Does Humanism help with Ethical Issues?

I often describe Humanism as Atheism with Ethics, so I suppose the answer has to be "Yes" - but it needs some qualifying.

The BHA web site says that "We take responsibility for our actions and base our ethics on the goals of human welfare, happiness and fulfillment. We seek to make the best of the one life we have by creating meaning and purpose for ourselves, individually and together."  That sounds like a form of Utilitarianism or Consequentialism, which is the way I do ethics too.  What course of action will bring the best result for everyone?

But how does that help?  If you're the kind of person who wants to do the right thing, what ever that is, then most of the time what you actually do is rely on instincts, sometimes called conscience.  You don't think about things, you just know what to do for the best.

Sometimes it doesn't work like that.  There are cases when you do have to think, perhaps hard and long, and perhaps in the company of other people.  Of course, when we do consult others, we usually consult like minded people.  There would be no point in discussing whether it was my duty to disclose my friend's affair to her husband with an out-and-out hedonist.  But again it usually boils down to what we think, on balance, is the best thing all round.  We rarely if ever consult books of ethics.  We might go to a religious authority if we are a member of a religion, and he or she might give us advice, but most people would then weigh that advice and then do what they personally thought right anyway. 

If, for example, a member of your family, let's say a child of yours, behaved in a way that was not acceptable to your religion, you might ask an elder of some kind what you should do.  He might then tell you that the scriptures tell you that what God requires you to do is to stone them to death.  But we don't actually do that these days, so the right thing to do is to cast them out and have nothing to do with them until they repent.  Well, you might follow that advice, but my hunch is that rather a lot of parents would find another way.  And notice that the elder didn't apply the scripture either.  His conscience would not approve of stoning to death, so he found another solution.  That's normal.

And then sometimes you get a really difficult problem, like the case of the conjoined twins known as Jodie and Mary.  The parents were of one view, the doctors of another.  They went to court.  The court sought the advice of the Archbishop of Westminster, (the parents were Catholics).  His advice ignored the teaching of St Thomas Aquinas probably because it didn't accord with the Archbishop's conscience exactly as in my illustration above.  The judgement summed up many possible views, conflated some, ignored others, including the Archbishop they had consulted, and gave a judgement that the judges thought, for various reasons, was the best possible outcome for one of the twins.  And us?  Those of us who followed the case were probably of the same opinion after the judgement as we were before it.

So in answer to the question "Does Humanism help with ethics?" I have to come back with another question: "Does anything help with ethics?"  What seems to help most is having other, probably like-minded, people to discuss an issue with you, who will help you to clarify it.  And then you do the best you can, living with your human limitations and at least confident that having done the best you can there is no supreme being to answer to.

There are several interesting discussions of the Jodie & Mary case on the Internet.  If you wanted to follow it up, two links to start with are this one from Spiked and this one from The Guardian.

Why I am a Humanist

I found two comments on the British Humanist Association forum which I felt I had to respond to.

1)  We all only live once. Only humanism tells you this, which is why everybody in the world should be humanist.

I have a problem with this: it's a rather dogmatic approach.  It isn't that I believe I only live once because that's what Humanism tells me.  That approach is far too like a religion, and illustrates why some atheists I have met are so ready to denigrate Humanism as just another belief system.

It's actually the other way round.  All the evidence I have seen about who were are, what we are, how our consciousness happens, how much our personality depends on what's going on in the electrical circuits and pharmacology of our brain, it seems inescapable that when our brain stops, we stop.  There doesn't seem to be any magic stuff floating around somewhere inside us that is not dependent on our brain.  So it's clear to me that any kind of survival after death is so much wishful thinking.  We cannot imagine not existing, so we assume that somehow we will continue in some other world which, were it not for that wishful thinking, there would be no reason to think exists.

That much is clear to me.  And because it is clear to me, then one of the reasons I am a Humanist is that this view is the Humanist view too.

2)  This means that humanism must be only about improving the quality of life of all people on this planet, whether they are humanist or not.

Another problem: I cannot see any logical reason why only having one life means that we must be about improving the quality of life for all people.  It is just as rational to say that, for the same reason, I am determined to get the maximum pleasure for myself in any way that appeals to me, and everyone else can go whistle a happy tune.

It so happens that my temperament is to be an ethical person.  That's where it starts.  I then work out my ethical response to the problems that life throws at me - how best I can live, which for me involves maximising the common good.  I think it is probably true that if we all acted that way life would be better, more enjoyable, than if I was a blinkered hedonist, but I can't be sure.  However, it's good enough for me and that's the way I live. 

So another reason I am a Humanist is because I notice that this is the way Humanism presents itself to the world.

Retirement?

I don't understand how, having retired just 4 weeks ago, I have been as busy as ever in these last few days.

Still, there are compensations.  Wonderful autumn mornings have let me find some great new places to walk Laddie.  This pic was taken by Helen when we were in NYC - but it's Laddie and November foliage, and very typical of our walks last week.

We've had some good views of wildlife too: lots of green woodpeckers, we surprised a pheasant the other day and his cackle as he escaped surprised Laddie, red kites circling, and a kestrel perched in a tree we were walking underneath.  It was a female - nice to be able to tell the difference!  Which reminds me, we've not had any game birds for dinner yet this season.  Have to correct that.

Secularism

Someone asked me what I mean by secularism.  Well, a great place to start is this BBC News story.  In short, conservative Jews in Israel want to enforce their way of life on a US company's Israel factory.

I am absolutely for freedom of religion.  A secular state says that everyone has the right to follow whatever religion they wish, with two provisos: they may not harm anyone else, and they may not enforce, or seek to enforce, their rules of life on anyone else.

In this case it's easy.  Intel wants to operate its factory on Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath.  The workers can do what they like.  No-one forces anyone to work for Intel or anyone else.  Intel sometimes requires work on Saturdays.  Okay, so if that's against your religion you have the freedom not to work for them.  But you do not have the freedom to insist that Intel does not work on the days you do not work.  Intel is not even Jewish (it's a company, how can it have a religion?  Religion is something people have). Even less is it ultra-orthodox.  So a secular state (which Israel claims to be) gives it the freedom not to follow the religion of a few Israelis, or even the majority of Israelis were that the case, and it gives its employees the same freedom.

In a secular state everyone has the right to follow their religion and no-one is compelled to comply with anyone else's.

Private "Police"

There is an item on the BBC this morning about private security firms patrolling some streets to provide residents with a greater feeling of security.   The Vice Chairman of the Police Federation is quoted as saying "it's the police who patrol public space" - and there's the rub. 

I spend some time reasonably often in the USA - Cleveland, Dallas and recently New York City.  The difference in policing leaps out.  You don't walk far, or drive anywhere in NYC, without seeing a very obvious police presence.  It's much the same in Cleveland and Dallas too, if not quite so much. 

A friend of mine in Cleveland was woken by a phone call from the police.  They'd been called to the area because youths were suspected of breaking into cars, and on checking they noticed that his car was unlocked on his drive.  Would he like to go and lock it?   I just cannot imagine that happening in Wellingborough, and seeing a policeman on patrol is a rare event.

Obviously it's a budget issue, but I know which approach I prefer.  Private "police" should have no role, and not be needed.

What are local Humanist groups for?

Since organising Humanists is slightly harder than herding cats, I expect there are quite a few potential answers to the question above.  Not a few Humanists I know see no need for local groups at all. 

The Bedfordshire Humanist Society, of which I am a member, recently asked the membership what they thought.  There was a choice of 7 options, with the opportunity to write in another.  Members were asked to rank these, 1 to 7, and then the results were totted up - low score wins of course.

• To support and affirm each other in identifying and applying Humanist principles, by means of open and honest debate. [32]
  
• To work to establish in the minds of local people an awareness and acceptance of the values of Humanism. [34]
• To support, locally and nationally, causes that we recognise as consistent with Humanist and secular principles. [38]
• To attract, and retain by appropriate activities, like-minded people. [43]
• To contribute to the well-being of our local community. [64]
• To give each other pastoral support when needed. [70]
• To have a nice time instead of a nasty one. [81]

It's interesting that I was having a discussion today where the potential for loneliness and the lack of support that Humanists can experience was raised.  It's something religious organisations are good at, but by and large Humanists are not.  Well, we don't want to look or act like a religion, do we?

None the less there is a normal human need for support and companionship from like-minded people, and I'm glad to see it high on the list of priorities that members of the Bedfordshire group profess.

It's good to be under the microscope.

It's hard to say when I first began to question the things I was told in order to get a better grasp of the truth.  I tell a story about that which goes back to age 6 or so.  Certainly by my teens I was reading theology and philosophy and scribbling notes in the margins.  So for me John Stuart Mill's teaching in On Liberty that freedom of speech was necessary even when the opinions expressed were wrong came as a welcome support.  On the whole, adults and teachers don't like to be pressed in the way that I did – and still do.  Of course there are exceptions.

Mill's argument, in brief, was that there were two kinds of advantages to freedom of expression. 

1. If you are in argument with someone over a position you have adopted, then it may be that you have done so simply following a fashion, or you may have made a serious study of the subject, or something in between.  Being challenged and tested by someone with a contrary point of view can only be to your benefit.  For no matter how slight or thorough your command of the case is, you can only learn more about its strengths and weaknesses when you are called upon to defend it.  Your grasp on the topic can only be enhanced by the experience of a serious challenge.
   
   
2. If all opinions can be expressed in the manner outlined above then there are two possible outcomes.  It may be that, contrary to expectations, the new or challenging opinion wins the argument.  In that case Society gains by advancing to new truth.  But if it loses, then the worst that can happen is that the advantages described above apply and everyone gets a clearer grasp of the issues at stake and a deeper understanding of the truth.

Mill drew a clear boundary – incitement to harm was not to be allowed.  Other than that, anything can be discussed.

Later on I came into contact with Karl Popper's writing.  He made a similar point.  Again only in brief, Popper taught that all knowledge is provisional.  It starts from a problem, and a hypothetical solution is proposed.  It has to be a serious attempt to solve the problem of course, and it has to be testable.  It may simply be adopted for a while but eventually it will be challenged.  Serious challenges will have one of two effects: either the hypothesis will emerge stronger from the test and live to face other challenges, or it will fail, in which case a new hypothesis will be proposed.  Naturally it will be a better attempt to solve the original problem because it will deal with weaknesses in the first hypothesis.  Then the cycle starts again, with more criticism, more refinement, and a new solution to the problem that is better to the one before.  This, he claims, is how science proceeds.  In Conjectures and Refutations he incidentally shows that the same method applies in philosophy.

So challenge and criticism is to be welcomed.  It's a method I applied in my job before I retired and I still think it is the best approach now.  This means I don't have to be defensive when criticised and pressed because the challenge is a welcome opportunity to get closer to the truth.

I've been asked to talk about Humanism to a group in Northampton.  One member has submitted some questions that might be discussed.  I'm looking forward to the opportunity.  Here are the questions she has put forward:

1. Can one be a Christian Humanist, when, by definition, Humanists are either Atheist or Agnostic and Christians believe in the Holy Trinity?
   
   
2. Are we a coincidence of biology?
   
   
3. Are not Humanist ceremonies merely copies of religious/faith-based liturgy?
   
   
4. How do Humanists govern and moderate their views without recourse to some external “higher” source of final arbitration?
   
   
5. Is Humanism a response to the excesses and corruptions committed in the name of “religion”? Christianity as a “faith” would express its human response in almost exactly the same way as Humanism, but includes the element of theistic belief.
   
   
6. How does Humanism avoid becoming a “religion”? (Religion being the human outworking of faith.)
   
   
7. The best school in our area is a church school – as a Humanist should I send my child there?
   
   
8. Should I, as a Humanist, withdraw my child from RE lessons?
   
   
9. What are the main differences between Christian Humanism and secular Humanism?

There is some interesting stuff in here.  I'm going to address the issues on this blog one at a time starting 23 November.

The Last Day

So the final day in New York dawned.  Bonnie has a list of things to do when we come back. I've got a few too.  I don't think either of us expected to enjoy it this much, or to be this bushed at the end of a week's holiday.

Having packed we left the hotel on our way to the Morgan Library and Museum, and stepped out onto Madison Avenue only to find it had disappeared.  In it's place there was a street market that was not there yesterday.  So that accounted for an hour while Bonnie made some purchases to add to our packed and weighed suitcases. Just be prepared never to be surprised in New York, and you should come back in one piece.

I got tired wandering through this market that ran down Madison from 60th to 42nd - that's quite a way.  So we went and had coffee and strolled up to Bryant Park only to find that it too had been transformed.  But the oasis of Bryant Park was still there, behind the just-being-finished skating rink and the semi-permanent boutiques which this time we somehow resisted.  Towering over it is The Bryant Park Hotel, cunningly disguised as a Christmas Tree Decoration. 

Leaving Bryant Park we wandered back towards Madison to find the Morgan Library and walked into yet another treat.  We only had 90 minutes to spare, but that was enough to look at Blake's Ancient of Days, to read Jane Austen's sister's hand written account of the novelist's death, to gaze on a 14th century book of hours and more.  Another place for a longer visit next time.

Now it really was time to go home.  Our taxi to the airport reinforced my view that there is a law forbidding taxi drivers to indicate prior to a manoevre.  It is also generally considered a good idea to move to the far right lane when turning left as that way you cut across all the other traffic and prevent them getting into the turning ahead of you.  All the taxi drivers we have met have had interesting stories to tell of how they came to New York and much else besides.  The reputation for discourtesy that they have acquired was nowhere in evidence.  A couple were so interesting I'd happily have gone round again to hear more.

Once through security I could finally do what every trip to America is about for me: sit at a bar with a beer watching the NFL.  I saw the New York Giants lose to the San Diego Chargers, bad news for New Yorkers, but great for Cowboys fans like me.  By the time our plane landed the Dallas Cowboys had won against the Philadelphia Eagles, making happiness complete and rounding off a truly wonderful event.

Thank you Bon for a wonderful birthday, and Debby and Kate for helping to arrange it.

It's taken some time...

I had no time to write up Saturday on Sunday morning - we had to get checked in, fed, checked out and out into NYC for the last time, leaving enough space to do something and get back to the hotel, collect our bags and then get transport to JFK.

When we got home on Monday there were two days to write up and a lot of unpacking and sleep to catch up on, and Laddie to be collected from his favourite Auntie.

So here I am on a cold foggy Tuesday in Wellingborough bringing things up to date.  In this post and the next I'll deal with our final hours in NYC.  In the following one I am going to write up some thoughts about an interesting challenge I am facing later this week, which is also related to an item in the current New Humanist.

We went down 42nd to Pier 81 in order to take a boat trip round the island. Having got our tickets we decided to go round US Intrepid, a WW2 aircraft carrier, moored next door.  But the line was long and strangely full of people in service uniforms.  So we walked up the front to see what was going on. 

It didn't take long to find out!  Moored alongside Intrepid was another ship, the focus of attention.  It was USS New York, to be commissioned that morning. 

The bow of the New York contains steel salvaged from the World Trade Centre, and the line waiting to board Intrepid contained people who were connected to 9/11 - relatives of people killed, emergency service people, and so on.  From the number of very obvious men wearing dark suits, with short haircuts and a curl of wire running from an ear to inside their collar (hereafter to be called Obvious Service Agents) it was apparent that a real big-wig was on the way.  We went off for coffee and while we were enjoying it, Hillary Clinton arrived.

So we didn't get to go on Intrepid.  Next time. But we can heartily recommend the Circle Line tour of Manhattan Island.  Some of Bonnie's pictures of the wonderful views will go on our picasaweb page in due course.  The guide was amusing and very informative, and I think the tour was among the best 3 hours we spent in the city.  And we were sitting down all the time.  There cannot have been any other 3 hour time slot in the week we were there that we were sitting throughout.

After the trip we wandered into Macy's for a little shopping then back up Broadway to say goodbye to Times Square.  It is impossible to do justice to that place in a movie, let alone a few words.  It vibrates with life.

But even if you know Times Square, expect the unexpected.  There was plainly something going on ahead.  When we got up there Bonnie assumed her new role in life.

Wedding photographer.  In all the hussle and bustle, with passers by walking right through the wedding party, there they were.  Maybe, Bonnie suggested, they had met on Times Square.  Well, we wish them a happy married life, filled with the excitement of Times Square, and the stability that is less obviously present.

So we went back to the hotel, changed, and went out to find somewhere to eat.  Mid Town Manhattan, Saturday night, no reservation.  Oh well, you can hope.

In fact we had our best meal out of the week.  The Kellari Taverna is a gem.  The service was brilliant, the food and wine exquisite, the decor fabulous, the atmosphere wonderful.  What a fantastic lucky chance to stumble upon it on our last night.  I can see the Kellari becoming a Last Night In New York tradition for Bonnie and I.

What a day...

Quite by chance the New York Yankees, who have won the baseball World Series in the last few days, were given a tickertape parade which started from Battery Park yesterday.  And that happens to be where the ferry to the Statue of Liberty starts from, our destination for the day.  Our first reaction was how to avoid it, the crowd, and the traffic.  But we wound up in the crowd anyway.

What a treat it turned out to be!  Happy friendly people celebrating.  Floats, and lots and lots of air-born paper.  These days it's from the shredders every office has.  Some of the bits we saw floating by looked pretty much intact.  But it was great fun.  We stayed in the crowd for nearly an hour before moving on.

Bon got some great pics of the Statue, and of Manhattan Island from Liberty Island.  I haven't included here the ones she is most proud of, as they need more space than is available, but they will be on Picasaweb soon.  We spent quite a while on Liberty Island.  It was cold, but bright sunshine and a good place to be.  None the less, I think if we had realised what was in store for us at Ellis Island where the immigrants were processed until 1954, we'd have left sooner to allow more time.

It must have been moving for Bon – here was where her grandfather came to America from Czechoslovakia in 1904.  She did make an attempt to trace the record at the computer terminal at the ground floor exhibition, but there was a line of people waiting and when the first attempt did not succeed she gave up.  I think we can do it on-line from home, I'll certainly try.  There were numerous exhibits but the first one to grab me was the set of instructions about how to find your ancestor in the records.

It was fine until I came to the section beginning “If your ancestor was an enslaved person...” at which point the full human horror of slavery hit home.  I was moved almost to tears thinking both of the slaves themselves and of their descendants trying to trace people who did not appear in the immigration record because they didn't count as people.  Your best hope was to have an idea of the ship they came on, when you might be able to find a record of their first being sold.  Even now, in the early hours of the following day, I find it hard to write about.  History got a human face here for me.

Then we went upstairs to the Registration Hall – a large room where, on most days, around 5,000 immigrant hopefuls were processed.  Luckily we tacked on to a talk by one of the National Park Rangers about what had happened.  The best bit was that 98% got in.  But up to 1,000 a month were sent back to where they had come from either because they were judged mentally incompetent, or liable to become a charge on the public purse, or because they had a contagious disease.  The process was, to say the least, impersonal.

Then we moved on to an exhibition about what happened to these people – how sick children were treated (in short, hospitalised and allowed a 5 minute visit from their parents once a week).  The whole family was detained until the child either recovered or died.  Once again it was moving to the point of being draining for me, and it must have been much more so for Bonnie whose grandfather had been through it.

We had to miss some parts of the exhibition, because we needed to get back to our hotel and change of the concert we had tickets for.  But I am not sure how much more I could have handled anyway.

Imagine these thousands, most without work, many without English, suddenly confronted with an implacable bureaucracy, and all they wanted was to leave home behind and assimilate – become Americans.  There was a long list of organisations that provided volunteers to help these people.  Some were secular, organised immigrant groups, Ukrainians for example, who at least could provided someone who spoke a new arrival's language and often a lot more.  But the vast majority were religious organisations, Quakers, Orthodox, Salvation Army (of course); too many to remember, and I could not but think how grateful the newcomers must have been for a friendly and helpful face, and I was grateful for them too.  I've not usually got a great deal of good to say about religion, but credit where credit is due, and here it is very due indeed.

So we went back to the hotel, changed, and took ourselves to Lincoln Center.  It's a stunning group of buildings.  Bonnie doesn't take her camera to concerts, so she did the best possible with her phone.  I don't have the kit here to download the pictures, so they will follow.  We heard Schubert, music written in the year between Beethoven's death and Schubert's own, aged only 31.  The C Minor Piano Sonata was thrilling, and the F Minor Piano Duet Fantasia that followed was very good indeed, but then came the String Quintet in C Major which was absolutely wonderful and took me at least to the heights.

Dinner in a diner, a local business that had fed the residents of the Upper West Side since the 1960s finished the day.  It was a tiring one, a long one, and an enlightening one.  If I come back to NYC one of the main objectives will be to go to Ellis Island, complete the exhibition, and if possible find Joe Zahorec's registration.  After all, I owe him something too.
 

A little thinking...

Okay, I'm going to put my scepticism aside for a moment. I'm not going to bang on about how much, if anything, it is possible to actually have certain knowledge of. Instead I am going to bang on about two common uses of the verb “to know”.

Sometimes we talk about things where we have a high degree of confidence and also where there is also a good amount of justification for that confidence in the form of supporting evidence.

Sometimes the evidence for is not that great but there are convincing reasons for thinking that the opposite of something we think we know is false. There are examples where this can be critical. Approaching a distant traffic signal in uncertain light conditions we might say that we are not sure if it is red or yellow but we are sure that it is not green, and act on that, which may save our lives. Or we may say that from scientific observation it is certain that the Earth goes round the Sun, where our first impression is the opposite. It is normal to talk in terms of knowledge about things like that. Sceptics like me might have theoretical issues with such statements, but it is normally fine to base actions on them. So we can develop medicines on the basis of our knowledge of biology and chemistry, even if I am not totally certain that we really know what we think we know. And when I am sick I am perfectly happy to rely on them. This kind of knowledge is good enough for ordinary life.

Included in this area are things like mathematics and the results of scientific enquiry. Confidence is both high and justified. There are good reasons for believing things like this. Without many of them modern life would not be possible – no engineering, no medicine, no cars or planes or trains, no satellite navigation, no radio or TV, vastly less agriculture, no computers, no credit cards, and so on and on and on. No-one fights wars over this kind of knowledge. There may be theoretical doubts like mine, but these are the things that we believe we know, and the results are before your eyes.

On the other hand are the things in which we have confidence but without any justification. I remember having a discussion some years ago with a man and his wife about the limitations of knowledge – a topic he plainly had a poor grasp of as you will see. The example he used was his certainty of is wife's fidelity. She growled at him: “Don't you be so sure!” My opinion at the time was that she objected to being taken for granted, something he was in the habit of doing, and I still think that's right. But until the advent of DNA testing, it has always been an issue because men did not have any way to be certain of the paternity of the children they were expending effort to bring up, apart from incarcerating their wives. Evidence of the defensiveness of men in this respect is all around us. That's what Harems are about, and you can easily develop the idea.

On a different level I was chatting to someone I had met when walking our dogs. Somehow the conversation got round to how things look from a dog's point of view, and I mentioned that they are colour blind. “Oh I don't believe that!” she said and went on with an anecdote that I did not commit to memory. The point is (and I did not bore her with it) that dogs' eyes do not have receptors (like ours do) that are capable of distinguishing light of different wavelengths, which is how colour vision starts. Of course we can't be absolutely certain of what a dog's brain does with the information that it does receive, but as it does not get information about variations in light wavelengths, colour vision has all the marks of being impossible. But the person I was talking to had her own opinion, in total ignorance of the science, and that was that. She believed, with conviction, her dog saw colour not merely without evidence, but flying in the face of evidence.

Beliefs of this kind can be incredibly strong, and very important to people. I knew someone who was absolutely convinced that she talked every day with her dead mother. Many people find great comfort in thoughts like that. They are convinced. It is remotely possible, we cannot be absolutely certain that people do not survive death in some way, even if it looks like a very remote possibility from a scientific point of view. But there is certainly no evidence that they do. People who are convinced that they can talk to dead loved ones are basing that certainty on something private to them, something going on in their own head that cannot be substantiated. However comforting or important such beliefs are, they remain beliefs, not knowledge. However, they are things about which we are found saying “I know” when we mean “I believe”.

There is a great deal of confusion in the area that encompasses belief and knowledge. Just the other day, in the American Museum of Natural History in New York, I was hanging on to a group that was getting information from someone at the front who was obviously very knowledgeable. It turns out that he was an anthropologist on the museum staff and they were a class of students. He was standing before a display of fossil hominid skulls explaining the relationships and where and how discoveries made since the display was built 3 years ago fit in. He was talking about the time, just over 30,000 years ago, relatively recently in geological terms, when there were 3 species of human alive on the planet. There was us, Homo sapiens, there were the Neaderthals, Homo neanderthalis, and the small human species whose fossils were discovered a few years ago on the Indonesian island of Flores, Homo floresiensis. He went on quickly to wave his hand over the display and show other times when there were “several human species alive at the same time”.

This last phrase was too much for one of the students, who interjected “Don't you mean human-like?”. He replied, I thought with a touch of irritation, “No, they are humans, genus Homo.”

At this point my imagination went into overdrive, and I quickly formed an opinion for which I have no evidence whatsoever. My speculation was that this young lady was having a problem, one that the lecturer had encountered before, perhaps often before. Her problem was, I guessed, that her religious beliefs told her that God created man in his own image, and that we are not related to the other species, and definitely not to the apes. But the anthropological evidence before her eyes, of which there is a mountain, is to the contrary. The relationships between human species and pre-human close relatives have long been studied. Controversies about exact details of relationships exist, but the framework is as certain as things get in science. There is no debate that we and the other apes share a common ancestor, and there have been other species of our own genus, Homo, to whom we are more or less closely related. If I am right, (and I emphasise that this is entirely conjecture on my part) the young lady does indeed have a serious problem because religious convictions are among the firmest we have. They are the beliefs of which we are, often, the most certain, our strongest convictions. But they remain beliefs, not knowledge, and often fly in the face of knowledge in the other sense.

Jung said that he “knew” about the existence of God – but he had no evidence. He knew what a lot of ancient people believed, he had evidence for that. He knew what his patients believed, he had evidence for that too. And he knew what he believed, but that does not add up to knowledge of the divine, only a lot of different beliefs. None the less, he said, and we say, “I know” with conviction and certainty.

It is, I hope, obvious that there is every reason to doubt, to be very wary, when we have beliefs, strong convictions, without justification. These are the sort of “knowledge” that throughout history people have been prepared to kill for, and on behalf of which they have been prepared to torture people, to burn them alive. Wars have been fought and terrible crimes committed because of these beliefs. In human history atrocities have been committed by people with a certain belief against people who differed from them by tiny amounts. No wars have been fought over the certainties of mathematics. But on the other hand mathematicians have been burned at the stake by religious believers whose beliefs could not stand being confronted by knowledge.

On a smaller scale, our preparedness to defend our beliefs, even on such a trivial thing as a dog's colour vision, can lead to people falling out in a big way. People resort to violence to defend unjustified belief, either against other beliefs or against the inroads made by knowledge.

For this reason it is vitally important that on the one hand we know what we believe, and on the other, believe what we know.

*I am grateful to Andre Comte-Sponville (see readinglist below) for the idea contained in his phrase "know what we believe and believe what we know".

Laddie

Laddie too is on holiday, staying with his favourite Auntie Helen.

As you can see, he is happily enjoying a therapeutic foot bath.  Since he normally protests at even the threat of getting his feet wet, he must hold Helen in particularly high esteem in order to sit with feet dunked while she takes photographs.

If this gets out his friends will never let him forget it.

This is New York

The day began with a visit to my favourite art collection in the world, the Frick Collection.  Henry Frick seems to me to be well described as a latter day robber baron, but he had exquisite taste in art and the money to acquire it.  His house was built with a comparison to Andrew Carnegie's mansion in mind.  I've read that he said he was going to make Carnegie's place look like a miner's shack.  As Carnegie had recently built the most modern and opulent dwelling in New York, that was quite a challenge.  But on his death Frick left the house and the art collection to the city.  I guess there was enough in his estate for the value not to be missed too much.

You can get round in, say, two hours.  Unlike most art collections it does not leave you feeling daunted or exhausted.  And the art is wonderful.  I particularly like the Turners, which seem to have a light from within, the Gainsboroughs, and the Holbein portraits of Thomas Moore and Thomas Cromwell, which flank the stunning St Jerome by El Greco.  My very favourite, Ingres  Comtesse d'Haussonville was away on loan.

No matter how you enter the Frick, you leave calmer and with raised spirits.

We then walked across Central Park.  I've never been in the park when it did not look good.  Today the leaves were in technicolor and the autumn light was perfect.  We walked from East to West, and from 70th to 80th, heading for the Natural History Museum, which is between the two buildings across Turtle Lake that you can see here.

It is a very pleasant stroll.  You just keep the East side behind you and eventually the West side appears.  In the middle you can't even hear the New York traffic, and there is an abundance of wildlife, along with runners, joggers, walkers, people exercising their dog, people sitting and relaxing, courting, and generally making use of the city's breathing space.

No, we didn't get lost.  It was a convenient sign to lean against while Bonnie took a couple of pics.  The little red bag contains my Frick souvenirs.

Entering the Upper West Side is, for me, like going home.  It's my favourite part of the city.  The restaurants and shops, and the wonderful dwellings, combine to make it the place that I would live if I had the choice.  We found some very affordable Real Estate.  There was a 15 room apartment going for a mere $24.5m for example.  More reasonably priced was a very nice studio apartment for $350k.  So I think I'd better start buying the Euromillions tickets.

That left us at the doorway into the American Museum of Natural History.

AMNH is about as unlike the Frick as anywhere could be.  It's enormous, and one visit could not possibly be enough.  There is enough there to fill your time for a week at least, maybe a month.  We spent most of our time in the geology section, and afterwards I felt much the same as I do towards the end of a 10 week Open University course.  We learned a lot, and we marvelled at a piece of rock containing some zircon crystals that were 4.627 billion years old - right from the time the Earth was being formed from the disk of debris around the infant sun.  One small treat was a screen showing all the earthquakes since 1960 - they appeared one by one.  After a while there was a clear pattern and there was revealed the outline of the earth's tectonic plates.  Quakes mostly happen where they meet.  Light inside made photography very difficult, but with any luck we'll get some images on Picasa later.

The newest exhibit is the Hayden Planetarium.  We actually started there with a program about the history of the solar system which was incredibly well done, and narrated by Whoopi Goldberg.  It was, of course impossible to photograph from the inside.  But on the way to eat Bonnie managed to get this great image of the globe that houses the planetarium from the street outside.

We made our way to Amsterdam Avenue - please can I live not more than 200 yards from 80th & Amsterdam?  Bonnie spotted a pleasant-looking restaurant, and we decided to look along the block.  That led us to Savann - and we needed to go no further.  A great place, a local business and doing well in the hardest place in NYC for a restaurant to survive.  So we ate there and brought a wonderful day to a perfect conclusion.

Too stuffed for anything else, we got a cab and were driven back to 45th down 5th Avenue.

There was traffic, but this is New York and I don't care.

The sweepstake

Almost every corner you go round and at every time of day when the light is different, there is a new view of the Chrysler Building.  Bon has captured well over a hundred of these.  But in the lobby with its wall to wall art deco - the lift doors, the floor, the ceiling, just everywhere, she confounded me and only took 23 photos.

So the winner with the nearest guess of 34 is Amanda King, Princess of Luton and Wales!

Wages

According to one famous old misogynist the wages of sin is death.  Bonnie has discovered that the wages of single-minded bell-ringing New York style is sore elbows.  It was a far cry from "Let's get together for a chat and pull a few ropes" - she was asked on arrival if she could ring Dedman Triples - these guys are serious.

The weather forecast has improved: there is now only a 50% chance of rain this afternoon, and it's bright again this morning, but 10 degrees F cooler than yesterday.

Whenever I come here I wind up walking more than I intended, and yesterday was no exception.  Today we'll get some form of transport up from 45th to 71st for the Frick, then stroll across the park to the Natural History Museum at 79th.

I must talk to my chefly friends and family and find out why any steak I get here is better than every steak I cook for myself at home.

Going like the clappers

(An English expression meaning going very fast or very hard, and in this case a pun as the bell is struck by a clapper.)  I am, as you know, addicted to puns. The thick part of the rope that the ringers grip is called the sally, so when Bon goes ringing I always ask her to pass on my regards to Sally Pullar.

Trinity Wall Street was in the shadow of the Twin Towers, and while Bonnie was ringing I walked over to the site of the crime.  It is amazing how much survived.  The other distinction is that it is the only peal of 12 bells in North America.  It was only installed 3 years ago thanks to a generous benefactor.

Notice the box Bonnie is standing on.  She had some issues with US Customs when she imported it.  No, not really, I am joking.  The tower captain in Wilby where she regularly rings posted it over.  Bell ringers need to be particularly careful about personal freshness, as you can see.

It's a pity really that all the pics are of the ringing chamber, which is about half way up the tower.  It was dark, so I guess images of Wall Street and the NYSE wouldn't have been much fun.  But I can finally tell people that I am married to a big noise in the NY Financial District.

Afterwards we needed good Italian food and a glass of fermented grape juice to restore our strength.  After all this exertion, tomorrow we're off to the Frick and the Museum of Natural History.  Following that I plan to eat at one of the fine ethnic restaurants on the Upper West Side.  Pics of the museum displays will not be allowed, so you'll have to be contented with my waffle.

Just Grand

There were two main items on the agenda for today - joining in bell ringing at Trinity Church Wall Street and the tour of Grand Central Terminal.  As I am writing this the principle ringer is resting before taking on the challenge of climbing 100 steps to the ringing chamber.  We're just back from Grand Central.

I did the tour once before, but even tho' for security reasons there are parts the tourists can no longer reach, this was by far the better tour.  Marty the tour guide knew his stuff and communicated his enthusiasm for the building and for New York's cultural heritage.  I have never enjoyed a tour more.

There is no way to do justice to the main concourse - 400 feet wide, 125 ft high and I forget exactly how deep, but about 120/130 feet.  It's huge.  Built in 1913 in the Beaux Arts style it is magnificent and very impressive.  What you see now is the result of a restoration that ended about 1996.  For the previous 30 years the building hadn't been maintained or cleaned.  It was designed to move 125,000 people a day.  Today what with rail commuters, subway users and other visitors about 800,000 people a day pass through with ease.  It's a design masterpiece.  After the restoration the architecture is a triumph, and the tour is something every visitor to the city should take.

Under the main concourse is the Dining Concourse, with several native NY restaurants (no chains) providing an assortment of foods that can only be marvelled at.  I've got to go back if only to sample the Chilli Shack's 7 varieties of chilli.  After the tour we tucked into the original New York Cheesecake.  Words fail me, and that doesn't happen often.  There are also several ritzy restaurants catering for the top end of the market.  The most famous eatery in the Terminal is the Oyster Bar which opened the same day the Terminal did in 1913 and is still highly popular.

And it doesn't stop there.  Grand Central Market, which has entrances both inside and outside the terminal building, is probably the finest food hall I've ever seen anywhere.  In my youth I worked in the food hall at Selfridges, so I would have claimed to have been at the very top end - but no longer.  It's basically a number of small outlets specialising in different culinary delights: meat, cheese, fish, greengrocery, everything you can imagine.  And the Selfridges Food Hall cannot compete, in my view. 

Naturally it is busy - I'd shop there if I could.  I was tempted by just about everything I saw.

Add to that book shops, shoe shines, shoe repairs, a shop specialising in varieties of olive oil... The place is a community all by itself if you didn't need to go somewhere else to sleep.

We did also manage to wander through the East Side at around 40th and a bit below, nice streets with trees and a very pleasant residential feel.  Bon thinks she's found where she wants to live.  The only downside is being a little far from my favourite district, the Upper West Side which we hope to see on Friday when we are going to a concert at the Lincoln Center.

It's two hours before we need to go out, down to Wall Street, for bell ringing, after which we plan to get an Italian meal in Little Italy.  There is just a chance that, when we get back to check-in, I'll be charged excess baggage for my stomach.

The best view in the world?

It was great to meet up with Rick again for dinner.  This time we went to a mid town restaurant for steaks all round and never mind the methane.  After all, I'm only 65 once. 

Sitting over food and chatting has to be one of my favourite ways to spend time.  I get pretty much relaxed and it is so good to learn about people, to get to know them.  When it's Bonnie's family I specially enjoy it, partly for themselves and partly for the different perspective I get on her through the prism of their shared history.

Rick went off to meet Sandy who was driving up from DC.  One of the things I learned early about the USA is that people think nothing of travelling long (for us) distances.  It's only four hours away.  We hope we'll get a chance to meet her soon.  I mean, if Rick's services are required in the Far East, I don't see why they should not be in Europe.  Now we have Eurostar it's more or less trivial to travel between Wellingborough and Paris (only one change of train and certainly less time than it takes to drive to New York from Washington).

After he left we walked down 5th Ave to 35th Street where there is an enormous pile of concrete lit up red, white and blue - the Empire State Building.  No picture can do justice to the view from the top.  And it's from up here at night that you get the best possible view of the Chrysler Building.  A bit further round from here to the right you can see planes waiting in line to land at JFK.  At one time I counted seven.  This happened also to be the side of the building, 86 floors up, where there was least wind. 

But somehow Bonnie managed to keep her camera steady enough to get some shots south towards the Financial District and the Statue of Liberty.  I can't help missing the Twin Towers and being shocked, even now, at the incredible inhumanity that enabled such an act as 9/11.  The introduction they show you as you come in to the Empire State Building includes a moving reference to those towers.

Anyway, within my frame of reference, this is the best, most dramatic, view in the world.  Even the Grand Canyon doesn't quite equal it.  There you can see the enormous expanse of geological time exposed.  Not only is it beautiful, but it tells you something important about the planet.  But New York, for me, has an even more important message about the vibrancy and resilience of our life together, and that is even more important.

Time for a beer...

I have to say that today has been an enormous pleasure.  After breakfast we headed off to collect our New York passes, stopping to enjoy Times Square on the way.  (The image here is, of course, the phonograph I mentioned in my previous blog.)  I didn't know a chunk of Times Square has been pedestrianised since I was last here, prior to 9/11.  It is just so vibrant.  And the ads are even more spectacular than they were last time.

Then we meandered off to the Rockefeller Center to go to the observation platform 68 stories up.  The pics leave something to be desired as it was a brilliant day but a tad hazy, and in the pics there is more haze than anything else.  But I guess we were up there an hour or more just drinking in the view.  The last time I saw NYC in daylight from a height was from the top of the World Trade Center.  I actually think that the view from the Rockefeller Center may be better because the city is all round you, rather than in one direction as it was from the WTC.

I wish I could bottle the sense of confidence and energy that I pick up whenever I visit New York.  Standing up here overlooking my favourite city must be how my laptop feels when it returns to base and gets plugged in to the mains again.

Bonnie has had a great day.  Her camera is smoking hot.  She was like a child set loose in a toy store, with a free pass to all the toys, on Christmas Day.  It gives me great pleasure to see her happy, and this is the happiest I've seen her in a long time.

After watching the skaters at Rockefeller Plaza we walked down to Grand Central to book for the walking tour tomorrow, so I'll save that for then.  There are highlights to mention!  Then off to the New York Public Library.  I'll save the photographs of the Rose Main Reading Room and so on until they go on Picasaweb later.  It was here that I had another great moment: a Gutenberg Bible.  The first major printing work in Europe, done in 1455.  About 70 copies survive, and here was one, in excellent condition.  The photograph isn't great because of the glass case and the reflection it creates.  But I could not help remembering how much of our culture was driven by this first printed book.  Once printing was established there came the demand for freedom of thought and freedom of expression and so many other things we take for granted.

In between Grand Central and the Library we made a stop at an adjacent building - Walter Chrysler's classic.  Of course we went into the lobby and Bonnie took a photo or two.  But I'll save the account of that, with a few of the other pictures we have of that great architectural confection, for a blog entry all of it's own.  There is still time to enter the sweepstake.  Entries range from barely more than 10 to well over 100.  I know, but I'm not telling!

Breakfast

On our way to breakfast (we had to eat in this lovely hotel at least once!) there were two great moments.

In the packed elevator were two guys who showed no signs of ever having met before.  The first said to the second "Interesting tie".  Reply, "Thank you".  First: "Buy it yourself?"  Second "Yes."  First then dramatically rolled his eyes skywards.

As you approach the restaurant there is a windup record player complete with horn and an LP cover from the 1920s - the title refers to a band leader I can't recall and "...at the Roosevelt".  There will be a picture on the blog later, of course.

Another first for today - first time anyone has taken a photograph of my breakfast.  To tell the truth, the fruit was only the first course.  I won't need lunch.

Danger, contains philosophy!

As a hint to anyone considering entering the sweepstake, or who would like to make another entry, so far Bonnie has taken 40 pics of the crown of the Chrysler Building, all from the hotel window, and it was only 7 am this morning when I counted.

One of the joys of being anywhere with a local is that you get to see things and go places you never would otherwise.  Last night we went for a meal with Rick, and ate in a local diner that most tourists would pass buy.  Quite apart from a nice family natter (something I know Bonnie misses and that I too feel deprived of) I had one of the most tasty meatloaf and mash with veggies that I could have wanted.  And after came the treat of the trip so far.  As we left the diner, ahead of us was a floodlit pinnacle and Bonnie asked what it was.  I replied "Grand Central Station" and Rick said, "No, it's the other way".  "Yes it is!" the foreign tourist said with glee - "who lives here?"  And we all had a good giggle.  "That's going in the blog." Bonnie contributed, showing that she has got to know me over the years.

Back in the hotel Bonnie took some pictures of the lobby.  The lillies are real.  It has a feeling of 1920s grandeur about it.  It's worth checking out the web site if you haven't already.

Of course I woke about 2 a.m. which would have been about time to take the dog out back home.  But I dropped off again quickly enough with the help of one of the books from my reading list below.  If nothing else it caused me to change my email signature. 

I did lie in bed in the dark for a few moments considering why it is that so many people respond badly to criticism.  One of the reasons I got into Karl Popper was that I read in one of his essays some things I had been thinking for quite a while on that very topic.  It seems to me that it is only through criticism that we find out how our position differs from someone else's.  It's how we discover their view of the world, and by posing a question about the validity of what we have offered, makes us think again.  So at the very least we learn something, and maybe discover something we did not know before.  It's the most valuable thing.

Back in the 1970s in college Cecelia Goodenough made a lot of the need to question what we had accepted because at the very least we got to know it better, and hopefully would get a better, stronger, understanding.  Her subject was Christian Doctrine, which she understood as a journey into truth, so every question had to be asked.  Not all of our group were willing to follow her, and to test their convictions, which is too often the case with people who have religious beliefs, but for those who did, all gained.  She would not have agreed with where my questioning took me, but she would have supported my method. 

"Saper aude" said Kant, dare to know, dare to use your intelligence, dare to distinguish the possibly true from the certainly false.

Bushed

For starters I have changed the blog settings, so anyone should be able to comment now.

Up at 3:30 this morning, it's only 4pm here in NYC but we've been going for about 18 hours.  On the subway on the way in to the city we met an extremely interesting lady who was visiting relatives in Wembley last week and she and Bon had a lot to say to each other.

Bonnie's nephew is coming to the hotel at 6:30 tonight and we plan to eat together, so I think I had better get a nap before hand.

My plan of emerging from the subway with a few of the Chrysler building didn't work - came out the wrong exit.  Nor did we spot it on the short walk up to the hotel.  Some inconsiderate person has built a tall building to obscure it.

But from our 18th floor window there it is: the top few floors and the art deco crown, so I guess I know what the first stop will be tomorrow.

No prizes for guessing who looked out of the window and said "Wow! How cool is that!"  I think she's pleased.  I certainly am.  It is just great to be back in Manhattan.

Don't forget...

Don't forget to enter the "How many photos will Bonnie take in the Chrysler Building lobby?" Sweepstake.  Make a guess, email it to me by Wednesday midnight (US time), and the nearest wins.  For another hint, I'm carrying a spare 20G drive to cater for them.

Ready to go...

A piece of work required for my BHA Funeral Celebrant training is finished, so I can rest easy. 

We've decided to do it the hard way (the cheaper way) and travel into Manhattan by train.  The only time I went via JFK before the taxi took an age getting through Queens (that's the Borough, I mean) - it must have been over an hour.  At least the train doesn't have to compete with traffic.  We emerge at 42nd just outside Grand Central, which is as good first view of the Big Apple at street level as you could want.  And Bonnie will get her first glimpse of the Chrysler Building when she emerges from the subway.

Then it's a short (3 block) walk up to the hotel on 45th & Madison.

Remarkably, Bonnie has finished packing already and weighed her bags, and we've done the on-line check-in. So now I'm the one holding things up - just a few items to through in a bag and sufficient books to keep me occupied on the flight.  Landesman's "Skepticism: The Central Issues" is keeping my interest at the moment.

Dear old Laddie is off for a holiday of his own with Auntie Helen where he gets somewhat spoiled.  Well, spoiled enough that he sits at the door and waits to go in and doesn't come to see me off when I leave.  He's just been for his annual bath and groom, so he's flashier and smoother than usual.

Even I am getting quite excited now - I really love New York, and given my choice of anywhere in the world to live, the Upper West Side would be my first choice (with a holiday home in Jamaica!)