Great minds think (A previous experience)

Some years ago I attended a public lecture in the packed historic, Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford.  I do not doubt that the string of degrees, academic awards and degrees-to-be present would have put my meagre attainments to apparent shame.  Starting from that deserved humility I became increasingly incredulous as the evening wore on (wore having a special reference given the uncomfortable seating).  For this was a lecture postulating the Multiverse.

It is always good to reduce complex ideas to simpler ones and if I have a gift to offer the Great Minds of Oxford it is perhaps this as I seek each Sunday to convey deep truths to people coming off a week at the shop, office or rest home.  So the summary goes something like this.

1. The Universe exists, so it must be explicable.  
2. The existence of the Universe is proving inexplicable to natural science (too much complexity, not enough billions of years etc.).
3. There must therefore be ever so many other 'Universes' and we've happened in the one that works.  [As Uni = one we have to change it to Multi = many]

The minor hole in this wild speculation would be the existence of a Creator which easily explains the complexity.  What a laughable idea . . .

Or to put it another way: although this blog post appears to contain thoughts and words in the English language it has not been written by a Writer and is simply one of an infinite number of blog posts and you have simply happened upon the one that randomly looks as though it was written.

Great minds think, but thinking is never enough.

A Capital Weekend

It was in the shadow of rising Nazism that a Conference met in Oxford in 1937.  Drawn from many different Christian expressions it wrestled with issues that have since - and not least this weekend - shaped the post-War world too.  It was notable for its clarity, something rarely achieved in Ecumenical conferencing.

As the Greek people vote in the most economic of all elections it is interesting to notice the 1937 Conference's warnings about Capitalism.  It was a feature of the Conference that it refused to identify any overarching political system with the Kingdom of God (at a time when every overarching political  system was claiming to be God's or, in the case of Stalinism, god).  Fascism and Communism have (for a while) had their day, Monarchy fell earlier and now we have Market Capitalism and Democracy which are starting to fall out with each other.

"Could anything, possibly, be wrong with Capitalism?", my Western generation asks, expecting the answer No.

In 1937 the Conference believed it systemically brought the following four negatives  - enhanced acquisitiveness; shocking new inequalities; irresponsible possession of economic power; diminishing Christian vocation.

Last night I returned from visiting someone on a nice new well-staffed ward (yes I know that the NHS has its problems but . . .).  Earlier in the day I had collected a regular prescription and dropped it into the nearest pharmacy I was walking past.  This morning I listened to a Doctor in a Greek Hospital telling how there was one nurse for 50 children and that they had to scour the region for drugs that they needed, sometimes failing to find them.

And I thought.  My generation of Westerners has reaped great rewards from Capitalism.  But the negatives those Christians saw are alive and well in the way it works today; where the added suffering of a sick child in Greece is deemed positive to protect a currency union.  It takes a spiritual outlook to believe that the child will, in fact, outlive money and not the other way round.

Time

The British (though strangely no individual Briton I have met) are quite keen on ancient peculiarities.  We had a dose of them at the Royal Wedding recently when the Archbishop, dressed in finery that threatened to outshine the bride but bespeaking some other century, led the couple in thees and thous, past a betwixt and a wedlock and generally reminded us of the glories, if such they be, of ancient Church of England liturgy. 

You can get an ancient peculiarity daily in Oxford Cathedral (which, were I an Anglican, would be my diocesan mother church).  For Oxford cathedral keeps Oxford time, not Greenwich Mean Time or British Summer Time like the rest of the nation.  So the 11:00am service starts at 11:00am Oxford time, which was five minutes later than London.  So, unless you've adjusted your watch, it will be 11:05 to you.

It's all a bit of odd fun, isn't it?

Mmm.  Yet in the field of human life there are few things more important than than marriage, the public commitment of a man and a woman to stay together faithfully until parted by death.  If there is something more important it might be a service of worship at which humans gather to address, and be addressed by, their God and Saviour.  So why, I wonder, are these things the ones that are anachronistic?  Why make these the museum pieces?

Although, of all the things that happen in Oxford, only the worship of almighty God is stuck in this time warp the real peculiarity is this - that worship of almighty God is the only thing happening in Oxford that will also happen in a New Order of things when time itself is history . . .

Lennox

Without doubt two of my Sabbatical highlights were listening to a sermon and, on another day, a lecture by John Lennox. He is a Mathematics Professor at Oxford University and applies his knowledge of things like algorithmic incompressibility and other less-than-everyday categories to the Science and Religion issues raised by the likes of his fellow-Professor Dawkins.

He convincingly shows that DNA, by its very complexity and randomness, makes natural selection impossible as an explanation of humans (and a lot else). In a famous experiment monkeys were given the chance to produce a Shakespeare Play. The real monkeys were markedly and hilariously unsuccessful.

Some more imaginery monkeys were put to the task in the form of a computer programme, randomly producing letters and yet their infinite energy and concentration is also doomed to fail.

No, science shows what every believer knows; that there is more to us than natural selection. This extra to natural selection might, in the neutral sense, be described as 'information'. To be fair, Richard Dawkins concedes the need for this himself. In another blog, with John Lennox's help, we can deal with his unbelievable answer to the problem. Meanwhile, here's a clue to the right answer: