So What?

Quantum Puppetry

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August is traditionally the silly season and this year, before it settled down to more serious news, I was delighted to read that Paul Daniels had been hospitalised after Sooty had thrown a pizza at him.  I was not delighted Paul Daniels had been hospitalised, of course but the idea of a little yellow bear throwing a pizza struck me as hilarious and most people I have told this story to also find it hilarious.  Until of course they remember Sooty is a puppet and the pizza was actually thrown from someone's hand.

An article about puppets in today's Metro, about Handspring Puppet Company, is worth a read, the challenge is to make the puppet seem alive.  I read somewhere, and thought it was in this article but I can't find it there, that whereas an actor's role is to get the audience to suspend their disbelief, the challenge to the puppeteer is to get the audience to suspend its belief this is in fact a puppet.

This week's New Scientist's cover story Quantum Minds suggests that the human mind might be described by the same maths as quantum theory.  Note this is not the same as using quantum theory to explain human minds.  It does seem logical that the same maths might explain both, as the maths enables the mind to grasp quantum behaviour in the first place.

I think puppets might help.  One characteristic of quantum mechanics is super-position.  This is where we are asked to understand the behaviour of a particle as both a particle and a wave, two mutually contradictory things.

This is exactly what we all do with puppets.  If you don't believe me, watch this video about the puppets used in the stage play of Michael Morpurgo's 'The War Horse'.  We can see its a puppet and yet we're able to perceive it as if it is a real horse.

 

 

Related articles

• Quantum minds: Why we think like quarks (newscientist.com)
• Sooty apologises for Paul Daniels pizza-throwing injury (telegraph.co.uk)

Homocide: A Year on the Killing Streets

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I've just finished reading Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets by David Simon, one of the script writers for the television series, The Wire.  This book is the result of a year's placement he had with Baltimore's homicide police in 1988.

I found this passage, which struck me as apt for its time and for the present day.  It comes towards the end of the book (page 635) where Simon is writing about his time on placement in retrospect.  He writes of the changes he's seen in the Baltimore police since 1988:

I came to realise that there was something emblematic here: that in postmodern America, whatever institution you serve or are served by - a police department or a newspaper, a political party or aa church, Enron or Worldcom - you will eventually be betrayed.

It seemed very Greek the more I thought about it.  The stuff of Aeschylus and Sophocles, except the Gods were not Olympian but corporate and institutional.  In every sense, ours seems a world in which individual human beings - be they trained detectives or knowledgeable reporters, hardened corner boys or third-generation longshoremen or smuggled eastern European sex workers - are destined to matter less and less.

Simon wrote these words in 2006 and I think they reflect exactly the situation we find ourselves in today.  We have seen it in the financial crisis, MPs' expenses, News International and the various scandals that have rocked the police in London.  And we've seen it in the riots and the response of decent people to the riots, who have lost any sense of the gains made by previous generations whereby bullets are not fired at crowds, whatever they are doing (except in N Ireland during the Troubles).

It is partly a cult of the young.  It seems inconceivable experience might count for anything.  Short term funding schemes mean communities cannot build a resource of people who know the area and its history.  They are recruited and after 3 years have to move on.  As there is no career structures, the best move onto other things so few garner experience over a lifetime's career.  This is reflected in all walks of life; we are told it is foolish to assume you are in a job for life.  Who can say this is not true?

Lent 43: Radical Paul

We are putting no obstacle in anyone's way, so that no fault may be found with our ministry, but as servants of God we have commended ourselves in every way: through great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labours, sleepless nights, hunger; by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, holiness of spirit, genuine love, truthful speech and the power of God; with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left; in honour and dishonour, in ill repute and good repute.  We are treated as impostors, and yet are true; as unknown, and yet are well known; as dying, and see - we are alive; as punished, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing everything.  (2 Corinthians 6:3-10, NRSV)

On Monday, a new book by Philip Pullman The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ  was published.  I think the hype around Pullman is a bit over the top; I managed to read His Dark Materials without realising he was meant to be an atheist.  So I welcomed news of this new book.  However, my rapture was somewhat modified when I heard on the radio that the person responsible for the scoundrel Christ is none other than Paul.  At this stage, I have not read the book but the idea that Paul was somehow singlehandedly responsible for the misrepresentation of Christ does not stand up to scrutiny.  For one thing, only six of the letters ascribed to him were actually written by Paul.  This Paul is sometimes known as radical Paul.  The New Testament includes several letters which were written after Paul's death and significantly modify radical Paul's theology.  Furthermore, I'm sure the problems started much later than Paul, in the fourth and fifth centuries.  Constantine reinforced trends already present in the contemporary church.

Another thing in the news is a nurse who is taking her employers to court for discrimination  against her faith because she is not permitted to wear a cross whilst on duty.  Good for her!  She should be standing up to such pettiness, which, contrary to popular belief, is not enshrined in legislation.  But does it really require a letter in the Sunday Telegraph from several bishops and ex-bishops, lamenting this attack upon the Christian faith?  Look at this passage from Paul and get some perspective!

Unbaptism Revisited

A few months ago unbaptism was in the news.  At the time it struck me as odd. 

As usual a number of atheists voiced some of my bewilderment.  Surely to demand your baptism is undone is to attribute to baptism the very efficacy atheists deny?  If it is meaningless, to have it undone implies it has a meaning.  Why not just ignore it? 

One reply was that the aim of this particular demand was to undermine the Church of England.  The Church of England would no longer be able to claim them as members.  There may well be other arguments for unbaptism and I’ll willingly have a go at them, if someone tells me what they are.

The main problem is that the Church of England does not have members.  It is organised into parishes and anyone living in a parish has a right to participate in the services of their parish church or churches.  If they wish to ignore them, they are free to do so.  It is not just atheists who ignore the services, Christians of other traditions, some of whom might have been baptised in the Church of England, will rarely take part if ever.

Those who wish to support the Church of England opt in through the electoral roll.  These people might never have been baptised (in which case they are able to ask to be baptised), they might have been baptised by the Church of England or by another tradition.

So, to be unbaptised makes no difference whatsoever to the Church of England in terms of its legitimacy as the established church in England.  If you’re an atheist the only thing you can do is to opt in.  (After this you could opt out again but it seems fairly pointless to me.)

One other point.  Is it actually possible to renounce baptism?  The question I would ask is this.  Rebaptism is forbidden in the majority of churches.  If an atheist who renounces baptism, takes their unbaptism certificate to a minister of most traditions, would they be able to rebaptise them?  I suspect not.  So, a hypothetical person baptised as a baby, grows up atheist and renounces their baptism, then changes their mind and becomes a Christian.  Do they need to be rebaptised?  I suspect not because the churches would see this as a rebaptism and not as a first baptism.  I’m sure someone will tell me if I’ve got this wrong.

Unbaptism looks to me like a campaigning tool but I'm not sure it has been thought through.

The way I see it is baptism is a covenant initiated by God.  From this perspective, even if you are an unbeliever, it is hard to see how you can renounce your baptism.  Atheism doesn’t need this type of gimmick; it is what it is.  In my view atheists are particularly loved by God, because they reject the idolatrous images of God so many religious people take for granted.  Many are therefore closer to God than Christians who separate themselves from the pain of being human, through their illusions about God.  So, there is probably a very comfortable corner of heaven set aside for atheists (unbaptised or not).  (The picture is of Homer and the Ancient Poets in Dante's first circle of Hell by William Blake.)