Teeth, morality, religion and heavy legs

Yes, I thought I'd blog on a diverse range of topics today.

First of all are teeth and the fact that my daughter is now taking on the appearance of a beaver with the appearance of her front lower pair and front upper pair of milk teeth. She is no longer a baby (aaawww) but instead has gained the ability to gnaw through wood (hoorah!). We are hoping she'll take after me in the teeth domain for my wife has a slightly wonky set of toothy pegs. Mine ain't US-style perfecto, but they also aren't British in appearance - my wife, an aussie, introduced this stereotype to me. Apparently most of the rest of the developed world take the piss out of us Brits for having dodgy teeth - 'British Teeth'. I had no idea, but it is as entrenched a stereotype as French men wearing stripey t-shirts and dangling onions from their bikes. Unfortunately I think the British Teeth stereotype might actually have more basis in truth, or so my wife tells me at least.

Onto morality and religion. I type this whilst watching 'Make me a Christian' on Channel 4. It's an interesting program but fails to address the assumption that religion is the only way to have a coherent moral or ethical stance - this assumption is not stated as such but lurks around in the background context. I'd much rather see a set of people engaged with debates about morality (concerned with good or bad) and ethics (sets of principles for conduct) which include religion but expose the participants to a far wider range of positions.

As someone educated formally to Doctoral level in the sciences and a professional 'scientist' I understand what Richard Dawkins is still trying to do - show people that the Biblical account of creation is complete nonsense in terms of geological, glaciological, genetic and fossil evidence, and that in fact you don't need to invoke a godlike entity to explain either the existence or diveristy of life. There are simpler explanations, and following William of Ockham's (a good Christian by coincidence) principle (Ockham's razor) the only plausible way of building theory and explanation is piece by piece, starting with the simplest and only adding additional elements and layers if absolutely necessary. Otherwise you start arbitrarily complex and you have no basis for jusifying the level of complexity of explanation you have selected. The dynamics of small scale (chemical, molecular and genetic) processes embedded within the dynamics of larger scale (developmental biological, organismic and ecological) processes over space and time are all that is needed.

Clearly such process based explanations do not provide the same kinds of answers that religion provides, or at least the non-literal creationist or fundamentalist bits of religion. But I suspect not everyone wants or needs such answers. Science does not do the same thing as religion in epistemological or functional terms and no-one sensible has ever pretended otherwise.

However Richard Dawkins fails to understand that simply showing that there is no need to believe in a god does not provide a replacement for something which is quite clearly a core component of human life regardless of country or culture. People all over the world lead their lives according to religious codes of morality and ethics, and meet together to worship. Does this mean that people need to belong to morally and ethically defined communities, or to have some institutionalised forum for debating issues of morality and ethics, or just to be told what is good and bad? I don't know, but suspect there are a complex set of needs being satisfied. Richard Dawkins will remain frustrated until he figures out something to adequately replace the religions he so desperately wishes to debunk. I suspect it will be close to impossible however - the institutional history and capital associated with the worlds religions is substantial and I cannot see how something (a new institutional structure - centralised or decentralised wouldn't matter) could be created quickly enough to satisfy the same needs as the religions of the world. These things take time, lots of time ...

I wonder whether I should turn this blog into a sort of scholarly version of the subversive blog? I simply can't compete with Dave in booze terms and agree with some other WHWR family members that blogs which contain more than facts and figures are more interesting. Well I'll see if anyone bothers commenting here to see whether the scholarly waffling appeals or put readers off. Maybe I'll continue on regardless! :-)

But having said that here are the facts for my weekend's runs. I did a hilly off road 10 miler yesterday which I felt tired throughout but also felt I maintained good form. I then did a faster run today to try to get some speed back into my legs. It wasn't a tempo run or speed session, just an attempt to run a bit faster than normal. I managed despite getting lost a bit but my legs felt really heavy throughout so it wasn't a comfortable run.

Saturday - trail run
Distance: 9.80 miles
Ascent/descent: +834'/-803'
Time: 01:23:56
Splits: 8:34 (avg), 9:14 (slowest), 8:04 (fastest)

Sunday - road run
Distance: 6.89 miles
Ascent/descent: +164'/-164'
Time: 00:52:55
Splits: 7:41 (avg), 7:42 (slowest), 7:20 (fastest)