Dutch rethink Christianity for a doubtful world

By Robert Pigott BBC Religious affairs correspondent, Amsterdam

The Rev Klaas Hendrikse can offer his congregation little hope of life after death, and he's not the sort of man to sugar the pill.

The Exodus Church is part of the mainstream Protestant Church in the Netherlands

An imposing figure in black robes and white clerical collar, Mr Hendrikse presides over the Sunday service at the Exodus Church in Gorinchem, central Holland.

It is part of the mainstream Protestant Church in the Netherlands (PKN), and the service is conventional enough, with hymns, readings from the Bible, and the Lord's Prayer. But the message from Mr Hendrikse's sermon seems bleak - "Make the most of life on earth, because it will probably be the only one you get".

"Personally I have no talent for believing in life after death," Mr Hendrikse says. "No, for me our life, our task, is before death."

Nor does Klaas Hendrikse believe that God exists at all as a supernatural thing.

"God is not a being at all... it's a word for experience, or human experience”

"When it happens, it happens down to earth, between you and me, between people, that's where it can happen. God is not a being at all... it's a word for experience, or human experience."

Mr Hendrikse describes the Bible's account of Jesus's life as a mythological story about a man who may never have existed, even if it is a valuable source of wisdom about how to lead a good life.

His book Believing in a Non-Existent God led to calls from more traditionalist Christians for him to be removed. However, a special church meeting decided his views were too widely shared among church thinkers for him to be singled out.

A study by the Free University of Amsterdam found that one-in-six clergy in the PKN and six other smaller denominations was either agnostic or atheist.

Klaas Hendrikse: "You don't have to believe that Jesus was physically resurrected"

The Rev Kirsten Slattenaar, Exodus Church's regular priest, also rejects the idea - widely considered central to Christianity - that Jesus was divine as well as human.

"I think 'Son of God' is a kind of title," she says. "I don't think he was a god or a half god. I think he was a man, but he was a special man because he was very good in living from out of love, from out of the spirit of God he found inside himself."

Mrs Slattenaar acknowledges that she's changing what the Church has said, but, she insists, not the "real meaning of Christianity".

She says that there "is not only one answer" and complains that "a lot of traditional beliefs are outside people and have grown into rigid things that you can't touch any more".

Dienie van Wingaarden, who's been going to Exodus Church for 20 years, is among lay people attracted to such free thinking.

Some believe that traditional Christianity has too restrictive a notion of the nature of God

"I think it's very liberating. [Klaas Hendrikse] is using the Bible in a metaphorical way so I can bring it to my own way of thinking, my own way of doing."

Wim De Jong says, "Here you can believe what you want to think for yourself, what you really feel and believe is true."

Churches in Amsterdam were hoping to attract such people with a recent open evening.

At the Old Church "in the hottest part of the red light district", the attractions included "speed-dating".

As skimpily dressed girls began to appear in red-lit windows in the streets outside, visitors to the church moved from table to table to discuss love with a succession of strangers.

Professor Hijme Stoeffels of the Free University in Amsterdam says it is in such concepts as love that people base their diffuse ideas of religion.

"In our society it's called 'somethingism'," he says. "There must be 'something' between heaven and earth, but to call it 'God', and even 'a personal God', for the majority of Dutch is a bridge too far.

"Christian churches are in a market situation. They can offer their ideas to a majority of the population which is interested in spirituality or some kind of religion."

To compete in this market of ideas, some Christian groups seem ready virtually to reinvent Christianity.

They want the Netherlands to be a laboratory for Christianity, experimenting with radical new ways of understanding the faith.

"For me the service is very freeing"Stroom ("Stream") West is the experiment devised by one church to reach out to the young people.In an Amsterdam theatre young people contemplate the concept of eternity by spacing out a heap of rice grains individually across the floor.

"The difference from other churches is that we are… experimenting with the contents of the gospel," says Rikko Voorberg, who helps to run Stroom West. "Traditionally we bring a beautiful story and ask people to sit down listen and get convinced. This is the other way around."

Stroom focuses on people's personal search for God, not on the church's traditional black-and-white answers.

Rikko believes traditional Christianity places God in too restricted a box.

He believes that in a post-modern society that no longer has the same belief in certainty, there is an urgent need to "take God out of the box".

"The Church has to be alert to what is going on in society," he says. "It has to change to stay Christian. You can't preach heaven in the same way today as you did 2,000 years ago, and we have to think again what it is. We can use the same words and say something totally different."

Staphorst, in the Dutch Bible Belt, has a by-law against swearing

When I asked Rikko whether he believed Jesus was the son of God he looked uncomfortable.

"That's a very tough question. I'm not sure what it means," he says.

"People have very strict ideas about what it means. Some ideas I might agree with, some ideas I don't."

Such equivocation is anathema in Holland's Bible Belt, among the large number of people who live according to strict Christian orthodoxy.

In the quiet town of Staphorst about a quarter of the population attends the conservative Dutch Reformed Church every Sunday.

The town even has a by-law against swearing.

Its deputy mayor, Sytse de Jong, accuses progressive groups of trying to change Christianity to fit current social norms.

"When we get people into the Church by throwing Jesus Christ out of the Church, then we lose the core of Christianity. Then we are not reforming the institutions and attitudes but the core of our message."

But many churches are keen to work with anyone who believes in "something".

They believe that only through adaptation can their religion survive.

The young people at Stroom West write on plates the names of those things that prevent earth from being heaven - cancer, war, hunger - and destroy them symbolically.

The new Christianity is already developing its own ritual.

Why does God allow natural disasters?

[from www.bbc.co.uk Jan 19, 2010]

By David Bain
Lecturer in the philosophy department of the University of Glasgow.

At the heart of Haiti's humanitarian crisis is an age old question for many religious people - how can God allow such terrible things to happen? Philosopher David Bain examines the arguments.
Evil has always been a thorn in the side of those - of whatever faith - who believe in an all-knowing, all-powerful, all-good God.
As the philosopher David Hume (echoing Epicurus) put it in 1776: "Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is impotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Whence then is evil?"
Faced with this question, Archbishop of York John Sentamu said he had "nothing to say to make sense of this horror", while another clergyman, Canon Giles Fraser, preferred to respond "not with clever argument but with prayer".

I have nothing to say that makes sense of this horror - all I know is that the message of the death and resurrection of Jesus is that he is with us
Archbishop of York, John Sentamu
Perhaps their stance is understandable. The Old Testament is also not clear to the layman on such matters. When Job complains about the injuries God has allowed him to suffer, and claims "they are tricked that trusted", God says nothing to rebut the charges.
Less reticent is the American evangelist Pat Robertson. He has suggested Haiti has been cursed ever since the population swore a pact with the Devil to gain their freedom from the French at the beginning of the 19th Century. Robertson's claim will strike many as ludicrous, if not offensive.
And even were it true, it wouldn't obviously meet the challenge.
Why would a loving deity allow such a pact to seem necessary? Why wouldn't he have freed the Haitians from slavery himself, or prevented them from being enslaved in the first place? And why, in particular, would he punish today's Haitians for something their forbears putatively did more than two centuries before?
So what should believers say? To make progress, we might distinguish two kinds of evil:
the awful things people do, such as murder, and
the awful things that just happen, such as earthquakes

Would those hailed as brave still exist in a Magical World?
St Augustine, author CS Lewis and others have argued God allows our bad actions since preventing them would undermine our free will, the value of which outweighs its ill effects.
But there's a counter-argument. Thoroughly good people aren't robots, so why couldn't God have created only people like them, people who quite freely live good lives?
However that debate turns out, it's quite unclear how free will is supposed to explain the other kind of evil - the death and suffering of the victims of natural disasters.
Perhaps it would if all the victims - even the newborn - were so bad that they deserved their agonising deaths, but it's impossible to believe that is the case.
Or perhaps free will would be relevant if human negligence always played a role. There will be some who say the scale of the tragedy in natural disasters is partly attributable to humans. The world has the choice to help its poorer parts build earthquake-resistant structures and tsunami warning systems.

A still smoking Krakatoa in 1883, which caused a devastating tsunami
But the technology has not always existed. Was prehistoric man, with his sticks and stones, somehow negligent in failing to build early warning systems for the tsunamis that were as deadly back then as they are today?
The second century saint, Irenaeus, and the 20th Century philosopher, John Hick, appeal instead to what is sometimes called soul-making. God created a universe in which disasters occur, they think, because goodness only develops in response to people's suffering.
To appreciate this idea, try to imagine a world containing people, but literally no suffering. Call it the Magical World. In that world, there are no earthquakes or tsunamis, or none that cause suffering. If people are hit by falling masonry, it somehow bounces off harmlessly. If I steal your money, God replaces it. If I try to hurt you, I fail.
So why didn't God create the Magical World instead of ours? Because, the soul-making view says, its denizens wouldn't be - couldn't be - truly good people.
It's not that they would all be bad. It's that they couldn't be properly good. For goodness develops only where it's needed, the idea goes, and it's not needed in the Magical World.
In that world, after all, there is no danger that requires people to be brave, so there would be no bravery. That world contains no one who needs comfort or kindness or sympathy, so none would be given. It's a world without moral goodness, which is why God created ours instead.
But there is wiggle room.
Even in a world where nothing bad happens, couldn't there be brave people - albeit without the opportunity to show it? So moral goodness could exist even if it were never actually needed.
And, anyway, suppose we agree moral goodness could indeed develop only in a world of suffering.
Doesn't our world contain a surplus of suffering? People do truly awful things to each other. Isn't the suffering they create enough for soul-making? Did God really need to throw in earthquakes and tsunamis as well?
Suffering's distribution, not just its amount, can also cause problems. A central point of philosopher Immanuel Kant's was that we mustn't exploit people - we mustn't use them as mere means to our ends. But it can seem that on the soul-making view God does precisely this. He inflicts horrible deaths on innocent earthquake victims so that the rest of us can be morally benefitted.
That hardly seems fair.
It's OK, some will insist, because God works in mysterious ways. But mightn't someone defend a belief in fairies by telling us they do too? Others say their talk of God is supposed to acknowledge not the existence of some all-powerful and all-good agent, who created and intervenes in the universe, but rather something more difficult to articulate - a thread of meaning or value running through the world, or perhaps something ineffable.
But, as for those who believe in an all-good, all-powerful agent-God, we've seen that they face a question that remains pressing after all these centuries, and which is now horribly underscored by the horrors in Haiti. If a deity exists, why didn't he prevent this?

David Bain is a lecturer in the philosophy department of the University of Glasgow.

Responses:

As an Anglican, I always had presumed that God is too big, if you like, too omnipotent to even vaguely notice humanity, after all we are dust: "from dust you are made and to dust you shall return". Though the thought of that kind of horror being suffered by many innocents - and an apparent loving God is contradicting. However at least I find comfort, and probably most Christians, in the world to come where everything would be good, If you like God repaying his debts for letting us suffer.

Dan, Hampshire

The reason why good does not reduce suffering and evil in the world is simply because he does not exist! Or if he does he does not care about humans at least on a individual basis, I am not sure he cares about them on a species basis. Why does he not look after all the animal species that are facing extinction? Evolution explains must of human behaviour and geology and physics explains most natural disasters. If God intervened, there would be evidence. He would have to thwart the laws of physics or/warn people.

John O'Toole, Sligo Ireland

God made man as his greatest creation. In order for humans to be all they can be we must live in a world like this one. Moral courage can't just be a potentiality, it must be an actuality in all it's complexity for it to mean anything. Also, in order for the world to be able to create and sustain the complexity of life that it has, the crust of the earth must move, must regenerate itself. Thus, earthquakes, tsunamis. All religious people can do in the face of a catastrophe is to do what we can to alleviate the suffering and possibly create a world where these sorts of things have much less impact. Isn't the real tragedy of Haiti the poverty that has blighted the island, that lead to substandard buildings and poor infrastructure? This is as much a man-made disaster as divine.

Matthew Thomas, Cattleford

This is a transient life, the real life will come later. We as humans have got a warped sense about what this life means to us, we ignore the reality of the next world. So if your time is up and you die hopefully you were on the path of doing good. There is a story of Khizer & Moses, when the former kills a child and Moses is aghast. Khizer tells him that the child would have grown up and killed his parents for greed. So if Khizer knows that how can we question God when children pass away. As the article also points out, it's a test for the rest of us to see how we respond to the suffering of others. Maybe we can learn to look after the old folks in the neighbourhood when we are moved to help people as far away as Haiti?

Kaz, Ellicott City, USA

Debating the intentions of a mythological character which allegedly has an interest in allowing 'bad' things to happen on planet earth? Are we living in the 21st century or the 12th century ? Natural disasters, disease, accidents and co-incidences are all things that occur naturally and not as the result of the will of any fantastical all powerful Monster. Maybe a comet will hit the earth one day and maybe all that will be left will be a copy of Dr. Dolittle. Just because somebody wrote it down does not make it true.

Andrew Connor, Uxbridge

Perhaps you should include non god-based religions to get out of this dilemma. Try Buddhism for example.

Isabelle Clinton, Forest Row, United Kingdom

God has put us in a 'crucible' and he is very interested in how we cope by us invoking the law of love. No one is immune from tragedy, not least his own son Jesus. So, its more about loving our neighbours rather than puzzling why. We live in a dangerous world let no one doubt it. Some disasters are natural but many others are of our own making but throughout we must live the law of love.

Alan Smith, Preston, Lancashire

The Japanese (90% Buddhist) have a saying that pain is our best friend. Because for the most part we learn and grow the most from painful experiences. If we are not born new, but simply coming around for another shot at growth (reincarnation), then the notion of a child being pure is put aside. If pain is our friend, then the notion of pain as cruel is put aside. If death is not the end, then the notion of unfair or untimely death being the worst thing imaginable is put aside.

John Roberts, Tulsa, Oklahoma USA

A thoughtful article on an enduring problem. God is perfectly good and perfectly powerful. Haiti was fully within his control. Why did it happen? Because men's deeds are evil. The Haitians'? Not particularly - see Jesus on the Tower of Siloam - "repent, or you too will perish". Because there are murderers and rapists in the world? Not just them - there is no one good, not even one, all have turned away and fallen short of the glory of God.

Jon Hall, Jacksonville, Florida, USA

This is a very interesting article. It is a classic philosophy question that can never be convincingly answered. This article lists some interesting points. In one part, there is the argument that why can't god just create good people with free will? If god just created good people with free will, it logically follows that all their actions will always be good since they are good people. Doesn't this defeat the whole purpose of free will where you can choose your actions as opposed to being restricted only to good actions? It almost feels like an oxymoron to say that we should only have good people with free will. Secondly, in vedic philosophy there is a belief in the continuum of the soul. Many scientific studies and real world experiences show that this could be true. To believe or not is a question for another day. However, if we allow for this continuum then we can easily explain natural disasters (where even innocent babies die) by attributing the punishment to their past lives' actions, also known as Sanchita Karma in Sanskrit. The other answer to the question posed could just be that god's ways are so intricate and complex that to comprehend the greater good out of seemingly painful punishments are just beyond human comprehension. This is one of those questions that we could argue about all day and yet arrive at no answer.

KRL, Old Bridge, New Jersey

Having lost a sister to a brain tumour aged 49, and a close friend to cancer at the age of 30, and being a C of E priest, you might imagine this kind of matter has been a part of my own, and many others' formation. Archbishop Sentamu is right on one level; for the sake of those caught up in this tragedy we need to pray and act now, and think later. But for many of us there has already been much thought. John Polkinghorne and others successfully argue that free will is not just about humanity, it is also about the freedom of the universe to be what it is. It has to 'work' to make sense. In order for life to exist on this planet there simply has to be tectonic activity. Without the 'recycling' processes involved there would be insufficient carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and earth would become a lifeless snowball. It has to be a dynamic system and given the freedom to be what it is. Likewise, without mutation there could be no progressive evolution. Most mutations are dead-ends, some are useful and retained if they provide breeding advantage, and some are deadly. But you cannot have one without another, at least not if you want life. Could God have done it differently? Probably. But then if his hand was that obvious, would we have the freedom to choose whether to seek him out? Probably not. But back to Archbishop Sentamu's sentiments; the importance of what needs to be done now far outweighs the philosophy of why it happened.

Paul, Birmingham

Race ?

While humanity continues to judge individuals based on arbitrary physical characteristics such as skin, hair or eye color and pretend that combinations of such characteristics constitute different "races" there will be an impediment to social progress. It has long been demonstrated by scientific research that all modern humans in fact belong to the same race and that these physical differences result from minor genetic variations. We are all decended from a population of only a few thousand who lived in Africa around 100,000 years ago at a time when modern humans were in danger of extinction.
To refer then to other individuals as a different race is clearly not correct.
The widely held perception that humans belong to different races is the root of many predjudices that should not exist and have no logical basis. These predjudices are based on primitive "in group out group" insticts and behavior which has also been observed in apes.
Differences in language and culture create the real barriers and we should all work to overcome our predjudices through education and develop tolerance and mutual respect.

Earth's population "exceeds limits"

[by Steven Duke from www.bbc.co.uk/news April 1, 2009]

There are already too many people living on Planet Earth, according to one of most influential science advisors in the US government.
Nina Fedoroff told the BBC One Planet programme that humans had exceeded the Earth's "limits of sustainability".
Dr Fedoroff has been the science and technology advisor to the US secretary of state since 2007, initially working with Condoleezza Rice.
Under the new Obama administration, she now advises Hillary Clinton.
"We need to continue to decrease the growth rate of the global population; the planet can't support many more people," Dr Fedoroff said, stressing the need for humans to become much better at managing "wild lands", and in particular water supplies.
Pressed on whether she thought the world population was simply too high, Dr Fedoroff replied: "There are probably already too many people on the planet."
GM Foods 'needed'
A National Medal of Science laureate (America's highest science award), the professor of molecular biology believes part of that better land management must include the use of genetically modified foods.
"We have six-and-a-half-billion people on the planet, going rapidly towards seven.
"We're going to need a lot of inventiveness about how we use water and grow crops," she told the BBC.

THE MOST POPULOUS NATIONS
China - 1.33bn
India - 1.16bn
USA - 306m
Indonesia - 230m
Brazil - 191m

"We accept exactly the same technology (as GM food) in medicine, and yet in producing food we want to go back to the 19th Century."
Dr Fedoroff, who wrote a book about GM Foods in 2004, believes critics of genetically modified maize, corn and rice are living in bygone times.
"We wouldn't think of going to our doctor and saying 'Treat me the way doctors treated people in the 19th Century', and yet that's what we're demanding in food production."
In a wide ranging interview, Dr Fedoroff was asked if the US accepted its responsibility to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, the gas thought to be driving human-induced climate change. "Yes, and going forward, we just have to be more realistic about our contribution and decrease it - and I think you'll see that happening."
And asked if America would sign up to legally binding targets on carbon emissions - something the world's biggest economy has been reluctant to do in the past - the professor was equally clear. "I think we'll have to do that eventually - and the sooner the better."
The full interview with Dr Nina Federoff can be heard on this week's edition of the new One Planet programme on the BBC World Service

Richard Dawkins on Charles Darwin

[from www.bbc.co.uk/news 14 February, 2009]

Oxford University's former Professor for the Public Understanding of Science, Richard Dawkins, is one of the world's staunchest defenders of the theory of evolution. He is the author of The Selfish Gene and a well known atheist tract, The God Delusion. So how does he assess Darwin's ideas on the 200th anniversary of his birth?
The BBC World Service's Owen Bennett Jones spoke to Professor Dawkins.
RD: "Charles Darwin really solved the problem of existence, the problem of the existence of all living things - humans, animals, plants, fungi, bacteria. Everything we know about life, Darwin essentially explained."
OBJ: "Did he make any mistakes in your view?"
RD: "Yes he made some mistakes. He lived in the middle of the 19th Century, and, obviously, we know a lot more now than he knew. In particular, he got genetics all wrong. Nobody in the 19th Century knew much about genetics, and so naturally Darwin got that wrong. But given that, it's remarkable how much he got right."
OBJ: "But people say modern discoveries in genetics, actually confirm what Darwin was saying...?"
RD: "Very much so, yes, and it's amazing how far ahead of his time he was."
OBJ: "Right, so can you explain that to us? Basically, modern genetics confirms the principle, but he got the detail wrong, is that it?"
RD: "Yes, you need genetics in order to make Darwinian natural selection work. It depends upon genetics. Darwin didn't realise how much it depended upon what you could call "digital genetics" - the idea that a particular gene, you either have it or you don't.
"In Darwin's time people thought it was a bit like mixing substances - you've got some male substances and some female substances and you mix them together, and you got child substance. It's not like that at all.
"It's digital. You either get a gene or you don't. Nowadays with DNA of course we know that it's really like computer code, it's like reels and reels of computer tape. And little did Darwin know, he actually needed that for his theory to work.
"But nevertheless he got it astonishingly right. So you could almost say he nearly forecast digital genetics - although he didn't."
OBJ: "Do you believe his belief is compatible with a belief in God?"
RD: "Many people do, because there are plenty of clergymen, bishops, theologians and things who of course go along with evolution. They have no choice; the evidence is overwhelming. I personally think it's rather difficult, but that's my personal opinion and you'll find plenty of clergymen to disagree."
OBJ: "Because Darwin is now a very controversial figure, particularly in the United States?"
RD: "He's controversial amongst people who don't know anything, but if you talk to people who are actually educated, he's not really controversial. There's no controversy about the fact we are cousins of monkeys, cousins of cows, cousins of aardvarks. That's completely non-controversial among anyone who knows anything about science."
OBJ: "Did Darwin lose his faith?"
RD: "Yes, Darwin lost his faith gradually. As a young man he was destined for the church. He was training to be an Anglican clergyman at Cambridge [University], and then gradually throughout his life he lost his faith, partly because of personal tragedy - losing children and things like that, and partly because his science led him to see the superfluousness of a creator. He never described himself as an atheist; he ended up describing himself as an agnostic - the term which was coined by his friend T H Huxley.

What do you get if you divide science by God?

[www.bbc.co.uk/news March 24, 2009]

A prize-winning quantum physicist says a spiritual reality is veiled from us, and science offers a glimpse behind that veil. So how do scientists investigating the fundamental nature of the universe assess any role of God, asks Mark Vernon.
The Templeton Prize, awarded for contributions to "affirming life's spiritual dimension", has been won by French physicist Bernard d'Espagnat, who has worked on quantum physics with some of the most famous names in modern science.
Quantum physics is a hugely successful theory: the predictions it makes about the behaviour of subatomic particles are extraordinarily accurate. And yet, it raises profound puzzles about reality that remain as yet to be understood.
WHAT IS QUANTUM PHYSICS?
Originated in work conducted by Max Planck and Albert Einstein at start of 20th Century
They discovered that light comes in discrete packets, or quanta, which we call photons
The Heisenberg Uncertainty principle says certain features of subatomic particles like momentum and position cannot be known precisely at the same time
Gaps remain, like attempts to find the 'God Particle' that scientists hope to spot in the Large Hadron Collider. It is required to give other particles mass
The bizarre nature of quantum physics has attracted some speculations that are wacky but the theory suggests to some serious scientists that reality, at its most basic, is perfectly compatible with what might be called a spiritual view of things.
Some suggest that observers play a key part in determining the nature of things. Legendary physicist John Wheeler said the cosmos "has not really happened, it is not a phenomenon, until it has been observed to happen."
D'Espagnat worked with Wheeler, though he himself reckons quantum theory suggests something different. For him, quantum physics shows us that reality is ultimately "veiled" from us.
The equations and predictions of the science, super-accurate though they are, offer us only a glimpse behind that veil. Moreover, that hidden reality is, in some sense, divine. Along with some philosophers, he has called it "Being".
In an effort to seek the answers to the "meaning of physics", I spoke to five leading scientists.

1. THE ATHEIST
Nobel-prize winning physicist Steven Weinberg is well-known as an atheist. For him, physics reflects the "chilling impersonality" of the universe.
He would be thinking here of, say, the vast tracts of empty space, billions of light years across, that mock human meaning.
He says: "The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it seems pointless."
So for Weinberg, the notion that there might be an overlap between science and spirituality is entirely mistaken.

2. THE SCEPTIC
The Astronomer Royal and President of the Royal Society, Martin Rees, shows a distinct reserve when speculating about what physics might mean, whether that be pointlessness or meaningfulness.
He has "no strong opinions" on the interpretation of quantum theory: only time will tell whether the theory becomes better understood.
"The implications of cosmology for these realms of thought may be profound, but diffidence prevents me from venturing into them," he has written.
In short, it is good to be humble in the face of the mysteries that physics throws up.

3. THE PLATONIST
Cambridge physicist Roger Penrose differs again. He believes that mathematics suggests there is a world beyond the immediate, material one.

Can science explain all of life's meaning?
Ask yourself this question: would one plus one equal two even if I didn't think it? The answer is yes.
Would it equal two even if no-one thought it? Again, presumably, yes.
Would it equal two even if the universe didn't exist? That is more tricky to contemplate, but again, there are good grounds for a positive response.
Penrose, therefore, argues that there is what can be called a Platonic world beyond the material world that "contains" mathematics and other abstractions.

4. THE BELIEVER
John Polkinghorne worked on quantum physics in the first part of his career, but then took up a different line of work: he was ordained an Anglican priest. For him, science and religion are entirely compatible.
The ordered universe science reveals is only what you'd expect if it was made by an orderly God. However, the two disciplines are different. He calls them "intellectual cousins".
"Physics is showing the world to be both more supple and subtle, but you need to be careful," he says.
If you want to understand the meaning of things you have to go beyond science, and the religious direction is, he argues, the best.

5. THE PANTHEIST
Brian Swimme is a cosmologist, and with the theologian Thomas Berry, wrote a book called The Universe Story: From the Primordial Flaring Forth to the Ecozoic Era.
It is avidly read by individuals in New Age and ecological circles, and tells the scientific story of the universe, from the Big Bang to the emergence of human consciousness, but does so as a new sacred myth.
Swimme believes that "the universe is attempting to be felt", which makes him a pantheist, someone who believes the cosmos in its entirety can be called God.
Mark Vernon is author of After Atheism: Science, Religion and the Meaning of Life
Which physicist do you most agree with? Add your comments on this story, using the form below.

As a Hindu I can agree with them all. There is a (centuries old) western short-sightedness approach to science that is generally backed up Abrahamic beliefs. Science is being polarised or is seen in that manner ie if A is right B must be wrong, rather like the concept of heaven and hell. In Hinduism and other 'Dharmic' beliefs it has always been said that we live in the age of "maya" or illusion or even 'veil' and that what we see is made from 'cosmic vibrations'. Nothing that we see is how it is, it is our eyes that can only take in limited information which our brain processes to fill in the gaps. Is a rock just a rock or is it billions of particles resonating at a certain frequency to make the 'image' of the rock 'seen' by our eyes. The answer is both! Seeing may be believing, but it depends on whether you see with your eyes or an electron microscope. Dipen, Stanmore

I am a physicist and evangelical Christian, so I think Penrose and Polkinghorne are closest to the truth. I'm pleased to hear that people are beginning to look again at the foundations of quantum theory. In recent decades physics has been dominated by what I call 'quantum mechanics' (like 'garage mechanics') - people who can do the sums but don't think about what they mean. The deeper questions in physics are bound to interact with the religious/philosophical assumptions of the physicist. Dave, St. Neots

I agree with Weinberg. The maths might show up the complexities in nature and point to some profound conclusions, but the whole idea of something supernatural pulling the levers of the universe just escapes me. Dan Wildsmith, Barnsley

When my ego is flaring I'm with the atheist simply because all thoughts, perceptions and concepts come from that wonderful delusional and often ignorant creature we call the mind. When the self is in check I'm with the sceptic...for the same reason! Only mankind's arrogance, brought about by that delusional self, has to believe they exist for some "special" purpose. Billy, garnerville, newyork, usa

Obviously the great Martin Rees, but for more detail and a lot of work on the scientific view [eg, ch.6 in "Exploring Reality"], I go with Polkinghorne. My own view is '99% Dawkins' - but what a difference 1% Christ makes. Your equation should be something about exobiology, or evolution of altruism: the Price equation, or just rB > C. Biology describes the world; physics is a special case. Valerie Jeffries, Faversham, England

As a Christian I would agree with John Polkinghorne. Science just reveals how awesome the world is, a world which God created and designed. It is ironic that many scientists try and disprove God but in many instances only demonstrate just how complex and wonderful the world is. There had to be an author of creation. We are not here by chance. Nathan Goodearl, Guildford,UK

I most agree with Martin Rees. He seems to accept that we are not currently in a position to understand the universe in it's entirety. I would be interested to hear his views on the so-called 'God Particle' (Higgs Boson). I fundamentally disagree with the view that science and religion are compatible and fail to see why some people who choose to exercise faith in a religious belief choose to do so via science. Religion can exist without science, and science without religion. Rachael Amato, Bristol

I agree with the Atheist. For as long as anyone can remember the things we don't understand have been given the explanation 'God', or 'Gods' and throughout history science, little by little, provides non-God explanations for things (suns, stars, comets, animals, plants etc.). This pattern looks set to repeat itself ad infinitum. In time we will be looking at our current religious theories and thinking how primitive and quite frankly wrong they look in the context of modern knowledge. But belief seems to be a need for many humans and I have no doubt their beliefs and Gods will move on in to the future gaps in our understanding. Julian Harrison, Shrewsbury

4. THE BELIEVER is correct InshAllah. Many scientific facts have been found to be consistent with The Quran. Science is the rational study of creation, and its facts are consistent with revelation. Saqib Pervaiz, Wolverhampton

The Atheist makes the most sense. The Universe is full of mystery that Mathematics and Physics will, in time, unravel. However, I don't understand why Steven Weinberg needs to believe that the Universe should have a personality and why he deems it as pointless. Everything in life is pointless from that point of view, experiences - my enjoyment of living is my spirituality, for me there is no God and why does that matter? David Hunt, Cambridge, UK

France chastises Pope on condoms

The French foreign ministry has voiced "sharp concern" following the Pope's rejection of condom use to fight Aids.
Benedict XVI, who is on a tour of Africa, said handing out condoms only increased the problem of HIV/Aids.
The Roman Catholic Church says marital fidelity and sexual abstinence are the best way to prevent the spread of HIV.
But France, echoing the reaction of some aid agencies, said it "voices extremely sharp concern over the consequences of [the Pope's comments]".
"While it is not up to us to pass judgment on Church doctrine, we consider that such comments are a threat to public health policies and the duty to protect human life," foreign ministry spokesman Eric Chevallier said.
The Pope arrived in Cameroon on Tuesday at the start of his week-long African tour.
He urged Christians everywhere to speak out against corruption and abuses of power.
"A Christian can never remain silent," he said, after being greeted by President Paul Biya, Cameroon's ruler for the past 26 years.
But he sparked controversy by telling reporters that HIV/Aids was "a tragedy that cannot be overcome by money alone, that cannot be overcome through the distribution of condoms, which can even increase the problem".
The solution lay, he said, in a "spiritual and human awakening" and "friendship for those who suffer".
Some activists were dismayed by the approach, saying condoms were one of the few methods proved to stop the spread of HIV.
Rebecca Hodes, of the Treatment Action Campaign in South Africa said: "His opposition to condoms conveys that religious dogma is more important to him than the lives of Africans."
Some 22 million people are infected with HIV in sub-Saharan Africa, according to UN figures for 2007. This amounts to about two-thirds of the global total.
The Pope said Catholicism faced a threat from superstition. On Wednesday, the Pope attended a gathering of more than 30 Cameroonian bishops in the capital, Yaounde.
He told the bishops they had to preserve traditional African families and protect the country's poor.
"In the context of globalisation with which we are all familiar, the church takes a particular interest in those who are most deprived," he said.
He said it was the duty of Christians to help to build "a more just world where everyone can live with dignity", the Associated Press reported.
The Pope also warned of a threat to the Catholic Church in Cameroon from evangelical movements and from the "growing influence of superstitious forms of religion".
Earlier on Wednesday, he held a private meeting with Mr Biya at the presidential palace.
The BBC's Caroline Duffield in Yaounde says Mr Biya's consistent electoral victories have been widely condemned as fraudulent.
Having spoken out publically against corruption, many Cameroonians will be hoping that the Pope delivered his message in private as well, says our correspondent.

Sex claims against US Church rise

[from www.bbc.co.uk/news 14 March 2009]

The number of new claims of sexual abuse made against US Roman Catholic priests rose by 16% to more than 800 last year, a Church report says.
It says the Church paid $436m (£313m) in 2008 for abuse cases. Most of the money was used to compensate victims.
The study covered almost 200 dioceses and religious orders across the US.
It found that more than one in five victims were under the age of 10 when they were abused.
Although the number of claims made against the Church rose in 2008, the total cost dropped by 29% compared to the previous year.
The Associated Press news agency said 2007 was an unusually high year, when the Archdiocese of Los Angeles began paying a $660m settlement to about 500 people.
The annual review tracks progress made in implementing the Charter for the Protection of Children, adopted by US bishops following a scandal in Boston in 2002.
Cardinal Francis George of Chicago said the Church was "on the right path" in its quest to better protect "all children in society".

Atheist bus campaign spreads the word of no God nationwide

Donations totalling more than £140,000 to fund adverts on 600 buses across UK as well as in London tube stations
Riazat Butt, religious affairs correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 6 January 2009 17.20 GMT

Anyone who has spent a chilly half-hour waiting for a double-decker may already have doubted the existence of a deity. But for those who need further proof, a nationwide advertising campaign aimed at persuading more people to "come out" as atheists was launched today with the backing of some of Britain's most famous non-believers.
The principal slogan – "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life" – can already be seen on four London bus routes, and now 200 bendy buses in London and 600 across the country are to carry the advert after a fundraising drive raised more than £140,000, exceeding the original target of £5,500.
The money will also pay for 1,000 advertisements on London Underground from next Monday and on a pair of giant LCD screens opposite Bond Street tube station, in Oxford Street. Organisers unveiled a set of quotes from public figures – including Albert Einstein, Douglas Adams and Katharine Hepburn – who have endorsed atheism, or at least expressed scepticism about a Creator. The words "That it will never come again is what makes life so sweet" are quoted from the poet Emily Dickinson.
At the launch in a heated marquee next to the Albert Memorial, the television comedy writer Ariane Sherine, creator of the campaign, said: "You wait ages for an atheist bus and then 800 come along at once. I hope they'll brighten people's days and make them smile on their way to work."
She suggested the campaign in a Guardian Comment is free blogpost last June, saying it would be a reassuring alternative to religious slogans threatening non-Christians with hell and damnation. At today's launch she said the sheer number of donations, which were still coming in, demonstrated the strength of feeling. "This is a great day for freedom of speech in Britain. I am very glad that we live in a country where people have the freedom to believe in whatever they want."
Joining Sherine were Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion, Hanne Stinson, from the British Humanist Association (BHA), the philosopher AC Grayling and Graham Linehan, who wrote Father Ted, Black Books and The IT Crowd. There were messages of support from the actor Stephen Fry and the writer Charlie Brooker.
According to the BHA, "huge numbers" of people in Britain have non-religious beliefs – between 30 and 40% of the population, with a higher figure, between 60 and 65%, in young people.
Hanne Stinson said: "We all, whether we have religious or non-religious beliefs, have a right to be heard, and no one particular set of beliefs has any more right to influence the public debate than any other. The message isn't aimed at people with religious beliefs – it's aimed at atheists and agnostics."
Most commentators recognised the slogan as a simple statement of non-religious belief and appreciated that it was designed to reassure people there was no reason to worry about being non-religious, she said. "People can lead a happy, enjoyable and rewarding life without religion."
Prior to the launch, Sherine was concerned that the posters would be banned from buses operated by Stagecoach, the second largest public transport company in the UK. Its co-founder Brian Souter is a member of the Church of Nazarene, an international evangelical Christian denomination.
A Stagecoach spokesman said all adverts on its buses were vetted before being published. "This particular advert is being carried on a number of bus operators' vehicles across the UK. We took advice from the Advertising Standards Authority in advance of publication and we have been advised the advert complies with the relevant guidelines and legislation."
The theology thinktank Theos welcomed the campaign, saying it was a "great way" to get people thinking about God. "The posters will encourage people to consider the most important question we will ever face in our lives. The slogan itself is a great discussion starter. Telling someone 'there's probably no God' is a bit like telling them they've probably remembered to lock their door. It creates the doubt that they might not have."
A statement from the Methodist Church thanked Dawkins for encouraging a "continued interest in God".
The success of the British initiative has inspired atheists around the world. The American Humanist Association launched a bus advertising campaign last November with the slogan, "Why believe in a god? Just be good for goodness' sake", appearing on the sides, rear and insides of Washington DC's 230 buses.
The subsequent news coverage generated mostly negative phone calls and emails, with the largest number going directly to the organisers. Hundreds of complaints were sent to Metro, the government body responsible for the city's buses and subways. The poster provoked two counter-campaigns by devout Christians.
From Monday, buses in Barcelona bearing a Spanish translation of the British slogan will hit the streets, to the consternation of the city's Catholic hierarchy, while Italy's Union of Atheist, Agnostics and Rationalists plans to roll out atheist buses.
Atheists in Australia have fared badly with their campaign. Attempts to place slogans such as "Atheism – sleep in on Sunday mornings" on buses were rejected by Australia's biggest outdoor advertising company, APN Outdoor.

Legal case against God dismissed

[from www.bbc.co.uk/news]

A US judge has thrown out a case against God, ruling that because the defendant has no address, legal papers cannot be served.
The suit was launched by Nebraska state senator Ernie Chambers, who said he might appeal against the ruling.
He sought a permanent injunction to prevent the "death, destruction and terrorisation" caused by God.
Judge Marlon Polk said in his ruling that a plaintiff must have access to the defendant for a case to proceed.
"Given that this court finds that there can never be service effectuated on the named defendant this action will be dismissed with prejudice," Judge Polk wrote in his ruling.
Mr Chambers cannot refile the suit but may appeal.
'God knows everything'
Mr Chambers sued God last year. He said God had threatened him and the people of Nebraska and had inflicted "widespread death, destruction and terrorisation of millions upon millions of the Earth's inhabitants".
He said he would carefully consider Judge Polk's ruling before deciding whether to appeal.
The court, Mr Chambers said, had acknowledged the existence of God and "a consequence of that acknowledgement is a recognition of God's omniscience".
"Since God knows everything," he reasoned, "God has notice of this lawsuit."
Mr Chambers, a state senator for 38 years, said he filed the suit to make the point that "anyone can sue anyone else, even God".

The Fine Art of Baloney Detection

CARL SAGAN'S BALONEY DETECTION KIT
Based on the book The Demon Haunted World by Carl Sagan
The following are suggested as tools for testing arguments and detecting fallacious or fraudulent arguments:

Wherever possible there must be independent confirmation of the facts
Encourage substantive debate on the evidence by knowledgeable proponents of all points of view.
Arguments from authority carry little weight (in science there are no "authorities").
Spin more than one hypothesis - don't simply run with the first idea that caught your fancy.
Try not to get overly attached to a hypothesis just because it's yours.
Quantify, wherever possible.
If there is a chain of argument every link in the chain must work.
"Occam's razor" - if there are two hypothesis that explain the data equally well choose the simpler.
Ask whether the hypothesis can, at least in principle, be falsified (shown to be false by some unambiguous test). In other words, it is testable? Can others duplicate the experiment and get the same result? Additional issues are
Conduct control experiments - especially "double blind" experiments where the person taking measurements is not aware of the test and control subjects.
Check for confounding factors - separate the variables. Common fallacies of logic and rhetoric
Ad hominem - attacking the arguer and not the argument.
Argument from "authority".
Argument from adverse consequences (putting pressure on the decision maker by pointing out dire consequences of an "unfavourable" decision).
Appeal to ignorance (absence of evidence is not evidence of absence).
Special pleading (typically referring to god's will).
Begging the question (assuming an answer in the way the question is phrased).
Observational selection (counting the hits and forgetting the misses).
Statistics of small numbers (such as drawing conclusions from inadequate sample sizes).
Misunderstanding the nature of statistics (President Eisenhower expressing astonishment and alarm on discovering that fully half of all Americans have below average intelligence!)
Inconsistency (e.g. military expenditures based on worst case scenarios but scientific projections on environmental dangers thriftily ignored because they are not "proved").
Non sequitur - "it does not follow" - the logic falls down.
Post hoc, ergo propter hoc - "it happened after so it was caused by" - confusion of cause and effect.
Meaningless question ("what happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object?).
Excluded middle - considering only the two extremes in a range of possibilities (making the "other side" look worse than it really is).
Short-term v. long-term - a subset of excluded middle ("why pursue fundamental science when we have so huge a budget deficit?").
Slippery slope - a subset of excluded middle - unwarranted extrapolation of the effects (give an inch and they will take a mile).
Confusion of correlation and causation.
Straw man - caricaturing (or stereotyping) a position to make it easier to attack..
Suppressed evidence or half-truths.
Weasel words - for example, use of euphemisms for war such as "police action" to get around limitations on Presidential powers. "An important art of politicians is to find new names for institutions which under old names have become odious to the public"
Above all - read the book!

Do they really think the Earth is flat ?

[By Brendan O'Neill - www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine/]

In the 21st Century, the term "flat-earther" is used to describe someone who is spectacularly - and seemingly wilfully - ignorant. But there is a group of people who claim they believe the planet really is flat. Are they really out there or is it all an elaborate prank?
Nasa is celebrating its 50th birthday with much fanfare and pictures of past glories. But in half a century of extraordinary images of space, one stands out.

WORLD VIEW
330 BC Aristotle provides evidence of spherical earth
240 BC Eratosthenes of Cyrene accurately calculates circumference of globe
8th Century AD work by Bede shows acceptance of sphere idea

On 24 December 1968, the crew of the Apollo 8 mission took a photo now known as Earthrise. To many, this beautiful blue sphere viewed from the moon's orbit is a perfect visual summary of why it is right to strive to go into space.
Not to everybody though. There are people who say they think this image is fake - part of a worldwide conspiracy by space agencies, governments and scientists.
Welcome to the world of the flat-earther.
Our attitude towards those who once upon a time believed in the flatness of the earth is apparent in a new Microsoft advert.

Photos such as this one are deemed fakes by flat-earthers
Depicting an olden-days ship sailing on rough seas, presumably heading towards the "edge of the world", the advert is part of a $300m campaign aimed at rescuing the reputation of Windows Vista by comparing its critics to flat-earthers.
Satellite era
But are there any genuine flat-earthers left? Surely in our era of space exploration - where satellites take photos of our blue and clearly globular planet from space, and robots send back info about soil and water from Mars - no one can seriously still believe that the Earth is flat?
Wrong.
Flat earth theory is still around. On the internet and in small meeting rooms in Britain and the US, flat earth believers get together to challenge the "conspiracy" that the Earth is round.
"People are definitely prejudiced against flat-earthers," says John Davis, a flat earth theorist based in Tennessee, reacting to the new Microsoft commercial.
"Many use the term 'flat-earther' as a term of abuse, and with connotations that imply blind faith, ignorance or even anti-intellectualism."
Mr Davis, a 25-year-old computer scientist originally from Canada, first became interested in flat earth theory after "coming across some literature from the Flat Earth Society a few years ago".
"I came to realise how much we take at face value," he says. "We humans seem to be pleased with just accepting what we are told, no matter how much it goes against our senses."
Mr Davis now believes "the Earth is flat and horizontally infinite - it stretches horizontally forever".
"And it is at least 9,000 kilometres deep", he adds.
James McIntyre, a British-based moderator of a Flat Earth Society discussion website, has a slightly different take. "The Earth is, more or less, a disc," he states. "Obviously it isn't perfectly flat thanks to geological phenomena like hills and valleys. It is around 24,900 miles in diameter."
Mr McIntyre, who describes himself as having been "raised a globularist in the British state school system", says the reactions of his friends and family to his new beliefs vary from "sheer incredulity to the conviction that it's all just an elaborate joke".
So how many flat-earthers are around today? Neither Mr Davis nor Mr McIntyre can say.
Disappearing ships
Mr McIntyre estimates "there are thousands", but "without a platform for communication, a head-count is almost impossible", he says. Mr Davis says he is currently creating an "online information repository" to help to bring together local Flat Earth communities into a "global community".
"If you will forgive my use of the term 'global'", he says.
And for the casual observer, it is hard to accept that all of this is not some bizarre 21st Century jape. After all, most schoolchildren know that ships can disappear over the horizon, that satellites orbit the earth and that if you head along the equator you will eventually come back on yourself.
What about all the photos from space that show, beyond a shadow of doubt, that the Earth is round? "The space agencies of the world are involved in an international conspiracy to dupe the public for vast profit," says Mr McIntyre.
John Davis also says "these photos are fake".
And what about the fact that no one has ever fallen off the edge of our supposedly disc-shaped world?
Mr McIntyre laughs. "This is perhaps one of the most commonly asked questions," he says. "A cursory examination of a flat earth map fairly well explains the reason - the North Pole is central, and Antarctica comprises the entire circumference of the Earth. Circumnavigation is a case of travelling in a very broad circle across the surface of the Earth."
Ultimate conspiracy
Mr Davis says that being a flat-earther doesn't have an impact on how one lives every day. "As a rule of thumb, we don't have any fears of aircraft or other modes of transportation," he says.
Christine Garwood, author of Flat Earth: The History of an Infamous Idea, is not surprised that flat-earthers simply write off the evidence that our planet is globular.
"Flat earth theory is one of the ultimate conspiracy theories," she says.
"Naturally, flat earth believers think that the moon landings were faked, as were the photographs of earth from space."
When Columbus sailed, it was known the world was not flat
Perhaps one of the most surprising things in Garwood's book is her revelation that flat earth theory is a relatively modern phenomenon.
Ms Garwood says it is an "historic fallacy" that everyone from ancient times to the Dark Ages believed the earth to be flat, and were only disabused of this "mad idea" once Christopher Columbus successfully sailed to America without "falling off the edge of the world".
In fact, people have known since at least the 4th century BC that the earth is round, and the pseudo-scientific conviction that we actually live on a disc didn't emerge until Victorian times.
Theories about the earth being flat really came to the fore in 19th Century England. With the rise and rise of scientific rationalism, which seemed to undermine Biblical authority, some Christian thinkers decided to launch an attack on established science.
Samuel Birley Rowbotham (1816-1884) assumed the pseudonym of "Parallax" and founded a new school of "Zetetic astronomy". He toured England arguing that the Earth was a stationary disc and the Sun was only 400 miles away.
In the 1870s, Christian polemicist John Hampden wrote numerous works about the Earth being flat, and described Isaac Newton as "in liquor or insane".
And the spirit of these attacks lives on to the present day. The flat-earth myth remains the outlandish king in the realm of the conspiracy theorist.
And while we all respect a degree of scepticism towards the authorities, says Ms Garwood, the flat-earthers show things can go too far.
"It is always good to question 'how we know what we know', but it is also good to have the ability to accept compelling evidence - such as the photographs of Earth from space."

Imagine No Religion

[by Richard Dawkins http://richarddawkins.net/]

Imagine, sang John Lennon, a world with no religion. Imagine no suicide bombers, no 9/11, no 7/7, no Crusades, no witch-hunts, no Gunpowder Plot, no Kashmir dispute, no Indo/Pakistan partition, no Israel/Palestine wars, no Serb/Croat/Muslim massacres, no Northern Ireland 'troubles'. Imagine no Taliban blowing up ancient statues, lashing women for showing an inch of skin, or publicly beheading blasphemers and apostates. Imagine no persecutions of the Jews - no Jews to persecute indeed, for without religion they would long ago have intermarried with the surrounding populations.Of course today's religious killings and persecutions are not motivated by theological disputes. IRA gunmen don't kill Protestants (or vice versa) over disagreements about transubstantiation. The motive is more likely to be tribal vengeance. It was one of 'them' killed one of 'us'. 'They' drove 'our' great grandfathers out of our ancestral lands. The grievances are economic and political, not religious, and the vendettas stretch back a long way.But although the tribal disagreements themselves have nothing to do with religion, the fact that there are two tribes at all has everything to do with religion. There are, no doubt, tribal distinctions of genetic or linguistic origin, but in Northern Ireland what else is there but religion? The same applies to Indo-Pakistan, Serbo-Croatia, and various regions of Indonesia and Africa. Religion is the world's most divisive label of group identity and hostility. If a social engineer set out to devise a system for perpetuating today's most vicious enmities, he could not come up with a better formula than sectarian education. Faith schools that taught all religions comparatively might do some good. But the whole point of faith schools is that the children of 'our' tribe must be taught 'their own' religion. Since the children of the other tribe are simultaneously being taught the rival religion with, of course, the rival version of the vendetta-riven history, the prognosis is all too predictable.What can it mean to speak of a child's 'own' religion? Imagine a world in which it was normal to speak of a Keynesian child, a Hayekian child, or a Marxist child. Or imagine a proposal to pour government money into separate primary schools for Labour children, Tory children, LibDem children and Monster Raving Loony children? Everyone agrees that small children are too young to know whether they are Keynesian or Monetarist, Labour or Tory, too young to bear the burden of such labels. Why, then, is our entire society happy to slap a label like Catholic or Protestant, Muslim or Jew, on a tiny child? Isn't that, when you think about it, a kind of mental child abuse?I once made that very point in a broadcast debate with a Roman Catholic spokeswoman. I've forgotten her name but she was probably some kind of agony aunt, and a stalwart of Thought for the Day. When I said that a primary school child was too young to know whether it was a Catholic child or a Protestant child, she bristled: "Just come and talk to some of the children in our local Catholic school! I can assure you they know very well that they are Catholic children." Well yes, I believe it only too well. The Jesuit boast - "Give me the child for his first seven years, and I'll give you the man" - is no less sinister for being familiar (in various versions) to the point of clich?. But, you may ask, what if religion is true? (What if my particular religion is true, you should rather say, for mutually contradictory beliefs can't all be true.) Surely sectarian indoctrination would not be child abuse if it saved the child's immortal soul? Despite its smug presumptuousness, I can see how you might take that view if you sincerely believed you had the God-given truth. Let me, then, be ambitious if not presumptuous, and try to persuade you that you do not have the truth. Your confidence in your God is simply wrong!Why do you believe in your God? Because he talks to you inside your head? That is surely not a reliable argument. The Yorkshire Ripper's murders were ordered by the perceived voice of Jesus inside his head. The human brain is a consummate hallucinator, and hallucinations are not good grounds for beliefs about the real world. Perhaps you believe in God because life would be intolerable without him. That's an even weaker argument. Maybe life just is intolerable. Tough! All sorts of things are intolerable, but it doesn't make them untrue. It may be intolerable that you are starving, but you won't make a stone edible by believing - no matter how passionately and sincerely - that it is made of cheese. By far the favourite reason for believing in God is the argument from improbability. Eyes and skeletons, hearts and nerve cells are too improbable to have come about by chance. Man-made machines are improbable too, and they are designed by engineers for a purpose. Surely any fool can see that kidneys and wings, ears and blood corpuscles must also be designed for a purpose, by a master Engineer? Well, maybe any fool can see it, but let's stop playing the fool and grow up. It is 146 years since Charles Darwin gave us what is arguably the cleverest idea ever to occur to a human mind. He demonstrated a working process whereby natural forces, with no design whatsoever, can by slow, gradual degrees generate an elegant illusion of design, to almost limitless levels of complexity.I have written books on the subject and I obviously can't repeat the whole argument in a short article. Let me give just two guidelines to understanding. First, the commonest fallacy about natural selection is that it is a theory of chance. If natural selection really were a chance process, it is entirely obvious that it could not explain the illusion of design. But natural selection, properly understood, is the antithesis of chance. Second, it is often said that natural selection makes God unnecessary, but leaves his existence an entirely open possibility. I think we can go further. The argument from improbability, which traditionally is deployed in God's favour, turns out to be, when you think it through, the strongest argument against him.The beauty of Darwinian evolution is that it explains the very improbable, by gradual degrees. It starts from primeval simplicity (relatively easy to understand) and works up, by plausibly small steps, to complex entities which, by any non-gradual process, would be too improbable for serious contemplation. Design is a real alternative, but only if the designer is himself the product of an escalatory process such as evolution by natural selection, either on this planet or another. There may be alien life forms so advanced that we would worship them as gods. But they too must be ultimately explained by gradual escalation. Gods that exist ab initio are ruled out by the Argument from Improbability, even more surely than are spontaneously erupting eyes or elbow joints.Religious faith is not only a major force for evil in the world. Its very foundations are undermined and denied by scientific logic. Imagine a world where nobody is afraid to follow such thoughts wherever they may lead.

Some good quotes ...

"It appears to me (whether rightly or wrongly) that direct arguments against christianity and theism produce hardly any effect on the public; and freedom of thought is best promoted by the gradual illumination of men's minds which follows from the advance of science." [Darwin]

"If we believe absurdities, we shall commit atrocities." [Voltaire]

"I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own -- a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotism." [Einstein]

"Faith means not wanting to know what is true." [Nietzsche]

"I cannot believe in the immortality of the soul.... No, all this talk of an existence for us, as individuals, beyond the grave is wrong. It is born of our tenacity of life – our desire to go on living … our dread of coming to an end." [Edison]

"The Bible is not my book nor Christianity my profession. I could never give assent to the long, complicated statements of Christian dogma." [Lincoln]

"Religion is a byproduct of fear. For much of human history, it may have been a necessary evil, but why was it more evil than necessary? Isn't killing people in the name of God a pretty good definition of insanity?" [Arthur C. Clarke]

"Religions are all alike – founded upon fables and mythologies." [Thomas Jefferson]

"Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith, I consider a capacity for it terrifying and absolutely vile." [Kurt Vonnegut]

"Religion is based . . . mainly on fear . . . fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death. Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand in hand. . . . My own view on religion is that of Lucretius. I regard it as a disease born of fear and as a source of untold misery to the human race." [Bertrand Russell]

Saudi king appeals for tolerance

[from www.bbc.co.uk]

King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has called on followers of the world's main religions to turn away from extremism and embrace a spirit of reconciliation.
The king was opening a conference in Madrid which brings together Muslims, Christians, Jews and Buddhists.
He said the great conflicts of history were not caused by religion, but by the misinterpretation of religion.
King Juan Carlos of Spain, the co-host, said Spain had always sought to promote international dialogue.
Critics have dismissed the gathering as a propaganda gimmick by the Saudis who, they say, are not best placed to host a meeting on religious tolerance.
Wahhabism, the strain of Sunni Islam that is officially practiced in Saudi Arabia, is considered one of the religion's most conservative and intolerant forms.
"My brothers, we must tell the world that differences don't need to lead to disputes," King Abdullah said.
"The tragedies we have experienced throughout history were not the fault of religion but because of the extremism that has been adopted by some followers of all the religions, and of all political systems."
Correspondents say King Abdullah has made reaching out to other faiths a hallmark of his rule since becoming king in 2005. He is the first reigning Saudi monarch to meet the Pope, for example.
In June, Abdullah held a religious conference in Mecca in which participants pledged improved relations between Islam's two main branches, Sunni and Shia Islam.
The conference is sponsored by Saudi Arabia and is billed as a strictly religious, non-political affair. It is off limits to journalists apart from the inaugural session.

Hari on science versus religion

[Posted by cabalamat on 2008-Jul-09]
Johann Hari warns against the dangers of religion:

Does anybody else find it depressing that as science teaching declines in our schools, we do more than ever to push the sterile fictions of religion on children? As a direct result of government policy, Physics and Chemistry are withering while the enforced study of religion – in faith schools – is swelling.
Hari is right to be concerned about this. Science has a direct effect on Britain’s prosperity. Bad science teaching, or no science teaching, will make us materially poorer than we would be otherwise. It will also make us spiritually poorer, because it’ll replace the true awe and wonder at the natural world with the trite and silly fantasies of religion.
Despite the claims of woolly-headed kum-by-ya multiculturalists, there is a fundamental conflict between science and religion. Science offers a natural explanation of the world, based on empirical observation and reason. Religion offers a supernatural explanation of the world, based on ‘divine revelation’ – in other words, hallucination.
These two roads lead in different directions. Empirically observing the world will never lead you to conclude that (say) the Archangel Gabriel inseminated a virgin and she produced a Messiah who could produce infinite amounts of fish from a basket.
The more we explore the world with science, the more we find it is not as described in the Holy Books. Their maps, their explanations, their histories – all are empirically false. So the religious can either scramble rather pitifully to deny the facts, as creationists do, or they can turn more and more of their faith into gaseous metaphor, with their ‘God’ reduced to a distant First Cause.
In terms of policy the solution to these problems of science and religion is fairly obvious:
1. science should be taught as a compulsory subject in all schools; and taught in an interesting way.
2. religion should also be a compulsory subject. The purpose of religious education should be to innoculate children against religious belief, so that future generations can grow up free from religion.
3. there would be no faith superstition schools
4. independent schools would be required to follow the same policies as state schools regarding the above

Absolutely Right !!!

Keith Allen will burn in hell

[First shown on Channel 4 in June 2007 - from http://www.channel4.com/]

Keith Allen discovers an unnerving mixture of hatred, fanaticism and fun when he investigates one of the USA’s most extreme fundamentalist churches.
The members of Westboro Baptist Church in Kansas, which preaches that every word in the Bible is literally true, are some of America's most fanatical Christian fundamentalists. Bearing ‘God Hates Fags’ and ‘God Hates America’ placards, they cheerfully picket the funerals of US soldiers killed in Iraq, and delight in provoking outrage among both liberals and patriots.
Programme-makers in America and Britain have repeatedly tried to expose their beliefs as anti-Christian, but these attempts have failed. In Channel 4’s investigation, Keith Allen takes a smarter, more streetwise approach. During three extraordinary days at Westboro, Keith reveals more about the church than other television programmes have unearthed in three months.
In interviews that are hilarious, infuriating and compelling, he forensically exposes the curious mixture of hatred and jollity that underpins their faith. Using all his journalistic skills and instincts, he scavenges for information in local bars and discovers a secret about the church's chief spokesperson, Shirley Phelps-Roper. Shirley confesses her ‘sin’ on camera, making a memorable climax to a programme that exposes the hypocrisy of this bizarre, fundamentalist sect.
Find out more
There’s lots more information about Christian fundamentalists in the USA in other parts of the Faith and Belief website.
God's Next ArmyConservative evangelical Christians hold key positions in the US Government, and now they're training the next generation to take power.
Make Me A VirginWhen filmmaker and ex-evangelical Christian Jamie Campbell is asked to make a video promoting sexual abstinence, he discovers some unexpected agendas at work in the ‘no sex before marriage’ movement.
Putting the Fun Into FundamentalPresenter Elliott Gerner travels around the world meeting different religious groups, from Christian fundamentalists in America's Bible Belt to an obscure Hindu goddess in India.
Texas Teenage VirginsIn the town of Lubbock in Texas, where a lot of people take the Bible literally, the church is powerful enough to ensure that teenagers receive no education about sex, while the Christian radio stations and preachers tell them that condoms don’t work, that sex brings disease and that abstinence is the only option.
The Doomsday CodeTony Robinson investigates the people with powerful political friends in the White House, who are trying to bring about the end of the world.
The FundamentalistsMark Dowd finds that there are fundamentalists of all religious persuasions across the world – Christians, Hindus, Jews, Muslims and, unexpectedly, Buddhists.
The New FundamentalistsRod Liddle investigates the evangelical Christians who tell teenagers that contraception won't protect them and that homosexuality is wrong.
Turning Muslim in TexasIn the state of Texas, the Bible Belt is transferring its allegiance to the Qur’an because, for many erstwhile Christians, believe it or not, the church is too liberal.
With God on Our SideA detailed and fascinating exploration of American Christian fundamentalism, the intentions and implications of the separation of church and state, and a round-up of evangelicals.

Ben Stein 1, Yoko Ono 0 in "Expelled" copyright spat

[from www.arstechnica.com/news.ars/ by Timothy B. Lee, June 2, 2008]

A New York judge today dealt a serious blow to the widow and children of John Lennon, who are seeking to force the removal of the John Lennon song "Imagine" from a controversial film about intelligent design, creationism's PR-savvy cousin. Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed argues that advocates of the theory of intelligent design face persecution in the academy. Judge Sidney H. Stein rejected the plaintiff's request for an injunction against further distribution of the film, finding that the makers of Expelled were likely to prevail in their argument that the use of "Imagine" was fair use under copyright law.
The controversy centers around a segment about an hour into the film. Science advocate P.Z.Myers argues that greater science literacy would "lead to the erosion of religion," and expresses the hope that religion would "slowly fade away." The narrator, Ben Stein, asserts that Myers' ideas aren't original. Rather, he is "merely lifting a page out of John Lennon's songbook."
The viewer is then treated to a clip from John Lennon's "Imagine," with the lyrics "Nothing to kill or die for/And no religion too." The music is accompanied by black-and-white footage "of a military parade, which gives way to a close up of Joseph Stalin waving." Next, the film cuts to a guest who argues that there is a connection between "transcendental values" and "what human beings permit themselves to do one to the other." Evidently, religion is the only thing standing between us and Stalinist dictatorship.
Judge Stein's task wasn't to critique the dubious logic of this segment, but to evaluate the narrower question of whether the film's use of "Imagine" is fair under copyright law. He noted that the film was focused on a subject of public interest, and that the film was commenting on Lennon's anti-religious message. The excerpting of copyrighted works for purpose of "comment and criticism" is explicitly protected by the Copyright Act, and Judge Stein ruled that this provision applied in this case.
Imagine there's no Fair Use
The decision quotes extensively from Bill Graham Archives v. Dorling Kindersley, a 2006 decision that allowed the reprinting of reduced-size versions of several historical posters used in a coffee-table book about the Grateful Dead. In that case, as in this one, the alleged infringers had used the works in a commercial product, but the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit found that "courts are more willing to find a secondary use fair when it produces a value that benefits the broader public interest." Whatever the merits of its argument, Expelled is clearly commentary on an issue of public concern, and the use of "Imagine" was central to its argument. Those facts weighed heavily in favor of a finding of fair use.
Stein and company were defended by lawyers from Stanford's Fair Use Project. In a blog post announcing their decision to take the case, executive director Anthony Falzone wrote that "The right to quote from copyrighted works in order to criticize them and discuss the views they represent lies at the heart of the fair use doctrine," and argued that Ono's actions threaten free speech.
We've noted before that intelligent design is not a scientific theory so much as an attempt to create the appearance of controversy using flashy PR tactics. Indeed, the advocates of intelligent design theory have explicitely advocated that schools "teach the controversy," which gives schoolchildren the mistaken impression that there is widespread controversy regarding the merits of evolution within the academy. Expelled in particular has advanced this narrative by featuring scientists who supposedly faced retaliation for their support of intelligent design. (The film greatly exaggerates the persecution of intelligent design advocates)
It is, therefore, unfortunate that Lennon's heirs sought to use copyright law to squelch criticism of Lennon's lyrics. No matter how dishonest Stein and company's arguments may be, they have the right to make them, and copyright must give way to the First Amendment. Ono's aggressive tactics will give Stein and company an undeserved PR victory, allowing them to play the beleaguered underdogs fighting the "Darwinist" establishment. The way to counter Expelled is with logic and evidence, of which there's an ample supply. Overzealous application of copyright law is counterproductive.

While it is regretable that John Lennon's classic song has been used for what is quite clearly a cynical and unoriginal Christian apologist propaganda movie, it is clear that there is no law being broken. John Lennon was an atheist who understood that religion and belief in the afterlife cause great suffering. He explicity stated that he did not believe in Jesus, the Bible or any other form of religion and this is reflected in the line "nothing to kill or die for and no religion too". The Ben Stein movie uses the clip from Imagine followed by images of Stalinist Russia to imply that a nation without religion inevitably turns into a brutal totalitarian regime. This is an old argument used by apologists who having failed to convince us that their religion has any basis in reality, resort to the argument that religion (generally Christianity) produces a better and more compassionate society than atheism. This argument is of course intellectually poor and strongly one sided, but could still be convincing to impressionable and poorly educated individuals and this, I feel certain, is exactly what it sets out to do!

Interestingly the movie sets out to argue the case for the concept of intelligent design as opposed to accepted evolutionary theory. However evidently it is unable to do so adequately and is forced to fall back on the old "without Christianity people wouldn't be nice to each other" argument, which has nothing to do with the intelligent design vs evolution debate. After all even if that were true it would prove the theory of evolution is faulty.

It is a great shame that the work of a brilliant and enlightened individual like John Lennon should be used in this way. We shouldn't be too surprized though, after all part of the motivation for his murder were his anti-religious and anti-Christian views. But that wasn't enough, now they want to offend his memory, his fans and his family by using his work for a dishonest and ill-conceived project that he would have totally disapproved of.

God is a concept by which we can measure our pain

"God is a concept by which we can measure our pain. I’ll say it again, God is a concept by which we can measure our pain.

I don’t believe in magic, I don’t believe in I-ching, I don’t believe in bible, I don’t believe in tarot, I don’t believe in Hitler, I don’t believe in Jesus, I don’t believe in Kennedy, I don’t believe in Buddha, I don’t believe in mantra, I don’t believe in Gita, I don’t believe in yoga, I don’t believe in kings, I don’t believe in Elvis, I don’t believe in Zimmerman, I don’t believe in Beatles, I just believe in me.

The dream is over, What can I say? The dream is over. Yesterday I was dreamweaver but now I’m reborn. I was the walrus but now I’m John. And so dear friends you just have to carry on. The dream is over."

- God, John Lennon

Pakistani boy killed by teacher

[from www.bbc.co.uk]

A student of a religious seminary in Pakistan's Punjab province has died after he was punished by his teacher, police say. Atif, seven, was hung upside down from a ceiling fan by Maulvi Ziauddin for not memorising his Koran lessons, his fellow students told the police.
Atif's condition deteriorated quickly and he died in the teacher's room. Maulvi Ziauddin has been arrested. Human rights organisation say Pakistani children are often exposed to abuse.
Arrested
The students told the police in the town of Vehari that Atif was punished on Wednesday by Maulvi Ziauddin who left him hanging from the fan for some time. The son of a farm labourer, Atif lived in the seminary with about 20 other students, including a cousin.
"When his cousin did not see Atif on Wednesday night or the next morning, he informed the family," a Vehari police official, Mohammad Afzal, told the BBC. "Members of the family found Atif's body in Maulvi Ziauddin's room, but the cleric himself was missing," he said.
He was arrested from a nearby village later on Thursday.
The police said they would file formal charges after an autopsy report is issued by the local hospital. In a report published in January, Lawyers for Human Rights and Legal Aid (LHRLA) - an organisation which monitors and compiles cases of child abuse and kidnapping - said children in Pakistan were increasingly exposed to abuse, kidnapping and violence.
The number of reported cases involving children has more than doubled from 617 in 2006 to 1,595 last year, the report said. It blamed poor law enforcement and old social attitudes towards children's rights as some of the reasons for the problem.