Jonathan's blog

This post might seem rather out of character for this blog – usually reserved for computing, photography and other gadgets. But for a number of reasons, I’ve been thinking about religion and atheism relentlessly for a number of weeks now. It seems fitting to write something about it on here.

My background

I was born into an Anglican Christian family with two Christian parents. I attended church with my parents practically since birth. After moving to Bristol several years ago, I made the conscious decision as an adult to attend an Anglican church here too. Aside from the usual teenage rebellious “blip”, I haven’t really questioned my faith.

However, I’ve always been interested in science and in 2007 I completed a degree in physics. Of course I’m aware that the Bible gives its own version of the creation, but I regard this as a work of fiction, written to demonstrate certain points. I believe the physics version of the creation: the big bang, astronomy, evolution and all the other things that are taught in schools and universities. But I believe that God was the ultimate creator of the universe, but not necessarily by design.

I don’t for a second think God sat there and made all the animals, in the same way you can imagine a child making animals from Play-Doh. I believe something started off a sequence of events that lead to the creation of the Universe: galaxies, stars, planets and life. I think life evolved as is believed in modern science. Who knows if God planned the route evolution would take beforehand, or whether it’s more like an artist flicking paint randomly at a canvas, with no preconception of how it might turn out. I don’t think it matters.

You could say that I am contradicting myself in subscribing to two apparently opposing theories. But I argue that the Bible is not Christianity and it is possible to believe in God, while also dismissing the Bible as a fictional but useful moral compass. I pick and choose what I accept as true, and what I reject.

I decided for myself as a teenager that God exists, but knowledge of this deity is outside the realms of present scientific knowledge. I also decided to believe that Jesus Christ almost certainly walked the earth, and went about preaching as is reported in the Bible, but that he was a human being – rather than a god or a semi-god. I chose to believe that the Bible is a work of fiction, loosely based on the truth. Reports of miracles are likely to be misreported or exaggerated through word of mouth. The Bible was written to demonstrate points and to guide lifestyle, rather than to provide a 100% accurate historical record.

That all sort of fits together and doesn’t contradict itself too much. I was happy with that set of beliefs until the last few weeks. So what changed?

Philip Pullman

By chance a few months ago, I saw Philip Pullman on BBC Breakfast promoting his new book, The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ. Most of the interview focused on the controversy that the book was causing. This immediately made me want it, so with no further consideration I ordered it from Amazon.

I read it eagerly, and I found it entertaining, interesting, and thought-provoking. Unlike some Christians, I didn’t find it in the least bit offensive or blasphemous. I recommend you read it yourself, whatever your opinions on Christianity. The theme of the book is to show how word of mouth can distort the truth unintentionally, and how events can be misinterpreted or misremembered. It demonstrates these points by telling the story of our fictional human character Jesus and how his words and actions can be portrayed as if he were the son of God.

The book got me thinking about the role of Jesus in Christianity but it didn’t cause me any problems. I was already open to the idea that Jesus was a normal person, so Pullman simply helped me to justify that idea to myself. It didn’t diminish my faith in God or cause me to take Christianity less seriously.

Ultimately, I enjoyed the book so much that I bought it for my mum for her birthday.

Richard Dawkins

After reading Pullman’s book, I had been thinking on-and-off about Christianity, and religion in general. Over the last couple of weeks, Channel 4 has been showing a series of Richard Dawkins documentaries and I watched them with interest. These documentaries covered purely biological topics, and also some religious content. I respect Dawkins as a scientist. He’s an intelligent man, so why not also listen to his thoughts on religion? His documentary “The Root of All Evil” (later retitled “The God Delusion”) proved fascinating. Of course there’s only so much you can cram into 90 minutes, and so I decided to buy his book, also titled “The God Delusion“, for a fuller picture.

Reading his book, I found myself generally nodding and agreeing. I’m no biologist but I was easily able to follow the scientific (and mainly biological) arguments and justifications. He used the same scientific techniques that anyone who has studied science will be familiar with. It’s remarkably hard to find fault in his logic, except occasionally he extrapolates scientific results a little too far, in my opinion. Perhaps the biggest flaw in the book as a whole is that he sets up arguments for God, and then breaks them down. Of course he doesn’t include any such arguments for which he has no disproof.

Some of his rhetoric seems unnecessarily spiteful towards Christians and members of other religions – but I suppose that’s why he has become so infamous, and ultimately how I came to hear about and be interested in his work. Luckily I’m not easily offended; I’m able to laugh at myself and so I find his snipes at various groups of people amusing and entertaining.

I had never really questioned my faith beforehand, nor considered the reasons for choosing to be an atheist – other than an unjustified “I don’t believe in fairy tales”. It was therefore very useful to learn about several arguments against the existence of God, and evidence to support them.

Keith Ward

Clearly it makes no sense, and it is not good practice to read literature from only one side of a debate before making a decision – no less an informed one. There is an enormous selection of works on the subject of God’s existence. Some is specifically Christian, while some is not tied to any particular religion, and is a more general look at theism. However, I chose Ward’s book “Why There Almost Certainly Is a God: Doubting Dawkins” as it claimed to be a direct response to the Dawkins book I had ordered. I hoped this would give a clear for-and-against picture of the situation – and of course it was convenient that Amazon recommended it for people who had ordered “The God Delusion”.

This book too is an excellent read: full of interesting ideas and logic that I had not come across before. Scientifically, it was a lot more heavy-going than Dawkins, making use of some fairly advanced scientific concepts. I would recommend the reader has at least an A-level in physics, or is prepared to look up some scientific concepts while reading the book.

While Dawkins uses widely-known scientific concepts, familiar terminology and simple arguments, Ward delves deep into abstract philosophy. Granted I’ve been reading this book before bed every night, but I found myself frequently needing to re-read passages in order to grasp and follow the ideas. I assume someone who knew something (anything?) would be better-equipped than me to follow this book.

You might think, as a Christian, I would be ready to lap up everything Ward says in his arguments for God. Perhaps it was because I wasn’t so readily able to understand his arguments, but to me the book seemed to have the tone of “clutching at straws”. The book seemed a little contrived and I found it quite hard to believe the arguments.

Many of the arguments depend on other truths, most of which are currently unproven theories in the world of physics – for example the idea of the multiverse. It’s hard to take the arguments as seriously as the ones Dawkins puts forward, simply because they rely on concepts that are not well understood by scientists, and are certainly not everyday knowledge.

I’ve never particularly enjoyed abstract ideas: in maths and physics I always preferred classical mechanics and optics to more abstract fields such as quantum mechanics. I think it’s for this reason that I found his book hard to swallow. Sure, the arguments are plausible and may well be proved correct one day, but I think it’s a bit too soon to rely on them for concrete arguments. At some places, I even found myself uttering “bollocks” under my breath.

My conclusion

Perhaps my agreement with Dawkins and my criticism of Ward might lead you believe that I’ve changed my mind about Christianity, or at least about God. But this is not the case.

Belief isn’t something you can necessarily decide upon, in the same way you choose a meal from a restaurant menu. More than two decades of Christian teaching is likely to have left a deeper impression on me than two weeks spent reading two books.

But I don’t think this is the only reason that I still believe.

I’ve thought long and hard about these two books, and about evidence that I’ve come upon in my own life experiences. The most compelling argument (for me, at least) comes from a recent bereavement. About two years ago, my grandfather died. I don’t believe in souls, spirits or ghosts in the way they are commonly portrayed, but all the same I just can’t believe that the essence of my grandad has simply gone. Somehow, he lives on. I reason with myself that he lives on chiefly as memories in the minds of people who knew him. It’s a one way relationship: we can’t contact him, but he still has the power to influence us, either by things he said during his life, or by things we can imagine him saying now. In my opinion, that power is sufficient to believe that he lives on in some capacity.

However, I’m not sure what I think will happen when I die – whether we will again be reunited, or whether everything will just stop.

I believe in everyday miracles. The miracle of nature, the miracle of human intelligence and of science. Some people pray for a miraculous healing from cancer or other illnesses, but I think scientists, doctors and nurses provide a miraculous service in curing vast numbers of people from conditions that would otherwise be fatal.

Of course, it’s important to remember that spirits are different from God, and that in turn God is different from Christianity. And definitely that Christianity as a religion is different from Christianity as a tradition and a culture. But they sort of come as a package.

This might seem a bit of a cop-out for people who were expecting a yes/no answer, but I think that we are not currently in a position to use science to prove or disprove the existence of God. I don’t think that religion conflicts with science, no matter what I’m told by Dawkins or Ward, or anybody else.

I will gladly reconsider my position when new knowledge is discovered, but until that time, I still believe in God, and I’m happy to be a member of the Church of England.

The only change I will make to my lifestyle is to avoid reading such heavy and thought-provoking books before bed. If there is a God, he’s certainly fried my brain

For those that don’t know, I work on a university campus. I graduated from the same university a few years ago.

Back in June, there was a series of graduation ceremonies. There were smart-looking graduands in their suits and gowns, strolling around looking the business. There were proud parents, beaming with delight that their children had completed their degrees.

For the first couple of years after my own graduation, I was so glad to be free from the educational system that I wasn’t particularly interested in the educational aspect of the following cohorts. This year, I think I’m suitably distanced from exams, revision and essays that I can appreciate watching others benefit.

For some reason, I too felt a swell of pride as I watched the scores of robed graduates-to-be.

Now the new year has started, and this week is Freshers’ week. Everywhere you look, there are new students. Lots of excited faces as they discover new places and meet new people. I’m a teeny bit jealous – I remember how exciting the start of my undergraduate career was.

When I started at university, I was eighteen and I felt fully grown up. I’m vaguely aware that I’ve changed in the years since then, but I don’t feel much different in myself. Looking at the new cohort, I can’t help but see children. I can’t believe their parents would let them move away to a strange city – surely they are too young?

And that’s when it occurred to me. I’m getting old. Reminiscing about “when I was your age” makes me feel like some sort of grandfather figure. I don’t mind though – I like my job, and I like being on a university campus: surrounded by intelligent people of different ages and specialisms.

I’m looking forward to the next graduation season now

I was just considering the possibility of visiting a friend in Utrecht. With the flights currently grounded, I thought it might be a nice idea to get the Eurostar or ferry to Calais and cycle from Calais to Utrecht. I wasn’t exactly sure how far it would be, so I checked on Google Maps.

The shortest driving route from Calais to Utrecht is 337 km. That’s doable on a bike in a few days. However, being a car route, it was sticking to the major roads so I selected the walking option which I thought might choose quieter roads that would also suit a cyclist.

Apparently the quickest (not shortest) route on foot is 1,049 km. Unbelievably, the map shows that you are to go via the UK twice.

Calais to Utrecht

I suppose the implication is that it’s quicker to take the ferry for the long stretches than walk. The only segments of that journey to be undertaken on foot are a short stretch in Kent, a short stretch near Brugge and the home straight into Utrecht.

The shortest walking route still goes via Kent but makes you walk from Oostende to Utrecht.

I will probably end up getting the ferry to somewhere in Holland and cycling just the last stretch.

My youngest brother will soon be sixteen, which means he will have come of age in the eyes of the Church of England. He was given a form to register on the church’s electoral roll, meaning he can attend and vote at PCC meetings, and probably entitles him to hold other positions of responsibility too.

However, I just glanced over the form and it seems so antiquated and difficult to follow that I am really not surprised that attendance is falling at Anglican churches!

A note for those of you who aren’t familiar with churchy stuff: church with a lower case C refers to a physical church building, or a single church. Church with a capital C means the wider Church; e.g. the Church of England. Confused?

APPLICATION FOR ENROLMENT ON THE CHURCH ELECTORAL ROLL

Full name: _________________

Preferred title: ________

Full address: _______________________

I declare that:

1. I am baptized and aged 16 or over (or, become 16* on ___)
2. I am a member of the Church of England (or of a Church in communion with the Church of England) and am a resident in the parish, or
3. I am a member of the Church of England (or a Church in communion with the Church of England) and, not being resident in the parish, I have habitually attended public worship in the parish during the period of six months prior to enrolment, or
4. I am a member in good standing of a Church (not in communion with the Church of England) which subscribes to the doctrine of the Holy Trinity and also declare myself to be a member of the Church of England and I have habitually attended public worship in the parish during the period of six months prior to enrolment.

I declare that the above answers are true and I apply for inclusion on the church electoral roll of the parish.

Signed: ______________ Date: ________

Notes

1. The only churches at present in communion with the Church of England are other Anglican Churches aand certain foreign Churches.
2. Membership of the Electoral Roll is also open to members in good standing of a Church not in communion with the Church of England which subscribes to the doctrine of the Holy Trinity where those members are also prepared to declare themselves to be members of the Church of England.
3. Every six years a new roll is prepared and those on the previous roll can re-apply. If you are not resident in the parish but were on the roll as an habitual worshipper and have been prevented by sickness or absence or other essential reason from worshipping for the past six months, you may write “would” before “have habitually attended” on the form and add “but was prevented from doing so because” and then state the reason.
4. If you have any problems over this form, please approach the clergy or lay people responsible for the parish, who will be pleased to help you.
5. In this form, “parish” means ecclesiastical parish.

You know when you’re a geek when, as I did, you see a lady in church wearing a pale jacket with blue, green and grey rings, and you think “Oooh, OpenSolaris!”

A friend of mine spotted that his bank claims to use “the highest security available” when actually they use ARC4 and 1024 bit RSA. He sent them this:

Dear HBOS security

I have recently received the below message in regard to your paper-free service. While the message was genuinely sent by yourselves, I do take issue (and most strongly so) with the statement that “You can access our paper-free service safe in the knowledge that it uses the highest level of security available.” In fact, your SSL security is bordering on outmoded; if you took security seriously then you would certainly use 128- or 256-bit AES (rather than ARC4) and 2048- or 4096-bit (rather than 1024-bit) RSA. I very much hope you already know that NIST will consider 1024-bit RSA (equivalent to an 80-bit symmetric key in terms of the effort required to break it) officially obsolete as of 2010, so I would certainly have expected that you would transition to 2048-bit or longer RSA keys by now, although I still hold out hope that you will finally do this before the new year is upon us. Until then, I would suggest that you do not allow misleading statements such as the below to be issued as regards your security provisions.

Yours faithfully
B S T

Having received no response after several weeks, he then sent them this:

Dear HBOS security

Since I sent the below message over a month ago, I have received no response but for an automated acknowledgement which has not been followed up. However, I have received another message seeking once again to inform me that you supposedly use the highest level of security available. With 2010 almost upon us, and with Christmas cheer in my heart, I decided to give you the benefit of the doubt and check to see if, in fact, you have at last dragged yourselves into the 21st Century as far as encryption algorithms are concerned. It was with disappointment, then, albeit little surprise, that I found no change since I had sent the previous e-mail. It is pertinent, although perhaps somewhat ironic, that even the Web-based interface through which I write this message is served along with DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA encryption.

Perhaps it was not clear enough to you lackwits the last time, but a viable security policy consists in practice of more than simply claiming that something is highly secure and hoping that nobody will notice otherwise. On the other hand, perhaps I should not have such high expectations of the competence of a bank that invested heavily in US mortgage-backed securities, which anyone with an ounce of common sense could see had been vastly overvalued due to a financial mania, and failed to make a sufficiently early exit from this market, with clearly disastrous consequences suffered as a result. If you insist on continuing to pursue these games of brinkmanship not only in your financial dealings (alas, supposedly your primary competency) but also in respect of basic consumer protection such as website security, then perhaps I shall be better off to take advantage of the recent market corrections to withdraw all but a nominal sum from my current account and make sounder investments by acquiring additional gold, silver, and foreign currency instead.

Yours, with much disdain
B S T

He has yet to receive a response, but we shall see what they say in the end.

As someone who frequently makes online purchases, I am a frequent user of courier services. But on this occasion, the seller that I bought from used a courier that I haven’t experienced before – Interlink Express. And I have to say, they’ve done everything right. I am impressed by their level of service, and I think other couriers should follow suit. It’s not exactly rocket science – it’s taking care of the little things.

Firstly, they sent me an email the day before my parcel was due to arrive. This is really handy, as it gives me time to make arrangements to be at home – rather than the usual scenario where it turns up without warning and oh – I’m at work. Commence long drive at inconvenient time to wherever their depot is.

They also sent me an email on the day to let me know the parcel was on the van.

I was also impressed by their online order tracking. It seems to me that most couriers who offer this service have very vague entries such as “Dispatched” and nobody is quite sure what this means. They also never seem to update their status. City Link are pretty bad at this – once I received a parcel from them and for days afterwards it still claimed it was on the van.

Interlink Express provide detailed information on their tracking page and seems to be updated promptly. Of course there’s no excuse for it not to be, in the age of barcodes, databases and PDAs. But it makes a nice change nonetheless.

Here’s what their tracking page says about my order:

When it arrived, I was asked to sign on a touchscreen PDA, and was delighted to find that within a couple of minutes the tracking information had been updated. This is how it’s supposed to work

I was musing today about the lifetime of my data, and what might happen to it after I die. I’m a jolly character, aren’t I?

But there are two questions here. First there’s the question of my private data – e.g. online banking stuff and other personal documents that I want to keep to myself for now, but may well have to be released to the executor of my will or whatever.

Then there’s the question of the data I’d love to share. For example my photographs and musical recordings – I’d like to think that they will persist long after I’ve gone. Maybe even wind up in a futuristic museum so people can marvel at how we used to live. Perhaps.

Private data

If I died tomorrow, would my family be able to get at my private files? It’s a bit more involved than looking in a box-file on top of my wardrobe. Nobody has an account on my home server and PC except me, and nobody else knows my root password (I hope).

But I don’t want to give anyone access to my data today. I don’t want to create accounts for other people that can access my stuff, and I don’t want to tell anyone my password. Can you imagine telling somebody all your passwords and saying they weren’t allowed to use them until your death?

That’s not to say that my data is totally inaccessible. My disks are not encrypted so booting from a live CD would be an easy way to read the data without having to log on as me. This would be an easy job for most of my geeky friends, but I don’t think my parents, brothers or girlfriend would be able to do it. Would my next-of-kin have the initiative to ask one of my colleagues or friends to “hack” my systems in the event of my untimely death?

I expect if the circumstances of my death were suspicious, police would confiscate my computers anyway and examine them. A police computer expert would have no problem in extracting the data, but whether or not they would hand it over to my family is a different question.

Of course for accounts I hold with third parties, such as online banking, email companies and of course my employers, it is usually possible to present a death certificate and the account will be opened for the executor.^{[1, 2]} But this doesn’t apply to my systems.

The flip-side of allowing access to my data is that the executor or next-of-kin gets access to all of my data. After I die, I may well be happy for the executor of the will to browse my financial and legal documents, but what if I don’t want him or her to know about my plans to take over the world, or my illegal downloads? What if I have some embarrassing secrets that I don’t want my family to find out about?

The only two approaches here are to specify in my will which files should be deleted and which should be kept^[3], or to encrypt everything that I do not wish to be read. Bear in mind that if you wish to make the encryption effective, you will also need to encrypt the backups.

Maybe the best idea would be to write down my password and some brief instructions for accessing my data if necessary, and then seal this in an envelope to be kept in a safe place with my will. Anything I don’t want seen, ever, can be encrypted. Then it should be straightforward for the relevant people to get access to my private documents, with minimal risk of abuse.

Public data

As I touched upon in the introduction, the second section is to do with the longevity of my created data. A large part of this is to do with choosing an appropriate format, and ensuring that the format stays current.

For example, my photos are currently stored on a hard disk, formatted with the ext4 filesystem, and saved as TIFF images. They are backed up, but that’s mainly irrelevant here. The point is that I don’t expect my hard disks to still be working in ten years’ time, and there’s a fair chance that today’s popular filesystems won’t be in widespread use after a decade either.

While I’m alive, it’s easy for me to move my things around. Let’s suppose next year hard disks start to become obsolete and a new type of memory card becomes commonplace. It will be easy for me to copy my photos from my hard disk onto this new memory card. I can also convert my images from their TIFF format to tomorrow’s shiny new format if necessary.

But who will do this after I’m dead?

It was easy for me. After my grandad died, I inherited a box of 35mm slides, as well as some 35mm negatives and some 6″×4″ prints. Things you can see with your eyes don’t tend to go obsolete in a decade. Provided I look after these physical photos and protect them from heat, light and moisture, they are likely to last for decades or centuries.

I’ve also scanned them in and archived them on disk – where they are safe from paper-curling humidity, but still prone to obsolescence as I mentioned above.

So long as I have backups and I keep with the times and convert my photos to whatever format is appropriate and save them on whatever media is current, I can’t see a problem. I could even make prints of all my photos and store them securely.

The snag comes when I die, and I will have to entrust my photos to a descendant. Hopefully they will treasure the photos and look after them, as I am doing with my late grandfather’s work – but there’s no guarantee. If I didn’t have an interest in photography myself, it’s entirely plausible that I might have declined my grandad’s slides.

It seems here that the best approach is to preserve my data while I’m still alive and kicking, and make it known to my family that I wish my photos to be looked after when I’m gone. Hopefully they will take heed!

Perhaps undermining the tone of this whole article, I might add that I’ll be dead so why should I care!

References

1. https://windowslivehelp.com/community/t/150085.aspx
2. http://www.news.com.au/technology/story/0,28348,26303927-5014239,00.html
3. Maybe this could be automated, and my will could specify the path to a script that deletes some things and preserves others.

I was flicking through the user manual for my 1981 Canon AE-1 Program. Some of the pages are illustrated with sketches of two characters–a man and a woman–having discussions. In every case, the “stupid” woman is confused, has made a mistake, or doesn’t know what to do.

Her hero, a dashing young man, always comes up with the answer.

What's a woman to do?

I don’t know about you, but I’m glad that today’s user manuals have simple labelled diagrams and bulleted lists of instructions.