Christmas… again

Although some on the Right may be surprised, Richard Dawkins has made it known that he is a “cultural Christian”. The Right in Britain are busy these days trying to persuade anyone who’ll listen that there’s a leftwing plot to undermine Christmas in the guise “Political Correctness”. The recent “Christianophobia” debate testifies to the jostling among those on the Right for the use of Christianity some sort of “British culture” campaign, which is apparently threatened by what they see as undue deferrence to the cultures of ethnic minorities and the like, in particular (I suspect) the Islamic traditions within this country.

On this reading, it is not secularisation that is changing the face of Christmas. Yet – as I’ve said before – what the overwhelming majority of people in Britain today celebrates is in fact a secular version of Christmas, one that is only in part informed by Christianity, and to an extent that will vary from family to family. Hence a recent finding that British people don’t seem to know much about the Christian origins of Christmas – although there are about 4.4 million people who may wish they’d never heard of Christmas at all.

To the best of my knowledge, there is no shred of evidence that anyone wants to actually ‘purge’ the Christian basis of our culture or our heritage: you can’t study either without coming up against it. Ignoring it represents a failure of understanding, both of our present and our past. But Christianity itself doesn’t need to be promoted or publicly defended in some way to underline this – it should be learnt and understood as and when one comes across these things, in its correct context, as you would the influence of Greek and Roman mythology. After all, no one would suggest that we should continue building in the English-decorated Gothic style, lest architecture should somehow forget its past and traditions.

Contemporary culture is – or should be – something that people should freely choose to engage in, or not, and on their own terms, as they see fit. Hence Dawkins has no problems with singing Christmas carols, whereas I choose not to celebrate Christmas at all. Both are valid, although one wonders if the view is soon to be that one who doesn’t celebrate Christmas is to be seen as “not British”.

Eitherway, it hardly seems an area in which the the State could effectively intervene, if indeed it should at all. Not celebrating a Christian version of Christmas, or not celebrating Christmas at all, is not to attempt a purge of anything; rather, it’s the exercise of choice.

The problem is perhaps that Christmas is bigger than Christianity – both in terms of adherents, but also culturally. The fact is that any story of Christmas that restricts itself to merely the birth of Jesus amounts to Christian propaganda: again, as I’ve said before, the “story” of Christmas also encompasses other pre-Christian European traditions – Germanic, Celtic and Roman – as well as more recent traditions, such as the American Santa Claus, the European cult of St Nicholas, and the British Father Christmas (sadly almost completely usurped by Santa). A far bigger, and dare I say it, a far more interesting story, which would of course include the Christian story.

Hate campaign against female clergy

Church of England female clergy are still unnaccepted in some quarters. A Cornish curate has now taken a couple of weeks leave after a recent spate of arson attacks, although there’s been a problem for sometime. This usefully reminds us that Christian fundamentalism (which logically must be behind this as no one else would be ideologically opposed to female Christian ministers within the Church of England) is clearly shown to be as dangerous as any other fundamentalism, religious inspired or otherwise. Naturally, it will only be a minority or even (as in this case) an individual extremist – an often recited phrase in other contexts.

Christianophobia?

A Parliamentary debate has today been scheduled on something which the MP Mark Pritchard calls “Christianophobia”. His complaint appears to centre on a perceived fear that people in this country are somehow afraid to express Christian sentiment due to “political correctness” and a wish not to offend minorities. The finding recently that four-fifths of schools are not putting on Nativity plays by the Telegraph, allegedly for the same reason, appears to have prompted the debate.

The debate raises the question of whether Christianity in this country should be supported or propped up by the State (more than it is already, of course). As a secularist, I don’t believe that any religion should be supported by the State – it is up to people themselves what cultural traditions – religious or otherwise – they want to keep onto.

But Pritchard forgets that most of the country – well over ninety per cent, in fact – are don’t practice any religion at all, let alone Christianity. With respect to Nativity plays, there may be, perhaps an excessive, desire not to “offend” other religious sentimentalities in some of the more mixed ethnic areas, but it is also a fact that cultures change. It needs hardly to be said that for two or three thousand years before Christianity was (forcibly) introduced into this country, the winter festival now called Christmas had different cultural meanings. Indeed, as we all know, very little of the origins of Christmas has to do with Christianity.

The period we now call “Christmas” has undergone yet another transformation in the last thirty to fifty years in the UK. To all intents and purposes, it is now largely a secular festival, reflecting a largely secular society, as the annual pleas by religious figures to remember what Christmas is “really” about testifies. You could disparagingly characterise Christmas as one that now celebrates Santa Claus as the god of consumerism, and there’d be some truth in that, although it is also one that has the remnants of previous Christian, Roman, Germanic and Celtic beliefs, among other native folk traditions. (Oddly, those concerned with the “true” meaning of Christmas don’t tend to talk about these earlier beliefs.)

The lack of interest in specifically Nativity plays by schools more than likely represents a broader cultural change associated just as much with secularism as with anything to do with “political correctness”. It’s not that there is a rise in “Christianophobia” so much as a radical decline in Christian worship, and a lack of relevance of the previously Christian message of Christmas to the modern day secular festival that is now Christmas.

This is something that has been happening for a number of years, if personal experience is anything to go by. Because of house moves, during the 1980s I went to three different primary schools in Essex – two of which were Church of England Voluntary Controlled – in places which were overwhelmingly white British. Not once did I see, or was ever part of, a Nativity play.

Scientific facts and theories

Following very belatedly from my last post, a reasonable question is “what is a scientific theory?”, and what constitutes a “scientific fact”?

The question of a scientific fact arose in a brief discussion I had on a creationist blog. The objection by said Creationist was to a BBC web page about science talking about scientific facts. That’s an odd state of affairs for non-Creationists such as myself – a bit like being outraged at naked people on a porn site. But the objection centred on the idea that science – and in particular the theory of human evolution – was being portrayed at “fact”, while misunderstanding the context within which these “facts” appeared.

It is – I find – a common misunderstanding within the Creationist/”Intelligent Design” camp. So let’s recap what a “scientific fact” is, as no doubt I shall refer to such things as this blog develops. Apologies in advance for those that find this basic, but it’s better to be clear on such things!

A scientific fact is one which has been corroborated by reproducible results from experiments that themselves can be repeated – that’s not the same as “proved”. It’s virtually impossible to prove a theory. So it’s true to say that no one has proved that gravity exists – it’s just that all the known experimental data corroborates the theory that it does, and it is referred then as a “scientific fact”.

Evolution is likewise a “scientific fact”, for exactly the same reason that garvity is; and evolutionary theory – aka theory of evolution – explains the fact of evolution.

For a theory to be a theory, one needs to be able to make a prediction – or a hypothesis – based on this theory which can then be tested by experiment. The data either corroborates or disproves the theory. So, with evolution for example, your hypothesis would be that you would expect to see increasing complexity over time. You would not expect to see birds before the existence of land animals, for example. To do so would prove evolution wrong; not to do so corroborates the theory as it falls in line with our hypothesis.

Disproving that theories relating to gravity or evolution exist is only that – proving that that those particular theories are wrong. So if cars and buses and trains tomorrow all start floating, or that daylight in the UK doesn’t appear until 1.30pm, we can say that our theory of gravity is wrong. Likewise, if we found a fossilised rabbit in a strata of rock that was a billion years old, we’d say that the current theory of evolution is wrong.

Saying a theory is wrong is NOT the same as saying that another is right. It is an odd feature of the Creationist debate that an awful lot of energy of Creationists and their ilk is spent on “disproving” the theory of evolution. They have continually failed so far, but even if they were correct in their assertions, that doesn’t prove anything at all about Creationism – they would only have only shown that evolution is wrong.

Likewise, demonstrating or showing that “irreducible complexity” exists (a favourite of the so-called “Intelligent Design” adherents) only proves that such thing appear to exist – it does not prove that there is in fact a Designer or Intelligence or Creator. Separate experimental data would be needed for such a thing to be established in a scientific manner. So far, “irreducible complexity” has not been shown.

But as I’ve pointed out, that would at best only show that evolution is wrong – not that Creationism or Intelligent Design is actually correct in its further claims about Designers and Creators. Here, to the best of my knowledge, no attempt has even been made to even say what kind of experiment could be done or what evidence would be required that corroborates the existence of a single Designer or Intelligence at work somewhere, rather than disproves current scientific theories. And it’s precisely because it fails to produce a testable hypothesis, that Creationist “science” and ID “theory” are not theories or science.

The thing about Creationism

I wasn’t planning to write any posts at all that dealt specifically with Creationism head-on; there didn’t seem to be much point. That was until I ended up in a discussion on a blog, one which I had the sense to keep brief – these kinds of discussions can get very entrenched and end up nowhere fast.

There are some odd things about Creationism and “Intelligent Design” (ID). The most notable is the obsession with evolution and Charles Darwin. It’s useful at this point to remember what evolution is about: it simply says that through natural selection, species either adapt to a changing environment – or die out. The same process – natural selection – gives rise to new species, when a population is separated and the number of adaptations begin increases to a certain point. That’s a rough outline – there is a whole debate as to what actually constitutes a ’species’.

Adapatations are brought about by changes – mutations – in DNA: something that Darwin had no knowledge about, although he figured that there must be something that was passed onto the next generation.

It’s odd that Creationists (including the ID people) should spend much time on this theory – not only is it so well established in the literature that it would be akin to challenging the concept of gravity, but it’s the way in which they try to select examples by way of counter example.

The arguments tend to be one of the following: given biological example is so complicated that it must be designed/created; and then conclude that it indeed has been designed/created (‘irreducible complexity’ in the jargon). The other tact is to deny that random mutation within DNA is possible, or, if it is, it is very rare and only produces negatives consequences.

This latter example was one recently presented to me elsewhere; the first time I heard it, oddly enough, was by Islamic Creationists from Turkey. So even if I were to be convinced by this argument, I’m unsure with the Creator is Allah or Jehovah! I joke, but the point is serious: what evidence can be brought to bear to prove one way or another, given that their respective holy texts cancel each other out?

Both tactics essentially try to undermine evolution as a theory. It doesn’t work because it doesn’t disporve the theory; at best, if there were no mutations, as the Creationists claim, and if there were irreducible complexity, it would suggest that the theory of evolution doesn’t apply in those given particular cases. Mutations, for example, occur in bacteria (hence resistance to anti-biotics) and so on.

What would disprove the theory of evolution would be a ‘counter-factual’. Irreducible complexity purports to be such a counter-factual, but evolution says precisely that which is denied by the Creationist: however incredible it may seem, and whatever teh appearnace of design, that particular biological phenomena did come about by evolution, and not by divine intervention. Simply claiming something is designed based on appearance is far from proving that it has been designed.

A true counter-factual would be something that was demonstrably against something that evolution predicts. Evolution predicts that complex organisms arose from simple organisms. By definition, if you found a complex organism in a geological era when there should only be simple ones (however old you think it is and whatever the geologists say) would be the kind of thing. So, if you found a modern human burial in the Jurassic, or JBS Haldane’s rabbit in the Pre-Cambrian period; that would be perfect.

The logic of the arguments are often faulty. For example, having established in their minds that evolution doesn’t work, they conclude that there is 1) the appearance of design which means that 2) there is a designer. Evolution says the opposite, that the appearance of design doesn’t imply a designer, so you would need to supply evidence to prove that the appearance of design really does imply a designer. The next fault is that, for some reason, it only implies a single designer – again, at the expense of evidence. Why not a team of designers, given that Boeing 747s (complicated pieces of machinary) use hundreds of designers? We are not told why (without resorting to the holy text of choice).

Finally, saying that the variety of life on Earth was because of a Designer, or God, is not an answer but raises two other questions: how, and what created this Designer/God? These cannot be answered without recourse to holy text; the text in question may be right, but given that the experience of God is a personal, subjective experience rather than an out-there, objective, experience, it really does take us away from the science that we were trying to do answer the kind of scientific questions that evolution answers.

Whatever else may be said about Creationism and Intelligent Design, science it most certainly is not.

Further reading: Steve Poole on ‘Intelligent Design’

Jonathan Edwards loses his faith

One of the more prominant ‘born-again’ Christians of recent years, the Olympic gold medallist Jonathan Edwards, has now apparently lost his faith. He makes some interesting remarks:

When you think about it rationally, it does seem incredibly improbable that there is a God [...] I am not unhappy about the fact that there might not be a God [...] I don’t feel that my life has a big, gaping hole in it. In some ways I feel more human than I ever have. There is more reality in my existence than when I was full-on as a believer [...] I feel internally happier than at any time of my life, more content within my own skin. Maybe it is because I am not viewing the world through a specific set of spectacles.

Welcome to the dark side, Jonathan!

That Ring Thing

Yesterday, a 16-year old girl lost ‘her’ appeal to wear a silver ring in school to show her commitment to refraining from having sex until she’s married; and – as she also says in the video – to remain “sexually pure” until she’s married, whatever that may mean.

I used the word ‘her’ above, in inverted commas, advisedly becuase her father seems to figure largely in this: he is a pastor at their Church and is someone who is running the Silver Ring Thing campaign in their area, as well as being the “Parents Programme Director” for the national organisation.

The claim is that the ring, symbolising chastity, is ‘part’ of her faith, and that she should be able to express this the same way as Muslims (for example) wear headscarves.

Yet nowhere in the Bible does it instruct anyone to wear a ring – or anything else for that matter – as a commitment to chastity, and the movement – confined within the ‘evangelical’, or fundamentalist, denominations – is barely more than ten years old. There is nothing distinctively ‘Christian’ about wearing a ring in today’s world (if not in the past). The Koran, on the other hand, does talk about women dressing modestly (in chapters 31 and 33), from which the tradition of hajibs, niqabs and burkhas clearly descend. Even if we accept that marriage rings are a Christian tradition (and its not clear to me yet that we should), there certainly isn’t a respective Christian claim that can be made for so-called ‘chastity rings’, much less one that’s based on the strict reading of the Bible that the fundamentalist denominations usually insist upon. The courts were essentially right in this respect.

Yet the Playfoots make another, non-faith based claim that appears to confuse their argument. They are quick to make a general abstinence argument, and say that the wearing of this ring symbolises that commitment. For example, on her blog Lydia says that:

Over two years ago, I was concerned at the number of teenagers who were catching sexually transmitted diseases, getting pregnant and/or having abortions.

The Government’s Sex Education Programme is not working, and the pressure on young people to ‘give in’ to sex continues to increase. This is often because of the media’s focus on sex and the expectations of others.

This is distinctly not an argument based on her faith, but a political or education argument, one that should be irrelevant if it was merely a question of faith. If this is the point that she’s making, the courts were certainly right to dismiss the case: the ring is just a ring that contravenes the school’s dress code.

UK floods the judgement of God

The Sunday Telegraph revealed that the Bishop of Carlisle is under the impression that the judgement of ‘God’ was responsible for the flooding in Yorkshire and elsewhere last week as punishment for moral behaviour as well as environmental degradation. In particular, he is quoted as saying:

We are in serious moral trouble because every type of lifestyle is now regarded as legitimate

and

In the Bible, institutional power is referred to as ‘the beast’, which sets itself up to control people and their morals. Our government has been playing the role of God in saying that people are free to act as they want

and that:

The sexual orientation regulations [which give greater rights to gays] are part of a general scene of permissiveness. We are in a situation where we are liable for God’s judgment, which is intended to call us to repentance.

In trying to lessen the implied homophobic intent behind the comments of the Church of England Bishop, it was explained this evening on the BBC Radio 4’s PM program that the Bishop did not really mean what he appears to say, after all. Rather, he meant something a little more complicated, to do with human actions (of which moral actions are only part), which then affect the environment, which then causes global warming, and which finally may have caused the flooding. Quite why one needs ‘God’ in that chain of events was not really explained.

However, it can be questioned as to whether Bishop Dow did actually mean something as benign, only for it to be mangled by the Sunday Telegraph. He has, after all, expressed concerns in the past before on the way in which Government has apparently usurped the moral authority of his god in connection with legislation outlawing the discrimination against gays by Church-ran adoption agencies.

When the Bill outlawing discrimination against gays with respect to Church-ran adoption agencies was before Parliament, the Bishop, in his monthly dioscean notice of March this year he commented that:

Once God is removed from the scene, where ultimate moral authority should be located there is then a vacuum. Not surprisingly, the vacuum is then filled, frequently by an institution, in this case by the government [...] if the trend to ignore God persists, we will find many other situations where an institution takes to itself the role of ultimate moral authority and endeavours to enforce its moral judgement with law or rules, be it on a national scale or simply in the institution itself.

For the Bishop, the Government’s stance on the issue of Church-ran adoption agencies is a case in point of the way in which Government has usurped the moral authority of ‘God’.

It’s clear that the Bishop’s recent speech reported in the Sunday Telegraph follows a favourite theme about Government taking on the role of “ultimate moral authority”, to the point of citing the same example, that of gay lifestyles, as an example of “permissiveness”.

It would seem, then, that – despite the semantic gymnastics on Radio 4’s PM by the Church’s spokesman – the Sunday Telegraph was right in its intepretation of the Bishop’s remarks, and that he meant what he said: that the floods in Yorkshire and elsewhere are “God’s judgement” on our perceived moral failings.

The problem with ‘atheism’

Atheism is another of those problematic terms. There is, in fact, more than one type of atheist: at least five different variations have been delineated. These are:

Negative/weak atheism someone who to all intents and purposes doesn’t believe in a god, without necessarily going so far as to say that there is in fact no god.

Positive/strong atheism someone who simply affirms that there is no god as a statement of fact.

Explicit atheism somone who knowingly rejects any notion of god.

Implicit atheism someone who has not heard of a god, and cannot therefore decide whether belief in such an entity is reasonable or justifiable or worthwhile. Children especially are usually considered to be implicitly atheist as they have to be taught that there are such things as religious ideas and concepts of god.

militant atheism is a term one finds in the press; it describes any atheist – strong or weak – who argues vociferously against statements made by people of faith, and seeks confrontation with them. In the UK, Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens are the two best known examples.

religious atheism is how I choose to describe those religions, such as most schools of Buddhism (Theravadin, Zen, etc.) and the Advaita vedanta school of Hinduism.

An indication of the problem can be seen in the number of caveats and definitions. In particular, the idea that there are religious people who are themselves ‘atheist’ goes against intuitively what people would commonly take to be a feature of atheism – that is, its irreligiousness (if not anti-religiousness).

This latter common perception of what an atheist is (a view particularly in the US) is itself problematic, of course: a disbelief in something is now associated with a particular negative attitude. It is a situation made worse by the existence of ‘militant atheists’. It is this that gives atheism its increasingly sectarian and hostile nature, one which people such as myself would want to avoid: why should we define ourselves by something in which we do not believe?

Nevertheless, that there are indeed ‘religious atheists’ alerts us to a feature of atheism: that is that it is rooted in the Western and Islamic experience. The term ‘atheist’ has little meaning in China and India; it would not have had much meaning in the West more than 1500 years ago. It is defined against theism, which is at bottom a belief in a personal god of the Islamic and Judeo-Christian traditions. Atheism is defined by what it is not: it is not theism, perhaps because not being a theist was exceptionally rare in the Common Era up until three hundred years ago at the most. Atheism, by defining itself what it doesn’t believe in, rather than what it does, can be seen as ‘negative’ – it is the reason why the BHA sees humanism as ‘positive‘.

Finally, there is the point that the word ‘god’ is used too often as though it means the same thing to all people, or that there is an agreed definition. The responsible thing, when asked by someone if you believe in ‘god’, should be to ask what they mean by ‘god’. One of the traps that some atheists fall into is to define a god, and then say why they don’t believe in it. They may find that there are theists who would equally not believe in that particular definition of god.

Because atheism is related to a specific cultures and traditions, and in a specific time, and because it is sectarian, and increasingly seen as something hostile, I am personally reluctant these days to describe myself as an ‘atheist’.

On the other hand, insofar as atheism argues that it is encumbent upon theists – particularly those who are engaged in conversion – to prove their claims of the existence of a god, rather than for anyone to try and prove a negative and by proving that a given god does not exist, then in that sense I remain an atheist: this is a weak atheism that makes no claims to knowledge about the non-existence of god that one finds with ’strong’ or positive atheism, but one that says that it finds no reason to believe the claims for a particular god’s existence. It is not an atheism by which I would necessarily define my identity by, however.

Humanism: a flawed concept?

Is there such a thing as ‘humanism’?

The fact that ‘humanist’ exists as an adjective would seem to imply that there is. The word actually already has a related noun: human. To be a ‘humanist’ in the arts is someone who focuses on the human world and human concerns as oppose to the religious and the divine worlds (during the renaissance in particular, these were art, music, grammar, rhetoric, oratory, history, poetry, moral philosophy and classical Greek and Roman texts).

Humanism as a broad term might be understood, then, as areas of study, or an attitude, that foucesses on intellectual endevours that are characterised by human concerns – science, philosophy, etc. If you’re not interested in the divine as having any importance within the world, you are by definition a humanist.

Humanism has, however, been more precisely articulated as a particular philosophical outlook with which to guide one’s life. The British Humanist Association (BHA) defines a humanists as people who “make sense of the world using reason, experience and shared human values.” These “values” also appear on the International Humanist and Ethical Union’s (IHEU) website, and elsewhere are included with “natural values”. Precisely what these “human” or “natural” values are is not specified. Equally, it’s not clear that using “reason” and “experience” are the exclusive preserve of the non-religious, and nor is it clear that ‘humanists’ are the only people who try to “live happy and fulfilled lives and help others to do so.”

The BHA essentially exists to provide secular alternatives to baptisms, marriages and funerals; it also has a longstanding schools’ religious education campaign to raise awareness of secular lifestyles within that context. This is important work for anyone who cares about alternatives to religious ceremonies and religious thinking.

The BHA, however, also appears to give reassurance to people that lives without a religious framework are equally ‘good’, even though, humanism, as defined by the BHA, does not offer any guidelines as to what a ‘good’ life is, other than one that is not reliant on beliefs that are “religious or superstitious“.

In short, the BHA attempts to define a wider philosophy of life behind the word ‘humanism’. But despite these attempts to give it a particular meaning, it remains more a general label to an approach to life.

Organised humanism offers no distinctive philosophy as such – it takes a rationalist approach moral problems; it extols the scientific method to gain knowledge about the world; and it emphasises human rights; it promotes secularism; but none of those things require the label ‘humanist’. Again, it is difficult to see what is exclusively humanist in the Amsterdam Declaration, as being rational, or ethical, or supporting human rights, the responsible use of technology and democracy is not – many religious people would argue the for the same.

Organised humanism is in danger of creating a secular religion (if that’s not a contradiction in terms). Rather than a god, humanity is at the centre of this ‘religion’. It is arguably too focussed on humanity, at the expense of the world and its environment, for example.

Humanist organisations also have a habit of retrospectively labelling as humanists people who would not have encountered the concept. Given the vagueness of the concept, this makes it easy to co-opt people from the past – in fact, anyone who did not find t necessary to talk about god in their work. An interesting figure is Albert Einstein – because of his work, he is seen as “essentially humanist” on the BHA website. Yet he is frequently cited by Christians as a theistic scientist (for example, the fundamentalist (‘evangelist’) Christian website – BibleQuery.org – lists Einstein, as a god-fearing scientist.

Einstein certainly was not a ‘humanist’ over above him being a scientist. (And, in actual fact, as Richard Dawkins shows in his provocatively titled The God Delusion, Einstein was not a theist at all, and was criticised by Christian fundamentalists for his remarks on his disbelief in any god as such). Suggesting that Einstein’s work was ‘humanist’ adds nothing that the word ’scientific’ doesn’t already say, and perhaps a good deal less.

Humanism aspires to equate itself as anything and everything that is not religious, yet it fails to offer a distinctive doctrine or intepretation of (say) “human values” of its own, and as long as that remains the case, any conception of humanism as a philosophy to guide one’s life will remain flawed.