How Pakistan lost the names of god....

A poignant article in Kashmir Monitor tells of when the name of God in Pakistan became Allah. And includes this quote from author Mohammed Hanif:

Author Mohamed Hanif, in his celebrated debut novel, A Case of Exploding Mangoes, says it best: “…All God’s names were slowly deleted from the national memory as if a wind had swept the land and blown them away. Innocuous, intimate names: Persian Khuda which had always been handy for ghazal poets as it rhymed with most of the operative verbs; Rab, which poor people invoked in their hour of distress; Maula, which Sufis shouted in their hashish sessions. Allah had given Himself ninety-nine names. His people had improvised many more. But all these names slowly started to disappear: from official stationary, from Friday sermons, from newspaper editorials, from mothers’ prayers, from greeting cards, from official memos, from the lips of television quiz show hosts, from children’s storybooks, from lovers’ songs, from court orders, from habeas corpus applications, from inter-school debating competitions, from road inauguration speeches, from memorial services, from cricket players’ curses; even from beggars’ begging pleas.”

So much is lost when religious orthodoxy - Islam in this case - destroys folklore. The efrits die, rakhshasa stop prowling, the fairies vanish, and the green god disappears back into his mossy home in the heart of the wood. In Pakistan, the diversity of our appeal to the spirit world is no longer. And the world is poorer.

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Keep the Faith - a thought on atheism and belief

Atheists, or many of them, have an issue with the idea of faith. Much of this stems from a misunderstanding, from the belief that faith and religion are, if not the same thing, close enough so as to be used interchangeably. The approach of public agencies doesn't help here either as they universally use faith as a convenient cipher for religion - 'Faith Organisation', 'Faith Group' and 'Faith Leaders' are, in public policy speak, simply ciphers for religions, churches and priests of one sort of another. The problem is that this misrepresents the idea of faith.

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. (Heb. 11:1)

That's how St Paul defines faith in his Letter to the Hebrews. It doesn't talk directly of god or religion or worship merely that faith is our evidence for things we cannot sense. It is the riposte to that sceptical urge for evidence - Thomas thrusting his hand into Christ's spear wound. A rejection of the empiricist idea that things without evidence, without Christ's blood on your hand, are not true or unreal - myths, fairy tales, trite stories. We are serious people for heaven's sake!

"Keep the Faith" is the joyous cry of Northern Soul fans:

Singing and playing sax is still my main occupation these days, but whilst I still possess the same enthusiasm for 60s soul tunes and making people smile - I will continue to try and "Keep The Faith" !

Now some youngsters of today's generation may read this and laugh their heads off - and that's OK - because now is your time. But when you reach 50 I hope you are still as passionate about your music and that you too have lots of genuine friends who like you have also remained resolute throughout in their beliefs.

That faith's an intangible thing, hard to explain to those who don't have it, who aren't Northern Soul people. But it's real and important - as that quote above makes clear it really matters, it's part of identity and belief. A feeling familiar to football supporters loyally slogging through the rain week after week to see their club - dreaming that one day greatness will arrive but knowing differently: sharing this with others among the faithful.

In her "Bourgeois Virtues", Deidre McCloskey quotes philosopher J. Budziszewski:

No argument can be so completely drawn as to eliminate its dependence, conscious or unconscious, on undemonstrable first principles.

On faith.

McCloskey continues later:

The Faith, in other words, need not be a faith in God. Many secular folk believe in a transcendent without God, though approaching him.

The way in which we live, the communities we build, the exploring of our world, the speculation about the universe and the hope for the future we hold - all these things in part depend on us taking things in faith. Without trust our society works poorly and to trust someone, in business or in our personal lives, is an act of faith. For sure we can apply rules to enforce that contract implicit in trust but wouldn't relying on enforcement make for a dreadful world? Isn't it better to have faith in our fellows and act accordingly?

Without first principles we are speculating in a fog. So we take some things as axiomatic and construct argument accordingly. And we are able to appreciate that one person's axiom is another's nonsense - my Dad used to end political arguments proclaiming that 'the dialectic is axiomatic'. Without faith, without acceptance of the unprovable, it is difficult to sustain argument and to promote speculation - to get closer to that thing of faith be it god or non-god.

So when atheists construct an argument from the assumption that there is no god they start with that undemonstrable first principle (no god) of Budziszewski's. It is an act of faith to make this argument. And none the worse an argument for being so.

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"It's not an ideology, dear, it's a mental illness": On the medicalisation of brainwashing

We all sort of know about brainwashing - it features in dystopic SF movies and is the sort of thing that dodgy religious cults get up to. It sits in the same box as 'gay cures' and the scarier end of drug-abuse therapy - something that's probably causing more mental health damage that any good (assuming there was good in the first place).

Watch out as the use of these techniques become medicalised - because 'extremism' and 'fundamentalism' are not matters of agency but involuntary consequences of socialisation or 'brainwashing':

Kathleen Taylor, a neurologist at Oxford University, said that recent developments suggest that we will soon be able to treat religious fundamentalism and other forms of ideological beliefs potentially harmful to society as a form of mental illness.

Read through what this researcher is saying. Read it carefully. It's not pretty is it? Dr Taylor goes on:

She said that radicalizing ideologies may soon be viewed not as being of personal choice or free will but as a category of mental disorder. She said new developments in neuroscience could make it possible to consider extremists as people with mental illness rather than criminals.

She told The Times of London: "One of the surprises may be to see people with certain beliefs as people who can be treated. Someone who has for example become radicalized to a cult ideology -- we might stop seeing that as a personal choice that they have chosen as a result of pure free will and may start treating it as some kind of mental disturbance."

OK you say - this is about saving people who have been brainwashed by the cult (perhaps up to and including paying £3 to join the Labour Party so as to vote for Jeremy Corbyn). But it's a good thing - we'll be treating the ill you see:

"I am not just talking about the obvious candidates like radical Islam or some of the more extreme cults. I am talking about things like the belief that it is OK to beat your children. These beliefs are very harmful but are not normally categorized as mental illness. In many ways that could be a very positive thing because there are no doubt beliefs in our society that do a heck of a lot of damage, that really do a lot of harm."

This is a recipe for a state-determined definition of 'normal' with anyone holding views that are outside the norm and defined as 'harmful' categorized as mentally ill. This is the medicalisation of brainwashing with the intention of treating the ill-effects of the wrong kind of ideology or belief.

On a much larger and potentially more fruitful scale is the recognition that the entire domain of religious beliefs, political convictions, patriotic nationalist fervor are in themselves powerful platforms for nurturing "Us vs Them" paranoid delusional fantasies which work out destructively in a 9/11 attack or a Hiroshima/Nagasaki orgy of mass destruction.

Frightening eh?

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Schools: we should focus on attainment not religion

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British Values. I'm not really alone in struggling to understand what these mysterious things might be especially when they are set out like this:

“It shouldn’t take any intervention from my Department to say that young people should be learning the fundamental British Values of democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty, tolerance and respect – because these British values are fundamentally a good thing."

I'm a big fan of all these things but they aren't what I would understand by 'British Values' - indeed these concepts predate the existence of Britain and could best be described as human values. I also think that teaching young people the value of democracy, liberty, law, tolerance and respect is a good idea - not to the exclusion of reading, writing and arithmetic but definitely a good thing. But teaching young people about democracy, liberty, law, tolerance and respect is a good thing everywhere - not just in Penge or Queensbury but in Peshawar and Phnomh Penh too. These values are universal.

The problem we have is that the government has chosen to use the idea of 'British Values' as a rod to strike at traditional religious beliefs - whether Muslim or Christian. To define British Values in terms only a Guardian reader would recognise.  Here's Nicky Morgan again:

“The events in Birmingham last year showed what happened, when those that don’t subscribe to our fundamental British values try to hijack our education system, radicalise our children and break those societal bonds. What happened in Paris this month, showed what can happen when people like that succeed.” 

What we see here is the deliberate juxtaposition of traditionalist religious opinion with violent terrorism. What Mrs Morgan is telling us is that teaching traditional Muslim religious values (to be clear, I don't find these values particularly appealing) leads more-or-less directly to young men using Kalashnikov rifles to slaughter cartoonists. More to the point, there is no suggestion at all that teaching these values is necessarily at odds with democracy, liberty, law, tolerance and respect.

The truth is that Ofsted - and the Department for Education - has adopted the stance that any hint of religious exclusivity or faith-based education is questionable. And this doesn't just apply to the schools in Birmingham targeted in the 'Trojan Horse' campaign but to schools with a Christian ethos - here's St Benedict's Catholic School in Bury St Edmunds:

The school was the focus of controversy when Ofsted last year included it in a blacklist of schools failing to promote “British values” and downgraded it from “good” to “requires improvement” because younger pupils were unaware of the dangers of radicalisation and extremism.

Quite what those younger pupils were exposed to isn't clear - perhaps they were learning about that well known Catholic radical, Guido Fawkes? Or maybe teachers were telling them that The Inquisition was actually a fine institution dedicated to saving souls rather than to torture and execution by fire? The truth of the school is that it's a great school providing what parents want - a safe place and good education:

St Benedict’s Catholic Secondary School in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, was ranked 56th best in England when School Performance League Tables were published last week. It was also listed as the “top state comprehensive school” in England and Wales, and has the highest percentage of A-level passes in Suffolk and the second highest by just one per cent ­ of GCSE passes in the county.

More recently Ofsted has acted again - pushing two Christian 'free schools' in the North East towards closure with a focus on 'diversity' rather than on the actual performance of the school. Ofsted pulls up one school, Grindon Hall as follows:

"...the wider curriculum, including form time and the school’s assembly programme, has too narrow a focus to enable pupils to think for themselves and reflect about the fundamental British values needed to live in Britain today.”

The term 'wider curriculum' refers to the stuff that isn't teaching maths, English, geography, science and so forth. But the truth about the school is that it is delivering what parents want - good results:

A-level students at Grindon Hall Christian School have produced the best A-level results of any school in Sunderland. The school pulled ahead of all others in the city with an average point score of 225.

GCSE students are also celebrating, having made the school one of the best-performing state schools in the city. 68% of Grindon Hall's GCSE students achieved at least five A* - C grades including English and Maths.

Surely this is what really matters? Unless Ofsted and Nicky Morgan think that the nice young people leaving Grindon Hall will suddenly up sticks and join some sort of violent religious cult?

In Bradford, Ofsted and the Council have been going into schools because of this focus on fighting 'extremism', on British Values. Which would be fine if they were doing the same for schools that were failing academically. At the same time the political leadership in education has been using its time and resources to conduct a vigorous anti-government campaign rather than on trying to get the changes in place that might offer a better chance to young people in Bradford.

Ofsted is creating demons and hobgoblins - "these people are radicalising our children" - or else wibbling on about diversity - "children don't have any non-white friends" and supposed intolerance of gay and lesbian people by ten year olds. It is time the government stopped all this and began to focus on what matters to parents - and, quite frankly, to the children - how well the school does in its main job of providing young people with a decent education. In the end it's attainment Ofsted should be inspecting not a nebulous and dangerous concept called 'British Values'.

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Real religious faith versus the murderous corruption of faith...

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Via Cranmer's blog:

He has lost a thousand of his parishioners over the past year alone - murdered by Muslim militants; many of them summarily shot or beheaded. He has recently been speaking to numerous fellowships in the UK to raise awareness of the situation in Iraq, and he received death threats last week from ISIS/ISIL (or IS [Islamic State], as they now wish to be called). Notwithstanding the danger, he has returned to St George's in Baghdad to continue his work. He wrote:

We go back to Iraq on Tuesday. There are so many needs to provide and we thank our Lord for how he has provided for us to meet these needs through you. We have so many Christians who have literally been ousted from their homes with nothing, they are living on the streets.Please pray that we may be able to show them the love of Jesus and provide their needs.

The Islamists are trying to eradicate the symbol of the cross from their new Caliphate.

There was no Mass in Mosul last Sunday for the first time in 1600 years. Those Christians who risk worship must do so in silence, praying under new Sharia regulations that have silenced every church bell in the city. 

Cranmer provides a place where people can give practical, cash help alongside their prayers. I hope many do perhaps including some on the spiritual journey of Ramadan right now.

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Things that aren't extremism

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Today is clearly a day to talk about  extremism. But to do this we need first to know what people mean by 'extremism'. Here are some things that are not extremism:

1. Living your life according to the tenets, strictures and requirements of a religious faith

2. Asking that the institutions of society recognise your right to live according to your religious faith

3. Promoting your religious faith to others as a good way of living

4. Asking that a school respects your faith in its education of your children

5. Criticising the action of government where those actions attack the practice of your religious faith

The problem is that we appear - regularly for Islam and increasingly for Christianity - to confuse religious orthodoxy with extremism and seek to marginalise religious belief where is doesn't accord with the assumed mores of the secular majority. We also have a new intolerance of ideas - we may believe otherwise but for many Christians, Muslims and Jews homosexuality remains a sin (just as sex outside marriage remains a sin). To seek to close down this belief - to demand that people believe otherwise - is to reject a central premise of our society: the idea of free speech. And this, for me, is a far worse extremism than being a devout Muslim, Jew or Christian.

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How I lost god and found Dungeons and Dragons

The other day I bumped into this article entitled 'How we won the war on Dungeons & Dragons'. It was about the excitement generated by Christian conservative groups in the USA about the role playing game:

My best friend got kicked out of Catholic school for playing D&D, which we counted as a win because it meant she could come to our shitty public school and play D&D with us. Outside our southern California town, however, D&D players weren't getting off so easily. They were ostracized by their peers, kicked out of public schools, and sent to glorified reeducation camps by parents who feared their children were about to start sacrificing babies to Lolth the spider demon.

An awful deal of fuss and bother (not to mention damage) created by a game. And the children so mistreated by schools and parents had no defence against the "Dungeons and Dragons is just devil worship" line - they were just kids playing a game.

We didn't have quite the same problem in the UK. Our Christianity is altogether more calm and moderate and, while there were some who complained (we saw them rise again like some form of undead when the Harry Potter books were published), they were few and far between. As far as I know there weren't any kids kicked out of school or sent to bizarre indoctrination camps to expunge the influence of devil worship or the glorification of witchcraft.

What I do know is that Dungeons & Dragons changed my life. I'd had a pretty orthodox catholic upbringing, I'd learnt the catechism, I attended mass faithfully and I thought I got the religion malarkey. But what I'd never done in all this certainty and absolutism is consider the meaning of good and evil, tried to understand what these terms we gaily bandy about actually mean. Much of the religious discussion about evil, for all its invoking of demons and condemnation of magic, is more precisely about actions - outputs, if you prefer. Evil is defined as doing things that 'we' (the religion in question) disapprove of.

So I arrive at university and get stuck into playing Dungeons & Dragons. And, because it is inherent to the game, we talk about this:

This is the D&D 'alignment chart' and it's really important if you play the game. Since it's a role playing game you have to try and play your character in character (we used to hate the sort of game playing where player interaction was shoved aside for the sake of vast armouries of magical goodies). And this means that, if your character is evil, you need to understand what evil means. Not in terms of actions but in the context of feelings, motivations and behaviours - at least enough to make the game fun.

We spent hours discussing, for example, what 'chaotic neutral' meant - was it a sort of carefreeness on steroids or something more profound, more religious. A rejection of order - the Dice Man of the fantasy world?  The answer doesn't matter, what mattered was that we talked about good, evil, the meaning of law and how these could be personal. It was a far better moral education than the platitudes of RE at school or the banalities of the typical catholic homily.

If you want to live a good life, it has to be on the basis of understanding what that means. You can get out the book and read the (often contradictory) guidance from the ancients or else you can work it out from first principles. And the D&D alignment chart seems to me a good place to start - it tells me that executing the adulteress for her sin may be lawful but it is probably evil at the same time and that saving that adulteress - however sinful she may be - is a chaotic act but also an act of goodness.

Religion told me none of these things. I learnt that god is good and the devil is bad. And that if I follow the rules I will live forever. I learnt nothing about what all this meant, about whether there's a devil or whether that god is all he's cracked up to be.

This doesn't make me an atheist. Nor does my favourite D&D creation, a neutral evil mage called Tim with a withered hand, make me evil. And I don't want to make out that fantasy role playing is the route to salvation - unless your idea of salvation is spending 30 hours clearing out one of Chris Barlow's slightly manic dungeons.

But for me, playing Dungeons & Dragons, taught me more about good and evil than all the priests and brothers who'd taught me about god. And, although I didn't realise it at the time, those months in 1979 were when I lost god and found Dungeons and Dragons.

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What Sharia says about leaving your wealth to the cats home

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It's OK folks I'm not channelling some Muslim scholar or even Karl Sharro. But I am bothered by the kneejerk reaction to the Law Society's guidance on sharia wills:

The Law Society was accused of giving its stamp of approval to discriminatory practices after it published advice on writing wills which deny women an equal share and exclude “illegitimate” children or unbelievers. 

My problem is that wills are intended to be discriminatory and, more to the point, it's the testator's wealth not society's. This means that the person making the will can do so on whatever basis he or she wants. We do not need the permission of parliament to write a will in which:

“The male heirs in most cases receive double the amount inherited by a female heir of the same class. Non-Muslims may not inherit at all, and only Muslim marriages are recognised. Similarly, a divorced spouse is no longer a Sharia heir, as the entitlement depends on a valid Muslim marriage existing at the date of death.” 

This may offend you - it certainly offended ex-Conservative MP, Lousie Mensch - but there is nothing in English law to prevent people from ordering their affairs in this way.

By way of comparison, why no faux-offence at the regular decisions made by worshippers of Bast:

When the much-loved British actress Beryl Reid died, she left her £1 million home to her four cats, all of which had been strays that she had rescued.

Hamish, Coco, Boon, Tuffnel and Eileen continued to live in luxury even after their besotted owner’s death.

Is this not as egregious a decision as deciding that the strictures of an ancient religion will determine who gets what?

As a society we have two choices here: we either believe that people can decide how their wealth is distributed after they die or else we don't. And in the latter case (which those so agitated by Sharia wills seem to have adopted) we would have to accept some intervention of the state to determine how the money is divided. Tell me folks, do you want parliament to decide how you organise your estate?

If you believe in a free society where we may order our affairs as we wish then you have to accept that some people wish to live according to the rules set by their faith. And for a devout Muslim this means Sharia. This doesn't mean that we can require people to order their affairs in this way merely that, if this is what a person chooses, they've every right - in England have always had every right - to do that unhindered by the intervention of the state.

And for those who adhere to other faiths, criticising the rules set by Sharia is, to put it mildly, monumental hypocrisy.

I am still unsure though what Sharia says about leaving your wealth to the cats home?

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More on that pesky free speech...

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Apparently expressing the beliefs of mainstream christianisty, islam and judaism is now illegal:

Mr Miano has recently been out preaching in Wimbledon. He very much enjoys biblical evangelism, speaking about spiritual growth, personal holiness and the person and work of Jesus Christ. On Monday, his theme was sexual immorality - all forms (1Thess 4:1-12). He talked about sin - heterosexual and homosexual - without discrimination. As he was preaching, a lady heard him say that homosexuality was a sin, and promptly summoned the police, who duly arrived.

Mr Miano was then arrested for violating Section 5 of the Public Order Act: he was accused of using homophobic speech likely to cause anxiety, distress, alarm or insult.

Now I don't think that homosexuality is any sort of sin but I do know that free speech means others should be able to express that view. And I also know that many christians, muslims and jews consider homosexuality to be a sin.

But there's something about sinners - at least if you're a christian:

Judge not, and ye shall not be judged: condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned: forgive, and ye shall be forgiven. Luke 6:37

The suppression of free speech is an act of judgement as plainly as is the stoning of adulterers or the casting out of people we choose to label 'sinner'.

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As society becomes less religious I find myself profoundly unmoved

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Yesterday evening I watched two episodes of The Borgias - there I saw, just as I did reading Neal Stevenson (and others) work, The Mongoliad, the reality of organised religion. Not the honest piety we are told is its feature but rather the rapacious pursuit of power and the aggressive destruction of anything that seems to be competition. Having cowed and captured the state, religion took the instruments of the state's power - swords, soldiers and torture - and used them to exercise and sustain control.

Not in the interests of salvation but in the service of power. It was a reminder that, however much we may wish otherwise, the nature of religious authority is more political that spiritual - even if they no longer carry on quite so rapaciously as did Rodrigo and his family.

So today, with that reminder in my mind, I was struck by the Heresiac's observations on a YouGov poll:

A new YouGov poll confirms that religion among the younger generation is in headlong retreat. A mere 25% said that they believed in God. A further 19% said that they believed in a "greater spiritual power", while a full 38% now claim to have no religious or spiritual beliefs at all. The remainder were agnostic. Essentially, then, this is a non-believing generation. 10% said that they attended religious services at least once a month (this is quite close to the long-term average for the population as a whole), but the majority (56%) said that they never went. In perhaps the most significant rebuff to traditional religion, 41% thought that it was the cause of more harm than good in the world. Only 14% (a considerably smaller figure than that for belief in God) thought that religion was, on balance, a good thing.

It seems that far from (as some foolish stats-mongers contend) us having a Muslim majority in a few years, the reality is that we will have an atheist majority. Perhaps some fear this eventuality - I find myself unmoved. Not by the prospect of atheism - it is a foolish belief - but by the obvious failure of organised religion to grasp the ideals and ideas of today. I have a feeling that religion as a great institution is nearing its final days - all the baggage of the state tacked onto god (as if we still need our rulers to have some pretence of his endorsement) no longer works.

This will not make us a better society or less divided. But we will not be the worse for the demise of organised religion.

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Astaroth and the children of rock stars...

He is a Mighty, Strong Duke, and appeareth in the Form of an hurtful Angel riding on an Infernal Beast like a Dragon, and carrying in his right hand a Viper. Thou must in no wise let him approach too near unto thee, lest he do thee damage by his Noisome Breath. Wherefore the Magician must hold the Magical Ring near his face, and that will defend him. He giveth true answers of things Past, Present, and to Come, and can discover all Secrets. He will declare wittingly how the Spirits fell, if desired, and the reason of his own fall. He can make men wonderfully knowing in all Liberal Sciences. He ruleth 40 Legions of Spirits.

Such is the temptation of the devil - he drips away at the minds of weak people. And none are weaker, it seems, than the Daily Mail journalist:

Crowley, who was born into an upper-class British family in 1875, styled himself as 'the Great Beast 666'. He was an unabashed occultist who, prior to his death in 1947, revelled in his infamy as 'the wickedest man in the world'.

His form of worship involved sadomasochistic sex rituals with men and women, spells which he claimed could raise malevolent gods and the use of hard drugs, including opium, cocaine, heroin and mescaline.

To be honest - as the hat tells us - Crowley was rather more of a libertine than he was ever an adherent of some evil faith. Indeed the motto of the Ordo Templi Orientis - "do what thou wilt" - rather makes this clear! These organisations barely merit the term religion or cult and the 'beliefs' are syncretic making connections between ancient myths, christian iconography and supposed gnostic insight. And for many these secret (or rather secretive) groups fascinate with their combination of the slightly naughty with an esoteric justification for such naughtiness.

It has always seemed to me that Aleister Crowley, for all the occultist guru status laid on him by modern ODO followers, was chiefly interested in such mish-mash religiosity because it excused his rampant (and not especially choosy) sex drive. Terms like the "wickedest man in the world" were more or less self-penned - Crowley revelled in the symbols, candles and drugs far more than in any sincere belief in the strictures of the ODO scriptures, many of which he wrote himself anyway.

Such decadence and libertinism appeals to a certain sort of person - perhaps the wayward child of rockstars or someone similarly blessed with the means to pursue a debauched lifestyle without recourse to doing any real work. After all, Crowley was just such a person and so, it seems is Peaches Geldof:

Given her own dabbling in heroin and casual sex, particularly during a rootless period when she lived in Los Angeles a few years ago, it is perhaps natural that the troubled offspring of Bob Geldof and Paula Yates should be attracted to such a liberal school of thought.

It seems to me that the Order in question appeals precisely because of the heroin and casual sex rather than because of some supposed "satanic" ritual. But - as the Daily Mail find - there's always one person who is prepared to believe that these are evil sectarians who do human sacrifice:

A former FBI agent, Ted Gundersen, who investigated Satanic circles in LA, found that Crowley’s teachings about 'raising demons to do one’s bidding' suggested human sacrifice, preferably of 'an intelligent young boy'.

This is placing altogether too much credence on the ravings of a drugged up libertine - a creative and clever drugged up libertine but still a drugged up libertine. And we shouldn't be surprised that the secret club purporting to descend from Crowley's little clique appeals to modern day drugged up libertines, should we?

Finally though we need to be clear - the Ordo Templi Orientis, the Order of the Golden Dawn or any of the other cranky pseudo-masonic clubs associated with Aleister Crowley are not devil worshippers. Mad, bad and dangerous to know maybe but not satanists.

And as ODO's UK leader points out:

...his is the only religion that sends people a letter of congratulations when they decide to leave

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Bel and the nationalisation of marriage

AT BABYLON the imposing sanctuary of Bel rose like a pyramid above the city in a series of eight towers or stories, planted one on the top of the other. On the highest tower, reached by an ascent which wound about all the rest, there stood a spacious temple, and in the temple a great bed, magnificently draped and cushioned, with a golden table beside it. In the temple no image was to be seen, and no human being passed the night there, save a single woman, whom, according to the Chaldean priests, the god chose from among all the women of Babylon. They said that the deity himself came into the temple at night and slept in the great bed; and the woman, as a consort of the god, might have no intercourse with mortal man

OK, it’s perhaps not wisest to begin discussing marriage by quoting The Golden Bough but this begins with the debate about “same sex marriage” and the Government’s proposal to change its definition of marriage so as to encompass partnerships that have no procreational purpose (rather like sleeping with Bel). In the context of today’s society this is a right and proper thing to do - although proving less simple that it seemed at first.

In the ancient world, government and religion were one and the same thing. Here’s Finer, in The History of Government speaking of the world’s first state - Sumer:

“The king of a city, nevertheless, sat on his throne specifically to order the people’s service to the gods and on him depended not only the routine business of the city, or even its safety and independence, but its well-being and the bounty of Nature itself.”

Every action was a matter for the gods – not least those occasions that Arnold van Gennep coined the term ‘rites of passage’ to describe: birth, puberty, death and, of course, marriage. For a Sumerian to separate marriage from religion would have been impossible. Indeed, the Sumerian believed that everything – every minor act of his life – was only possible because the gods allowed it. So it was with each ancient society – hence the holy prostitute sleeping in Bel’s bed.

So marriage became a thing of the state – especially in record-obsessed places such as Sumer. And it became a thing of the state because religion and the state were inseparable. For the peasant this mattered very little since that peasant owned nothing and marriage merely recognised a partnership. But for the landowner, the rich and the powerful it really id matter.

However, even beyond the bounds of civilization, marriage was still a thing of religion – whether we look at Beltane fires or bride-snatching, we still see belief in spirit as a justification of these actions. It simply wasn’t sufficient for marriage to be celebrated by the village, by society. Marriage required the endorsement of a higher authority – god or government or both these things combined.

And, since marriage became a factor in who owned things, the government gradually pushed religion aside – the concerns of mammon triumphed: money, land and business were more important than the blessings of god. The rite of passage remained but the institution of marriage became wholly nationalised – a creature of laws not a blessing of god.

And so it is today. Trooping down a church aisle is no more a marriage than holding hands and jumping over a besom. Instead we must go to a room, sign a book and get a certificate from a representative of government. Only then can we say we are married. And this is what the debate is all about – marriage is a thing of the state, a nationalised institution. And government says that its institutions must not discriminate on the basis of sexual preference.

Maybe marriage shouldn’t be such an institution – one granted specific and defined privileges in law (that may yet be extended to new tax privileges). But so long as it is such an institution – and this has nothing to do with god – then the state’s rules on “equality” must apply. If religious folk wish to reclaim marriage for the gods then, given that government and religion are no longer inseparable, they should be campaigning for all state recognition of marriage to be ended, to privatise marriage and return it to the religions that created it.

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In which the Charity Commission becomes a lawmaker...

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I'm inclined to side with the Charity Commission in this matter except for one minor point. It isn't the Commission's job to define the law:

“This decision makes it clear that there is no presumption that religion generally, or at any more specific level, is for the public benefit, even in the case of Christianity or the Church of England. The case law on religion is rather ambiguous.  Our view is that the definition is rather dated, and it is our job to define it adequately.”

If there is a case for removing charitable status from religion then that is a matter for Parliament not the Commission.

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Why Atheists are wrong...

The Symbol of a new Faith

No, I'm not about to launch into some sort of proof of god's (or gods for that matter) existence but just to cry a little at the problem with atheism. I've always liked to play with metaphysics:

Let me start, dear reader, with the one clear fact in all this – there is a “creation”. OK it could be an entirely accidental creation, it could be a glorious combination of accident and subtle external intervention or the Great Goddess Woo might have made it from tears at the death of her pet dog. What you believe here isn’t important – what is important is enquiry – asking the question.

You see atheism is as much an act of faith as believing in gods and less so that believing in fairies. Atheists can no more prove their position than can bearded monks sitting on the flanks of Mount Sinai. And the bearded monks are often far more metaphysically interesting and open to doubt that the "skeptical" atheist.

A while ago I had a gentle little dig at the great prophet of militant atheism, Richard Dawkins:

I make no secret of my disagreement with Dawkins – his spiritless, dry, confrontational obsessions have created an atheism that is no longer fundamental but that requires a range of beliefs beyond the essence of atheism. That essence is, of course, very straightforward – that there is no god. What Dawkins has done has been to take upon himself a jihad directed at anyone who does not adhere to his obsessions – unreconstructed Darwinian evolution, a view that religion is a pathology and utter contempt for any promotion of a religious viewpoint.

Indeed the adherents of Dawkins have set about creating a religion - it even has a name now: Atheism Plus (or A+) complete with a funky logo. Soon all the little Dawkinsites will be wearing badges with this symbol - a bit like the little fish symbol that evangelical Christians wear or maybe a green turban or a gold bracelet.

These Atheist jihadi are keen to set out their stall - amidst all the denial of religiosity, our Atheists demand that Atheism must change society, just as does Christianity, as it is with Islam:

If there is no god, if religion is a sham, that has significant consequences for how we should structure our society. 

These atheists - followers of the prophet Dawkins - do not stop with believing that there is no god but go much further. Religion must be first condemned and its influences removed from any public influence. Atheism these people tell us must be practiced:

Atheism sensu stricto may be a specific assertion about a fact of the universe, but atheism as practiced is a defining idea in a mind and a powerful foundation for a human community. It has meanings and implications that we must heed and use for achieving our goals.

Let me adjust that so you can understand:

Religion sensu stricto may be a specific assertion about a fact of the universe, but religion as practiced is a defining idea in a mind and a powerful foundation for a human community. It has meanings and implications that we must heed and use for achieving our goals.

The statement makes just as much sense (which to me is absolutely none) in either version. Atheism is wrong. Not because there is a god but because to assert god's non-existence is no different to asserting god's existence. And to construct a faith-based organisation that singles out other faith-based organisations as targets is indistinguishable from the Islamic idea of jihad or the evangelical injunction placed on Christians.

The logic of Atheism dies when you treat it as a religion. And, because atheism requires a profound act of faith, it can only be a religion.

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Glamour, social media and technology - thoughts on magic

Magic is a tricky, rather contested idea. Not something to be played with idly. Yet a useful metaphor nevertheless if somewhat over used.

The big problem with magic lies in what we mean by it – is it the mysticism and spells or the shaman or is it a hyperbolic expression of transformation or occasion? When we say the wedding was magical we don’t mean it was presided over by a magus chanting spells (whatever we may think of the Church, its spellcasting is ever so English and not remotely mystical) but that the event was wonderful, exciting and filled with delight.

This of course brings us to Facebook and what Damien Thompson calls the “magic of social media”. And, as we find with clever pundits much of their magic is wrapped in the deliberate confusion of meaning. Here we find both meanings of magic intertwined – first we get the Arthur C. Clarke quotation without which any comment on technology is incomplete:

“...any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”.

By which the sage understood that we (the users of technology) had no idea how the stuff actually worked. I recall a conversation between a senior IT manager and an engineer wherein the engineer explained as follows:

“You know how to make computers work for you but I know how computers work.”

Into this trap our pundit tumbles – carrying on from Clarke’s quotation:

He was writing in 1973, and I’m not sure it’s true any more. Young people everywhere are far too tech-savvy to be baffled by technological wizardry.

Somehow I’ve a feeling that the typical gadget-strewn twenty-something may know all the buttons to press on his or her iThings but has only a tenuous grasp of how it is that those iThings weave their magic. Clarke was right; the iThing is a magic item – Galadriel’s ring or Elric’s sword – rather than a prosaic tool akin to a hammer or a spoon.

Social media are a consequence of magic not magic of themselves. Such things as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Yammer are faerie glamour – the illusion not the magic itself. We have all obtained these iThings and use them to craft vast magical empires, places to chat, to play, to work and to learn. But the magic we wield is outside our knowledge, we do not know why we can download films or upload photographs (indeed we will mostly struggle to explain how the films and photos come about) merely that we can do so and that the results are “magical”.

For Thompson – adopting the doomsayer’s cloak – this is not good, such empires of illusion are dangerous:

This is exciting, but not necessarily in a good way. Accelerating change will tie economic activity ever more tightly to fragile charisma.

The success of magic – of technology (and Thompson confuses Apple who create new magic items and Facebook where people play with those items – the first in Clarke’s terms is magic, the second merely glamour) – is, Thompson says, down to that charisma and to the idea of cult. Thus technology businesses like Apple are akin to Pentecostalist preachers driven by the founder’s magical presence rather than by the real magic of technological innovation.

Now I don’t think Mark Zuckerberg set out to create a massive social media monster when he created Facebook. But what he and others did was to remove the stopper from a magic bottle releasing a veritable horde of djinni. Whether they will survive remains to be seen – at some point us users of the djinni will have to pay (there is always a cost to using magic) or lose the power.

However, this relates only loosely to the real magic – the robots, the computers, the little metal and plastic slaves that do things we could but dream of a few years ago. Watching colour images beamed back from Mars or hearing of nanotechnology allowing the most delicate of brain surgery. This is where Arthur C. Clarke’s magic is now.

Damien Thompson sees the pretty things built by magic and believes them to be the magic. If those pretty things are sometimes designed to deceive they just reflect humans – the deception is just the same as those Pentecostalists with their laying on of hands, speaking in tongues and preference for showmanship over devotion. But this is not the magic – we must look instead to the things we don’t understand but take for granted. Televisions, computers, mobile phones – all the paraphernalia of modern living – these are the magic.

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Do we believe in redemption...

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...political redemption that is of course. Let me explain.

Bradford had two councillors who were elected as BNP - as it happens they are husband and wife and represent Queensbury ward. Almost a year ago, they announced their resignation from that party and their intention to sit as independent councillors. At that time they also said that the politics of race and religion did not serve Bradford well.

As a 'mea culpa' it was a start.

Over this weekend, these Councillors sent an e-mail out to all the Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat members of council following the success of Respect candidates in the local elections. Here is a chunks of that e-mail:

"Please forgive Lynda and I if you consider this e-mail inappropriate.

As most of you will know Lynda and I were at the count on Thursday/Friday supporting our friend Conservative Cllr Michael Walls.

What we witnessed at the count made our blood run cold, the politics of division has again reared it's ugly head in Bradford..."

They were, of course, referring to the manner in which Respect had campaigned - so it went on:

"Lynda and I have to agree with Ian Greenwood's televised comment re Respect that he considered that Respect made promised they would not be able to keep.

Lynda spoke to our wonderful Lord Mayor Naveeda Ikram at a recent opening ceremony that Naveeda performed in Queensbury.

Naveeda explained to Lynda how worried she and Ian Greenwood were that Respect had brought religion into their election manifesto.

Respect targeted heavily populated Asian/Muslim areas of the City and in doing so has split the local Asian communities."

 Now I appreciate the slight irony of former BNP councillors speaking of the "politics of division" but Paul's e-mail seemed genuine - he expressed real concern at how hard-working councillors like Ian Greenwood could be swept aside by this sort of campaign (a reminder, I guess, that the BNP did this too - the current Conservative Group leader, Glen Miller lost his seat to them in 2004).

My question however, isn't whether you agree with the analysis these councillors present but whether it opens the door to the 'political mainstream' for politicians previously wholly beyond the pale.

Do we believe in redemption?

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Decisions...

The Quaker Meeting House at Sedburgh

Quakers - as far as I recall - have this idea of 'waiting on god'. There is no service, people say more-or-less what they want. I'm probably wrong in this but it always seemed an interesting idea. It is a fine thought that a whole 'service' can pass without a word being said and for those present to see this as good and valuable.

The first that enters into the place of your meeting. . . turn in thy mind to the light, and wait upon God singly, as if none were present but the Lord; and here thou art strong. Then the next that comes in, let them in simplicity of heart sit down and turn in to the same light, and wait in the spirit; and so all the rest coming in, in the fear of the Lord, sit down in pure stillness and silence of all flesh, and wait in the light . . . . Those who are brought to a pure still waiting upon God in the spirit, are come nearer to the Lord than words are; for God is a spirit, and in the spirit is he worshiped. . . . In such a meeting there will be an unwillingness to part asunder, being ready to say in yourselves, it is good to be here; and this is the end of all words and writings—to bring people to the eternal living Word.

It's OK, dear readers, I am not rushing off to sign up for the Religious Society of Friends, but the idea of waiting for 'the light' - however we may want to define that 'light' - is a very appealing idea. We are too ready to shout over others, to engage in a babble of debate, bandying words, opinions, numbers and statistics around as if by their sheer quantity we will demonstrate the truth or proof we seek.

I like also the idea that we listen - I'm not very good at this but I like the thought. Not just to the opinions of others as if we were some sort of knowledge sponge but to the deeper sounds - what I guess the Quakers would call 'god'. We are enjoined to be logical as if that state is the antithesis of spiritual. We are told to seek truth yet do so without either the tools or a map for such a search.

Politics exists for one reason - we have to make decisions. There is no other purpose to the profession - the good folk of Bingley Rural elect me to do that for them. My problem is that, when the work informing us is done well, those decisions are not easy. We get little chance to contemplate, to wait for that 'light' - so often we end up uncomfortable with the compromise, questioning of the evidence and unsure of the options. Yet a decision must be made. So we make one.

For me the result of this is to doubt. I've said before that no-one without doubt can be a conservative and this remains my view. And I believe that the central importance of doubt should lead us to political inaction rather than political action. Since we cannot be sure that the changes proposed will make things better, the current arrangement should be preferred unless it is broken beyond redemption.

Perhaps, before making those decisions - before changing something, ahead of curtailing someone's rights or ending someone's business - we should sit in silent contemplation of the decisions we will take. We should maybe listen to the deeper sound of society, think closely about what it might mean for our neighbour and then decide whether we make the change. Perhaps, instead of filling rooms with statistics, analysis and documentation that no one person has read let alone understood, we should instead think whether, when we think of what we've chosen, our heads will go up and a smile will come on our face.

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Are we really a Christian country?

Barely a week passes without the words appearing somewhere, uttered by a politician or, more likely, by an ageing Anglican clergyman...

“...Britain is a Christian country!”

This cry – used down the ages to exclude Jews and, more recently, to marginalise Muslims – may have been true once but I do not believe that we can make that claim any more. But first to understand the claim.

In one respect the argument is about numbers – two-thirds of the population express their identity as Christian so we are, ipso facto, a Christian nation. We still grant a privileged position to representatives of the protestant hierarchy – not just seats in the House of Lords but an almost divine right to airtime wherein to pontificate about the issues of the day.

And these bishops are listened to, just as the local vicar gets a hearing that you as just a bloke in the village won’t get. The established church as an institution also exercises power through its secular role as one of the nation’s two or three biggest landowners. Wherever we look we see evidence of the worldly presence of the church and every day we hear that church express its worldly power.

However, like other institutions (the political parties spring to mind), the church is all fur coat and no knickers. Those self-identifying Christians are little better than agnostics – only about 5% of the population turn out to the established church’s weekly offering. This is little different to that rather more secular religion- association football.

These grand, purple-robed men (and maybe women in a year or so) are sustained by a vast property holding not by the support of the populace. Indeed the public’s general view of religion is to mutter something about “good men” and then shrug. Our religion has declined to the symbols and sounds of a forgotten faith – we sing carols, get the vicar to conduct rites of passage and pay no attention at all to the message.

Our Christianity is hard to distinguish from believing in fairies, ghosts or boggarts. That hard-nosed faith founded in the idea of grace and personal salvation has been replaced by a mushy set of superstitions.

 “Maybe there’s a god and we were told something about Jesus at school. I like those hymns. Did I tell you about the clairvoyant I went to at the pub?”

I do not make these observations in some sort of skeptical rapture – the skeptics like Dawkins are ghastly and ignorant in their denial of metaphysics. I wish simply to point out that we are an agnostic place, we like the comfort blanket of the church (especially when it’s a beautiful piece of gothic splendour or Norman survival) but we do not see that the church offers us anything beyond that comfort.

So while I have no beef with faith schools and see the obsessing about creation that typifies atheist debate as largely an irrelevance, I do not think that we’re a Christian country. I don’t believe that Christians deserve any special treatment – any more than I believe that so-called “faith leaders” should be afforded a special place or privileged access to power.

We should be gently moving the Church of England towards the retirement home. Not some drastic, painful and purposeless disestablishment but a gradual recognition that priests have no more rights to influence than publicans.  Religion will never go away – as Gordon Dickson observed in the Dorsai trilogy, part of man’s psyche is a preference for certainty, order and the direction of a god. But as someone once said, the work of the state is no business of god’s:

“And Jesus answering, said unto them, Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's: and to God the things that are God’s. And they marvelled at him.” (Mark 12:17)

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