Second Sight

So that’s that then. Stephen Hawking has assured us that the laws of physics are sufficient to explain the universe we live in – and that we have no need to posit the possibility of God. His book, The Grand Design, will be published on September 9.

This is neither the time nor the place to focus on the detail of his arguments, and no doubt plenty of description will be forthcoming in the popular press and elsewhere. I want to focus initially on one remark he makes: “philosophy is dead.”

Bang goes the wisdom of two and a half millennia. But philosophy is not only not dead, it was never needed as much as it is now. One of the most important tasks in philosophy is to ensure that the right questions are asked and that the arguments which proceed stand up to rigorous examination. No wonder Hawking would like philosophy to be dead because he is wrong on both counts.

The drive of Hawking’s approach is that the theory, or rather the family of theories, he espouses leads to the possibility of 10 to the power of 500 different universes (try that on your calculator and watch it explode). Thus the extraordinary fine-tuning required for a universe which would eventually be able to support human life is not evidence for a designer God; it has in fact come about by chance. Since our universe is, by definition, the only one we can experience, we are fooled into thinking that it is the only one which exists, or has existed.

M theory, as it is known, is highly controversial within the scientific community; indeed there are eminent names who claim that it cannot properly be called a scientific theory at all. The idea of multiverses to explain the fine-tuning has been known as the “last refuge of the agnostic”. But let us assume that it is true, that there is an infinity of universes, and that our universe is an inevitable result of chance at work – where does that get us?

First, we are reminded of the theory of evolution. We have no difficulty in reconciling our belief in God as creator with evolution in which myriads of tiny chances, inevitably filtered by fitness to survive, develop into higher forms of life. God is not some sort of inventive superman who performs in the same sort of way as we do – but at an infinitely higher level. He transcends the universe; his creative action is utterly beyond our ken. If we use terms like “designer” it is only because the human mind and human vocabulary has no further reach. Our descriptions are only useful if we always bear in mind their gross inadequacy.

Similarly, if all the physical laws had been explained and proved (known as the Grand Theory of Everything) – which is a million miles from the case – our understanding of the actions of God would not be one whit greater: his existence and his actions are of a different order.

Most particularly it would not touch the question of how something existing comes out from nothing. That is a question which science cannot answer, and will never answer, because nothingness is not within its domain. Hawking apparently does not address this question – which is the true and ultimate Theory of Everything. But what philosophy can teach us is that neither he, nor you, nor I will ever explain creation, except through faith.

Of course we haven’t yet studied the major natural law problem, but this Blog is never afraid to tackle the most controversial topics. I write of a flagrant breach of the natural law which is extremely common. Indeed the Pope himself is guilty of it.

Why do a large number of males, indeed a majority in western countries, deliberately remove their secondary sexual characteristics? That is, why do they shave off their beards?

On a prima facie basis we must recognise that to remove such an obvious characteristic given to us by our Creator is a flagrant insult to his generosity and is clearly a perverse denial of our sexual natures. More careful examination reveals that the mutilation involved is, as the theologians say, intrinsice malum – and no circumstances whatsoever, except a secondary effect resulting from extreme medical necessity — can justify it.

Not that I am the first to draw attention to this neglected area of morality. The Albany Argus of 1855 was clear that removing beards was a violation of the laws of nature. It contradicted the purpose of a beard which is clearly to keep the face and throat warm. Shaving involves wasting some 40 inches of hair a year, and – over a lifetime – using up a solid three month’s worth of effort. It is, the Argus said, a “barbarous practice” quite unsuited to modern man.

You may think the issue of beards is trivial, but in fact the instinctive response to facial hair lies deep in the human psyche. While the most respectable and wise have worn beards, they nevertheless constitute a threat to those whom I may charitably call “would-be eunuchs”.

You will recall (if only because it has recently been revived) the 1960s musical, Hair. Its significance lay in the fact that the new, questioning – and so threatening – generation majored on the growth of long hair and beards. They were a sexual threat.

I worked for many years for a large international financial company, and, even as late as the ‘90s, my UK boss told me that the international powers that be had always held back my promotion on the grounds that my beard gave the wrong image.

I have been fortunate in my women friends, and I enjoy the proximity of the fair. So I had the opportunity to observe what happened when I grew a beard in middle life – a grizzled version of which is still with me today. About half my women friends retreated to a safer distance, while the other half came in closer. The contrast was most marked. But I suppose the epitome came when I asked my wife whether or not she liked my beard. She answered: “It’s like committing adultery, without all the hassle.”

The beard stays on.

It is over two years since I wrote in general terms about the concept of the natural law (July 4 2008) but some recent correspondence in this paper suggests that there are certain aspects which could profitably be revisited. I have in mind, simply as examples, letters from Simon Reilly and Hugh Dwan (July 30).

Mr Reilly tells us that, being written in the heart of man, natural law is not subject to change and is self-evident. This, as a broad statement, is unexceptionable but, without refinement, it can lead to misunderstanding – and so wrong inferences. While it is certainly true of the major principles such as that the good should be done and evil avoided, that injustice is wrong, that moral principles are universally applicable – and so on, it is not so when judging the application of the more detailed tenets.

Since such tenets are derived from the circumstances of human nature, change is always possible. For example, the human reproductive system evolved to favour frequent pregnancies to cope with high early mortality. Such fertility would now be unsustainable, so natural family planning, which would formerly have been condemned, has become virtuous. Similarly, our relatively recent ability to donate a kidney to someone in need is seen as an act of love and not prohibited “mutilation”, as our earlier understanding would have judged it.

A second factor can be new knowledge. And, in the 19th century – when the microscope corrected our Aristotelean understanding of conception – the moral status of early abortion was changed correspondingly. Nowadays we realise at an increasing depth the interfusion between the psychological and biological elements in the human being. In the light of this knowledge we can see the potential inadequacy of absolute moral dicta based on biological phenomena. We might note, as a minor example of this approach, that one may, in justified cases, deceive but that telling an actual lie is held, “by its very nature”, to be always wrong because it violates the purpose of speech.

This is not to suggest that the inferences which may be drawn from the biological nature of human acts are irrelevant to natural law decisions, but rather that they should be part of the evidence to be weighed rather than the final arbiter.

That such tenets are not always self-evident can be illustrated by many examples. So I just choose some well-known ones.

It was not evident to the Church that everyone had a natural law right to freedom of religious conscience and practice. So Vatican II and the teaching of John XXIII corrected a misapprehension of centuries. And corrected it so effectively that Pope John Paul was able to say, with a straight face, that the Holy See “has always been vigorous in defending freedom of conscience and religious liberty”. I imagine that the odd heretic raised a singed eyebrow at that.

Slavery, which Pope John Paul condemned as intrinsically evil, was condoned throughout most of the Church’s history. And, if I remind you of the long history of the castration of youths for the sake of the glory of God and the Sistine choir, it is only to exemplify how some natural law applications have been far from self-evident.

We are very aware of the outstanding contemporary example of widespread episcopal collusion favouring the interests of the abuser over the rights of the abused. In rightly condemning corrupt individual priests and nuns we may forget that the real scandal lies in the institutionalised blindness to the duty owed to the victims.

Which brings me to Mr Dwan’s reminder that Pope Paul claimed that “no member of the faithful could deny the Church’s competence in her Magisterium to interpret the natural moral law”. Leaving aside what Karl Rahner described as the “many doctrines which were once universally held but have proved to be problematic or erroneous”, we are still left with analysing what is meant by interpreting the natural moral law.

For the Magisterium to elucidate and witness to the natural law and its applications in particular circumstances is of course an invaluable service. But it differs in kind from its authoritative teaching based on revelation and tradition. Since natural law is patent to reason, such interpretations must equally be patent to reason and, like any legal body interpreting a law, the reasons for any conclusions should be given. Of course an inconclusive natural law argument may well be paralleled or supplemented by Revelation or by some other factor to which the Church has privileged access – but this is not, by definition, a discernment of natural law through reason.

A straightforward example is provided by monogamous marriage. While natural law strongly supports the concept, it is accepted that reason could allow polygamy in certain unusual circumstances. Moses was not condemned for permitting it among the Jews, yet Jesus makes it clear that it was not God’s intention for the human race – clarifying the divine will through revelation.

The principles here, if not my examples, are of course related to Aquinas, whose teachings on the natural law have been seminal both in Christian and secular thinking. I would encourage anyone who wishes to look into the question more deeply to start with him and then proceed to the Catechism, in which natural law has several references. It is particularly valuable on the relationship of natural law to the divine law and also on the ease with which sin and habit can cloud our grasp of what the natural law demands. Perhaps the missing element here is that it does not clarify that sin and habit can cloud the vision of institutions as well as individuals.

Lots of opportunity to argue about this one…

So we have renewed confirmation that every human being alive today is descended from a single mother, who lived 200,000 years ago. Hallo, cousins!

The lady in question is known as mitochondrial Eve. The name comes from examining the mitochondria which are the energy factories in each human cell. Conveniently they are only inherited through the female line, and have 37 genes which rarely change. In addition they have a variable region which changes fast enough and regularly enough to time the small genetic variations which do occur.

These observations need to be matched against genetic models which use different sets of assumptions about migration, and expansion, and take into account random growth and extinction. In this study, published in the journal Theoretical Population Biology, ten different models were studied side by side – making the result the most robust and reliable to date.

Of course the genetic identification of a single ancestor does not mean that we have discovered the first woman. We know nothing about her predecessors, and it is generally thought that a number of small human populations lived in different habitats before dying out. It would appear that mitochondrial Eve mothered the only line which happened to survive.

An interesting thought strikes me. Traditional moralists have argued that there are certain extreme circumstances in which polygamy would not be forbidden by the natural law.  But polyandry is always forbidden. However, in the case of mitochondrial Eve, polyandry would certainly be beneficial in order to achieve more general genetic diversity. Indeed if there were only one woman around – and several males, polyandry would be almost inevitable. Perhaps polyandry was simply too unthinkable for the male moral theologian.

Of course this is small beer compared with a new fossil discovery, published in Nature Geoscience (also on August 17). These take us back 650 million years, and are the earliest evidence of animal body forms, somewhat like a primitive sponge – 70 million years earlier than previous evidence.

Perhaps they are our ancestors too – but this might be harder to demonstrate.

Some years ago, when I was receiving what seemed to me alarmingly large sums of money for addressing business conferences and the like, I used to teach rhetoric. We may first think of rhetoric as an art (which it is), but it is also a science, in the sense that it has procedures and techniques which can be evidenced empirically. It has been studied from at least the time of the ancient Greeks. Even Aristotle wrote a (rather tedious) book on it.

The most accessible example is “Friends, Romans, countrymen” from Act III of Julius Caesar. Ironically, we do not know whether Shakespeare himself ever experienced those heady moments of holding and controlling the feelings of a large audience. If not, it was only his genius which enabled him to exemplify rhetoric so brilliantly.

Mark Antony is addressing a lynch mob which is passionately against the assassinated Caesar. And that key first line forces them to recognise that he is one with them. We do not dislike “people like us”; it’s written in our genes. But before they can analyse that, he counters their suspicions by assuring them that he is not going to praise that vile Caesar. Nor, they discover quickly, is he going to attack their hero, Brutus. On the contrary, Brutus is an honourable man.

In fact he is so honourable that Antony is called upon to mention this several times. But each time he couples it with a fact which is incompatible with the claim of an honourable man. The compliment becomes a condemnation. Beware when your opponent assures his respect for your good faith.

But since I can only exemplify, I move on to the point where Antony is overcome by his depth of feeling: “Bear with me; my heart is in the coffin there with Caesar, and I must pause till it come back to me.” You can almost hear the crowd gulping in emotional sympathy, just as we do when we hear an appeal from a parent on the television. And on some occasions it comes from the very parent who has done the dirty deed. Antony times it to perfection. During the space he has created with his crocodile tears the crowd begins to wonder whether he has a point.

And then he strikes. He reveals that he holds Caesar’s will in his hand, but he does not intend to read it although it is so generous to them that they would kiss Caesar’s wounds in gratitude if they heard it. And predictably they insist, they implore, they demand that he should do so. But to refuse to read the will because its generosity might inflame them is high-level provocation, and Antony sustains it.

Instead, he asks their permission (for he is of course no more than their servant) to show them the body of Caesar, wound by wound. “If you have tears prepare to shed them now.” An appropriate visual aid can be invaluable for dramatic and persuasive effect. I always look for an opportunity to use one, but I rarely have to hand a bloodstained corpse. No wonder he is able to say: “O, now you weep, and I perceive you feel the dint of pity.”

The crowd is so enraged it is on the point of riot. They have even forgotten the existence of the will. But Antony wants a rebellion, not an episode of temporary vandalism. He must push the message fully home. He reads them the will and the public benefits it contains. And the mob rushes off intent on destruction. While Antony, presumably with a little self satisfied dimple in his cheek, says: “Now let it work; mischief, thou art afoot.”

Was Mark Antony insincere? At a deeper level we have no reason to doubt his love for Caesar, and his determination that his treacherous assassins should be punished. And if he sees that a resulting coup will create a new regime in which he will be a leading participant, that is hardly surprising.

But the speech itself is a brilliant exercise in persuasive communication; and his last line would show that, even if it were not obvious from the context. And yet he has the nerve to say: “I am no orator as Brutus is; but, as you know me all, a plain, blunt man.” What a decent chap! No wonder he gets later to rule Egypt from Cleopatra’s bed – even if the long-term outcome proved unsatisfactory.

We have at least two considerations to reflect on here. The first is to consider whether good rhetoric is intrinsically dishonest. And that analysis might start by investigating the elements of rhetoric which most of us use naturally.

If you have ever smiled at someone in order to get good service, that’s rhetoric. If you have ever said “thank you” when you didn’t mean it, that’s rhetoric. If you have ever chosen your words, or the order of your words, to give a specific impact to your communication, that’s rhetoric. And it can prove dangerous when your public remark is belied by your private views – as many politicians have had cause to discover. As did Tony Hayward, chief executive of BP, when he unwarily said: “I want my life back.”

The second is to be on guard against the rhetoric we hear – from the political broadcast to a Science and Faith column to a papal statement. Again, I would not suggest the Pope was ever insincere, but his addresses are constructed to give a particular effect, and we need to know how our susceptibilities are being addressed. I bear in mind that his hero, Socrates, continually championed the truth while using the most skilful rhetoric with which to bolster his, often doubtful, arguments.

Is rhetoric simply a form of manipulation? Is it the duty of the Christian always to speak plainly, and from the heart? And how would our social life change if that were so?

Here’s a problem – and a solution.

A recent study in the August issue of the British Journal of Urology reported that almost two thirds of women reported sexual dysfunction. Six key areas were noted: lack of desire, arousal issues, lack of lubrication, lack of orgasm, lack of satisfaction and/or pain during intercourse.

These problems strongly relate to age. For example, lack of desire was reported by 48% (44%) of women in the 31 to 45 age group. And by 65% (48%) of women in the 46 - 57 age group. The figures in brackets refer to difficulties in achieving orgasm. By the age of 70, lack of desire, satisfaction and orgasm is around the 90% mark.

The sample was large enough to give significant results, but the participants were all attenders at a urology (trouble with the waterworks) clinic, which may mean that they were untypical. However the results correlated well with a Turkish study suggesting that the prevalence of female sexual dysfunction, and its relationship to age, is biological rather than sociological. You can read a fuller summary here.

Does this have any special significance for us? Perhaps not – unless one considers the evidence that women tend to be more sexually interested around the time of ovulation. Since this is the time when sexual congress is ruled out in natural family planning the best chance for women prone to sexual disorders to promote the relationship through satisfying sexual connection has to be eschewed.

However, take heart. Another very recent study tells us that women have a tendency to be more erotically aroused by men wearing red garments, in preference to any other colour. So the whole problem might be solved by the purchase of a pair of bright red pajamas. Good luck!

Bless me, readers, for I have sinned. For some time now I have been aware of an important moral question – which could disturb a number of people. In fact it disturbed me, although for reasons of age it has no practical consequences. But I wanted to avoid examining the details; I was, as Cardinal Ratzinger (and St Paul) would say, not listening to the voice of God. I knew that, if I listened, I should have to write. And so, belatedly, I do – and at the urging of a regular Second Sight Blog contributor.

We all know that a large proportion of Catholic laity, and indeed clergy, reject or at least have serious doubts about the Church’s unqualified condemnation of contraception. I don’t want to discuss that question but I do want to examine the different types of contraception which might be used. I am speaking primarily about the long-term pill, the intrauterine device (IUD) and barrier contraceptives. I will give you a reference to more detailed information below. But here I summarise.

I hold, but will not argue in detail here, that, at conception a new and separate human being is formed. It contains full DNA instructions from its parents, and proceeds to develop towards maturity according to these instructions. The development is gradual and continuous: no particular incident, such as the implantation of the conceptus in the womb, is more than just a necessary stage in the process. This is in fact the Church’s understanding, but I would defend it independently of ecclesiastical fiat.

When the Pill was introduced in the early 1960s it contained two hormones: oestrogen and progesterone. It was intended to be, and was seen as, a reliable method of preventing ovulation. But it proved to have a number of side effects, and prospective side effects – and this led to a modification of the formula in the direction of lessening the oestrogen. And nowadays we also have the progesterone-only pill. Such a pill can work by inhibiting ovulation, or by preventing conception by changing the rate of motility, in both directions, in the fallopian tube. These are contraceptive effects. But its fail-safe effect is abortifacient. It prevents the conceptus from implanting in the womb, and thus it is passed, unnoticed, with the next period. The statistical evidence is that, for a sexually active woman, a live conceptus would be aborted on two occasions over 15 years with the oestrogen/progesterone pill, and one abortion a year with a progesterone-only pill.

The IUD, once the early side effects had been controlled, became – on the face of it – the perfect contraceptive. It could remain inserted for long periods of time, but could be quickly and conveniently removed. I won’t detail the types here, but it operates as a contraceptive by changing motility in the fallopian tube and has a spermicidal effect. But its major effect (through its structure which in some types is enhanced through hormones) is to make the lining of the womb hostile to any further foreign body. Quite simply, it causes an abortion by preventing the conceptus from implantation, and so developing further.

It is not my business to tell anyone how to behave but I would suggest that it is hard to speak of a formed conscience without studying this question. I would recommend starting with a major document to which a blog contributor directed me. And, for obvious reasons, I would value any comments on my technical description, and the inferences I draw from this – particularly from those who are experts in either or both aspects.

It may seem strange to list alternatives in an area which is under an interdict, but in the interest, at least, of lessening evil I should do so. Natural family planning, which is not a contraceptive but a contraceptive procedure, has strangely mutated in the Church’s eyes from vice to virtue; it must come first. I am well aware of its good and bad psychological side effects for some, and its impracticability in certain marital circumstances. It could also be an irresponsible, and therefore unloving, option for some.

Barrier contraceptives, if not infallible, are pretty reliable in principle – and failures do not cause abortions. Then there is permanent sterilisation for either sex. On the horizon is the male pill, which operates by removing a protein needed for the seed to become fertile. It has no abortifacient properties, and, as yet, no side effects are apparent. But it is not yet thoroughly tested and is unlikely to be available for three years or more. Recent work has discovered a key gene for sperm production which has remained unchanged for 600 million years, and is present in virtually all animals. This may prove another route.

None of these latter methods will be acceptable to the Church for the usual reasons. Nevertheless, methods of family limitation are common throughout Catholic populations. We can, at least, avoid – and teach others to avoid – those which work by abortion.

Nor do I forget that moral theologians were happy when the direct purpose of the Pill was to regularise cycles, etc. In such cases the suspension of ovulation was seen as an acceptable, if unwanted, side effect. (Although I understand that there was a sharp increase in women requesting treatment for such conditions following Humanae Vitae. I wonder why.) But the intended effect and the side effect must be judged as proportionate. Is the risk of abortion too great to justify the therapeutic usage of the Pill? That question needs more discussion.

I would like to thank several blog contributors whose thoughts and expertise have helped this column to be a co-operative feature.

(This is a copy of the link above for those who prefer to paste into a browser: http://www.dialoguedynamics.com/content/learning-forum/interviews-and-articles/article/mons-jacques-suaudeau-on-the-link)

I want to raise the topic of sex education on the Blog rather than in the CH, because I know much more about the questions than I do about the answers.

First, I should confess that I only have the most anecdotal knowledge of what material is currently being used by Catholic schools – and how it is taught. As a grandparent it has not been my duty to interrogate any schools, but any of you who have your own children at school should know what is being done in their case. And if you don’t know, I am inclined to ask you why you have not felt it your duty to find out. As we have discovered through the Blog some very strange approaches have been used in the past. This was the link

Equally I have seen highly orthodox material written in a way which shows no understanding of the Teflon coating of the adolescent mind, when it is being taught material which does not relate to their experience.

In broad terms I imagine that we want our children to have a good understanding of sexuality; to have taken aboard that its full expression is reserved to the sacrament of marriage; to have understood the relationship between sexual expression as a consummation of committed love, and formed around its purpose of procreation.

We will want them to know that sexuality is a gift from God, and so essentially good. Yet they must realise that there are many ways in which it is possible to misuse it. But this should not lead to an association of sexual expression with guilt or shame.

At a more practical level they must realise that a misuse of sexuality can lead to great emotional harm and also to the outcome of disease or pregnancy. Both or either of these can have long term consequences on their own life or on the lives of other people.

But we have to be realistic about this. The facts appear to be that many Catholic children pick up quite different ideas, or, if they accept them in principle, they fall away very quickly in practice. And this is not surprising. As my granddaughter, when aged 15, said to me: “Most women don’t get married until they’re twice my age. It’s a bit much to ask me to be celibate for 15 years.” I could see her point. And since I can’t be theoretical about my own granddaughter I find myself very concerned that she avoids the worst outcomes of “unsafe” sex, because there is a high probability that she, like most of us, will not live her Catholic life to perfection. How should this be handled without conveying the impression that I think it probable that she will transgress, and that I will understand, and so condone? (Of course it’s not my direct problem – she has perfectly good parents of her own; I use this as an illustration.)

This is by no means the first time I have considered the problem. Back in 1972 I wrote (with my wife) a 50 page pamphlet called Choices in Sex. Since young people, even at that time, appeared to ignore lectures in orthodoxy, we presented it in a way which was designed to get them thinking about the issues – partly through having correct information and partly through raising questions for them to consider and internalise.

The pamphlet received an Imprimatur, but this was withdrawn at the imprecation of a group of conservative clergy. And, perhaps not surprisingly, there was trouble with the Holy Office. Ironically one paragraph which they chose to castigate had in effect been dictated to us by an archbishop in good standing. We were styled as “corrupters of youth” in the Irish press which – given that this was the heyday in Ireland of clerical paedophilia, and institutionalised cruelty by Catholic nuns – seems to us in retrospect to be something of a sick joke.

So it would seem that straight, orthodox teaching makes no imprint on the youthful mind, or contaminates it with a sense of guilt. Accepting youth as it is, and not as perhaps it should be, and teaching them how to navigate the sexual jungle only encourages them towards sin. Giving the young the hard facts – psychological, biological, social and spiritual – and helping them to think about how they should best behave, while respecting their decisions, is corrupting.

So what are your children, or the children of your Catholic friends, getting from the Catholic school and their parents? How do you think sexual education should be done?

Imagine that you are watching a short video clip in which you are asked to count how many times a particular incident occurs. Easy enough. But now imagine that at one point someone in a gorilla suit walks across the screen and looks you straight in the eye. Would you notice it? Apparently around half the watchers don’t. This exercise has been carried out dozens of times, using people of different psychological profiles, and the results are always approximately the same.

The reason lies in our faculty for filtering out information which may distract us from the task in hand - in this case focusing on the incidents that have to be counted. It is easy to recognise the value of this focusing faculty. Many years ago, when the children were babies, I developed the capacity to sleep straight through their noises at night. On the grounds of my inability to breastfeed I took the view that this was their mother’s work. Typical man, you might say. But when my wife had to be away for a few days, my hearing became so acute that I could be woken by the slightest undue noise from the nursery.
So we are reminded that all our experiences are ultimately subjective. What we notice, what we remember: what we decide is mediated to us through various filters. We may have the impression that we are looking at reality but in truth we are only looking at what our mind, tutored by our innate disposition, our lifetime experiences and our chosen focuses is able to recognise.

We know about some of the irrational influences which affect us. For example, I am aware that we tend to attribute virtue to physically attractive people. But how many juries, who are less likely to convict an attractive person, and to award them higher damages, are aware of the injustice they perpetrate? And they are unlikely to be aware of how easy it is for a police interrogator to turn a witness’s uncertain and tentative evidence into sworn certainty (and genuinely experienced as such) by the time they reach the box.

What is your attitude towards money? You may range from keeping good reserves towards a rainy day to spending the maximum (or more) as soon as you hear the coins clink. You may think that your approach is rational and well thought-out. But it could depend on whether your are inclined to optimism or pessimism, or on earlier experiences - particularly as a child. And your spouse may take a different view: does that make for balance or antagonism?

No doubt many readers will have interviewed candidates for a job. How likely are you to make a good judgment of your applicant’s success? We must suppose it will be reasonably sound, or why interview? In fact on a scale from zero (completely random) to 10 (always right), the average correct judgment was between one and two.

There is strong evidence that most interview decisions are made within the first five minutes, and any contrary evidence is, like the gorilla, simply ignored. You will see tall people as more authoritative (and this can be effective throughout a whole career). A BBC accent will be seen as a sign of competence in one culture, and as a sign of effete impracticality in another. In many areas of industry a beard can be a problem; they will use your brains but the boardroom is a step too far for such eccentricity. The biggest quality to bring as a candidate is to be likeable to the interviewer. Provided that you have the essential qualifications that will be the decisive factor.
Of course, the interviewers may have been rather thick. But Professor Eysenk persuaded the matron at a London teaching hospital to give up interviewing, and to select senior nurses simply on paper evidence of the necessary (high) qualifications and proven work record. Her selection accuracy went up substantially. Overwhelming evidence shows that selection interviews are actually counterproductive. Of course no one believes that, but it remains true.

How do you judge risk? If I asked you to rate the safety of say bicycling, flying, walking, car, or train in order of deaths per mile travelled you might well get the order right. But you might not know that walking and cycling are about the same risk (about a third of the risk of motorcycling). The car risk is less than a tenth of the cycling risk but 25 times the risk of the train; and the air risk is so low that it practically falls off the chart. We are likely to be influenced by publicity given to big incidents, and certainly by our own experience or that of people close to us. Just driving past an accident, ambulance and all, may make us more careful. But none of this affects the actual probabilities. I break off at this point to nip out to visit my wife in hospital, remembering that, measured by deaths, hospital beds are a dangerous environment.

And I am back, reflecting on the dangers of unconscious factors in our decisions. I could have filled several columns with further, well-investigated, examples. I believe profoundly in free will but how can I judge that I am free in any specific decision? As it happens I have kept records of such studies over some 20 years, and wrote a book largely devoted to them. So it is likely that I know more about the effects of our unconscious on our freedom than most people have had the opportunity to study. And I am still foxed.

What effect does this have on our quest of virtue or for our capacity for sin? How well trained are our spiritual adviser or our confessors in such matters? Share your ideas with us.

We have, during this year, discussed whether the Neanderthals, despite not being our direct ancestors, could plausibly have immortal souls. This time, some new discoveries are the occasion of looking at homo antecessor – an extinct species thought to have been present in Europe about a million years ago.

The most northerly point which we believe that they reached is Happisburgh in Norfolk, not far from Norwich. The site is an early course of the Thames, now revealed by erosion. At that time of course England was joined to continental Europe, and a walk directly eastward would take one to the area of modern Amsterdam. If you know the loucher parts of Amsterdam you might well reflect on the degree of progress man has or hasn’t, made over the last million years.

No direct Antecessor fossils have been foundon the site, and we do not know whether they died out there or retreated to warmer southern climates: the winters were very harsh. Later settlements at other sites have been found in Europe, but during a time when the climate was milder.

Antecessor had a somewhat smaller brain than modern humans, but the Norfolk finding demonstrates that they were manufacturers of sophisticated stone tools and certainly hunters. It is thought likely that they made clothing from animal skins and were capable of using fire. Without these skills they would hardly have survived at all. Indeed the experts had previously found it hard to believe that survival would be possible that far north.

I have not attempted to write in greater detail because those who need this might like to visit the site at Nature, where there is a good video and a very clear explanatory article: http://www.nature.com/nature/index.html There is also a good Wiki piece on homo antecessor, which already writes about the latest finds.

And we are left with the old question of the point at which the homo line was immortally ensouled. We know when it is night, we know when it is day – it’s twilight which cases the problem. So we have evidence of behaviour, both in Antecessor and Neanderthal, which suggests the presence of the unique powers through which we recognise the soul. But the evidence appears gradually, while a human soul either is or isn’t present. I would not care to come down on one side or the other.