Remembrance Sunday and the
C of E
Commonwealth War Grave - Jewish
cc-by-sa/2.0 -
©
Evelyn Simak -
geograph.org.uk/p/5706944
Commonwealth war grave - Christian
'The Church' is specifically the Church of
England, which has a special status in Remembrance Day commemorations. The
Church of England's present role in the commemorations is indefensible, I
argue. I begin with an objection based on a clear-cut principle and then
give an objection of wider scope. See also the section on the
Bishop of Sheffield on this page, which contains
a
brief summary of my reasons for criticizing the Church of England's role in
Remembrance Sunday commemorations.
The work of the Commonwealth War Graves
Commission is beyond praise. The contribution of Fabian Ware, who
founded the Commission in 1917, is beyond praise. At the cemeteries of the Commission I've visited in
Belgium and France, I've experienced the immense dignity and calm of these
places, the sobering and harrowing impact of these places. Each marked grave
has a headstone, which has a national emblem or regimental badge, and the
rank, name, unit, date of death and age of each casualty, with a personal
dedication chosen by relatives. The headstone includes a religious symbol,
but not in the case of known atheists. In the
vast majority of cases the symbol is the Christian cross, but not for followers of other religions, such as the Jewish
man whose headstone is shown above, Of course, the fact that a
headstone has the Christian cross is no evidence that the man who gave his
life was a believing Christian. When
asked 'What religion are you?' it was usual to answer 'C of E,' Church of
England.
The Commonwealth War Graves
Commission didn't assume, then, that everyone who made this sacrifice was a
Christian and has made an attempt to distinguish between Christian - at
least nominal Christians - and believers in other religions, or nominal
believers in other religions, as well as people who clearly had no religious
beliefs.
The Lions of the Great War statue in Smethwick,
Birmingham (which was vandalised just days after it was unveiled) is one of
a number of similar monuments. The statue shows a Sikh soldier. Birmingham
City Council: the statue 'honours the sacrifices made by South Asian service
personnel of all faiths from the Indian subcontinent who fought for Britain
in the First World War and subsequent conflicts.'
But in services
throughout the country, on remembrance Sunday, not the least attempt is made
to distinguish between Christians and non-Christians. When those present are
expected to give the responses, what are people who disagree with Christian
theology or who have no interest in it to do? What are followers of other
religions to do? Stay silent? Mumble
insincerely? Asking people or expecting people to show belief when they have
no belief shouldn't possibly be expected. The Church of England may have its
reasons for expecting people to take part in a Christian service even when
they have no belief in Christianity, or to become silent witnesses in these
parts of the commemorations, by far the larger part of the commemorations,
in general. This is a marginal institution now, and so it may well try to
maintain any influence it has, such as this influence over the people
gathered to remember the fallen.
This is an Order of Service for Remembrance Sunday:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/
hi/pdfs/26_08_05_order_of_service.pdf
It contains this:
' ... through Jesus Christ our risen Redeemer'
and this bit of Trinitarian theology:
'
And the blessing of God Almighty,
Father, Son and Holy Spirit be with you all
and remain with you always.'
What are the Unitarians, the Jews,
the Moslems, the agnostics and the atheists who are present to make of
this? Is this an event they can witness and take part in wholeheartedly?
Any Anglicans present who are Conservative Evangelicals will have a
their own interpretation of the words, 'through Jesus Christ our risen
Redeemer.' For them, anyone who rejects the risen Redeemer has no hope
of salvation. In the past, Christianity was a hellfire religion, almost
completely so. That influence has waned, but not nearly so much amongst
Conservative Evangelicals. The Jews and the atheists who are buried in
the graves of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission are excluded from
salvation. They didn't accept 'Jesus Christ our risen Redeemer.' The
status of the nominal Church of England members and the Roman Catholics
is presumably much the same. I'm very familiar with the repulsive
theology but even so, I'll be asking for clarification from Conservative
Evangelicals and others.
If, as I argue, Services of Remembrance on Remembrance Sunday - the ones
held in the open air, attended by members of the public with widely
varying views on religion, not, of course, the services held in Churches
- are indefensible in their present form, what can replace them? This
involves difficulties, but they can be addressed. There can be
continuity with the past. Very often, a band takes part in the event and
I see no objection to the continuing playing of such resonant pieces as
'O God our help in ages past' and 'Abide with me,' but without the
words. 'Nimrod,' from Elgar's Enigma Variations, is often played at
Remembrance Sunday events and, of course, has no words, only its intense
beauty.
Alternatively, a choir could be present to sing the words of a hymn-
just so long as the public isn't expected to sing the words as well. The
music is far more important than the words to all but committed
Christians, and often, far more important to committed Christians as
well.
In the Christmas season, I've listened to carols very, very often -
the very popular carols and such carols as 'In dulci jubilo,' 'Es ist
ein Ros ensprungen' and 'Adam lay y-bounden.' And, of course, Bach's
Christmas Oratorio. Again, the music is far more important than the
words to most people.
Remembrance Day commemorations without the involvement of the
Church of England would be shorter than before, but the commemorations
could be extended. Consideration could be given to commemorating the
service of men and women in the British Armed Forces directly after the
commemoration of those who fell in previous conflicts. At present, Armed
Forces Day is held in late June. Moving these event from June to
Remembrance Sunday would make sense. Very often, members of the armed
forces attend Remembrance Sunday events and they would obviously take
part in the events to commemorate the service of present day members.
The general public would be free to attend the earlier part, the
commemoration of the fallen or the later part, the commemoration of the
present day Armed Forces, or both parts.
Christian believers would, of course, be free to attend a religious
service later in the day. Every year, at Endcliffe Park in Sheffield, a
wreath laying ceremony is held to commemorate the crew of the American
bomber Mi Amigo which crashed in the park on February 22, 1944. The
ceremony is held on the Sunday nearest to February 22. A little later, a
service takes place at St Augustine's Church, which is not far from the
crash site. I attend the ceremony, but not the Church service, as I'm
not a Christian believer. This is the pattern which should be followed.
A replacement for the present Remembrance Sunday services (again, the
ones attended by the general public, not the ones in Churches) is
essential, overdue. On November 11, 2018, I attended a
Remembrance Sunday service in a nearby park, a smaller event than the
one I usually attend, in Sheffield city centre. As always, I found the
religiosity dispiriting, but this year more than ever. In this year
which marked the centenary of the ending of the First World War, there
had been the chance to find out so much more about the soldiers, sailors
and airmen who took part in this war, but for most of the time, the
stress was not upon human life but upon theology and ecclesiastical
generalities. Not in evidence at all was any recognition of
complexities, of harshness, the realities which historians have probed.
The achievement of historians who have written about the First World War
deserves to be much more widely recognized. Their achievement is on a
very high level, so often - magnificent. A Remembrance Day event isn't a
suitable venue for exploring these complexities, but a Remembrance Day
event isn't the place for a clergyman to give his own partial
interpretation of historical events, presenting it as obvious or
indisputable fact.
This is what the clergyman did at the event I attended. In his address, he claimed that when the guns fell
silent, peace had replaced war. This is perfectly true. Peace did
replace war, for the time being. But he also claimed that hope had
replaced 'futility.' This is surely the claim that the First World War
had been a futile war. Many historians have contested this claim and
have given arguments and evidence that the claim is mistaken.
In the booklet which gives the format of the service and the text which
forms the main component of the service, the words of the Reverend Canon
are often followed by the response expected of the public: in bold
print.
Examples from the booklet:
After each prayer the following being [sic - insufficient care was given
to proof-reading] will be used.
Officiant Lord, in your mercy.
All
hear our prayer
So, people at the commemoration who never pray are expected to make an
exception now and to offer a prayer, with the expectation that God will
hear the prayer?
Later:
Officiant Will you seek to heal the wounds of war?
All
We will
The officiant, like most of those attending, or perhaps all of them, has
no way of healing the wounds of war.
Officiant Will you work for a just future for all humanity?
All
We will.
Any idea that injustices in vile, corrupt states - or injustices in
liberal, enlightened states can be ended, so that all humanity has a
just future, is utopian, impossible, deluded. Any idea that people
attending the service should be expected to give assent to the notion is
ridiculous.
The service included five 'Regimental Collects,' not delivered by the
officiant. This is the first of them, the prayer for the York and
Lancaster Regiment (the mangled opening is another instance of poor
proof-reading:
'Almighty God who cans't save by many or by few and dost bid us to
endure to the end that we might be saved, strengthen we pray thee, The
York and Lancaster Regiment, that, as our perseverance has not been
found wanting in battle, so we may be blessed in enduring all
temptations, and at length, receive the crown of life, through Jesus
Christ our Lord.
All Amen.
This is a prayer which amongst other things asks God to strengthen The
York and Lancaster Regiment. Our national defences are badly in need of
strengthening. There are insufficient recruits, there's insufficient
funding, the armed forces aren't given the resources to meet the very
serious challenges they face. National defences are strengthened by
well-known means, finding more recruits (recently, the decision has been
taken to find recruits from other countries) by changes to the national
finances, and the rest. Is it worth asking God to strengthen the
national defences? Surely not, and it's no more worthwhile to ask God to
strengthen the York and Lancaster Regiment.
The Collect makes clear reference to the Christian doctrine of
salvation: ' ... that we might be saved.' This is an aspect of Christian
doctrine which I've discussed in other places. Which people, according
to the officiant, according to Justin Welby, to name just two people,
are saved? What are the criteria? The evangelical answer is that very
restrictive. The saved are far fewer in number than the damned.
I do, though, commend the last paragraph of the text in the booklet and
specifically the last sentence:
'Lest we forget. The First World War came to an end at 11 am on 11th
November 1918. The Second World War ended on 8th May (Europe) and 15th
August 1945 (Far East.) Let us also remember all the members of the
British Forces who are currently deployed in operations, world-wide.
As I've explained, a dual commemoration, of the present-day service of
the British armed forces after a commemoration of those who have fallen
in war, seems to me to be a promising development.
Not all the prayers used in the service are given in the booklet. There
was, for example, a prayer for our political leaders, asking God to
grant them 'wisdom.' Will our political system be strengthened in the
least by asking God to grant wisdom to Theresa May (who is a Christian.)
Would it help Jeremy Corbyn if prayers are offered to God to grant him
wisdom as well? The complexities and realities of politics are far away
in this mechanical, routine exercise of prayer and response. To expect
the public to take part in the charade is nonsensical.
The Church of England may well expect, or hope, that some of the people
who attend a Remembrance Day service and who aren't church goers will go
on to become church goers. It would be unfair to claim that this would
be the primary motivation of the Church. In individual cases, this may
happen, but far more likely is this outcome: people who attend who have
lost a relative in a war, people who have a more general interest in the
enormity of the major conflicts, the enormity of the losses, the
devastating effects of much smaller conflicts, will be dismayed and
deterred by the nature of the service, led by the clergy, with public
activity confined to the responses to the prayers of the clergy, the
saying of the Lord's Prayer, and, of course, the singing of hymns. This
is an utterly inadequate way to respond to the upsurge in public
interest occasioned by this Centenary.
The Menin Gate Memorial at Ieper / Ypres recording the names of 54
389 officers and men from United Kingdom and Commonwealth Forces who died in
the Ypres salient before 16 August 1917 and who have no known grave.
The Conservative Evangelical attitude to most of the names here is
utterly repulsive, unless these Conservative Evangelicals happen to believe
that there's no penalty at all attached to disbelief in Jesus Christ as
Redeemer or lack of interest in Jesus Christ as Redeemer. Meanwhile, more
liberal Anglicans can try explaining what possible disadvantages there can
be to being a Jew or an agnostic or an atheist.
In all this, I must stress, I feel I've far more in common with
Christians who share my view of the importance of remembrance than
with those non-Christians who claim that wearing a poppy is 'glorifying
war.' Christians and non-Christians can share a common understanding.
There are vast numbers of Christians whose war service has been
outstanding. One of them is a former Archbishop of Canterbury, Robert
Runcie, who won the Military Cross for his acts of courage. He was
amongst the first British soldiers to enter Bergen-Belsen concentration
camp at its liberation by the British army.
Dan Snow, 'Remembrance Sunday should not be
dominated by religion.'
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/nov/06/remembrance-sunday-lack-of-secular-presence
'After the first world war the Cenotaph was designed by Edwin Lutyens
as a secular memorial because the war dead were from a dizzying array of
peoples, nations and creeds. The prime minister, David Lloyd George, backed
him up. He insisted on a secular monument and he rejected an alternative
proposal for a huge cross at Admiralty Arch. The government also rejected
Church of England proposals that it should have Christian inscriptions on it
or a cross on top of it. At its dedication on 11 November 1919, the King
simply unveiled it, after which were two minutes silence. Many in the church
were appalled by the lack of ritual.
'The Cenotaph is a state monument. It is not a religious one. About
26,000 serving members of the armed forces today describe themselves as
having no religion, which makes the non-religious the second-largest belief
group (after Christianity). We cannot continue to exclude a representative
of these serving men and women, not to mention the tens of thousands of
people of no religion who served in the world wars – men such as my grandpa,
and many of his comrades.
'Remembrance is one of our most important duties as citizens. The act
itself must reflect changing times. The event at the Cenotaph every November
must feel as relevant and profound today as it was when it was first
conceived. It must reflect the society it serves.'
St Paul's Cathedral:
thinking and faith
Martin Firrell is an artist, or claims to be an artist,
and is obviously regarded as an artist by the people at St Paul's Cathedral,
which supported his work financially and gave him the use of their
dome. Above, A Martin Firrell Enhanced General
Purpose Category Slogan for a Caring Corporate Partner and Sponsor: the
Church of England, St Paul's Branch.
St Paul is an obnoxious, repulsive, hideous propagandist,
never more so than in these famous/infamous verses (all translations from
'The Good News Bible:'
Ephesians 6:5 'Slaves,
obey your human masters with fear and trembling; and do it with a sincere
heart, as though you were serving Christ.'
Colossians 3:22 'Slaves,
obey your human masters in all things, not only when they are watching you
because you want to gain their approval; but do it with a sincere heart
because of your reverence for the Lord.'
Galatians 3:28 'So there is no
difference between Jews and Gentiles, between slaves and free people,
between men and women; you are all one in union with Christ Jesus.'
See also the sections on this page, 'For
God so loved the world ...' and 'Black Lives
Matter: Conviction and ideology.'
Sarah Mullally's interest in helping underprivileged and
marginalized people is subject to {restriction}. She doesn't have a
privileged background - she was a comprehensive school pupil and has worked
as a nurse - but now she has certain advantages. Harriet Sherwood, the
Religion correspondent of the Observer, claims that she is 'now the C of E's
most powerful ever senior female cleric.'
As I see it, she now has a privileged position in an institution which
enjoys unjustifiable privileges, the established Church, the Church of England. The Right Reverend and Right Honourable Dame Sarah Mullally
DBE (Dame of the British Empire) has a seat in the House of Lords as one of
the Lords Spiritual. There are 26 bishops who have this privileged position.
The British Humanist Association has said it's 'unacceptable' that 'the UK is
the only Western democracy to give religious representatives the automatic
right to sit in the legislature.' I agree.
On this page, I discuss in detail
another area of our national life where the Church of England has a
privileged position, as I see it - the Church's participation in Remembrance
Day services. I don't think that this can be defended, but if Dame Sarah Mullally cares to defend it, I'd be very interested to read what her defence
amounts to - and, of course, the arguments of other bishops and other clergy
in favour of the Church's participation.
There are many, many clergy and others in the Church of
England who believe that during the Eucharist, the bread is changed into the
body of Christ and the wine is converted into the blood of Christ. The
Anglo-Catholics who believe this have a doctrine of the mass which is
identical to the Roman Catholic one, or very similar to it.
The BBC documentary 'Christmas at St Paul's' explains, when the making of
the Advent wreath is shown, that the red berries are a symbol of the blood
of Christ. Most Anglicans believe that the wine of the Eucharist is a symbol
of the blood of Christ, but Anglo-Catholic believers in transubstantiation
believe that the wine actually becomes the blood of Christ.
St Paul's Cathedral is a place which Anglo-Catholics find congenial, one
with the smell of incense. The documentary mentions 'Midnight Mass.' It's
not referred to as 'Midnight Holy Communion.' It may well be that some or
many of the clergy, and the people who attend services there, believe in
these Anglo-Catholic doctrines, believe that the wafers, the thin discs of
bread which were shown in the documentary, are transformed in this way.
The Dean of St Paul's, The Very Reverend Dr David Ison
(his PhD is in early church history) is shown delivering this article of faith
early in the documentary:
'In the name of God, who has delivered us from the dominion of darkness
and made a place for us in the Kingdom of his beloved son ...'
Obvious questions could be asked about the universality of these
benefits. For Christians who ignore traditional doctrine, these benefits are
universal, for other Christians, anything but universal: loving parents,
engineers, war heroes, everyone without Christian faith remain in the
'dominion of darkness' and have no place in 'the Kingdom of his beloved
son.' What is David Ison's view, I wonder? Perhaps he could explain.
The best known Dean of St Paul's is the poet John Donne. The site
contains an extended discussion of his poem 'A Valediction forbidding
Mourning' on the page on metaphor.
The Reverend Canon Michael Hampel was Precentor of St
Paul's Cathedral at the time the film was made. He's now the Vice-Dean and
Precentor of Durham Cathedral. In the film, he sees the enormous front doors
of the Cathedral as a sign of welcome. As so often, a different
interpretation is possible. The enormous doors weren't designed to be
welcoming. This was a vast building, to me a building which is grandiose,
and small doors would have seemed ridiculously small, out of scale.
The cathedral welcomes not just
'people who are very committed to their faith and people who are not sure.'
These are 'the hesitant people on the edges of faith.' He claims that these
people are in 'the shadows.' Is this the same as the 'dominion of darkness,'
or similar to it? He may or may not have an opinion on the people who remain
on the edges of faith and never become committed to faith. Do these people
remain in the 'dominion of darkness?'
The documentary gives a great deal of time to the sacrist James Milne. A sacrist
has responsibility for ceremony, for liturgical events. This doesn't exclude
responsibility for explaining his view of Christian faith, as he sees it.
James Milne really is an instructive example of a contemporary clergyman
attuned to some contemporary norms - following these norms in such a devoted
way. His devotion isn't quite the traditional Christian
devotion. He's more interested in the cult of celebrity than in the cult of
the Virgin Mary, let's say.
The commentary of the documentary mentions the 'carol concert with
orchestra and celebrity readers ... the glitziest event in the cathedral
calendar.'
James Milne is obviously an Anglo-Catholic. He's referred to as 'Father James Milne.' 'Fr James Milne has been tasked with
recruiting the celebrity readers.' He has been 'stalking celebrities for the
past 12 weeks and his efforts have begun to pay off.'
He says, 'We have, in alphabetical order, Sheila Hancock OBE, Emily Watson
OBE.' These mentions of the Order of the British Empire are significant, surely,
and the celebrities, and the honours they've received, are mentioned in the
tones of a glutton talking about the food he's eaten.
A member of the Cathedral staff sitting by a computer points out that
'last year we had Benedict Cumbebatch - that's made me excited like for two
decades. So I'm quite a happy bunny.' Drooling over celebrities seems to be
not unknown amongst clergy and other staff, then.
Commentator: 'At the 11th hour, Fr James has a breakthrough with his 3rd
celebrity reader.'
Fr James: 'I've just heard today that Michael Palin
thinks he's free ... so hopefully all will be well.'
(Compare and contrast T S Eliot, Four Quartets, Little Gidding:
'And all shall be well and
All manner of things shall be well')
Later: 'I've just heard today that Mr Palin is able to read,
which makes me very happy.'
After this triumphant end to his search, the commentator
tells us that he can now unwind. He unwinds by turning
to the model railway set he has available
in the cathedral.
Fame and celebrity preoccupy him intensely, it's clear
(and perhaps at the expense of ordinary people). 'You
can't quite believe that you're speaking to this person
who's famous, who's a celebrity.'
I don't see any reason at all why St Paul's Cathedral
should support his infatuations and allow him to spend
so much time 'stalking' famous people. This is not just a failure on his
part but a failure in the oversight of his work, perhaps.
Of course, there's much more to the film than what I've mentioned -
everyday banter, everyday friendliness, such as the friendliness of Fr
James, who seems to be an approachable man, and everyday jobs such as sewng
and dusting and sweeping - although the everyday jobs are applied in a
setting which isn't everyday. The women who sew may be sewing the very
ornate, and, to me, very ridiculous Bishop of London's mitre, a kind of hat.
It's shown in the photograph above of Sarah Mullalley, the Bishop of London.
The things which are dusted and swept are the massive furnishings and floor
of the Cathedral. Practical thinking is applied to problems which aren't of
the usual kind at all. They have a 'practical' solution if they run out of
wafers. A priest will be on hand to consecrate more. The stonemasons
comments on pigeons, a pest to them as they are to me, are far more
comprehensible. The information about damage to the Cathedral from German
bombs during the Blitz was very interesting, and that and the information
about repair work was, to me, a welcome relief from the Christianity.
Despite the cheeriness and good humour, I was left in no doubt that the
Cathedral existed to make known Christian claims, such as the claim that
Jesus came to save us. Towards the end of the programme, there was this,
spoken by the Dean:
'Let us pray for the people he came to save.' This shows an excessive
belief in the power of prayer. Does he really believe that the act of
praying for these people will make any difference?
From the Church of England Holy Communion service:
'Hear what Saint Paul says: This saying is true,
and worthy of full acceptance,. that Christ Jesus came into the
world to save sinners.' There's more about saving sinners in the section on
this page on Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury.
My interest in the English choral tradition, above all
Christmas music, is mentioned in the section on
this page on the King's College Chapel service. It was a great pleasure to hear the singing
of the St Paul's cathedral choir.
I can't be as enthusiastic about the architecture of St Paul's as the architecture of
King's College Chapel. The interior
seems to me much less successful than the exterior.
Too much of the interior seems grandiose and ungainly, without sufficient
expanse, despite its physical dimensions.
I explain my concept of expanse, scale and detail in my page
on Design principles (the page is mainly concerned with design in gardening
but also discusses architectural design.
The detail in St Paul's cathedral is often very successful, of course.
The wood carving of Grinling Gibbons is just one example.
Above: A Martin Firrell Enhanced Pro-Radical-Feminist
False Generalization Slogan, not projected on any part of a cathedral. In
this section, I discuss some men at St Paul's Cathedral. I don't regard them
as dangerous, but I do regard them as naive.
This is an
unenhanced slogan
on the Martin Firrell
Website, www.martinfirrell.com
Embrace lesbianism and overthrow the
social order
The amazing thing is that Martin
Firrell would like companies and other institutions of the existing social
order to support him! His hypocritical
Website has a begging section:
'Whilst we value the significant support of organisations like leading
digital media companies Clear Channel and Primesight. Firmdale Hotels,
Haysmacintyre, 20th Century Fox, Lloyd's of London and Virgin Atlantic, we
still need to raise significant funds to make our public artworks possible.
'We always work collaboratively with corporate supporters, understanding
business aims and Corporate Social Responsibility policies, to create
sponsorship opportunities with lasting value and impact: Mutual benefit is
vital to sustainable partnerships.'
Even more amazing, he has found some prestigious businesses and
institutions willing to support him, amongst them the National
Gallery, St Paul's Cathedral, The Guards Chapel Wellington Barracks, The
National Theatre, St Paul's Cathedral, Clear Channel ('Leading digital media
company'), Primesight ('Leading digital media company'), Firmdale Hotels,
Haysmacintyre, 20th Century Fox and Lloyd's of London.
And this is the context for Martin Firrell's 'art work,' obviously 'a
focus for reflection, meditation and contemplation.'
From the St Paul's Website,
https://www.stpauls.co.uk/history-collections/the-collections/arts-programme
'Cathedral Art
Throughout its history, art in St Paul's Cathedral has inspired
and illuminated the Christian faith for those who visit, and
provided a focus for reflection, meditation and contemplation.
The Question Mark Inside - Martin
Firrell (2008)
What makes your life worth living? The
artist Martin Firell posed that question as part of an art work to
celebrate the three hundredth anniversary of the Cathedral.'
There are short profiles in this section of
some men at St Paul's Cathedral - ones who appeared in the BBC film
'Christmas at St Paul's.'
Credit for images of King's College Chapel above: Creative Commons
Link to licence:
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/legalcode
©
Copyright
Richard Croft and licensed for reuse under this
Creative Commons Licence
In this section, I concentrate on
the King's College Chapel carol service, its strengths, which are often
mentioned, as well as its weaknesses, which largely go unmentioned, but I comment in a few places on some other strengths and
weaknesses of King's College, and of Cambridge University.
The
English choral tradition, above all the singing of Christmas music, and
English architecture are strong interests of mine. In its union of beauty in
music and beauty of architecture, the King's College service has an appeal
for me greater than any other. Here, I concentrate on the defects, as I see
them, but with immense gratitude for the experience of excellence and
beauty.
The faults of the
King's College Chapel service and the faults of Cambridge University are the
faults so common in organizations and events of some complexity or enormous
complexity - and in not so very complex things. The carols which are sung at
the Carol service aren't the union of excellent music, sung to an excellent
standard, and excellent words. The words are often at a much lower level than the
music - I discuss the issue below. The words are often doggerel. The words often
give opinions which can only be held by very credulous people, as I show
very soon. The readings from the Authorized Version of the Bible may be
sonorous or impressive in other ways, but they raise very difficult issues.
There isn't here the union of language of real grandeur and language which
conveys beliefs which can be held by people who aren't credulous. Again, I
show this very soon.
Opera performances too, as events of
substantial, complexity, show an admixture of excellence and imperfection. A
performance of the Bach Chaconne for solo violin can attain, or almost
attain, perfection, although one performance can't possibly bring out other
qualities to be found in the music. The music can be interpreted in various
ways, but a single performance can only give one interpretation. The
calmness of a section may be brought out in one interpretation, calmness
with an abrasive edge in another.
A stage production of Mozart's
'Cosi fan Tutte' will make it clear that the music is at so much higher a
level than the implausible, almost ridiculous plot and that the musical
value is so much more important than the words. The libretto has no literary
value at all. It's unlikely that the soloists will all sing at the same,
very high level of excellence, that the orchestra will also play at a high
level of excellence, and that the direction and the stage production will be
at the same high level of excellence. This is to simplify, of course. The
parts have to be broken down into sub-parts.
Supplementary
information: I refer to this as implementation of the {theme} {resolution.}
My page Introduction to {theme}
theory is a general introduction and the page
{resolution} explains this
particular {theme}.
This is the order of service for the
Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols, broadcast by BBC Radio 3 on 25
December 2018:
Hymn: Once in Royal David's City (desc. Cleobury)
'Once in Royal David's City' was written by Cecil Frances
Alexander, who also wrote the trite and sentimental verbiage of
All things bright and beautiful, discussed in the
section to the right.
Bidding Prayer read by the Dean
Up! good Christen folk (Piae Cantiones)*
First lesson: Genesis 3 vv 8-19 read by a Chorister
Adam lay ybounden (Ord)
Jesus Christ the Apple Tree (Poston)
Second lesson: Genesis 22 vv 15-18
read by a Choral Scholar
In dulci jubilo (arr. de Pearsall)*
I saw
three ships (arr. Simon Preston)
Third lesson: Isaiah 9 vv 2, 6-7 read by
a representative of Eton College
Nowell sing we now all and some
(Medieval)
Unto us is born a Son (arr. Willcocks)*
Fourth lesson:
Isaiah 11 vv 1-3a, 4a, 6-9 read by a Fellow
A spotless rose (Howells)
The Lamb (Tavener)
Fifth lesson: Luke 1 vv 26-38 read by the Master over
the Choristers
Joys seven (arr. Cleobury)
Bogoróditse Dyévo (Arvo Pärt)
Sixth lesson: Luke 2 vv 1-7 read by the Mayor of Cambridge
What sweeter
music? (John Rutter)
Stille Nacht (arr.Ledger)
Seventh lesson: Luke 2
vv 8-16 read by the Director of Music
In the bleak midwinter (Darke)
While shepherds watched (desc. Cleobury)*
Eighth lesson: Matthew 2 vv
1-12 read by the Vice-Provost
O mercy divine (Judith Weir) (King’s
College Commission 2018)
Sir Christèmas (Mathias)
Ninth lesson: John
1 vv 1-14 read by the Provost
O come, all ye faithful (arr. Willcocks)*
Collect and Blessing
Hark! The herald angels sing (desc. Cleobury)*
My discussion is very brief, and I only comment on a very few of the
carols and the readings. The music of 'Adam lay ybounden in Ord's
arrangement is so wonderful that it deflects attention from the words.
Closer attention to the words may well remind us that our ancestors were
capable of believing in preposterous rubbish - and give rise to alarm that the doctrine
conveyed by the words can still be taken seriously or semi-seriously at
King's College. The reading from Genesis which precedes the carol gives a
view of the origin of sin which is much the same as the one expressed by the
carol. There was every
reason to include the carol in the service, for the quality of the music and
not the quality of the text, but no reason at all to include the reading
from Genesis, except to preserve the pattern that a carol should illuminate a text, supposedly, and a
text should illuminate a carol, supposedly. (It obviously seemed a good idea
at the time.)
This is the text of the first lesson, Genesis 3: 8 - 19
8 And they heard
the voice of the Lord God
walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid
themselves from the presence of the
Lord God amongst the trees of the garden.
9 And the
Lord God called unto Adam, and
said unto him, Where art thou?
10 And he said,
I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and
I hid myself.
11 And he said,
Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I
commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat?
12 And the man
said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and
I did eat.
13 And the
Lord God said unto the woman,
What is this that thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled
me, and I did eat.
14 And the
Lord God said unto the serpent,
Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above
every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou
eat all the days of thy life:
15 And I will
put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it
shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.
16 Unto the
woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in
sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy
husband, and he shall rule over thee.
17 And unto Adam
he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast
eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of
it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all
the days of thy life;
18 Thorns also
and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of
the field;
19 In the sweat
of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out
of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.
This is likely to have been included with a symbolic, not a literal,
sense in mind, although there are many Christians who would regard it as a
literal and true description of events. As a symbolic account of the coming
of sin into the world, according to the Christian account, this is
valueless. What can possibly be the contemporary benefit of hearing this?
The reading is followed by the carol 'Adam lay ybounden,' (Ord), an
ignorant text set to music of such beauty. This is the Middle English text
in largely modern spelling:
Adam lay ybounden,
Bounden in a bond;
Four thousand winter
Thought he not too long.
And all was for an apple
An apple that he took.
As clerkes finden written
In their book.
Ne had the apple taken been,
The apple taken been,
Ne had Our Lady,
A-been heaven's queen.
Blessed be the time
That apple taken was!
Therefore we may singen
Deo gratias!
From the section on this page Feeding the hungry and
the Sermon on the Mount:
Art and architecture do nothing to demonstrate that a religious
doctrine is trustworthy (there are wider implications.)
To confine attention to great artists, the art of a great
artist can't demonstrate any of these:
That Jesus calmed a storm on the Sea of Galilee
That Jesus
was crucified as a matter of historical record, or that Jesus was crucified
for our sins
That Jesus was born in a stable, or that Jesus was born
anywhere else
That St Peter founded the Roman Catholic Church
That the
Assumption of the Virgin Mary took place
To extend the list,
The musical quality of 'Adam lay ybounden' and the musical
quality of a performance of 'Adam lay ybounden' in King's College Chapel do
nothing to demonstrate the doctrine to be found in the carol, the
significance claimed for the eating the apple and for 'Our Lady.'
The
magnificence of the architecture of King's College Chapel does nothing to
demonstrate the validity of the beliefs of worshippers in pre-Reformation
times.
The magnificence of the architecture of King's College Chapel does
nothing to demonstrate the validity of the beliefs of worshippers in
post-Reformation times.
The architecture of King's College Chapel is
irrelevant to the competing, contradictory claims of Protestants and Roman
Catholics.
The painting by Rubens in King's College Chapel is irrelevant
to the historical investigation of the reliability of the Nativity story.
The choral music performed in King's College Chapel is irrelevant to the
competing, contradictory claims of Protestants and Roman Catholics.
Performances of works by the Roman Catholic Palestrina do nothing to
validate Roman Catholicism.
Performances of works by the Lutheran Bach do
nothing to validate his Lutheran beliefs.
Performances of Bach's B minor Mass do
nothing to validate the theology of the mass.
John Eliot Gardiner's documentary film 'Bach: a passionate life' is
impressive in many ways, but completely overlooks the difficulties in
linking theology and music, or, as he puts it, the amalgam of theology and
music. The film can be found at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5o1DZPqqx-M
At 59:20 the astounding and shattering opening music is interrupted
by John Eliot Gardiner's words:
'Bach's purpose was to draw the listener in, to recreate in front of
their ears and eyes the drama of Christ's crucifixion and his St John's
Passion is an extraordinary amalgam of theology and music, religion and
politics, drama and wonderful presentation of story telling. So we sense the
tension already in St John's Gospel between Light and Darkness, between Sin
and Good Works and Faith and Doubt.
This is clumsily worded, as in 'to recreate in front of their ears
and eyes,' which, in its concentration on ocular and aural evidence ignores
understanding - as well as misunderstanding. The elemental Light and
Darkness, which have such great appeal to so many Christians, and many
non-Christians, conceal rather than illuminate. The difficulties in this
Gospel account are decisive. I discuss the difficulties of this verse from
St John's Gospel in the section on this page Why
the Christian God didn't love the world:
For God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only Son, that
whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life.' John
3: 16 (World English Bible).
I discuss Christian views of sin and good works in the section
Pete Wilcox, Bishop of Sheffield.
John Eliot Gardiner's book 'Music in the Castle of Heaven: A Portrait
of Johann Sebastian Bach' is, as would be expected, a much more detailed
portrait, but one marked by the same misunderstandings. He finds in the
music of Bach 'the voice of God' and declares 'God is still the only true
creator.'
In contrast to John Eliot Gardiner, I'd claim that Bach's
transcendental musical genius was accompanied by conventional, and mistaken,
views on theology. If a Mormon composer of genius had emerged to write works
of genius to celebrate the founder of Mormonism, Joseph Smith, non-Mormons
would be able to appreciate the music but not the non-musical content.
'For God so loved the world ... '
Above, a slave, Lousiana, mid 19th century: after a flogging
The discussion begins, after some more images, with an examination of John
3:16. The implications of this text, one of the most widely quoted in the
whole of the New Testament, are deeply disturbing. The images are relevant
to the text, which includes comments on slavery but not only slavery. In a section to the right,
I refer to 'A cathedral dedicated to St Paul ... who accepted slavery.' But
Jesus lived in a slave society. Slave markets, where men, women and children
were bought and sold, would have been completely familiar to him, and all
the cruelties of slavery. What does he have to say about the subject in his
teaching? Nothing. Did he denounce the practice of slavery? No. For century
after century, the Christian churches were just as indifferent.
John 3:16 is
amongst other things about the people who supposedly qualify for salvation
and the ones who do not. Any Christian who follows this teaching must surely
believe that there two classes of slave, the ones who have everlasting
life and the ones who do not - or have everlasting life, but not one of
bliss. The destiny of the slave who had been flogged depends, according to this orthodox Christian view, on the
slave's beliefs, the slave's commitment to Christ or lack of it. There are a vast number of other possible examples - the two classes
of NHS workers, the two classes of engineeers, the two classes of climate
activists, not the deranged and the reasonable (I regard Extinction
Rebellion as an example of the deranged) but the ones who have accepted Jesus as their Lord and Saviour
and the ones who have not, with very different destinies, the two classes of
loving mothers and fathers - only the ones who love Jesus, or commit
themselves to Jesus as their Lord and Saviour are saved, according to this
atrocious, despicable view. There are even two classes of people who served as
guards and executioners at concentration camps and extermination camps, the
ones who came to Christ during the war or after the war and achieved
salvation, and the people they killed, tortured, worked to death. The Jews
who made up so many of their victims their victims, didn't qualify for salvation,
unless they converted.
I give enough evidence below to show that this isn't a travesty of the
orthodox belief of vast numbers of Christians, such as evangelicals. These
are deranged beliefs.
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that
whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life.' (Gospel
according to St John, 3:16, King James Bible.')
I read Greek and I'm not dependent on translations. The text
in the original:
Οὕτως γὰρ ἠγάπησεν ὁ Θεὸς τὸν κόσμον, ὥστε τὸν Υἱὸν τὸν
μονογενῆ ἔδωκεν, ἵνα πᾶς ὁ πιστεύων εἰς αὐτὸν μὴ ἀπόληται ἀλλ’ ἔχῃ ζωὴν
αἰώνιον.
Paul
(I prefer not to call the author of the New Testament Epistles 'Saint' Paul)
and others developed a theology of redemption according to which the world
was redeemed by the sacrifice of Christ on the cross. The cross can't
possibly be described as a 'symbol of hope.' In this thelogy, only those who
believe in Christ as their Lord and Saviour do not perish, are saved, have
everlasting life.
Were there two kinds of slaves who were flogged in the American slave-owning
states before the abolition of slavery (one of them is shown above, after a
flogging), the ones who had accepted Jesus
Christ as their Lord and Saviour, the ones whose sins were forgiven, the
ones who did not perish but have everlasting life? And the slaves
who were flogged - they may well include the slave shown here - who never
gave much thought to Jesus or any thought to Jesus and for these or other
reasons didn't believe in him. They were too
preoccupied with other matters - enduring back-breaking work, enduring
another flogging, the prospect of being parted from husband or wife or
children, as could easily happen if members of the same family were sold and
became the 'property' of different 'owners.'
An image above shows some of those who died of starvation at
Bergen-Belsen camp, after liberation of the camp by British and Canadian
forces. Also shown in the image is one of the camp 'doctors,' Fritz Klein,
executed in 1945. Another image shows a Christian cross which was erected on
the site of the camp.
Were there two kinds of victim of Nazi brutality at Bergen-Belsen
concentration camp, the ones who had accepted Jesus
Christ as their Lord and Saviour, the ones whose sins were forgiven, the
ones who did not perish but have everlasting life? And the
ones who had not accepted Jesus Christ as their Lord and Saviour, the ones,
for example, who retained their Jewish faith until they died of starvation
or disease? Was their eternal destiny no different from that of Fritz Klein.
Believers in the Christian doctrine of redemption, do you really believe in
this inhuman doctrine, in this inhuman, monstrous God?
The British and Canadian forces who liberated Bergen-Belsen - were there two
kinds, the saved and the damned?
Were there two kinds of slave-owners? The slave-owners who accepted
Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savour, the ones whose sins were forgiven,
such as the sin of flogging slaves, who did not perish but have eternal life
- and the slave owners whose sins were unforgiven, like the slaves who for
one reason or another never made the all-important decision - to accept
Jesus Christ as their saviour.
Of the three people shown here a slave owner and her two slaves, which
of them, if any, went on to 'everlasting life?' (ζωὴν
αἰώνιον in the New
Testament Greek of the text.) Which, if any, went on to 'everlasting
punishment' (κόλασιν αἰώνιον)?
To suppose that it was obviously the two slaves, not the slave owner, is to
ignore the 'teaching' of the Bible and the 'teaching' of the Church -
although the interpretation of the Bible and the guidance of the Church are
the subject of discussion, dispute and action - the 'action' includes, of course,
in the past, burning
at the stake - but there's the inconvenient insistence that Christ came to
save sinners, including, of course, the woman slave owner here. 'On
hearing this, Jesus said to them, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor,
but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners." ' (The
Gospel of St Mark, 2:17.) The Church is supposedly 'a hospital for sinners,
not a museum for saints.'
In an affidavit made at Nuremberg on 5 April 1946, it was revealed that Rudolf Höss, the
commandant of Auschwitz-Birkenau
'commanded Auschwitz until 1 December 1943, and estimate that at least
2,500,000 victims were executed and exterminated there by gassing and
burning, and at least another half million succumbed to starvation and
disease, making a total of about 3,000,000 dead. This figure represents
about 70% or 80% of all persons sent to Auschwitz as prisoners, the
remainder having been selected and used for slave labor in the concentration
camp industries. Included among the executed and burnt were approximately
20,000 Russian prisoners of war (previously screened out of Prisoner of War
cages by the Gestapo) who were delivered at Auschwitz in Wehrmacht
transports operated by regular Wehrmacht officers and men. The
remainder of the total number of victims included about 100,000 German Jews,
and great numbers of citizens (mostly Jewish) from The Netherlands, France,
Belgium, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Greece, or other countries. We
executed about 400,000 Hungarian Jews alone at Auschwitz in the summer of
1944.'
Shown above, an image of Rudolf Höss just before his execution. By this
time, Höss had returned to the Catholic Church. On 10 April 1947, he received the
sacrament of penance from Fr.
Wladyslaw Lohn S.J., of the Polish Province of the
Society of Jesus. The next day, he took Holy Communion. In a farewell
letter to his wife, Höss wrote 'I have again found my faith in my God.'
Did he gain 'eternal life,' then, as a result of his very late
repentance, if it's assumed that this repentance was genuine, unlike the
vast majority of those who died at Auschwitz, who were mainly Jewish, people
who hadn't accepted Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and Saviour. Many
Nazis were killed before the end of the war, in battle, by allied bombing,
in a variety of ways, before they had the chance to follow the example of
this man. What if Rudolf Höss had been killed too, before he was welcomed
back into the Roman Catholic Church?
Do Roman Catholics (and other Christian believers in an orthodox doctrine
of redemption - or an orthodox theory of redemption) really believe that
when '2,500,000 victims were executed and exterminated there by gassing and
burning, and at least another half million succumbed to starvation and
disease, making a total of about 3,000,000 dead,' only a minority of these,
a very small minority, were saved and that all the others were unsaved? Do
they really believe that Rudolf Höss was saved but that the vast majority of
his victims were unsaved?
Below, Jewish
women and children from Hungary walking toward the gas chamber, Auschwitz
II, May/June 1944.
A Youtube video which gives an unwitting exposure of the
deeply disturbing implications of orthodox theories of redemption, and their
blatant stupidity:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWFeM-Rper0&t=872s
The causuistry, the examination of the case of Rudolf Höss, the case for
the salvation of Rudolf Höss, come from 'Sensus Fidelium,' a Roman Catholic
source.
A study in the late 1980s by the Polish historian Franciszek Piper published by
Yad Vashem in 1991, used timetables of train arrivals combined with
deportation records to calculate that, of the 1.3 million sent to the camp,
1,082,000 had died there, a figure (rounded up to 1.1 million), a figure
that has come to be widely accepted.
Robert Jan van Pelt: 'This figure [1.1 million] has been endorsed by all
serious, professional historians who have studied the complex history of
Auschwitz in some detail, by the Holocaust research institute at Yad Vashem
in Jerusalem, and by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in
Washington, D.C.
In 2006, the Church of England voted to apologise to the descendants of
victims of the slave trade.
An amendment "recognising the damage done" to those enslaved was
backed overwhelmingly by the General Synod.
During the debate, Rev Simon Blessant said, in connection with the Church
of England and the slave trade, 'We were at the heart of it.' He gave
information about the involvement in the slave trade of the Society for the
Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, which owned the Codrington
Plantations.
These were two sugarcane growing estates on the island
of Barbados. In 1710, they came into the possession of the Church of England
'Society for the Propagation of the Christian Religion in Foreign Parts.'
The plantations were run by managers, nominally supervised by a Board of
trustees of the Society headed by the Archbishop of Canterbury and a
committee of Church of England bishops.
The plantations depended upon a regular supply of new slaves from West
Africa. For almost a decade after the 'Society for the Propagation of the
Christian Religion in Foreign Parts' inherited the plantations, slaves were
branded on the chest with the word 'Society.'
During the debate, the fact was mentioned that when
the emancipation of slaves took place in 1833, compensation was paid not
to the slaves but to their owners. The information was given that the Bishop
of Exeter and three colleagues were paid nearly £13,000 compensation
for 665 slaves. This compensation was well over
£ 1,000,000
in current values. The Bishop of Exeter, William Philpotts, had
opposed the Abolition of Slavery Act.
Above, William Philpotts, Bishop of Exeter
It can safely be assumed that the Bishop of Exeter had a belief in the Son
of God but that some - perhaps many - of the slaves had no belief in the
Son.
Of course, throughout all the slave-owning period in this country - and
throughout all the heretic-burning and witch-burning period in this country
- at such places as St Paul's Cathedral and King's College Cambridge, as
well as quiet and lovely village churches, sermons were preached, prayers
were said, for the most varied reasons, including condemnation of heretics
and witches, holy communion was taken, evensong sung.
The Gospel according to St John, 3:18, 'He that believeth not is condemned
already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son
of God.' (King James Bible.)
One of the modern translations for the whole verse- like others, it updates
the language but not the theology:
'Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is
condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son
of God.' (English Standard Version.)
The Gospel according to St John, 3:36 in the King James Bible:
'He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth
not the Son shall not see life: but the wrath of God abideth on him.
It seems clear that slaves without belief in the Son of God are condemned
and subject to the wrath of God, whilst slave owners with belief in the Son,
such as the Bishop of Exeter, aren't condemned but have everlasting life.
The Church of England's acceptance of slavery, with exceptions, wasn't in
the least in conflict with Biblical ethics. After all, Jesus Christ preached
the gospel in a slave-owning society, one in which slaves were flogged,
worked to death and crucified, and never at any time, according to the
Biblical record, declared that slavery was an evil and had to be ended.
Jesus Christ was supposedly without sin but the Church has never claimed
that the knowledge of Jesus Christ was without limitations. He had no knowledge of the
measures necessary for adequate public health, for example - the provision
of safe drinking water - or the measures necessary to end the Malthusian
nightmare of pregnancies far in excess of the replacement rate and very high
levels of infant mortality, or the agricultural measures needed to avoid the
cycle of famine. Jesus Christ shared the limited knowledge of the
people of his time and also shared many of their views, including an
indifference to the horrors of slavery. If Jesus wasn't indifferent to the
horrors of slavery, why is there no record at all in the Biblical account
that he opposed slavery?
St Paul showed such energy in promoting the doctrines of redemption and
complete indifference to slave ownership. His epistle to the Galations,
3:28, in the 'Good News' translation.
'So there is no difference between Jews and Gentiles, between slaves and free
people, between men and women; you are all one in union with Christ Jesus.'
St Paul was interested
only in the fact - or the fact in his theology - that slaves who accepted
Christ as their saviour and free people (including slave-owners) who
accepted Christ as their saviour were in this respect, this all-important
respect, according to him, the same - their sins were forgiven. The sins of the
two groups would be very different, of course, but not in every way. The sins of the slaves might include, in this despicable theology,
swearing, the sins of the slave owners might also include swearing. There's
no record of St Paul, or Jesus Christ, claiming that flogging a slave or
breaking up a family of slaves - selling the parents to one new owner and
the children to a different new owner - was a grave sin.
From the section on this page on the King James Bible:
'In his epistle to the Galatians (5:19-21) St Paul condemns various sins,
'works of the flesh' in the King James translation, including, in this
translation, adultery, fornication, uncleanness, drunkenness, revellings -
and, also, witchcraft and heresies. St Paul doesn't condemn slave-owning or
any of the abuses which accompanied slave-owning, such as flogging of
slaves.
What of the people who campaigned to end the evils of slavery? They
couldn't, of course, claim Biblical Backing for their campaigning, any more
than the people who opposed the persecution of alleged witches. The Bible is
silent about so many very important matters, including the ending of
slavery, and gives hideous rulings on others, including the persecution of
witches. The King James Bible, completed
in 1611, saw the scriptures rewritten to further the King’s agenda. Exodus
22:18 in the King James version: “Thou must not suffer a witch to live.” The Good News Translation is 'Put to death any woman
who practices magic.'
Were there
two kinds of anti-slavery campaigner, the campaigners whose sins were
forgiven, and the campaigners whose sins were unforgiven? Were there two
kinds of people opposed to slavery? See the section on
Michael Dormany, the evangelical
chaplain of Christ's College, Cambridge, which includes information
about Charles Darwin's opposition to slavery and about his abandonment of
belief in Christianity.
Quakers played a very important part in ending the evils of slavery, but
Quakers are without the all-important belief in Jesus Christ.
Evangelicals and many other Christians would be confident that the Quaker
reformers didn't qualify for eternal life. William Wilberforce, in contrast,
was an evangelical Christian and did qualify.
William Wilberforce's contribution to the ending of slavery was very, very
important, although believers in the Bible doctrine of salvation will
obviously regard his contribution as far less important than the fact that
he accepted Christ as his Lord and Saviour.
Wilberforce had some serious faults - although believers in the Bible
doctrine of salvation will regard them as unimportant.
The radical writer
William Cobbett pointed out that Wilberforce campaigned for slaves but not
for workers in Britain. He wrote, ' Never have you done one single act, in favour of the labourers of this
country.
Wilberforce opposed the granting of the right to workers to organise and
join unions. In 1799, he spoke in favour of the Combination Act, which
suppressed union activities. He called unions 'a general disease in our
society.'
Very much concerned by what he thought of as the degeneracy of British
society, Wilberforce campaigned against 'the torrent of profaneness that every day makes more rapid
advances. He considered this issue as important as the abolition of the
slave trade. At his prompting, and the prompting of a Bishop, King George
III was requested by the Archbishop of Canterbury to issue in 1787 the Proclamation for the
Discouragement of Vice, which urged the prosecution of those guilty of
'excessive
drinking, blasphemy, profane swearing and cursing, lewdness, profanation of
the Lord's Day, and other dissolute, immoral or disorderly practices.' To
this end, he founded the 'Society for the Suppression of Vice.'
A contemporary example of an evangelical Christian's obsessions and his
neglect of horrific abuse and cruelties.
Stephen Holland isn't a member of the Church of England. He's an
evangelical minister who has many Youtube videos to his credit - or
many Youtube videos where his mediocrity and stupidity are obvious. One of
them has the title,
'Objection to the Bishop of London Sarah Mullally, and some good books.'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=2&v=k8tNbOnVDoQ
He's protested at services where women are consecrated. This is from the
site 'Christian Today.' It includes some of his comments.
'It is not my intention to prevent these ungodly practices, but rather to
voice a public objection to them.'
He makes his objection during the part of the consecration service where
the question is asked of the congregation: "Is it now your will that they
should be ordained?"
He answers: 'No, in the name of Almighty God I protest. There are no
women bishops in the Bible.'
All the books
visible in the Youtube fiasco are Biblical commentaries.
The case of John Smyth: an evangelical Christian's obsessions - ones much
worse than the obsessions of Stephen Holland - and his infliction of
horrific abuse and cruelty. He was a leader in the evangelical Iwerne Trust
which was active in promoting evangelical holiday camps. He subjected boys
to lashings with a garden cane, thousands of strokes each.
A report on the incidents was made by the Trust in 1982 but not made
public until 2016. It was not until 2013 that the claims were reported to
police. After the horrific abuse came into the public domain, the Bishop of
Guildford, Andrew Watson, released a statement accusing Smyth of
giving him a 'violent, excruciating and shocking beating' as a young man on
a single occasion.
There's abundance evidence that John Smyth was sadistic and abundant
evidence that he believed in the Son of God. Since the Church is 'a hospital
for sinners, not a museum for saints,' in the opinion of many, and since he
seems to have satisfied the criteria for redemption laid down in St John's
Gospel and so many other sources, it seems that, unlike so many, he
qualified for eternal life.
Outwardly, he had a successful conventional career and led a conventional
evangelical life. His Alma Mater was Trinity Hall, Cambridge. He was called
to the Bar at Inner Temple and had a senior legal post, as a Recorder.
In July 1977, Smyth acted for Mary Whitehouse, the Christian morality
campaigner, in her successful private prosecution for blasphemy at the Old
Baily against Gay News, which had published James Kirkup's poem'The Love
that dares to speak its name.'
In 2005, he opposed the legalisation of same-sex marriage in South
Africa. He claimed that to introduce same-sex marriage, would result in
'violence to the mind and spirit' of the religiously devout and that it
would discriminate against them. On this occasion he was unsuccessful.
Church Society, a Conservative
Evangelical group in the Church of England:
' ... all people are under the judgement of God and his righteous
anger burns against them. Unless a person is reconciled to God they
are under His condemnation and His just judgement against them is that they
will be separated from Him forever in Hell. (Romans 1 v18, 2 v16, Revelation
20 v15)
'Jesus will come back and the world will end, there will then be a final
judgement where those who have not accepted Jesus will be cast into hell
with Satan and his angels. Christians will receive new bodies and live in
eternal bliss in the presence of God the Father, God the Son, and God the
Spirit. (Hebrews 9 v27, Revelation 20 v11, 1 Corinthians 15 v51)
'The biblical way of salvation has often been attacked over the
centuries, however it is stated clearly in the 39 Articles of the Church of
England:
Article 6: Of the sufficiency of the holy Scriptures for salvation.
Article 1: Faith in the Holy Trinity
Article 9: Of Original or Birth-sin
Article 2: The Word, or Son of God, who became truly man
Article 4: The resurrection of Christ
Article 11: Of the Justification of Man
'Unless a person is reconciled to God they are under his condemnation ...'
Good works are no defence. Article XII 'Of Good Works' states
'Good Works ... cannot put away our sins, and endure the severity of God's
Judgement.' Whether the good works include bringing safe drinking water to
people ravaged by water-borne diseases such as cholera by means of massive
engineering works, or rescuing Jews from the Nazis, or opposing the Nazis by
heroic action in battle, or everyday goodness and self-sacrifice, if there's
no belief in Jesus Christ, the good works are ignored, in this loathsome
scheme, and there's no salvation.
On this page, there's a profile of the
Bishop of Sheffield. He describes himself as an evangelical, with
conservative tendencies. A public statement of his faith would be useful --
the aspects which concern salvation and redemption and who qualifies for
salvation...
Justification by faith and justification by works are too very different
positions in Christian theology. In that chaotic work 'The
Bible' there's support for 'justification by works' in the
Parable of the Sheep and the Goats: good deeds are the way to salvation, not
so much belief in the saviour. Given the hideous complexities of reality,
even an omnipotent God would surely be unable to direct people to the
grossly simplified alternative of 'sheep' or 'goat.' The Bishop of Sheffield
has made it clear that the Bible is very important for him - perhaps he
could make clear some of the chaotic contradictions of the Bible?
When God takes into account the competing claims of Bible-reading, praying
to Himself, attendance at Church services, eliminating the agents of Satan,
eliminating witches, engineering work to provide safe drinking water,
bacteriological advances to identify and reduce the risk of pathological
bacteria, advancing pure mathematics, furthering enlightened administration,
overcoming or failing to overcome a hideous childhood, how does he decide to
award the coveted status: 'Worthy of eternal life?'
Until the abolition of
child labour, for so many, childhood, and youth, was the time for
back-breaking work in almost complete darkness, youth was the season for
hauling almost impossible loads, for inhaling coal dust, for risking
crushing, drowning in the underground waters, and for being torn limb from limb.
Were there two categories of child labourers in the coal
mines - the ones who accepted Jesus Christ as their Lord and Saviour, and
the ones who may have heard about Jesus at Sunday School, if they ever
attended Sunday School, but who gave no further thought to the
salvation of their souls, being too preoccupied with the horrors of life
underground?
Christianity makes human sin (a form of human error)
responsible for a vast amount of human misery. In the past, human sin was
often supposed to be responsible for earthquakes, but present-day Christians
are far less likely to believe in that, more likely to believe in the
scientific explanations for earthquakes, in this case, seismology.
Traditional Christianity gave explanations for the occurrence of coal seams
and copper ore - 'In the beginning, God created Heaven and earth.'
Science gives explanations for the occurrence of coal seams and copper ore
too. The traditional Christian explanation leaves us wondering why the coal
seams and the copper ore should have been placed in such a way as to require
back-breaking, dangerous work to make use of them.
Are there two categories of builders and other skilled
trades - including the builders and others who have built churches - plasterers, roofers, scaffolders
- and
two categories of architect, structural engineer and mechanical engineer -
without whose work people would be living in the open or in crude shelters -
the believers in God's 'one and only son' and the rest, the majority,
deprived of 'eternal life?'
Are there two categories of loving mothers and loving
fathers, the ones who never qualified for eternal life, and the ones who did meet
the Christian criteria?
Above, Selwyn College
Ian McFarland is a Fellow of Selwyn College and the Regius Professor of Divinity at
Cambridge University. He's the author of 'In Adam’s Fall: A
Meditation on the Christian Doctrine of Original Sin.' There's
a remarkably revealing interview with him which was published in the 'Church
Times.'
https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2018/20-april/features/interviews/interview-ian-mcfarland-regius-professor-of-divinity-cambridge
Some statements he came up with:
I was the oldest of three, in a comfortable childhood in a standard US
nuclear family.
During term, pretty much all my time is devoted to teaching and
administration.
One reason Cambridge was attractive to me is that terms are short and
vacations relatively generous, and, during vacations, I can devote myself
pretty much full-time to research.
Original sin teaches that all human beings are equal in their captivity
to sin.
On original sin I’m pretty Augustinian.
The confession that Jesus is the saviour of us all means we all need
saving — we’re all caught up in the dynamics of sin.
For me, the experience of God comes when I hear the Word preached and
receive the sacrament. That’s God addressing me — if I have the wit to
listen.
Professor McFarland has many advantages, it seems: a comfortable, sheltered
life, now including very generous vacations (not 'relatively' generous
vacations, surely), and also, the assurance of salvation. The people I mention in
various places on this page and on other pages on this site, the slaves, the
child labourers, the miners, and others, led lives which were different in every way,
dominated by dangerous, back-breaking work and without the assurance of
salvation, except for a few. Unbaptized babies and infants too young to
work went to hell as a consequence of original sin, according to St Augustine. An
extended study of the theology of St Augustine would make it clear that his
statement, 'On original sin I'm pretty Augustinian' has very, very
disturbing implications.
Ludwig Wittgenstein's 'Philosophical Investigations' (which begins with an
extended quotation from Augustine, 'Confessions,' I.8, to introduce the
discussion of issues in the philosophy of language) contains this claim,
'[philosophy] leaves everything as it is.'
All the advances and nuances of
Professor McFarland in his quest to understand sin, including original sin,
leave so much of deadly doctrinal content intact.
'Original sin teaches that all human beings are equal in their captivity
to sin.' Professor McFarland, do you really believe that the people who
rescued Jews at immense personal risk, the people who fought to liberate the
death camps, the people who fought to end the Nazi nightmare, are 'equal in
their captivity to sin' with Himmler and other architects of the Final
Solution, with Höss, the commandant of Auschwitz and other
implementers of the Final Solution?
'We all need saving — we’re all caught up in the dynamics
of sin.'
Has Professor McFarland considered some of the implications of this claim?
'We all need saving,' according to Professor McFarland, but only some will
be saved. Above, I discuss the salvation of slaves, the salvation of mine
workers, including child mine workers, and other groups. Cambridge
undergraduates, graduates, academic staff and other staff are obviously in
need of salvation too, according to Professor McFarland.
The perspective which views people in this way is hideously distorted. Does
he really believe that applicants to Selwyn College should be viewed first
and foremost as candidates for salvation (or damnation)? Selwyn's
reputation for intellectual integrity - and reputation for intellectual
common sense - is compromised by allowing these hopelessly bad views on sin,
original sin, salvation and damnation to go unchallenged.
The fellows of Selwyn College pursue research interests in fields as varied
as nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, palaeobiology, computational
fluid dynamics, digital fabrication, compressible gas flow and topology,
whilst one fellow, Professor McFarland, pursues a research interest in
original sin. He's the author of the book 'In Adam's Fall: A Meditation on
the Christian Doctrine of Original Sin,' and not from a skeptical
perspective, one which finds the doctrine unable to explain the
imperfections of our world.
This could be called incongruous, grotesque, deeply depressing and
many other things. Given the hideous implications of the doctrine - which
include the ignoring of a person's contributions to magnificent areas of
human achievement in science, engineering, music, historical study, literary
study and many more, since salvation and damnation have nothing to do with
such things, since the sin of the sinful contributor to science, engineering
and the rest is far more important - I think a much harsher word is
called for.
Why anyone should be expected to waste years studying theology at Cambridge
University under the guidance of such people as the Regius Professor of
Casuistry is a mystery. Why Selwyn College appointed Professor McFarland as
a Fellow of the College is a mystery.
The unfortunate fact is that some of his Augustinian views are reflected in
mainstream Christianity, including the verse which opens this section
For God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only Son, that
whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life.' John
3: 16 (World English Bible).
Supplementary material:
This is one of the 'unsaved sinners.' From my page on
the death penalty:
'Chronically psychotic
and brain damaged, Johnny Garrett had a long history of mental illness and
was severely physically and sexually abused as a child, which the jury never
knew. He was described by a psychiatrist as "one of the most psychiatrically
impaired inmates" she had ever examined, and by a psychologist as having
"one of the most virulent histories of abuse and neglect... encountered in
over 28 years of practice". Garrett was frequently beaten by his father and
stepfathers. On one occasion, when he would not stop crying, he was put on
the burner of a hot stove, and retained the burn scars until his death. He
was raped by a stepfather who then hired him to another man for sex. It was
also reported that from the age of 14 he was forced to perform bizarre
sexual acts and participate in pornographic films. Introduced to alcohol by
his family when he was 10, he subsequently indulged in serious substance
abuse involving brain-damaging substances such as paint, thinner and
amphetamines. The US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit upheld a state
court finding that his belief that his dead aunt would protect him from the
chemicals used in the lethal injection did not render him incompetent to be
executed (for a murder committed when he was aged 17.')
Did God decide that Johnny Garrett
deserved to be included with the sheep or the goats? Were his good works
sufficient for him to be included with the sheep? According to the
alternative criterion, did God decide that Johnny Garrett should not perish
but have everlasting life, since he'd accepted Jesus Christ as his personal
Lord and Saviour?Very, very unlikely.
What of his executioner, the one who pressed the button to
end his life? Was this a good act or a bad act, was the executioner a sheep
or a goat? Or, alternatively, according to a contradictory aspect of
Christian theology, was the executioner someone who believed in Christ or
not?
Eternal damnation isn't stressed nearly as much in Christian
circles now, but every Christmas, Christians - the ordained in fancy dress
at the King's College Christmas service and the less lucky ones in
vandalized city
churches - insist that being a Christian gives certain advantages. What
advantages, exactly? Are there long-term consequences (eternal hellfire or
lesser disadvantages) for non-believers, the ones too busy to believe or to
investigate the advantages of belief, the ones too chronically abused to
believe or to investigate the advantages of belief, all the others who fail the test?
From my page Poems, a poem on
the sufferings of children working in the mines. The poem is discussed in
the section strata poetry of my page on
Concrete Poetry.
The Bible authors neglected almost entirely the
issue of cruelty to animals. Soon after the slaves in the British empire
were freed, bull-baiting and bear-baiting were made illegal. The frenzied
attacks of the dogs on tethered bulls and bears in cities, towns and
villages which had never bothered the vast majority of the population,
including the vast majority of Roman Catholic clery and Church of England
clergy, was at an end.
Credit: Jules and Jenny
Bear-baiting, depicted in this misericord in St Mary's Church, Beverley.
From Schopenhauer's 'Parerga and Paralipomena,'
the chapter on 'Religion:'
'I heard from a reliable source that, when asked by a
society for the protection of animals to preach a sermon against cruelty to
them, a Protestant clergyman replied that, with the best will in the world,
he could not do so because in this matter religion gave him no support.'
Click on text to the right of a blue box to go to a section of this
page or another page. Other links are shown as highlighted in grey
Click on the rail (long blue band at left margin) to go to top of
page: a quick way to reach the links here from lower down the page
Sections of this page:
Introduction
'For God so
loved the world ... '
Remembrance Sunday and the C of E
The C
of E in Sheffield: discarded rubbish
(In column at far right of page)
Tim Ling, Church Army
Strategist
The C of E in Sheffield and
the environment
Pete Wilcox,
Bishop of Sheffield
(In
column at far right of page)
'Extra ecclesiam nulla salus.'
Noah's Ark 1: Who would Adam and Eve it?
Noah's Ark 2: Human values
Reformed
Christian Gentleman and Bufo buffoon, a
venomous toad
Conservative
Woman and Christian-inanity
Dr
Alan Billings, Police and Crime Commissioner
Adrian Dorber, Dean of Lichfield Cathedral
George Pitcher,
Anglican priest
Geoffrey Hill, Christian poet
St Paul's Cathedral: thinking and faith
King's College Chapel, Cambridge
All things bright and beautiful
The King James Bible
Feeding
the hungry and the Sermon on the Mount
The C of
E, a broad, divided church: time to leave
Non-religious stupidity
Aphorisms: religion and ideology
What is an ideology?
See also the
pages
Ethics:
theory and practice
Nietzsche: against
Nietzsche is an opponent of pity as well as Christianity. In
my page on Nietzsche I defend humanitarian values and criticize some of the
delusions, distortions and falsifications of Nietzsche - from a
non-Christian perspective.
Aphorisms
Cambridge University
which includes a section 'Cambridge Christianity' and profiles
of some Cambridge Christians.
Introduction
Above, believers in
transubstantiation, in this case Roman Catholics - during the Mass, the bread and wine are converted to
the actual body and blood of Christ. Many Anglicans believe in
transubstantiation too. As I make clear in other places, the Church of
England is hopelessly divided, with a chaotic mixture of incompatible views.
Credit: Creative Commons
Link to licence:
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/legalcode
Threats to the mind aren't important
to many people. If beliefs are deluded but the people holding them are
'harmless' (not terrorists, not advocates of indiscriminate violence which
threaten the body), then this is of no account. I regard threats to the mind
as well as to the body as important, as far from harmless, as threats to be
resisted. 'Threats to mind and body:' the phrase is a concise way of
expressing the conviction that harmful
forces may threaten not just the body, by killing and injuring, but the
mind, by threatening free thought and free expression, artistic
expression as well as intellectual expression.
There are still old-fashioned atheists who regard Christianity as the
most harmful force in the world today. In the twentieth century, fascism and Stalinism
and other forms of communism completely eclipsed Christianity as a threat to body and mind.
In the past, Christianity has often threatened mind and body. In the
section on Pete Wilcox, the Bishop of Sheffield, I
discuss some of the people burned at the stake - by the Church of England
and by Calvin at Geneva - for disbelief in the doctrine of the Trinity and
other failures of belief.
Hume, writing in the 'Treatise concerning Human Understanding: 'Generally
speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous; those in philosophy only
ridiculous.'
A partial updating of Hume's view: the errors in
religion may be dangerous but the most dangerous errors come from
non-religious ideologies. In the past, the most dangerous errors have been
Nazism and Communism, and of communist ideologies, particularly Stalinist
communism. The other-worldly aspects of religion, the stress upon ritual or
correct thinking or a holy book, and all the other varied characteristics of
religions, have lessened their capacity for causing harm. The cruelties of
Christianity, such as the Inquisition and the cruelties sometimes carried
out by Islamists, such as amputation of limbs and stoning to death, have
never been on the same scale as the savagery of Nazism and Stalinism, or the atrocities
committed by such regimes as those of Pol Pot in Cambodia.
There are still old-fashioned atheists who overlook the many, many
impressive Christians and followers of other religions. Their assumption
that non-religious people must always be superior to religious people could
be called childish, but I use the word 'unformed.'
In the twenty-first
century, Christianity is negligible as a threat to mind and body whilst the dangers of
Islamism have become obvious, to anyone with any sense, and
{adjustment} is needed to recognize these changing realities. But it isn't
enough to recognize the chief threats, there has to be quantification of the
threats. Even radical, terror-supporting Islamism is obviously far less of a threat to body than
Nazism in the past. Its outrages are horrific but generally localized. No Islamic state or
terrorist organization has perpetrated a fraction of the atrocities
inflicted by Nazi Germany, again, despite the horrific atrocities they have
inflicted, in part because radical Islamism generally seems to
be incompatible with highly developed economies, social organizations and
scientific and technological expertise. When an Islamic state is an
exception to this - Iran is the prime example now - then the potential
threat to the body is very great. If ISIS did have the power and the
resources, then its atrocities would equal those of Nazi Germany.
On this page, I criticize not just
the religious but some of their opponents, such as some humanists
(supporters of groups such as the British Humanist Association.) To see
through some illusions and forms of stupidity is no guarantee that someone
will not be subject to other illusions and forms of stupidity. Illusion
and stupidity aren't evaded too easily. A humanist who can see through the arguments intended to
show that the gospel records are largely reliable, that Jesus rose again,
that prayer works and is worthwhile (although not, nowadays, that praying for good weather works and is worthwhile), may well
be in the grip of delusions more harmful than any of these.
In various places in this site, I argue against pacifism. A Christian
who believes that Jesus rose again may well recognize the harsh realities
that make pacifism unworkable and disastrous in some circumstances, may have
delusions about prayer but recognize that to defeat Nazi Germany or the
Taliban requires practical action. The humanist who airily dismisses the
need for action by force of arms in some circumstances is suffering from a
more severe form of delusion. The believer's common sense and good sense may
be left unaffected by theological illusion.
I criticize the Anglican
priest George Pitcher on this page. This is someone whose superficiality
should be obvious. He shares the illusions of so many secularists in such
practicalities as defence, Islamism, migration and other issues but he has
religious illusions as well. They include his incredible belief that the
Church of England can still be taken seriously - provided, of course, its
Public Relations are conducted in a more sophisticated way, by making full
use of social media, for instance. He would like other things to happen as
well, things which are unlikely to happen.
The strengths of this age co-exist with stupidities.
The stupidities of previous ages were different but often as bad or worse. When Protestant persecuted Catholic and Catholic persecuted Protestant and
both Catholic and Protestant persecuted non-believers and believers in other
forms of Christianity, tolerance was an overwhelmingly important
necessity. Today, tolerance can be stupid and dangerous, as is increasingly recognized. Giving
sanctuary to the persecuted is noble but giving sanctuary to the persecuted
who would be only too glad to persecute, given the chance, is
usually very mistaken. To distinguish between people worthy of a safe haven
in a liberal democracy and people who aren't in the least an asset to a
liberal democracy, who are a threat to a liberal democracy, may be very
difficult, but the attempt has to be made.
But this isn't in general a tolerant age. Political correctness has
replaced Christianity as a threat to the mind.
It would be a great mistake to suppose that only religious beliefs which
are aggressive or grossly intolerant are dangerous, that religious beliefs
which are placid and tolerant can never be dangerous, or that
philosophical beliefs can never be dangerous - with {restriction} of
attention here to physical dangers, the dangers to body. Only a little
thought and reflection are needed to realize that Buddhism and Quaker
beliefs (which are peripherally religious) can be potentially
dangerous and actually dangerous. This is for the reason that any set of
beliefs, religious or otherwise, which fails to recognize and to act against
dangers by giving support to inaction is itself dangerous. If ruthless
militarism is a great danger, so is pacifism in the face of ruthless
militarism.
David Hume, the 18th century philosopher, the greatest and most
influential of English-speaking philosophers and a very versatile
writer, was born in Edinburgh, studied at Edinburgh University, was a
librarian at Edinburgh University and lived for much of his life in
Edinburgh - but he didn't secure a chair at the university.
Edinburgh ministers petitioned the town council not to give the chair to
him on account of his atheistic views.
This is from Richard Wollheim's introduction to 'Hume on Religion,' which
contains the classic 'Dialogues concerning Natural Religion' and other
texts, including 'Of Miracles' (Section x, An Enquiry concerning Human
Understanding.)
'Looking back upon eighteenth-century Edinburgh, we tend so readily to
think of it as bathed in that soft 'Athenian' light, in that glow of radiant
liberalism, which distinguished its middle and later years, that we quite
forget at how narrow a remove it stood, both in time and place, from
fanaticism and intellectual barbarism.'
This was David Hume's attitude to illusion and ignorance and people in
the grip of illusion and ignorance:
' ... it might be possible to liberate them from this illusion or that,
but it would only be replaced by another. 'In a future age,' he wrote, a
propos of the doctrine of transubstantiation [the belief that during the
Catholic mass, the bread and wine are transformed into the literal body and
blood of Christ, without any alteration of appearances] 'it will probably
become difficult to persuade some nations, that any human two-legged
creature could ever embrace such principles.' Then with characteristic
wryness he added, 'And it is a thousand to one, but these nations themselves
shall have something full as absurd in their own creed ... '
Many, many Catholics and other Christians have been and are not just
people of good sense but outstanding, to give just one example, the
Christian people who sheltered Jews facing extermination, at enormous risk
to themselves. A belief in transubstantiation can co-exist with
clear-sighted views - and humane views, as well as great abilities in the
sphere of practical action. Many, many secularists, who can see the
absurdity of transubstantiation have views which are ridiculous and
stupid.
This isn't in the least a scholarly page, but I can claim knowledge of
theological scholarship, including study of the New Testament in Greek, as
well as extensive study of wider theological debate and discussion.
Aphorisms:
religion, ideology and honesty
See also my page Aphorisms.
This world is inexhaustible
and unfathomable. We need speculate about no other.
Mystics who are 'deep'
are out of their depth.
Humanity can be explained
only partly in natural terms but not at all in supernatural terms.
The horrific imperfections
of the world foster courage and ingenuity. Why not skepticism?
The understandable fear
of becoming lost, of leaving behind roads and paths, helps to explain the
refusal to follow an argument wherever it leads, the reassurance of religions
and ideologies.
The Christian revelation
has taken away from life the mystery which for non-Christians remains. For
skeptics more than for Christians, this is a mysterious and magical world.
The Christian God has
become softer and gentler, a God who's 'only human,' although no more so than
the old vengeful God.
My atheism is far from
being the most important thing about me, otherwise there would be a strong
linkage between me and the atheist Stalin.
To know that someone is
a Christian or an atheist tells me almost nothing about the person.
Self-evident untruths
and half-truths will always be popular.
Honest people may well
reinterpret their lives at intervals as drastically as totalitarian regimes
reinterpret their own history.
I detest your ideology
and the ideologies you detest.
Oppose mindless tolerance
as well as mindless intolerance.
Oppose secular tyrannies as well as religious
tyrannies.
'The later can be better
than the earlier.' There's more consolation in this than in all the religions
of the world. It may even console us for the existence of those religions.
If the world were imperfect
in the way that Christians or communists suppose, Christianity or communism
might be true, but it's imperfect in a way that refutes them. And so for other
theisms and ideologies.
The great achievements
of religious architecture, painting, sculpture and literature are no evidence
for religion but evidence that people with artistic gifts may not have the
same
talent for critical thinking.
The world can look better seen in a distorting mirror.
Extra ecclesiam nulla salus.'
With comments on 'key workers' in 'sacred spaces.'
Above, la Scala Santa in Rome. This section is addressed to
Roman Catholic commenters who are more sophisticated than the simple
believers who ascend the Scala Santa on their knees - sophisticated,
liberal Catholics who even so believe in doctrines which are surely
just as difficult to defend - ridiculous, in fact. No Catholic has to
believe that the steps making up the Scala Santa were flown - or
trasported in some other way - from Jerusalem to Rome, but belief in
transubstantiation is a very different matter. This is a central belief
- the belief that in the Mass, the bread becomes bread no longer, but
the actual body of Jesus Christ, the wine becomes wine no longer, but
the actual blood of Jesus Christ - not symbolically the body and blood
of Christ but the actual body and blood of Christ. Or the belief in the
indissolubility of marriage, the belief which overlooks the plain fact
that two people may marry at a time when their judgment was unformed,
when they were teenagers or adults with poor judgment, the belief which
maintains that once married, they should stay married. In secular
society, divorce allows people to start again after making a mistake. In
Roman Catholic societies, divorce takes place despite the 'teaching' of
the Church, but only as a result of secular thinking and common sense.
The teaching of the Church has contempt for common sense in so many ways
- but more in the past than the present.
After examining briefly the doctrine 'Extra ecclesiam nulla salus,'
I examine some claims of a 'liberal' Roman
Catholic, not named here. In an article published in
'The Daily Telegraph,' (19 October, 2020) with the heading 'Churches
have always been key workers,' she calls for state support for Churches
- a disastrously misguided call. In France, the secularism of the state
is emphasized. In Great Britain, there's a need to emphasize the
secularism of the state too - including separation of church and state The state has no business subsidizing
Churches. If it subsidizes Churches, should it subsidize mosques,
synagogues and temples too?
The writer emphasizes the practical work of Christian Churches.
Roman Catholic Churches, like other Churches, contribute to famine
relief and relief concerned with medical emergencies but are part of a
Church which has disregarded, which continues to disregard, the obvious
fact that human populations are subject to the Malthusian
pressures which are general in the animal kingdom - many are born but
few survive, a situation transformed by the development of artificial
contraception, opposed by the Roman Catholic Church but transforming
women's lives, and men's lives too. They are part of a Church which
prefers to celebrate 'martyrs' rather than the scientists, engineers,
medical staff, labourers and others whose work has transformed the world
in other ways, by, for example, freeing humanity, or a large section of
humanity, from periodic famines, from periodic plagues. There's a great
deal of background material on these matters on this page and other
pages of the site - to give a complete set of links to the material
would be difficult. I quote in various places this, from Peter Mathias'
'The First Industrial Nation:'
'The fate of the overwhelming mass of the population in any
pre-industrial society is to pass their lives on the margins of
subsistence. It was only in the eighteenth century that society in
north-west Europe, particularly in England, began the break with all
former traditions of economic life.'
Material in the site tends to be highly dispersed. A single
section may contain material with strong contrasts. So, for example, the
next section documents the abusive language of one particular Christian,
a 'heretic hunter' with, fortunately, no way of enforcing his views, now
that Protestants can no longer torture or kill Catholics and Catholics
can no longer torture or kill Protestants, but contains very different
material such as this:
'I'm disappointed, very disappointed, that
'Conservative Woman,' a site with so many
strengths, whose stance is very similar to
my own in many ways - I'll mention just one
of them, the emphasis on defence and
deterring aggression, upholding the
importance of our armed forces - should
support this deeply misguided religious
ideology.
On the subject of 'martyrs,' which is the subject of a book by
the commenter whose article in 'The Daily Telegraph' criticized here:
A placard from one of the many commemorations which have taken
place in France since the beheading of Samuel Paty:
'Samuel is not a martyr (let's leave that word to the fanatics!)
Samuel is a hero of the Republic.'
'Samuel n' est pas un martyr (laissons
ce vocable aux fanatiques!) Samuel est un Hero de la République.'
'The Christian attitude to historical
events is often but not always faulty and
misguided, The Christian attitude to the
natural world more consistently so, I think.
The Coronavirus, protein and nucleic acid,
is part of God's creation, to some
Christians, like lambs and kittens, sharks
and the plague bacillus. There are
Christians who would view the coronavirus
pandemic as God's punishment for sinners - a
strange act of God, considering that it has
led to the cancellation of Church services.
'The Lisbon earthquake led to
widespread doubt about God's power in the
world. The more fundamental question
concerns God's existence, of course. It was
hard to explain an event which caused so
much death and damage and which couldn't be
blamed on human imperfection (or 'sin,'
which isn't a synonym for imperfection.)'
There have been, and still are, many, many Roman Catholics who
believe that the steps shown in the image above are the very steps which Jesus Christ walked up in
Jerusalem, before talking with Pontius Pilate - and that the steps were
transported from Jerusalem to Rome by Saint Helena in the fourth
century. For many centuries, the steps have attracted Christian
pilgrims. To this day, pilgrims ascend the steps on their knees.
From the Wikipedia entry:
'Climbing the Holy Stairs on one's knees is a devotion much in
favour with pilgrims and the faithful. Several popes have performed the
devotion, and the
Roman Catholic Church has granted
indulgences for it.
Pope Pius VII on 2 September 1817 granted those who ascend the
Stairs in the prescribed manner an
indulgence of nine years for every step.
Pope Pius X, on 26 February 1908, conceded a
plenary indulgence as often as the Stairs are devoutly ascended
after Confession and Holy Communion. On 11 August 2015, the
Apostolic Penitentiary granted a plenary indulgence to all who
"inspired by love" climbed the Stairs on their knees while meditating on
Christ's passion, and also went to Confession, received Holy Communion,
and recited certain other Catholic prayers, including a prayer for the
Pope's intentions.''
The section 'Skeptical Visitors includes this:
'Charles
Dickens, after visiting the Scala Sancta in 1845, wrote: "I never,
in my life, saw anything at once so ridiculous and so unpleasant as this
sight." He described the scene of pilgrims ascending the staircase on
their knees as a "dangerous reliance on outward observances" '
https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/what-no-salvation-outside-the-church-means
One of the most misunderstood teachings of the
Catholic Church is this one:
“Outside
the Church there is no salvation” (Extra ecclesiam nulla
salus).
'Those trying to grasp the meaning of this teaching often
struggle with its formulations by various Church Fathers and Church
Councils down through history. Of course, to understand an isolated
formulation of any Church teaching, one must study the
historical context within which it was written: why it was written,
what was going on in the Church at the time, who the intended
audience was, and so on. One must discover how the magisterium
(teaching office) of the Church understands its own teaching. If
someone fails to do this and chooses, rather, to simply treat a
particular formulation as a stand-alone teaching, he runs the risk
of seriously misunderstanding it.'
'In recent times, the Church has recognized that its teaching
about the necessity of the Catholic Church for salvation has been
widely misunderstood, so it has “re-formulated” this teaching in a
positive way. Here is how the Catechism of the Catholic Church
begins to address this topic: “How are we to understand this
affirmation, often repeated by the Church Fathers? Reformulated
positively, it means that all salvation comes from Christ the Head
through the Church which is his Body” (CCC 846).
'In keeping with the Church’s current spirit of ecumenism, this
positive reformulation comes across less harshly than previous
negative formulations. Even so, it remains quite controversial. So,
let’s see how this new formulation squares with Scripture.'
' ... consider these three verses:
- He who believes and is baptized will be saved. (Mk 16:16)
- [U]nless you repent you will all likewise perish. (Lk 13:3)
- [H]e who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life,
and I will raise him up at the last day. (Jn 6:54)'
This 'Biblical proof' uses two quotations from Synoptic
Gospels followed by a quote from the Gospel according to John. The
Greek historian Thucydides, a towering figure in historiography,
scrupulous in his use of evidence, acknowledges that in the speeches
which are so prominent in his History of the Peloponnesian War, the
wording is his own. Modern ideas of exact quotation were foreign to
the writers of the Gospels. The assumption that the Synoptic Gospels
contain exact quotations of Jesus' own words is false. Readers of
the Gospel according to John - apart from orthodox Christians,
whether Protestant or Catholic - will find that Jesus speaks in this
Gospel in a very different way from the way he speaks in Matthew,
Mark and Luke. The wording is the wording of John. The historical
Jesus can't be reached by these means.
Many, many troubling questions arise from just these verses. I
don't need to deal with them in any detail here. Material on this
page is highly dispersed and material on the site tends to be highly
dispersed. I deal with the issues in other places. I'll simply give
reminders here.
The Catholic commentary continues:
'Notice that in these three verses Jesus associated salvation
with baptism, confession, and the Eucharist, respectively. Catholics
recognize that these sacraments are administered through the Church.
In fact, in the case of the latter two, a validly ordained priest is
necessary for their administration, so the sacrament of
ordination must also be associated with salvation. A primary role of
the Catholic Church in conjunction with salvation is becoming quite
clear.
'This brings us to the second part of the Catechism’s
formulation of the doctrine being considered: “. . . through the
Church which is his Body.”
Since the sacraments are the ordinary means through which Christ
offers the grace necessary for salvation, and the Catholic Church
that Christ established is the ordinary minister of those
sacraments, it is appropriate to state that salvation comes through
the Church.
...
'Since the sacraments are the ordinary means through which Christ
offers the grace necessary for salvation, and the Catholic Church that
Christ established is the ordinary minister of those sacraments, it is
appropriate to state that salvation comes through the Church.
'This is not unlike the situation that existed prior to the
establishment of the Catholic Church. Even before it was fully revealed
that he was the Messiah, Jesus himself taught that “salvation is from
the Jews” (Jn 4:22). He pointed the woman of Samaria to the body of
believers existing at that time, through which salvation would be
offered to all mankind: the Jews.
'In a similar fashion, now that the Messiah has established his
Church, Jesus might say, “salvation is from the Catholics”!
'Recognizing this, we can see why the Church, especially during times
of mass exodus (such as has happened in times when heresies have run
rampant), has been even more forceful in the way it has taught this
doctrine. Instead of simply pointing out how God offers salvation from
Christ, through the Church, the Church has warned that there is no
salvation apart from Christ, outside his Church.
'Since Jesus established the Catholic Church as necessary for
salvation, those who knowingly and willingly reject him or his
Church cannot be saved. We see this in Jesus’ teaching: “He who is not
with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me scatters” (Mt
12:30). Also: “[I]f he [a sinning brother] refuses to listen even to the
church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector” (Mt 18:17).
Paul warned similarly: “As for a man who is factious, after admonishing
him once or twice, have nothing more to do with him, knowing that such a
person is perverted and sinful; he is self-condemned” (Ti 3:10-11).
'Having said all this, we must recognize that this doctrine is not as
far reaching as some imagine it to be. People will sometimes ask, “Does
this means non-Catholics are going to hell?” Not necessarily.'
There follows a discussion of 'invincible ignorance,' including this
bleak comment:
'Paul did not say that those who are innocently ignorant of the truth
will be saved; he simply keeps open the possibility of it.'
One obvious consequence is this, to give just one example from many
possible examples. If, in the past, a tribe living somewhere in the
Amazon, far from Catholic civilization, had never been reached by
Catholic missionaries, then they would have the excuse that they hadn't
rejected Catholic teaching - they had never even heard of it. If they
had been visited by Catholic missionaries and been exposed to Catholic
teaching and some of their number had rejected it, then it seems they
would have been damned.
Followed immediately by this further 'Biblical proof:'
Similarly, he wrote: “[I]s God the God of Jews only? Is he not the
God of Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles also, since God is one; and he
will justify the circumcised on the ground of their faith and the
uncircumcised through their faith” (Rom 3:29-30).
Anyone who disagrees with my view of the doctrine of
'outside-the-church-no-salvation' will find contrary views in many
places, of course, including this blog devoted to the issue (and devoted
to th doctrine):
http://outsidethechurchnosalvation.blogspot.com/2009/06/st-thomas-aquinas-on-salvation-by.html
Noah's Ark 1:
Who would Adam and Eve it?
The two sections on Noah's Ark on this page
also appear on my page on Cambridge
University.
www.linkagenet.com/themes/cambridge-university.htm
Above, animals (two of all the
animals in the world) waiting to board Noah's Ark, which will save them from
drowning when God, angry at human wickedness, floods the entire world -
according to the Biblical Creation Trust and many other organizations. The
people who had built the Cathedrals and those lovely English Parish
Churches - as well as the unlovely and quite ugly English Parish Churches -
had a similar view of God, in general.
Below, a representation in
stained glass of Noah's Ark, from Lincoln Cathedral (one of the
cathedrals, and churches, I've visited in the course of architectural
study visits.) The fact that a building is an architectural achievement
is no guarantee that the activities within the building, the beliefs of
the builders and the users of the building, are at a high level:
credulity and superstition aren't excluded from buildings of note.
'Adam and Eve it:' Cockney
Rhyming Slang, of course, meaning 'Who would believe it.' The accents and
dialects of the British Isles are an interest of mine. My own accent is
Yorkshire, specifically South Yorkshire, Sheffield, but I also use Sheffield
dialect - a particular grammar and vocabulary as well as a particular
pronunciation.
From the page
https://www.biblicalcreationtrust.org/people.html
'Steve Lloyd MA, PhD works part-time as a
Researcher and Lecturer for BCT [Biblical Creation Trust] and is also pastor
of Hope Church, Gravesend. He studied Materials Science at the University of
Cambridge and became a Royal Society University Research Fellow. Steve also
has a Diploma in Theology and Religious Studies from the University of
Cambridge.'
It's obvious that this Royal Society University
Research Fellow has more than maintained the high standards of Cambridge
science. If we look at some of his beliefs, it's obvious to me that he's
also maintained the abysmal standards of Cambridge theology.
These are some of the beliefs promoted by the
Biblical Creation Trust. From the page
https://www.biblicalcreationtrust.org
Belief 'that the Bible provides reliable historical
information.'
The Bible's 'God-spoken testimony to events such as
Noah’s flood means that a worldwide global flood in human history (for
example) must be included in any scientific model that is true to the
earth’s past.'
Amongst the doctrines 'central to Biblical Creation
and established from numerous passages of the Bible,
'Adam was a historical individual from whom the whole human race is
descended.
...
'Noah’s flood extended over the whole globe, bringing destruction to all
air-breathing land animals outside the ark.'
I don't make any attempt to give the arguments and evidence against these
doctrines, except to state that a flood extending over the whole globe is
impossible - to mention just one objection, floodwaters could never reach to
the tops of high mountains, or to the tops of high hills, and 'air-breathing
land animals' in these places would survive. Noah is supposed to have
brought two animals of every kind into his ark. The impossibility here
should be obvious - Noah's Ark would have to be bigger, much bigger, vastly
bigger than the biggest aircraft carrier to contain two of every animal.
Whales are air-breathing animals. This particular Cambridge scientist (not
in the least representative of Cambridge science, at least contemporary
Cambridge science) believes. presumably, that there were two Blue Whales and
two of all the other species of whale (all of them air-breathing animals, of
course) on board Noah's Ark. The Biblical Creation Trust does acknowledge
the existence of dinosaurs, generally large or very large animals.
Other luminaries listed on the Biblical Creation Trust Website:
'Paul Garner MSc, FGS is a full-time Researcher and Lecturer for
BCT. He has an MSc in Geoscience from University College London, where he
specialised in palaeobiology. He is a Fellow of the Geological Society of
London and a member of several other scientific societies.'
'Matthew Pickhaver BSc, PGCE is an Associate Lecturer with BCT and
our Communications Manager. Matthew was awarded a BSc in Zoology by
University College London.'
'William Worraker is an Associate Researcher with BCT. He has a
BSc (Hons) in Physics and a PhD in Engineering Mathematics, both from
University of Bristol, UK. Employed in scientific software development until
recently ... His current BCT research seeks a scientific solution to the
‘Flood Heat Problem’: where did all the heat go that was released during the
Genesis Flood?'
Their excellence (in scientific attainment) and the stupidity of their
theological views should be obvious - it's obvious to me - but stupidity
doesn't do justice to their views. They also overlook, are unaware of, the
contradiction between their views and human values. They overlook or are
unaware of the human cost.
Noah's Ark 2:
Human values
From my page
www.linkagenet.com/themes/heaneytranslations.htm
Relevant, I think, to some comments below,
on the death of children.
© Victoria and Albert Museum, London
' 'Lydia Dwight Dead,' from the collections of the Victoria and Albert
Museum, which gives
this information: 'Lydia Dwight was six years old when she died on
3 March 1674' and 'One of the earliest experiments in European ceramic
sculpture, this object was commissioned by the father of the dead child in
order to capture her likeness and perpetuate her memory. It was a personal
and private sculpture, reflecting the grief of the little girl's family ...
' The sculpture was lent to the Millennium Gallery, Sheffield by the
Victoria and Albert Museum and it was there that I saw this heartbreaking
response to the death of a young child, which has a
counterpart in the heartbreaking set of poems by the Polish poet Jan Kochanowski: the 19 elegies or 'laments' of 1580, written to commemorate his
daughter Urszula, who died at the age of two. Seamus Heaney's translation of
these 'Treny,' undertaken with Stanislaw Baranczak, is an important
contribution to this devastating literature, an important contribution to
the poetry of deep feeling.
'I discuss the translation
of only four lines of Jan Kochanowski's 'Treny III' and mainly a single aspect:
the translation of repeated words or phrases. My knowledge of Polish is much more restricted
than my knowledge of the other languages here. I studied Polish before visiting
Poland, a country, and a people, of great importance and significance for me, and spoke Polish whilst I was there, but only for simple, everyday
purposes. The Polish of 'Treny' is Renaissance Polish.
'Stanislaw Baranczak's introduction to his translation with Seamus Heaney includes this:
' 'Jan Kochanowski (1530 - 84), the greatest poet of not just Poland but the
entire Slavic world up to the beginning of the nineteeenth century ... '
'His cast of mind was formed by a philosophy of the golden mean and
moderation, and this in turn produced a quiet acceptance of whatever life
might bring, a tendency to handle the vicissitudes of earthly existence in a
rational and orderly way, one always seasoned with a dose of healthy
scepticism as regards both gain and loss, success and failure, happiness and
misery.
' 'The stable - or stable-seeming - foundation of such an outlook was
provided by both ancient thought and Christian theology. For a
sixteenth-century Humanist - in this case, moreover, a poet whose earlier
work included not only a Classical tragedy with a plot borrowed from Homer
but also a poetic translation of the Psalms - elements of stoicism or
epicureanism could merge conflictlessly with the belief in Providential
protection bestowed on the just as a reward for their virtuous lives ...
' 'Yet it is precisely this kind of stable and secure philosophical
foundation that may well be the first thing to crack 'when the Parcae cease
to spin / Their thread, when sorrows enter in / When Death knocks at the
door'. And this is what happened to Kochanowski in middle age when Death
snatched away his youngest child, a two-and-a-half-year-old daughter called
Ursula, devastating the poet's hitherto unshakeable equanimity ... All of a
sudden, pain reaches a degree of intensity that cannot be explained away. No
rationalization makes sense to us any more when its very philosophical basis
is pulled out like a rug from under our feet - when we can no longer
subscribe to the belief that each of us is to a large extent a master of his
or her own fate, and that we therefore have the right at least to hope that
our actions, if purposeful, timely and determined enough, may bring the
desired results ... '
The devastation caused by the Great Sheffield
Flood of 1864, following the collapse of the Great Dale Dike.
From the page
http://www.mick-armitage.staff.shef.ac.uk/sheffield/flood.html
'Six hundred and fifty million gallons of water roared down the Loxley
valley and into Sheffield, wreaking death and destruction on a horrific
scale.
'Individual experiences were infinitely tragic, pathetic, and sometimes
bizarre. The first to drown was a two-day-old baby boy, the oldest a woman
of eighty-seven. Whole families were wiped out; one desperate man, trapped
upstairs in a terrace house, battered his way through five party walls to
safety collecting thirty-four other people as he went; a would be suicide,
locked in a cell, decided, as the flood poured in, that he no longer wished
to die; one poor old man drowned alongside his sleeping companion - a
donkey; a husband put his wife and five children on a bed on which they
floated until the water went down.'
'After about thirty minutes the flood gradually subsided leaving a trail
of destruction more than eight miles long: it was later described as
'looking like a battlefield.'
In this flood, at least 240 people were killed. The victims included
babies - a few days old, a few weeks old, a few months old. The loss of life
in The Great Global Flood caused by God (according to the Biblical Creation
Trust) was immeasurably greater - for people, for all 'air-breathing
animals.' Why exactly did the all-wise Creator wipe out the entire human
race, babies, children and adults, young and old (as well as
'air-breathing' animals), allegedly - apart from the favoured few inside the
Ark? What does this catastrophe tell us about the nature of God the Father
and the nature of the beliefs of the Biblical Creation Trust?
The attempt to present the Global Flood as a historical event with
a theological basis - an action of God - is made by many, many
fundamentalist Christians and Christian groups, not just the Biblical
Creation Trust, of course. This is one of them, from
https://bibleproject.com/blog/why-did-god-flood-the-world/
Anyone who thinks this is plausible and reasonable needs to think again,
and the thinking - the complete response - should be about much more than
concepts. It needs to take account of human values - but fundamentalist
Christians are likely to dismiss some human values as incompatible with
Christian doctrine.
Extracts from
https://answersingenesis.org/bible-characters/noah/the-evangelist/
'Like people today, almost certainly the people of Noah’s day were busy
enjoying the pleasures of life and did not believe or care that judgment was
coming.
'During the decades of mankind’s last days, Noah was working on the Ark.
As it grew, it must have been a potent symbol to those living nearby. One
can imagine that Noah was often asked about his construction project.
Indeed, it is likely that he was mocked for such an enterprise.'
'Hebrews
11:7 says, “By faith Noah, being divinely warned
of things not yet seen, moved with godly fear, prepared an ark for the
saving of his household, by which he condemned the world and became heir of
the righteousness which is according to faith.” '
The Willing Savior
Noah’s Flood teaches us two things about the attitude of
God towards us.
He is angry with sin and will punish it one day.
He loves us and sends us a way of salvation, if we will only repent and
turn to Him.
Jesus is our Ark of Salvation today. Just as Noah was saved
by grace through faith from the destruction of the Flood, we can be saved by
grace through faith in Jesus, when we repent and turn to Him.
There are vast numbers of Christians who have no belief in an actual
flood sent by God and an actual Ark who do believe that if a person fails to
accept Jesus as 'personal Lord and Saviour' they are alienated from God,
eternally.
Reformed Christian Gentleman and Bufo
buffoon, a venomous toad
Above, photographer's impression of Reformed Gentleman, Bufo
buffoon, a venomous toad. At the end of this section, material on this
toad.
Collins English Dictionary, entry for 'toad,' meaning 3: 'a
loathsome person.'
And once again the resident moron responds as predicted.'
'You're
talking to yourself, cretin.'
'You're too stupid for words.'
'Good
grief, it's an imbecile. Your ignorance is an embarrassment.'
'You're
so wilfully stupid it's funny.'
'You're hopelessly dense.'
'You're
swinging it, you deranged moron.'
Above, and below, some grotesque comments from Reformed Gentleman and the commenters he
addresses. I only give extracts, not the comments in full - I observe
copyright restrictions.
Most of Reformed Gentleman's Disqus 'comments' have been posted
on the site 'Conservative Woman'
https://conservativewoman.co.uk/
To view all Reformed Gentleman's Disqus comments:
https://disqus.com/by/disqus_BKSPV2MbkH/
The collected Disqus Comments show that he uses the same
insults, similar insults and variants of these insults again and again
and again.
His comments make it clear that he's a Christian and a protestant
Christian. His attitude to Roman Catholics is very similar to his
attitude to non-Christians. He's also a Creationist, as this comment of
his shows: '
'You're a fraud ... You're not even pretending to deal with the
scientific literature and the arguments. You're completely out of your
depth and lost. The creationist sites provide both arguments and
scientific literature. Your refusal/inability to interact with these
mean you tacitly concede the debate.'
Wikipedia: The term creationism most often refers to
belief in
special creation; the claim that the universe and lifeforms were
created as they exist today by divine action, and that the only true
explanations are those which are compatible with a
Christian fundamentalist
literal interpretation of the
creation myths found in the
Bible's
Genesis creation narrative.' (Wikipedia) Reformed Gentleman may or
may not believe in this particular version of Creationism.
There seems every reason to suppose that if orthodox Christian
belief is true, Reformed Gentleman's salvation is assured: the orthodox
Protestant Christian view of redemption, which denies salvation to war
heroes, humanitarians, the mass of devoted parents, scientists,
engineers and an incalculable number of others, unless they belong to
the small minority of people who have accepted Christ as their personal
Lord and Saviour, is very, very disturbing.
A selection of Reformed Gentleman's comments to a variety of
commenters at Conservative Woman on a variety of pages:
'And once again the resident moron responds as predicted.'
'You're
talking to yourself, cretin.'
'You're too stupid for words.'
'Good
grief, it's an imbecile. Your ignorance is an embarrassment.'
'You're
so wilfully stupid it's funny.'
'You're hopelessly dense.'
'You're
swinging it, you deranged moron.'
'You're a liar.'
'You're a
phoney, little boy.'
'You've been refuted left and right, little
boy.'
'You're beyond moronic.'
'Good grief, you're dense.'
'You're talking to a mirror again, weirdo.'
'Confused little meat
sack.'
'You're a dunce and you're bone idle.'
'You ran then and
you're running now, bottle job.'
'You're all talk. You're a fraud.'
'You're a mess.'
'Other than being an utter bore, what is the point
of you?'
'Good grief, you're a bore. You can barely string a sentence
together. Stop wasting my time, cretin.'
More of his comments are quoted below as a Supplement. The selection
above gives the general idea. The additional comments in the Supplement
are likely to confirm the impression, drive it still further into the
mind.
A selection of Reformed Gentleman's comments on one single page of
the site to a single commenter, not me but a Roman Catholic (from the
page
https://conservativewoman.co.uk/the-great-ventilators-myth/ which
also contains comments on me and my comments to Reformed Gentleman):
' ... you're still unhinged. I've no time for RC garbage ...'
'Are
you deranged? You want to talk 'biblical' yet you cite your heretical
garbage?'
'Yeah, you're still rambling, heretic. Do you ever ask
yourself why you cannot derive your weird little beliefs from the
Bible?'
'Subjectivist bullpoop, Catholicism personified.'
' ...
there's the RC subjectivist bullpoop. Thank you, heretic.'
'You're an
utter cretin. Your position is anti-objectivity and therefore champions
my own view over yours ... Yikes!'
'You're a joke. Abandon the
dramatics.'
'Look to your own anti-Gospel grabage (sic), heretic.'
'Wow, look at the deceitful Romanist. Bless you, heretic.'
'Tell me,
Romanist heretic, where in the Bible can you find your latest wokist
rant?'
'Utter drivel. What a waste of bandwidth.'
'Yes, heretic,
your rambling garbage aside, we reformed know where we got the canon
...'
'Oh my. The emition (sic) is palpable. Where's your Bible,
heretic?'
'Pathetic. You cowardly heretic.'
When I included this selection in one of my comments on the page'
this was how he responded:
'You're a coward and a snide. You can't deal with the
arguments so you try to stir the pot. You're intellectually and
philosophically inept, utterly out of your depth, so you go
trawling through one's comment history, picking out 'insults'
with no regard for context or arguments surrounding the
'insults'. You're a dishonest hack and completely unhinged.
You're a weirdo. And that's a valid ad hominem criticism,
you utter cretin ... Have you any idea how unhinged you look?'
Some context - points made by this Catholic and the replies
of RG, 'Reformed Gentleman.' Context in much more detail -
clicking on the link already provided
https://conservativewoman.co.uk/the-great-ventilators-myth/ gives
access to all the comments which follow the article: the
comments of this Catholic, Reformed Gentleman, myself and all
the other contributors of comments. Clicking on the name
'Reformed Gentleman' at the beginning of any of his comments
gives access to all the Disqus comments he's contributed to
'Conservative Woman.'
Catholic: You're simply determined to smear me and are honing
in on the first thing you can find. But the suggestion that what
I've said is in any way to deny the vitalness of the Gospel is
just unfair.
RG: You're a joke. Abandon the dramatics.
Catholic: You keep telling me I don't believe the Gospel. I keep
telling you I do. You keep refusing to explain why I don't.
RG: Look to your own anti-Gospel grabage (sic), heretic.
Catholic: You don't seem to understand that abuse isn't a proof
of anything. I don't think the Catholic faith is anti-Gospel.
Just asserting that it is proves nothing.
RG: Wow. Look at
the deceitful Romanist. Bless you, heretic. Tell me, Romanist
heretic, where in the Bible can you find your latest wokeist
rant.
Catholic: Nowhere. I do not endorse what I think you
mean by wokeism.
RG: Yeah you do. It certainly is not derived
from objective teaching.
Another Roman Catholic to Reformed Gentleman, from the Comments
section of the page
https://conservativewoman.co.uk/emotion-not-empathy-rules-the-world-of-woke/
(The page gives the context):
You are trying to manipulate a "discussion" to be engaged in purely
on your own terms ... I have no interest in having any kind of
discussion about me personally ; even though I find it ridiculous that
you seem to want to deny the validity of my own choices as a Christian
on some basis of Protestantism that demands exactly that Christians are
to make their own choices. And google the Luther quotes yourself, unless
you wish to admit to the very laziness that you implicitly accuse me of.
...
I have no interest in the type of Reformist discussion that you want
to insist on, as I believe it to be inherently flawed in its principles.
Last post here, feel free to type whatever final word that I shall
decline to read.
Reformist Gentleman to this Roman Catholic, from the Comments
section of the page
https://conservativewoman.co.uk/emotion-not-empathy-rules-the-world-of-woke/
(The page gives the context): :
Oh I know. You don't have the stomach for this. The moment you walked
past the arguments and exegesis you conceded the debate. This is just
mopping up.
You're a shirker. Whining about 'delusions' while not even
attempting to demonstrate such is the height of folly.
'If you think that describing your points as "cod's wallop" is
"conceding them", then perhaps you shouldn't be trying to lecture others
about exegesis.'
That's incoherent drivel. One of us is sticking to the subject and
the other is throwing a tantrum. The fact you are refusing to address
the arguments means you tacitly concede the points. That's a valid
inference. You wilfully entered the discussion and 'challenged' me to
prove my assertion. I did just that, providing argument and exegesis. In
return you have failed to shoulder your burden of responsibility.
'You are trying to manipulate a "discussion" to be engaged in
purely on your own terms.'
Oh good grief. Stop the dishonesty and whining. I'm very much focused
on the arguments and have been from the start. Your whining is
embarrassing. It's your comfort blanket, covering for the fact you're
ducking the actual debate.
Are you upset that I'm attacking Romanism? Well, you're attacking
Protestantism. Am I whining? Get a grip.
'But I have no interest in having any kind of discussion about me
personally...'
Neither do I. You're making things up.
'...even though I find it ridiculous that you seem to want to deny
the validity of my own choices as a Christian on some basis of a
Protestantism that demands exactly that Christians are to make their own
choices.'
What the hell are you talking about? This is pathetic. I'm being no
more forthright about Romanism than you are about Protestantism. You're
a mess.
'I have no interest in the type of Reformist discussion that you
want to insist on, as I believe it to be inherently flawed in its
principles.'
Oh, you meanie! Should I whine now because the nasty Romanist said my
Protestant faith is inherently flawed?
In all sincerity, I've seen you produce arguments in other contexts
and I respect the fact that you seem capable philosophically. You're not
stupid by any stretch. But you have let yourself down here. There was no
need to play the victim. That was utterly disingenuous.
Since you have no desire to continue this discussion, I'll leave it
there and go and have a large whiskey.
Reformed Gentleman to me, from the Comments section of the page
https://conservativewoman.co.uk/emotion-not-empathy-rules-the-world-of-woke/
(The page gives the context, including comments I contributed):
The trouble with the meat sack (he doesn't like this term but it is
appropriate given atheistic assumptions) is he cannot distinguish wanton
insults from valid and relevant/necessary ad hominem criticism. It is
one of his many confusions.
[So all his comments on me in the list below are 'valid/necessary
ad hominem criticism' and none of his comments are 'wanton insults.']
You're a dishonest hack and an
intellectual pygmy.
You're incapable of engaging in rational argumentation, so instead
you engage in deflection. You're an embarrassment. Again, your inability to think is astounding.
Bloody hell. You are truly unhinged. It's no longer funny.
Once again you have demonstrated your utter inability to understand
nuance and employ rational thought.
... his whole post represents the
emotional rant of an insignificant meat sack. His very presence here
demonstrates the absurdity of atheism.
Supplement: other comments of Reformed Gentleman, beneficiary of
Christian salvation to other people he's displeased with for one reason
or another, people who in many or most cases won't deserve Christian
salvation, according to this damnationist believer. This repetitious
content can be omitted if necessary.
Says the bone idle, cretinous loser who's been winging it through
this discussion.
You're a dunce and you're bone idle.
Your
inferiority complex is obvious.
Go away, you odious cretin. You do
not know how to think rationally ... You're insincere and a sad actor.
Your 'message' (swivel-eyed rant) is incoherent and inaccurate, you
utter cretin.
You're one of the most irrational, odious specimens one
has every encountered.
You really are an unpleasant, quite loathsome
individual. [!]
You're talking to a mirror. You can't handle the
philophical arguments.
You really are a drip ... You utter bore.
You've been refuted, two-penny shrill.
You're still ranting ...
You're oversensitive.
I'm offering valid and relevant criticism ...
Are you dense?
You're talking to a mirror ... you're a despicable
cretin, an actor. I'm done engaging you.
You're a fallacy machine,
Gumbo. You're also one of the dumbest people I've ever encountered.
You're a fantasists. A Walter Mitty.
... this is [sic] simply your
own arbitrary criteria and you're too dense and bone idle to recognize
it.
You've been refuted left and right, little boy. You're in my
pocket.
You've conceded the debate, little boy, and yet you cling on
like a helpless child, desperately trying to get in a shot. You fail
every time. Game, Set & Match. Soli Deo Gratia. [Translation: to God
alone the thanks.]
You're a liar. You constantly refuse to examine
evidence and argument.
You're still in a babygro.
You're talking
to yourself, cretin, and not addressing my argument.
You're so dumb.
You're winging it, you deranged moron.
This is fun. You're fun,
Sparky. You're so wilfully stupid it's funny.
Please repeat that
using coherent English, little guy.
The very fact that you are here
arguing against others' beliefs refutes atheism.
Stop acting like an
adolescent whinebag and act like a grown adult.
Again, your inability
to think is astounding.
Bloody hell. You are truly unhinged. It's no
longer funny.
Some of my comments at
Conservative Woman:
Dr Alan Billings, Police and
Crime Commissioner
I'm a non-believer. Dr Billings
isn't a non-believer. He describes himself as a retired Church of
England priest. In 'Keeping Safe,' very unwisely, he includes, on Page
2, in very large, very prominent letters, this quotation from the Old
Testament prophet Jeremiah:
'Seek the well-being of this
place ... for in its well-being you will find your own.' Jeremiah 29:7.
His Foreword ends with this:
The overriding message for the
coming year (2019-20) is that we must get better at working together for
the common good. The prophet put it this way: 'Seek the well-being of the place
where you are set ... for in its well-being you will find your own'.
(Jeremiah 29:7.)
Jeremiah's words had a specific
reference. Dr Billings ignores this and ignores the context. The
complete text of Jeremiah 29.7, in the translation of the King James
Bible:
'And seek the peace of the city
whither I have caused you to be carried away captives, and pray unto the
LORD for it: for in the peace thereof shall ye have peace.'
The New International Version
translation:
'Also, seek the peace and
prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to
the LORD for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.'
There was, of course, absolutely
no need for Dr Billings to include this quotation from an Old Testament
prophet. He should have realized that he was writing for a community
made up of many different groups - not just Church of England believers
and other Christian believers but non-believers, people with no belief
in God or the Bible, either the Bible as the inspired word of God or the
Bible as a good guide to contemporary problems, a community which
includes people with a wide range of religious but non-Christian views.
On 28 January 2019, a letter of
mine was published in the Sheffield newspaper 'The Star,' with the
heading 'Can public C of E services be defended?'
An extract:
'According to the British Social
Attitudes Survey, affiliation with the Church of England (C of E) has
never been lower in all age groups: it amounts to only 2 per cent of
young adults.
'What can justify the C of E’s
dominant role in Remembrance Sunday commemorations, then? I attend the
event in the city centre or at Weston Park. Like ones throughout the
country, it takes the form of a C of E service.
'There are many, many prayers and
after each one, this is the expected response (as given in the Order of
Service booklet):
'All Hear our prayer
'What is a non-believer or a
believer in another religion to do? Mumble insincerely? Stay silent?
Should non-believers pretend to believe in the power of prayer, or in
the Trinity – the doctrine that there’s God the Father, the Son and the
Holy Spirit (also in the booklet)? We attend to remember the fallen, to
show gratitude for their sacrifice, to show gratitude and appreciation
for present members of the armed forces, not to witness a C of E
service. '
Dr Billings made a comment on the
Website of the newspaper but declined to address the problem. His view
seems to entail a view of the Church of England as having a privileged
position in the civic life and wider activities of this country. In
addition to receiving his view of South Yorkshire Police's conduct in my
case, whether he chooses to defend the force or to criticize it, I'd be
interested in receiving his view of the Church's role in Remembrance
Sunday events - does he support the continuance of the status quo or
not? Perhaps he thinks that the views of non-believers like myself can
safely be disregarded.
Adrian Dorber, Dean of Lichfield Cathedral
See also my page
Israel, Islamism, Palestinian ideology
All the instances of bias I document on the page, some of it deluded,
psychotic bias, come from non-Christians. The Church of England's record in
relation to the state of Israel isn't in the least bad. The case discussed
here isn't typical in the least. It's a rare exception.
The very
critical letter I quote in my profile of
the Bishop of
Sheffield on this page does include this, 'There are and have been many,
many exceptional C of E members ...' Michael Ipgrave, the Bishop of
Lichfield, is certainly one of these exceptional people - but I'm thinking
primarily of his mathematical abilities and not at all of his theological
and ecclesiastical work.
Adrian Dorber has been heavily criticized for his role in a blatantly biased
conference which was suppposed to shed light “on the Israel/Palestine
Conflict and the prospect of peace” but which obviously did nothing of the
kind. From the graphic account written by David Collier of the
conference 'Holding Palestine in the Light,' held at Lichfield Cathedral.
The full account is at
http://david-collier.com/?p=2328
An extract:
... sitting next to me with her hand raised is Mandy Blumenthal. Zionist to
the core, Mandy had asked a question of Yossi Meckleberg earlier in the day.
She had wanted to know why Yossi had seemed to imply settlements, rather
than Arab rejectionism and violence was a (the?) major stumbling block. This
time, with the knowledge that Mandy was a Zionist, the Chair was visibly
ignoring Mandy’s raised hand.
The Chair was desperately seeking questions
from elsewhere in the audience. The questions had dried up. It was a
stand-off. Mandy became vocal:
‘why won’t you let me speak?’
‘Because you spoke earlier’ came the reply.
As an answer it did not suffice. Several people had asked more than one
question. The situation was absurd. There were no more questions. Only
Mandy’s hand remained aloft. There were still 10 minutes left till the end
of this session.
Several people became visibly agitated. A member of the audience asked why
the chair was ignoring Mandy’s question. Mandy spoke up again:
“Isn’t this a conference, why is only one side allowed to be heard?”
Open confrontation. This was not what the Dean had wanted, he stepped in to
soothe the situation and offered Mandy Blumenthal the microphone. Yet as he
did this and as Mandy stepped up, the Chair led Kamel Hawwash off the stage.
The ‘Jew’ question need not be answered. An awful, vile slur. In the end,
Hawwash did return but only to claim that Blumenthal had lied.
It was break time again. There were several cries of “shame on you”, but I
am not sure to who it was directed. Someone came straight up to Mandy
to apologise. ‘This is my town and I am Christian but that was
unacceptable’. ‘I do not know why it happened’. Others started to get
involved, some suggested they had not expected this conference to be so one
sided. This time as I mingled I was approached by a young activist. He
identified himself quite quickly as a ‘BDS supporter.'
My comment, published below David Collier's article:
The Church of England is often regarded as naive, blundering, ineffectual –
but some naive, blundering, ineffectual people in the Church can cause real
damage. Adrian Dorber, the Dean of Lichfield Cathedral, is one of these.
The Bishop of Lichfield claims that he couldn’t have stopped the
Conference, but it was naive of him – more than that, a serious blunder –
not to have realized that a Conference on this topic would be controversial.
He ought to have intervened and made sure that the Conference would be
fair-minded and balanced but failed to do that. Justin Welby says that ‘He
has no direct authority over the Dean,’ but he’s admitting, in effect, that
he, the Archbishop of Canterbury, is sometimes unable or unwilling to do
anything about the anti-Israel propaganda which is allowed to go
unchallenged far too often in the Church of England.
A sermon preached at St Marks Church, Sheffield in 2014 included this:
‘The Revd Dr Stephen Sizer, who has researched and published broadly in this
area, concludes ‘that Christian Zionism is the largest, most controversial
and most destructive lobby within Christianity. It bears primary
responsibility for perpetuating tensions in the Middle East, justifying
Israel’s apartheid colonialist agenda and for undermining the peace process
between Israel and the Palestinians.’ ‘
What? The intractable problems of the Middle East, the atrocities in the
Middle East, largely caused by Christian Zionists? The Revd Stephen Sizer is
yet another naive and blundering Anglican, but a particularly dangerous one.
He gave a link to an article which claimed that Israel was responsible for
the 9 / 11 attack on the World Trade Center!
The Bishop of Guildford acted decisively: he made it clear that Stephen
Siver was in danger of losing his job, as reported in 'The Church Times'
and other places,
https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2015/13-february/news/uk/not-anti-semitic-just-stupid-stephen-sizer-ordered-offline-to-save-his-job
The Bishop of Lichfield failed to act at a time when he should have acted.
If he'd acted, he could have prevented this embarrassing and ridiculous but
very harmful series of events.
Bishops, like so many other people,
have their specialities. Michael Ipgrave, the Bishop of Lichfield, has a
great interest in the relations between Christians and other religious
groups. You'd think, then, that he'd take a very close interest in this
conference, where the relations between Christians, Jews and Moslems play an
important role. He was appointed Diocesan Chaplain for relations with
people of other faiths in 1992. Later, he became Inter-faith Relations
Advisor to the Archbishops' Council and Secretary of the Anglican Church's
Commission on Inter-faith Relations. In the 2011 New Year Honours List, he
was appointed an OBE 'for services to inter-faith relations in London.' And,
he's the author of a book on inter-faith dialogue and has contributed to
other publications on inter-faith matters. He was Bishop of Woolwich before
he became Bishop of Lichfield.
Despite all this experience, general
and specific, he failed comprehensively in this instance. He failed to do
what was within his power, he failed to ensure that there was some degree of
fairness in this disastrous conference.
President Harry S. Truman
had a sign 'The buck stops here' on his desk. Recommended: that the Bishop
of Lichfield has the same sign on his desk to remind himself of his
responsibility.
My view of human imperfection is very different from the Christian
one. I don't accept the Christian view of sin but I do accept the reality of
human imperfection. (My view is very, very different from most others. (See
my page {restriction}). I think that the
Christian view takes far more account of realities than some non-Christian,
atheistic views - and not just the ones which are utopian. The Christian
view that a person can put aside faults, including very serious
faults, can go beyond them, can evolve, in moral terms, deserves to be
treated very seriously. We must often criticize and condemn, but compassion
is one of the most important of all virtues - and not, of course, a purely
Christian one.
Professor Kamel Hawwash didn't like David Collier's account one bit.
Compare and contrast the cool, supposedly 'objective' tone of this
'Reflections of a diaspora Palestinian Professor Kamel
Hawwash'
and this, the Professor's mini profile
'Professor
Kamel Hawwash: a British/Palestinian and a long standing campaigner
for justice for Palestinians'
both to be found on Lichfield
Cathedral's Website page on the recent conference on Israeli-Palestinian
issues
http://www.lichfield-cathedral.org/news/news/post/123-conference-holding-palestine-in-the-light
- and the article written by Kamel Hawwash which has this headline, 'Lichfield Cathedral stands strong in the face of bullying by the
pro-Israel lobby' and which refuses to consider any possibility of reasoned dissent,
dissent based on arguments and evidence, and was published in that
well-known purveyor of ideological claptrap the 'Middle East Monitor'
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20161015-lichfield-cathedral-stands-strong-in-the-face-of-bullying-by-the-pro-israel-lobby/
and also published on the evasive Website of Professor Kamel Hawwash
https://kamelhawwash.com/
who has every reason to be taken seriously as an academic civil engineer
but has no reason to be taken seriously as a commenter on such issues as the
politics and military conflicts of this particular area of the Middle East
and the ethical issues which arise from them.
Lichfield Cathedral too has abandoned the basic principles of
fair-mindedness and has become a purveyor of ideological claptrap, at least
in this hideous fall from grace.
But the organization's distortions and
evasions and selective use of evidence and misuse of evidence are often much
more serious than this simple incompetence. For example, 'Labour
Friends of Palestine' claims that Israel has sentenced prisoners 'without a
proper trial, which includes the right to present evidence, call witnesses
and be represented by a lawyer who can visit them freely' but the safeguards
of the Israeli legal system are vastly greater and more effective than those
in Gaza. On 22 August 2014, 18
suspected collaborators were executed by
Palestinian firing squad in different parts of the Gaza strip, without
representation by a lawyer, without a proper trial or any trial at all. In
the legal system of Gaza, homosexuality is a criminal offence, punishable
with imprisonment for up to
ten years. A mother may be imprisoned for
having a baby when unmarried.
George
Pitcher, Anglican priest
The Wikipedia entry for George Pitcher can be strongly
recommended. It makes clear that this is someone with a record of
substantial, sustained achievement, including achievement in an unexpected
but very important field, industrial reporting. If my own account draws
attention to some shortcomings, I recognize his achievements. The
shortcomings don't cancel his achievements or diminish his achievements.
He's not in the least one of those ineffectual clerics with no interest in
practical matters.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Pitcher
George Pitcher is a
very unusual, unconventional priest of the Church of England - but a priest
with some of the usual, conventional faults and failings, I think.
A very brief, very revealing introduction to some of his 'thinking' is published
in the 'Church Times.'
https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2011/14-october/comment/ten-media-tips-for-the-church
So, 'ten media tips,' not ten commandments. In his 'top tips' article in the top Anglo-Catholic megaphone (not that it
can transform negligible thoughts, of next to no interest, into resounding,
convincing demonstrations of Truth), he accuses critics of Islamism and left-wing
thinking of cowardice:
'Islamophobic, blogging rightards had gone strangely quiet.' (Here,
'blogging' seems to be yet another insult, like 'Islamophobic' and 'rightards.')
His claim is ridiculous. Nothing like that had happened. Is he quite sure
that all or most - or any - opponents of Islamism and left-wing views had
'gone quiet?' Could he name a few? Could he name a large number? Can he be sure that if a few had 'gone quiet' there wasn't an
alternative explanation?
I'm a critic of Islamism and left-wing thinking too, and a critic of George
Pitcher. I don't think it's likely in the least that he'll give serious
answers to the criticisms I make of Islamism, left-wing thinking and George
Pitcher. Most of the criticism (but not the criticism of George Pitcher) is on other pages, not this one. If he can
spare the time, he could read some of it . -
Let's make a direct challenge to George Pitcher and find out if he can
answer the objections or if he'll go 'strangely quiet.'
His top-tip number 2:
'Stop being a
victim: get on the front foot, and stop whingeing
about how badly you are treated. This is not Pakistan or Palestine, and you
are not being persecuted.'
When he refers to Palestine, he's not referring, of course, to any
oppression by Hamas or to oppression of homosexuals in Gaza (homosexuality
is illegal there, and women who have children whilst unmarried can be
imprisoned and are imprisoned.) Of course, he's referring to the Israelis.
My page Israel,
Islamism and Palestinian ideology
gives a comprehensive discussion of some of the faults of Palestinian
society.
In the same 'top tip,' he writes,
' ... use your freedom. Head-butt the bullies, by which I mean give as good as you get: journalists
respect, albeit grudgingly, those who fight back.'
I'm not a journalist but I'll respect George Pitcher all the more
if he decides to fight back, to oppose me and my views - if he can, that is.
I don't regard myself as a bully, and I think that the advice to head-butt
is disastrously misguided. He leaves unexplored the glaring contradiction
between this advice and Christ's commandment to 'turn the other cheek.' The
people he calls 'bullies' include people of very different kinds. Most of
them, I'm sure, are anything but bullies. They're often people who, unlike
the head-butter, give arguments and evidence, but arguments and evidence he
doesn't like at all.
In general, the profiles on the more developed pages are very
critical, but I try and find out a great deal about the people I criticize.
I've removed profiles and decided not to write profiles when I've found out
that the profiles concern people who suffer from a very serious health
condition, or have a relative with a very serious health condition. It's
essential, I think, that polemics, like the waging of war, shouldn't be
unrestricted. Human values should inform polemics. George Pitcher's bright
and breezy, unformed and superficial advice to 'head-butt' the bully - the
alleged bully - is wrong.
His 'top tip' number 8 is this: 'Rapid rebuttal: don't whine that you have
been misrepresented. Hit the phone and tell the journalist in monosyllables.
It not only does good, but feels good.'
Geoffrey Hill, Christian poet
From my page The poetry of Seamus Heaney:
flawed success
Geoffrey Hill has been
phenomenally industrious in creating the essays which make up his large
volume, 'Collected Critical Writings' but it has been peculiar, obscure,
murky, subterranean, mole-like work, largely unrelated to our very different
world above-ground.
Peter McDonald, writing in 'The Times Literary
Supplement,' claimed critical greatness for the Writings: 'The publication last year
of Hill’s Collected Critical Writings (reviewed in the TLS, July 18,
2008) made it clear that he is a thinker about poetry (and of course about
more than poetry alone) who can stand beside the very greatest – beside
Dryden, Johnson, Coleridge, Arnold, Empson and Eliot – regardless of his
status as a poet.' Peter McDonald was making a mountain out of a mole Hill.
The 'Collected Critical
Writings' are a challenge to almost any reader, but the above-ground world
challenges us in ways that the Collected Critical Writings largely evade (and
Dostoevsky's 'Notes from Underground' don't evade.) He's made a labyrinth
of tunnels, tunnels that connect with other tunnels and tunnels that lead
nowhere. One tunnel led him to 'Mombert, in the 1884 Preface to his edition
of Tyndale's Pentateuch ...' ('Of Diligence and Jeopardy') but there are not
enough tunnels that lead to the surface, either directly or indirectly.
As we read, we're being
lulled, tranquillized. We are all like Tennyson's lotos-eaters now and
again, and welcome the chance to be lulled, particularly if we can be lulled
without any feeling of guilt. The difficulties of the book assuage any guilt
or misgivings. How can we be lulled and tranquillized if we're reading a book
which demands such concentration? But we are.
One of its main deficiencies
is the lack of organizing principles, organizing concepts. The ones he
uses are unsuitable and inadequate. Non-scientific subject matter can't
dispense with organizing principles and organizing concepts to make sense
of the accumulation of experiences and thoughts, even if it doesn't have available the body of
scientific theory which makes sense of scientific data. (Wittgenstein's
'Philosophical Investigations' are a case in point, not a counter-example.)
In 'A Pharisee to Pharisees,'
a discussion of the poetry of Henry Vaughan, he makes a comment which shows
that his grasp can be very insecure: 'It would perhaps be generally agreed
that a 'poetic' use of language involves a release and control of the magnetic
attraction and repulsion which words reciprocally exert. One is impelled,
or drawn, to enquire whether that metaphysical rapport felt to exist between
certain English rhyme-pairings is the effect of commonplace rumination or
the cause of it.' And, later, 'In Vaughan's poetry a rhyme which occurs with
striking frequency is 'light : night', or 'night : light'. Here, too, basic
mechanics assume ontological dimensions.'
Magnetic forces don't
in the least constitute an adequate explanation for the linkages and contrasts
between words. This is a poor and misguided 'organizing principle.' It involves
ignorance of or the ignoring of the vastly more suitable explanations of linguistics.
Metaphysics and ontology have a technical meaning and use in philosophy, and
again, the use of these concepts clarifies nothing: 'metaphysical rapport'
and 'ontological dimensions' contribute nothing but a superficially impressive
sound to the discussion.
He turns to theology far more often than to any other
study to make spurious sense of the world and his theology is
backward-looking - a forward-looking theology would be no more impressive.
He even turns to original sin in his exploration of defects in the Second
Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (in the essay 'Common Weal, Common
Woe' in the 'Collected Critical Writings.') This is the ending of the essay:
'Most of what one wants to know, including much that it
hurts to know, about the English language is held within these twenty
volumes. [The 'most' here is completely unwarranted. The most comprehensive
treatment of any subject of any size is sure to leave out so much that it
can't possibly include 'most of what one wants to know.' The treatment is
subject to extreme {restriction}.] To brood over them and in them is to be
finally persuaded that sematology is a theological dimension: the use of
language is inseparable from that 'terrible aboriginal calamity' in which,
according to Newman, the human race is implicated. [quoting one 'authority'
or to be more accurate one Roman Catholic writer who made very contentious
claims about original sin and linked matters, such as venial and mortal sin,
shows nothing] Murray, in 1884, missed that use of 'aboriginal'; it would
have added a distinctly separate signification ['distinctly' is pleonastic,
of course] to the recorded examples. In 1989 it remains unacknowledged.
'In what sense or senses is the computer acquainted with
original sin?'
A substantial reference work such as the Oxford Dictionary can
never attain complete accuracy, comprehensiveness and up-to-date
information. It's subject to inevitable {restriction}. The concept of sin is
irrelevant here. My own concept of {restriction} is vastly more useful in
conveying human imperfection, including the imperfection of evil, human
error, the human failure which is willed and the human failure which is
beyond human control, and the inconveniences and difficulties, including the
extreme difficulties, which are inherent in the natural world and beyond
human control, such as agricultural difficulties and the difficulties of
mining, but its scope is very much wider than that - which can be expressed
by quantification of {restriction}:- (scope). My page on
{restriction} gives a selection of
illustrative instances. Flaws in the poetry of Seamus Heaney are instances
of {restriction}:- (poetic success) and flaws in Geoffrey Hill's 'Collected
Critical Writings' are again instances of {restriction}.
The King James Bible
'TO THE MOST HIGH AND MIGHTY PRINCE JAMES, [BY THE GRACE OF GOD,] KING OF
GREAT BRITAIN, FRANCE, AND IRELAND, DEFENDER OF THE FAITH, &c.
'The Translators of the Bible wish Grace, Mercy, and Peace, through JESUS
CHRIST our Lord.
'GREAT and manifold were the blessings, most dread Sovereign, which
Almighty God, the Father of all mercies, bestowed upon us the people of
[England], when first he sent Your Majesty's Royal Person to rule and reign
over us. '
This is from the introduction to the King James translation of the
Bible, also known as the 'Authorized Version.' Here, I don't discuss
grandeur of language or the importance of the Authorized version in the
history of language but some of the vile context: including the failure of
the Church of England to
oppose persecution at the time and its active involvement in persecution.
The birth of this literary masterwork (a literary masterwork to some extent) was accompanied by hideous torture and
burning at the stake.
From the Website of the British Library
https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/king-james-vi-and-is-demonology-1597
'In 1597, King James VI of Scotland published a compendium on witchcraft
lore called Daemonologie. It was also published in England in 1603 when
James acceded to the English throne.
'The book asserts James’s full belief in magic and witchcraft, and aims
to both prove the existence of such forces and to lay down what sort of
trial and punishment these practices merit – in James’s view, death.'
From the site
http://www.wondersandmarvels.com/2014/07/king-james-i-demonologist.html
'James personally oversaw the trials by torture for around seventy
individuals implicated in the North Berwick Witch Trials, the biggest
Scotland had known ... The trial resulted in possibly dozens of people
burned at the stake, although the precise number is unknown.
'In 1597, James published Daemonologie, his rebuttal of Reginald
Scot’s skeptical work, The Discoverie of Witchcraft, which questioned the
very existence of witches. Daemonologie was an alarmist book, presenting the
idea of a vast conspiracy of satanic witches threatening to undermine the
nation.
'In 1604, only one year after James ascended to the English throne, he
passed his new Witchcraft Act, which made raising spirits a crime punishable
by execution.
...
'In 1612, the King’s paranoid fantasy of satanic conspiracy,
planted in the minds of local magistrates eager to win his favor, culminated
in one of the key manifestations of the Jacobean witch-craze—the trials of
the Lancashire Witches, accused of plotting to blow up Lancaster Castle with
gunpowder. Eight women and two men were executed.
James’s legacy extends even into our age. The King James Bible, completed
in 1611, saw the scriptures rewritten to further the King’s agenda. Exodus
22:18, originally translated as, “Thou must not suffer a poisoner to live,”
became “Thou must not suffer a witch to live.” '
The reference to 'poisoner' here is mistaken. The Hebrew word does not
mean 'poisoner.' The translation is subject to some dispute but all
plausible translations give an instruction which will be condemned, rightly
so. The Good News Translation is
'Put to death any woman
who practices magic.
'
In his epistle to the Galations (5:19-21) St Paul condemns various sins,
'works of the flesh' in the King James translation, including, in this
translation, adultery, fornication, uncleanness, drunkenness, revellings -
and, also, witchcraft and heresies. At the time of the translation,
witches were burned alive and heretics were burned alive.
Whether the translation of the Bible has grandeur or is plain and
contemporary, Biblical Christianity is a hideous thing.
Below, the Apotheosis of King James I by Rubens, at the Banqueting House,
Whitehall
Below, Edward Wightman being burned alive. He was the last person to
be burned alive for heresy in this country, in 1612. Only three weeks
before, Bartholomew Legate had been burned alive for heresy. Both had denied
the doctrine of the Trinity. Edward Wightman had also questioned the status
of the Church of England. The charges against him included these:
That there is no Trinity;
That Jesus Christ is not God, perfect God and of the same substance,
eternity and majesty with the Father in respect of his God-head;
That Christianity is not wholly professed and preached in the Church of
England, but only in part.
Below, a diagram which is supposed to explain the mysteries and
paradoxes of the Trinity: why Michael Servetus, Edward Wightman and
Bartholomew Legate and all the other disbelievers were mistaken, according
to Trinitarians.
Feeding the hungry and the
Sermon on the Mount
Above, a
page from The Gospel according to Matthew, from Papyrus 1, c.
250 AD
Above, a combine
harvester
© Copyright
Anne Burgess and licensed for
reuse under this
Creative Commons Licence.
Above, tractor working the land in Norfolk
This is a very brief survey of some of the issues, but none the worse for
that, I'd hope. In my page on Nietzsche, I quote
this, from his book 'Twilight of the Idols:'
' ... my ambition is to say in ten sentences what everyone else says in a book -
what everyone else does not say in a book...'
I'd claim that the arguments I give here are ones which
are missing from much longer discussions of the issues. In my page on
Nietsche, my loathing for him will be obvious. I criticize his criticism of
pity. I criticize him for his neglect of the material conditions of life,
which is the focus of attention here:
'He criticizes the Christian tendency to overlook the needs of the body
but largely ignores the material conditions of life. It was impossible to
satisfy the fundamental needs of the body until the industrial revolution
transformed the material conditions of life.'
The Sermon on the Mount isn't concerned with the material conditions
of life. These are addressed in the margins of the New Testament. The
feeding of the hungry is a practical problem which is addressed only in two
'miracles' of Jesus reported in the Gospels.
The first 'miracle,' the 'Feeding of the 5, 000' is reported by all
four gospels: Matthew 14: 13-21, Mark 6:31-44, Luke 9:12-17, John 6:1-14.)
The second 'miracle,' the 'Feeding of the 4,000', with seven loaves of
bread and fish, is reported by Matthew
15:32-39 and Mark 8:1-9.
The accounts in Matthew of the feeding of the 5, 000, the
feeding of the 4, 000 and the Sermon on the Mount all refer to 'multitude'
or 'multitudes,' in the original Greek
ὄχλον and
τοὺς
ὄχλους. The word can be translated in ways which are very
different: crowd, populace, throng, mob, the masses.
These 'miracles' are irrelevant to the practical problems of feeding the
hungry. Doctrines of salvation can easily be constructed from the New Testament
record, but not practical advice to do with the prevention of famine or the
prevention of plague or the healing of disease or the death of women in
childbirth. Christians have taken it for granted that people subject to such
terrible burdens as these can overlook their burdens and are free to
consider the welfare of the soul, the merits of Jesus Christ as their Lord
and Saviour. So, Jesus came to earth and gave advice about all kinds of
spiritual matters, but gave no advice about such problems as feeding the
people, releasing people from the Multhusian nightmare of too many births
and insufficient resources. Release from the consequences of sin is
adequately covered - at least to the satisfaction of people convinced that
the doctrine of salvation they believe is the true one - not so release from the scourges of infectious disease.
Here, I concentrate on release from the scourge of famine. From the
page where I criticize Green ideology:
'On the
back cover of Peter Mathias's 'The First Industrial Nation': 'The fate of the overwhelming mass of the population
in any pre-industrial society is to pass their lives on the margins of subsistence.
It was only in the eighteenth century that society in north-west Europe, particularly
in England, began the break with all former traditions of economic life.'
'In the
'Prologue,' this is elaborated: 'The elemental truth must be stressed that
the characteristic of any country before its industrial revolution and modernization
is poverty. Life on the margin of subsistence is an inevitable condition for
the masses of any nation. Doubtless there will be a ruling class, based on
the economic surplus produced from the land or trade and office, often living
in extreme luxury. There may well be magnificent cultural monuments and very
wealthy religious institutions. [There are many images on this page which
show 'magnificent cultural monuments' and 'very wealthy religious
institutions,' the images which show King's College Chapel and St Paul's
Cathedral] But with low productivity, low output per
head, in traditional agriculture, any economy which has agriculture as the
main constituent of its national income and its working force does not produce
much of a surplus above the immediate requirements of consumption from its
economic system as a whole ... The population as a whole, whether of medieval
or seventeenth-century England, or nineteenth-century India, lives close to
the tyranny of nature under the threat of harvest failure or disease ... The
graphs which show high real wages and good purchasing power of wages in some
periods tend to reflect conditions in the aftermath of plague and endemic
disease.'
'Larry
Zuckerman, 'The Potato:' 'Famine struck France thirteen times in the sixteenth
century, eleven in the seventeenth, and sixteen in the eighteenth. And this
tally is an estimate, perhaps incomplete, and includes general outbreaks only.
It doesn't count local famines that ravaged one area or another almost yearly.
Grain's enemy was less cold weather (though that took its toll) or storms,
which damaged crops in localities, than wet summers, which prevented the grain
from ripening and caused it to rot.'
Desperate
poverty in pre-industrial societies and the early period of industrialisation
required that 'every member of a family who could work did so, down to young
children.' ('The Potato'). And child labour, 'though among the industrial
revolution's evils, wasn't restricted to factory or home workshop. Farm workers'
six- and seven-year-old children toiled long days too.'
'What
ended grinding poverty (the poverty of being clothed in filthy rags as well
as the poverty of not having very many clothes), what eventually freed these
children from work in mines, factories, workshops, the fields, what gave men,
women and children increasing relief from back-breaking work, was greater
productivity.'
The problem of thirst - material thirst - was addressed in a
magnificent way, by the construction of reservoirs, which has involved large
scale civil engineering. At last, clean drinking water was available in
large quantity. The most significant cause of human disease is lack of clean
drinking water and lack of adequate sewage disposal - problems which Jesus
neglected.
The Sermon on the Mount doesn't mention
material hunger, or material thirst. Instead, we have this (Matthew 5:6):
'Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after
righteousness: for they shall be filled.'
This
has the advantage of resonance, to an extent. It sounds good, to an extent.
In the modern Church, as previously, sounding good and looking good have the
advantage over approaches which are ethically good or realistically good.
The translation here is the King James Bible, examined
and criticized on this page. I point out that King James was a persecutor of
women he considered witches.
Our dilemmas and difficulties aren't solved and aren't treated
realistically by producing a Biblical quote, such as some superficial words
of Jesus - overlooking, of course, the difficulties of deciding if the words
were used by Jesus at all. The 'teaching' of Jesus recorded in the gospel
according to St John which doesn't appear in the synoptic gospels - this is
a reminder of the difficulties. Any idea that the synoptic gospels are a
reliable source of information is ridiculous. The simple faith of ordinary
people requires a recourse to complex matters to do with advanced textual
scholarship. Before any claim that 'Jesus said ...' or 'Jesus
taught, the word 'allegedly' should be inserted. An additional source of
difficulty and confusion is to do with translation. One translation may
convey one impression, a different translation a different one. The King
James bible gives 'blessed' as a translation of the New Testament Greek word
Μακάριοι the plural of μακάριος. The word can also be translated as 'happy.'
Familiarity with the original languages hasn't protected Christian
commentators from misrepresentation and outright stupidity. Christian
commentators have often claimed, for example, that the Christian doctrine of
the Trinity is supported by the fact that the word for 'God' in Hebrew is a
plural word, אֱלֹהִ֑ים The word appears in the first verse of
Genesis, 'In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth,'
Of course, 'heaven' and 'earth' here belong to a simple,
superseded cosmology and to accept that God created these is to ignore all
the scientific evidence. If it's claimed that this is a literal approach and
that anyone who takes it is ignoring the depth of the original, perhaps
claimed to be symbolic rather than literal, I'd say that it's not profound,
and that to take this approach is ruinous for clear-sighted thinking. Honest
thinking and honest feeling are both distinct from manipulated and
superstitious thinking and from the feeling which flourishes when unchecked.
The connotations of 'happy' are very different from those of 'blessed.'
Happiness, unlike blessedness, has rarely been prominent in Christian belief
before contemporary times. Happiness began to count in the Age of the
Enlightenment. Louis de Saint-just, prominent during the French Revolution,
claimed that 'le bonheur est une idée neuve en europe' ('happiness is a new
idea in Europe.')
In the Sermon on the
Mount, Jesus allegedly said, according to Matthew (5:4), 'Blessed are they
that mourn: for they shall be comforted.'
In times of war as in times of peace, those who mourn for loved ones
they have lost have no reason to be comforted, if the loved ones they have
lost never accepted Jesus Christ as their personal lord and saviour. The
confused and contradictory theology of the Bible is clear enough about this.
The belief of St Paul and countless other followers of Christ is that these
loved ones are lost.
The words of the Bible never give an adequate
treatment of any issue of any complexity. The alleged saying of Jesus,
'Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things
that are God's' (Matthew 22:21) is useless as a guide to the many, many
problems to do with the relationship between Christian duty - or 'duty' -
and practice and the demands of a secular state. The alleged words of Jesus
in the Sermon on the Mount 'Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be
called the children of God' are useless in guiding those who try to end a
war. Ending the First World War and ending the Second World War entailed
issues of vast complexity, to do with military realities, economic and
financial realities, the competing claims of humanitarianism and harshness,
the realities of displaced people, and so much else.
The combine
harvester - one of them is shown at the beginning of this section - is a
very versatile machine, capable of harvesting a wide variety of grain crops,
including wheat, oats, barly, maize soya beans, flax and sunflowers. It's
one of the most important labour-saving inventions (and human
suffering-saving inventions, freeing humanity from the suffering which
arises from hunger and famine, the suffering which arises from limited
agricultural prodictivity.
The straw which is left can be chopped up and spread on the field, or
converted into straw bales. I've a great interest in straw bales, which I
use in my allotments for construction and other purposes. To me, they have
aesthetic as well as practical importance. This is an image from my page
Gardening, construction:
introduction, with photographs.
The combine harvester and the tractor shown in the photographs
at the beginning of this section are working in good weather conditions. If
bad weather is forecast, the Church of England has helpful advice for
Anglican combine harvester and tractor drivers. It makes use of the
prayer-phone to God.
https://www.churchofengland.org/prayer-and-worship/worship-texts-and-resources/common-worship/churchs-year/times-and-seasons/agricultural-year
'Prayer in Times of Agricultural Crisis
'Two forms of prayer are provided. The first is a
prayer that can be used as a basis for corporate response to a time of
crisis. The second is for seasonable weather, and may be used in times when
heavy rain or flooding or indeed lack of rain prejudices the crops, or when
severe or extreme weather endangers the harvest and the welfare of animals.'
The book 'Atmosphere, weather and climate' (Sixth Edition) by Roger G
Barry and Richard J Chorley includes this:
'The most
notorious type of cyclone is the tropical hurricane (or typhoon). Some 80 or
so cyclones each year are responsible, on average, for 20, 000 fatalities,
as well as causing immense damage to property and a serious shipping hazard,
due to the combined effects of high winds, high seas, flooding from the
heavy rainfall and coastal storm surges.' The book outlines the science
which underlies cyclones, including such branches of science as atmospheric
physics. An example:
'Enhancement of a storm system by
cumulus convection is termed Conditional Instability of the Second Kind ...
the thermally direct circulation converts the heat increment into potential
energy and a small fraction of this - about 3 per cent - is transformed into
kinetic energy ...
'In the eye, or innermost region of the
storm, adiabatic warming of descending air accentuates the high temperatures
... '
The physical processes which underlie the world's weather
are of vast complexity. Scientific advances have made possible control in
innumerable cases, but not so in the case of weather systems. Scientific
advances have made it possible to forecast adverse weather in many cases,
and the advance warning often enables lives to be saved and property to be
safeguarded by taking preventive action.
Praying that God will change
the weather to benefit the people praying is futile, ridiculous and stupid,
and by mentioning this on the Church of England Website, the Church is
making itself look futile, ridiculous and stupid. What are the mechanisms by
which God changes the weather when prayer reaches him? Does God alter
adiabatic warming, or the fraction of potential energy transformed into
kinetic energy?
Calming the storm is one of the miracles of Jesus, reported in all
the Synoptic gospel accounts - this is reporting which bears no resemblance
to the reporting which can be found in good or moderately trustworthy
newspapers.
This is the account in Matthew, 8: 23 - 27 in the
King James Bible:
23 And when he was entered into a ship, his disciples
followed him.
24 And, behold, there arose a great tempest in the sea,
insomuch that the ship was covered with the waves: but he was asleep.
25 And his disciples came to him, and awoke him, saying,
Lord, save us: we perish.
26 And he saith unto them, Why are ye fearful, O ye of little
faith? Then he arose, and rebuked the winds and the sea; and there was a
great calm.
27 But the men marvelled, saying, What manner of man is this,
that even the winds and the sea obey him!
This is a contemporary translation, to be found in The Good News
Bible. As will be obvious, a translation into contemporary English doesn't
translate a superstitious world view of natural processes into a
contemporary world view.
3Jesus got into a boat, and his disciples went with him.
24Suddenly a fierce storm hit the lake, and the boat was in
danger of sinking. But Jesus was asleep. 25The disciples went
to him and woke him up. “Save us, Lord!” they said. “We are about to die!”
26“Why are you so frightened?”
Jesus answered. “How little faith you have!”
Then he got up and ordered the winds and the waves to stop, and there was a
great calm.
27Everyone was amazed. “What kind of man is this?” they
said. “Even the winds and the waves obey him!”
Compare and contrast the miracles of Jesus which amount to
faith healing and scientific medicine. It's sometimes claimed that
historical progress is an illusion. Although there are vast numbers of
credulous people now, including vast numbers of credulous Christians, the
credulous Christians of past centuries were more credulous, far more
dangerous in their credulity, than the Christians of today.
This is the storm as depicted by Rembrandt in one of his lesser
great works:
Art and architecture do nothing to demonstrate that a religious
doctrine is trustworthy (there are wider implications.)
To confine attention to great artists, the art of a great
artist can't demonstrate any of these:
That Jesus calmed a storm on the Sea of Galilee
That Jesus
was crucified as a matter of historical record, or that Jesus was crucified
for our sins
That Jesus was born in a stable, or that Jesus was born
anywhere else
That St Peter founded the Roman Catholic Church
That the
Assumption of the Virgin Mary took place.
See also my discussion of art works of music as well as
pictorial art) and architecture in King's College Chapel. The architecture
of King's College Chapel doesn't validate Christian belief, either
pre-Reformation belief or post-Reformation belief. The quality of the choral
singing in King's College Chapel doesn't validate Christian belief, in any
of its contradictory manifestations.
These are instances of the {theme}
{separation}.
My pages on literature should leave no doubt that there are ways of
looking and ways of thinking which are separate from economic and
technological (and humanitarian) perspectives. In the case of grain, this is
one of them, a well-known example. From Thomas Traherne's 'Centuries of
Meditations:'
'The corn was orient and immortal wheat, which never should be reaped,
nor was ever sown. I thought it had stood from everlasting to everlasting.'
The C of E, a broad, divided
church: a time to leave
The Labour Party, like the Church of England, has
often been described as a 'broad church.'
The Labour Party has members who want to 'smash
capitalism' and members who are happy to maintain an economy with a mixture
of private sector and public sector components. The Labour Party has members
who are outright anti-semites and people who belong to the organization 'Labour
Friends of Israel,' people who are Brexiteers and people who are remainers,
supporters of Corbyn and loathers of Corbyn. Some differences can
easily be tolerated in this broad church, but most of these are far too deep
to be tolerated. The people holding one set of opinions should belong to a
completely different organization.
Of course, some Labour Party MP's have decided to
leave - people who detest antisemitism, the Labour Party leader and Brexit,
particularly leaving the EU with no deal.
The divisions in the Church of England are no less
marked. There are evangelicals who believe in hellfire and people whose
faith is very vague. Not only are there evangelicals, anglo-catholics and
'liberals,' there are people with a lapsed faith, people who are no longer
believers but who choose to remain in the church.
This is passive avoidance. The broad church is
grotesque. The time has come to leave. Evangelicals can get out, or the
liberals or the anglo-catholics, or some combination of these.
Non-religious stupidity
'For
Christianity and all existing creeds Hume had, and always displayed, the
greatest contempt: and he used the attribution of orthodoxy as a standard
form of abuse. Writing for instance, to his old friend, the Moderate
minister, Hugh Blair, Hume referred to the English as 'relapsing fast into
the deepest stupidity, Christianity and ignorance.' (From Richard Wollheim's
introduction to 'Hume on Religion,' which includes 'Dialogues concerning
Natural Religion' and other essays by David Hume.)
When Hume wrote
these words, and for many centuries before, stupidity took the form of
Christianity more often than not in this country and the rest of Europe. In
a largely post-Christian age, stupidity more often takes other, secular,
forms. Many of the English, and other nations, have relapsed fast into the
deepest stupidity and ignorance which are completely unreligious. Even so,
the prevalence of Christian stupidity in the United States can't be ignored.
One of the post-Christian stupidities - there are many more - is extreme
hedonistic stupidity. A sticker seen on a car near here: 'If it's not fun,
don't do it.' (The temptation was strong to go home, print out a large
poster and stick it on one of the car doors, the poster containing just
these words: 'If removing this poster isn't fun, don't remove it.)
'The sentiment of the sticker is ridiculous, infantile in its view of the
world, hopelessly unformed and mindless. The defence that it's nothing but
a little fun in itself won't work. There are many, many people who believe
it, believe in it, or something ridiculous and infantile but less stupidly
ridiculous and infantile. If very many people followed it - but that would
be impossible - then societies of any worth would be impossible. These
societies would certainly be incapable of defending themselves.
Religious people have included many, many mawkish sentimentalists, but they
have often had a view of the world which is strenuous, which recognizes
duties, such as caring for the sick even when the duties involved no gain
for the carer, let alone 'fun.' The objections to 'If it's not fun, don't do
it' are obvious and include the objection that when people who believe this
fall sick, they will be looked after by people with very different views.
Secular views, like religious views, may be clueless, secularists, like
religious people, may be clueless.
Richard Wollheim, on Hume's
attitude to the ignorant: 'He was convinced that the ignorant ... would
always have their superstitions: it might be possible to liberate them from
this illusion or that, but it would only be replaced by another. 'In a
future age,' he wrote, à propos of the doctrine of transubstantiation [to
people unfamiliar with the Catholic doctrine, the notion that during the
Mass, the bread and wine are transformed into the body and blood of Christ -
not symbolically but in actual fact the body and blood of Christ] 'it will
probably become difficult to persuade some nations, that any human
two-legged creature could ever embrace such principles.' Then with
characteristic wryness he added, 'And it is a thousand to one, but these
nations themselves shall have something full as absurd in their own creed,
to which they will give a most implicit and most religious assent.'
Since Hume wrote, the creeds have usually been of an informal kind.
Stupidity has often been too vague-minded for inclusion in a creed. Hume
seems not to have anticipated the dangers and stupidity of some
non-Christian and post-Christian beliefs, which now dominate our world.
Aphorisms:
religion and ideology
I share, to an extent, Nietzsche's view of the possibilities and the
importance of the aphorism form, but I don't share his high opinion of
himself. The section which contains this (section 51 in his book 'Twilight
of the Idols.')
'the aphorism ... in which I am the first master among Germans ... my
ambition is to say in ten sentences what everyone else says in a book - what
everyone else does not say in a book ...'
also contains this ludicrous claim:
'I have given mankind the profoundest book it possesses, my
Zarathustra.' (R J Hollingdale's translation.)
From my page Aphorisms which gives most of
the aphorisms I've written.
The great achievements
of religious architecture, painting, sculpture and literature are no evidence
for religion but evidence that people with artistic gifts may have far less
talent for critical thinking.
This world is inexhaustible
and unfathomable. We need speculate about no other.
Mystics who are 'deep'
are out of their depth.
Humanity can be explained
only partly in natural terms but not at all in supernatural terms.
The horrific imperfections
of the world foster courage and ingenuity. Why not skepticism?
DEUS ILLUMINATIO IGNIS FATUUS
The understandable fear
of becoming lost, of leaving behind roads and paths, helps to explain the
refusal to follow an argument wherever it leads, the reassurance of religions
and ideologies.
The Christian revelation
has taken away from life the mystery which for non-Christians remains. For
skeptics more than for Christians, this is a mysterious world and sometimes
a magical one.
The Christian God has
become softer and gentler, a God who's 'only human,' although no more so than
the old vengeful God.
My atheism is far from
being the most important thing about me, otherwise there would be a strong
linkage between me and the atheist Stalin.
To know that someone is
a Christian or an atheist tells me almost nothing about the person.
Self-evident untruths
and half-truths will always be popular.
Honest people may well
reinterpret their lives at intervals as drastically as totalitarian regimes
reinterpret their own history.
I detest your ideology
and the ideologies you detest.
Oppose mindless tolerance
as well as mindless intolerance.
If the world were imperfect
in the way that Christians or communists suppose, Christianity or communism
might be true, but it's imperfect in a way that refutes them. And so for other
theisms and ideologies.
The world, like some faces,
can look better seen in a distorting mirror.
What is an ideology?
I explain my conception of ideology here. In
this section, I make use of {themes} in a few places. These are introduced
in my page Introduction to {theme}
theory.
'Ideology' derives from the Greek λόγος and ἰδέα.
Liddell and Scott give three basic meanings for ἰδέα in the Greek Lexicon,
(1) form (2) semblance, opposed to reality (3) notion, idea. The third is
taken to be the meaning applicable in 'ideology,' but an ideology makes use
of the second meaning. Liddell and Scott include an interesting illustration
for this second meaning, from Theognis:
γνώμην ἐξαπατῶσ’ ἰδέαι 'Outward appearances cheat the mind.'
Of course, etymology isn't a reliable guide to meaning, or the range of
meanings in the case of a complex term.
A
number of disparate conceptions of ideology have been employed since the
term 'idéologie' was coined by Destutt de Tracy in 1796. He envisaged
ideology as a general science of ideas, their components and relations - or
{linkages}, as I would term it.
The word ideology is predominantly given a normative meaning now. An
important stage in the transition to a normative meaning occurred in the
1840's. Marx and Engels in 'The German Ideology,'
('Die deutsche Ideologie'), criticized the Young Hegelians. Their view, it
was claimed, regarded ideas as 'autonomous and efficacious'
and failed to grasp 'the real conditions and characteristics of
socio-historical life.'
Karl Popper regarded Marxism, and the views of Freud and Adler, as pseudo-scientific. His account in Chapter 1 of 'Conjectures and Refutations' has great
importance in the study of ideology. The book's index reference to this
material is 'total ideology.' I don't endorse in its entirety his view
of Freud and Adler. I regard his criticism of Marxism as valid. I don't
provide amplification here.
From Introduction to
{theme} theory:
Expansion brackets are useful for the process I call
'amplification.' A writer who is pursuing a main argument will sometimes
make claims or comments or provide evidence which amount to a brief mention,
without any attempt to substantiate the claim or comment or to explain such
matters as the degree of reliability of the evidence. Very often, it would
be impractical to do so. It is not always possible to present every aspect
of an argument thoroughly.
Popper writes,
'I found that those of my friends who were admirers of Marx, Freud, and
Adler, were impressed by a number of points common to these theories, and
especially by their apparent explanatory power. These theories
appeared to be able to explain practically everything that happened within
the fields to which they referred. The study of any of them seemed to have
the effect of an intellectual conversion or revelation, opening your eyes to
a new truth hidden from those not yet initiated. Once you eyes were thus
opened you saw confirming instances everywhere: the world was full of
verifications of the theory. Whatever happened always confirmed it.
Thus its truth appeared manifest; and unbelievers were clearly people who
did not want to see the manifest truth; who refused to see it, either
because it was against their class interest, or because of their repressions
which were still 'un-analysed' and crying out for treatment.'
All of the criticism here is applicable to the feminist views I criticize, although the 'unbelievers,' of course, are the non-feminists
who refuse to see 'the manifest truth' because it was against their gender
interest, as males, or because of some deep-seated psychological conditions.
Feminist 'consciousness-raising,' when successful, is held to open the eyes
of the woman (or man), who now sees confirming instances everywhere of the
deadly effects of patriarchy and the truth of feminism. The world is full of
verifications of feminist theory. Women who act in non-feminist and
anti-feminist ways, for example, are held not to falsify the theory. Their behaviour is due to the malign influence of patriarchy.
Popper adds, 'A Marxist could not open a newspaper without finding on
every page confirming evidence for his interpretation of history.' The
corresponding feminist will find confirming evidence for an interpretation
which finds 'sexism,' not perhaps everywhere, but permeating so many areas
of reality, including personal, social, historical and economic reality.
In Chapter 9 of
'Unended Quest,' he explains the development of his thought during an early
period of his life: 'I developed further my ideas about the demarcation
between scientific theories (like Einstein's) and pseudoscientific
theories (like Marx's, Freud's, and Adlers). It became clear to me that
what made a theory, or a statement, scientific was its power to rule out, or
exclude, the occurrence of some possible events ...' This is the concept of
falsification which he elaborated in 'The Logic of Scientific Discovery'
('Die Logic der Forschung.')
Falsification is a concept which has very great importance in the study
of philosophy of science but its applicability to the study of ideology,
including the ideology - as I see it - of feminism hasn't been adequately
explored. I introduce two technical terms which I think are useful in
discussions of falsification and attempts to falsify: 'falsificans,' the
falsifying arguments and evidence, and 'falsificandum,' the
application-sphere of the falsificans. The falsificandum is more general
than scientific subject-matter. An ideological falsificandum is, however,
falsified less conclusively than a scientific falsificandum.
The two terms, like the word 'falsify,' come from late Latin 'falsificare,'
from 'falsus' and facere. They have a linkage with the established terms 'explanans'
and 'explanandum,' from 'explanare.' Carl Gustav Hempel and Paul Oppenheim
proposed a deductive-nomological model of scientific explanation (not given
expansion here):
' ... the event under discussion is explained by subsuming it under
general laws, i.e., by showing that it occurred in accordance with those
laws, by virtue of the realization of certain specified antecedent
conditions' and 'By the explanandum, we
understand the sentence describing the phenomenon to be explained (not that
phenomenon itself); by the explanans, the
class of those sentences which are adduced to account for the phenomenon.'
('Studies in the Logic of Explanation,' 'Philosophy of Science,' XV, p.
152.)
Popper's concept has been criticized by a number of philosophers.
One of them is the Australian philosopher David Stove, who was strongly
anti-feminist. Some limitations of David Stove's approach have been very
well explored by Patrícia Lança in her article.
David Stove against Darwin and Popper: The Perils of Showmanship.
(Originally published in 'The Salisbury Review,' Summer 2001.) I don't
include her discussion of David Stove's criticisms of Darwin and Darwinism,
but I do include her brief, critical, mention of feminism and her criticism
of relativism. Many feminists include science in their relativistic views.
What she has to say about the manner of criticism is very important for
critics of feminism, although I favour a mixture of styles, including
ridiculing the ridiculous. She writes:
'THERE IS ALWAYS something immediately enjoyable about watching,
listening to or reading apparently outrageous attacks on received
opinion. Reductio ad absurdum is, after all, a time-honoured trick of
rhetoric. The attempted dictatorship of 'political correctness' nowadays
makes the trick even more liable to work. According to those who
listened to the lectures of the Australian philosopher David Stove, he
was a virtuoso in the genre. Professor Michael Levin says: 'Reading
Stove is like watching Fred Astaire dance. You don't wish you were Fred
Astaire, you are just glad to have been around to see him in action'.
'There is, however, a problem with ridicule, especially if we
ourselves have our own reasons for not liking its victims. It is liable
to obscure solid grounds for criticism and play into the camp of the
adversary by providing facile, spurious or distorted arguments. This
would seem to be the case with some of Stove's writing as exemplified in
the two books under review. Not that he isn't worth reading. His
provocative style is such as to make many readers stop, think and
re-examine their own preconceptions. On the other hand, those unfamiliar
with the subject matter, especially among the younger generation, are
likely to be seriously misled about some of his targets and to mistake
rhetoric for serious argument.. Stove, who died in 1994, was a
conservative, an anti-communist and desperately at odds with the
fashionable Left-wing views prevalent in the academy ...
[On his criticism of Popper]
'It is not easy here to produce
a rebuttal of the required brevity or to embark on a boringly technical
argument for and against Popper's epistemology, but justice does require
some attempt to be made. It must first be stated quite unequivocally
that certain of Popper's epistemological positions, once widely
accepted, have in recent years come under forceful criticism from many
quarters ... Nevertheless it is one thing to criticize and quite another
to misrepresent.
...
'It is indeed ironic that the
anti-communist Stove should find Popper so objectionable when there is
probably no academic figure in the last half century who has done as
much to combat their common enemy. In fact on many matters Stove and
Popper were on the same side. Against irrationalism and relativism,
against Freud, against philosophical idealism, against scepticism,
critical of some aspects of Darwinism, and, much else.
'So,
Popper concluded, scientific laws are not immutable but are always
hypotheses. All you can have are better or worse theories and the
scientist's work is to produce ever-better theories. The only logically
and practically acceptable way to do this is to try to falsify your
theory by appropriate testing: the method of trial and error. This,
Popper says, is what scientists actually do in real life. Scientific
method is basically one of testing, making public and criticizing.
Failed theories are abandoned and the search begins again, either by
trimming or adapting the old theory or formulating a new one. So a good
scientific theory should be framed in such a way that it is testable, in
other words falsifiable. If this is not the case then the theory is
neither a good theory nor even a scientific theory.
'Demarcating
science
Popper was interested in finding a criterion for demarcating
science from non-science and he concluded that such theories as Marxism,
Freudianism or astrology do not meet the criteria required of a
genuinely scientific theory. They are couched in such broad terms that
they are invulnerable to falsification. Whatever happens their
proponents regard them as either corroborated or unfalsified. They are
theories against which no arguments or criticisms can count.
'Whatever the justice of his views on induction, Popper's conception of
falsifiability proved a rich field and he mined it for theories in the
realm of his other passion: politics and social questions.. Having
thrown out positive corroboration as crucial in favour of its negative,
namely falsifiability, and having made criticism the essential method
for this, he proposed a similar approach in the political and social
spheres. The aim of government, of the State, should never be the
positive one of trying to make people happy, a quite impossible aim.
Happiness is a private matter and conceived of differently by each
individual. On the contrary the only feasible objective of government is
the negative one of reducing misery. Suffering, starvation, disease and
the rest are objective, public and measurable and it is the State's job
to try to minimize them because the only justification for the existence
of government is the protection of the citizen. To this end freedom to
criticize, to discuss and debate solutions is essential. So for Popper
democracy means freedom of criticism and institutional arrangements that
provide for the removal of unsatisfactory rulers without bloodshed. He
deduced from this position the enormous importance of institutions and
an institutional tradition, of gradual reform as against revolution, and
wrote and lectured widely on these subjects, declaring untiringly that
the political systems of Britain, America, Canada, Australia and New
Zealand were the best models so far known.
'Popper’s philosophy
of science
Now none of this can be unacceptable to a reasonable
person, least of all to a conservative. What has stuck in the throat of
many people is that Popper makes his anti-inductivism bear too much
weight. To deny the possibility of inductive knowledge is to fly in the
face of everybody's everyday experience, including that of our dogs,
cats and most other sentient beings. If we did not start by assuming
regularities and their more or less indefinite replication none of us
would survive for a moment. Indeed, we would be unable to learn anything
at all. It would seem, in fact, that all of us, including animals, have
an innate predisposition to use induction. Popper did not accept this:
he thought that what is innate is the predisposition towards using
methods of trial and error. However, to object to induction on the
grounds that it does not use the rules of entailment of deductive logic,
is to extend the criteria of formal systems and mathematics beyond what
is appropriate. Deductive logic is one thing, inductive logic is another
and their modes of justification are distinct. In science both logics
would appear to have their place. Indeed in the areas of logic and
epistemology we can find an ever-growing literature in which even
deductive logic is questioned and alternative logics proposed.
'Popper's great contribution to the philosophy of science was to
highlight the importance for good theorizing of the need for clear
articulation so that it is immediately, or as immediately as possible,
apparent what would be the conditions for falsification. Such procedure
is both practically and intellectually economical and nurtures the
critical approach and in no way encourages relativism.
'Stove
will have none of this. In a dizzying dithyramb he inveighs against
Popper, not only ignoring his closely woven arguments, but accusing him
of such crimes as denying the accumulation of scientific knowledge, of
irrationalism and of self-contradiction. The aim of science in Popper's
view, Stove alleges, is not to seek truth but to find untruth. Popper's
insistence on the provisional nature of scientific theories, on what he
calls 'conjectural knowledge' is regarded by Stove as irrational in the
extreme. Popper, in effect, denies the accumulation of scientific
knowledge because, if it is all provisional, then it cannot be
knowledge. Knowledge, for Stove, always means knowledge of the truth,
and truth cannot bear the adjective 'conjectural' (as though truth were
absolute). He implies that to talk about 'conjectural truth' is rather
like talking about somebody being 'a little bit pregnant'. So the
concept of 'conjectural knowledge' is a nonsense, a contradiction in
terms and meaningless, and leads to the denial of objective truth found
in the relativists. Stove makes much of this with his usual darting wit.
But his objections are unconvincing. Without entering into the sorely
disputed question (among philosophers) of what constitutes truth it
seems no more unreasonable to talk of 'conjectural knowledge' than to
talk of 'partial knowledge', which everybody does without batting an
eyelid. All Popper means by 'conjectural knowledge', is 'the knowledge
we have so far on the basis of our unfalsified theories', that is, those
theories which when tested are found to have verisimilitude with
empirical facts. This is something we hear every day when we are told
about 'the present state of knowledge'. So the proposition that absolute
truth is unattainable does not entail relativism and, indeed, seems
undeniable to most people.
'That Popper believed fiercely in
objective truth (in its non-absolute sense) is evidenced from his
constant stress that the job of the scientist is the quest for truth. He
also thought that this was an unending quest, for our ignorance is
infinite before the infinity of what is to be known and the finite
nature of our knowledge. This is not the place to examine Popper's
somewhat bizarre theory of 'epistemology without a knowing subject',
what he called World Three, that mysterious sphere in which are stored
books and all man's artefacts, but any serious study of this shows just
how much Popper believed in the objectivity of knowledge.
'So,
because of his misreading, Stove sees Popper as the ultimate progenitor
of the real irrationalists including the unspeakable Feyerabend whose
relativism led him quite openly to declare that schoolchildren should be
taught astrology and myth as equally valid explanations of the world
along with science. Popper's frequent and extended criticism of these
attitudes is regarded by Stove as mere quarrelling between inmates of
the same stable. He totally ignores the historical fact that the actual
forerunners of relativism in philosophy of science were the sociologists
of knowledge going back to Mannheim, examined and combatted by Popper
himself in many writings. Today, of course, relativism in science
studies, rather than coming mainly from Stove's three musketeers has
sadly been given a new boost by philosophers of cognitive science in
conjunction with artificial intelligence theory such as Stitch, the
Churchlands and their disciples.
'Those who wish to have a more
informed and balanced view of Popper's ideas would do well to read
Anthony O'Hear or Susan Haack. The latter should be of especial interest
also to adversaries of all forms of relativism, gender feminism and the
corruption of the academy.
'For anyone acquainted with what
Popper actually wrote, Stove's wholesale condemnation, can only be
regarded as dogmatic and unjust. This is serious because in the present
academic atmosphere of relativism, irrationalism and sub-marxism, there
could be no better antidote for today's students than to read what
Popper has to say about these matters.
'Reading Stove's opinions
about him will do little to encourage them in this direction. The
trouble is, as indicated at the beginning of these comments, that
Stove's style is frequently so engaging and humorous that many readers
will be taken in.'
Popper's account of 'pseudo-scientific' theories is a suitable
starting point in explaining my own view of ideology. I regard the concept of falsification as
important in demarcation, although not the demarcation which Popper employs.
The demarcation here is demarcation between two non-scientific
interpretations, ideological and non-ideological. I replace 'demarcation'
with the {thematic} operation of {separation}, symbol '//' which has
material as well as non-material application-spheres. As my concern on this
page is feminism rather than Marxism, I give no account of my reasons for
thinking that Marxism is ideological, or the views of Freud and Adler.
Outside science,
falsifiability has a legitimate use in deciding which views to do with
human nature, human achievement, and other aspects of humanity - I'll refer
to 'human studies' - are securely grounded or the product of
ideological distortion. If the distinctive conclusiveness of scientific
falsification is lacking, the claim that an argument has been falsified may
have great cogency, the argument that an argument has withstood the process
of testing far less cogency. 'People are benign' is a statement which can't
be tested, or falsified, by the methods of science, but it can be tested,
and falsified, to a high degree of probability, by non-scientific methods.
'Women are benign' is a statement which can be tested and falsified too.
Facts are used differently in ideological and non-ideological theories
and views. Facts in non-ideological theories and views may often be
problematic but they are assessed by using independent methods and
techniques, such as comparison of source materials, avoidance of
demonstrably unreliable witnesses.
Facts in ideological theories and views avoid the use of methods and
techniques external to the ideology. Ideological theories and views are
based on the distinction between appearance and reality. Facts belong to the
world of appearance, which is regarded as illusory. Facts which are
demonstrably true, passing the most thorough and comprehensive tests, belong
only to this world of appearance if they conflict with facts which support
the ideology. If not in conflict, they are admitted to the world of reality.
It's essential to distinguish between facts and the explanation for those
facts, the context of those facts. The sphere of facts, although far from
straightforward, is much simpler than the sphere of explanations and
context. I don't accept that facts are themselves interpretations, that
there aren't many, many well-grounded facts in human studies.
A feminist could claim that the generalization 'all women lack serious
vices' (without {restriction} to sexual vice, of course) should be
considered in context, which supplies a cause. The many women who could be
cited as counter-examples, the women who obviously have serious vices, are
so on account of the manipulation and control exercised by men. A wide
variety of other claims about women which seem to challenge feminist views
could be countered in a similar way. The feminist would then have to
explain, or explain away, the unflattering view of many women which is
required here - women as weak and malleable.
If X is the subject matter - class in society, women in history or
whatever may be treated in an ideological or non-ideological way - then the
crucial difference is that the ideological and the non-ideological way are
different in the reasons for {modification} and the use of counter arguments
and contrary evidence. {modification} has /{revision}, an example of a
'specific' {theme}, with {restriction}:- general applicability, and the
capacity for /{revision} is the term in non-thematic form 'revisability.'
Revisability is common to scientific theory and a non-scientific theory, as
well as, more loosely, a 'view,' which is non-ideological.
{modification}:- [ideological theory or view] has as agents not counter
arguments and contrary evidence but, as examples, the forces which change an
ideology and give it different forms, perhaps as a result of the very
different social contexts in which the ideology is found. Similarly, the
language in which an ideology is expressed may develop different 'dialects,'
for similar reasons.
An ideology may exhibit drastic and abrupt {modification}, as in the case
of the communist supporters who abandoned criticism of Nazi Germany, but
this was not as a result of counter arguments and contrary evidence but the
fact that Soviet Russia entered into a pact with Nazi Germany at Stalin's
instigation.
If counter arguments and contrary evidence lead in all cases to no, or
practically no, /{revision} of a theory or view, then the theory or view is
likely to be ideological.
/{revision} of a non-ideological theory or view, like /{revision} of a
scientific theory, allows of quantitative differences. The most drastic form
is abandonment. Of course, there may be abandonment of an ideological theory
or view, as in the case of communists who became non-communists. Counter
arguments and contrary evidence of value may be rejected for a time but
eventually have an effect.
'The God That Failed,' published in 1949 book, contains six
essays by prominent writers and journalists who decame disillusioned with
communism and abandoned it. The six were Louis Fischer, André
Gide, Arthur Koestler, Ignazio Silone, Stephen Spender and Richard Wright.
A critique of a possible feminist defence is only given in outline here.
On this page, as in so much of the site, evidence and argument is often
given in a dispersed form. I examine feminist arguments in many places on
this page and there are many places in other pages of the site where
material can be found which has relevance to this page.
I see the need not to confine attention to the arguments and evidence but
to the factors which may prevent the arguments and evidence from being
understood or appreciated. This is particularly necessary when considering
the totalitarian ideologies, above all Stalinism and Nazism, the subject of
Hannah Arendt's 'The Origins of Totalitarianism,' in three parts. Evidence
may require insight and sometimes empathy to appreciate. Hannah Arendt could
obviously enter the world of totalitarian ideology. She possessed a a far
deeper degree of distinctively personal insight, over a far wider range,
than, say, Karl Popper. Intellectuality of very great distinction, such as
he possessed, can probe some things far more effectively than others.
In the last chapter of the third volume of 'The Origins of
Totalitarianism,' significantly entitled 'Ideology and Terror: A Novel Form
of Government,' she gives, too late in the book, it has to be said, a
formulation of ideology. The formulation isn't a good one: 'Ideologies -
isms which to the satisfaction of their adherents can explain everything and
every occurrence by deducing it from a single premise - are a very recent
phenomenon and, for many decades, played a negligible role in political
life.' No ideology explains everything or every occurrence. This is much too
wide a claim. Ideologists don't claim to explain, for instance, most natural
phenomena. The use of the logical term 'premise' isn't appropriate, and
ideological explanations and directives may be derived from a small number
of basic beliefs, not necessarily a single one.
Hannah Arendt elicits very different responses. Two very different
responses, those of David Satter and Bernard Wasserstein, are given in an
excellent
Symposium: Is Hannah Arendt still relevant? I very much believe that she
is.
In general, ideologists see no need to defend a
thesis against the arguments and evidence which comprise a legitimate
anti-thesis. The reference to 'ideology' can be removed, since the claim
that the thesis is ideological is often part of the claim of the
anti-thesis. I think that these terms 'thesis' and 'anti-thesis' are useful
in examining the reaction of feminists to criticisms, and their lack of
reaction.
The evidence and arguments put forward by opponents
of feminism amount to a substantial case to answer, surely, and I claim to
have added to the evidence and arguments. I think that the thesis is
substantial but that the anti-thesis is far from substantial.
Argument and the presentation of evidence and the
giving of counter-argument and counter-evidence are of fundamental
importance and my terms 'thesis' and 'anti-thesis' express these necessities
of debate concisely. If the views often summarized as 'political
correctness' seem to avoid debate on these terms, it's cause for particular
alarm that this is so often the case in universities and colleges.
Thesis can become anti-thesis and anti-thesis can
become thesis. If a feminist criticizes the arguments I use and denies that
the evidence I put forward is convincing, then this anti-thesis becomes the
thesis which it is for me to answer as an anti-thesis.
It's possible that a
synthesis will emerge from the contending thesis and anti-thesis, but often
this is not the case.
When a very powerful thesis - one with very strong
arguments and accompanied by very strong evidence - is challenged by an
anti-thesis which has neither, a synthesis is very unlikely. In this case, I
use the simple symbolism (thesis) >> (anti-thesis). If the anti-thesis is
better supported, then (thesis) > (anti-thesis).
This simple scheme, using this simple pair of terms,
has to be supplemented and extended when there are more than two opposing
viewpoints, but it can often be used if single aspects are the focus of
attention: this is to practise {resolution}. Often, a practical
decision is the issue. A measure may become law or not and there may be
support for the change in law or opposition to the change.
Supporters of the
status quo and opponents of the status quo may have various reasons and may
supply different arguments and evidence but the decision may well be a
clear-cut one. Support for the status quo is the thesis and opposition to
the status quo is the anti-thesis. All that is needed is to distinguish the
diverging views which make up the composite thesis and anti-thesis.
All things bright and
beautiful ...
Which of the animals below were 'made by God?'
This
is some supplementary information which is relevant, I think.
Information about the living things shown in the images, with the
emphasis on the ones which raise great difficulties for the claim that God
Almighty 'made all things well.'
Images identified by line number
followed by image number in the line.
1:1 red squirrel
(Sciurus vulgaris)
1:2 African elephant (Loxodonta
africana)
1:3 Oriental rat flea (Xenopsylla cheopis),
here shown engorged with blood. This is the primary vector responsible
for the transmission of Yersinia pestis.
2:1 Yersinia
pestis, the organism responsible for bubonic plague in most plague
epidemics. The best known outbreak is 'The Black Death,' which killed, it's
estimated, between 75 and 200 million people in Europe and Asia, peaking in
Europe from 1347 to 1351. It killed 30 - 60% of Europe's population.
2:2 White shark (Carcharodon carcharias)
2:3 Malaria mosquito (Anopheles gambiae). This transmits the most
dangerous malaria parasite species (to humans), Plasmodium falciparum. According
to the World Malaria Report of the
World Health Organization,
World Health Organization, there were 219 million cases of malaria
worldwide in 2017, resulting in an
estimated 435,000 deaths. Children under five years of age are most affected
3:1 European robin (Erithacus rubecula) If God 'made' the robin he
surely made the male robin's instincts. Male robins exhibit very aggressive territorial behaviour.
They are likely to attack other males and competitors which enter their
territories, sometimes with fatal results. They can also attack other small
birds.
3:2 Fly agaric (Amanita muscaria) Not one of
the deadly poisonous fungi but capable of killing. It has hallucinogenic
properties. God's purpose in including these properties in this particular
part of his creation is unknown.
3:3 Wild flower
meadow.
Cecil Frances Alexander wrote the words of the
ridiculous Anglican hymn 'All Things Bright and Beautiful.' The carol 'Once
in Royal David's City,' a fixture of the Christmas service at King's College
Chapel, was also written by her. She also wrote 'There is a Green Hill Far
Away.' 'All Things Bright and Beautiful' is loosely based upon the
'Apostles' Creed' of the Church of England.'
It consists of a series of stanzas that elaborate upon sections of the
Apostles' Creed.
The complete text is never sung now with all
these verses. Her claim in the third verse that God made the rich and the
poor and placed them far apart in the social system is too much for most
modern Christians.
1.
All things bright and beautiful,
All creatures great and small,
All things wise and wonderful,
The
Lord God made them all.
2.
Each little flower that opens,
Each little bird that sings,
He made their glowing colours,
He made their tiny wings.
All things bright ...
3.
The rich man in his castle,
The poor man at his gate,
God made them high and lowly,
And ordered their estate.
All things bright ...
4.
The purple headed mountain,
The river running by,
The sunset and the morning,
That brightens up the sky;−
All things bright ...
5.
The cold wind in the winter,
The pleasant summer sun,
The ripe fruits in the garden,−
He made them every one:
All things bright ...
6.
The tall trees in the greenwood,
The meadows where we play,
The rushes by the water,
We gather every day;−
All things bright ...
7.
He gave us eyes to see them,
And lips that we might tell,
How great is God Almighty,
Who has made all things well.