Science, religion and the Golden Compass

This was one of those times when I wondered why I still bother going to the cinema at all. The Golden Compass is visually unimaginative, the acting is perfunctory, the script is bland and the morals utter trash.
The experience is made worse by the tendency of cinema theatres to keep the volume ridiculously high. I’m not sure whether that is done to compensate for lack of substance or to keep you awake.
The fuss about GC is in its ‘morals’, which are an unsophisticated whinge against authority. I understand the book (Philip Pullman’s Northern Lights) is supposedly critical of the Catholic Church for abusing its authority by keeping people in the dark. The film tones it down into a lacklustre opposition to authority.
When I sat in the cinema and watched the never ending nonsense, I couldn’t understand what the fuss was about. Not having read what it was meant to be about, I was interpreting the inadequate script as a dumbed down version of the creation story. Accordingly, human beings transgressed authority and, as a result, evil becomes present in the world tempting people. The ‘authority’, aiming to keep people in their childhood ignorance and innocence, captures children before temptation can lead them astray.
One could even interpret it more blandly as a metaphor for history: a successive series of conquering what is perceived as evil, be it poverty, powerlessness, injustice and captivity, regardless of the means and oppression of others.
No such luck. The Golden Compass is paranoid fear of religious authority. Perhaps someone should point out to Pullman that the Catholic Church, and most other religious ‘authorities’, have lost their authority and power long time ago. I suppose it’s easier to look into the past (about 200 years in fact) and cover one’s eyes to our 21st century’s challenges.
Even so, the script is full of mistakes, using words inappropriately and confusing concepts such as ‘freedom’ with ‘free inquiry’ and ‘free will’. These are three separate concepts bundled together in the film by sheer ignorance.
Pullman seems to argue that authority wields power over people taking their ‘free will’ away, (by which he probably means free choice instead) and impedes free inquiry, such as the pursuit of knowledge, which he identifies it with modern science.
Free will is a philosophical category; it generally means choosing between good and evil, not what you’re having for lunch! Authorities, let alone the Catholic Church, have never taken away one’s free will. They have taken away one’s freedom by imprisoning and killing, and free choice by censoring books or people.
Pullman is stuck in the past when the Catholic Church waged war against modern science. Aside from the fact that history is much more complicated than this, the Catholic Church, at least, accepts of the theory of evolution and wields very little power, if any.
Pullman’s ignorance leads him to confine free inquiry to scientific research and to call scientific knowledge ‘truth’. Oopsy daisy!
The pursuit of the truth, being transcendent, is primarily philosophical and religious and is beyond the scope of scientific inquiry which concerns itself (or should concern itself) with objective reality.
Such incompetent ‘defenders’ of scientific inquiry feel under attack (not sure why since the bio-sciences get most of the research funding) and launch an anachronistic tirade against an authority that is no more. If Pullman feels so strongly about authorities deciding for the rest of us, he should look elsewhere, at the new elites wielding power over knowledge.

What is intelligence?

Professor Flynn’s ‘What is intelligence?’ is not a book about intelligence. It’s a book about IQ. The Flynn effect deals with the rise of average IQ test scores (see below for more info).
The problem is that IQ scores do not measure intelligence. Flynn himself argues that IQ tests measure only a minor sort of "abstract problem-solving ability" with little practical significance.
The problem is that people see numbers and think them as ‘authoritative’! There is a tendency at wanting everything to be quantifiable and ‘scientifically proven’. Frankly, this undermines science itself.
1. There are no innate intellectual abilities, including logic, that are not conditioned by one’s environment, culture and educational experience. One might have a predisposition for logic or other ways of processing information, but, ultimately, one’s knowledge and practice will allow that predisposition to grow or stale. That’s why the best way to develop one’s logical abilities is through the study of latin, greek and algebra.
2. IQ tests are dependent on the people who devise them, and what they think counts as intelligence. It’s about what questions they ask and how they ask them.
3. There is no space for insight and understanding.
IQ tests can tell us something very valuable, however. They correctly identify egotistical eejits who think intelligence can be quantified.

For more on Flynn, see

Flynn effect - University of Indiana

Flynn effect - Wikipedia

Welsh role models

The newly appointed Children's Commissioner, Keith Towler, has called for better role models for youngsters. Here is my nomination of Philip Jones Griffiths.
I learnt about him a long time ago, when I was still a teenager from an Italian magazine. I've never come across anything else about him here in Wales or indeed Britain. It takes Italians to appreciate a good Welshman! :)
Philip Jones Griffiths is one of the most talented war photo-reporters ever. He covered the Algerian war, the Yom Kippur war in Israel and Vietnam and Cambodia, among others.
His groundbreaking pictures show us our humanity in its perverse cruelty and disarming vulnerability. His photos talk of love, death, politics, violence with irony and humility. He puts a mirror in front of us to remind us of who we are and who can be.
... Please, please, come to Wales!

Best Christmas card ever!

I find Christmas cards a bit impersonal. It's customary, but I get lots of them from lots of people, more as a matter of form. I prefer substance to form.
I prefer people remembering my birthday. Above all, I don't understand why people who know me don't cross the word Christmas on the card and write Chanukah for a change!!!
Anyway, here is the best Christmas card ever!!

Is Christmas under attack?

Zaki Cooper, on the Guardian reminds us that 'some of the staunchest supporters of Christmas come from other religions'. 'Support' seems to imply that Christmas is somehow under the prospect of being cancelled. Undoubtedly renaming Christmas ‘Winterval’, as Birmingham Council did some years ago, allegedly not to offend people of other faiths, is simply barmy. However, this does not mean in any way that Christmas is under attack. One could make the argument that people are, in general, less religious and therefore Christmas is not being celebrated religiously as in the past. Personally, I think religion is back on the scene so I don’t think that is the case. Purists might say that decorated trees and Coca-cola red Santas have nothing to do with Christmas. It is true that the decorated tree became the ‘Christmas’ tree after the Victorians decided to revive an old pagan custom. It is also true that the familiar face of Santa has been spread around the world by Coca-Cola, although it was originally invented by cartoonist Thomas Nast in 1862. However, why should we snub these symbols? Christmas and other celebrations are the result of the inevitable mix of pagan, Christian, and now commercial, images. It is what keeps celebrations relevant and alive throughout time. After all, Christmas replaced previous pagan celebrations and, I assume, inherited the need for lights in the middle of winter when the days are short and cold. That’s pretty much why Jews celebrate Chanukkah, the festival of lights. What is problematic though is the loneliness that comes with Christmas. While the rest of the world celebrates with presents, food, company, suicides increase significantly. Perhaps Christmas and Chanukah should be about bringing some light into the lives of the people around us. This reminds me I’m supposed to make some latkes for a friend!!!

Climate Change Petition

I support Al Gore's call for a visionary global treaty to be completed and brought into effect by 2010, please sign the petition below:

http://www.climateprotect.org/standwithal

Nick Cohen: left, right or wrong?

Nick Cohen, the Observer’s journalist, has taken to caricature the Left as a fascist cohort supporting militant Islam. I went to his talk at the Café Philo in Hampstead a week ago or so. He started his talk on 'what's left of the left' by expressing his shock and surprise at the support leftwing politicians and intellectuals give to militant Islam. Not sure what is surprising about some extremists on the left, i.e. those proclaiming that they are ‘all Hitzbollah now’, supporting religious and political obscurantism. After all, it wasn’t such a long time ago when most of the left was supporting of people such as Fidel Castro and even Ho Chi Min. What escapes Cohen is that there’s never been one socialist or liberal tradition, but many. Liberalism and socialism have shaped western democracy. They made possible the recognition of liberty and equality as fundamental to society. They also have a heavy baggage, which ranges from Stalinist dictatorships to unbridled capitalism.
Personally I think liberty and equality are two sides of the same coin of justice. After all, how can one be free to choose if one has no opportunities? There are still women around the world who do not own anything and are prevented to own by the society in which they live, they are often illiterate and simply do not count. The inequality they experience prevents them from being free. This I suppose makes me a liberal-socialist in the tradition of Italian liberal-socialism (a strong and great movement), headed by Carlo and Nello Roselli.
Nick Cohen, obviously ignorant of history, philosophy and politics, bundles together politicians, journalists and various intellectuals from the centre and the left (whatever that means today) under the banner of liberals. His aim is to create an enemy with whom to wage war and thus justify his stance in favour of the war in Iraq. Yes, he’s that pathetic.
It’s the oldest and cheapest trick: decry the opposition instead of engaging with the arguments.
I haven't read his book 'What's left', nor do I plan to read it. However, as I was browsing it, I've stumbled on a heavily loaded sentence where he forces an association between the 3m-strong demonstration against the war in Iraq in Rome back in 2003 with the Italian fascist regime, Rome having been the capital under the Mussolini dictatorship. Except Rome started off as a republic, which makes it, as far as I know, the first example of a republic in history (with Athens being the first democracy).
For Cohen, the war in Iraq is all about removing an evil dictator regardless of the disaster this has brought and regardless of what else could have been done instead. Ultimately, he doesn’t understand that our democracies are grounded on the respect of human life. It is true that there are people who support Hitzbollah and make excuses for radical Islamic terrorism. There are also people who are just as contemptuous of human life and advocate war (in Iraq, Iran etc.) regardless of the consequences. Nick Cohen seems to be one of them. Has Nick Cohen reached the bottom? What's left of him?