Pope Benedict's Christmas address to the Curia

There has been a lot of discussion about Pope Benedict's Christmas speech to the members of the Roman Curia.
His speech is available on the Vatican web site in Italian and German, but not yet in English.
There is an unofficial English translation available from the English and Welsh dioceses. (A pdf reader is needed).

Most of the press comment has been about his references to gender studies. I had never heard of this, but the Pope is right on the ball, and we have gender studies right here, in river city. For example, at the University of Sydney and University of NSW. I think it is well worth the effort to read Pope Benedict's speech and look at the university course descriptions.

Limits to the population bomb

This week, PM Kevin Rudd announced his policy to achieve reduction in carbon emissions. It was greeted by tears and cries of dismay from the passionate environmentalists. They may be passionate, but they have a problem. A big proportion of the population doesn't believe them. The level of this disbelief is hard to know, because it is very sensitive to the way the poll questions are asked. The number of skeptics could be high or low or somewhere in between.

Now, I'm old enough to remember lots of environmental debates down through the years, and I have a theory that the environmental lobby has cried wolf so often that it has lost most of its credibility. We have reached a stage where, although almost all scientists agree humans are causing climate change which will have drastic effects in the next few decades, they are just not believed. We are supposedly living in the age of science, but it is common now to believe that the vast majority of scientists who talk about climate change are either incompetent or self-serving liars.

Why? How about these for reasons.......

The Great Barrier Reef is Doomed

For all of my adult life, the imminent destruction of Australia's Great Barrier Reef has been predicted, firstly because of uncontrollable spread of the Crown of Thorns starfish, and recently because of global warming. For example, in 1972 a book surveyed the spread of the starfish and their possible devastating results. But guess what? In 2008, researchers report that "THE potentially devastating crown-of-thorns starfish is in retreat on the Great Barrier Reef, with its numbers hitting a 20-year low". Well, blow me down!!!!

The population explosion is out of control

In 1968, Paul R. Ehrlich wrote The Population Bomb which predicted that

"The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate..."

It didn't happen.

Limits to Growth

In 1972, a book called Limits to Growth was published by the think tank The Club of Rome. I remember it well, because it was set as a text book for my undergraduate engineering course, and I had to write an essay on it. I passed, but I'm not so sure the LTG did. The book was based on a computer model of exponentially growing demand for resources and more limited supply of these resources. The book had pages and pages of graphs based on different assumptions, and from memory, some of them showed catastrophic drops in population in the 1980's due to exhaustion of resources. When some more optimistic assumptions were made, the catastrophe moved out by a few decades.

I seem to remember a quote (I can't remember by whom) about LTG along the lines of "we might be wrong, but even if we are, it is good to frighten people so they start doing the right thing".

I humbly suggest that was the dumbest thing anyone could have said. It does matter if you are right or wrong, and we can see now that, even when global warming is predicted by a much more credible and numerous group of scientists than the Club of Rome or Paul R. Ehrlich, people have become very suspicious of scientists who tell them the end is nigh.

The resource that is really limited is credibility, and the environmental scientists have squandered it.

What do we want?

Clive Hamilton has written an article called net porn goes way beyond naughty about the "clean feed" the Australian government is proposing to demand from internet companies. The intention is to filter out hard core porn at the level of the Internet Service Provider.

You need a subscription to read this article, but a couple of quotes from it are:

"What’s so special about the internet? All but the most unthinking libertarians accept censorship laws that limit s-xual content in film, television, radio, books and magazines. Yet the hysterical response from the internet industry and libertarian commentators to the Government’s proposal to require ISPs to filter heavy-duty p-rn shows how the internet has become fetishised."

and

"Children are confused, shocked and disturbed by these images and it is likely that some boys and young men have developed unrealistic and perverse expectations about what a s-xual relationship involves."

The article will probably eventually appear on Clive Hamilton's own web site

Mr Hamilton's attempt at rational argument has been greeted in the web comments by a tidal wave of outrage. Unfortunately, this outrage is no tsunami of rational thought. The arguments of the opponents are:

1. it won't work technically
2. there will be undesired side effects which will limit free speech
3. leave me alone, I like the internet just the way it is (this argument is more implied that stated explicitly)

Interestingly, the opponents of the clean feed never, as far as I have read, confront the issue of children being confused and disturbed by these images. It is apparently seen as irrelevant by the proprietors of the internet.

The argument that clean feed won't work technically seems a very weak and dishonest one to me. Firstly, it ignores the fundamental issue of what we want to do and diverts attention to technical details. Remember that the people saying this don't want it to work anyway. Also, only a fool would make dogmatic statements about what will never work. Bill Gates famously said in 1981 "640 k ought to be enough for anyone" (I think he might have since denied saying that).

The free speech argument is also just plain silly. In what way could free debate and the expression of ideas be limited by controlling hard core porn?

In my opinion, Clive Hamilton is a shining light of rational thought in a pretty gloomy world of half baked rhetoric and self deceiving prejudice, demonstrated by the "arguments" used to condemn his recent article on controlling porn on the internet.

The new 4 letter words: Good News

There was a story last week of the plan started by Andrew Forrest of Fortescue mining to provide jobs for young aboriginals.

Andrew Forrest has lived many years in outback Western Australia and himself speaks some Aboriginal languages. He gathered together a "who's who" of Australian business, the Murdochs, Packers, Stokes etc. to commit to delivering these jobs.

It seems to me that this is a gloriously blessed story, but it was buried on page 10 of the Sydney Morning Herald, and page 21 of the Daily Telegraph (even though their boss was giving large amounts of money to it). How come we ignore good news?

Its interesting to look a little at the background of Andrew Forrest. He now attends an evangelical church in Perth. One of the church newsletters says:

"Sep 10 Andrew Forrest's How I came to see the Light. One of Australia's wealthiest men was so influenced by the change in his then fiancee, his wife Nicola's new found faith, that he too wanted the same and they got hitched the same year reported Teen Challenge in their Sep-Oct 08 newsletter. "That was the turning point when I knew that the issues were resolved, my heart was healed and I ws ready to move on," says Nicola after receiving prayer from a visiting minister. "

The Aboriginal leader Noel Pearson said the plan represents "a huge act of faith", and “For every one job, 10 flowers will bloom in the futures of indigenous children. And for every 10 jobs, 100 flowers will bloom”.

Isn't this both good news and a fascinating story? Surely its more interesting than most of the stories on the front pages of our newspapers.

Doubtful future for Australian stem cell research

Big news at The Australian Stem Cell Centre. According to the newsletter for 23rd October,

'The Australian Stem Cell Centre announced this week an organisational restructure aimed at optimising the Centre’s operational activities.
This follows a review of the organisation to establish the appropriate level of resources needed to effectively meet the Centre’s objectives over the coming years.
As a result of the restructure, eleven positions throughout the organisation have been identified as redundant. The staff concerned have been informed of the Centre’s decision and will be leaving at various times in the coming months.
Acting Chief Executive Officer, David Collins, said “It is with regret that the ASCC takes these measures but it is the right thing to do for the long term. We understand that this is a stressful time for the affected staff and we will provide as much support as possible during this difficult time, including a financial package and out placement training. We thank all of our staff for their patience and understanding during this process.”'

There was more background to this on ABC local radio 

"The Board's decision to sack Stephen Livesey came after a science review of the centre found that many of the researchers were openly competing with each other."...

"The Board itself resigned en masse last month, citing interference by stakeholders as the reason."...

"Federal Science Minister Senator Kim Carr declined the ABC's request for an interview, but his spokesman said a decision is yet to be made on whether the Australian Stem Cell Centre will receive any federal funding in future."

all this after

... "a fierce bidding process involving some of the country's top research institutions, the Australian Stem Cell Centre was set up at Melbourne's Monash University in 2002."

is this what you get with selfless scientific research aimed at improving the lot of humanity?

Xavier muck up

It is good to see that Archbishop Denis Hart is getting actively involved in repairing the damage of the muck up day by Xavier students in Melbourne.

You can talk all you like about youthful enthusiasm getting carried away, and people being in the wrong place at the wrong time, but this is scandalous and shameful behaviour. Apparently one of the boys in year 12 has been regularly bullied, and what sends a chill down my spine is the comment from some of his classmates that he was laughing and enjoyed it. This really is "Lord of the Flies" stuff.

IMHO, the important thing is not just finding the culprits now, but asking what happened (or didn't happen) 10 years ago to cause this behaviour. By chance, a couple of days ago, I saw a large truck trailer in the local public school which is the Life Education  programme in public schools, and this goes to Catholic and independent schools as well. Life education teaches children in primary schools about dangers of drugs, smoking and alcohol. I believe it uses testimonials by celebrities and survivors, and probably is based on a practical harm minimisation ethic.

I would hope that in a Catholic school, the teaching would also involve ideas of rising above "delights" (such as they are) of the flesh, the virtues of self-control and wisdom, giving honour to God and service to our neighbours. I don't have any knowledge of what has happened at Xavier, but my fear is that humanist Healthy Harold from life education is not taken seriously enough, and neither is religious education at the schools. I hope my fear is unfounded, because otherwise, there is a time bomb ticking away in the Catholic education system.

Big Opportunity

I see that in London, the British Humanist Association and Richard Dawkins are paying for ads on the side of London buses reading
"There's probably no god. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life"
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/london/7681914.stm

In London, this costs about $A27,300 to put the ad on the side of 60 buses for a month.
We can only hope that someone does a similar thing here in Australia, as it would be a perfect opportunity to put Catholic ads on the side of buses at the pretty reasonable price of about $150 per bus per day. It would be great to start up an ad battle like that.
We should put our minds to what we would put on the advertisement. My first thoughts are:

"The happiest people I know are Catholics. Why?"

"You can always have faith in reason. Think about it"

"Jesus loves you. Yes, you"

Bring in on.

good and bad and Henson

It has been made public that the school which allowed Bill Henson to scout for potential models was St Kilda Park Primary school.

Interestingly, St.Kilda Park has in place classes of philosophy for children. Presumably these are intended to be a model for the alternative to scripture classes in public schools that are often talked about, but rarely exist.

Assuming the principal involved believes in these classes, I would be interested to hear her philosophical justification for turning the school playground into a market place, and a market where apparently only 2 people knew what was going on. Also, I would be interested to know how she sees the role of the children in this case. Are they meant to be active learners, or are they regarded as objects to be organised and arranged by the "artist"?

Another interesting aspect of this case is the discussion about Henson's photos themselves. There has developed a distinction between

1. pornography
2. erotic art
3. just plain art

I don't know where this distinction came from, it seems to have appeared in the last 10 or 20 years in order to justify the existence of "adult" magazines in main street newsagents. I think the supporters of Bill Henson claim that his photos can be classified as 2 or 3.

Now, I'm not sure whether the philosophers from St Kilda Park could explain the distinction between these. I suspect they would base it on whether anyone is harmed by making the images. As far as I know, Christian theology would also consider the harm people can do to themselves by obsession with these images. Before the fall, we were "naked and unashamed" (Genesis 2) but now we have to take care that we see others as made in the image of God, not just a physical object to be looked at.

Whatever turns you on

I was watching the Collectors programme on ABC TV, and they presented a man who collected toy tractors, in front of an audience of what appeared to be grey haired retirees. Now, people are entitled to pursue their interests, but is this the most important thing someone with time on their hands could do? Think of all the other pastimes people do: bridge clubs, tour guides of heritage houses, wine appreciation classes, theatre subscriptions etc. Do these have eternal significance?

Then I thought of the grey haired ordained and religious people nearing retirement. Maybe they should be thankful that they do have the chance to spend their time on things that matter.

Then I heard a story about Andrew Forrest, who is Australia's richest man. Maybe that has changed a little since the stockmarket changes recently, but he is still wealthy. Andrew Forrest has plans to support aboriginal communities by offering employment. He has also told his children that he plans to give away much of his wealth, so they will not inherit all his billions.

A little internet investigation of his motives shows that Andrew and his wife Nicola are Christians and attend an evangelical church in Perth. This is a sort of reverse "prosperity gospel". Make the money first, then give it away. I suppose there are atheist philantropists, but they seem to be few and far between. It seems that eternal values are needed before people are inspired to change their lives.

light bulbs

I have now read the Good Weekend extract from David Marr's book about  Bill Henson. To answer my question at the end of the previous post, this extract doesn't spend much time criticising the people who have questioned Bill Henson's photos, its main purpose is to depict the photos as being an act without any victim, and therefore above criticism. There are long and laborious descriptions of the process of Henson finding his models, talking to parents, setting up studio sessions etc, all with the intention of portraying them as morally neutral actions which have no victim.

First of all, from a Christian viewpoint, this ignores the idea that people are more than their bodies, and obsession with physical bodies distracts us from considering each other as made in the image of God, with an immortal soul, no matter how beautiful or repulsive our physical appearance may be. I assume Bill and David will disagree with this idea.

That said, the article reveals its assumptions and obsessions eg:

"Henson doesn't claim to understand exactly why his models work for him or exactly what they get from the experience, but he believes the kids are stronger for it: "They gain some strength because it's a big decision to make, and really no one else can make it for them."

Well Bill, they are children, and they are being influence by the adults around them, including yourself, even if you don't realise it.

"Though Henson often promised me access to the world of his former models, it never occurred. He put this down to shyness and fear of the press"

Bill, it might be a good idea to think longer about this shyness and what prompts it. Maybe they have regrets.

As for the internet,  "He won't have a bar of those he calls scaremongers for being as terrified of the internet as primitive man was of the wheel. He's happy for his work to be seen on the net."

Bill, it's good you are happy. What about the children? What about the potential child molesters who cruise the net?

"What matters is art's impact. 'It's a force for good. That's my answer to the internet thing'."

In other words, Bill says art always trumps the concern of parents and society to protect children. Sorry, Bill, that's not good enough, art has its own responsibilities.

Finally, of course, there is the issue of the Melbourne school principal who allowed Henson to wander around the playground looking for subjects. What is the motive behind Marr and Henson revealing this behaviour? Of course it is all over the media today and will be brought up in federal parliament.

If Marr and Henson are really surprised by this reaction, they are truly not the brightest flashbulbs in the bag.

Henson outrage

I see that David Marr has written about the recent investigation of Bill Henson's photos of a young girl. A preview article was published today in the Sydney Morning Herald.

Marr says that "Henson was having trouble finding the models he needed for the Sydney exhibition due to open in May." I suppose that would be because the models don't last long, being unusable once they get older than 14 or thereabouts.

Then, according to Marr, "Friends introduced him to the principal of a Melbourne primary school." Henson says "I went in there, had a look around at lunchtime, just wandered around while everyone was having their lunch. I saw this boy, and I saw a girl too, actually, and I thought they would be great and the principal said, 'Fine, I will give the parents a ring and let you know.'

I find the idea of Henson wandering around a school playground looking for children "who would be great" a little creepy. Nevertheless, I would be interested to know what made these two children "great" and the other children less than great.

But Marr says there is no problem because "the child's mother explains for the first time how her daughter - whom we'll call N - came to know Henson many years ago and agreed to model for him earlier this year." I see, Marr thinks the child could give consent, but she can't be named. Why is this anonymity necessary?

Well, anyway, we can all read Marr's article in the Good Weekend tomorrow, and the SMH tells us helpfully that "Henson's photographs of N appear in Good Weekend with the model's permission." Oh good, I suppose the SMH hopes that will attract lots of readers to the Good Weekend.

Personally, I would like to see the girl ask Bill Henson to take his clothes off so she can photograph him. I think that would be art, but I think it is unlikely to happen. I wonder why?

Clive Hamilton has discussed this case in an article in crikey.com.au

Hamilton does not think the photographs are pornographic, but discussion of them is justified, especially as they were published in the internet.

"If artists have a responsibility to push at the boundaries of the acceptable, society has a responsibility to push back. After a decade or more in which children have been increasingly exploited, society is beginning to push back and Bill Henson has been a victim: innocent perhaps, but he should have known better."

I will be interested to read Marr's full article. I will be disappointed if Marr plays the victim card and claims people like Henson should be immune from discussion and that any criticism of him proves the base motives of the people offering the criticism.

A question for your next trivia night

How about this for a trivia question?

What do the following have in common?

1. the discovery of the genetic process for inheritance of characteristics by sexual reproduction
2. the formation of fossils in rocks, which provides a way of estimating the geological age of the earth
3. the Big Bang theory of the origin of the universe.

Answer......

they were all theories proposed by Catholic priests.

1. Fr Gregor Johann Mendel (1822 - 1884)

was an Augustinian monk who studied the inheritance of characteristics in peas and bees and is considered the father of genetics.

http://anthro.palomar.edu/mendel/mendel_1.htm

Mendel was a contemporary of Charles Darwin, but Darwin probably did not know of Mendel's work, which is a pity, because it would have helped Darwin to realise the error of his idea of "blending inheritance"

http://www.brooklyn.cuny.edu/bc/ahp/MBG/MBG2/MBG.Question.02.html

2.St Nicolas Steno (1638 - 1686)

Niels Stenson was born in Denmark where he studied anatomy and then travelled through Europe and was supported in his scientific work by the Grand Duke of Tuscany. He latinised his name to Steno and also converted from his Lutheran faith to Roman Catholicism. He studied geology and explained how fossils are formed, which was a puzzle to the people of the time who thought they somehow grew in rocks. He wrote one of the classical works of geology, "De Solido".

In 1675, Steno was ordained a priest and in the following year he was made a bishop. He did not continue his scientific work after becoming a priest, but he did not deny the truth of his discoveries, which of course can be used to estimate the age of the earth and explain mysteries such as why fossils of seashells are found in rocks on mountaintops.

http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/steno.html

His pious and virtuous life resulted in him being canonised by Pope John Paul II.

3 Fr Georges Lemaitre (1894 - 1966)

Georges Lemaitre was born in Belgium and became a professor of physics at the Catholic University of Louvain.

He proposed a Big Bang theory of the origin of the universe, which involves the universe starting at one point and expanding at an increasing rate.

http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/science/sc0022.html

This was a controversial theory at the time and was opposed by scientists like Sir Fred Hoyle, who proposed a "steady state" universe which has existed forever. Observations made in 1998 by astronomers in California indicate that Fr Lemaitre was right.

Incidentally, Sir Fred Hoyle was an atheist, but he has said that the existence of certain carbon isotopes which are required for life is statistically so unlikely that he has written a book called "The Intelligent Universe"

http://home.planet.nl/~gkorthof/kortho47.htm

This is sometimes quoted by supporters of Intelligent Design, but I don't know if Sir Fred agreed with them.

Roe and Norma McCorvey

Sometimes the personal experiences behind public events are very surprising.

The famous legal case "Roe v Wade" in the US resulted in legalised abortion in that country. The real person behind the pseudonym "Jane Roe" was Norma McCorvey who has since become a campaigner against abortion:

http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/1998/roe.wade/stories/roe.profile/

http://www.virtuemedia.org/norma.htm

Faced with this, the "pro-choice" campaigners say that it is the result of the Roe v Wade case that matters, not the individuals involved.

Norma McCorvey says "If they don't care about me, how can they possibly care about anyone else?"

Kokoda Prayer

last night on the History Channel on pay tv there was an excellent programme on the battles on the Kokoda track in WWII. It has just been made and has interviews with Australians and Japanese talking about the same battles from different sides, intermingled with recreations of the battles:
http://www.historychannel.com.au/tv-shows/showDetails.aspx?show=177
There was one interview in the programme which was pretty startling, about the power of prayer. I have put it on YouTube at

What do you think about it?

set up calendar for Google calendar and Thunderbird

There are add-ons for the Thunderbird email client that gives a calendar and allows you to synchronise with Google calendar (ie, if you add an event on Thuderbird, it appears on GCal, and if you add an event on GCal it appears on Thunderbird. I haven't yet tried the case of adding an event on Thunderbird while there is no internet connection active, and then later activating it. Hopefully the new event is then added to GCal.
I am using Thunderbird 2.0.0.16
Lightning 0.9
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/2313
and Provider 0.5
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/4631#reviews

There is a description of how to set these up at
http://bfish.xaedalus.net/?p=239

This seems to be a practical way of synchronising your calendar between a desktop and a laptop.
There are new versions of all these tools coming up (Thunderbird 3.0 later in the year), so some of the details might change, but Mozilla seems committed to adding this as a useful feature.

Freedom Paradox by Clive Hamilton

I have just finished reading the book “The freedom paradox. Towards a post-secular ethics” by Clive Hamilton.

http://www.clivehamilton.net.au/cms/index.php?page=home

I was interested in this because I have heard Clive Hamilton speaking in the media on topical issues and he seems to be prepared to confront issues that are often ignored.

I think he could be fairly described as a left wing journalist, and he constantly says that he is not religious, but he comes to many of the same conclusions as the churches via the path of humanism and atheist philosophy. This can be a tortuous and hilly path, for example he says that “When Jesus said the meek shall inherit the Earth, he meant that only those who transcend their identification with the ego-self in the phenomenon will find the path to the universal Self in the noumenon.” Having read that, I am grateful that Jesus said what he did, in the way that he did.

Nevertheless, it seems to me that Clive Hamilton deserves respect for his open minded examination of topical issues.

My understanding of his case is that when we look at life today, especially in the West, our material prosperity and the freedom movements of the 60’s and 70’s haven’t delivered the promised satisfying and happy life. We might be free, if we want, to ignore the conventions of the past and institutions like the churches, but many people spend their lives following trends and peer pressure under the disguise of “freedom”. The solution Clive Hamilton offers is to follow the innate moral self, which he describes using the ideas of Kant and Schopenhauer.

The problem he sees is:

 “Although few today feel the need to apologize for their lack of religiosity, it is also broadly acknowledged that the collapse of the authority of the church left most people unsure where to look for moral guidance, except to their equally confused friends. In the new autonomous moral universe individuals would be able to choose their own moral standards, subject only to the constraint that others not be injured. Yet even the ethic of consent – hopelessly inadequate when confronted by predicaments that might involve third parties – cannot help us understand what is in our real interests, those moral interests lying beneath the urge to satisfy immediate desires.” (p.118)

Clive Hamilton believes that a “moral self” can be found without religious faith:

 “When we identify with the universal Self the ‘illusion’ of our independent existence falls away and the personal self merges with the universal Self, which is shared by all. We recognize in another our own inner nature. Abolition of the distinction between subject and object and the participation of self in others give rise to what I call ‘metaphysical empathy’, and it is this that forms the grounds of morality and the basis of the moral self. Methaphysical empathy is the awareness of participation in the being of others that arises from identification of the self with the universal essence.” (p.146)

Nevertheless, he recognizes that churches have provided a direction to the moral self:

 “Despite their institutional failings, the churches were traditionally the repositories of those transcendent elements that remind us of our lives beyond the mundane, of our universal Self and its oneness with the noumenon. Although the authority of the churches as keepers of the transcendent has largely collapsed, the metaphysical ground of their former legitimacy is unchanged. Religious ceremonies such as the Mass still allow some individuals to feel a relationship with something transpersonal. But for most of us the loss of our conviction under the weight of science has closed down our access to the numinous. The modern rational mind’s lack of will to believe denies it knowledge of the stream of meaning that runs beneath to surface of daily life.” (p.227)

My personal opinion from reading this book is that Clive Hamilton understands Kant and Schopenhauer better than Christianity, and “institutional failings” and the “weight of science” are not enough to dismiss the truths of the Church. However, his book is an interesting read, and the product of a person without the prejudices of many “public intellectuals” of today.

Ave Maria by Mirusia and Andre Rieu

In his outdoor concert in Maastricht this year, Andre Rieu and Mirusia performed Shubert's Ave Maria.
You can see a preview on YouTube at:


look at the reaction of the audience as well as listening to the music!!

capture YouTube video

To capture a YouTube video, I used the following, using Ubuntu Linux:
-install the "video download helper" firefox add-on. You then just go to the video and click on the icon on the toolbar. This captures the video and creates a .flv flash file.
-use the linux command-line application ffmpeg to convert from flash to mpeg video
( ffmpeg -i old-file.flv new-file.mpg )
-use the linux application devede to convert from mpeg to iso format. (get devede from the synaptic package manager).
-click on the iso file to burn to dvd.
voila!!!