Posts by Chris Waugh
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Capture: Spring is Like a Perhaps Hand, in reply to Lilith __,
Hey, you’ve got sky-flowers, what could be grander than that? :-)
The rain that was promised with the sky-flowers would be nice. Rain cleans the air. Rain dumps the air pollution on the ground. And on my car, but better there than in my daughter's lungs. But you're right.
And trees. Trees are beautiful things. Natural aircon and air cleaners. 'Twas nice under these ones, although I'd swap the fishing gear for a good book and a cold beer.
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This is from one of those rare days when our clouds actually had form and texture, not like today when we're back to formless, smothering grey. I'm also gettting eager for a change of season, just the opposite of yours. I'm also getting eager, I must admit, for a return to islands with a climate fit for human habitation.
Sorry 'bout the lack of flowers.
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Good show, and no ads! I also particularly liked the last section. Sapna Samant made a lot of sense.
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Hard News: Do me a favour ..., in reply to Russell Brown,
Unfortunately, it's geoblocked.
Change that to past tense. Tried it half an hour ago, got the geoblocked message popping up for a split second, followed by the connection issues warning with the offer to change speeds - happened twice. Just tried again now (8:10am Beijing time, 12:10pm NZT), loaded fine, watching now.
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Hard News: Christchurch: Is "quite good"…, in reply to Hebe,
Ballantyne's is moving into the private prison business?
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Hard News: Christchurch: Is "quite good"…, in reply to Joe Wylie,
hmmm.... it'll make it much quicker and more efficient for the police and courts to process shoplifters.
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The plan, such as it is, makes it into the Chinese media. Fortunately it leaves English names in English - Chinese transliterations can be quite hard to decipher, so this makes googling companies like Populous (these people? wah, big stadiums!), Woods Bagot (here?), Boffa Miskell (oh, a New Zealand firm?) and Fourfoursixsix (if that's their website, can we expect the Christcurch CBD to be eyewateringly faded into a misty background?), that I've never heard of (maybe Christchurchian people are more familiar with these names), much easier.
But it says Gerry says the plan has the government's strong support and has won the attention of the whole world, and is very helpful for Christchurch.
And it mentions sport facilities, but it doesn't say stadium.
It does say that an earthquake memorial and all that other stuff will be built with the support of public funds. Doesn't say how those public funds will be raised.
No mention of the people of Christchurch. Then again, it has disturbed me for... how many years have we put up with this government now?... just how much the National Party has in common with the CCP, especially in its attitude to its subjects.
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Up Front: The Up-Front Guides: The…, in reply to Lilith __,
Can you give an example?
Your question troubles me somehow. Am I to understand that in your view all those in whose lives faith plays a role all adhere to some rigid insistence that the world is this way and no other and could not possibly be any other way in spite of all the evidence piled in front of them? Who then, when they get sick, jump in their cars or on a bus or train and visit a doctor and get medicine and therefore avail themselves of much of the good science has done? My very limited experience of this world strongly suggests otherwise.
I clearly remember sitting in the Octagon talking to a Salvation Army officer who told me in his view all drugs should be legal. How you get to that position while being an officer of a church that forbids tobacco and alcohol and has a long tradition of treating addiction I do not know.
One night many years ago in Beijing I found myself in a slowly emptying pub sharing a beer with a Sudanese man who claimed to work at his country's embassy agreeing with him that this ism-schism nonsense was the cause of the world's troubles and we should all just get along in peace and mutual respect, as implied in as-salaam aleykoum - may the peace of God be upon you - emphasis on the peace bit.
In Changsha I worked with a man who identified as High Anglican, yet referred to the stories of Jesus' death and resurrection as 'the Christ Myths'.
I was raised in the Salvation Army. I floated through a few churches in my youth - evangelical and worse, and the 3 Self official church in Changsha. I haven't darkened the door of a church, with the exception of my grandmother's funeral in 2010, for many a long year. I don't find it useful to describe my current religious/spiritual/philosophical leanings, let's just say I've come a long way from where I started and take inspiration and wisdom from whatever source presents itself, and many sources present themselves.
I'm not trying to portray either atheism or science as some other kinds of faith, as they clearly are not. I'm just stubbornly insisting that for some faith, despite our species' long and sordid history of using faith to commit and inspire others to commit horrific evil, does play a valuable and positive role in their lives, and that for such people there is no necessary contradiction between faith and science. One can take inspiration from Jesus' hanging out with fishermen, prostitutes and tax collectors and pointedly not with the Pharisees and chasing money lenders out of the Temple without being a bigot or rejecting evolution. One can draw inspiration from Confucianism without being a misogynist. One can see the wisdom in Laozi's 无为/take no action/go with the natural order of things while embracing how science and technology can help us put 无为 into action (and no, there's no contradiction between 无为 and action, necessarily).
but, yeah, ism-schism, let's not go there
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Up Front: The Up-Front Guides: The…, in reply to Lilith __,
But there isn’t.
Yes, I know. I really shouldn't have added that, it distracted from my main point, which is that for some of us there is no contradiction between faith and science.
But if I may defend my glibness, and borrow from Ben
we don’t really have any way of quantifying how far into the search we’ve got
This doesn't just apply to algorithms, but all of human knowledge. Or, DexterX:
Everything evolves.
In other words... maybe one day.... <wistful sigh>
But:
But even if that’s true, my point is that scientific knowledge is continually challenged, refined and updated in the light of the evidence. Faith isn’t.
Faith can be so tested. Not for all believers, sure, there are still those who cling stubbornly to mediaeval nonsense. But some do put their faith to these tests and do update it.
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Up Front: The Up-Front Guides: The…, in reply to Sofie Bribiesca,
We discussed how we found that a tad confusing, being that her trials are science based.
That would only worry me if her trials were of faith healing, or if her faith were somehow negatively impacting her professional performance - Frank Burns in MASH (the film), for example, using his faith to evade personal responsibility. It may well be that her faith is part of what inspires her to a career in medicine, and may therefore boost her performance, by, perhaps, keeping her motivated when she's tired and drained. I dunno.
I can see the confusion, I think, from an atheist point of view - how could you hold on to faith when you work in science? Faith is so silly and irrational and devoid of evidence to prove it. How can you maintain faith when you work in a field that relies on concrete evidence and reason?
But I maintain that faith and science speak to different aspects of the human experience and therefore are not inherently contradictory. For religious doctors, science could be the way they go about healing broken bodies while faith answers all those "spiritual" questions - identity, community, belonging, tradition, purpose, meaning, origins, death. Call it a crutch if you will, but we all face those questions. Some find the answers in faith. So long as they keep an open mind, tolerate the different beliefs of others, and update their faith as science, philosophy, art and theology progress, then I don't see a problem.
And if one day science does rule one way or another on god/s, then we've all come to a happy compromise - well, assuming everybody accepts that ruling.
