Religious Jewellery

Another chapter has been added to the saga of religious clothing after Sakira Watkins-Singh was supported by a High Court Judge and allowed to wear the Kara at school after previously being excluded. I’m not sure exactly where I stand on this one. My bigoted dad said “if they can’t dress like the people in this country, they can go back to where they came from”. He got a bit stuck when I told him she was Welsh…

Anyway, although I support religious freedom and freedom of expression, I must admit I was a little frustrated when the judge claimed that the Kara (a bangle worn by all baptised Sikhs) was not a piece of jewellery, but a sign of faith. To me this was just ignoring what’s right in front of them and over-symbolising the item. It may be a sign of faith metaphorically but physically it is a piece of jewellery. Pieces of jewellery are not allowed, so that’s that. If the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster decided that a symbol of their faith was to have bolognese sauce spread across their faces at all times, it wouldn’t be tolerated. If another faith decided that they had to wear giant sombreros, it wouldn’t be tolerated.

Then I was reminded that the Kara is one of the Five K’s. From my limited knowledge of Sikhism I remembered that the 5 K’s are obligatory for Sikhs, which makes it considerably different to the wearing of a crucifix for Christians, for example, which isn’t at all necessary. So in that sense, I see where the judge is coming from. It’s not just taking off a piece of jewellery; in a way, taking it off would be denying their faith, which I wouldn’t endorse.

However, after the Crackergate story, it would be hypocritical of me to respect one crackpot story about Sikhs not being Sikhs if they don’t wear a metal bangle, but not another crackpot story about a cracker turning into a piece of flesh. Surely there are times when a Sikh would take it off, such as when they’re having an MRI? One woman likened taking off the Kara to taking off her arm, which I thought was a bit extreme.

Then another hazy memory from my knowledge of Sikhism came to the fore. Sikhs are also required to wear a Kirpan, a short curved blade, so that they can defend themselves and the weak. We wouldn’t tolerate someone taking a blade into school, no matter how important it was to someone’s faith. The Kara is no different. It’s a piece of jewellery which cannot be worn. End of.

Bank Charges

Anyone who’s ever gone overdrawn will be eagerly awaiting the result of the test case which will decide whether the charges that banks levy on their customers are fair or unfair. The issue that’s making the news is to decide if the bank is making a charge that genuinely reflects how much it costs them (unlikely – surely only a small admin charge would be required), or if they’re making a charge to punish someone for going overdrawn. This distinction is important because the banks are not allowed to make punitive charges, only the government is legally able to do that.

I had one objection to this test case. If it goes ahead and banks aren’t able to make such charges anymore, then the banks will lose out and they’ll try to make their money elsewhere. This would mean the end for free banking as we know it, and banks might have to start charging us to keep our money, or alternatively raise interest rates on loans. This would be bad.

But then I looked at it another way. The people who are having to pay these bank charges at the moment are the people whose bank balances are closest to zero; in other words, the poorest. Now I can’t support a system which not only punishes people financially for being poor, but also depends on that money to finance the richer people in society who rarely have to pay charges for going overdrawn. It would be better that we all just paid a flat rate, or even better that banks charged more for accounts with more money in them.

The consequences of this test case could reach far and wide.

The religion of Einstein

I have often heard it said that even Einstein, one of the fathers of modern science, was himself religious in spite of his vast scientific knowledge. This is often used by religious campaigners as some sort of proof that science leads to religious belief. I think what someone says should be taken on its own merits rather than the merits of who says it, but nevertheless this point could do with putting down. Now you may know that I’ve recently been reading “The Portable Atheist” in what little spare time I have, and one particular section has me enthralled. It’s a selection of writings on religion by Albert Einstein, mostly in letters either to friends or in reply to people who ask his opinion. In any case I intend to try and address this question of whether Einstein was ‘religious’ or not.

At first glance, you could be excused for saying immediately that there’s no doubt Einstein was not religious. The first exctract is from a letter dated March 24th, 1954:

“I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.”

This seems clear, but the use of the word “personal” God, muddies the water a little. What many people claim is that he was a Pantheist, in that he saw Spinoza’s God in nature and the universe.

“I believe in Spinoza’s God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings”

Now the issue is muddied further because Einstein uses the word religious in odd ways. The word “spiritual” or “awe” would probably be better placed in the following:

“The religious feeling engendered by experiencing the logical comprehensibility of profound interrelations is of a somewhat different sort from the feeling that one usually calls religious.”

“To know that what is inpenetrable for us really exists and manifests itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, whose gross forms alone are intelligible to our poor faculties – this knowledge, this feeling… that is the core of the true religious sentiment. In this sense, and in this sense alone, I rank myself among profoundly religious men”

So why is the word religion used here? It’s daft. Dictionary.com defines the word religious as:

1.	a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, esp. when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies, usually involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs.

2.	a specific fundamental set of beliefs and practices generally agreed upon by a number of persons or sects: the Christian religion; the Buddhist religion.

3.	the body of persons adhering to a particular set of beliefs and practices: a world council of religions.

4.	the life or state of a monk, nun, etc.: to enter religion.

5.	the practice of religious beliefs; ritual observance of faith.

6.	something one believes in and follows devotedly; a point or matter of ethics or conscience: to make a religion of fighting prejudice.

Each of these definitions make certain to include the elements of both belief and practice. As far as I can tell, Einstein’s religion concerns no practice, no ritual observance, and only a belief which has more to do with the laws of nature (a scientific belief) than with any kind of God. Fortunately he clears the issue up a little in this next readng, from a letter in 1954 or 55:

“I have never imputed to Nature a purpose or a goal, or anything else that could be understood as anthropomorphic. What I see in Nature is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly, and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of humility. This is a genuinely religious feeling that has nothing to do with mysticism.”

Again he insists on using the word religious even though he says almost as clearly as you can that he ascribes no sort of consciousness to this thing he calls Nature. He is genuinely just an admirer of the universe and of science. We would not call that religious today. This is merely the kind of agnosticism that leans towards atheism, in that even if some kind of superior spirit exists, it doesn’t matter because it wouldn’t concern itself with the fates and actions of human beings. As Hitchens says in his introduction, “Einstein always insisted that the miraculous thing about the natural order was that there were no miracles, and that it operated according to astonishing regularities.”

In a way, Einsteins beliefs as I’m interpreting them from his writings are fairly similar to my own. I’ve often said whilst debating online that I have no problem with the idea that there was a First Cause that we may as well call God. But the odds of this God still existing, being a conscious ‘anthropomorphic’ entity, being able to control the universe as it wishes (indeed our experience tells us that the universe works according to strict principles than by the whims of a superiour being), having intended to create in the most roundabout way possible a race of beings out in the sticks of the universe, giving a damn about our planet or the living things on it (least of all specifically humans over all the others), and coincidentally being one of the same anthropomorphic Gods that human beings have created out of the mystery of the unknown world and universe are so astronomically small that you may as well live your life as though no God exists.

Crackergate

What in the holy hell is going on in the world? This is the Crackergate story which is doing the rounds at the moment. I won’t go into a load of detail as PZ Myers (the same PZ Myers who was ejected from a screening of ’Expelled – No Intelligence Allowed’, despite being in it and being invited) explains the whole thing here. Basically a student went to a Catholic Mass, and when he took the Eucharist (a piece of unleavened bread that, when the priest says some magic words, supposedly turns literally into the body of Jesus Christ, despite not actually changing at all), he didn’t eat it, but kept it in his mouth. When he went to leave, disgruntled Catholics attacked him trying to get it back, but failed. Now they’ve been sending him DEATH THREATS about it, calling it “a hate crime” (surely it’s not even a normal crime, never mind a hate crime) and “worse than hate speech”, and likening it to a hostage situation.

PZ Myers, hearing about this, commented on it on his blog (linked to above), asking people to send him some of the bread so he can abuse it, and now the Catholic League and its leader Bill Donohue have decided that he should be getting death threats too. All over a piece of bread. Ironically these are the same kinds of people who call Catholicism peaceful (witch trials, inquisition, crusades, anyone?), and the Catholic League specifically claims to stand up for people’s civil rights. How about the right to life, morons?

In any case now people are complaining to the President of PZ Myers’ university where he works, calling for his dismissal, so I’d like to urge anyone who cares to drop him a line in support of Myers. The President’s address is bruin001@umn.edu, and he asks that anyone who comments leaves a real name and is polite and courteous.

Women bishops

Once again the conservative foaming-at-the-mouth Bible bashers are showing their intolerance by opposing a move that would allow women to be ordained as CofE bishops. Fortunately the General Synod has voted in favour of the motion, although it’s likely that it’ll be watered down in a code of practice which will seek a compromise with the ‘traditionalists’ who oppose the move. They want to have male ’super-bishops’ so that the ‘traditionalist’ parishes can work under a male bishop instead of the female bishop who may be in their area. How is this any different from the sexism that exists in the church now? It just creates a 2-tier system, once again telling women that they’re not equal. Is it just me or could ‘traditionalist’ be switched with ‘bigoted’ in almost every usage of the word on this subject?

What is the big deal? These sexists have been pointing to the Bible in places like Mathew 5 where he names the disciples and saying that they’re all men, and so all the bishops should be men too. So what? They were probably all ethnically Middle-Eastern with dark hair, too, so should we only let middle-eastern dark-haired men be bishops? Of course not! And in 2 Timothy 2, the word ‘man’ is used to describe someone who could teach others about the grace of God. So what? The passage was written in a sexist time when slavery was condoned. Fortunately we’ve moved on from those times, but these ‘traditionalists’ wouldn’t mind going back. These people are hiding behind their Bibles, claiming that they can’t ‘in conscience’ go along with it, when in reality it’s nothing more than sexist bollocks. I’ve watched people with blatently sexist opinions being interviewed on TV, sometimes by female journalists, and not once does anyone come out and say “hold on a sec, you’re saying women aren’t good enough. You’re a sexist.” Where is the moral objection to having women bishops? Why would God be so outraged with women becoming members of the clergy? Why is it so important that people are threatening to leave the church over it? Put your dress and your funny hat back on, shut up and get back to lying to people for a living.

Once again, this is a classic example of people interpreting their religious texts in different ways and coming to very different conclusions about an important issue. For me, it’s high time we stopped tolerating intolerance hidden beneath the religious banner.