Friday, February 22, 2013

A couple of things to listen to

Audible have brought out an audiobook version of the Genesis of Science.  This is very much a personal project of the narrator Rich Germaine, so I am very grateful to him for producing it.  Unfortunately, for licensing reasons, this version isn't available outside the US.

Also, I've recorded the Faith and Life Lecture that I was privileged to give at St Philip the Deacon Lutheran Church in Minneapolis last November (this was my first attempt at recording straight to tape, so I hope it sounds OK).  You can listen to it and all the other Faith and Life Lectures at their website.

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Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Birkbeck College, University of London

Very sorry to spam our own blog, but if any readers are graduates of Birkbeck College, please could they get in touch.  For those unhappy enough not to have studied there, Birkbeck is a constituent college of the University of London and specialises in part time courses and evening classes.  I took my MA in Historical Research there before moving to Cambridge for my PhD.

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Sunday, February 03, 2013

Martyred in the USSR


Like many conservatives, I get annoyed at the free pass that the Soviet Union often gets in the history of 20th century tyranny.  Students think nothing of having a poster of Stalin on their walls.  And as I have blogged before, Stalinist academics somehow become national treasures.  A decade ago, a woman who delivered our nuclear secrets to the Kremlin was let off on the grounds she was getting on a bit.

So, it is good to note that people are still trying to put the record straight.  In particular, work is ongoing on a new film about the persecution of people of faith in the USSR.  The atheism of the communist system is an embarrassment for modern secularists which they deal with in various ways.  But most commonly, they just ignore it.  It is unlikely that atheism per se made the USSR even more murderous than it would have been anyway.  But there is little doubt that it did lead the communists to persecute believers simple because they were believers in a way that is little appreciated today.  

The film is called Martyred in the USSR and if you think it is a worthwhile project, you can find more details here (note the film sampler is pretty gruesome).


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