'Nother Solent

Swarms of souls, reprise:

Iain Murray replies:

I have often used myself the argument that we mortals cannot hope to comprehend the workings of an omnisicient, omnipotent, infinite mind (although "mind" seems to me too little a word to describe what's going on), and so I see your point, although the same argument also applies to your argument about baptism and hell. How can we be sure that we know what is just and unjust? (But that's a quibble, and I'm pretty sure you're right on that issue.)

What's the point of theology? I think it is that the debate helps us to see God's love in all things. However, if we argue that the innocent will experience God's love automatically if they die still innocent, then that's a pretty good argument FOR abortion, it seems to me. No worries about aborting, or even about infanticide, because the soul is assured of heaven. I seem to remember someone positing that the Islamic version of this argument is why their terrorists don't mind blowing up babies. I'm not sure that we adequately discern God's love by following this course of argument.

All very complicated. And then I look at the eyes of my daughter and see God's love there. That's normally the point when I give up worrying about the issue and read her a Thomas the Tank Engine book instead...

My reply (and Ian's, I am sure, had he cared to pursue it - the whole debate is well-known) to the argument sometimes put forward by terrorists and wacky cults both Christian and Islamic that it is OK to kill babies because they die innocent and go straight to heaven is that God has made it clear by scripture (as the Onion put it, "Which bit of thou shalt not kill don't you understand?' "), by tradition, and by providing the vast majority of mankind with instincts to cherish life and protect infants that it is very much not OK.

The cliché-monger in me now wants to say, "From the sublime to the ridiculous" and start talking about Thomas the Tank Engine. But the transition is not so ridiculous as all that; theology is useless if it does not lead to and reinforce the perception that love (exemplified by child and parent sharing a storybook) is good and hatred and malice bad.

I am suffering cruelly from Thomas withdrawal systems. Time was when I knew every cranny of the Fat Controller's realm like the back of my hand. I knew what number Boco was. Man, I knew what number Bear was. The Thomas duvet cover passed from older to younger child in the manner of the Olympic torch. Then a dreadful day came when even the youngest said firmly, "I'm too old for Thomas now." And we came unto Pokémon and Power Rangers. O tempora! O mores!

Rice among the skyscrapers.

Jim Bennett writes:

No discussion of eminent domain is complete without reference to Japan. Basically, they have no almost no eminent domain or planning and zoning. They deal with hold-outs by paying them more, or in extreme cases by building around them. Read Tokyo: The City at the End of the World, by Peter Popham (1985) for a discussion of this and a great photo of a tiny rice farm surrounded by skyscrapers -- a holdout resolved in the Japanese manner. How they dealt with railways, the book didn't say."

Japan, the great anomaly. It's a pity that my knowledge of Japan has focussed the quaint at the expense of the relevant. Did you know that there is a single Japanese word meaning "to try out one's sword by taking the head of a passing stranger"? No, neither did I know it, because it is just the sort of cutsey anecdote that is likely to be completely fraudulent.

But Japanese accomplishment is not fraudulent, for all their recent troubles. I will track down that book! If the Japanese have managed to raise mighty cities without denying the rights of the holders of the land then they are an example to us all. I do hope they managed the same trick with their famously efficient railways. However I recall violent struggles in the 60s and 70s over the building of Narita airport, which, if I have correctly understood this 1999 statement by farmers in the area, do seem to have involved government force. The smell of government force was in the air in '99, too, as another runway was planned, though the wording suggests the use of it is not so accepted among the Japanese as among us.

A second "temporary" runway was indeed built in time for the World Cup this summer. My fellow-feeling for the farmers of Toho hamlet is so acute that not even the fact that their plight was sympathetically recorded by Palestine Indymedia can diminish it.

Why doesn't the Labour party behave the way that they want Oxford University to?

They would oblige the University to take on a candidate because she has coped admirably with her disability. But this disabled woman is suing the Labour party for discrimination.

For once, my sympathies are with Blair and his team. The woman sounds a drip. Given that she spent five years in a state of nervous prostration because she didn't get the job she wanted, then just how likely is it that she would have been up to facing Matthew Parris on a roll? (Alas the full withering blast of Parris's article on Blair's visitation to St Saviour's and St Olave's Primary school is muffled by the fact that the Times demands a subscription to read it. But it contained lines like this: "When the Prime Minister told them that he had come to win not just votes but hearts, one girl, drawing her blouse up at her midriff, placed the collar over her head. It was an eloquent response.")

The deaf girl rejected from Oxford sounded a far more competent and resilient character. Even so, Labour dudes, irrespective of the merits of this particular case it looks as though you don't apply the principle that 'the best poster-child must get the position' to your own affairs. Thanks for getting sued in such a timely manner and making me look prophetic.

A swarm of souls.

Iain Murray has a post about the scientific and theological aspects of abortion.

Abortion is one of the many subjects about which I may never fully sort out my opinion. I am broadly against it, certainly. Late term, and particularly "partial-birth" abortion is clearly murder, and will one day be classed with the Aztec sacrifices in the record of human barbarity. At the other extreme, the microscopic bundle of cells that is all there is in the first days after conception just does not engage my sympathy, potential human being or not.

That isn't what I want to talk about today. To me this post was most interesting where it touched on the nature of souls and heaven:

Yet this argument does not account for multiple births, as the individuals do not split until several days after conception. Is it one soul until the split? Or two souls attached to the single embryo? This is not an easy problem to solve.

and

All told, only about one-third of sperm-egg unions result in babies, even when abortion is not a factor. Do each of these embryos have a soul too? If so, then (using down and dirty simplistic renditions) heaven is going to be occupied by a lot of souls that have never heard Christ's teachings. That's pretty weird theologically speaking.

I have no idea what the actual answer is to either question. But it strikes me that both your worries hinge on what the human mind finds hard to imagine. The human mind is limited. A believer can rest assured that the Divine mind is not.

The question as to the souls of twins is fascinating, but not any more of an obstacle to belief than the question as to the point at which any soul begins. (That being the question, you will recall, that I could not answer.) God's book-keeping, however it is managed, does not slip up; he already sees the lives of those twins in their entirety.*

It may or may not be the case that heaven is full of the souls of embryos - but if so, the question it raises is not new to theology. We all already knew that in most ages up to half of all babies die before reaching the age of five. Such souls are not denied Christ's teaching; they are getting it direct! The real mystery is why God chooses to have some of us run the obstacle course of life first.

What happens to babies and/or embryos who are not baptised is a related issue. In olden times it was believed that they went to Hell. I find it absurd to suppose that God, the origin of all goodness, would be so unjust, or unjust at all.

This is all rather similar to recent debate as to whether God can cope administratively, so to speak, with people being revived cryogenically. Don't worry. He can.

*To see from a standpoint outside time is not to control. They still have free will.

One thing I love about the internet

is the way that you can reach straight through the layers and get a response from the person you - er - referred to unfavourably in your blog this morning. Dawsonians versus Scoobie.

Freedom and Whisky said, read this. And in turn I say it. It is an unflinching examination of terrorist motives from Cut on The Bias. Not one to read with the kids looking over your shoulder.

Words and deeds.

Hokiepundit started thinking about languages and ended up discussing the the European/Anglo divide.

"...English solves the problem by simply appropriating or creating words to fill in the gap (English has over twice as many words as any other language, with second place going to German), while Latin tinkers with what's already extant. It then occurred to me that this can also be applied to the Anglospheric (I really would like a better term for that, by the way) and Western European ways of thinking (actually, I think that the Germanic people are still somewhat awkward in their acceptance of Romance thinking, but that could be a whole post in and of itself). Anglos value economy over conservation, though if conservation is efficient, it becomes economical. Europeans are more inward-looking and tend to go more by what they already know.

When I saw this, I thought, "Wow, yes, true!" Then I wasn't so sure. Mind you, Hokie himself might say the same. His style is to put down his thoughts as they strike him and then reconsider later if need be. I'm not complaining; it's a blog not a doctoral thesis.

UPDATE: A gentleman called Gene 6-pack (a name which surely must caused him some embarassment at school) wrote:

The Germans do not have a whole lot of words. They have just a few gutturals that they repeat and repeat.

That is a very naughty thing to say.

School's out.

The Telegraph says let 'em go at fourteen if they want to. Dang. I should have written this one. It's right up there in my rant rankings at #3 or #4. I was a teacher for one strange year, and I well recall how one of the dull-eyed youths to whom I failed to impart any physics would suddenly become lively and talkative when he discussed his ambition to be a hairdresser. If he had been free to leave that day and commence cutting hair, he and I would have parted friends. Alas, I was obliged to hover over his shoulder nagging and threatening him. Pity.

BeSeen no more.

Oh, frabjuous day. Not. They've closed down BeSeen free web counters. Does anyone, by any chance or mysterious working of caches, know where I'd got to on my counter?

And Blogger won't post.

Life's hard for us scroungers. Do I ask a lot out of life? All I want is air, warmth, food, water and effortless free access to marvels of technology unknown to even the emperors of yesteryear. And those incompetent multinational fat cats can't manage even that.

On the other hand a comforting burst of Google Self-abuse gave me 9,250 mentions. Go on. Make it ten thousand.

Quote of the Day:

"Time and again, the Arabs spit in the face of the West, and the West pretends that it’s raining." - Joseph Alexander Norland, writing in Dawson Speaks.

"Exam success doesn't qualify you for any of the great positions.

If you're very clever, the Treasury isn't obliged to take you on, whatever Gordon Brown has said about Magdalen and Laura Spence," was a marvellous argument-clincher from Simon Carr in the Independent.

I love turning the tables. Carr makes a good point that Oxbridge selection, like all personnel selection, is often and justly more concerned with how the selector will get along with the selectee than with actual cleverness. Let's insist that all Gordon Brown and Tony Blair's political advisers (with whom the politicians must rub shoulders daily) must be multiply-qualified, disabled, ethnic and sexual minorities, irrespective of any flair the candidates might have for the work.

BANANA DOT COM.

Iain Murray writes,

When I worked at the DOT, planning rail lines that needed compulsory purchase powers

Oh, so it was you, was it? Right mate, you'll be first against the wall when the revolution comes.

we called it BANANA -- Build Absolutely Nothing, Anywhere, Near Anyone.

I actually think the British idea of holding up projects for years on end to allow for full public inquiries and Parliamentary investigation is a pretty good system, far better than the French "grand projet a l'interet national" or the awful American "eminent domain" (which allows only for individual court challenges, normally based on technicalities). The rights of the individual are better protected by our system rather than the best available competitors.

I agree. Long ago I was chugging towards the Channel Tunnel with a bunch of Treasury guys. Someone (conceivably it was me in a foolish moment) made the then-commonplace observation that it was an absolute disgrace that the journey from Dover to London took however-many hours while that from Coquelles to Paris took three and a half minutes.

Yup," said one man proudly. "I did that." For the next half hour as we meandered through the leafy stations he would make such comments as, "That's one town that won't be ripped to bits. Saved three million pounds, too."

I saw a sad thing that day when we got over to France. Reaching into the French entrance to the tunnel is a vast loop of road. And sitting in the middle of the loop, just visible in the dip of a hill, is an untouched but half-abandoned village. There were then still some old people living there, surrounded by the roar of the road, looking as if their entire hamlet had been wrapped in a force-field by car-shaped aliens and transported to the See The Wild Humans safari park.

Thanks also to Robert Martin and David Gillies who also supplied BANANAs. Mr Gillies added,

As for the controversy of whether new airports are justified - that's classic Coase theory, which of course is neatly derailed by compulsory purchase/eminent domain, whathaveyou - one of the most (if not the most) pernicious measures in the power of government in supposedly free-market societies.

The trailing colon

is not a medical condition but the result of some glitch preventing me from editing the previous post. What I wanted to ask was, how exactly does one get "duped", as Prince Ahmad bin Abdul-Aziz tactfully described the plight of our hapless military official, into firing an anti-aircraft missile? Did the Al-Qa'eda sympathiser pretend it was all a prank he was playing - "go on, press the button, I abjure you, for assuredly it will make much smoke and my American friend up there laugh so jolly!" - or did the Al-Qa'eda boy make out this nice box with all the buttons was the latest Nintendo GameCube, perhaps? After all, one can't expect a Saudi official to know the ins and outs of all those infidel geegaws strewn all over his office; what else are Pakistanis for?

Seems like everybody's so sensitive nowadays...

Now the Americans have got in a huff just because a Saudi military official tried to shoot down one of their aeroplanes. Fuss about nothing, really. The poor chap was just an innocent sucker:

Wot, No Moppets?

This is terrible. It seems the Palestinian authorities have gone and taken offence at the way not everyone likes the Moppets & Martyrsâ„¢ piccies and aren't going to let us see them no more. LGF reports. (If the link doesn't go straight there, scroll down to "Harming the Cause").

Bring back our Moppets! Write to your Palestinian Authority TV station now! C'mon guys, we did it for Star Trek!

Thanks for the thanks

, Chris. Chris Bertram just dropped me a nice e-mail. So what am I going to do to maintain my reputation as the Wicked Witch of West Essex? Bash out a whole screed of argufying about an earlier post in which Prof. Bertram is a little unfair to Stephen Den Beste and to a libertarian subspecies, that's what. Here's the relevant quote:

"For what it's worth I see Den Beste's position as being a rather typical example of a rather unattractive ideology: libertarianism within borders, authoritarianism outside. Individual rights are to be protected against the coercive power of the state, just so long as the right-holders are fellow citizens. Outsiders are legimate targets for coercion so long as that suits "national interest".

"Libertarianism within borders" is a recognizable strand of opinion, but I doubt if any but its least thoughtful proponents hold it on the grounds described there. I am not quite sure whether I am or am not a within-borders Libertarian, but certainly some of my opinions end up with results that can sound rather similar, despite my firm belief that every human being has the same basic rights. Here's how I and some others end up where we do:

The key point for most would be that a world government - any world government - would be fatal for liberty. Liberty is kept alive by diversity of jurisdictions. Even if you can't physically flee to another, freer country, the mere knowledge of its existence keeps the flame burning among the oppressed and takes the heart out of oppressors. So we sort-of like borders, not because we like people being stopped from moving across them, but because we like the fact that no prince can extend his arm across all of them.

Competition among countries is good for scientific and cultural progress, too. A commonly cited example is the way that that Imperial China's ocean going fleets were mothballed as the result of some instantly forgettable power struggle at Court. Click! One bad decision in a unified state was enough to write China out of the "Winners of History" chapter in the textbooks of the next several centuries. Compare Columbus in fragmented Europe, going from king to king until he found someone to fund his voyage of exploration. We fear that the Chinese stagnation might overtake the whole world if the UN gets its way: without the competitiveness and mere difference provided by there being many different countries some ideas will never be taken up and some ideas will never even be conceived.

A third point is that you can be a messianic libertarian for all mankind, wild as a wolf and an inveterate enemy of every state on earth and yet still feel yourself rooted in history. If you are American that means that you will not merely observe from on high that this or that aspect of the US Constitution or American history generally has been benefical to libertarian ideals. You are much more likely to see the relationship between the American people and their Constitution as a something close to an epic of faith, with overtones of the Book of Exodus. I am not even American and yet I feel real outrage when the Constitution is (note the word) violated. Because of the special place in history held by the Constitution it really is worse, more dangerous, when it is violated than when other countries' less epoch-making constitutions are violated. This would be an easy attitude to mock, but I do not mock it. I share it (while thinking that Mr Den Beste overstresses the extent to which America is different and better.) I also hold to the British equivalent: I see the latest moves to end the double jeopardy rule not merely as bad in themselves but also as Blair betraying the hard-won rights of Englishmen, squandering his inheritance.

UPDATE: At the time of writing, Stephen Den Beste has not yet responded. But here's R Alex Whitlock's take on the same Junius post.

Just Read It.

Afghanistan: A Just Intervention by Chris Bertram of Junius.

Advantage blogosphere! Disadvantage The Independent, and anyone who wants freedom of education.

The Indy has an article today headed "Pioneers of education at home toast their 25-year revolution. I keep getting "gateway timeout" every time I try link to it. Those cursed Goa'uld, always plotting! When I do finally defeat the alien machinations you will see that it is a workmanlike article sympathetically reporting Iris Harrison's long struggle to be allowed to educate her children at home, as 50,000 UK children now are educated. A side panel describes, again sympathetically, a case history: "When Jan Price's bullied son tried to kill himself she knew school was not for him."

As soon as I saw the words "home education" I homed in. I assumed that the Indy had heard of the latest threat to home schooling, as described by Brian Micklethwait and was on the case. Not so. Blissful Indy ignorance suffuses the whole article. No doubt the letters column tomorrow will let them know that even such quintessential Independent readers as the average British home-schooler will not be left alone by Brussels.

The Ignorant. It is. Are you?

David Janes

discerns the truth behind the headlines of progressive newspapers: it's all parody.

NIMBYs of the world, unite!

Oops. My thanks to the 1,029,561 readers who pointed out that NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) is certainly heard all over the English speaking world, and probably originated in the US. I really should have guessed that it did not originate in the UK as we usually say "back garden", not "back yard", even if it clearly is a yard with not a blade of grass to be seen between the antique fridges and fashionably "distressed" Vauxhall Carltons left there For Display Purposes Only.

We have just acquired a Vauxhall Carlton. It does go, except when it doesn't.

NIABY (Not In Anyone's Back Yard), though, is my own coinage. Feel free to spread the meme.

More Catholic than the Pope.

I preen. I adjust my whiskers with a self-satisfied paw as I bask in the sunlight of being more libertarian than the Libertarian Alliance's transport spokesman. The prolific Patrick Crozier (he of the three solo blogs, UK Transport, This Blog Has No Title and Croziervision - can he keep it up?) apologetically comes out in favour of compulsory purchase.

Patrick, have you been playing with those nasty statist kids down at that trainspotter's newsgroup again? You have picked up some very naughty phrases.

Nope, this line-of-joke is getting too snotty. Think I'll do the job seriously, as it deserves. Patrick, you correctly point out that our modern world was built by compulsory purchase - even going back to the canals and the pioneering railways - and incorrectly infer that we should therefore go on doing it.

Before I charge off on that argument, though, I must add one small historical note - you are no doubt aware of this, but I think it needs to be brought to the foreground. Although the the early railways were built on the strength of compulsory purchase it was a less bad sort of compulsory purchase than we have today. The initiative for the creation of railways came from entrepreneurs not from the executive, and there was no use of an executive power of purchase. The purchases were carried out by private Acts of Parliament and these were argued for and against in Parliament acting almost as a court in which the Bill finally enacted could be seen as a judgement in a court of law. (The Liverpool and Manchester Railway Act had to be presented three times before it was passed.) The same was true of the Enclosure Acts. I am far from admiring any sort of compulsory purchase, but at least in these days the arguments revolved around specific proposals rather than an amorphous and unarguable notion of "public interest".

Back to the main theme. Patrick writes:

With all but a few minor exceptions every canal, every railway and for all I know every road and every airport built in the UK was built with compulsory purchase powers.

True. And every country in the modern world was built upon conquest, yet we eschew it now.

Dr Benson does give the example of pipelines that have been built without compulsory purchase. Which is interesting. But I am forced to wonder if the only reason they succeeded is that pipelines can go from A to B via just about any route you like while roads etc have to go from A to B via C, D and E.

That "have to" is unjustified. Just as roads sometimes divert around physical obstacles such as mountains, or political ones such as national borders, or environmental ones such as the nesting sites of Great Crested Newts, so let them sometimes divert around people-obstacles. It is pleasant to dream about the world we would have had if they had always done this. Imagine, the nesting-sites of mere humans might be considered as sacrosanct as those of newts!

What I think this debate boils down to is this: I believe that railways, roads and airports are essential and if that means riding roughshod over a few libertarian principles then too bad. I did not enjoy writing that one little bit.

Even if I conceded that compulsory purchase was once necessary, there's a big difference between railways, roads and airports being essential and more railways, roads and airports being essential. We could very well live with what we've got. (I mean compulsorily-purchased ones; anything built without the use of force is fine by me.) Does the dividing line between a guilty past that can nonetheless be lived with and a sudden change in behaviour starting now sound arbitrary and self-serving? It's only the same dividing line that comes up in any discussion of morality; it's the present and the future that we can change. As I said before, all the world employs some sort of dividing line when talking about conquest. The Americans don't give back America to the Indians; but they don't - whatever some twits say about Iraq - go in for the conquest business any more. We don't have to start digging up the runway at Heathrow in order to move towards an ethical system of procurement of land for future airports.

(I haven't even started on the effects of the internet on transport, which I had intended as the second major rant in this post! Is Your Journey Really Necessary? More another day.)