Quantum fluctuations - something from nothing?

Some late night musings on a classic philosophical question, given a new spin by quantum physics...

Can something come from nothing? In a vacuum, quantum fluctuations mean that energetic particles appear and disappear from nothing. Some atheists argue that this means we don't need God to explain why the universe exists.

But even a vacuum isn't really nothing: it's like an empty bank account - no money, but it still has rules governing how things can be put in and out of it. Absolute nothing would mean not just an empty account, but no account at all.

Science may be able to describe rules that allow for "nothing" from "something" within the system of the universe; but it can't answer why there's a system and rules that permit that in the first place.

What do you think?

Poetry on the unprinted page, or, the trouble with ebooks

Right now, I'm in the thick of an exciting work placement with the Welsh publishing house Seren. Over eight weeks, I'm working as a Digital Assistant, getting them set up in the brave new world of ebook publishing. As both a book and technology geek, it's a great job for me to tackle.

Seren have loads of great titles: last year, they published The Last Hundred Days by Patrick McGuinness, which was long-listed for the Man Booker prize, and shortlisted for the Costa first novel award. Particularly up my street is their current series New Stories from the Mabinogion, which retells Welsh myths and legends in a modern style and context. They also publish a wide variety of fiction, non-fiction and poetry from Wales. It's really exciting to have the opportunity to work with them on creating ebooks.

Poetry in ebook form is one of the most interesting tasks facing me. Publishers are used to having complete control over the layout of the printed page. Contemporary poets make use of various typographic tricks to fuse together word, form and meaning. On an ereader, however, all that becomes fluid. Ebooks can be read on devices of all different shapes and sizes, from dedicated e-ink readers such as the Kindle, up to large computer screens, or down to mobile phones. Words reflow to fit these screens - which is great for reading prose, but can play merry havoc with the readability and artistic integrity of poetry.

For example, one of Seren's upcoming poetry titles involves two long poems, one of which starts normally from the front, the other of which is printed upside down from the back, so you can turn the book over either way to start reading. There's no exact way of replicating that experience in ebook form.

The formatting options available on ereaders such as Kobo, Nook or Kindle are still pretty primitive. The current EPUB and especially the Kindle file format are very basic. They are much more limited than what can be done on a normal webpage. But new file formats - EPUB3 and Kindle Format 8 - are on the way. These will allow more sophisticated layouts, fonts and image handling. In the meantime, many publishers are developing apps for those times when a basic ebook layout just won't cut it.

Of course, 90% of poetry is simply a series of lines on a page, perhaps with a bit of indentation, so there's plenty of poetry that's relatively straightforward - perhaps a little fiddly to convert correctly, but perfectly doable given time and patience. But the other 10%, those poems which push the boundaries of form and textuality, present both a creative and technical challenge - but one that I've started to get to grips with!

Slytherin, Saint Paul and the dangers of ambition?

Over the summer, I signed up for early access to Pottermore, the new Harry Potter website, and a few weeks ago I got the email granting me beta access. One of the activities on the site is completing a quiz in order for the Sorting Hat to put you into one of the four houses of Hogwarts, the wizarding school, according to your character.

As you'll know if you're a Harry Potter fan like myself, the House of Gryffindor, Harry's house, is famed for its courage; Ravenclaw, for intelligence; Hufflepuff, for diligence, and Slytherin for ambition. Slytherin is also the house that has produced the majority of Dark wizards, such as the evil Lord Voldemort, and as such has the reputation of being the "evil" house.

Somewhat to my amusement, I was sorted into Slytherin, which seemed to me ironic since I reckon I'm a pretty good natured guy, a far cry from Lord Voldemort or the unpleasant Draco Malfoy and his racial-purity obsessed chums. But on further reflection, I thought that if you take ambition as the defining quality of a Slytherin, rather than "being evil", it was actually a pretty fair choice. I really would like to change the world, and yes, I'm aware there's a hint of megalomania in that statement!

As the Harry Potter books suggest, ambition can be dangerous. More importantly, the Bible has some particularly strong warnings about ambition. But is it all bad?


The apostle Paul wrote in Phillipians 2:3-8:

Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others. Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death — even death on a cross!

The apostle James also warned in chapter 3 verse 4 of his epistle:

For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice.

Does this mean I should squash my ambitions? Are they nothing but trouble? Or does the phrase "selfish ambition" suggest that there might be such a thing as unselfish ambition? Paul also wrote in Romans 15:20:

It has always been my ambition to preach the gospel where Christ was not known, so that I would not be building on someone else's foundation.

And he told his young protégé Timothy in 1 Timothy 3:1 that:

Here is a trustworthy saying: If anyone sets his heart on being an overseer, he desires a noble task.

So it seems that Biblically speaking not all ambition is necessarily wrong. It seems to me that ambition is good or bad depending on what it's aiming for. Ambition can be good if it is an ambition for the glory of God and the good of others, but it is easily corrupted into something self-seeking and self-centred.

Our motives are rarely if ever entirely pure. Mixed in with an honest desire to do good is usually a self-centred desire for status, reputation and so on. The worship of our own self-image is one of the subtlest forms of idolatry. It can lead not only to pride, but also to deep discontent and despair as we attempt to maintain a certain image of ourselves.

God's grace is the liberating antidote to this bitter cycle of pride and worry. Realising that we are accepted and loved by God purely as a free gift of grace in Christ sets us free from having to prove ourselves by our actions, whether that's to God, others or ourself.

Grace also sets us free from the constant paralysis of analysis that can come from the introspection of always examining our motives to see if they're pure. Even though our motives are often impure, in Christ, God accepts us and uses us for his purposes anyway. The Holy Spirit is at work in us to help us develop the genuine love for God and others that is the proper motive for our actions. So while we should be self-aware and should seek to put to death our selfish ambitions, that shouldn't make us do nothing, or prevent us from having any ambition ever.

A good litmus test is whether we'd be happy if someone else achieved the good we are ambitious for. If someone else could do the same thing as well or better, would we be happy in the achievement, or is personal recognition what's really important to us?

What do you think is a healthy attitude to ambition? How do we get the balance right between wanting to achieve great things, and not being proud and self-centred?

There's Probably No Dawkins

American philosopher, debater and Christian apologist William Lane Craig has been getting attention for Richard Dawkins' refusal to debate him. Craig's Oxford debate has been publicised with a bus campaign stating 'There's probably no Dawkins'.

It's a funny and clever riff on the atheist bus campaign, and good publicity for William Lane Craig's Reasonable Faith debate tour. Dawkins is in a bit of a lose-lose situation - Dawkins would be hard-pressed to match Craig in the debate, and such an event would be good publicity for Craig but less so for Dawkins; but by refusing, Dawkins looks weak and Craig still gets lots of publicity.

In response, Dawkins is trying his best to dismiss him as a legitimate intellectual figure, accusing Craig in The Guardian of justifying genocide in the Old Testament. This is a tricky subject, and as such is a good 'distraction' for Dawkins to use in diverting attention away from the debate about God's existence. I think it's quite telling - the New Atheism is as much an attack on the goodness of God as it is on his existence.

Of course, divinely-sanctioned war in the Old Testament is an important issue in its own right. For an introduction, check out these articles on Bethinking: Old Testament Mass Killings, Is God a Monster?.

But on the basis of an atheistic, naturalistic worldview, so what if the Israelites committed genocide? If we are nothing but molecules in motion, then there's no more moral import to the movements of some ape-descendants in the Middle East than there is to continental drift or the Northern Lights.

Of course, genocide is always wrong, and we know it's wrong, but that suggests that there's more to reality than Dawkins' atheism allows. Atheists are just as moral as anyone else, but this is inconsistent with their stated beliefs - you can be moral without God, but you cannot justify objective, universal morality from a purely naturalistic philosophy.

Dawkins is also begging the question by accusing Craig of endorsing genocide, because Craig's argument is to explain why the war described in Judges was not in fact genocide, but was a proportionate, targeted and morally justified war given the full circumstances and context.

As a reason not to debate Craig, it's a pretty weak one. Dawkins is basically saying he won't debate with Craig because Craig takes the Bible literally, even the parts that go against modern morals and values. This is an odd reversal: Dawkins devotes most of his attention in The God Delusion on attacking the more extreme versions of religion rather than its more "moderate" forms. But now he's saying he'll only debate "moderate" religious figures. A bit inconsistent, surely?

However, I think Craig and those promoting him might need to tone down the rhetoric a bit. There's a danger of going too far and appearing needy and attention-seeking. Potential debate opponents need to be reassured of a fair fight, rather than being invited to an intellectual ambush. In an interview on BBC Radio 4, an atheist complained about Craig's "slippery arguments". On the other hand, this guy seemed to be objecting that Craig uses lines of argument that sound convincing and are hard to refute without a lot of work. It seems that Craig should be ashamed of using such dirty tricks as having strong arguments for believing in God, and use unconvincing arguments that are easily refuted instead!

See the programme for William Lane Craig's Reasonable Faith tour to find out where he's appearing, or check out a recording of his lecture at Imperial College London from earlier this week.

The Joys of Rereading

So many books, so little time! I'm enjoying having more time for reading for pleasure now I've finished my MA. It's sometimes possible to feel guilty about going back to reread books, when I've got so many unread books waiting for me.

But you never actually read the same book twice. You never have the same experience of a book twice, because you will have changed. At different times in your life, you bring different experiences and knowledge with you to a book - you'll pick up on different things, other elements will resonate with you, you'll spot connections you missed before.

In An Experiment in Criticism, C S Lewis proposed judging books by how their readers read and respond to them, rather than judging the taste of readers against some pre-determined "canon" of quality literature. So rather than good and bad books, or "literary" versus "genre" books, "classic" vs "popular", he distinguished between "literary" and "unliterary" ways of reading.

You can judge a book on the quality of its readers, Lewis suggests, and the way in which they read the book. If a book is "tossed aside like an old newspaper the moment it has been used, unliterary reading can be diagnosed with certainty". But, "where there is a passionate and constant love of a book and rereading, then however bad we think the book and however immature or uneducated we think the reader, it cannot".

A good book invites and rewards rereading. It will also have more on offer than just "how will the plot be resolved?" Plot is the skeleton on which the juicy meat of story hangs. In a good book, you can enjoy the characters, situation, descriptions, atmosphere and so on repeatedly even when you know how the story ends. And a good reader is one who delights in not just in books in general, but loves specific books and returns to them to drink again from their riches.

Life, Death, Steve Jobs and Success: The Richest Man in the Cemetery?

By any human measure, Steve Jobs' life was an incredible success. Co-founder of Apple, former owner of Pixar, a visionary who transformed computing, the music industry, mobile phones and much more.

And then he died, aged only 56.

Jobs was suffering from pancreatic cancer, and his death at such a relatively early age is deeply sad. And yet in Steve Jobs' Stamford University commencement address in 2005, he was able to say:

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

"Follow your heart". Jobs' success was due in a very large part to his sense of vision. He didn't want to make "me too" products, to follow existing trends and successes, to be a slave to market research. He said, "For something this complicated, it's really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them."

But if that's true of computers or iPods, then what about life? Will "following your heart" really make you happy? Perhaps when it comes to what really matters, we don't know what we want until we're shown what we need.