Text of this morning's thought:
On Saturday, the people of Bristol had the chance to look around our new £60m heart institute, ahead of its full opening next month. It’s an impressive looking facility, and testimony to the incredible progress medical science has made over the last century.
Yet we should remember that this progress has not always been welcomed. For example, today, 3,500 heart transplants are carried out around the world every year. But when the first was carried out, unsuccessfully, in 1967, many reacted with horror. Malcolm Muggeridge referred to it as “the final degradation of our Christian way of life.”
Most of us today, Christians included, find this reaction puzzling. But actually, it is quite common for people to make strong moral judgements on the basis of instinctive repulsion. Psychologists call it the “yuck” factor. If we find the idea of something disgusting, we are more likely to believe that it is morally wrong.
Heart transplantation is a reminder of how time can enable us to see the good in what initially seems grisly.
This is something we need to bear in mind when thinking about the frontiers of medicine today. For instance, many recoil at potential scientific advances involving human and animal-human hybrid embryos. There are indeed serious issues at stake here, and it would be wrong to dismiss all concerns about such technologies as ignorant gut reactions.
But at the same time, if we are not able to set aside our emotional responses to such technologies, and judge them on their merits, then we could easily find ourselves seeing danger and wickedness in what is actually beneficial and good. The scary science of today could well be the routine and welcome surgery of tomorrow.
Monday, 27 April 2009
Monday, 20 April 2009
Thought for the Day - BBC Radio Bristol
Text of this morning's thought:
This weekend, I had the unusual experience of not just following the news, but being in it. The BBC and the Independent were among those who reported that Wellington School, in Berkshire, had appointed two people to help their students to think better. One is to be the thinker in residence while I am to become their philosopher in residence.
People often guffaw at initiatives like this. For example, some of you may remember the derision heaped upon the Bristol Festival of Ideas four years ago when it appointed its own thinker-in-residence. One Telegraph columnist took a typically dim view of the job, saying “all he has to do is shut his eyes and get on with it.”
But ideas often sound silly when they're new and unfamiliar. For instance, do you think that people would laugh at the idea of appointing a Rabbi-in-Residence at a university or prison? They might, if they forgot that such people already exist: they're called Jewish chaplains.
In thinking, as in much else, we're creatures of habit and we often confuse what we know with what is good; what we believe with what is true; and what is normal with what is right.
To break out of these habits, you have to think for yourself. But anyone can do that. Like cooking for yourself, the real test is how well you do it.
So I'm glad that schools are taking the development of thinking skills seriously. Far from being a wacky add-on, thinking should be at the heart of education. After all, cramming heads with information is not much use to children if we don't teach them what to do with it.
This weekend, I had the unusual experience of not just following the news, but being in it. The BBC and the Independent were among those who reported that Wellington School, in Berkshire, had appointed two people to help their students to think better. One is to be the thinker in residence while I am to become their philosopher in residence.
People often guffaw at initiatives like this. For example, some of you may remember the derision heaped upon the Bristol Festival of Ideas four years ago when it appointed its own thinker-in-residence. One Telegraph columnist took a typically dim view of the job, saying “all he has to do is shut his eyes and get on with it.”
But ideas often sound silly when they're new and unfamiliar. For instance, do you think that people would laugh at the idea of appointing a Rabbi-in-Residence at a university or prison? They might, if they forgot that such people already exist: they're called Jewish chaplains.
In thinking, as in much else, we're creatures of habit and we often confuse what we know with what is good; what we believe with what is true; and what is normal with what is right.
To break out of these habits, you have to think for yourself. But anyone can do that. Like cooking for yourself, the real test is how well you do it.
So I'm glad that schools are taking the development of thinking skills seriously. Far from being a wacky add-on, thinking should be at the heart of education. After all, cramming heads with information is not much use to children if we don't teach them what to do with it.
Monday, 13 April 2009
De Botton reviewed
"There is undoubtedly something refreshing in a book which doesn’t rush to judgement but has the courage simply to help readers do the work of thinking for themselves."Review of Alain de Botton's new book in Waterstone's Book Quarterly.
Loud but not clear
"Perhaps a period of New Atheist exuberance was necessary. At least it got people thinking, although I fear it has confirmed every negative stereotype about it. We now need to turn down the volume and engage in a real conversation about what of value is left of religion once its crude superstitions are swept away."Article in today's Guardian.
Thought for the Day - BBC Radio Bristol
Text of this morning's thought:
Today is Easter Monday. I’m not a Christian, so that doesn’t mean much to me. More surprising, perhaps, is that it doesn’t mean much to Christians either. Easter Monday is an entirely secular bank holiday with no special significance in the Christian calendar. Holy Saturday, which passed largely unnoticed, was a much more important time for sober reflection on the day Christ is said to have lain in the tomb.
Today is a good example of how intertwined our secular culture and religious traditions have become. Christmas, for example, is a Christian holiday, a pagan midwinter festival, and a secular celebration. Halloween is similarly the day before All Saints Day, a Celtic festival, and a chance for kids to dress up and play at being scared.
Even those who apparently give the feasts the same significance disagree over their meanings. Take Easter. All Christians celebrate it as the day Christ rose from the dead. Scratch the surface of this agreement, however, and you find some believe in a bodily resurrection, others solely a spiritual one, while some are happy to take the whole thing metaphorically.
There is not even agreement about why Jesus died. The Catholic liturgy, for instance, talks clearly of Christ’s sacrifice for our sins. Yet the Anglican Rev Giles Fraser wrote in the Guardian on Friday of how he found “the idea that God requires the sacrifice of his own son so that human sin can be cancelled” “disgusting” and “morally degenerate.”
So when people complain that we have lost the true meaning of festivals like Easter, I wonder what they’re talking about. The meanings of our national holidays are not just there, waiting to be discovered. Christian or otherwise, we have to work them out for ourselves.
Today is Easter Monday. I’m not a Christian, so that doesn’t mean much to me. More surprising, perhaps, is that it doesn’t mean much to Christians either. Easter Monday is an entirely secular bank holiday with no special significance in the Christian calendar. Holy Saturday, which passed largely unnoticed, was a much more important time for sober reflection on the day Christ is said to have lain in the tomb.
Today is a good example of how intertwined our secular culture and religious traditions have become. Christmas, for example, is a Christian holiday, a pagan midwinter festival, and a secular celebration. Halloween is similarly the day before All Saints Day, a Celtic festival, and a chance for kids to dress up and play at being scared.
Even those who apparently give the feasts the same significance disagree over their meanings. Take Easter. All Christians celebrate it as the day Christ rose from the dead. Scratch the surface of this agreement, however, and you find some believe in a bodily resurrection, others solely a spiritual one, while some are happy to take the whole thing metaphorically.
There is not even agreement about why Jesus died. The Catholic liturgy, for instance, talks clearly of Christ’s sacrifice for our sins. Yet the Anglican Rev Giles Fraser wrote in the Guardian on Friday of how he found “the idea that God requires the sacrifice of his own son so that human sin can be cancelled” “disgusting” and “morally degenerate.”
So when people complain that we have lost the true meaning of festivals like Easter, I wonder what they’re talking about. The meanings of our national holidays are not just there, waiting to be discovered. Christian or otherwise, we have to work them out for ourselves.
Friday, 10 April 2009
Episode 1 of new podcast
In the first edition of Baggini’s Philosophy Monthly, I’m talking to the Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks; offering an alternative thought for the day; visiting the first Thomas Hobbes Festival of Ideas and twittering. To download (including iTunes), click here. Do let me know what you think.
BPM is produced in association with The Philosophers' Magazine. If you enjoy the podcasts, please support our work.
BPM is produced in association with The Philosophers' Magazine. If you enjoy the podcasts, please support our work.
Intuition not to act must be overcome
"The question that is often asked is whether we should put ourselves at risk to help others. In most cases where people fail to act, however, danger to themselves is not the major factor."Short column in today's Herald.
Thursday, 9 April 2009
Lancaster University - 13 May
Talking about how history might judge our moral failings, at 4pm. Full details here.
Bristol Festival of Ideas - 12 May
Atheism and meaning panel discussion with Susan Blackmore and Christopher Brookmyre, at 19:30. Full details here. I'm also chairing some other events during the festival, and am one of the judges for the £10,000 nook prize, which is awarded at a public event on May 5.
Monday, 6 April 2009
Thought for the Day - BBC Radio Bristol
Text of this morning's Thought:
It was not the happiest of weekends for Bristol's major sports teams. In the rugby, Bristol’s long-expected relegation from the premiership was finally confirmed.
In the football, City’s home draw left the slim chances of reaching a play-off place dangling by a thread, while Rovers continued to play out a largely meaningless mid-table end to the season with a defeat to Tranmere.
Still, if there’s one thing that sport teaches you it’s that success and failure are both temporary and relative. Consider that this time only four years ago, Bristol Rugby were also out of the premiership, while City and Rovers were both stuck a division below where they are now.
So when Rugby coach Paul Hull talks about “coming back stronger” next year, he’s not simply being optimistic. He’s only stating what any sports person has to think if they are to stay competitive. For whether you’ve won or lost this season, next year the same old ball game is, in a sense, a whole new one too.
If being successful were all that mattered, this would be a pretty depressing state of affairs. Achievements are fleeting and the exception, not the rule. If life’s meaning is sought through them, in sport or elsewhere, then life is usually meaningless.
Fortunately, there’s another way of looking at it. Those who regularly fill the stands of the Memorial Stadium or Ashton Gate do so not just so that the rare moments of pure triumph are sweeter, but because they enjoy the drama, the beauty and the emotion of the struggle. The moral for the rest of us is clear: You should not just sing when you’re winning. As long as you’re playing, be in good voice.
It was not the happiest of weekends for Bristol's major sports teams. In the rugby, Bristol’s long-expected relegation from the premiership was finally confirmed.
In the football, City’s home draw left the slim chances of reaching a play-off place dangling by a thread, while Rovers continued to play out a largely meaningless mid-table end to the season with a defeat to Tranmere.
Still, if there’s one thing that sport teaches you it’s that success and failure are both temporary and relative. Consider that this time only four years ago, Bristol Rugby were also out of the premiership, while City and Rovers were both stuck a division below where they are now.
So when Rugby coach Paul Hull talks about “coming back stronger” next year, he’s not simply being optimistic. He’s only stating what any sports person has to think if they are to stay competitive. For whether you’ve won or lost this season, next year the same old ball game is, in a sense, a whole new one too.
If being successful were all that mattered, this would be a pretty depressing state of affairs. Achievements are fleeting and the exception, not the rule. If life’s meaning is sought through them, in sport or elsewhere, then life is usually meaningless.
Fortunately, there’s another way of looking at it. Those who regularly fill the stands of the Memorial Stadium or Ashton Gate do so not just so that the rare moments of pure triumph are sweeter, but because they enjoy the drama, the beauty and the emotion of the struggle. The moral for the rest of us is clear: You should not just sing when you’re winning. As long as you’re playing, be in good voice.
Saturday, 4 April 2009
Eyes Down on Clubland - BBC Radio Four
My small contribution is the least of your reasons for listening to this interesting programme on working men's clubs. Broadcast today, it is available to listen again here for a week.
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