eChurch Blog

The British Humanist Association (BHA) has welcomed a new revision of the model funding agreement for Free Schools by the Government in order to preclude ‘the teaching, as an evidence-based view or theory, of any view or theory that is contrary to established scientific and/or historical evidence and explanations.’ This highly significant change has been made in order to ban creationism from being taught in Free Schools, and prevent creationist groups from opening schools. The change follows the BHA coordinating the ‘Teach evolution, not creationism!’ campaign, which called for this precise change.

In September, the BHA came together with thirty leading scientists and science educators including Sir David Attenborough, Professor Richard Dawkins and Professor Michael Reiss, and five national organisations to launch ‘Teach evolution, not creationism!’, which called on the government to introduce statutory guidance against the teaching of creationism and garnered significant press coverage. The BHA also launched a government e-petition making the same call, which has now garnered over 20,000 signatures.

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A few links I found interesting for one reason or another:

CIFwatch – Was Moses a colonizer? The Guardian’s Nicholas Lezard uncovers why us Jews are kleptomaniacs

pmphillips’s posterous – The Way of Death is paved with…

Left Foot Forward – 2012 – the year the world must wake up to Christian persecution

NewScientist – The hard way: Our odd desire to do it ourselves

Trinitarian Dance – Dealing with personal sin is like extracting an ingrown toenail.

USAToday – The God effect: ambition drops with temptation

Linen on the Hedgerow – Be Gay friendly – or go to jail!

Science and Religion Today – How Can You Tell How Humble Someone Is?

Cranmer – The quest for the elusive ‘Conservative Particle’ in the Coalition Collider

Christian medical Comment – Lessons from Stephen Hawking and Kathryn Higham about assisted suicide

The BBC are leading this morning with the totally impartial headline: Assisted suicide: ‘Strong case for legalisation’.

This of course refers to the findings of the pro-euthanasia panel of ‘experts’: The Commission on Assisted Dying.

This commission was chaired by pro-euthanasia supporter Lord Falconer and funded by pro-euthanasia supporter Terry Pratchet and set up by pro-euthanasia group Dignity in Dying.

Regular readers will know my views on the death cult euthanasia and as there is so much being said on t’interweb right now I don’t feel the need to chime in, but will simply link to Christian commentary. I’ll probably update links as I stumble across them today:

Opinionated Vicar – BBC campaign for assisted suicide continues

Church of England – Statement on the report of the Commission for Assisted Dying

Catholic Commentary – It’s OK to need to be cared for

iBenedictines – Law and Life

Christian Medical Comment – Lord Falconer’s commission – help in reading what lies between the lines in their press release

Christian medical Comment – Individuals and Organisations who refused to give evidence to Falconer Commission

Christian Medical Comment – Falconer report on euthanasia ‘biased and flawed’, says Care Not Killing

Cranmer – What about Dignity in Living

Bishop Nick Baines – Assisted dyeing

Vic the Vicar – Being ‘In Control’

Will’s Blog – Assisted suicide and the “panel of experts”

Ben Trovato – BBC’s Euthanasia Campaign

Nancy Wallace – Can Assisted Suicide be Right?

The Telegraph: Cristina Odone – Two men with money and influence are trying to change the law to make dying easier. It’s scary

Vic the Vicar – Assisted Suicide – CofE get it right

Calvin L Smith – “Allow Assisted Suicide”

Catholic Herald – Lord Falconer’s safeguards will not make assisted suicide any safer

A Brief Encounter – Legalised Killing

MercatorNet – The New Year should begin with ideas for saving lives, not for killing them

Protect the Pope – Bogus commission’s pro-euthanasia report should be voted on by House of Commons –Tory MP

Christian Concern – The Falconer Commission on assisted dying: Do not be fooled

Feel free to let me know of other links or pop them in the comments.

And here’s a poem lifted from CounterCultural Father written by Catholic poet Elizabeth Jennings:

The law’s been passed and I am lying low
Hoping to hide from those who think they are
Kindly, compassionate. My step is slow.
I hurry. Will the executioner
Be watching how I go?

Others about me clearly feel the same.
The deafest one pretends that she can hear.
The blindest hides her white stick while the lame
Attempt to stride. Life has become so dear.
Last time the doctor came,

All who could speak said they felt very well.
Did we imagine he was watching with
A new deep scrutiny? We could not tell.
Each minute now we think the stranger Death
Will take us from each cell

For that is what our little rooms now seem
To be. We are prepared to bear much pain,
Terror attacks us wakeful, every dream
Is now a nightmare. Doctor’s due again.
We hold on to the gleam

Of sight, a word to hear. We act, we act,
And doing so we wear our weak selves out.
We said, “We want to die” once when we lacked
The chance of it. We wait in fear and doubt.
O life, you are so packed

With possibility. Old age seems good.
The ache, the anguish – we could bear them we
Declare. The ones who pray plead with their God
To turn the murdering ministers away,
But they come softly shod.

A few links I found interesting for one reason or another:

Maggi Dawn – Battle On

A biologist’s view of science & religion – Typologies, categories, and the myth of science and religion at war

Washington Post – Vatican launches Catholic home for U.S. Episcopalians

Engage – Daily Mail reports that halal meat rejected in Parliament restaurants and cafes

A Tiny Son of Mary – God Bless the Oratorians!

The New Oxonian – Accommodationist of the Year!

Doug Chaplin – Maybe they should be ashamed of that gospel?

Theology Under Construction – Should Christians Refuse to Explain Christianity?

There is no doubt in my mind that there are many ‘churches’ in this country which would fall easily under the definition of a cult. From my experience they practice scriptural literalism and are in effect their own Magisterium. Oddly enough this ‘literalism’ doesn’t tend to stretch to the Sacraments. They are ‘independent’ in that have have no ecclesiastical hierarchy and therefore no accountability.

They are usually insular and avoid interaction with the wider body, for example: “Churches Together”. They tend to view other Christians as ‘not saved’ which begets a ‘them and us’ mentality. The hierarchy is usually comprised of one pastor and his ‘elders’ and they detest what they would term as ‘institutional’ churches such as Anglicanism and Catholicism, which they view as ‘deceived’ or ‘pagan’. In extreme cases this loathing may include ALL other denominations, sects and cults, making them true lone rangers. In other cases they may loosely affiliate with an umbrella organisation to lend an air of respectability.

I think you get the picture; in a nutshell, Biblical fundamentalists.

Given the nature of these fundamentalist organisations it would be difficult to know how prevalent they are, but it’s interesting to note in this regard that the leading UK organisation for Cognitive Therapy – BABCP British Association for Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapies – has deemed this issue important enough to publish a series of articles in their in-house journal – CBT Today.

These articles are also available on their website which I will link to below, but first a caution. These articles were written in the US which has been picked up by Dr Rob Waller, Consultant Psychiatrist (BABCP Member) and he comments:

As you read these I think you will see that this is a very serious and sad problem and something that undoubtedly grieves Jesus and that he would wish his church not to do. However, because these articles are written from an American perspective, it can read as though most evangelical churches in the UK fall into this category. The word ‘fundamentalist’ means different things each side of the Atlantic.

I wrote a response to these articles which was published by the paper journal alongside the second article, but does not appear on their website. I have therefore reproduced the text below. I wrote it jointly with Greta Randle, Chief Executive of the Association of Christian Counsellors, and Gillie Jenkins, an expert in cult religions and pathological spirituality. Among other things we were surprised by the number of column inches over three editions given to this relatively niche topic and presented in [our view] quite a biased, antagonistic and pro-atheist way.

Please make up your own minds.

It’s well worth reading Dr Waller’s response to these articles first, before proceeding to read the articles themselves; which can be found on the following links:

Religious Trauma Syndrome: It’s Time to Recognize It 

Understanding Religious Trauma Syndrome: Trauma from Religion

Understanding Religious Trauma Syndrome: Trauma from Leaving Religion

In the centre spread of my local free paper is a wonderful account of the geological marvels of my local Forest of Dean. Here’s some snippets:

The Soudley Valley today is a peaceful and scenic place, teeming with wildlife and with a little stream winding through its heart.

It makes it almost impossible to imagine the landscape that David Owen describes as as we begin our walk following one of Gloucestershire Geology Trust’s Trails. “400 million years ago Britain was part of the supercontinent known as the Pangaea that had existed for about 100 million years and would last for another 200 million years,” he says.

“This part of the continent was almost completely South of the equator and would have been a hot, arid landscape. Pretty much all of the Forest of Dean, however, formed part of the river estuary four times wider than the Amazon today.” It was totally unlike the Amazon however as at this point in Earth’s history there was little complex life at all on land.

David says: “Although there were fish in the sea, there were no plants as we know them today at all and certainly no large animals on land.”

This fascinating piece continues bursting with interesting facts and cites the oldest rocks in the forest as being some 400 million years old!

David Owen continues:

By now we have reached 350 million years ago. Still well before the dinasours but at the point where plants were beginning to colonise the land in numbers and fish had crawled out of the water and evolved to breath and walk on dry land.

It’s at this point when life began to flourish on land, that much of the mineral wealth of the Forest was formed. In geological terms, humans have been here for very little time at all, but their impact has been huge. People have been closely entwined with the geology of this area ever since they moved here a mere few thousand years ago. They exploited iron, coal and stone which had formed millions of years earlier.

I’ll leave the piece here, but you get the drift; this is an informative and interesting article and comes complete with nice pictures of rocks.

But this article also comes complete with something rather odd.

I abruptly stopped reading half way through, when my eye caught sight of large red rectangle box embedded at the end of the article, emblazoned with this heading:

YOUNG EARTH CREATIONISM.

Here’s what is said within the box:

Scientists are almost unanimous in their agreement that the earth is billions of years old. In fact, it’s probably one of the few areas of science in which there is such complete agreement. There are a few Christians and Jews who disagree however and date our planet, as our predecessors in Biblical times did, at between 5,0000 and 10,000 years old. They believe that the earth was created, as Genesis describes, in a very short period of time. David says: “It is possible to have strong religious beliefs and reconcile that with modern scientific thought. I have a colleague who is working on some of the oldest rocks on the planet, believed to have been formed not long after the Big Bang. He’s also a committed Christian.”

Seriously why did they have to spoil a perfectly good geological piece with this condescending rubbish? What possible motivation could they have had. It certainly adds nothing to the scientific understanding.

What on earth was the point of it? Can anyone tell me?

It’s just plain weird to me.

A few links I found interesting for one reason or another:

Thirsty Gargoyle: L’esprit de l’escalier: Third Thoughts on Redefining Marriage

Daydreamer: The truth about depression

Church Mag: The 5 best toys of all time

Countercultural Father: Mass on Saturday Evening or Sunday Morning?

The Atlantic: Is Iran already under attack?

BioLogos: The miracle of light

The Orthodox Church Blog: Will this be the first time the world sees the Ark of Covenant? Leaking roof in Ethiopian chapel ‘will lead to relic being revealed’

The Telegraph: David Icke – would you believe it?

The Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, has come under considerable fire for insisting that ‘spiritual health’ should be part of an amendment to the Health and Social Care Bill.

Dr John Sentamu told peers: “I am one of those who believe that human beings are psychosomatic spiritual entities.”

Here is a snippet from the National Secular Society (NSS) on this matter:

“When spirituality is considered as part of healthcare, the non-religious often lose out, even when the term is made very broad. At a time when the NHS is facing severe cuts, surely the most important thing is to treat patients and keep them alive long enough to worry about the state of their souls?”

Firstly, as spirituality is already considered a part of healthcare, how on earth do the non-religious lose out. Are they saying that resources would be taken away from the non-religious. Wouldn’t it be more the case that their care will remain exactly same, but with an enhanced spiritual care facet available for those that need and request it.

Secondly, I think that conflating ALL spirituality with religion is flawed. It’s not hard to find folks practicing their spirituality in a non-religious manner. If what the NSS are really trying to say is that the ‘non-spiritual’ would lose out, then wouldn’t that be their own choice, as presumably they wouldn’t wish to be involved in this side of care.

As for ‘keeping folks alive long enough to worry about their souls’, well this is a luxury that is simply not always available, and sounds to me quite a brutal approach. Coupled with this, might be the fact that attending to the patients spiritual needs, may indeed enhance life expectancy anyway.

Especially in life-shortening illnesses, spiritual support may be as simple as having someone listen to the patient. It’s not all about providing answers, and from a Christian perspective, pastoral theology guides us in how to love wisely, and surely everyone is looking for that.

In my palliative care training during the week, we broke into small groups and discussed our ‘spiritual experiences’. Now do bear in mind that the groups were a mixed bag of folks from all different backgrounds, ages, belief-systems, and none. The one striking observation was that everybody – without exception – had a spiritual experience to relay. Whether is was: walking the dog, observing nature, music, myths, births, dreams, or whatever; everybody described their experiences of feeling ‘spiritual’.

This simply reinforces to me that Dr John Sentamu is correct in his appraisal of humans as spiritual entities. This also reinforces the needs to incorporate this vital element into any holistic medical environment.

Now some will say – especially members of the NSS – “I’m not spiritual”, OK, fair enough, then you won’t need this aspect of care, however, many, many, others do.

So why seek to deny others this valuable part of holistic heathcare, just because you don’t need it?

That’s the headline emblazoned on the Richard Dawkins website (Thoughts of God Make Us Slackers, Study Suggests), which has been lifted verbatim from the LiveScience website.

As usual things are a little more nuanced than first appear and the excellent Tom Rees of Epiphenom has written up the study; which I’ll reproduce here under his Creative Commons License:

According to some new research, your ideas about gods can significantly affect your approach to life. Lead researcher Kristin Laurin (at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada) and colleagues Aaron Kay and Grinne M. Fitzsimons (Duke University) ran a series of priming studies, in which the subjects had to form sentences from scrambled sets of words or read a passage about god as part of a bigger study (so they didn’t cotton on to the fact that they were being primed). By carefully choosing the words, the researchers could subliminally prime the subjects (all undergraduate students) with different ideas about God.

What they were interested to know was whether reminding people about God can make people less interested in actively pursuing goals (perhaps because they think that God will take care of everything for them) or better able to resist temptation (perhaps because they think God is watching them and will frown upon moral weaknesses!). What they found was that both things can happen, although which effect you see depends upon the type of God that you prime.

So, for example, when they primed the students with a passage describing a controlling God who “understands what it is like to be in our shoes”, they found that the students subsequently expressed less interest in signing up to additional study to attain career goals (such as becoming a lawyer, nurse or stockbroker). However, other students primed with the same god concept declared that they were more able to resist the temptation to hang out and have fun with their friends on an evening when they should be studying for an important exam that was a required step in attaining that career.

In other words, if you pump up people’s idea of god as controlling, then they feel more able to resist temptation, but less inclined to work hard to achieve their goals!

In other studies, they dug into other facets of this relationship. They found that students primed with the idea of god valued achieving just as much, it’s just that they were less inclined to put the effort in.

Participants who had read a short passage about God subsequently ate fewer cookies than did those who had read a control passage about a topic unrelated to God. Resistance to temptation was particularly strengthened in students who read passages describing God’s omniscience.

The researchers conclude that reminders of God can influence real world goals in both positive and negative ways. What the overall effect will be will depend on what exactly the task in hand is – whether it requires self control or the drive to achieve. It also, they say, depends on what kind of God you have in mind:

If, on the one hand, a person is reminded of God, and this activates the representation of an omnipotent, but not omniscient, external force (whether as a result of features of the reminder itself or as a result of how the person represents God), the net influence on the person’s self-regulation might be negative. If, on the other hand, a person is reminded of God, and this activates the representation of an omniscient, but not omnipotent, external force (whether as a result of features of the reminder itself or as a result of how the person represents God), the net influence on the person’s self-regulation might be positive.

It would seem these proposed changes to the General Medical Council’s guidance, may have been prompted by the recent case involving Dr Richard Scott:

Pulse magazine reported last week that the General Medical Council is planning to ‘harden’ its guidance on religion in practice.

The document Good Medical Practice (2006) is the core guidance to doctors and describes what is expected of all doctors registered with the GMC. Although the guidance is addressed to doctors, it is also intended to let the public know what they can expect from their doctors.

The GMC says that it is reviewing Good Medical Practice ‘to make sure it is up to date and fit for its many purposes’.

A formal consultation will be launched later this month and will lead to publication of a new edition of the guidance in 2012.

The new draft guidance has added a duty for GPs to consider ‘patients’ religious, spiritual and cultural history’ when assessing patients.

The regulator also plans to tighten up anti-discrimination guidance on doctors expressing personal views, including religious beliefs, in consultations.

Its previous guidance had stated: ‘You must not unfairly discriminate by allowing your personal views to affect adversely your professional relationship with patients.’ Its new version removes the word ‘adversely’, requiring GPs to challenge their colleagues’ behaviour if there is any effect to the professional relationship.

Once ‘Good Medical Practice’ has been modified it is expected that the GMC will then move to modify its supplementary guidance ‘Personal Belief and Medical Practice’ which goes into these matters in far greater detail.

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The GMC’s suggested new approach will not just make things more challenging for Christian doctors but will have implications for any doctor of any faith (or none) who expresses a personal belief that he or she feels might help (about anything) to a patient. This has the potential to lead to many more complaints against doctors and many more cases for the GMC to examine. The regulator could be walking a very delicate path indeed.

I suspect it will not just be Christian doctors who will be awaiting the draft guidance with much interest and examining its wording very carefully.

SOURCE

So much for the holistic approach.