Dawkins v McGrath
By Huw Leslie | July 14, 2007
Somehow I don’t find it surprising that my favourite athiest Richard Dawkins couldn’t find the time to include the interview below with Alister McGrath in his documentary – after all, moderate, non-creationist Christians aren’t nearly as interesting as fiery mouthed, intellectually challenged creationists, are they?
Anyway, at least he was persuaded to upload his interview with McGrath to Google Video. McGrath is the author of the excellent Dawkins Delusion, and makes several good points in the interview. He annoyed me when talking about the problem of evil – he argued that the world comes as-is, and God doesn’t interfere, and therefore allows evil to happen. Well, that doesn’t solve the inconsistent triad of benevolence, omnipotence and evil, because if He were benevolent and omnipotent he would intervene. He does, however, hint at the more sensible explanation that natural evil offers humans the chance to respond to it, and points out that a ‘toy world’ (Swinburne) with no evil just wouldn’t work. That explanation is entirely adequate, and I see no need to add the slightly incoherent fluff that almost leans towards process theodicy.
Dawkins talked about a hypothetical situation in which one girl survived a hurricane, and ten thousand died; the parents of the girl praised God for a miracle, and Dawkins rightly asked whether God did save the girl, and if so, why did he not save the ten thousand? Again, McGrath could have expressed himself better. He hinted at anti-realism, in that he mentioned the human need to praise God, but he should have emphasised that more. My view, broadly speaking, is that it is irrelevant whether or not God directly intervened to save the girl. Whether he did or not has no effect. The effect is caused by the fact that the parents either believe or do not believe that God intervened. The fact that they do is potentially powerful in guiding their future faith and behaviour. That is the crucial point which needs to be raised, and I think that definitely counts as a ‘silver lining’ effect under the Irenaean Theodicy. If McGrath had taken that angle, there would not have been the inconsistency which Dawkins correctly spotted.
Other than that, a great interview. I was pleasantly surprised to see Dawkins in moderate mood. Presumably he would not have been as moderate had the interview been conducted more recently; McGrath called him the ‘grumpy atheist’, and Dawkins has retaliated by quoting Yeats, comparing himself to a dog, and McGrath to a flea. Now now children.
Topics: Theology | Comments Off
Alan Johnston
By Huw Leslie | July 7, 2007
It’s difficult to express just how pleased I feel that I can remove the ‘Free Alan Johnston’ badge from the sidebar. It’s absolutely fantastic that he has been freed, not only because of him but because of the symbol he has become for journalistic freedom and mission.
It’s good for the middle east as well. I’m strongly in favour of the west opening discussions with Hamas, and I suspect that this is already secretly taking place. Of course Hamas needs to recognise Israel and renounce violence, but the west also needs to recognise that Hamas is the democratically elected party of government of Palestine, and appreciate why that has happened. With the appointment of TB as Middle East envoy for the Quartet and the release of Alan Johnston I’m hoping that we’ve reached a point where the peace process will be given renewed energy – it’s not like we’ve got any choice if we want a secure and just world in the future.
Topics: Uncategorized | Comments Off
Dear oh dear
By Huw Leslie | June 3, 2007
The new launch of Zooomr has been a shambles, and the final product isn’t even that interesting. It is far too buggy to have been released and it adds little in the way of innovation. I was going to write a review of Mark III when it was released on GizBuzz, but I don’t think I will now, mainly because I feel guilty being horrible about it, for obvious reasons. Fortunately I can write it here because hardly anyone reads this blog, so I feel less guilty.
For an excellent account of the release, check out this post by Zoli Erdos. If what he’s saying is true, then Kris’ lack of experience has been a major problem behind the release. It kinda pains me to write this given the immense respect I (and others on the Oratos team, incidentally) have for what Kris has achieved.
Where from here, then? It has become clear that the KT-TH partnership on Zooomr is no longer enough if it is to prosper. They have handled the community aspect mostly brilliantly (albeit with an occasional lack of sufficient information – see Zoli’s post). Things that haven’t been handled well have been engineering and monetisation. Both those point to needing VC or at least angel funding. Funding would provide the ability to hire a couple of experienced engineers and investors would provide the pressure to find a proper business model.
They should also build out a ‘community board’. Get famous people from the community like Scoble (who would love to do this), as well as some clever entrepreneurs from the valley, who might be less known but have better ideas, and finally some random Zooomr users who live locally to help in coming up with ideas and strategy, with monthly-or-so meetings. Zooomr gets great advice and coverage, and in return Zooomr leverages their community to generate lots of good will for everyone who helps them out, as they have done with those who lent them hardware this week. They shouldn’t pay the advisors.
That should solve the problem.
Topics: Uncategorized | 6 Comments »
Off again
By Huw Leslie | May 26, 2007
I’m going up North again tomorrow; I won’t have internet access for the first few days, but I should by Wednesday.
Topics: Me | Comments Off
Refreshed
By Huw Leslie | May 24, 2007
There comes a time in every blog’s life when it needs to be redesigned. For this blog, that meant using a new template. WordPress made it easy, and I now have a very Web 2.0-looking design of my own.
To celebrate the relaunch, below is a random Latin music track from Ioda Promonet.
Download “Un beso” (mp3)
from “God’s Project”
by Aventura
Premium Latin Music
Buy at iTunes Music Store
Topics: Blogging, Me | 1 Comment »
Tumblr is awesome
By Huw Leslie | April 28, 2007
I’m loving Tumblr – its a really simple blog platform that you can plugin your various feeds to, creating a nice combination of a lifestream and a personal blog. It is a study in usability – truly outstanding. It has just enough features to create a brilliant product, but not too many to make the UI silly. Someone should buy them now, if only to get the developers behind it.
You can follow my Tumblr blog/lifestream here. I’m thinking about whether to switch from WordPress – I’m really not sure.
Review on GizBuzz coming up!
Topics: Uncategorized | Comments Off
Teamwork?
By Huw Leslie | April 25, 2007
A geek’s definition of teamwork that I just read on a Crunchboard listing: “* Works well alone and with a team, including experience with a change control system such as SVN or CVS”. I’m sure they don’t mean it to sound like they believe that a good team player is a person who can use a version control system, but it might have helped if they had put the two requirements as separate listings!
Topics: Uncategorized | Comments Off
Measuring not grouching
By Huw Leslie | April 23, 2007
I’ve been moaning about Dreamhost’s uptime recently, threatening to switch. The problem is that no-one else that I’ve ever heard of seems to have anything that’s quite right, apart from Media Temple, which is double the price.
So, in an effort to be able to stay with DH, I’m measuring uptime this month using Pingdom’s free trial. At the moment, after about 48hrs monitoring, we’re on 100%, which is a pleasant surprise. Let’s see if they’ve got themselves sorted out.
PS: Sorry N. – analogy in next post!
Topics: Uncategorized | Comments Off
Alan Johnston
By Huw Leslie | April 19, 2007
The BBC is asking bloggers to put a banner on their sidebar as part of its campaign to get Alan Johnston, the Gaza correspondent who was kidnapped over a month ago, released. I’ve done that (see for instructions), and I’ve also signed the petition.
I’d encourage everyone else to do the same. Whilst it doesn’t actually do anything to get him released directly, I think it is important that as many people as possible point out that it is not acceptable to kidnap a person doing his best to report the story of a region as accurately as possible. We need to show that this matters, and that we are not going to let the matter drop.
Topics: Blogging, Politics | Comments Off
Escape
By Huw Leslie | April 8, 2007
I’m announcing, Peter-style, that I’m definitely offline until next Monday. Like him, I’ve written some posts which will be published next week, so GizBuzz won’t be completely without content.
I quite enjoy having absolutely no access to the internet – on some levels I don’t give a monkeys about any of the top stories on TechMeme. That’s a good thing. I’m singing evensong in Truro Cathedral, which should be quite nice.
Out.
Topics: Blogging, Me | Comments Off