Julian Baggini

On time

noreply@blogger.com (Julian Baggini) — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 12:46:00 +0000

The idea that, if the laws of physics don't mention it, it isn't real is also totally unjustified. To a physicist, biological organisms are ultimately as much collections of atoms as chairs and tables. Some would go so far as to say that, in principle at least, biology is reducible to physics. But does that mean that zebras aren't real? Any physicist who insists on this can't see the wood for the carbon.

Short piece on time in the January edition of The Times's Eureka Science magazine, Only available online through the Murdoch pay wall.

Heathen's Progress 17: The modern believer is not suspicious enough

noreply@blogger.com (Julian Baggini) — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 17:49:00 +0000

I'm afraid it's all too common for defenders of faith to start off by piling up a whole load of interesting scientific findings, only to follow up with a plethora of non sequiturs. The question rightly asked is how reliable are the various cognitive mechanisms we use for establishing different kinds of truth? And there seems to be no escaping the simple fact that subjective experience, in all its forms, is a very unreliable detector of objective reality. Despite the comfort Mark Vernon draws from recent research, there is no escaping the fact that the vast bulk of it points in exactly the opposite direction, undermining any confidence we might feel that our intuitive judgments are effective truth-trackers.

Latest in the Guardian Comment is Free Belief series.

Monarchists are from Mars, republicans are from Venus

noreply@blogger.com (Julian Baggini) — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 10:57:00 +0000

If you want proof that there is not one universe but a multitude of parallel worlds, you don't need any quantum physics: just read the Letters pages of our national newspapers...

Article in today's Independent

Heathen's Progress 16: Struggling with the question of belief? Homer Simpson's got the answer

noreply@blogger.com (Julian Baggini) — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 17:48:00 +0000

Homer's Wager concludes that you have no good reason to believe in God, even if it is more likely than not that he exists, let alone if you are among those of us who think the probability is closer to 6.7% than 67%. And what this shows is that the issue of God's existence or non-existence is not an important one after all.

Latest in the Guardian Comment is Free Belief series.

The Shrink & The Sage: Are we responsible for our actions?

noreply@blogger.com (Julian Baggini) — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 11:30:00 +0000

Responsibility is one area in life where philosophy and psychology leave us with the message: do not trust your feelings. You carry responsibility for whatever is within your control, whether you feel its weight or not.

Latest FT Weekend Magazine column

Heathen's Progress 15: You don't have to be religious to pray … but it helps

noreply@blogger.com (Julian Baggini) — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 18:13:00 +0000

Prayer, like many rituals, is something that the religious get some real benefits from that are just lost to us heathens. One reason is that many of these rituals are performed communally, as part of a regular meeting or worship. This means there is social reinforcement. But the main one is that the religious context transforms them from something optional and arbitrary into something necessary and grounded. Because the rituals are a duty to our absolute sovereign, there is strong reason to keep them up. You pray every day because you sense you really ought to, and it will be noticed if you don't. In contrast, the belief that daily meditation is beneficial motivates in much the same way as the thought that eating more vegetables or exercising is. Inclination comes and goes and needs to be constantly renewed.

Latest in the Guardian Comment is Free Belief series.

Review: A Short History of Western Thought

noreply@blogger.com (Julian Baggini) — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 15:27:00 +0000

To condense the history of western thought to around 50,000 words is the literary equivalent of trying to reproduce the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel on the inside of a matchbox. So it is to writer and film-maker Stephen Trombley's tremendous credit that his intellectual miniaturisation, while inevitably losing almost all the detail, leaves very little out and renders most of the original characters and scenes distinctive and recognisable.

Review in today's Observer

The Shrink & The Sage: Is blood thicker than water?

noreply@blogger.com (Julian Baggini) — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 16:37:00 +0000

Take simmering tensions about duties and obligations, add the same old disagreements about how family members should treat each other and you may get fraught, heated arguments. I am, of course, describing a typical row between moral philosophers who cannot agree on whether or not familial blood needs ethics to thin it...

Latest FT Weekend Magazine column

Heathen's Progress 14: Can it be rational for the religious to be non-rational?

noreply@blogger.com (Julian Baggini) — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 09:48:00 +0000

In practice there is no neat distinction between the logical and the psychological. Those who attempt to use pure reason cannot expect to succeed, while those who willingly allow psychological factors to affect their reasoning may be being more self-aware about their rational capacities than those who do not.

The Guardian Comment is Free Belief series continues.

Shades of green

noreply@blogger.com (Julian Baggini) — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 14:07:00 +0000

If Scruton makes a mistake it is, ironically, that he is not conservative enough. As he has written before, conservatism is not a philosophy but a disposition, and one of the things it is disposed to do is be mistrustful of comprehensive world views that attempt to provide all the answers. Conservatism has to apply that insight to itself and accept that the environment is a large, messy problem that requires a large mess of solutions, big and small, conservative and radical. Scruton is right to make the links between conservatism and conservation and to stress the role attachment to place can play in environmental protection. But this battle is too big, international and unprecedented for Burke’s “little platoons” to fight it alone.

Review of Green Philosophy: How to Think Seriously About the Planet by Roger Scruton in the FT Weekend (31 Dec/1 Jan)

Heathen's Progress 13: Has the God debate been moved on?

noreply@blogger.com (Julian Baggini) — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 17:35:00 +0000

Some in the blogosphere have suggested that in this series I have moved closer to the new atheists. I'm not sure this is true. For a variety of reasons (including unfortunate headlines others gave to some of my pieces) the extent to which I have disagreed with the new atheists has probably been overstated because it is the disagreements that I have found more interesting to write about. I agree with them that literal belief is not a straw man, strongly expressed belief is not aggressive dogmatism, we should be as free to criticise religion as people have been to criticise atheism, and that science does pose difficult questions for many religious people. But I still maintain that much of the rhetoric has not been helpful and that in order to make progress we have to look more at the best that religion has to offer, not the worst, and find common ground with more liberal believers in order to counter the more pernicious forms of belief.

Half-time report in the Guardian Comment is Free Belief series.

Saying sorry has never meant less

noreply@blogger.com (Julian Baggini) — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 09:01:00 +0000

The act of saying sorry when you're not has been elevated in recent years to something of an art form. There are so many ways of issuing a non-apology apology, all of which try to square the circle of meeting a public demand for repentance with the private refusal to admit that any is necessary...

Post at the Guardian's Comment is Free

Heathen's Progress 12: The parable of the allotments

noreply@blogger.com (Julian Baggini) — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 08:22:00 +0000

Last week I challenged the idea that religiosity is more about practice than belief with evidence that most religious people appear to have a large number of traditional beliefs which they take to be important. However, I suggested that there might be a response to this, and I've found a possible one in book 42 of the apocryphal Gospel According to Monty.

Latest in the Guardian Comment is Free Belief series

World Briefing & World Have Your Say - BBC World Service

noreply@blogger.com (Julian Baggini) — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 10:16:00 +0000

Yesterday I was on World Briefing talking about Science, meaning and values in the wake of the latest Higgs boson findings. The interview is at the end of the 13 December podcast, available here for a week.

I also took part in Word Have Your Say on the same channel later in the day. That programme is here.

Heathen's Progress 11: The myth of mythos

noreply@blogger.com (Julian Baggini) — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 13:26:00 +0000

A few weeks ago, I argued that the debate about the true nature of religion is hampered both by a confusion between what we think it ought to be and what it actually is, and by a lack of knowledge about what religious people, rather than the elite commentariat, really think. To get a better sense of these facts on the ground, I've conducted a survey, and I think the results make for interesting reading.

Latest in the Guardian Comment is Free Belief series

Sunday - BBC Radio Four

noreply@blogger.com (Julian Baggini) — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 13:22:00 +0000

I was on this morning's programme talking about "the luxury of being selfish" with Jamie Whyte and presenter Samira Ahmed. Listen again available here for a week.

Churchgoers Survey

noreply@blogger.com (Julian Baggini) — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 15:26:00 +0000

I have conducted a two-part survey as research for my Heathen's Progress series at the Guardian's Comment is Free Belief blog. Here the key documents of the survey are available for download, on condition that they are not used for commercial use and that you notify me of any use made of the data in material published in any form.

The first survey was of 141 Bristol Churchgoers. The documents available are

Survey as given to churchgoers [PDF]
Survey results summary [PDF]
Survey response spreadsheet [Excel]

Note that in spreadsheet, "0" indicates no response, "1" first option selected and so on. "v" indicates question answered in way which made it void.

The second survey was conducted online and received 767 responses.The documents available are

Survey results summary [PDF]
Survey response spreadsheet [Excel]

My initial discussion of the results is here.

Is generosity a luxury we can't afford?

noreply@blogger.com (Julian Baggini) — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 08:27:00 +0000

The last time we were supposed to have had a "me generation" it was in the Eighties boom, not a bust. "I'm alright Jack" has turned into "I'm not alright, Jack, so don't expect me to help you". Poor Jack gets fobbed off whatever happens.

Comment piece in today's Independent

The Shrink & The Sage: Identity traps

noreply@blogger.com (Julian Baggini) — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 11:50:00 +0000

It is because labels of identity can only refer to what we have in common with others that they can never capture our uniqueness. Our multiple identities are like an incomplete list of ingredients which fails to specify how much of each to use or even how they should be combined.

Latest FT Weekend Magazine column

Heathen's Progress 10: Respect for you and your crazy beliefs

noreply@blogger.com (Julian Baggini) — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 11:48:00 +0000

I keep channels of communication open out of disrespect to my own intelligence. When you look out into the world and see that it's insane, you have to accept the likelihood that you probably have your little pockets of insanity too.

Latest in the Guardian Comment is Free Belief series

Bristol Festival of Ideas - 3 December

noreply@blogger.com (Julian Baggini) — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 07:11:00 +0000

Talking about The Ego Trick at 6:30 pm. Details here. On the same day, I'm chairing Susan Greenfield's talk about her book on self identity.

The Shrink & The Sage: High standards

noreply@blogger.com (Julian Baggini) — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 07:08:00 +0000

Striving for the impossible will drive you mad unless you remember that it is indeed impossible. Kid yourself you can really do it and you are condemning yourself to a life of dissatisfaction. The problem with most perfectionists is not that they strive to be perfect, it’s that they believe they can be.

Latest FT Weekend Magazine column (26/27 November)

Heathen's Progress 9: The empty common ground

noreply@blogger.com (Julian Baggini) — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 07:06:00 +0000

"I'm sorry Julian, you seem to be working hard to establish a middle ground that nobody wants to occupy." I'm finding it hard to disagree with this comment by DiscoveredJoys on last week's post about what reasonable religious belief could look like today. But since the main purpose of posting my articles of 21st-century faith was to find out just how many could support them, the project is not worthless if we find out the answer is hardly anyone at all.

Latest in the Guardian Comment is Free Belief series

What matters in survival - Oxford, 24 November

noreply@blogger.com (Julian Baggini) — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 18:36:00 +0000

Technologies that extend and enhance life could change what it means to be a person. Does this matter and if so why? Which changes should we embrace and which should we shun? Talk to the Oxford Transhumanists at 7pm, Seminar Room 3, Balliol College, Broad Street. More details here on their Facebook page or just turn up.

Heathen's Progress 8: Articles of 21st-century faith

noreply@blogger.com (Julian Baggini) — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 16:30:00 +0000

I want to see just how many people really do embrace the kind of religious faith that explicitly rejects the kinds of things atheist critics think silly. To do this I've formulated four "articles of 21st-century faith": beliefs that I think would make religion entirely intellectually respectable, even to the hardest-nosed atheists. They are neither so vague that anyone could put their name to them, nor so specific that people who are broadly sympathetic should feel unable to do so. They are brief and minimalist, stating clearly and concisely only as much as needs to be stated to establish the legitimacy of superstition-free belief.

Latest in the Guardian Comment is Free Belief series