Christians on the March

I’ve been meaning to blog this for a few days now but I’ve been writing essays. It’s become clear that the evangelical wing of Christianity is becoming much more active in the UK. Before, Christianity was something you could choose to partake in, or to ignore, but more and more I’ve noticed people going out trying to convert people.

Take Thursday, for example. I was eating my lunch in the Student Union, minding my own business, when 2 people came up to me asking if they could talk to me about “spirituality”, as they put it. “Sure,” I thought, “but it’ll be the biggest grilling you ever get”. The 2 Canadian students were from an organisation called Agape, associated with the Christian Union somehow (incidentally the CU have also had a marquis up in the Meadows to try and get Christianity out there a bit more).

They started off by asking about me personally, trying to get me to like them so they look like the nice guys. Then all of a sudden it turned to religion. “So,” he said, “do you have any kind of spirituality?” I replied with my position that I’m a humanist, which I had to explain, and then that basically I don’t believe anything unless I have a good reason to believe it, and evolution explains my existence (as an aside, this guy said he studied biology, but I had to explain macro-evolution to him) so I don’t need to invoke a creator God. “You believe you’re here because of chance?” Argh! Just because there’s no intelligent force behind it, doesn’t mean it’s chance!

“But if God exists” -big if - “do you think he loves us all?”. Well if he does he’s got a funny way of showing it, there are good innocent people in Africa living hellish lives, and the world is full of evil, so I don’t see how he can possibly love us all.

Quickly moving on, the guy (can’t remember his name for the life of me), then explained that there’s a big gap between God and us, and that gap is because of sin, and we are all sinful. I told him that I have a problem with thinking of myself as “sinful”, just because I’m not perfect; generally speaking I’m quite a good person.

Again , pretty much ignoring what I said, he went on to say that Jesus is the only way to bridge the gap between man and God, and it doesn’t matter how good we are on our own, without Jesus there is no way to bridge the gap, as it says in John 14:6 (John seemed to be a particular favourite of his). I asked one of my old favourite questions, how can you be sure that you are right, but the Muslims at the mosque down the road are wrong? For every quotation from the Bible that you have supporting your worldview, they have another from the Koran which supports theirs.

“Well the thing is,” he said, “Jesus is just so perfect that he must be right, and he died in our place.” I had issues with the Jesus being perfect thing but my main point was, how do you know that Jesus died in our place? How do you know he didn’t just… well die?  Because he believes in the Bible, was his answer. I explained to him just how unreliable the gospels are, that they were written a long time after Jesus died (Mark was the first written, and that was 30 years after Jesus died, all the others were much longer after that, and most of those were based on Mark’s account). “But wouldn’t you prefer to have an eyewitness account?” he replied. Yeah I would, but unfortunately that’s not what we have in the Bible. This guy seemed totally unaware that the gospels were not written by the apostles themselves and I pointed out that there are many parts where Jesus is alone, so how do we know what he did? None of the apostles were there when he was born, for example, or when he was in the desert, and in Luke’s account of the ascension it specifically says that it’s not an eyewitness account. So the only written record we have of Jesus’ ministry is a collection of myths, legends and hearsay.

The next part was almost pitiful. He brought up CS Lewis’ argument that Jesus was either lunatic, liar or Lord. Again, I’ve shot this down so many times, but my theory is that he was actually none of these, but was merely a normal man who did exist, a great teacher, but he was lied about in order to make him fulfil the Old Testament prophecies. It’s entirely appropriate, the Jews needed the Messiah to free them from slavery, and some of them were getting desperate.

“But the Bible is historical fact!” he replied. Apparently they found some books in an old library (at least that’s what he claimed), which verified the whole story. Then when he started to make sense, he said that biographies of kings at the time, for example, mention that Jesus was around. But that doesn’t make him the Son of God. Let’s look at it from another view, using the same argument. The gospel account says that Jesus rose Lazarus from the dead. If this actually happened, do you not think that the news would spread like wildfire across Palestine? Do you not think that historians of the day would think it worthy of putting it into their journals, that a man was raised from the dead? And yet there is no record of it outside the Bible. Hmm…
So I had a problem with pretty much everything he said, and I asked him questions that he’d obviously never even considered before. He was just a young guy that didn’t really know what he was talking about, he approached converting me just as he would have an on-the-fence agnostic who’d never really thought about it, and I’m sure that if he thought about his beliefs objectively, he’d be an agnostic. The only way he managed to get through our conversation with his beliefs intact was by ignoring my arguments.

I know this isn’t very constructive, but it’s just so frustrating when people come to you with half arsed arguments that haven’t been thought through, with smug moral attitude. At one point he actually said “if only you knew what I know”. Come back when you’re willing to have an open-minded conversation.

Science and Youth

A fairly short one today, but firstly I’d like to plug the God’s Warriors series that the Humanist Society is showing. Tonight’s episode takes a look at Judaism, I believe, and begins at 6pm TONIGHT in Appleton Tower, Edinburgh University. The next 2 weeks will examine Christianity and Islam.

I went to the Edinburgh Creation Group last night to watch Dr Marc Surtees make his talk on the age of the Earth. He started by establishing what the Bible says, that if we look at Genesis in the original Hebrew then it is obviously talking about 6 days of 24 hours each, approximately 6,000 years ago, so there’s no fudging the issue, that’s what it says. To claim it’s a metaphor would be to do it an injustice.

What followed for much of the talk was just theory. If humanity did start with 2 people, how long would it take for there to be 6 billion people? He calculates that with a 2% increase every year as it is now, it would take just 1100 years. I meant to ask him how he got to this conclusion, but even so, it’s well known that the human population has been increasing very rapidly over the last century or so, and I think the growth rate would have been much less than 2% per year in the past.

There were other things which would seem to suggest that the world is only thousands of years old. Long-period comets have an average ‘lifespan’ of thousands of years. If they were formed at the same time as the planets, then the planets must only be a few thousand years old, because otherwise the comets would have all burned up by now and we wouldn’t see any comets. The Oort Cloud has been suggested as a source of comets to get around this problem, but it’s never been observed.

One thing that did interest me was something called the Faint Sun Paradox. We know that through nuclear fusion, the sun is now 40% brighter (and hotter) than it would have been at more or less the start of it’s lifetime, which means the Earth would have been extremely cold. Not only would this not allow life to evolve, but it would also go against geological evidence which has flowing water making sedimentary rocks. Sagan, who first noticed the problem, explains it by the immense amounts of greenhouse gases that would have been in the atmosphere at that time.

There were other things that, although they disputed the age of the earth, didn’t really support the Biblical account either, such as levels of salt in the oceans and levels of helium in the atmosphere. Then he went on to hypothesise that dinosaurs and humans existed side-by-side as late as the Middle Ages, with the dragons slain by St George and Beowulf being the last of the dinosaurs.

Of course there’s one big issue that I’ve skirted around so far, and that is dating methods on rocks, which the scientists say show us the earth is millions and millions of years old. Dr Marc showed how inaccurate dating methods can be, saying that there are lots of assumptions involved, particularly since we don’t have a good way of measuring the half-lives of any material useful for telling the age of the earth, so we shouldn’t rely on them.

I’m going to stop storytelling now and give my opinion. The dating methods we use now, although they may well be inaccurate, give us a ball-park figure of millions of years. It’s nothing like the mere 6,000 years the 6-day creationists are talking about. If the dating methods have problems (and I’m not nearly specialised enough to tell you if they do), then I would fully support taking another look at the issue from another direction, in the interests of good science. But that doesn’t mean that we should ignore the data that we’re getting. If I counted and told you that there were a hundred sweets in a jar, and then someone else counted and said “no, I think there’s 110″, it would be like assuming that there are a pitifully small number like 2 sweets in there, because obviously the counting method is unreliable, so you should just guess. There’s going to be somewhere in the region of 90-120 sweets in the jar.

It’s an issue I’ve noticed in a lot of creationists. There are niggles and problems with any theory. We can’t pretend to know everything, but creationists tend to point at the cracks in a theory and say “look, this can’t be true, so therefore Goddiddit!!” It reminds me of this picture I saw recently:

Age Discrimination

Whenever we hear about ageism, it’s always because people past about 50 find it difficult to find a job, because they’re going to be retiring fairly soon and the company considering hiring them wants somebody more long-term. But this is only one very small part of it.

I always used to be fairly active promoting young people’s rights. Every week you’d see headlines in the newspapers and Tory scaremongering propaganda on TV showing the world being destroyed by “hoodies” and “gangs of youths”. More and more, older people are getting intimidated by young people on the streets, even though they personally haven’t been on the receiving end of an attack by them, nor have they probably even seen it happen to someone else. In all likeliness the ‘kids on the streets’ (as if that’s a crime or something) are just hanging out with their friends. It’s all in their heads because of images in the media. The division between people of different ages has never been higher in this country.

Now in response to this, shopkeepers have started taking precautions against youth crime. Signs outside shops saying things like “only 2 under-18’s in the shop at a time” are commonplace, and some (admittedly very few) places even ban all young people altogether! Now I wonder, if we substituted “young people” with “black people” in this situation, would it not be considered discriminatory? I’m sure it would by almost everyone.

Now in the last couple of years, a new “weapon” against youth crime has been unveiled, which is being called the ‘Mosquito‘. It’s basically a box on a wall which emits a high frequency noise which only under-25’s can hear, so loud that it forces them to leave the area. This is blatant discrimination. It does not differentiate between young people who are causing trouble and other young people who may just happen to be in the area. Again, if a similar device were made which did the same kind of thing to black people, or women, would there not be uproar? Yes there undoubtedly would.

I’m not denying that there’s a problem with youth crime, but the way to tackle it is not to discriminate against all young people. Remember when institutionalised racism was commonplace in the 70’s and 80’s, things like the ‘sus laws‘ (which they basically want to bring back against young people with the ’stop and search’ powers given to the police) and other discriminatory methods of crime reduction were totally ineffective, and just increased crime in the black communities as they became disillusioned with society, leading to the 1981 riots. This is exactly what will happen if we continue to treat our young people like criminals, just for being young.

Humanist Ethics

Last night, the Humanist Society held its Big Event of the Semester (BEotS), a panel discussion on Humanist Ethics in the 21st Century, with:

• Roger Redondo, a neuroscientist and president of the Humanist Society
• Sue England, a human rights lawyer and women’s rights expert
• Patrick Harvie MSP, a humanist member of the Scottish Greens Parliamentary Party
• June Maxwell, leader of the Humanist Academy, who stepped in at the eleventh hour to replace another speaker who fell ill

Each of the speakers made a 20 minute talk or so taking their own spin on the question, “why do we need evolving humanist ethics in the 21st Century?” Roger concentrated on how we know that morality is wired into each of our brains genetically. There is evidence of a sense of justice in chimpanzees, and the ‘Trolley Problems‘ show us that morals are to a large extent universal, regardless of social conditioning.

The other speakers spoke more about humanist ethics in action. Sue England’s talk was particularly interesting because she led with the statement that religious discrimination is nothing whatsoever like other types of discrimination, in that you can’t easily change your sex or your race or get rid of a disability, but you can very easily change your religion or get rid of it completely. She then went on to show how religious organisations are gaining ground and getting privileged consultation in the EU, exemption from taxation and widely in Europe in such places as Germany, the Church gets money directly from pay packets like a second “voluntary” income tax. She also claimed that the European Convention on Human Rights mentions nothing about religion, but the Human Rights Act 1998 had section 13 put into it by Blair, which means courts have to respect the rights of a person to freedom of thought and religion. I’ve since been and checked this out, and article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights does outline freedom of thought and religion, so I think she must have got her wires crossed there.

Patrick Harvie’s talk was also very interesting. He concentrated on his time as the shadow for the Communities Portfolio, during which he was lobbied by all kinds of religious groups, and how religious groups get privileged in all kinds of ways in politics as well as in law. It tied in quite well with what Sue was saying. He finished by saying emphatically that a fixed moral worldview can’t adapt to new ethical problems such as stem cell research, abortion and climate change. We can’t just look in the Bible and ask “what did Jesus say about nanotechnology?”

June Maxwell’s talk was understandably a little less well jointed, since she had no time to prepare it. She concentrated on education, and how an evolving humanist ethic taught in schools would encourage children to be more responsible, and to think more about their actions rather than just not doing something because they’ve been told to.

She also claimed that Abraham, Moses and even Jesus never existed, which was more than a little controversial with 2 of the members of the Edinburgh Creation Group who came along for the show, missing their own event which was happening at the same time. She justified this by saying that the pagan gods that were celebrated on the 25th of December bore startling resemblances with Jesus, citing Attis, Osiris, Dionysus and Mithras as examples. I’ve checked a few of these out and the theory doesn’t really stand up to scrutiny. Mithras was worshipped after Jesus died, so if anything he was a copy of Jesus, and I can only find very tenuous similarities between Jesus and Dionysus. Lots of people know the links between Osiris and Christianity, but since the legend of Osiris is so old (about 2400 BC), I think it’s more likely to have affected the Old Testament prophecies about the Messiah than the legends surrounding Jesus himself. I think it’s more likely that he did exist as a person, but that he was exaggerated and lied about by his followers in order to fulfil the OT prophecies. I’ve heard a theory on my local radio phone-in show that Jesus was a drug dealer (I am from Liverpool), but I’ll leave that for now.

There was also a lot of controversy during the Q&A session when someone raised the issue of faith schools. The question-asker said that she’d been to a faith secondary school and she was always taught to be open minded, and she was taught about other faiths as well. June then replied (very passionately, I might add, she was almost shouting by the time she finished) by taking the example of the story of Abraham, which teaches obedience, but says nothing about the right of his son to live. I don’t know when June was last in a faith school, but I spent 14 years in the faith school system and I only ever learned about that story when I read the Bible in my own time, it wasn’t taught as part of the curriculum. Generally speaking my school was very liberal, it taught evolution and everyone I know believed in it, and I came out with a good sense of morals and a good education. There were certain problems which I won’t go into, but it certainly wasn’t the brainwashing zombie-factory June seems to think they are.

This entry’s getting far too long and I’ve had nothing to eat yet today (in my Chinese oral exam this morning I apparently told the examiner that my dad’s a professional socialist, instead of a social worker), so I’ll wrap it up with a comment. I was a little disappointed. I was hoping this would be something I could point to in the future and say “look, humanism isn’t just about bashing religion”, but religion was a topic which came up far too much throughout the evening. Sue England’s talk was not much more than arguing against religious practices in Europe, and the only talk that didn’t have religion at its centre was Roger’s, who I’m pretty sure didn’t talk about it at all.

All in all though, it was a good event and I’m glad I went, even if it did mean I didn’t do enough revision for my Chinese exam.

Rowan Williams and Sharia Law

There are 2 things I’d like to blog on today but I think I’ll do the other one tomorrow. I’m on a reading week in 2 of my subjects so I’ll have a bit of time.

Anyway there’s been a lot of controversy across the UK this week because the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, has said that Sharia Law is ‘unavoidable‘ in Britain, and that he would encourage parts of it to be incorporated into British Law in order to aid social cohesion. This is rather difficult for me because I’m going to defend his position from the attacks I’ve heard most commonly on online forums discussing the issue.

First of all, a lot of people have been saying things like “why should we follow Sharia Law when it oppresses women and has lots of other human rights issues associated with it?” That’s the very definition of straw-man argument. Dr Williams hasn’t said that we should oppress women or cut off people’s hands or whatever, he’s merely suggested incorporating certain aspects of it. Presumably that would mean taking the good bits rather than the bad, so we shouldn’t think about what he’s asking for as bringing Sharia Law, intact, to Britain.

The next one I’ve noticed is something like “if they want to come to this country they should stop trying to change Britain and abide by British Law”. There is a general widespread assumption which associates Islam with a geographical region in the Middle East. There are plenty of Muslims who are British, they’re not all immigrants. Just because Sharia Law might be active in places in the Middle East, doesn’t mean that British Muslims have all come here from there. To take this thinking further, now that it’s clear that many Muslims are British, would people who make this assertion also deny British people of other ethnic or social groups the right to request changes in legislation?

For example, last year gay people in Britain won the right to civil partnerships. Was this wrong? Should they have just accepted their lot and “abided by British Law”, and stopped trying to change Britain? No, I don’t think so. Just as British homosexuals have the right to request changes in legislation to accommodate themselves better, so do British Muslims have the right to request legislation to accommodate themselves better. If everyone stopped trying to change Britain, then we’d still be in an absolute monarchy stuck with slavery and strict blasphemy laws, and only landowners would have the vote.

When I first heard the news, my first concern was for the rule of law, and I’ve heard many people making similar statements. You can’t have one system of law for some people and another for others. Everyone within British jurisdiction should live by the same laws, otherwise the system becomes unworkable. 2 legal systems would also fail to aid social cohesion, because it could only be a divisive force. I think I was remembering the similar situation they have in Ontario, Canada, whereby in order to save on court time, two individuals may agree to arbitrate a civil dispute using any form of authority that they both recognise, most commonly religious law.

But we’re being unfair here. Dr Williams has said nothing about having 2 parallel systems of law, merely incorporating aspects of Sharia Law into our own system. There would be no such problem and the rule of law would remain intact. Our law is fluid and it would just be a change in legislation, just like any other.

So it sounds like I’m all for it, doesn’t it? Not exactly, I just think the arguments that are being used against him are characteristic of editorials in The Sun and really 2 dimensional. I have no objection to what he’s saying, but I don’t see the point in suggesting it. Surely the aspects of Sharia Law that would be desirable in our system are things that we’ve already thought of and are already part of our law? So we’re either taking positive aspects that we’ve already got legislation on, or we’re taking negative aspects that are undesirable.

The way he thinks it would aid social cohesion tells me that he thinks the mere fact that it would be taken from Sharia would tell Muslims that we’re listening to them, so in effect all he’s suggesting is that we take our existing laws and point a big arrow at it, saying “look, this is the same as this in Sharia Law! We value our Muslim citizens”, thereby Islamifying our laws to make them look more appealing. Which isn’t really doing anything, so why’s he suggesting it?

In any case I think he was pretty stupid to bring this up. He’s fully aware how many racists and xenophobes there are in this country, and he’s bringing a giant hammer down on his own head. The suggestion is just going to fuel hatred for Muslims in anti-Muslim groups, and possibly allow them to gain support. It was a stupid thing to say.

Afterthought: As a related aside, I’d like to make it clear that just because a piece of moral guidance comes from a religious source, doesn’t mean that I’m going to disagree with it. I personally agree with many of the teachings of Jesus, and I’m sure I would with many of Mohammed’s if I took the time to read them, but I will make up my own mind in each individual instance and won’t take guidance merely on authority.

Scientology Protest

Well, I was there, were you?

It was actually a really good turnout, we had about 150 people which was about as many as we could fit along the side of the road without blocking the pavement. The police were there to keep order and in case we decided to do anything stupid, but to be honest I don’t think anyone had any intentions of doing anything like that. One ironic thing was that one of my friends who turned up to protest has told me in the past that she’s a creationist Christian. She claims to hate scientology because it’s obviously a load of rubbish and it takes advantage of depressed people… bit strange really.

We noticed about 5 or 6 different people inside the building. They were photographing and videoing us, so we’ll see what becomes of that. All it’ll show is a big group of people standing there, singing and cheering when cars beep support. Nothing illegal there.

Although I don’t think it’s the most important or controversial topic at the moment, it was good to get noticed and have more people on board with the issue. Scientology is a cult, there’s no doubt about it. It takes people into it, separates them from their friends and family, takes their money away from them and resists letting them leave. It’s extremely secretive and exclusive, and they’re very hostile to people who oppose it.

Anyway I’m going to see if I can figure out how to upload the pictures. There are some great ones.

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Knowledge is Free

Lolcats

War on Scientology

It’s been called a ‘cult’ by a judge in the US Supreme Court and the Germans won’t have anything to do with it. The more I hear about it, the more I’m starting to realise just how messed up Scientology is. As if the Tom Cruise video wasn’t enough to get me going (”When you’re a Scientologist, and you drive by an accident, you know you have to do something about it, because you know you’re the only one who can really help…”), the fact that the “Church” managed to get it taken off YouTube really peeved me off.

Why people believe in this bollocks is beyond me. It was written by a SCIENCE FICTION WRITER! It’s obviously a cartload of rotten tripe! I don’t understand why someone would believe in this rubbish when they know it was just written by some guy.

Further to this are the allegations that Scientologists were responsible for the death of Lisa McPherson. After she had a car crash and a mental breakdown, they took her out of psychiatric care to look after her themselves, which led to her death, basically through neglect. They have untrained people practicing medicine without licenses, which is downright dangerous.

Anywho I heard today that all this controversy has led to the birth of an internet group known as Anonymous, which has declared war on Scientology. So far this has been by hacking their website and shutting it down, sending them pizzas, and (my personal favourite) sending them black faxes to waste the ink in their fax machines, but this Sunday it will go one step further with a global peaceful protest outside the many Churches of Scientology.

One of these is in Edinburgh, near the Tron in Hunter Square at 11am (and there was me thinking computer geeks slept all through the day). I’ll be there, and I’ll be sure to take some pictures and try and get them up here. I urge anyone else who wants a giggle to come along too. Apparently there are Facebook groups and events but I’ve yet to find one for the Edinburgh Protest.

Listening to: Pink Floyd - Astronomy Domine

The 123 Meme

Normally I wouldn’t do this, but I saw the word meme and I couldn’t resist. Memes are pieces of information that are transmitted from one mind to another, kind of like genes.

The 123 Rules:

1. Pick up the book nearest you with at least 123 pages. (No cheating!)
2. Turn to page 123.
3. Count the first five sentences.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five other bloggers.

The book closest to me was my Spanish Dictionary, which doesn’t really have sentences on pg 123, so the next nearest is ‘Farewell to God’ by Charles Templeton (again, don’t buy it, it’s crap).

But check the record. Mark’s Gospel does not mention the Ascension. Luke’s Gospel, after a disclaimer stating that he was not an eyewitness but is simply passing on what he has been able to learn from his research, then presumes to quote verbatim not only what Jesus said but entire conversations, including what Jesus’ respondents said.

And I hereby tag (people who I expect won’t pass this on), The Darwin Report, Feminism 101, Mano Singham, The Frame Problem, and The Bound Dragon (a literally random blog).

Birthdays

Today is my birthday. So far it’s been a completely normal day, which is a good thing. I had a pretty heavy weekend with work, my parents, the rugby and the Superbowl, and was drinking for 14 hours yesterday :|, so I don’t think I could have handled another exciting one today.

In any case I’m noticing that birthdays are becoming less of a big deal as I get older. I’m genuinely not bothered if I do anything or not tonight, and I wasn’t excited about it at all. It’s my first birthday away from home, though, which is a bit new. This year and last year have been pretty big years for celebrations in the family though. My cousin and I were 18 last year and my sister and my other cousin were 21, and this year my brother’s 18 and my mum’s 50, and my dad’ll be 60 next year.

It’s a little strange how we comemmorate events like birthdays. It’s not like I’m a year older today than I was yesterday, and it’s just a day like any other if I’m perfectly honest. And in the words of Pink Floyd I’m just one day closer to death. Woo! It’s strange how we mark the passage of time purely for the sake of it.

It makes me wonder when birthdays became the norm. There was undoubtedly a point when the calendar and dates were invented, and before that it would have been somewhat impossible to have a birthday. Time would just pass, unmarked by human hands.

But then I suppose if you look at it another way, you are literally supposed to be celebrating your birth. But nothing you do on your birthday has anything to do with your birth, it’s just more of a general celebration. We humans are strange creatures.