Could not improve on mystic dwarves

Yesterday the Lunchtime Observers took lunch at ............. in Finsbury Park. Apart from the conversation the highlight was an almost perfect bread and butter pudding. "Almost perfect" only because nothing can be perfect!
One of the ideas discussed was to take the occasional news story and rewrite it, changing all or as many of the facts as necessary, until the story is as it should have been in a perfect world. We could also just write news stories that we would like to see.

Here is one, but unfortunately it required absolutely no re-writing:


From Aljazeera.net
'Mystic dwarves' judge loses job
Friday 18 August 2006 10:44 AM GMT

A judge in the Philippines who claimed to have psychic powers and communicate with imaginary "dwarf friends" has lost his appeal to keep his job.
Court officials said on Friday that the Supreme Court was not convinced of the judge's mental state and rejected his appeal.
Florentino Floro, who presided in a suburban Manila court, was sacked on March 31 on "administrative grounds" after he failed a psychiatric test ordered by the Supreme Court.
The judge, who started his court sessions with a reading from the Bible's Book of Revelation, lodged an instant appeal. Floro was also understood to have claimed supernatural abilities, the ability to read the future and to have held "healing sessions" in his chambers. He also apparently claimed to have been seen by several people in two places at the same time.

The rule of law

The final ruling, written on August 11, said "judges are expected to be guided by the rule of law and to resolve cases before them with judicial detachment" to ensure that the public maintained its confidence in the judicial process. "The psychological finding of mental unfitness, when taken together with Judge Floro's claimed dalliance with 'dwarves' poses a serious challenge to such required judicial detachment and impartiality," the ruling said. This would "eventually erode the public's acceptance of the judiciary as the rational guardian of the law, if not make it an object of ridicule. "His insistence on the existence of 'dwarves', among other beliefs, conflicts with the prevailing expectations concerning judicial behaviour and manifests a mental state that should lay to rest any doubts about his valid removal from office for lack of the judicial temperament required of all those in the bench."

AFP
By

You can find this article at:

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/C528BE8D-2720-4A38-9C7A-7A662B3713BB.htm

Faith & Inspiration

Yesterday I went to an event in Harrow. I had been invited to participate.
It was entitled "Faith and Inspiration" and was Chaired by Father Fergus Capie, Director of the London Interfaith Organisation. It was quite well attended by people professing a variety of faiths and beliefs. (Mr Norman Kember, the Englishman who had been kidnapped in Iraq, was there. He said something which I thought particularly interesting. He said “the wrong people are here” - he wasn't looking particularly at me!)

I spoke after a contribution from an Immam, a Buddhist and a musician, Mohammed, who plays in a group comprising Jews Christians and Moslems – called Berakah.

This is what I said:
My name is Josh Kutchinsky. I am a Humanist, which is to say that Humanism is the label that comes the closest to encompassing my faith and my beliefs. My faith is grounded in uncertainty and is sustained by doubt. This is not the doubt of a shallow or mean-spirited cynicism but of a profound and sacred scepticism.

I would like now to quote the words of someone who doesn’t exist and who has never existed. He is a 16th century fiction. He has loaned money and he has not asked for any interest. He has, however, asked that if the money is not repaid at a specified place and time that he be entitled to cut a substantial piece of flesh from the borrower’s body. This penalty everyone realises will be a death penalty. The borrower does not foresee any circumstances in which he will be unable to repay and so he agrees to the terms of the loan. But there is a storm and ships have sunk at sea and a valuable cargo is lost. A mutual acquaintance brings news of bankruptcy and asks the lender what would be the point of exacting the penalty: of killing the borrower.

The lender replies:
To bait fish withal: if it will feed nothing else,
it will feed my revenge. He hath disgraced me, and
hindered me half a million; laughed at my losses,
mocked at my gains, scorned my nation, thwarted my
bargains, cooled my friends, heated mine
enemies; and what's his reason? I am a Jew. Hath
not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands, organs,
dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with
the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject
to the same diseases, healed by the same means,
warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as
a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed?
If you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison
us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not
revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will
resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian,
what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian
wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by
Christian example? Why, revenge. The villainy you
teach me, I will execute, and it shall go hard but I
will better the instruction.

These are the words of Shylock from the play the Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare.
What is the inspiration that I gain from this ?
Well it is complex. At the heart of the matter is an evocation of one strand of my Humanist faith which is that we are all, all six billion of us, very much alike. And yet that similarity includes, among other unfortunate qualities, the desire for that peverted form of justice we call revenge. The abused person, as we are often told nowadays, so easily becomes the abuser. Shakespeare also raises the question of identity, of religious identity and the claims false and fair made in its name.
There is much for me that is thought provoking and of contemporary relevance in Shylock’s speech. I could say a lot more but I won’t.

Some of you may be surprised, or even disturbed, at my use of words like sacred, faith, belief. These are words that Humanists often shy away from.
They fear, maybe not unreasonably, that they will be assumed to have beliefs that they do not. Well, let me just state, quite simply, that I do not believe in the actual existence of any God or gods.
However, as we all do, I recognise that there are many entities that exist as fictional creations of the human imagination. There is self-evidently a dividing line between the real and the imagined. And on which side an entity should be placed is often so ovious as to hardly be questioned and therefore most people agree: a table, a chair. However there are instances where people still feel that it is quite clear where something should be placed, but some put it on one side and some on the other.
Truth, however, is not determined by the numbers who vote for either side. Nor is truth the same as what is real. What matters to me is the value of the idea, its inspirational potential. The part it can play in the story of reality. That some ideas lead to harm seems obvious and yet...
it is only people who do harm.

I’d now like briefly to answer a question that was posed to me by Dr David Ibry for his book Exodus to Humanism, Jewish Identity without Religion. He asked me whether I considered myself to be Jewish. In my response I first provided some personal background and then I wrote as follows:

“Am I a Jew?” Well, in stereotypical fashion I will answer a question with a question. So, just because I don’t believe in God you want me to disown my ancestors among whom were individuals as great as any of the greatest cathedral builders? The cultural cathedral that is Jewishness is too rich in beauty and too steeped in blood to disown. However, it is merely one of the many threads that I weave to sustain my existence. I find it amusing to imagine my Chinese time-twin born at the instant of my birth in a village in China who like me , has luckily survived to be alive today. We share so much that it would be terribly sad to deny or diminish all that we have in common by exagerrating our differences: the clothes may be of different colours and sizes but are woven from similar materials and for the same purpose.


I think it might be interesting for me to consider an answer to another similar question: Am I a Christian? Well, I was born and have lived most of my life in this country whose architecture, education system, political system and so on are all deeply influenced by Christianity. So, whilst it seems slightly more strange I believe I am almost as much a Christian atheist as a Jewish one.
I would also willingly own the Hindu and Muslim influences on my identity and all the many other strains of human thought and belief which increasingly play a part in the life of this country and have their influence on who I am.

So I am able, as are we all, to gain inspiration from many cultures and religions which is what I think we are doing here tonight.
But you may be asking are there things which are specifically non-religious which inspire me? Well, I must say I find myself more spiritually moved, given my beliefs, by the Natural History Museum than by any cathedral that I have ever visited. Of course it has to be acknowledged that the architecture of the Natural History Museum is clearly influenced by that of cathedrals.
When it was opened in 1881 it was hailed as “a true temple to nature” and “the animal’s Westminster Abbey” but it is the purpose that this magnificent building celebrates and serves that stirs me – people’s universal enlightenment and the progress of science.
Another place of inspiration for me is Kew Gardens with its similar aims and objectives. Speaking of gardens one of the foremost ancient influences on modern Humanist thinking was a person who lived over 2300 years ago and who became known as the garden philosopher, for he often instructed his students in his garden. Epicurus and his Epicurean philosophy has, at times, been misrepresented and his philosophy wrongly described as the pursuit of pleasure without restraint. Epicurus himself said:

For it is not continuous drinking and revels, nor the enjoyment of women and young boys, nor of fish and other viands, that a luxurious table holds, which make for a pleasant life, but sober reasoning, which examines the motives for every choice and avoidance, and which drives away those opinions resulting in the greatest disturbance to the soul.

Well, maybe that is more thought provoking than inspirational but when Epicurus says:

Death is nothing to us, since when we are, death has not come, and when death has come, we are not.

or

Of all the means which wisdom acquires to ensure happiness throughout the whole of life, by far the most important is friendship.

I personally am moved, comforted and instructed by the simple truth of these observations.

The late Dr Jacob Bronowski was a polymath: a scientist, a mathematician, a playwright, a poet, a critic and a Humanist. In his famous television series the Ascent of Man at the end of one episode entitled, Knowledge and Certainty, we find him on a dull and wet day standing by the crematorium at Auschwitz. He crouched down and took a handful of the ashen mud and spoke passionately:

It is said that science will dehumanise people and turn them
into numbers. That is false, tragically false. Look for yourself.
This is the concentration camp and crematorium at Auschwitz.
This is where people were turned into numbers. Into this pond
were flushed the ashes of some four million people. And that was
not done by gas. It was done by arrogance. It was done by dogma.
It was done by ignorance. When people believe that they have
absolute knowledge, with no test in reality, this is how they behave.
This is what men do when the aspire to the knowledge of gods.
Science is a very human form of knowledge. We are always at
the brink of the known, we always feel forward for what is to be
hoped. Every judgement in science stands on the edge of error, and
is personal. Science is a tribute to what we can know although we
are fallible. In the end the words were said by Oliver Cromwell:
‘I beseech you in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may
be mistaken’.
I owe it as a scientist to my friend Leo Szilard, I owe it as a
human being to the many members of my family who died at
Auschwitz, to stand here by the pond as a survivor and witness.
We have to cure ourselves of the itch for absolute knowledge and
power. We have to close the distance between the push-button
order and the human act. We have to touch people.

Thank you for listening.

****************

A few people approached me afterwards and said they appreciated very much what I had said. I had a warm and friendly conversation with the Immam and with a young woman from New Zealand
Father Capie said that he was interested in my claiming back religious words - or he said something to that effect. He also was moved to tell the joke about the atheist who went to Northern Ireland during the troubles and was asked whether he was a Catholic or a Protestant and when he replied that he was an atheist was then asked: well, are you a Protestant athesist or a Catholic athiest!

terrorism - interesting article

"What if, after the attacks on the World Trade Centre or the London Underground, the West had taken a difficult and strange course of action, and done nothing at all? What if we had, as a society, turned the other cheek: mourned our dead, rebuilt our cities and allowed the senselessness of the attacks to stand exposed for what it was?
What if we hadn't invaded anywhere, hadn't, since we couldn't find our real enemies, invented others to strike at? What if we hadn't thrashed around like someone trying to kill a wasp with a broadsword? What if we had chosen not to dignify a Stone Age death cult with a geopolitical response? What if we had treated it like what it was: not an act of war, but an act of murder?
It's hard to see that more innocent lives would by now have been lost worldwide than actually have. It's hard to see that more teenage idiots would have rallied to Osama bin Laden's hateful flag than actually have. It's hard to see how these acts of murderous nihilism would have acquired - in so many eyes here and abroad - the apparent dignity of a cause."

I agree with what is said here but would have avoided the phrase "turned the other cheek" with its sanctimonious overtones.

The above excerpt is from an article in today's Daily Telegraph - Commentary By Sam Leith
(Filed: 12/08/2006) Full article - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2006/08/12/do1206.xml

Response to bombs that don’t explode.(unfinished)

Life is too short to be made sense of.
You can censor what people say but not what they think.
As I see it belief in the supernatural is simply unnatural.
There were, I am sure, many people in Britain who in the 30s thought that Hitler and the Nazis had many good ideas and I am also sure that quite a few of them changed their minds.
There are many people in Britain now who find the world around them so awful that they empathise with people who plan or carry out violent, self-destructive, and murderous hyper-protests.
Understanding that a variety of factors influenced the rise of Nazism isn’t to condone fascism.
Understanding that nobody acts without a motive doesn't explain the motive or the action.
Trying to understand someone's motives is not to support or condone their actions.
I do not want to give anybody any ideas, but what I don’t understand is why someone who wants to kill a lot of people is more attracted to blowing themselves up then getting a gun and shooting at random like other more normal maniacs.
If someone randomly killed someone close to me I don't know whether I would a) want to kill them b) want to forgive them, c) want to understand them. or d) none of the above.
I know many people who believe and say crazy things but behave quite predictably.
Most people I know are quite polite and very angry.
Why is it so obvious to me but not to journalists (and others) that describing the way things appear (and naming things) doesn’t explain anything.