Peter O’Toole, 1932-2013

December 15, 2013 • 2:49 pm

by Greg Mayer

The great Irish/English actor Peter O’Toole has died at the age of 81 in London. He was nominated eight times for the Academy Award for Best Actor from 1962 to 2006, but never won it; he had the most nominations ever of a non-winner. His most famous role was as T.E. Lawrence in “Lawrence of Arabia“.

Peter O’Toole as T.E. Lawrence, in a still reminiscent of a famous sketch Lawrence. (From The Guardian)

Jerry and I both have an interest in the real T.E. Lawrence (Jerry recounted a visit to Lawrence’s home, Clouds Hill in Dorset, while I gave a brief account of his life here at WEIT), and it is through the lens of his breakthrough role that we see O’Toole. I regard his portrayal as a great achievement in acting in a great film, even though there is much that is historically inaccurate in it for the Lawrence aficionado. The following picture is of O’Toole with Omar Sharif (also excellent) as Sherif Ali bin Hussein (a composite character based on several actual Arab leaders) at the battle of Tafas. The scene is brilliant cinema– it is so searing I can recite most of the lines from memory– though much of the dialogue and action is fictionalized. The scene captures well the strength of the film as art, and also its limitations as history.

Peter O’Toole and Omar Sharif in “Lawrence of Arabia”. (From The New York Times.)

O’Toole of course did much work besides this breakthrough role. I would particularly note his role in “Becket” and “The Lion in Winter“, and his ‘performances’ on any number of late night talk shows, where he never failed to please as a raconteur and bon vivant par excellence. (And also “How to Steal a Million“!) The news articles linked to in the first sentence lead to obituaries giving a much fuller account of his life and work.  Benedict Nightingale at the New York Times describes him as

… an Irish bookmaker’s son with a hell-raising streak whose magnetic performance in the 1962 epic film “Lawrence of Arabia” earned him overnight fame and put him on the road to becoming one of his generation’s most accomplished and charismatic actors… A blond, blue-eyed six-footer, Mr. O’Toole had the dashing good looks and high spirits befitting a leading man…

A wide-screen view of O’Toole as Lawrence. (From Yahoo News.)

Addendum. And here’s a favorite late night appearance. In it, O’Toole says what he wants written on his tomb stone: “It distresses us to return work which is not perfect.” Watch it for the full story.

[link updated 10.i.2019]

Chopra keeps tweeting

December 15, 2013 • 1:53 pm

I guess I’m in a bit of a contretemps with Dr. Chopra. He keeps tw**ting at me and they’re funny as hell. I guess he can’t help himself, which makes the following especially LOLzy:

Picture 1I love these. The first one implies that because I’m a determinist and an incompatibilist, he can predict my reactivity. (As if Chopra’s doesn’t have even greater and more predictable reactivity!) But determinists can also be determined to be nonreactive.  The third is an ad hom, and attempts to impugn my arguments because of my determinism.

The second is a deepity, which starts off okay and then degenerates into complete obscurantism. When Chopra stubs his toe on a rock, is he stubbing it on “consciousness within consciousness”? Can he will it not to hurt? And can that will then be read into his genes?

Then he proclaims his freedom from being reactive:
Picture 4Which is belied by this:

Picture 3Those fleas must be tenacious!

William Lane Craig’s Christmas present: five bits of evidence for God; Professor Ceiling Cat responds with evidence for Not Ceiling Cat

December 15, 2013 • 11:41 am

Where else but on Fox News will you find this bit of frippery: an article by the eloquent but slippery theologian William Lane Craig, and with the invidious title “A Chistmas gift for atheists—five reasons why God exists“. Craig tells us first that Christmas is a sham for atheists (yes, of course—if you want to celebrate Baby Jesus), and then adds this tidbit:

However, most atheists, in my experience, have no good reasons for their disbelief. Rather they’ve learned to simply repeat the slogan, “There’s no good evidence for God’s existence!”

No good reasons for disbelief? How about this one: “Lack of evidence in favor of God and manifest evidence that he’s man-made.” That’s not good enough, apparently.  So Craig offers us, as his Christmas gift, five of what he sees as the best reasons for the existence of God (presumably the Christian god). Sadly, they’ll convince only those who are already convinced. His quotes are indented.

1.  God provides the best explanation of the origin of the universe.  Given the scientific evidence we have about our universe and its origins, and bolstered by arguments presented by philosophers for centuries, it is highly probable that the universe had an absolute beginning. Since the universe, like everything else, could not have merely popped into being without a cause, there must exist a transcendent reality beyond time and space that brought the universe into existence. This entity must therefore be enormously powerful. Only a transcendent, unembodied mind suitably fits that description.

First of all, it’s possible (and may be likely) that our “universe” is one of many pocket universes that have been forming since time immemorial. In that case the system of multiverses didn’t have to have an absolute beginning, and the “cause” is, as Lawrene Krauss notes, simply a quantum vacuum fluctuation.  That’s not evidence for a “transcendent reality.” Further, what caused God? If theologians want to use the cosmological argument, that’s a perfectly good argument, and one not adequately answered by “God didn’t need a cause.”

2.  God provides the best explanation for the fine-tuning of the universe. Contemporary physics has established that the universe is fine-tuned for the existence of intelligent, interactive life.  That is to say, in order for intelligent, interactive life to exist, the fundamental constants and quantities of nature must fall into an incomprehensibly narrow life-permitting range.  There are three competing explanations of this remarkable fine-tuning: physical necessity, chance, or design. The first two are highly implausible, given the independence of the fundamental constants and quantities from nature’s laws and the desperate maneuvers needed to save the hypothesis of chance. That leaves design as the best explanation.

This has already been answered in a video by Sean Carroll, Official Website Physicist™.  There are at least four physical reasons for the fine-tuning of the universe, none of which involve God. We don’t know the answer yet, but to say that God is the best explanation is simply a God-of-the-Gaps argument (like #1). Further, such a calculation (the probability of God given the laws of physics that allow human life) requires a Bayesian estimate of the prior probability that God exists (something we don’t know at all).

3.  God provides the best explanation of objective moral values and duties. Even atheists recognize that some things, for example, the Holocaust, are objectively evil. But if atheism is true, what basis is there for the objectivity of the moral values we affirm? Evolution? Social conditioning? These factors may at best produce in us the subjective feeling that there are objective moral values and duties, but they do nothing to provide a basis for them. If human evolution had taken a different path, a very different set of moral feelings might have evolved. By contrast, God Himself serves as the paradigm of goodness, and His commandments constitute our moral duties. Thus, theism provides a better explanation of objective moral values and duties.

Many of us don’t see that there are “objective moral values” (I don’t, for instance, though I think there are right and wrong ways to behave if you want to achieve a given end.  And of course God’s will is not a good grounding for morality, given a). God was a horrible bully and killer of the innocent in the Bible (he in fact perpetrated many Bronze Age Holocausts, and b). nearly all theologians save Craig do not adhere to “divine command theory,” i.e., whatever God decrees is good by virtue of God’s fiat.  More rational theologians admit that God is good because he adheres to certain standards, and that those standards and not God’s will define what is moral.  But of course secularists have a perfectly adequate explanation for both innate moral feelings and socially-derived morality. To say that God is a better explanation means show that the probability of God given human morality is high, and that calculation again requires a Bayesian estimate of the prior probability that God exists The arguments for Not Ceiling Cat (below) suggest that the prior probability of God existing is  low..

4.  God provides the best explanation of the historical facts concerning Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection.  Historians have reached something of consensus that the historical Jesus thought that in himself God’s Kingdom had broken into human history, and he carried out a ministry of miracle-working and exorcisms as evidence of that fact.  Moreover, most historical scholars agree that after his crucifixion Jesus’ tomb was discovered empty by a group of female disciples, that various individuals and groups saw appearances of Jesus alive after his death, and that the original disciples suddenly and sincerely came to believe in Jesus’ resurrection despite their every predisposition to the contrary. I can think of no better explanation of these facts than the one the original disciples gave:  God raised Jesus from the dead.

Easy refutation here: the “historical facts” aren’t really historical facts, except in the minds of believers.  Muslim historians have concluded, with equal tenacity, that Allah sent us the Qur’an through his prophet Mohamed.  So there are two sets of diametrically opposed facts, neither supported by objective historical evidence from people who don’t already believe. The only “historical” evidence for Jesus’s life in in the scriptures, period, and those are full of contradictions, mistakes, and outright falsehoods.

5.  God can be personally known and experienced.  The proof of the pudding is in the tasting. Down through history Christians have found through Jesus a personal acquaintance with God that has transformed their lives.

People have all kinds of delusions: they regularly see and hear their dead relatives, are abducted by aliens, and, of course, gods of other faiths can be “personally known and experienced”. What Craig is doing here is substituting revelation—faith—for reason.  The personal experiences that people have of Jesus are, of course, not independent of one another, and so don’t provide independent data points. How many personal experiences of Jesus do Hindus or Buddhists have? You have personal experiences of whatever religion you were brought up in or adhere to, and that’s evidence that your “experiences” are not evidence of something real, but a comforting and culture-bound illusion.

No atheist will find these stupid arguments convincing.  But to counteract them, I present, as my Koynezaa present to believers, Professor Ceiling Cat’s evidence for Not Ceiling Cat (see also the hilarious sections for and against Ceiling Cat at the “Proof of Ceiling Cat” section of the LOLcat Bible site. Here is my more serious contribution:

1. God doesn’t give evidence for himself, even though he easily could, converting all the world to the true faith. But God WANTS us to know and accept him. Ergo, the best explanation for him being “hidden” is that he doesn’t exist.

2. The world is full of natural as well as man-made evils that make the innocent suffer. This cannot be comported with a loving and omnipotent God, even if you posit that all will be set right in the next world.

3. The existence of Hell, in which Craig believes, absolutely violates any conception of a loving God. No such God would consign people to eternal flames for trivial crimes like asking for evidence. If there is a Hell, then God is evil.

4. Different religions give different truths. At most only one of them can be right, and if one is, it’s probably not Craig’s.

5. The universe is full of superfluous stars and planets on which there’s no life. Why? Even the laws of physics could have been altered to allow the existence of only one galaxy—ours—without screwing up everything else. Theists have no explanation for this.  Saying that “God’s will is unknown” is no answer, for if you play that card, you lay yourself open to having to explain how you then know God is loving, all-powerful, wise, a disembodied mind, etc., etc. Further, the earth will be toast in another few billion years. Is that part of God’s plan, too?  Theists have no explanation for things like that.

6. Who made God?  Secularism provides the best explanation for the idea of God, for we have ample reason to think (and in fact have often witnessed) that gods are created by the human mind.

7. Scientific studies looking for God’s actions always fail.  These include investigations of miracles like the weeping Jesus in India (sewer water), the Shroud of Turin (forged) and the “cures” at Lourdes (no regrown limbs or eyes)—not to mention several failed studies of intercessory prayer.

8. Science continually contradicts God’s word, thus continually casting doubt on God himself. A hundred years ago, Craig would be have been preaching the literal truths of Genesis, Adam and Eve, the Great Flood, the Exodus, and so on. Now science shows that those ideas are wrong. Rather than take the parsimonious view that the Bible is a work of fiction, which is being whittled away completely by empiricism, theologians like Craig cry “it’s largely a metaphor.”  Unlike scientists, they accept no evidence against the God hypothesis, but simply wriggle like eels, defending the view to which they were committed in the first place. This is not theology but confirmation bias.

QED no Ceiling Cat. (But there is Professor Ceiling Cat).

Professor Ceiling Cat text

The good and bad of humanity

December 15, 2013 • 6:03 am

It is a truism of both religion and biology that humans are simultaneously selfish and altruistic.  The faithful say the selfishness comes from original sin and the goodness from God, while the biologist imputes our selfishness to evolution (for how better can you ensure propagation of your genes than by taking care of yourself and your kin first?); and, as for altruism, cooperation and kindness, they’re probably partly derived from adaptive reciprocal altruism evolved when we lived in small social groups, and partly from  a cultural overlay of expanded cooperation derived from reason (we now see that we don’t occupy any privileged position relative to others in society).

Regardless, I saw both traits demonstrated this week.  Last Saturday afternoon I parked my car in front of my building at work; I usually use it on the weekends and then leave it at work in case I need to use it during the week.  On Wednesday I looked out the window of my lab (I can overlook the car, which is nice) to see a huge dent in the front fender on the driver’s side. Going down to investigate, I saw that it was indeed a large, fresh dent, which I photographed this morning.

photo 140

But I also found a note stuck in my door handle.

The note said this (I’ve redacted names and phone numbers):

“Hi,

I saw the guy hit your left front fender in the snow. It was a [model and make of car redacted], with the Illinois plate [license plate number redacted].   Best of luck.

—name redacted

[phone number of person who wrote note redacted]. That’s all I saw, but feel free to call if you want.”

So while I was enormously peeved that someone had dinged me and run off, I was touched that a passerby took the time to take down the license number and description of the car and leave it for me, along with his phone number.

I called the number, which turned out to belong to a medical student here at the University. He reported that he saw the guy hit my car while backing out in the snow, and then get out of his car and inspect the damage to both his SUV and mine. At that time the student told him, “You know, you should leave a note for the owner.” The dinger said, “Yeah, I guess I should,” but the student suspected he wouldn’t.  So he took out a pen and wrote all the information down on a piece of paper, which he later put on my car when he returned and found no note from the malefactor.

I reported it to my insurance company and the University police, which ran the plates of the car that hit me and identified the owner. They also filed a formal report with the state of Illinois (I guess hit and run, even if it doesn’t hurt someone, violates some law or other).  My insurance company will fix the damage for nearly free, (I have to pay a small deductable). I don’t know what will happen to the miscreant who hit me and ran: probably nothing except that my insurance company will force his to pony up for the damage to my car.

This is about the fourth time this has happened to me in my life, and only once has someone left a note—a woman visiting from California, and the damage was so minor that I didn’t do anything about it. But it’s a truly vile act to damage someone’s property and then abscond without taking responsibility.  They do it because, of course, they think they can get away with it.  But this guy didn’t, thanks to a kind and observant student.

It’s a slow news day, so I’m reporting this, but it does show what we all know: some people are jerks and others go out of their way to be helpful. The next time you’re on the bus and an old person gets on, don’t be one of those who keeps your sit or pretends not to notice. Stand up and let the older person sit down.

If you’ve had experiences with really nice strangers, report them below (car-bashing jerks or others can also be reported).