Does our anger offend you?

There is a debate raging amongst the people of "Middle" England today. Played out at tables and other clichés around the country. The debate amongst the Middle people is identical to the debate amongst the chattering classes - down to the very last word.

'Kettle', 'Anarchist', 'Phalanx', 'Surge' - journalese now a common term of reference to the average Middle viewer of corporate news; no matter how debased the terms have become. The question that has come to dominate the debate for the chattering classes and thus the Middle is simply this: ‘do you condemn violent protest? Or don’t you?’.

The problem with this formulation is that the chattering classes have missed the point entirely. News editors typically don’t like to ask ‘why?’ questions you see, it involve too much pesky, time-consuming history. Twenty first century news is perpetually fixed on the zeitgeist of the now. The problem with the debate over the rightness or wrongness of violent protest is therfore inevitable and simple.

Violent protest is happening. It is a fact of life no more and no less than any other. The salient question then is not one of morality, but history. Anyone who saw the footage or was at the protest yesterday will know that of those involved in the violence, almost all were young, working-class men. So the obvious question should be - 'Why?'

Thatcher's children

During the eighties Britain was in the clutches of another Conservative administration. Thatcher oversaw and enacted massive and unprecedented free-market reforms that, as she well knew, would destroy the chance of a decent job for large swathes of the working class. An outsourcing of manufacturing, the destruction of native heavy industry, finacial de-regualtion, curtailments on the welfare state and a move to a so called ‘knowledge’ economy left millions facing crippling poverty of every kind.

If you are prepared to take away a person’s dreams - replacing them only with vivid nightmares - you best be prepared when they wake up. Thatcher knew this, Cameron knows it too. One only need peruse publicly available police and government literature to see that the militarization of the Metropolitan Police is progressing swiftly. The use of private security contractors at the Topshop protest last weekend tells us something too.

Austerity means poverty. People are waking up to this truth all over Europe, some later than others. According to France 24 the standard of living in Portugal after the recent sovereign debt crisis has collapsed in a way: ‘not seen since the 1930’s’. Similar stories are to be heard, in Greece, Ireland, Spain, Iceland and within the next few years Britain too. It seems obvious but it is rarely said, the outpouring of anger seen on the streets of London and around the country yesterday was not just anger over student fees or any one particular issue, it was symptomatic of growing civil unrest at the cuts agenda.

When the children and the grandchildren of those who suffered under Thatcher see corporate banks getting bailed out whilst their communities are targeted for a third round of neo-liberalism’s terrifying ‘progress’ - they get angry and violent. Why is this such a shock? First they came and took away working class jobs, decimating industry and pushing milliuons below the poverty line. Now they come back for the benefits and support mechanisms that kept those very same families fed and housed.

Whilst violence as a means of protest is not necessarily constructive, it certainly has been many times in the past. Of course, anger without direction can be dangerous and I always question the notion of attacking the tools of the State and not the State itself; even if the police do have their own violent agenda. Violence begets violence and it is inevitable that when you threaten the interests of the poorest in our society with the violent and destructive act of dismantling the welfare state, attacks on public sector workers, students and minority groups - there are inevitably going to be ramifications.

The gulf between rich and poor in England today wider than it was thirty years ago, or even a hundred. If our journalists did their jobs properly, we might be compelled to reflect on this fact more often than we do. As it stands however, most hacks seem content to chatter amongst themselves and with the confused Middle about trivialities.

What we should always remember is that these superficial moralistic debates about the rightness or wrongness of violent protest are academic and not useful for addressing the fundamental 'Why?' of the matter - why it is that people feel the need to resort to these tactics in the first place.

Hacks and politicians are always going to claim that violence is by default - mindless, nihlistic and self defeating. But for those who truely side with the disenfranchised, ignored and downtrodden in our society there is an acceptance that this is simply a tool in a limited arsenal. To quote several thousand anoynoumous demonstraters - You say cut back? We say fight back. CJL

Arguments from Design as a pointer to the existence of God

In “An introduction to the philosophy of Religion”, (Cambridge University Press; 1 edition 2008) Murray & Rea (MR) set out a variety of arguments that aim to show that something exists, which has many, if not all, the characteristics of ‘God’. Since antiquity, people have sought to offer explanations for how we came into being, many of these rested on the presupposition that the very reality of the world and universe was solid confirmation for the reality of God. These are often called ‘arguments from design’ or ‘teleological’ arguments. The existence of the universe according to this set of arguments demands an explanation and the only satisfactory explanation of its existence is God. A modern variant of the teleological argument is rested upon the concept of a ‘fine-tuned’ Universe, it is this specific argument that I will explore here.

A more technical name for the fine-tuned argument is the “Cosmological Anthropic Principle” (CAP). I will lay out the salient features of the CAP and explain its most common detracting theories. I will also make reference to “Science and Religion: An introduction” (Wiley-Blackwell, 2005) in which Alistair McGrath (MG) also sets out the CAP, its key problems and his replies. Neither MG nor MR come to any firm conclusions regarding the principle; both say that they feel the objections to the CAP fail but concede that the decision is ultimately down to the interpretation of the reader.

There are many variants of the “anthropic principle” which actually refers to a collective name for several ways of asserting, roughly, that the observations of our physical universe must be compatible with the life observed within it. MG says that the most common interpretation of the anthropic principle is the cosmological interpretation. This was notably defined in the 1986 study by Barrow & Tipler (BT) entitled “The Anthropic Cosmological Principle” (Oxford University Press, 1986). BT posit that for our Universe to be capable of sustaining life, a number of cosmological criteria have to be met. These are the so called dials of the “fine-tuner”, which are tuned so that if they were altered even a fraction, our universe would not be capable of forming or sustaining life. One example given by MR is the ‘strong force’ that is required to hold together the protons in an atom. The strength of this force and its direct proportion in relation to the electromagnetic force is absolutely necessary for all heat, light, and therefore, life in the universe.

MG is initially at pains to assert that although the anthropic principle may be compatible with a theistic worldview, it by no means offers irrefutable proof of the existence of God, but is merely consistent with the theistic position.
However, according to MR this apparent cosmic fine-tuning, leads some to favour the following argument:

1. The universe exhibits fine-tuning of a sort that makes it suitable for life.
2. The existence of fine tuning is probable under theism.
3. The existence of fine-tuning is highly improbable under atheism.
4. Therefore; Fine tuning provides strong evidence in favour of theism.


MG and MR point out early one possible criticism of this interpretation of fine-tuning theory. Namely, that it is a form of “carbon chauvinism” or in other words, it fails to consider that life might be possible in many different forms, not necessarily only our specific carbon based species.

Another possible problem with the CAP theory elucidated by BT, is that despite the arguments for the CAP, there may be no need to seek a further explanation of the universe at all. If the constraints of the Universe were not just as they are now they argue, we wouldn’t be able to observe the universe in the first place. In the BT analogy, the fact that anyone is observing anything, reflects the fact that the universe possesses certain features which permits the evolution of life, capable of observing some of those features. MG dismisses this argument as ‘not especially persuasive’ because it fails to address the underlying issue - ‘Why?’ He points us instead to another analogy first proposed by Richard Swinburne.

Swinburne wants us to suppose that a madman has kidnapped somebody and shut them in a room with a card shuffling machine. This machine shuffles ten packs of cards simultaneously and then draws a card from each pack and shows them to the victim. If the machine shows anything other than an ace of hearts then the hostage is killed in an explosion. The machine draws the cards and by some amazing luck all the packs of cards show ace of hearts. The kidnapper reappears and says that it is “hardly surprising” because if the machine hadn’t drawn the aces, you wouldn’t have been able to observe anything else at all. The point that Swinburne and MG are trying to illustrate is that the existence of the observer has no bearing on the probability of the events being observed. As Swinburne notes:

“If a series of highly improbable events give rise to an observer who can note this improbability, they are nonetheless improbable.”

However, there is another salient objection that might help explain why it is that we are the lucky ones who get to exist in a universe fit for life. It is called the “multi-verse objection” (MVO). MR state that according to the MVO the existence of one finely tuned universe is impossible. Instead there are multiple, possibly infinite other universes, each with its own distinct laws and forces, making it inevitable that at least one of these universes would be life permitting. In fact, many of these universes could be life permitting in ways we cannot possibly imagine.

MR dismiss the MVO because they anticipate three objections. Primarily, they dismiss it because they claim there is no verifiable evidence of any sort to date; perhaps ironically, claiming the principle of parsimony should be applied here. (If there can be no natural extrapolation from what we already know to the conclusion of multiple universes, then it should be rejected.) Secondly, MR state that even if we accept that there are multiple universes, why do we arbitrarily assume that they have distinct laws of physics. Could they not show continuity with each other? Lastly (and most interestingly for the non-theist), some physicists have reasoned that for there to be multiple universes it would require a “universe generator” of some sort. According the CAP, this universe generator would presumably also be fine-tuned for this purpose.

As MR point out, this raises a very basic question; if the universe generator exhibits complexity that requires some kind of explanation, wouldn’t we assume that the designer is also in need of explanation? MR directs us to the classical theological ideas of a “necessary” and “self explaining” God. A God that is ‘de re’ necessary. However, if we apply MR’s same rigorous logic to this idea, I think we find them somewhat lacking in testable hypothesis or credibility. Scientific and metaphysical explanations are not interchangeable and do not share the same level of importance when giving an account of cosmology.

Arguments from design such as this should convince us no more than the argument from the intricate ‘designs’ of species should have convinced pre-Darwinians. The fine-tuning argument for God’s existence is in effect a piece of natural theology. Natural theology takes agreed facts about the world, from the intricacy of a bird’s wing, to the supposed occurrence of a certain event in scripture, and argues that theism is the best or only explanation. As MG and MR would probably concede, the CAP is just one possible explanation for our origins. None of the reasons advanced for thinking it a better explanation than the alternatives seems particularly persuasive. The claim that God created a life-permitting universe is not backed up by any scientific epistemology, so we should be cautious when offered explanations of the vast cosmos that fundamentally rest upon recently discovered scientific truths corralled into an the awkward synthesis of theology and science. CJL