Eddie Thomas Hancock, born at 12:18 on January 21st 2009. Weighed in at 8lbs 12oz.
 |
| New Baby |
Wednesday, 21 January 2009
New baby
Well, this might slow down my blogging efforts for a while!
Eddie Thomas Hancock, born at 12:18 on January 21st 2009. Weighed in at 8lbs 12oz.
Eddie Thomas Hancock, born at 12:18 on January 21st 2009. Weighed in at 8lbs 12oz.
Sunday, 18 January 2009
Atheist or Agnostic?
There has been a lot of discussion recently regarding the ‘Atheist Bus’ campaign set up by Ariane Sherine. The campaign was originally set up to raise a small amount of money in order to counteract some religious ads that kindly advised us non-believers that we would all burn in hell. The British buses sport the phrase ‘There’s probably no God so stop worrying and enjoy your life’. I actually prefer the one put out just before Christmas by the American Humanist Society which said ‘Why believe in a god? Just be good for goodness' sake’. I think that’s a much more positive message.
A lot of the discussion has been around the use of the word ‘probably’ in the ad. Some people said that this showed a lack of conviction and was really a statement of agnosticism. Actually the truth was that the word had to be added to satisfy the advertising authorities. I think most of us have come round to accept ‘probably’ as it is logically correct (you can’t prove that there isn’t a god), but I think it’s going a bit far to say that this makes us agnostics rather than atheists.
I call myself an atheist because I don’t believe in the existence of god, in the same sense I don’t believe in the existence of unicorns or the tooth fairy. I could never claim that I can prove the non-existence of any of these entities.
Some atheists describe themselves as strong agnostics as the argument cannot be proved one way or another. I think this is a fine philosophical point, but the problem is that the agnostic in general use tends to mean someone who is undecided and feels that the argument is evenly balanced on either side. You could be agnostic on the grounds that the evidence is only 99.99% on one side.
Also, theists cannot prove that their particular god exists so, until they start referring to themselves as agnostics, I’m still happy to call myself an atheist.
A lot of the discussion has been around the use of the word ‘probably’ in the ad. Some people said that this showed a lack of conviction and was really a statement of agnosticism. Actually the truth was that the word had to be added to satisfy the advertising authorities. I think most of us have come round to accept ‘probably’ as it is logically correct (you can’t prove that there isn’t a god), but I think it’s going a bit far to say that this makes us agnostics rather than atheists.
I call myself an atheist because I don’t believe in the existence of god, in the same sense I don’t believe in the existence of unicorns or the tooth fairy. I could never claim that I can prove the non-existence of any of these entities.
Some atheists describe themselves as strong agnostics as the argument cannot be proved one way or another. I think this is a fine philosophical point, but the problem is that the agnostic in general use tends to mean someone who is undecided and feels that the argument is evenly balanced on either side. You could be agnostic on the grounds that the evidence is only 99.99% on one side.
Also, theists cannot prove that their particular god exists so, until they start referring to themselves as agnostics, I’m still happy to call myself an atheist.
Saturday, 3 January 2009
Does business need to be moral or just amoral?
As it's still holiday season I'm getting a bit behind in listening to all my podcasts, so I've only just heard this one from the Radio 4 Today show (don't know how long they keep their links active!). Their guest editor was Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, Archbishop of Westminster. As he is such an important person ( :-/ ), he was able to arrange an interview with Gordon Brown. During the interview, the Cardinal was suggesting to the PM that, after the recent problems, businesses should take on higher standards of morals and this would somehow protect the public in the future.
I think he is missing the point here. I don't think it is the position of businesses to be deliberately moral or immoral. Businesses should do whatever they need to do to survive in the long term. Without wanting to sound too Darwinian, natural selection will tend to favour those businesses that act in what most people consider to be a moral or ethical manner. Any business that consistently acted immorally or unethically would eventually get caught out, either through legal action or through a failure of their business model (e.g. the irresponsible lending of money that we have seen over the last few years).
Even though my politics tend to be on the liberal side, I could agree with the point of a economist I heard recently. He said that the problem with the banking industry was not that they were too capitalist, but that they weren't capitalist enough. In a pure capitalist system, each bank would be entirely responsible for its own actions, without any chance of a government bail-out. In this situation, they would not take so many dangerous risks and, almost by default, would have to act in a more reasonable, ethical, moral manner.
To me, this is probably how ethics and morality evolved generally. There is no need to impose a set of moral rules from on high. There are certain sets of behaviour that will allow a society to flourish and others that will only lead to a complete breakdown. Any society where murder and theft were acceptable would just fall apart very quickly. The only societies that would survive would be those that embraced a general sense of trust, but punished those who broke that trust.
In fact, for a long time I've felt that it just comes down to Game Theory. I studied Game Theory a little when I was working with Artificial Life and it relates to a lot of complex real world issues. There doesn't need to any grand supernatural theory as to why being good is good - it just works! Incidentally, when I looked up the Tit for Tat strategy that the argument above relies on, there was a link to a Richard Dawkins programme that discusses how this relates to the evolution of altruism, so maybe I'm on the right track!
I think he is missing the point here. I don't think it is the position of businesses to be deliberately moral or immoral. Businesses should do whatever they need to do to survive in the long term. Without wanting to sound too Darwinian, natural selection will tend to favour those businesses that act in what most people consider to be a moral or ethical manner. Any business that consistently acted immorally or unethically would eventually get caught out, either through legal action or through a failure of their business model (e.g. the irresponsible lending of money that we have seen over the last few years).
Even though my politics tend to be on the liberal side, I could agree with the point of a economist I heard recently. He said that the problem with the banking industry was not that they were too capitalist, but that they weren't capitalist enough. In a pure capitalist system, each bank would be entirely responsible for its own actions, without any chance of a government bail-out. In this situation, they would not take so many dangerous risks and, almost by default, would have to act in a more reasonable, ethical, moral manner.
To me, this is probably how ethics and morality evolved generally. There is no need to impose a set of moral rules from on high. There are certain sets of behaviour that will allow a society to flourish and others that will only lead to a complete breakdown. Any society where murder and theft were acceptable would just fall apart very quickly. The only societies that would survive would be those that embraced a general sense of trust, but punished those who broke that trust.
In fact, for a long time I've felt that it just comes down to Game Theory. I studied Game Theory a little when I was working with Artificial Life and it relates to a lot of complex real world issues. There doesn't need to any grand supernatural theory as to why being good is good - it just works! Incidentally, when I looked up the Tit for Tat strategy that the argument above relies on, there was a link to a Richard Dawkins programme that discusses how this relates to the evolution of altruism, so maybe I'm on the right track!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)