The God Delusion

Richard Dawkins is a former Oxford professor of the public understanding of science and author of the 2006 best-selling book 'The God Delusion'. In it he contends that a belief in the existence of God is contrary to all evidence and is therefore a fallacy, and argues that religion is the root of many evils. He has been described as a 'fundamentalist atheist'.

The book has divided opinion. In Turkey for example Dawkins' website was banned. A number of books have been published in defense of religion, rebutting his arguments. If you trawl through the internet its also obvious that he has developed a cult following, but has also to some extent become demonised. Over the last few years he has started to travel, debatating the issues on global television. He has appeared on televised debates in Mexico and the US, and even dropped in to the Bill O'Reilly Show on Fox News.

In 2007 he produced a two part documentary series on British television (Channel 4). I've copied youtube links for the first episode below if you are interested in seeing it. Remember that it's his personal opinion. It's interesting to analyse his language when he talks respectively about science and religion, and he does tend to come across as occasionally arrogant and condescending, depending on your point of view:

Arguments in favour of the existence of God

William Lane Craig (born August 23, 1949) is an American evangelical Christian theologian and philosopher. He is currently a research professor of philosophy at Talbot School of Theology, Biola, a private Christian university in southern California. He is a good speaker and is well known for appearing in debates championing the existence of God. In this youtube clip he sets out his arguments. Some of them could be taken straight out of a TOK textbook while I feel that others are rather circular arguments and have premises based in his own faith. I do, however, think this clip makes a nice starting point for a discussion on this topic, whatever your own position is:

Prescribed Essay Titles 2011-2012

Here are the TOK essay titles as published on the IB website. Your essay will be marked according to the assessment criteria. Remember to centre your essay on knowledge issues and, where appropriate, refer to other parts of your IB programme and to your experiences as a knower. Always justify your statements and provide relevant examples to illustrate your arguments. Pay attention to the implications of your arguments, and remember to consider what can be said against them. Include a word count and your list of references using the Harvard System.

Please see my other posts under "writing an essay" for help and advice. Examiners mark essays against the title as set, using the TOK essay criteria. Please make sure you are familiar with the criteria before starting your essay. Respond to the title exactly as given; do not alter it in any way. Your essay must be between 1200 and 1600 words in length. Remember also that your TOK presentation and essay must be submitted in the same language.

1. Knowledge is generated through the interaction of critical and creative thinking. Evaluate this statement in two areas of knowledge.

2. Compare and contrast knowledge which can be expressed in words/symbols with knowledge that cannot be expressed in this way. Consider CAS and one more area of knowledge.

3. Using history and at least one other area of knowledge, examine the claim that it is possible to attain knowledge despite problems of bias and selection.

4. When should we discard explanations that are intuitively appealing?

5. What is it about theories in the human sciences and natural sciences that makes them convincing?

6. ‘It is more important to discover new ways of thinking about what is already known rather than to discover new data or facts’. To what extent would agree with this claim?

7. ‘The vocabulary we have does more than communicate our knowledge; it shapes what we can know’. Evaluate this claim with references to different areas of knowledge.

8. Analyse the strengths and weaknesses of using faith as a basis for knowledge in religion and in one area of knowledge from the TOK diagram.

9. As an IB student, how has your learning of literature and science contributed to your understanding of individuals and societies?

10. ‘Through different methods of justification, we can reach conclusions in ethics that are as-well supported as those provided in mathematics’. To what extent would you agree?

And the same titles in Spanish:


1. La interacción entre el pensamiento crítico y el creativo genera conociemiento. Evalúe esta afirmación en relación con dos áreas de conocimiento.

2. Compare y contraste el conocimiento que se puede expresar con palabras y con símbolos y el conocimiento que no se puede expresar de estas formas. Considere CAS y una o varias áreas de conocimiento.

3. Examine la afirmación de que es posible adquirir conocimiento a pesar de los problemas de parcialidad y selección en historia y al menos otra área de conocimiento.

4. ¿Cuándo deberíamos descartar explicaciones que son intuitivamente interesantes?

5. ¿Qué es lo que hace que las teorías en las ciencias humanas y las ciencias naturales sean convincentes?

6. 'Es más importante descubrir nuevas formas de pensar sobre lo que ya sabemos que descrubrir nuevos datos o hechos'. ¿En qué medida está de acuerdo con esta afirmación?

7. 'Nuestro vocabulario no solo comunica nuestro conocimiento: da forma a lo que podemos saber'. Evalúe esta afirmación con referencia a diferentes áreas de conocimiento.

8. Analice las fortalezas y limitaciones de utilizar la fe como fundamento para el conocimiento en religión y en un área de conocimiento del diagrama de TdC.

9. Como alumno del IB, ¿cómo ha contribuido su aprendizaje de literatura y ciencias a su comprensión de los individuos y las sociedades?

10. 'Mediante diferentes métodos de justificación, en la ética podemos llegar a conclusiones tan bien fundametades como en las matemáticas'. ¿En qué medida está de acuerdo con esta afirmación?

The King's Speech

I recently watched this film, and I thought it deserved all the plaudits and its success at the Oscars (the most boring of all awards ceremonies). At its heart I think it's a commentary about the power and importance of language. This becomes particularly obvious when Bertie is sitting watching a film of Hitler speaking and mesmerizing his audience.

The monarch's job then, as now, is to be a talking head. As Bertie's father George V (Michael Gambon) shouts at one point "This family has been reduced to that basest of all creatures - we've become actors!". The film explores what it must be like to be forced to become a public speaker and effectively be unable to speak.



I also came across a radio interview in which Colin Firth discusses the film and the real George VI. He is incidentally an excellent speaker, and is managing to make a career out of gracious awards acceptance speeches at the moment:

Have we lost sight of everyday wisdom?

Barry Schwartz is an American pyschologist, author and professor of social theory and social action. In this TED Talk he makes a passionate call for practical wisdom as an antidote to a society gone mad with bureaucracy.

Manipulation of the Media

Just to prove that manipulation of the media is as old as the media itself, here are a couple of quotations I read recently. The description is taken from a wanted notice, purportedly signed by Pontius Pilate and later quoted by the Jewish historian Josephus:

"At this time, too, there appeared a certain man of magical power, if it is permissible to call him a man, whom certain Greeks call a son of God, but his disciples the true prophet, said to raise the dead and heal all diseases.
His nature and form were human, a man of simple appearance, mature age, dark skin, small stature, three cubits high [about five feet], hunch-backed, with a long face, long nose and meeting eyebrows, so that those who see him might be affrighted, with scanty hair with a parting in the middle of the head, after the manner of Nairites, and an underdeveloped beard."

This piece was later altered by Christian historians to read:

"... ruddy skin, medium stature, six feet high, well grown, with a venerable face, handsome nose, goodly black eyebrows with good eyes so that spectators could love him, with curly hair the colour of unripe hazel nuts, with a smooth and unruffled, unmarked and unwrinkled forehead, lovely blue eyes, beautiful mouth, with a copious beard the same colour as the hair, not long, parted in the middle, arms and hands full of grace..."

Taken from A Criminal History of Mankind, by Colin Wilson (Parragon, London, 1993).

At least both of the original authors agreed that Jesus had a centre parting. Other than that, I'm still undecided on his real appearance.

The Dor Yeshorim Organisation

Sat at home over the holidays, watching the television as usual, I came across a documentary about the Jewish Community in New York. Its probably common knowledge, but I personally wasn't aware of a system of genetic testing which is carried out on young Jews of high school age. These tests are administered by the Dor Yeshorim Organisation which was set up by Rabbi Josef Ekstein in the 1980s after he lost four of his children to Tay-Sachs disease (a genetic disorder caused when two recessive genes come together, one from each parent) and has expanded to cover other areas, including Israel.

Recessive genetic disorders are very prevalent in the New York Jewish comunity as it is a relatively small population with a very strong tendancy for intermarriage (over many generations). A simple (but possibly controversial) method for avoiding these problems is for prospective couples to have their test results checked for compatibility before committing to marriage.

Opponents compare the basic premise to that of eugenics (and with such a claim comes an inevitable comparison to the ideas of the Nazis). Certainly if you are a strong believer in the idea of "true love", then it is a bit off-putting. Furthermore, at what point should you stop? There will always be some deleterious genes in any genetic profile. You might argue, however, that it's natural to want to know as much as possible about your partner before you marry, and why shouldn't this involve delving into their genetic identity?

My initial response was to feel a bit uneasy about the whole premise. However, after thinking about it for a while, I can see a lot of value in the idea that a couple should be confident that they have done all they can to ensure they are able to have healthy children. Is it acceptable for a couple to decide that they shouldn't marry in order to prevent avoidable suffering and death in the next generation? Of course, if you feel strongly that it is wrong for your religion to dictate who you should fall in love with, then the ideas of Dor Yeshorim will be completely alien to you in any case. Certainly a good subject for a TOK presentation I think, and it is a good example of a subject in which religion and science meet.