The final word on the Guardian's ill fated attempt to influence the US election: Clark County, Ohio swung from Dem to GOP. No surprise there, but the whole episode perfectly underlines the stupidity to the so-called intellectual elite. Lots of good analysis in the London Sunday Times, including a fun article by Tom Wolfe. The main lesson (also still to be learnt by the Conservatives in the UK) is when you loose an election in a democracy, you blame yourself - you do not blame the voters. Until the Dems realise this, they are doomed. And that is not a good thing.

Tomorrow, I'll be in Cambridge attending a lecture from Alvin Plantinga, the esteemed Christian philosopher, who will be speaking on "Christian belief and Science: surface conflict, deep concord; Naturalism and Science: surface concord, deep conflict". I'll report back. Also, on Tuesday, Alistair McGrath will be talking on "Has Science Eliminated God?Richard Dawkins and the Meaning of Life" which is a plug for his new book Dawkin's God. Again, I'll report back and the whole lecture will be on the net.

Imagine you are a well educated chap in 1490. What do you know about the universe? You certainly know the earth is a sphere but also that it is stationary and the centre of the universe. You probably don't realise that you don't know about America and all your authorities on geography give no indication that it exists. If you were really up to date and had ready Ptolemy, whose Geographia had only recently been translated from Greek to Latin, you might have seen maps of the world than do not even allow room for another continent between Europe and far East. America also caused theological worries as the status of the natives vis a vis original sin and salvation were rather ambiguous. And of course, the bible also has no idea at all that this other continent is going to exist.

Trouble was that once America had been discovered, there was no denying it. Although there was initially some doubt as to whether Columbus had reached the East Indies as he was hoping, we find no trace of theological efforts to explain away this enormous problem and no efforts to censor the discoveries for fear of upsetting people. It seems that once something was established with good evidence, neither the Church or anyone else was going to gainsay it.

Fast forward to the 1630s and Galileo is told to deny that the earth moves. Now, the theological problems with a moving earth are like nothing compared to the problems caused by America, but this time there is a huge row. Why is the Church kicking up a fuss when it let the more serious difficulty of America pass it by? The reason, it seems to me, is simply that for Galileo the evidence was not good enough and he was making claims that appeared unjustified. The Church was not going to allow that to happen. As the reaction to the discovery of the New World shows, the Church was quite able to adapt to new scientific knowledge. What it could not do was allow Galileo to state terms when the facts had yet to be established.

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So Bush won it. I can't loose as much sleep over that as many Europeans. What I found most interesting, though, was the way that moral issues such as gay marriage, abortion and family values were so important to so many American voters. Now, the big question for the next four years is probably whether Bush will be able to rejig the Supreme Court. The result of that would either be to shift the US decisively to the right, or set the individual states free to decide their own policies. Which of these two results is the correct description is a matter of which side of the culture wars you are on. It is likely that the votes to outlaw gay marriage will be the first battleground.

Jack took me to task for not following up the Buttiglione case. This was due to my promise to drop politics (in abeyance for this post!). I think the way the left was able to claim Buttiglione's scalp was disgusting and will further undermine the European project. The attempt to force metropolitan values onto the south and east of Europe will probably fail and lead to yet another fault line in the EU. I can say this despite having studied Professor Buttiglione's comments and finding I disagree strongly with them. He might have been lazy (or misquoted) but I fear he actually misunderstands Catholic teaching (but so does everyone else, so no surprise). Buttiglione said that homosexuality is a sin. This is not actually true. Homosexual acts are sinful but the homosexual disposition itself is not. The fact is that all sexual acts outside of marriage are considered a sin by the Church which calls for celibacy for all unmarried people, including homosexuals. Given the Church asks most of its employees to be celibate, it isn't unreasonable that they ask the same of homosexuals (who are certainly not stopped from being priests as long as they are as celibate as all the rest are supposed to be). Neither do Professor Buttiglione's views on the family chime with the latest Vatican document. While it is true that the best place to bring up children is within a family of two married parents, it does not follow that a woman's place is automatically in the kitchen, protected by her husband.

We are left with a marked contrast between Europe and US. In Europe, the elites lead opinion and try to mould popular sentiment. In the US, politicians follow the people who vote for the party that reflects their values. Is this democracy or mob rule? The answer depends on who is asked the question.

Oh dear. More anti-religious thinkers making fools of themselves.

The discovery of the 'hobbits' of Indonesia has caused a flurry of rather misplaed excitement among those who still long for science to replace religion. Desmond Morris's rather stupid article for the BBC really shows that he knows nothing about either religion or the history of science. This is a bit depressing coming from someone who writes quite good books about human anthropology but par the course. I'm not even going to bother refute his nonsense about this being a blow for religion for anyone other that young earth creationists. Every big scientific discovery brings out people who think it will bring about the end of religion, and every time religion sails serenely on while the scientific theory is, as often as not, quietly dropped. And that might be the fate of the hobbits.

You see, while they are not very big, these hobbits also have very small brains. As Richard Dawkins explains here, our hobbits have a brain the same size a chimp, relative to their size. Our human brains are two to three times larger and even the extinct homo erectus packed a considerably larger brain than the hobbits. So, unless neuroscience is going to be completely re-written, the hobbits were not very bright, could not talk and the tools the skeleton was found with are the products of ordinary humans who probably hunted the little guys. All of which will be a serious let down for Desmond Morris and company. His article appears to be a product of blind faith rather than a rational examination of the evidence.

Better luck next time, guys.

Robert Price is as close to a Jesus mythologist as you will find in academia. His books Deconstructing Jesus and The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man are required reading for those seeking to undermine the veracity of the Gospels. Now he has produced a new website for himself which contains a couple of interesting articles. We actually had Price to thank for trashing Achyra S and thus showing that even intelligent atheists realise her work is rubbish. He has now also written an article on the Da Vinci Code explaining that it really does not have a basis in fact at all. I would recommend that people be steered towards it if they are the type who won't believe a word Christians say about this book.

Another interesting article is the one on US foreign policy and especially Iraq. Price appears to be a dyed in the wool neo-Con which surprises this European observer as we have been told in the media that all the neo-Cons are conservative Christians and Jews. Interesting to find that this is not necessarily true.

I can only agree with the comments made about the inadequacy of evidential apologetics. I was staying in a bed and breakfast on Wednesday night and found a copy of Josh McDowell's Evidence that Demands a Verdict on a shelf there. This is a book I have never looked at before but I was intrigued because it was the subject of a mass debunking exercise by a group of infidels (including our own anonymous poster) which is probably still available on the II site somewhere (yes, here we are).

The mistake made by McDowell and other evidential apologists is that they do not allow for other explanations a part from the one that they want us to believe. Most of the II critique is based on the idea that McDowell should have included all the opposing views rather than making his presentation look like an open-and-shut case. This criticism is obviously bogus, but the mere existence of the opposing views invalidates much of McDowell's argument. For instance, he claims that because the death of Jesus fulfilled so many Old Testament prophecies, it must prove he was the son of God. Well no, it does nothing of the sort, especially if the Gospels are written precisely with those prophecies in mind. Likewise, even if we grant the central historical facts of the passion narrative, we are still miles away from proving the resurrection - especially to someone whose world view forbids miracles. As Sherlock Holmes said "Eliminate the impossible and what is left, however unlikely, must be true." As the resurrection is viewed by some as impossible, another theory, however unsupported, must be true.

Which leaves us with a central truth about evangelism. Conversion is a matter between the individual and God. No human being can convert anyone. All we can do is allow ourselves to be used as instruments when He needs them for His own work. As our commentators said, apologetics is better off debunking the opposition rather than proving its own case. It is the defense advocate and not the prosecution.

I read my first incunabula yesterday.

This is rather more significant than it sounds as will become clear once you know what an incunabula is. The word is the Latin for 'cradle' and it refers to any book printed before 1st January, 1501 - that is, during the 15th century. As printing was only invented after 1450, we are talking about the very birth of printed books, hence the connection with 'cradle'. An incunabula is the holy grail of bibliography which means they are very expensive to buy (prices start well in excess of £10,000). This is partly because there are so few left in private hands while the big libraries have thousands. The one I read is held by Cambridge University Library and was a treatise on the calendar and arithmetic intended for students.

Another thing about incunabula is they tend to be pretty ugly. Not all of them, of course. Some are virtually indistinguishable from the illuminated manuscripts they replaced with gorgeous hand painted rubrication and illustrations around the printed text. But most are not like that and reflect the primitive print technology of the time and the need to cut costs to survive in the market place. Woodcut pictures exist but these are nothing compared to the intricate copperplate pictures that appear in the mid-sixteenth century. Worse for the reader, early books tend to be printed in a gothic typeface that is really hard to read. They also contain all the abbreviations that scribes used to use to cut down their work load. Compositors (the men who set up the type for printing) used these abbreviations to try and keep each line about the same length and produce a fully justified finish.

Shortly before 1500, Roman typefaces (and I'm seeing one now on my screen even if you the reader have a different one on yours) became popular because they were clear, elegant and took up less space while using less ink. They spread all over Europe from Italy, except to Germany where people continued to use gothic for centuries. So, if you actually want to read a book it is usually best to make sure it was printed after about 1550. In that case it will be easier to read, better illustrated, less abbreviated and, above all, a huge deal cheaper.

From the CADRE Blog, BK has an quotation about the intellectual decline of atheism. Of course, you do not need to tell me that many atheists on the internet are not exactly intellectual giants but the point about Anthony Flew and Dan Barker is also instructive. Flew is an esteemed, though very old, philosopher who has recently been having something of a crisis of faith over his atheism. Dan Barker is a musician who writes low brow books about how he hates Christianity.

Of course, you could retort that many Christians are not exactly brilliant intellects either. True indeed, but I'd suggest that this doesn't matter much. At root, Christianity does not claim to be an intellectual movement but a religion for everyone whether they are packing high calibre brains or not. And sure enough there are enough high calibre brains to make a mockery of any claim that Christians cannot be that clever.

Atheism however claims to be based on reason, rationality and logic. It is almost entirely an intellectual movement and consequently if it is losing the philosophical conflict it loses everything. The rude health of Christian philosophy and the decline of atheist thought is a much bigger threat to the later than it would be to the former. Atheism risks becoming something that people of a certain age and mind set grab onto instinctively (largely because it makes them feel intellectually superior) but will drop when it turns out that actually the clever guys are all in the other camp. I don't want to declare victory too early but the signs look good.

Of course, after the defeat of atheism, the much more difficult job will be the defeat of apathy.

Here's a short extract from Pliny the elders Natural History:

On the west side of the Dead Sea, away from the coast, where there are
harmful vapours, lives the solitary tribe of the Essenes. This tribe is
remarkable beyond all others in the whole world, because it has no women, has
rejected sexual desires, is without money and has only the company of palm
trees. Day by day the crowd of refugees is renewed by hordes of people
tired of life and driven there by the waves of fortune to adopt their
customs. Thus through thousands of ages - incredible to relate - the
race in which no one is born lives for ever; so fruitful for them is other men's
dissatisfaction with life!

Below the Essenes was the town of Engeda, second only to Jerusalem in the
fertility of its soil and in its groves of palm trees, but now, like Jerusalem,
another heap of ashes. Then comes Masada, a fortress on a rock, not far
from the Dead Sea. This is the extent of Judea. (V:73 - 4)

A few things to note. First, Pliny is happy to use the word 'hordes' to refer to the people joining the Essenes. This is an example of Latin hyperbole, much like Tacitus describing the Christians killed by Nero as a 'multitude'. Those who claim the use of the word 'multitude' as evidence of Christian forgery in Tacitus clearly know nothing about Latin literature. Second, and more interestingly, this passage strongly implies that the Essenes kept going after the Romans had destroyed Jerusalem in the First Jewish War. They are usually assumed to have packed it in about this time. Pliny could easily be mis-informed but we cannot just assume the Essenes ended as Vespasian's legions marched into Judea.