The end

There will not be any more here. For quite a long time most of what I want to say has been said on Facebook, but I found that unsatisfactory too. So I have started a new blog, and we'll see what comes.

olliekillingback.wordpress.com

Winifred's spoons.

I made a cup of tea and got a spoon out of the drawer to stir. It's one of Winifred's spoons.

Winifred was a parishioner of mine back in the 70s. She was a lovely old lady, well over 80, with a mind like a razor and the confidence to speak it. She liked to see new things being done, new ideas tried out. She was mentally much younger and more flexible than people 30 or 40 years her junior. We got on very well. Every week on Friday I took Holy Communion to her at home because she was too frail to get to church. I took the Book of Common Prayer (1662) along first time, as I would for all the older parishioners. Winifred insisted on the New Service (what soon became the 1980 Alternative Service Book). None of that old-fashioned claptrap for her! Enough. I loved Winifred dearly.

Early one Saturday morning Winifred's landlady phoned. Winifred was not responding and she was afraid she had died in the night. Would I please go round at once. I did, and indeed Winifred was dead in her bed. I gave her the last rites and the necessary formalities began.

The Vicar took her funeral in the parish church, with me assisting. I thought he got that wrong. Winifred and I were close, and she would have wanted me to do it. But maybe I could not have held back the tears.

In his address the vicar said that I had taken Winifred the sacrament the day before she died, so she had died in a state of grace. I thought "What? Is the God we believe in such a being as would penalise a fabulous (and deeply Christian in the best sense) old lady if I had not celebrated Holy Communion with her in her final hours? Is he the kind of being who would punish her if between receiving the bread and wine from me and her death she had entertained some wicked thought? If so, I'm out of here."

Within two years I had left the employ of the Church of England, although it took the death of another close friend before I finally walked away mentally, emotionally and publicly, from Christian belief.

Winifred's landlady gave me her cutlery. I still have her spoons and use them almost daily in the hope that some of Winifred's valiant freshness of mind might yet rub off on me.

False and real memories

I'm very interested in the phenomenon of false memories. At a trivial level I have a strong memory about the bridge event last night... but for various reasons I know it can't be correct, so I settle for being confused about it.

At the most serious end of the spectrum I have lived with someone who had memories of childhood abuse. No-one can say for sure whether those memories are true or false. The tendency is to believe the accuser, but observing the situation from close hand, I am genuinely perplexed. It is a very difficult situation. And so much hangs on it - someone's mental health, someone's freedom or imprisonment. Not having a memory one is certain of believed has in the past been so distressing it has led to suicide. But certainty is not a guarantee of accuracy - as I know from my own experience.

For example, and again at a trivial level, as often happens to people of my age my memory for names has become unreliable. I forget the names of people I know quite well and see often. And when I do that, I also have a certainty that the forgotten name begins with a particular letter. I've spent a lot of time trying to recall someone's name which I am absolutely certain begins with S, and when I finally get the name, say by asking the person, I find it begins with another letter entirely. I works for places too. I want to tell someone about that place up the M1 I visited recently... but I can't remember the name. I know it begins with N - Nottingham, Northampton, Newark, Nuneaton... no none of those. Ah, now I remember; Sheffield. This happens so often I have learned that it is as good as certain that my certainty is wrong, and the name as good as definitely begins with a letter other than the one I am certain it begins with!

In criminal cases the evidence of eye witnesses is usually taken as decisive. But researchers into memory are well aware that our memories are much less than reliable. People have been convicted on eye witness testimony: the witness is certain of what he saw, the jury convicts. But at appeal some other evidence comes along, something incontrovertible such as DNA, and the conviction has to be overturned. The witness's memory, of which they were certain enough to put someone's freedom in jeopardy, proves to be wrong.

There is a report in The Guardian today about some research that has been done with mice. Technology is such that the researchers were able to plant a false memory in the brains of mice and observe its effects. This is just the first step. It may help us to understand human memory better some time in the future, or it may help someone to manipulate our memory to our disadvantage. But at least it is a step towards greater awareness of the unreliability of memory. I suspect that the greater the certainty the greater the chance that memory is wrong. We'll see. But I tend to think that anything that reduces our cocksureness of being right all the time is going to be a good thing.

Functions of religion

I spotted this on Twitter this morning, retweeted by my friend Mike Hitchcock:

"Religion is man’s quest for assurance that he won’t be dead when he will be."

I like that.  From my funeral experience as well as from my study of religion, that seems to me to be the case, although not the whole case. The desire for reassurance that death is not the end is very strong, even in non-believers. Another factor, which also applies to magic, is the quest for control over nature, such as through praying for rain. Both of those primitive desires or needs are very understandable.

Another primitive desire behind religion is the quest to understand, for example "where did all this come from?" Religions are loaded with attempts to answer that kind of question. And why not? For some reason we desire, maybe even need, to know. The only caveat with such a reasonable attempt is the necessity of the ability to move on when the answers given prove to be inadequate.

Nowadays, and for a very long time, religion has at least two other functions. First it bestows political power on its leaders and underwrites the power of the secular rulers, who always seem to be in cahoots with some kind of religious belief. Second, it provides reassurance that what you are comfortable with will not change.

The first of these keeps people ignorant and subservient and must be challenged. The second tells them everything is alright when it isn't and so hinders human growth and responsibility. So that too needs to be confronted.

Religious belief

I am as horrified by the events in Bangladesh in the news today as everyone else. Believers in anything calling for those who do not share their beliefs to be hanged is about as ghastly a thing as can be imagined, except that their wish should become reality.

But it is a sign or symptom of what I am for ever banging on about. Religion is not an intellectual commitment, it is an emotional one, held in the guts, and therefore the irrational motor of extreme feelings and actions.

Just consider a few examples of very clever people justifying their religious commitment with serious argument. The one I know most about is Augustine, Bishop of Hippo and intellectual giant of his time. In his writings you can find clearly set out his struggle with himself and his attempt to justify and develop doctrine through philosophy. His influence is still being felt today. But deeply as Augustine's thought ran, it's hard to see him other than as a man who felt, and felt deeply, first, and thought after.

I know very little about the Jewish philosopher Saadia Gaon, or the Arab philosopher Abū Bakr al-Rāzī. In fact, only what I've learned from Peter Adamson's podcasts. But it seems to me that both these learned and intelligent men were reasoning from within an established philosophical background in order to support their religious beliefs. It would be possible to make the same argument about many others, including such greats as Thomas Aquinas, right down to the present day.

As a theological student I was taught by a lady for whom I had the greatest respect and affection. She was unremittingly rigorous in following hard questions where ever they led. If I owe my move into atheism to anyone, it's her. But even she started from her religious conviction and argued in support of it, sometimes very radically. So much so she was on the fringe of being called, with al-Rāzī, "The Heretic".

If this is the case even for the most subtle thinkers how can it be less so for the rest of us? Without the intellectual capacity of philosophers, most believers don't actually reflect critically on their faith to any significant extent. This may be a sweeping generalisation, but my experience as a clergyman convinced me that there are some who are prepared to think hard, and to shift their position within the faith when forced by the line their thinking travels. There are some who find thinking about religious issues threatening, and who may join a Lent course once every few years, but largely they don't want to think in a way that challenges belief, they want to be confirmed and comforted. And there are the rest who don't think critically about their faith at all. For them, faith is a given, a fundamental emotional commitment. And when it is attacked, or perceived to be attacked, it is an emotional, sometimes violent, response that is provoked.

It seems to me that this holds true for every religious person that I have ever discussed the content of belief with. Once, long ago, when my own reflections on religion were beginning, I heard an august member of my local church say that science was no problem for his belief - there was nothing in scientific discovery that he could not reconcile with his faith. Then he paused - I remember clearly (but not necessarily correctly) the room, the time of day, the elder he was talking to: it made such an impression on me. And after the pause he said "If scientists could create life in a test tube, that might be the end of belief for me". I was 14 at the time. I have never met another believer who could say that there might be a rational cause for the end of faith.

Look at me: I had long realised that my beliefs did not stand examination, certainly not the kind of rigorous critical questioning that my doctrine teacher had encouraged. I recognised that all the evidence I knew about was that the Universe was very far from the place religion described. I was convinced by people like Don Cupitt that religion was a human invention. And still, I was a clergyman, taking services, to which I now think I was addicted in some way, for years after reaching that point. It was an emotional experience, the death from cancer of a friend, also a clergyman, who, with only days left to live asked me where I though God was "in all this", that finally killed what I had grown up with and been motivated by all my life.

Criticising the content of belief on rational grounds convinces no-one. Believers are satisfied that much of religion is and will always remain a mystery, and they don't expect to make sense of it. What remains important is criticising the pernicious effects that religion often has, which we see, sadly, all around us.

Immigrants clog the NHS?

It especially annoys me when I read the "Immigrants clog up the NHS" claptrap. Old people in need of expensive, recurring and long term care clog up the NHS - people like me in fact. Immigrants are normally younger, therefore healthy, and make few demands. If you see many Asians in hospital they will usually be older, they'll usually have been here many years, they'll usually have paid their taxes and NI Contributions, and so on.

Being married to an immigrant, I may have an axe to grind, but not a few of my friends are immigrants, and none of them fit the stereotype. My wife certainly doesn't clog up the NHS, despite being in an older age group. She works for it, has suffered stress because of it, and conscientiously does her utmost to provide the best possible service to its customers. She is not alone in that.

Last time I was briefly in hospital, in the cardiac unit, there were no immigrants among the patients, and several among the nurses, all of whom did a great job. When I was on the table the cardiologist giving me the benefit of her expertise was an immigrant, and the consultant in the department is at least of Asian descent, whether he is himself an immigrant or not.

Persecution? WHAT?

Carey, former ABofC, says that UK Christians feel like a persecuted minority. Frankly that makes me sick. The Christian church knows what persecution feels like. It can recall persecution long ago in Ancient Rome, and persecution in more recent times in Stalin's Russia. To call what it now happening, namely a reminder from the secular world of human rights and a rejection of religious privilege and flummery, 'persecution' is a deep insult to those who really suffered for their faith.

It also displays a profound lack of historical perspective which amounts to ignorance. And it displays an arrogance which thinks it has a right to privilege in Government (such as automatic seats in the Upper Chamber and the right to be kow-towed to in certain issues) just because the rest of society thinks it is time to move on from 2000 year old moral prescriptions towards something more authentic and fit for the present day.