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Andrew Marr starts the week badly

Start the Week this morning was chaired by Andrew Marr. It was about the increasing importance of India. Marr, after announcing the speakers, introduced the subject by saying: "This rise of India is jolly good news for we Brits [sic]." I've come to expect this kind of thing from reporters on the BBC, but not from a journalist of Marr's eminence.

Rabbi Lord Sacks and the dinosaurs

In today's Thought for the Day Rabbi Jonathan Sacks was talking about the extinction of the dinosaurs, which he described as 'the greatest mass extinction in history'. Of course, he meant prehistory – some dinosaurs did survive the event for a time but none of them wrote a historical account of what happened – but leaving that aside, it wasn't the biggest extinction event we know of. The end-Permian extinction, about 251 million years ago, was much bigger, wiping out over 90 per cent of the species then alive, compared to about 75 per cent for the dinosaurs.

His talk was triggered by a TV programme this week which described recent research suggesting that it was the site of the impact that made the event so deadly. It released vast quantities of sulphur into the atmosphere. and this in turn led to large-scale loss of plant life and starvation of any dinosaurs who survived the immediate fireball. If the bolide had landed in the deep ocean or on dry land the catastrophe would have been less devastating. So 30 seconds' difference in the timing of the arrival might have allowed the dinosaurs to recover.

Sachs doesn't regard this as chance but as evidence for divine providence. It was God's plan to allow the mammals to take over and, ultimately, humans to emerge. "COME IN, DINOSAURS, YOUR TIME'S UP!" For me, this argument is reminiscent of the old joke about the man who shoots at a barn door and then draws a target round the shots to prove what a good marksman he is. I find it easier to believe that the timing of the event was due to chance.

I don't think there was anything inevitable in the evolution of humans or, probably, in the evolution of complex life, let alone intelligent life. Life is probably widespread in the universe but most of it will be bacterial. (See The Vital Question, by Nick Lane.)

The future of religious belief

Quite a few of the books about religion that I've reviewed over the years in my book review pages have suggested that religion is set to decline in importance in the 21st century. I've always doubted this myself and a major review, The Future of World Religions: Population Growth Projections, 2010–2050 by the Pew Foundation, finds that the non-religious proportion of the world's population will decrease in relative terms over this period, although it may increase a little in absolute numbers as a result of the increase in world population as a whole. Both Islam and Christianity will increase, although Muslims will come to outnumber Christians.

This is a demographic effect. Religious belief is declining in Europe, North America, Australia, and Japan, and is low in China. But all these countries have ageing populations and low birth rates, whereas both Christianity and Islam, but especially Islam, are prospering in countries with young fertile mothers who have large families. This analysis refers to the numbers of children being born into the various faiths; it can't tell us what proportion of these individuals will reject their birth religion later.

It's well worth having a look at the Pew site if this is a question that interests you. They also had a good review of the question In America, Does More Education Equal Less Religion?. In short, "Overall, U.S. adults with college degrees are less religious than others, but this pattern does not hold among Christians."

A reluctant conversion to Kindle





4. Our house is literally overflowing with books and there is nowhere to put new ones. I often want to look something up in a book which I know we have, but finding it often entails a long search through different rooms which may be ultimately unsucessful. So I expect most books I buy in future will be e-books.





An early forerunner of ISIS

Present-day ISIS (Da'ish) is remarkably similar to the Azraqites, a much earlier fundamentalist movement in Islam that existed at the end of the seventh century. It is described by W. Montgomery Watt in his book Islamic Philosophy and Theology... The Azraqites were in revolt against the ruling dynasty, the Umayyads, based in Damascus, whom they regarded as illegitimate and irreligious.

The members of their band were the true Muslims; their house alone was 'the camp of Islam' … where Islam was truly observed. Those who 'sat still' at home and did not make the hijra or 'migration' to their camp were sinners and unbelievers, outside the community of Islam. … By thus excluding from the Islamic community even those Muslims who did not agree with them in every detail, they made it lawful to kill such persons and also their wives and children; for according to an old Arab usage there was no wrong in killing someone not a member of one's tribe or an allied tribe… This puritanical theology became a justification for sheer terrorism and the Azraqites became noted and feared for their widespread massacres.

And the parallel goes even further in view of ISIS's practice of getting Western recruits to execute Western hostages.

It is said that when a man went to them and said he wanted to join their band he was given a prisoner to kill; if, as is likely, it was a prisoner from the man's tribe, the killing would break his ties with his tribe and attach him irrevocably to the Azraqites.

They were finally defeated in 697.

Book review: Islamic Philosophy and Theology, by W. Montgomery Watt

This book formed part of a series, edited by Watt, which described various aspects of Islam. It is mainly concerned with the medieval period and has little to say of the time after the Mongol conquest in the mid-thirteenth century; Watt speaks of a 'period of darkness' between 1250 and 1900. As the title indicates, it covers both philosophy and theology; this is appropriate, because the two subjects were nearly always closely linked in Islamic thought.

The opening chapters are largely historical, describing the events that followed the death of Muhammad in 632. He was succeeded by four 'rightly guided caliphs', the last of whom, Ali, was murdered in 661. The centre of power then transferred to Damascus, where Muawiyya had established a rival caliphate, that of the Umayyads. Read more

Book review: The Russian Interpreter, by Michael Frayn

The novel is set in Cold War Russia, some ten years after the end of the second world war. Paul Manning is living in Moscow, where he is writing a thesis. He receives a visit from Gordon Proctor-Gould, who had attended the same Cambridge college as Manning although they did not know each other at that time. Read more

A reminder for the Trump era



Book review: Towards the End of the Morning, by Michael Frayn

This is a novel about a kind of journalism that no longer exists. John Dyson and Bob Bell work for a newspaper that seems to have some literary pretensions, never sacks anyone and would certainly have folded long before the end of the twentieth century, let alone with the arrival of the Internet. The two men are friends and share an office where not very much work gets done. John is approaching middle age and has the ambition to get on television, which he thinks will transform his life. Bob, who is younger, eats sweets for comfort and has no ambition of any kind; he seems destined to potter along as a third-rate journalist for the rest of his working life. His ultimate future is probably foreshadowed by the third member of the office, 'poor old Eddie', who spends most of the day asleep, waking up occasionally to reminisce about old times and long-dead journalists of his acquaintance. Read more

Book review: What We Cannot Know, by Marcus du Sautoy


Book review: The Young Visiters, by Daisy Ashford


Book review: How the Mind Works, by Steven Pinker




Book review: A Life in Questions, by Jeremy Paxman
