their bonces more soberly than the wider public. But your situation is complicated by the fact that you put your friend on the public payroll. The suspicion was bound to arise that he was preferred more for the peak of his cap than his professional competence.
Not to have foreseen that danger was a mistake. But that does not diminish your right to wear what you choose. There are probably many men in positions like yours, stuck in suits, craving the liberation of denim, baseball cap and shades. Embrace the look and be a role model to repressed dressers everywhere.
Dear Dr Mander
Rule one: I am the Lord your God; thou shalt have no other gods before me. How hard can it be? Pretty hard, apparently because people keep denying me. The latest is this guy Hawking, who claims to know how the universe works, says there are many parallel universes and that it's all held to together by superstring or silly putty or some such. Anyway, he says that with all these multiple universes, it stands to reason that I don't exist. The chutzpah! That was six days' graft. I've a good mind to smite him.
Yaweh
Dear Yaweh,
You are understandably irritated by unbelief and idolatry. But vengeance is a very BC response. The current fashion is to set out arguments, as Stephen Hawking has done, in book form. You have not revealed your Word for several centuries now, which has left the field open to your detractors. A return to print could be a good way to reach a new audience. For tips on how to pitch the narrative so it is chatty in tone but with the hauteur of an omniscient being, and also for examples of how to settle old scores in memoir form, get yourself a copy of A Journey by your faithful disciple T Blair.
Dear Dr Mander
We are writing to alert you to a possible breach of security with regard to your mobile phone account. Our records show unauthorised attempts were made to access your voicemail records remotely. Our investigation has traced the source of the attempts to an address in Downing Street, London SW1. We are pursuing the matter further. Meanwhile, we strongly recommend you change your voicemail access passcode as soon as possible.
Customer services manager, VodaComNet
Dear Sir
I deal with high-profile clients in the world of media and government, for whom privacy is an issue of paramount importance. I would therefore appreciate maximum discretion on this matter and, to avoid causing undue distress, would request that the police not be notified at this time.
Dr Gerry Mander shares his consulting room with Rafael Behr
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Welcome to Kiryas Joel, New York. Please behave – and don't wear shorts
10 hours 10 min agoAmerica's tolerance is famed except, it seems, when it comes to the religious centre near Ground Zero
The sign is polite but firm. At the entrance to the small, upstate, New York community of Kiryas Joel, a new notice asks visitors to the village to shun shorts in favour of trousers or long skirts and wear long-sleeved shirts. It also asks people to maintain "gender segregation" in all public areas. "In keeping with our traditions and religious customs we kindly ask that you dress and behave in a modest way while visiting our community," the signs says.
What it does not explain is why. But that is simple enough. Kiryas Joel is home to a community of ultra-conservative Satmar Hasidic Jews and they would prefer that visitors adopt, or at least respect, their religious customs when passing through.
The New York branch of the American Civil Liberties Union, a tenacious watchdog on the encroachment of religion into public life, has no argument with the signs (they are on private land and, clearly, non-binding). Nor has the American media been especially outraged. After all, almost all the 22,000 residents of Kiryas Joel are Hasidic and abide by their religious customs of wearing heavy, body-covering clothing even through the heatwave that has gripped New York this summer.
But it's not just been the weather that's been hot in New York. So has the explosive debate over the so-called Ground Zero mosque (neither a mosque nor at Ground Zero).
Now, just for a moment, imagine that the good people of Kiryas Joel were not conservative Jews. Imagine them, instead, as Muslims. Muslims who had asked visitors to cover up when they come to their town. Muslims offended by the sight of any female flesh above the ankle or the wrist or below the neck. Muslims who wanted women and men passing through their community to stay apart. The outrage of America's conservative classes could well be astonishing.
The largely silent acceptance of Kiryas Joel's wishes tells us much about America's admirable tolerance for minorities. Just as the ugliness of the Ground Zero mosque debate tells us much about its fear over Islam.
Paul Harrisguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
A conversation with Stephen Hawking, aged five years old | Mark Vernon
Sat, 09/04/2010 - 15:00If Stephen Hawking was a boy again, what questions would he ask, and what would be the answer?
Imagine Stephen Hawking is reincarnated, and this time round his father is a philosopher. One day, when little Stephen is about five years old, they're sitting in the summer house with Fido, their pet dog. And Stephen asks one of those questions children love to repeat.
Daddy. Yes Stephen? Why is Fido? Well, Stephen, Fido had a mummy and daddy like you.
Yeah but, why is Fido? Err, you mean why is he a dog? That's because his parents were dogs, and his parent's parents were dogs too. They belong to what we call the same species. (Stephen is precocious in this life too.)
But why is Fido? Well, we know that Fido's parent's parent's parent's parents – a long way back – were not dogs, but were wolves. That was before human beings made them pets.
Oh. Why is Fido? Before there were wolves there was another species out of which wolves grow. We call it evolution, Stephen, and it's a very important process in the natural world.
Ev-o-lu-tion. (Stephen likes the feel of that word.) But why is Fido? Before that species, there was another, and another, and another, all the way back to tiny animals we call cells.
Why IS Fido? You're asking about biochemistry now. Err, roughly you can say that when the stuff of which everything is made is put together in a very complicated way – like a fantastic lego puzzle – then it takes on this very special property we call life.
WHY IS FIDO? Before life, there was just stuff – matter. It hung around for many billions of years on planet earth.
But why is FIDO? Before the earth, there were stars, and galaxies, subatomic particles and strange things like black holes. (Stephen has the very strange feeling that he knows all about black holes, even though he's only five.)
Yeah but, why is Fido? Scientists think it all started with a big bang, Stephen, a kind of spontaneous eruption out of which everything came.
Wow! Why is Fido? The big bang must have happened because of the laws of physics.
BUT WHY IS FIDO?
(At this point Stephen's father pauses. Being a philosopher, he realises that Stephen is now asking a very different question to all the ones he's asked before. You see, before, his questions could be answered with reference to some preceding state of affairs, out of which Fido can be said to have come. Now, though, he is asking about where everything came from, and being everything, there is no antecedent reality to refer to. To start to talk of nothing, not even abstract laws of nature, let alone wildly compressed energy, is to try to put everything in the context of nothing. But nothing is precisely that: not a quantum field fluctuating in the vacuum, not one universe springing out of a multiverse. Nothing is more radical than that. It is nothing. It's impossible to conceive of, in fact. It's no wonder Stephen's father pauses.)
I'm not sure we can ask that question, Stephen. It makes no sense.
But I want to know: why is Fido?
Well, some say the universe just is. There's a famous philosopher from about 100 years ago, Bertrand Russell, and he thought that.
(Stephen harrumphs.) But why is Fido?
There is another answer.
Yes? (Stephen sits up.)
Well, it's not exactly an answer.
Oh?
More like a mystery.
I like mysteries.
But I'm not sure you're going to like this one.
Tell me!
Well, there was another philosopher who was a friend of Bertrand Russell, in fact. He was called Ludwig Wittgenstein, and he said, "Not how the world is, but that it is, is the mystery."
Wow!
And the mystery is sometimes given a name.
What's the name?
It's called God.
(With thanks to Herbert McCabe)
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We cannot afford to shun Pakistan | Michael Nazir-Ali
Sat, 09/04/2010 - 09:00The world must not abandon Pakistan to the religious extremists
On a recent Pakistan International Airlines flight from Karachi to Lahore, a local – and somewhat revealing – fashion show played out on the TV screens. Among those having to watch were a large number of people returning from the hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca. This scene is but a microcosm of contemporary Pakistan. On the one hand, there are signs everywhere not just of personal piety but of a narrow and intolerant ideology based on religion, and, on the other, of people, especially the young, straining to break through the barriers of convention. The clash is evident everywhere, with the same newspapers, magazines and television channels carrying Islamic revivalist messages and permissive films. How this clash is resolved will be a clue to the destiny of the country.
This destiny is one that, in the medium term, is fraught with difficulty. The noted journalist Ahmad Rashid has said that Pakistan is going through political, economic and terrorist crises simultaneously. It is impossible in these circumstances to be ambitious, for example, about infrastructure and the urgent energy needs of the country. The confidence of international financial institutions is being bought by the strict and immediate implementation of harsh IMF policies, especially the removal of subsidies on domestic gas and electricity consumption. Needless to say, this has huge political implications in terms of public unrest.
The political situation remains very fragile, with the parties, the judiciary and, of course, the military all, publicly or privately, jockeying for power. Although there are encouraging signs, levels of violence remain obstinately high. There are daily reports of suicide bombings, political assassinations and kidnappings. There is evidence that attacks on minorities, such as Christians, Shia Muslims and the Ahmadiyya are a deliberate attempt by the Pakistani Taliban and their related "lashkars" – tribal militias – to widen the conflict in the area.
Independent surveys show that over 90% of Pakistanis believe that religious extremism is the greatest single threat to the country. As someone said to me recently: "It seems that an extremist 3% are holding the other 97% to ransom." A close encounter with extremism and terrorism has made even previously sympathetic Pakistanis realise the mortal danger they are in. This must be taken into account when assessing the effects of the "war on terror" on Pakistani public opinion. It may not be as uniformly hostile to combating terrorism as is sometimes made out by the press. The means used and the time taken, as well as civilian casualties, are crucial in determining the direction in which public opinion will go.
For these reasons Pakistan should not be isolated from the mainstream of the international community. It is important also to make sure that ordinary Pakistanis remain in contact with the outside world. The response by the international community to the earthquake in Kashmir in 2005 was hugely appreciated by ordinary people in Pakistan. A generous and timely response to the recent floods is yet another sign that the world has not abandoned Pakistan, whether to natural disaster or to extremists.
Pakistan will be a litmus test as to whether the international community and the Muslim world can halt the advance of extremist ideologies based on religion. It is vital for us to co-operate with those in Pakistan and elsewhere who have similar aims. These may be NGOs, universities, the media, women's and minority groups and, indeed, progressive elements in government. The world needs a stable, strong and moderate Pakistan, and so do its own citizens.
Michael Nazir-Aliguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Letters: A mystery wrapped in an enigma
Sat, 09/04/2010 - 00:04Stephen Hawking assumes that the big bang started from "nothing" (Universe not created by God, says Hawking, 2 September). I would like to know what his definition of "nothing" is. It is no answer to point to the emergence of positron-electron pairs that appear from "nothing" as each of these have energy and this energy must have existed beforehand. It is difficult to think of a universe in which there is "nothing" because nothing means just that, no mass, no energy and therefore no means of making anything in this or any other related universe. This is the crucial phrase: how can anything be born of absolutely nothing? If we accept this definition then the universe has existed for ever – and will continue for ever. If anyone wishes to call this infinitely long existence "god", then fine, but it doesn't solve anything, it still leaves all the questions of existence that all organised religions fail to explain. Such as: if the gods created the big bang then what were they doing before then? And since it is impossible to make absolutely nothing from something, what will they do after Armageddon – start all over again?
Professor AB Turner
University of Sussex
• Spontaneous creation, "something from nothing", is puzzling coming from a physicist. No-thing means no physical reality, but all reality is logically the realisation of possibility; ergo possibility is meta ta physica: beyond the physical.If one considers nature as two interdependent domains: the universe of physical reality, and the metaphysical realm of logical possibility, then some-thing does indeed arise from no-thing. Physical nature arising from metaphysical nature makes a supernatural explanation for reality entirely unnecessary. That doesn't disprove the god hypothesis, of course, but it does offer arguably a more probable explanation for our existence. Mathematics is a form of logic by which possibility is reduced by a process of entertained argument to a hypothetical conclusion, which while logically consistent is not necessarily true. So M theory, by which the metaphysics of logical possibility is used to argue an explanation for physical reality, without the mind of god, is only one of many possibilities. The only truly definitive conclusion arises when there is only one possibility left, the end of the current universe and a new "big bang" nature of possibility and reality.
John Stone
Thames Ditton, Surrey
• The capacity for self-delusion of the enormously gifted and intelligent seems to be as limitless as that of the rest of us.
If Stephen Hawking thinks that everything will be explained by the laws of gravity and physics, well, what explains the existence of the laws by which everything is explained? Why and how should there be any laws of gravity? How did they happen to exist even before matter came into being?
His theory just leaves yet another question begging. Even if we did come from nothing, where did the nothing come from? The existence of nothing is surely just as mysterious and inexplicable as the existence of anything.
Hawking's theory is not a satisfactory answer even for an atheist like myself. There probably never will be a full explanation for our existence. To explain A in terms of B simply leaves B to then be explained, and so on down an infinite alphabet.
Alex Shearer
Backwell, Somerset
• God, gods, whomever, may well have become tired of the arguments about his/her/their existence (In praise of… God, 3 September). Two thousand years ago, the Epicureans maintained that, while the gods certainly existed (well, obviously), the Immortal Ones had no interest whatsoever in mankind; much, I suppose, as interstellar travellers feel about defective species generally.
Tom Drane
Mitcham, Surrey
• Professor Hawking's new book is called The Grand Design. Doesn't a design require a designer? Without one, it is "A Grand Accident". It's curious how atheists cannot help resorting to religious language.
Rev Richard Haggis
Oxford
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Archbishop of York condemns UK opt-out from EU directive on sex trafficking
Sat, 09/04/2010 - 00:02John Sentamu accuses government of 'sitting on sidelines' while other countries tackle the cross-border problem
The Archbishop of York has joined critics of the government's opt-out from the EU's new directive on sex trafficking, describing the decision as "stunning".
John Sentamu accused ministers of "sitting on the sidelines" while other countries try to tackle a cross-border problem, which is thought to be growing but has seen fewer traffickers jailed this year than at any time since 2005.
The Archbishop said the "evil trade, which is nothing less than modern-day slavery", requires joint international action with Britain playing a full part. Estimates suggest that 2,500 foreign women have been pimped into prostitution by gangs.
Writing in today's Yorkshire Post, Dr Sentamu said: "I am no great supporter of European directives because of the supremacy of our parliament, but this one seems to be commonsense, designed to coordinate action against the trade in slaves. Britain should get involved now and be part of improving the situation – not sat on the sidelines offering wise words only when the match is over.
"Our government should be ensuring that Britain leads the way, as it did in the days of William Wilberforce."
His plea for a change of heart follows a similar appeal from the Labour party earlier this week, backed by the charity Anti-Slavery International. The Home Office says that caution over the directive protects damage to other national interests, but that the country is already "working constructively with EU partners" to fight sex trafficking.
Martin Wainwrightguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
New Yorkers split over mosque planned near Ground Zero
Fri, 09/03/2010 - 19:19New York Times poll shows two-thirds want to see the proposed mosque built further from the site of the 9/11 attacks
The controversy around the proposal to build a mosque close to Ground Zero has caused a deep rift within those most directly affected – New Yorkers – with a new poll showing that two-thirds want the planned centre moved further away from the site of the 9/11 attacks.
The poll, conducted by the New York Times among 892 adults across the city, records that 67% want to see the Muslim community centre built in a less controversial location.
Under the current plans, the $100m (£65m) project for the 13-storey multifaith centre would be built in Park Place, just north of the World Trade Centre, where almost 3,000 people lost their lives when al-Qaida brought down the Twin Towers.
The remaining third of those New Yorkers sampled felt that to move the centre would be to compromise American values.
The findings of the poll suggest that the intense dispute surrounding the planned mosque, which has seen national politicians as well as Christian and other religious groups wade into the controversy, has had an impact on the city that has up to now prided itself on retaining its traditional tolerance even in the face of the terrorist threat.
The proposed mosque, the brainchild of the moderate Islam group the Cordoba Initiative, has had a strong backer in the mayor of the city, Michael Bloomberg.
The survey suggests that among some New Yorkers there is a residue of anti-Muslim feeling. A fifth said openly that they feel animosity towards Muslims, and a third that they thought Muslims more sympathetic to terrorism than other subsections of US society.
The controversy surrounding the mosque shows no sign of letting up. On Sunday a firebrand Christian televangelist, Bill Keller, has booked a conference room in a hotel just next to Ground Zero to launch his so-called "9/11 Christian Centre". The Florida-based preacher is branding his new ministry as a direct response to the Park Place mosque scheme.
Keller has a track record of preaching against Islam as a false religion devoted, in his portrayal of it, to hatred and violence.
The religious figure behind the mosque, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, is a leading moderate within the US Muslim community. He has recently been on a tour of the Gulf region sponsored by the US state department to promote religious tolerance.
In a speech in Dubai earlier this week, he said the battle over the planned centre had breached fundamental questions of the future of Muslim relations in the country, that went far beyond "a piece of real estate".
The New York Times poll shows that although the city's residents are doubtful about the scheme, they do not like interference by outside politicians such as Sarah Palin, who famously called on peaceful Muslims to "refudiate" it.
Ed Pilkingtonguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Worshippers 'safe' after explosion at Hare Krishna temple
Fri, 09/03/2010 - 18:23Firefighters battle blaze that partially destroyed Leicester building, as witness suggests gas leak was to blame for incident
Firefighters were this afternoon battling a fire at a Hare Krishna temple in Leicester, following an explosion.
Initial reports said worshippers were trapped inside the blazing temple but the rescue service said later that everyone was accounted for.
A third of the building in Thoresby Street was destroyed in the initial blast.
The cause of fire has not yet been established. One eyewitness suggested it had been caused by a gas canister.
The temple is in a residential street and there had been a series of ceremonial events taking place.
Firefighters used thermal imaging cameras to look for worshippers inside the building, which was believed to be unstable.
Gauranga Sundara Das, a Hare Krishna community leader in Leicester, said: "There were 30 people there today.
"We were celebrating the birth of the founder of our movement ... I have spoken to someone who was outside at the time of the explosion. Apparently it came from a gas leak in the kitchen."
Owen Bowcottguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
The church and the revolutionaries | Hugh O'Shaughnessy
Fri, 09/03/2010 - 12:14Religion cannot afford to be 'above the fray'. The hardest part is deciding how to intervene, as the experience of Cuba shows
The question: Can religion be apolitical?It has always been my understanding – and it hasn't let me down yet – that those who go around saying "I'm a religious person so I'm apolitical" tend to be conservatives who don't want things changed, a profoundly unscriptural attitude. Their motto is one of a sort of dreary immobilism which they hope will keep them out of trouble, a sort of verbal trick contained in the old query, "When did you stop beating your wife?" As a Catholic trying to become a Christian, I am convinced that immobilism is not an attitude which matches up to the teachings of the scripture or to the examples set by a succession of great women and men who have stood out for decency, their faith and the love of God.
My attitude brings me a number of difficult cases. One of the most physically immobile of the early saints was St Simon Stylites who appears to have spent a good part of his life living on top of a column in the environs of Antioch where he died in 459.
But he wasn't a fossilised person. He was, it seems, one who spoke his opinions to the people on the ground or to those who put ladders against his pillar where he was to spend 36 years so as to be able to converse with him. Emperors and popes sought his council about the changes they wanted to bring in.
In our own times we have been taught a lesson on immobilism. At the time of the Cuban revolution in 1959 when the cold war was being fought at is frostiest and there were unbearable tensions between Castro's men who called themselves Marxist-Leninists and the establishment. And the Castro party took unjust decisions against Cuban Christians expelling many members of the foreign clergy from the island.
The Castristas were in fact a group of people – most of them ignorant of the mysteries of "scientific socialism" – who did not want any longer to see richer Cubans and foreign gangsters being singled out for commendation in a country were the poor were pushed to the side. Nor did they want Cuba to be patronised and lectured to by ignorant foreigners. Many of Castro's followers objected to Catholic leaders who were all too tightly bound to the interests of the rich and to the ideas of Francisco Franco. Many Cuban catholics saw Reds under every bed and knew where they stood in the cold war.
In such circumstances some bishops merely fled, fearing for the fate of their immortal souls. At the time of the illegal Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961 Cardinal Manuel Arteaga, the archbishop of Havana since 1942, who had at times supported the policies of the dictator Fulgencio Batista, sought refuge in the Argentine embassy in Havana and declared his opposition to the revolution. He was joined there by Bishop Manuel Rodríguez of Pinar del Río. But Arteaga was instructed by Pope John XXIII not to follow the path of the clergy whom Castro had expelled, but to stay in Cuba. Arteaga had no choice: he left the embassy for a clinic in Havana where he died in 1963.
The nuncio, the pope's man in Cuba, Cesare Zacchi, was able to keep a dialogue going with the Cuban leader at the height of the tension with Washington and at one point the pope's envoy went so far as to refer to Castro as "a man with deep Christian values" – to the deep grief, it must be said, of the anti-Castro camp. After completing his time in Havana Zacchi was appointed president of the Vatican's 300-year old academy for aspiring diplomats: his record in dealing with the Cuban government cannot have been judged as bad.
According to Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican secretary of state who seized the opportunity to be the first foreign leader to visit Fidel's brother Raúl in Havana after he took over the presidency in 2008, Zacchi had successfully stimulated relations between Havana and Rome.
Religion – at least the Christian religions – cannot afford to be "above the fray" The hard part is deciding how and where to intervene. Cardinal Arteaga got it wrong in the first days of the Cuban revolution. John XXII – and for that matter St Simon Stylites – got it right.
Hugh O'Shaughnessyguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Stephen Hawking can't use physics to answer why we're here | Eric Priest
Fri, 09/03/2010 - 09:00Modern belief in God is not about covering the gaps in our knowledge, but about answering different types of questions
Stephen Hawking makes the claim that it is not necessary to invoke God as the creator of the universe and the assertion that physics alone made it.
He may be correct in his first statement, but to rule out a possibly important role for God is in my view unjustified. It is certainly possible that God sets up and maintains or underpins the laws of physics and allows them to work, so that being able to explain the big bang in terms of physics is not inconsistent with there being a role for God.
As a scientist, you are continually questioning, rarely coming up with a definitive answer. The limitations of your own knowledge and expertise together with the beauty and mystery of life and the universe often fill you with a sense of profound humility. Thus, unequivocal assertions are not part of a genuine scientific quest.
Mathematics as applied to physics may be the queen of sciences according to Carl Friedrich Gauss, but it does not answer every scientific question. Chemistry, biology, psychology and the social sciences have their own ways of analysing the nature of reality which are complementary to those of physics and mathematics: indeed, they are not reducible to physics but their insights emerge at their own level of complexity.
Furthermore, many of the questions that are most crucial to us as human beings are not addressed adequately at all by science, such as the nature of beauty and love and how to live one's life – often philosophy or history or theology are better suited to help answer them.
The complementary nature of different questions and in particular of the difference between how and why are important. If M-theory does indeed turn out to enable a unified theory, Hawking may be able in future to say how the universe started, but as a physicist he cannot answer the question "why?"
This is well illustrated by John Polkinghorne's story about boiling a kettle: I can describe with physics how it boils in terms of the stove making its temperature rise; but why it is boiling is a different type of question altogether – most probably in my case because my wife is thirsty!
The so-called "God of the Gaps" is not part of modern religious faith. In this view, you invoked God to explain the inexplicable – at one time this would have been the weather or common diseases, and for Hawking apparently until recently the origin of the universe. Thus, when an alternative explanation arises, there is no longer any need for God.
The God followed by many people of a religious faith is not a God of the Gaps at all – rather a God who helps answer other nonscientific questions about why the universe and its amazing life exists and how to lead a good life. Also, they welcome the advances in understanding that modern science brings, since they reveal more of the incredible beauty, diversity and wonder of the nature of the universe.
You cannot prove whether God exists or not. But you can ask whether the existence or nonexistence of God is more consistent with your experience. It is up to each of us to reach our own conclusion, but for many of us it is and can make a profound and enriching difference to our lives.
Eric Priestguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
In praise of … God | Editorial
Fri, 09/03/2010 - 00:05The universe just ramped itself up. Simple. And yet doubts remain - spontaneous creation is, for most folk, just a contradiction in terms
"Dear Sir: Your astonishment's odd; / I am always about in the quad." This was the divine response, as imagined by Ronald Knox, to the inquisitive undergraduate who, following Bishop Berkeley's line of thought, wondered whether a tree in the college quadrangle would still exist if God was not there to sustain it. Now someone rather higher in the academic hierarchy has raised the question in a different form. Professor Stephen Hawking says in his new book that there is no place for God in theories about how the universe got started: "Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something." Anyone who has ever watched in amazement as a piece of domestic equipment, say a washing machine, suddenly swings into action, even though no human hand has touched any buttons, will be able to grasp something of what Hawking is hinting at here. The universe just ramped itself up. Simple. And yet doubts remain. One accepts that if God were to choose one day to explain the universe to Hawking, the professor would be one of the few people on the planet with any serious chance of understanding the conversation. But spontaneous creation is, for most folk, just a contradiction in terms. God may or may not find all this amusing. The thing is – how to put this gently to Professor Hawking? – that God does not necessarily follow the ins and outs of our many arguments about His existence. Who could blame Him if, after all this time, He has become tired of them? Meanwhile, there is still a tree in the quad.
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Chief rabbi challenges Stephen Hawking in row over origins of universe
Thu, 09/02/2010 - 19:48Lord Sacks accuses astrophysicist of logical fallacy in book excluding possibility of supernatural creation
The chief rabbi, Lord Sacks, hit back at Stephen Hawking after the astrophysicist said God did not create the universe.
In his new book, The Grand Design, published next week, Hawking concludes that science excludes the possibility of a deity and that it is unnecessary to "invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going".
But his findings were described by Sacks as an "elementary fallacy" of logic.
Writing in the Times, the chief rabbi said: "There is a difference between science and religion. Science is about explanation. Religion is about interpretation. The Bible simply isn't interested in how the universe came into being."
Sacks also said the mutual hostility between religion and science was one of "the curses of our age" and warned it would be equally damaging to both.
"But there is more to wisdom than science. It cannot tell us why we are here or how we should live. Science masquerading as religion is as unseemly as religion masquerading as science."
In an earlier book, A Brief History of Time, Hawking was apparently more open to the idea of God, suggesting that a scientific understanding of the universe was not incompatible with a creator. "If we discover a complete theory … it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason – for then we should know the mind of God," he wrote.
Riazat Buttguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
50th Tibetan Democracy Day ceremonies
Thu, 09/02/2010 - 13:37Tibetans around the world celebrate the 50th Tibetan Democracy Day which marks the anniversary of the Dalai Lama's efforts to transform Tibetan society into a democracy
How Buddhism could be a way out of the environmental mess we are in | Jo Confino
Thu, 09/02/2010 - 11:04The Zen teacher Thich Nhat Hanh explains in his new book how a Buddhist approach could benefit ecology
• Zen and the art of protecting the planet
There is something extraordinarily child-like about the 84-year-old Zen Buddhist master Thich Nhat Hanh.
To portray him out of context could make him appear naive and unworldly. It is therefore understandable that he does not like to be interviewed by journalists who have not already spent some time in his presence and meditated with him. The Daily Mirror was interested in running a piece only if they could get a picture of him with a major celebrity, which is not particularly helpful since he believes fame is one of the key paths to suffering.
After a rare private audience and five days in a retreat in Nottingham which nearly a thousand other people took part in, I have come to recognise that his way of being could be an antidote to our politicised and intellectualised world.
He has an uncanny ability to clear away the complexities of our lives by reminding us to think about the essence of who we are and offering some simple steps to challenge our habitualised problems and neuroticism.
In recent years, he has turned his full attention to the dangers of climate change and recently published the best-selling book The World We Have – A Buddhist Approach to Peace and Ecology.
He discusses in the book how he sat and consulted with the Buddha for many hours and came away with the recognition that we could be facing the end of our civilisation unless we can achieve a spiritual awakening and change our individual and collective behaviour.
"In my mind I see a group of chickens in a cage disputing over a few seeds of grain, unaware that in a few hours they will all be killed," he writes.
Above all else, Thay – as he is known – teaches that the world cannot be changed outside of ourselves. The answer is for each one of us to transform the fear, anger, and despair which we cover-up with over-consumption. If we are filling our bodies and minds with toxins, it is no surprise that the world around us also becomes poisoned.
He also argues that those who put their faith in technology alone to save the planet are bowing to a false god.
Like many other spiritual leaders, he sees the genesis of our pain as coming from our dualistic mindset that sees our connection to god, or Buddha, or spirit as outside ourselves and accessible only after our death. As a result we have developed a strong ego that sees itself as separate and threatened and needs to amass things like wealth to feel strong and protected. But none of these can fill the chasm created by our deep sense of separation.
He condones eco-activism but only if done with the right motives:
"I know ecologists who are not happy in their families. They work hard to improve the environment, partly to escape their own unhappy family lives. If someone is not happy within herself, how can she help the environment?"
"The energy we need is not fear or anger, but the energy of understanding and compassion. There is no need to blame or condemn. Those who are destroying themselves, societies and the planet aren't doing it intentionally. Their pain and loneliness are overwhelming and they want to escape. They need to be helped, not punished. Only understanding and compassion on a collective level can liberate us."
Thay believes that within every person are the seeds of love, compassion and understanding as well as the seeds of anger, hatred and discrimination. Using a gardening metaphor, he says our experience of life depends on which seeds we choose to water.
To help water those positive seeds and create a new global ethic, Thay's Order of Interbeing has distilled the Buddha's teachings on the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path into five core principles.
The Five Mindfulness Trainings, updated in the last year to make them relevant to our fast-changing world, are not a set of strict rules but a direction to head in.
Thay explains that in the First Training we vow to cherish all life on Earth and not support any acts of killing. In the Second Training we pledge to practice generosity and not support social injustice and oppression. In the Third Training we make a commitment to behave responsibly in our relationships and not engage in sexual misconduct. The Fourth Training asks us to practice loving speech and deep listening in order to relieve others of suffering. The practice of mindful consumption and mindful eating is the object of the Fifth Mindfulness Training.
While Thay sees following these trainings as a way out of the environmental mess we are in, he is not certain that people are yet ready to change their consumerist way of life.
"Without collective awakening the catastrophe will come," he warns. "Civilisations have been destroyed many times and this civilisation is no different. It can be destroyed. We can think of time in terms of millions of years and life will resume little by little. The cosmos operates for us very urgently, but geological time is different."
Jo Confinoguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Is physicist Stephen Hawking right that physics, not God, created the universe? | Poll
Thu, 09/02/2010 - 07:21In a new book, world-renowned physicist Stephen Hawking argues that the universe is the work of physics, not God. Do you agree?
Krishna's birthday
Thu, 09/02/2010 - 02:13Children dress as Hindu god Krishna during festivities to mark Janmashtami at a school in Mumbai
Stephen Hawking says universe not created by God
Thu, 09/02/2010 - 01:56• Physics, not creator, made Big Bang, new book claims
• Professor had previously referred to 'mind of God'
Poll: Is Hawking right?
God did not create the universe, the man who is arguably Britain's most famous living scientist says in a forthcoming book.
In the new work, The Grand Design, Professor Stephen Hawking argues that the Big Bang, rather than occurring following the intervention of a divine being, was inevitable due to the law of gravity.
In his 1988 book, A Brief History of Time, Hawking had seemed to accept the role of God in the creation of the universe. But in the new text, co-written with American physicist Leonard Mlodinow, he said new theories showed a creator is "not necessary".
The Grand Design, an extract of which appears in the Times today, sets out to contest Sir Isaac Newton's belief that the universe must have been designed by God as it could not have been created out of chaos.
"Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing," he writes. "Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist.
"It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going."
In the forthcoming book, published on 9 September, Hawking says that M-theory, a form of string theory, will achieve this goal: "M-theory is the unified theory Einstein was hoping to find," he theorises.
"The fact that we human beings – who are ourselves mere collections of fundamental particles of nature – have been able to come this close to an understanding of the laws governing us and our universe is a great triumph."
Hawking says the first blow to Newton's belief that the universe could not have arisen from chaos was the observation in 1992 of a planet orbiting a star other than our Sun. "That makes the coincidences of our planetary conditions – the single sun, the lucky combination of Earth-sun distance and solar mass – far less remarkable, and far less compelling as evidence that the Earth was carefully designed just to please us human beings," he writes.
Hawking had previously appeared to accept the role of God in the creation of the universe. Writing in his bestseller A Brief History Of Time in 1988, he said: "If we discover a complete theory, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason – for then we should know the mind of God."
Hawking resigned as Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University last year after 30 years in the position.
Adam Gabbattguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Response: No, I don't believe science holds all the answers to our existence
Thu, 09/02/2010 - 00:04Our consciousness paves the way for our spirituality, but there's little consensus
In finger-wagging style, Mary Midgley warns that "serious scientists know that their enquiries are endless; any answers always raise a swarm of new questions" (Serious scientists know that they cannot explain all the major puzzles of existence, 28 August). But who ever said otherwise? Well, I did apparently.
She quotes from my 1995 book, Soul Searching, selecting passages to back her assertion that I believe that science can provide "a sufficient explanation for everything that is or might be". What she fails to say is that in these passages I was describing how things looked to overconfident natural philosophers at the end of the 18th century, and how this set the stage for a Romantic reaction and in particular for spiritualism and psychical research.
True, I wrote that "two hundred years later this ambitious [Enlightenment] programme for a self-sufficient science has succeeded beyond the dreams of its inventors. Across great swaths of nature ... the major puzzles of existence have been pulled to pieces in the hands ... of all-conquering and -consuming scientific rationality."
But I went on: "Yet equally, two hundred years later, the majority of ordinary people have remained as faithful as ever to the earlier ways of thinking." And this was precisely my point. For most people scientific explanation remains unsatisfying. Indeed almost everybody has a Midgley – and a Newton – inside them, protesting that there has to be more to life, the universe and everything than we can ever know.
Midgley asserts: "Humphrey is convinced that something called science has indeed solved the mind-body problem." But if she had read further she would have found me saying: "All but a few contemporary psychologists agree that there will eventually prove to be some sort of satisfactory theory of mind-brain relationship … But at present there really is very little consensus about the form, let alone the substance, of this theory-to-come."
However, Midgley, it seems, has no interest in such a scientific theory anyway. For her, "our problem here is to understand the relation between our inner and outer life … and how to face life as a whole". Strangely enough, I entirely agree. In my own more recent writing, such as Seeing Red, I have begun to argue that the explanation for why consciousness evolved lies in its very mysteriousness and the effect this has on our world-view.
Since Midgley has quoted at such length from a book I wrote 15 years ago, let me answer with these words from the cover of my new book Soul Dust: "Consciousness, [Humphrey] argues, is nothing less than a magical-mystery show that we stage for ourselves inside our own heads. This self-made show lights up the world for us and makes us feel special and transcendent. Thus consciousness paves the way for spirituality, and allows us, as human beings, to reap the rewards, and anxieties, of living in what Humphrey calls the 'soul niche'." I invite Mary Midgley to review it.
Nicholas Humphreyguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Pakistan bomb attacks leave 14 dead and 100 injured in Shia procession
Wed, 09/01/2010 - 18:11Triple blasts in Lahore end lull in violence after floods as militants and 'civilians' die in air raids near Afghan border
Three bombs exploded at a Shia procession in the Pakistani city of Lahore, killing at least 14 people and wounding at least 100 others, police said.
The blasts took place at three sites as 35,000 Shia pilgrims passed through the streets in mourning for the caliph Ali, one of Shia Islam's most revered figures. The first blast was a time bomb. Minutes later, a young male suicide bomber tried to force his way into an area where food was being prepared for the pilgrims and blew himself up. A second suicide bomber struck at an intersection near the end of the procession.
The atrocities appeared to be the latest in a string of attacks by Sunni extremists against the minority Shias and broke a lull in violence during the floods that have ravaged the country.
The prime minister, Yousuf Raza Gilani, condemned the blasts and said the attackers would not escape justice.
The attacks came after two days of government air raids on militant strongholds in the north-west, near the Afghan border. Pakistani officials said up to 62 militants, their family members and other civilians with no ties to the fighters, were killed.
The raids yesterday took place in several villages in Teerah valley in the Khyber region and killed 45 people, the officials said. One official described the dead as insurgents, but said people living with them could also have been killed. An intelligence officer admitted that some women and children were killed in the attacks.
Jihad Gul, who lives near one of the villages, said he had seen the bodies of at least 20 women and children, but army officials said reports of civilian casualties were unconfirmed.
In today's air attack in the adjoining district of Orakzai, officials said 15 suspected militants were killed and 10 others were wounded.
In April, the Teerah valley was hit by army air strikes that killed about 60 civilians. The army, which initially described the victims as insurgents, ended up paying compensation to the victims' families and issued a rare public apology.
• Pakistan's military cancelled a trip by officers to an annual meeting at US Central Command after they were taken off a plane and subjected to "unwarranted security checks" at Dulles airport, Washington on Monday, a spokesman said today . The nine-member delegation, led by a rear admiral, was awaiting take-off on a United Airlines flight to Tampa, Florida, where Central Command is based.
Mark Tranguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds