The Reverse Robin Hood: or I Fought the Beast and the Beast Won

I’m not sure exactly when it happened that the British public decided that Bankers were agents of the devil, but it certainly seems to be the case judging by headlines this week. Well, maybe the press is on to something…

And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.

Revelations 13: 16-17 (King James Version)

A sad day today: in the case of The Office of Fair Trading versus The Minions of Satan (aka the High Street Banks) a decision was found in favour of the banks, ending several years of legal uncertainty. Well, for now…

Aleister Crowley, who declared himself the Great Beast. I'd prefer to have a cup of tea with him than sign a credit agreement with a high street bank any day!

Of course I do not literally think the British High Street Banks are the Beast prophesied in the final book of the Bible ; do they look like a lamb while speaking like a dragon? Um, well, now you mention it… That they are anti-christ seems quite clear: I mean usury (the lending of money at interest) is a mortal sin anyway isn’t it? So I like the term  “minions of Satan”, and encourage people to treat them just as you would if Old Nick appeared and asked you to sign a paper in exchange for a pile of  hot gold – if you must sign, sign in blood. This usually gets you chucked out of the bank before proceedings get nasty. Trust me, I know.

CJ applies for an overdraft facility.

Better you get chucked out or an ambulance or the police called than you lose your soul by dealing with the Devil.

What profiteth a man to gain the whole world, and yet lose his own soul?

Luke 9: 23

Yes I’m joking – I’m just mightily sore at this decision, and yet I can’t argue with the legal logic. It was the correct legal decision – but there are wider issues at stake…

The Reverse Robin Hood

So what is the Reverse Robin Hood? Something I found in the Anne Summers Guide to Improbably Acrobatic Acts? Not quite!It’s actually a memorable line from the Supreme Court ruling today

though Mr Sumption QC (for the banks) vigorously disputed Lord Mance’s suggestion that his clients were engaged in a sort of “reverse Robin Hood
exercise”

The phrase amused me, and lies at the heart of the controversy.

Banks exist to make their shareholders a profit. This is actually the responsibility of any publicly floated company, and therefore one can not blame banks for trying to make profits, no matter how many billion that may be. What is actually at stake here is not if bank fees are appropriate – I think it entirely appropriate I pay for the service provided; the question is how that payment should be taken.

At the moment we have ‘free banking’ in the UK – well 80% of people do.  The remaining 20%, the villains, in fact subsidize the free banking by paying these charges, which make up 30% of the revenues gained by the banks from their Current Accounts.

The villains who go overdrawn without proper authorisation pay many times the actual cost incurred to the banks by their indiscretion – and as a result, the 80% of good folks pay nothing. Fair enough?

Except — those 20% are the poorest members of society on the whole. People with enough money to live rarely go in to these unauthorised overdrafts simply for fun. OK a few do, because they have failed to watch their spending, or because a £25 fee is no big deal to them, so they would rather pay it than delay gratification. Unfortunately, for those who are actually in the bread line, an emergency like sickness means one often has to make the decision between going over and paying £25 fee to get the seven pounds fifty  for a prescription charge, or  not getting the pills. And trust me I know -I have a drawer full of prescriptions I have never collected.  A job interview? Same problem. I have lost all my savings I had amassed and bunt through my disposable income and had to borrow heavily just to get to an interview for a position I really wanted – the train fare alone was two weeks income for me. And I did not get the job, again…

Now to be fair, much of this is NOT a problem if you are on the dole, Income Support or similar. I know it’s hard, but I honestly miss the luxury of knowing I would get my bi-weekly giro. And free prescriptions! Unfortunately the only  state benefit I receive does not give on exemption from that or Council Tax for example, and a helluva lot of other people are in the same boat. It’s really mainly a problem for the working poor – those who actually do work, but are on low incomes. No amount of financial planning or savings can protect you against some of life’s disasters when you have £17.50 a week after rent & council tax to live off, and these people make up that villainous 20%.

And they pay everyone’s bank costs, covering the 80% who actually are never going to need to worry about having to go suddenly overdrawn. Hence “reverse Robin Hood” – not a sex position, but actually the way UK banking works - “robbing from the poor to pay for the rich”

The Sheriff of Nottingham ponders the size of his bonus as he prepares another Credit Card launch - so much easier than the olde methods of oppression!

This was NOT the issue at stake in the court case. In fact the Court Ruling goes some way to making clear that in fact the ruling was on the appropriateness of the tool used by the Office of Fair Trading to pursue the demonic horde – er sorry, I mean High Street banks – and that the tool in question, an EU directive, was incorrect. The OFT has gone off to lick it’s wounds, and I expect an announcement shortly – there are still plenty of legal options if they have the will to continue the fight. There is actually a FAR more dangerous legal threat to the banks lurking in the wings, but I shall ignore that for now as it has nothing to do with bank charges.

My Situation

I have just been hit for £100 by my bank for bank charges – puzzling, given that I have only one direct debit or other agreement, no standing orders, only one payment goes out – my phone bill – which I had funds to cover and have not gone over my agreed overdraft as far as I can see – until the charges came in last month, pushing me over.  Now i have been charged for being in debt cos I could not clear the last charge before this month.  That charge was equal to 10 days disposable income for me – the new charges represent six weeks disposable income. I am now locked in what will rapidly become a spiral of charges, which will eventually result in my ending up with a huge debt to my bank – all from one £25 charge, the cause of which I am still not aware of.

I have written to my bank, and had some correspondence – and was interested by what was said. I noted that I had signed up for a current account on the understanding that I could not actually go overdrawn, and that my solo card prevented me spending money I did not have. I was informed that in fact I can now go overdrawn, the contracts T&C’s* having been subject to change, and that they as a bank can in fact not stop me doing this, and can not allow me to put some block on my account so I can’t spend what I don’t have. I can NOT have a limit by which I can not go outside my overdraft. I asked why, and my understanding is this “service” is provided by a third party company. I need to look in to this, as it could have quite serious ramifications in terms of the legality of my original contract, subsequent variation,and Data Protection regarding sharing of my personal data with subsidiary or affiliated groups.

The End of Free Banking?

And here is the big bogeyman – the fear that like America, most of Europe, in fact most of the World we might have to pay a small charge for our banking.  The righteous 80% are positively frothing when you suggest that actually everyone paying the ACTUAL cost of their banking services would not really be unreasonable, rather than the poorest subsidizing everyone else.   The fact such an arrangement would be in agreement with principles of natural justice does not seem to bother them – they are terrified the bank might take their money.  Yet to the poorest the current arrangement is crippling, little more than loansharking. Why do I say this?

As you may have gathered I resent paying bank charges beyond my usual debit interest and the odd small fee, like the £9 which I used to be charged when I actually signed up to my contract if I did something dumb. That is today £25.  So when I needed money last month  (and I have just been scraping around to get change off the floor to buy a loo roll  – I get my money on Saturday) I decided that I would be a good responsible citizen, and extend my overdraft by fifty quid. It’s £200. I did not think £250 would break them. I had not been overdrawn beyond my limit in three years. I have no CCJ’s against me, and a small but regular income. So applied online for a one month £50 extension.

And they said it would cost me £25 for arranging the overdraft. Er what? It costs me £25 to go “informally overdrawn” – and £25 if I do it properly too? SO I phoned up, they confirmed the charge, and refused to extend my overdraft anyway. I ended up borrowing off friends, who ar every long suffering but realise my situation. Thanks to everyone who has helped so often!

Now the bank’s defence on their practices is that if you make an arrangement with them you will not incur the charges. I tried to make an arrangement – and the charges were still there? No less – exactly the same fee. So if i actually went overdrawn illegitimately, or legitimately, it would cost sthe same. And what is worse, they refused me anyway. So the bank has clearly decided I’m a bad credit risk – yet when I put my card in to try and get my last fiver out, it asked me if I wanted to pay £25 for the privilege of an “informal overdraft arrangement”.

I declined, and added another prescription to my collection.

So if Free Banking is threatened, I won’t cry too much. I’ll still pay, but you can be certain that te 80% will make sure that they are not ripped off, as they have the voices and power, and I don’t think it will happen anyway. Why? People are getting used to shopping around for the best bank account deals. They are realising that when a bank changes the rates or charges, they can move their money elsewhere. Credit Cards (which I don’t have) taught people the esoteric joys of balance tranfers. We are not like our parents who stayed with the bank down the road for life. Competition would reduce bank charges immediately once they are moved from those who can’;t afford them to those who can.

Furthermore, the government is the biggest stake holder in many of the High Street banks now. The bail out, what was it £62 billion or whatever, saved the economy. From my reading Gordon Brown actually did save the world, well at least the global economy while the Americans dillied and dallied. Good on him! I’m no fan of New Labour, but it was a beautiful bit of political intervention.  So maybe the political will exists to actually stop this nonsense, and stop the increasing gap between rich and poor in our society?

There is something pathetic about an administration legislating to end Child Poverty, yet not looking at the causes of that poverty, of which ruinous bank charges on the parents of said kids must come high in the causes. The government controls the banks – and can promise free banking on the banks they are major stakeholders in.

And the banks: the banks can stop this now. All they have to do is cap unauthorised spending – stop people taking money they have not got out of the cash machine, and charge what it actually costs to bounce a direct debit or whatever, not some exorbitant fee.  Sure people would suffer, as I do, because they can’t lay their hands on cash at the end of the month – but if you put them in a cycle of bank charges like this they will soon have no money by the middle, then the start of the month. So stop selling debt to third party companies banks, and make your limits stick. And get rid of the ludicrous charge on AGREED overdrafts.

Yes, profits might fall a little. Yes shareholders in the banks might get slightly lower dividends. But how many bank shareholders actually have kids in poverty? And aren’t we all shareholders when we pay tax since the bail out? Are we not entitled to join the party?

I fought the Beast – and the Beast won – for now. Yet it will not continue forever…

cj x

* and before anyone says – bet you did not read the Terms and Conditions carefully – oh, how wrong you are! I actually read them and understood them fully, and in fact far better in light of the relevant legislation than my bank appears to have.  I wonder why they do not hire solicitors to read their own T&C’s, rather than apparently just copy them from each other and earlier agreements? One day very soon this could cost them so much that a lot of banks might go under…  I find it incredible that many Banks seem unaware of the statutory requirements of the Consumer Credit Acts…

The Second Sermon of the Rev. Jerome

More silliness from the Dawkins forum, from my series of sermons. This one was much misunderstood at the time!

In this, the second of my Sunday sermons, I would like to take a moment to thank you all for the stunned silence which met my first sermon. At least I would like to think it was stunned silence — I suspect in reality it was either utter indifference, or an unwillingness to sit through a lengthy exposition. With these thoughts in mind I will now ask Mr Grimble on organ to play “Anarchy in the UK“, and for us to reflect deeply on the moving sentiments of that 20th century divine, the Rev. J. Rotten.

Thank you, especially to the choristers whose enthusiastic moshing brought a tear to my eye, especially that low aimed kick from Scrubbage minor. Let us proceed…

This evening, as we have all just witnessed, I received a right kick in the balls. And as I reeled around clutching my testes (and let us not forget testament derives from the same root, from the Roman custom of swearing veracity upon the testicles: still I know many of you know this for i have frequently heard you refer to the New Testament as “bollocks”, a knowledge fo ancient linguistics I find surprising in this remote village, but which assures me of your intellectual fervour and that my sermonizing has some effect… anyway, I was moved to think by Scrubbages attack on my manhood, “how often in life do we need a sharp metaphorical kick in the nads; and how often do we receive it without asking.”

Now it is fashionable these days to decry old fashioned notion of good and evil, and to pretend that evil and sin simply do not exist. How can such nonsense persist in a culture filled with learned scientists, dedicated to truth and rationality? Empirically i can assure you that sin and evil exist – for evil even now dwells within my nads, a nagging ferocious pain, and the look of ferocious malice and delight on Scrubbages face as he kicked me left me no doubt that he has a black sadistic soul, and a sadistic streak which would put the divine Marquis to shame: in short that he is exactly of the normal character of choir boys everywhere. If there is one error popularly ascribed to Rome I can have no understanding of, it is the often claimed propensity of their priests for choir boys. I doubt it can be more than a myth, as would anyone with even passing acquaintance with the breed who sing here.

Now does any here doubt the existence of evil? Scrubbage will deliver empirical evidence to your satisfaction, if you would care to come forward? He has a most excellent right boot? No? Why are my altar calls so unpopular these days? Very well, let us proceeed…

It would be easy for me to administer my wrath upon the unfortunate Scrubbage, were it not that I too was once a boy, and know that the urge to aim a kick a pompous old balding jackass in a cassock in the balls is one not lightly resisted. This is part of that burden of sin we all face — the urge to do what comes naturally, but what one really should not, for the benefit of others. I don’t care much if you want to spend an evening with the entire Welsh Rugby team high on drugs in a San Francisco bathhouse: what you do in the privacy of your own head is none of my business. Despite rumours about me climbing a ladder to stare in to the voluptuous Edna Nibbins bedroom window, I can assure you what you do in your bed rooms is no concern of mine. Looking at the size of most of you reared on a diet of MacDonalds and super-sized choco milkshakes, oozing out of your Sunday best, buttons straining against cheap polyester even imagining your sex lives renders me nauseous. I’d prefer to develop a mental lens cap when it comes to your vices – solitary, communal, or with the goat, the fetters, and the lard.

What bothers me is when you do not act in a spirit of love, charity and forgiveness. Note I say ACT. You can mentally act like a James Bond Villain for all I care, torturing unfortunates, sleeping with a bevy of beautiful women and winning the Church Bingo four weeks running. If however your actions bring misery upon others, then we have a problem. To think about such things – well it’s none of my business, and who am I to know? Yet to act with malice, to bring about deliberate evil, that is to engage in sin. And the problem with dwelling on evil thoughts is one tends to get rather caught up in them, like a girl trying to work out where her boyfriend was on Tuesday night after the pub, after Chastity Entwhistle gave him a lift home. She thinks and thinks and thinks: Chastity is a slapper, as many here can attest (nods to Chastity), and Brian a Dork – but Fiona’s mind dwells upon it till she calls Chastity a slag in public. Oh how easy it is to sin! See, I just did!

Now we often sin quite inadvertently. and cause misery to others. We should be sincerely repentant, and do our best to make amends – Chastity, did i forget to mention the Miss Joyful Prize for Raffia Work you won this has had the five pound prize replaced with a mini-break to Disneyland? – and we should sincerely ask for forgiveness, which looking at the surly pout on Chastity’s prize haddock face may be some time in coming. Damn! I did it again! Er, Chastity, see me after the sermon…

So why does evil come, when all we desire is good?

SEX.

Yes, you heard me, it’s all down to SEX. And I am deadly serious. For in the act of sexual reproduction, we take on Original Sin, the base mammalian traits and survival characteristics encoded in our Selfish Genes. In short, we act with animal instincts, because we are biological beasties, born through sexual reproduction. And let us never forget the stirring final chapter of the Book of our Prof, in which RD tells us a great truth – that we are by nature, naughty, wicked and inclined to act like irritating little shits, like in fact, choir boys. Yet RD reminds us that we have a true Grace, a chance of Redemption, for we alone of the greater primates (excluding possibly choir boys – I understand one once acted altruistically, a little angel in South Park Colorado called Eric Cartman, though others have expressed doubts) are capable of making moral choices, seeing ahead, and acting for the good of others – in short repudiating our selfish genes, and embracing loving kindness through imaginative sympathy with our neighbour.

Miss Jones! Mr Louder! Not that kind of embracing and loving! there is a place for that sort of thing – its the vestry cupboard, through that little door over there! And yes the flying helmet and the wet stick of celery is imaginative, but not that imaginative – I watched ‘Allo ‘Allo too!

Anyway, lest I drone on till the older members need funerals and someone decides to try and get a discount rate, yes, I can see you yawn. Yes, this is an awful lot like Christianity, and the teachings of Jesus and Paul. Yet if CS Lewis can get a Hollywood blockbuster deal, and so can JRR with his trilogy, well there has to be a place for crypto-Christian messages in todays society. And unlike those gentleman, I’m here and happy to be called a boring old fart and answer back.

Now if we can all sing Hymn no. 23 I fell in Love with a Starship Trooper – I trust you all brought your torches??? – I will just take Chastity outside for some much needed personal catechism.

May Your Mods be With You…

j x

The Mescaline, Apologist & Book Depository

What do Aldous Huxley, CS Lewis and JFK all have in common? They all died on this day forty six years ago today – November 22nd 1963. Oddly, they all strike a curious resonance with me — though JFK the least of the three, I was far more influenced by Huxley and arguably Lewis, though I never liked his apologetics works, apart from The Screwtape Letters.  Anyway, in memory of three great minds, I’ll raise a glass. Heaven and Hell, wherever they ended up, that would have made one hell of a dinner party that night…

cj x

Religion is NOT a mental illness

OK, a word of explanation. Lisa was doing a pharmacy paper on this subject, and I thought I’d do my version, using some of her notes and stuff. See what you think!

The argument that religious belief is a form of delusion is a common one. In psychiatric terms it is not correct; DSM IV clearly states that this, where delusions are stated not to include ‘articles of religious faith’. (American Psychiatric Association, 1994, p. 765)”

DSM IV does contain a new category of religious or spiritual problem –

“V62.89: This category can be used when the focus of clinical attention is a religious or spiritual problem. Examples include distressing experiences that involve loss or questioning of faith, problems associated with conversion to a new faith, or questioning of other spiritual values which may not necessarily be related to an organized church or religious institution. (American Psychiatric Association, 1994, p. 685)”

This was adopted for the fourth edition. It has proven controversial – but this refers to psychiatric problems related to religious belief, not religious belief in itself. Delusions can of course take on religious aspect, and some religious beliefs may be delusional, but a standard definition of delusion,

“A delusion is a false, unshakeable idea or belief, which is out of keeping with the patient’s educational, cultural and social background; it is held with extraordinary conviction and subjective certainty” (Sims 2003)

Cultural and social background clearly excludes most ‘mainstream’ religious beliefs. A woman who believes her cat is a deity may be delusional; a man who rips out the hearts of victims to offer them to the sun god is delusional, unless he happens to be an Aztec priest of a former era, in which case arguably the definition would endorse his beliefs. Religious belief in itself is clearly not a delusion. in psychiatric terms.

Are religious people, if not delusional, still psychotic? Some have argued that the religious are neurotic, and that religions roots lay deep in personality issues ( for example, (Freud, 1939)). Others have looked for neurological and organic problems, most famously Michael Persinger with his ‘God Helmet’ experiments. These however were not double blind, and when replicated without the subject knowing if the machine was running or not or the purpose of the experiment did not work, showing suggestion at the root of the claimed results. (Granqvist 2005)

At the heart of the discussion of whether those who believe in a God are psychotic must be whether that belief, theism, is a false belief. Richard Dawkins has become famous for asserting “there is no evidence for God”, (Dawkins, 2006) but the claim is clearly untrue – many people claim to have experienced gods, and there is much evidence offered. When challenged he asserts he means “there is no scientific evidence for God”. This however is equally problematic – the basis of all modern Science is methodological naturalism –

“It is an epistemological view that is specifically concerned with practical methods for acquiring knowledge, irrespective of one’s metaphysical or religious views. It requires that hypotheses be explained and tested only by reference to natural causes and events.” From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalism_(philosophy)

As such questions of God’s existence can not be admitted as scientific questions, and no scientific evidence can be offered. Also The Problem of Induction is settled in all modern Science by Hume’s assumption (see http://18th.eserver.org/hume-enquiry.html) of a universe governed by Natural Laws which are uniform and constant, which precludes direct Divine Intervention. If a God or Goddess exists it will be invisible to Science because of the axioms underlying all Science.

Science is not the only way of understanding however – the questions “how do I feel today?”, “what caused the First World War?”, and “does my mother love me?” are meaningful but not scientific. One can quite rationally argue a proof of a Creator using modern cosmology,  (see Davies 2006, Rees 2000)  or philosophical arguments. such as the Kalam Cosmological Argument  – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalam_cosmological_argument

References

American Psychiatric Association (1994) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition, DSM IV. Washington: American Psychiatric Association.

Davies, P (2006) The Goldilocks Enigma, Allan Paul

Dawkins, R (2006) The God Delusion, London, Black Swan

Freud, S, (1939) Moses and Monotheism, London, Routledge.

Granqvist et al (2005) ‘Sensed presence and mystical experiences are predicted by suggestibility, not by the application of transcranial weak complex magnetic fields’ in Neuroscience Letters, 379(1), p.1-6

Persinger, MA (1983) ‘Religious and mystical experiences as artifacts of temporal lobe function: a general hypothesis. in  Journal of Perceptual and  Motor Skills. Vol 57( Pt 2):p. 1255-62.

Rees, M, (2000), Just Six Numbers : The Deep Forces That Shape the Universe, Phoenix

Sims A (2003) Symptoms in the Mind: An Introduction to Descriptive Psychopathology.3rd Edition,  Saunders.

A Logical Argument for Existence of God(s) or Goddess(es)

Had a bad day. today. Dave Sivier came over and we had an enjoyable discussion on increasingly bizarre plans for “better faster cheaper” space exploration – NASA’ s current strategy in case you have not heard the phrase, culminating in a discussion of ideas for building a cheap Brunel-era tech space elevator, and I read some stuff Beast brought over on the development of the mammalian brain, and got very excited about the morphology of Eocene Lemurs. The gas man failed to show, but I slowly went down with a feverish cold and feel rubbish, and not at all with it.  Therefore as I feel rough I shall attempt to offer something not too ambitious in the way of posts tonight – my old attempt at a logical proof of the existence of God seems a good start…

OK, it was a couple of years ago, and someone challenged me to prove the existence of God in one post on the Dawkins forum, and silliness ensued. May amuse…

“OK, I shall argue the existence of God from the World of Warcraft.

1. WoW (or any MMORPG) is a simulated world with it’s own programmed physics in which players take part in an immersive mutual reality. If you are not familiar with it the best documentary is South Park’s episode Make Love, not Warcraft (link contains sound and obscene humour) which is on cable most nights this week I think.

2. My proposal, based on Nick Bostrom’s famous paper http://www.simulation-argument.com/simulation.html - the Simulation Hypothesis – is that given predicted exponential growth in computing (assuming we break the supposed Silicon limit) future virtual universes may be indistinguishable from the real thing. See the work of noted theologians Rob Grant & Doug Naylor in their opus Melior Quam Vita, part of their Rutilus Dwarf series of philosophical investigations for an example. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Better_Than_Life

3. Given that our universe is said to appear to be highly “designed”, as in the infamous problem of Fine Tuning, and the collapse of our normal understandings at Quantum levels, I suggest that this may simply be the level of programming code, and that it is extremely likely that we are living in a simulated universe generated by a civilization that has surpassed our own level of advancement. As virtual universes are easier to construct than real universes, we might infer the odds of us existing in a virtual universe are far higher than those of us existing in a real universe.

4. As the response to Fine Tuning usually suggested (including by Professor Dawkins) is multiverse, let us run with this and allow an infinite (or vast as required by Fine Tuning) number of universes. The odds of those universes having produced an advanced civilization which manufactures virtual universes therefore approaches certainty, and as these numbers increase vastly so does the number of virtual universes increase (probably exponentially) as does the likelihood we live in a virtual universe. This argument was amusingly developed by cosmologist Paul Davies. SO Fine Tuning or NO Fine Tuning, the argument holds.

5. The programmer of such a universe is outside time/space, super-natural, can change physical laws at whim, created and can destroy the simulation, and can of course “incarnate” by entering the simulation. Furthermore they can provide virtual afterlife, or switch players from previous simulations, giving reincarnation type effects. In effect with regard to their creation (including us) they are a God. This idea fits perfectly with the model of reality proposed by certain atheistic forms of early Buddhism, or more recently by William James in Human Immortality. If you must you can mention The Matrix, a film I have never actually seen, because my friends try to lynch me whenever it comes on.

6. Therefore the existence of God(s) is at near certainty! If Christianity’s claim that we are made in the image of God is to be considered, then these deities might be rather worrying though.

Feel free to critique my logic — somehow I doubt anyone is going to convert! As you may have gathered, I’m not entirely serious, though actually it is rationally coherent and entirely as far as I can work out logical. I welcome any serious critique, because though I have not, you can seriously argue this! Is it not a rational proof of the existence of Gods? “

This led to much discussion – but despite the bad humour and tone, I was being serious. I’m not convinced, but once you start to think in these terms it’s much easier to understand  how real theology works and why the whole God hypothesis is not as ridiculous as people seem to assume.  If you are interested in the cosmology underlying this look for the works of Lord Martin Rees, President of the Royal Society – especially Just Six Numbers – and Professor Paul Davies excellent The Goldilocks Enigma which I had not read at time of writing but which covers all the arguments for Fine Tuning of the universe wonderfully, as well as  giving you a whistle stop tour of modern astrophysics. However one night a few weeks ago I was up at 4am or something, and caught What We Still Don’t Know, a documentary series presented by Lord Rees. It was superb – and one episode in particular struck an incredible resonance with me, and might well amuse anyone who has read my argument. Have a look at it, because the exposition of the ideas I’m playing with is a thousand times more beautifully presented here, by people who know what they are talking about.  If I have time tomorrow I’ll talk through the critiques of Cosmological Fine Tuning briefly, and discuss why “I still believe in God, even if He no longer believes in me” to slightly misquote Wayne Hussey  Here is the episode on YouTube (contains sound and flashing images) – but really, do take the time to watch this…

What We Still Don’t Know -final episode, Lord Rees

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylxRBESxAlM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1FFs4g9Y10

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1Beve83wmY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9-RSyuw_9E

I’m off back to bed to rest. Night all.

cj x

Walking in Nature, Admiring the Designer’s Handiwork

An old post of mine from the Dawkin’s forum, I happened to think of…

My headache was such tonight I finally gave up on writing, and went out walking. It is a bitterly cold night, and my face is raw. I walked through Nature, admiring the handiwork, yes the Design; the staggering variety of form, texture and shape, the fragile ephemeral beauty of Nature’s dance, the rhythm of the scurrying life forms. The designs startled, enthralled, and confused me – at times I could see no real purpose in them. The night was filled with colours, a vast prismatic spectrum of shining jewels – yet I could not see why I would be able to perceive them at all? I am glad I can, humbled by their splendour, and the little green goblins which bade me cross the road shone like burning emeralds across the cityscape, but why can humans see so many colours? Is it a by product of some other evolutionary process?

Mystery! Can a God creep in here, into this nest of incomprehension?

Not tonight – I am a Christian, but here the hand of the Designer I beheld was the hand of humanity.

Let my friends go to some woodland glade to picnic in Nature – my Nature is the city at night! Let them walk over hill tops, staring at picturesque farms and flower filled meadows, and babble at the beauty of Nature – forgetting that even ugly old CJ is part of nature, and his house, these curious alleys, tiny streets, and towering glass malls are all part of Nature! They look for Nature as something other, something distinct – they hope to commune with the natural. Yet how can they do otherwise? the rivers of headlights, the pounding of the dance music from the clubs, the staggering waves of students reeling home – every bit a natural as the Lark and the Linnet? Why do we admire the wonder of the cherry blossom, and feel excited by the sight of a sunrise, yet miss the beauty of the cat graffiti’d on the wall of the Working Men’s Club, and the cascade of golden lights which fall down the Bingo Hall?

The hand of humanity is everywhere in the City – yet the farms, hilltops and woods are just as much shaped by those hands, its just those who did not grow up out there, where the town is an amber glow on the horizon, amidst the rustling of the woods, the shuffling of cattle, and the great loneliness beneath the stars — they miss the Designer.

We humans are part of Nature, and our towns are part of Nature too. The Lie we are not; Nature is the Other, is a strong and sometimes seductive one, but I resist it now, and see it’s idiocy! Maybe the cold effected my brain, and I will come to my senses as I thaw, but for now, I praise the natural world, and the mysteries of bus depots, the magic of the pavements, the wonder of the shining electrical stars.

cj x

July 4th – My challenge to Christian America

I just noticed that it is the night of the Fourth of July, so happy Independence Day to the US readers!

And for any fundamentalist Christians, I will hereby accept your surrender of the United States of America on behalf of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, and the restoration of the colonies. After all, you would not want to go against the Holy Bible would you?

As we all know, “no taxation without representation” was a cry of the traitors like Washington, Jefferson, Franklin et al. They objected to what is today the USA being a colony of the noble British Empire, and as uppity colonials always do, thought they should run their own affairs. Jolly bad show all round.

Rather than managing to lose the war against us Brits, and getting hanged as they so richly deserved, this disreputable mob of traitors won. OK, 1812 and the White House open air bonfire and rockets party made up for it a little, but it still irritates.

However luckily these foul “Founding Fathers” were clearly a bunch of irreligious maniacs, or simply did not know their Scripture. For what system of Government does God endorse? Imperialism and colonies paying taxation without representation. For is it not written “Render unto Caesar what is Caesars, and God what is God’s?” This clearly indicates the economic system then prevalent in the Roman colony of Judea was acceptable.

So stop whinging, and give us our colonies back, and we can celebrate true patriots like Benedict Arnold and Cornwallis, rather than perpetuate this irreligious treason?

Now of course, you may object to being forced to submit to Great Britian, in which case I will cheerfully accept a surrender to me personally. I have never been a King before, but have no real objection to trying something new. I don’t think American Democracy is faring well, so why not give Enlightened Despotism and a totally nonhereditary “I-just-felt-like-giving-it-a-shot monarchy a go? King Christian I – has a nice ring to it?

I will of course give the Native Americans due credit – they were there first. Mind you, in the UK so were the Welsh…

Everyone else though, how can you go against the clear word of God and support this overthrow of a rightful government? Have you not read Paul’s Epistles, if my earlier theological justification does not convince?

I await your surrender with eager anticipation. Maybe afterwards we can have a nice cup of tea, and a plate of cucumber sandwiches?

Happy 4th July!!!
cj x

The Medium and the Massage: a ghost story…

A short post till the hour comes round for this rough beast to slouch to TESCO, being bored…

I trouble not myself about the manner of future existence. I content myself with believing, even to positive conviction, that the power that gave me existence is able to continue it, in any form and manner he pleases, either with or without this body; and it appears more probable to me that I shall continue to exist hereafter than that I should have had existence, as I now have, before that existence began.
Thomas Paine –The Age of Reason

Oddly enough, despite a dramatic “ghost” experience in 1987, I did not immediately come to consider seriously the afterlife hypothesis. After all one might come up with many explanations of “ghosts” which do not require the human to persist in some sense beyond death, and for many years I did (and still do in they majority of cases I think) favour those. I am as noted personally disinclined to consider the survival (life after death) hypothesis – it strikes me as deeply counter-intuitive.

Anyway the summer of 1993 saw me reasonably well versed in parapsychology, and how to investigate a “haunting”. That summer I was contacted by a gentleman who owned a small hotel, and who stated his family who lived there had been troubled by a series of ghostly happenings – could we do something about it? Immediately we have a problem – I want to investigate ghosts, but people who call me usually wanted to get rid of them! I am a researcher, not an exorcist, no not even a ghostbuster! Fortunately a few months earlier we had also met a psychic claimant, Morven, who asked to be tested to see if her mediumship was genuine, or self delusion, or something else!

Morven was a lovely middle aged woman from Ireland who had been in the area for about two or three years.  We agreed to the test, and with our “haunt” some thirty plus miles away in another town, felt it unlikely she could have foreknowledge of the case.  As by profession I am a researcher, I conducted newspaper archive and book searches for material on the locations “haunting”, and established that no stories had been published for almost twenty years, but that there was a legend of a maidservant who hanged herself in one room after she found herself pregnant and her lover went off to the English Civil War, never to return. This necessitated that we go to elaborate lengths to prevent the medium gaining knowledge of her location.

We therefore placed cotton wool over her eyes, and taped it in location. We then placed a sleeping mask on top, before employing a full head bag of total opacity, secured at the neck to prevent peeping.  We placed a walkman with loud music on, and drover her out of town by a circuitous route, doubling the 30 mile trip. I did not reveal the location to my team until minutes before we set off, when one sceptic went ahead to make sure any obvious items in the five hotel rooms we planned to use for the experiment were removed, and the curtains secured to prevent any glimpse of the sky line or other external identifying features.

The haunted Old Bell; Camera flash on wardrobe not an "orb"!

On arrival the medium, now thoroughly car sick and gagging was taken as quickly as possible in to one room, and the hood removed. Our research ethics were awful! She however soon perked up, and identified one room as the haunt location.  Now this was correct, though if she had gone by the published accounts she would have been wrong – the rooms had been renumbered ten years before as I had previously established. Still she had a 20% chance of that!

She then reported a strangling sensation, and said a woman about 5′10” tall had hanged herself in the room. Fine, but rather tall we thought, and hardly unlikely given the age of the building! Furthermore she described turn of the century dress – 300 years out from the accounts we had! A radio team present taped (and broadcast next day) her “reading” – and the highpoint was the suggestion of unhappiness (do happy people hang themselves?!!),too much  booze and a name. She gives the name as follows – “Amy – no, Emmy. The surname is almost the same. Yes, it’s something like Emmy Emily”. She offered NO other names, and a few minutes later we had to open the window to giver her air, calling the experiment off..

I (rather gleefully I am afraid) told her she was completely wrong.

She wasn’t.

A week passed, and an interested local historian, Lionel Ayliffe, checked out the local coroners records – to find the only suicide recorded in the building happened in 1904, a lady named Amy Amery who was a servant who hanged herself after being dismissed for being a drunk.  This material had not been published as far as I can ascertain since the tragedy in 1904 when it had appeared in a local newspaper.

Reputedly haunted corridor at the Old Bell - naked CJ pics next time!

I am still disinclined to the mediumistic hypothesis by nature, but following this apparent success I decided to experiment further. The medium made a number of correct statements, and one possibly  incorrect – that the body was buried in the church opposite, something we could not ascertain. It was no more than a spark, but it got me interested. I claim no real evidence here – coincidence perhaps? – but it led me to at least investigate the survival hypothesis.

Psychic News article on the incident

Annoyingly, the tapes are lost. There is an account in The Psi-pher, the CPRG magazine, written close to the time – that is filed with the SPR, and in the British Library, but I don’t have a copy.  I will try at some future date to find the newspaper articles from the local press at the time. The “hit” was impressive – and I am tempted to speculate on how Morven could have gained access to the information, by various natural and “paranormal” hypotheses.  For the moment however, I’ll reflect more on the whole issue of mediumship…

Morven is no longer with us. I worked with her till 1995, when she became clearly unwell, and she died of breast cancer, refusing all but palliative care, brave and cheerful to the end. Her absolute conviction death was not the end was demonstrated int he immense courage with which she refused treatment. She left a wonderful son and daughter, two lovely people, and my memories of her are all fond. She died far too young, and I was angry about it, and I must say blamed her belief system to a small extent, however irrationally. Fear of death does make you fight harder maybe? Still Morven, I hope you are happy somewhere and giggling at me writing this… I’ll write more on Morven another time, in tribute to her memory.

Morven “did feet”. She was  reflexologist I think, and she insisted on doing this to my feet, free of charge. It was ok I guess, I did not really think it would have much effect, but it was soothing I think, depite my cynical jokes throughout the session. I really hope I did not offend her, now at least! I can be, like Clovis, terribly frank.  One night after the session she offered to try and get in touch with the Other Side for me, and despite my utter religious and moral rejection of necromancy and mediumship, I said, “well if anyone has a message I’ll gladly hear it.”  Eventually she did give me a message, and with some heavy prompting by me, she finally gave me one part of a message I had expected from my grandmother. If she had then given the second part, I would have been convinced – as it was, I’m afraid I was not.  There was nothing evidential to me in the message: to this day, no one has ever given me the two things i would expect to hear from her.

Why do I have problems with mediumship? Partly, it is to do with the dignity of the dead. I dislike treating the dead as performing seals.Here are the wise words of Stan from South Park –

You see, I learned something today. At first I thought you were all stupid, listening to this douche’s advice, but now I understand that you’re all here because you’re scared. You’re scared of death and he offers you some kind of understanding. You all want to believe in it so much, I know you do. You find comfort in the thought that your loved ones are floating around trying to talk to you, but thnk about it: Is that really what you want? To just be floating around after you die, having to talk to this asshole?

Now obviously I do not feel this way about Morven. She was a truly lovely, talented human being, who felt she had a special gift. Yet, in most cases in my experience, given enough time mediums do suffer in their own lives. The Fox Sisters succumbed to alcoholism I have met some lovely mediums, like my dear friend, Natalie, but I have also met some who I could honestly categorise as douches. Except possibly a douche has some valid medical usage – I don’t know… Yet to me, dabbling with the dead does not seem to generally result in much good. Ironic words for a fervent investigator of mediumship and spontaneous cases? Well, look at it this way – I use the bus analogy.

Imagine you are on a bus, and a stranger tells you to end your marriage. They inform you they are your long lost uncle, know all about your life, and while they really just tell you a lot of platitudes, with maybe a couple of verifiable facts, they insist they are telling you the best, for your own good. Would you take that advice? I have a frind who told me she was given up on her plans to study Classics at postgraduate level, because the board had advised her.  The university board? A board of classicists? I was puzzled. No, it turned out the board she was taking advice from was – a ouija board! To me this is tantamount to insanity. Sure, I’m probably really offending vast swathes of the readers of this blog – well a couple of you, as amazingly fifty people a day do read this, why I have no idea – anyway, I can only say it as I see it.

Now, what is the difference between listening to a medium, or supposedly a “disincarnate, disembodied spirit” and the guy on the bus who says he is your uncle? Some Christians believe they have the gift of discernment of spirits – I sure as hell don’t – but I can judge things by their fruits, and i have never been persuaded That much good cvomes of taking advice from the “dead”. My problem – are they always the dead? Pretty much every culture has a tradition of daimonic spirits, demons, evil spirits, angels, call them what you will- non-human intelligences.  Many mediums talk to me about “lower astral entities”, who impersonate the dead. So really dudes, I’m a bit wary. In fact I’m more than a bit wary – I’m positively opposed to listening to the “dead”, and making life choices on that basis. Sure my religious thinking probably results in prejudices, but if these things exist – how do we know they are what they say they are???

So do I believe in life after death? As a matte rof religious faith, yes. “Everything is NOT pointless” is CJ’s mantra, and I’m a colossal optimist – where Louie and I differ sharply.  But evidentially? Again, a guarded “yes”.

What really made me decide to favour it was the JSPR papers of Robertson and Roy on their PRISM research. These experiments examine the common (and on the face of it reasonable) sceptical claim that the statements given by mediums which purport to come from deceased communicators are so vague and general as to apply to anyone, and secondly that “cold reading” (which is possible, I can do it myself) whether conscious or unconscious accounts for any successes. Now as communication theorists generally agree that over 50% of communication is non-verbal, and that latter is demonstrable (even by me) to be possible, then immediately we need to devise quite a complex protocol for testing a medium.

What Roy and Robertson did was to design a simple procedure, by which a mediums statements to an individual in an audience were recorded. They then asked people not present how many of the statements they could accept, and found a incredibly high difference between the two sets of results. It was statistically demonstrable that chance could not account for the difference. The probability was less than 1 in 10,000 million the results were due to chance. Somehow the mediums were making statements which were NOT generally applicable, though about 30% of statements were vague enough to be taken as true by the average person. However over a large sample the statistics speak for themselves — somehow the medium was receiving information, or the recipient was far more likely to accept statements than the later research pool of a similar demographic “marking” the statements.

Now I’m sure that would not surprise anyone at all. After all the medium can SEE the audience member,and receive feedback. I’m sure we are all familiar with Cold Reading, and Hot Reading (deliberate research and preparation) remains a possibility. Therefore I am not especially surprised that the experiment gave the results it did…

However Robertson and Roy did not stop there. They published their protocol, in their second journal article, and deliberately sort out critical and sceptical evaluation. The protocol was tightened to a triple blind experiment, where the medium was not able to see the audience, and the audience did not know who was the recipient, and the two experimenters did not share this information two and a half years they conducted trials with this basic protocol and six different variations. And their conclusion? The statistical evaluation clearly showed that somehow the mediums were “hitting” far beyond probability, and that the chance could not be responsible. Some other factor is involved – what it is we do not know.

Sure that does not mean all “mediums” can do this. Most are doubtless deluded, charlatans or simply mistaken. The selected mediums studied however, chosen for their integrity and seeming ability were somehow obtaining information without any obvious sensory cues, in triple blind experimental conditions. That in no way proves afterlife – I can think of several other possibilities – but it was equally clear that cold reading was not responsible, and that in fact 60%+ of statements made were far too specific to be accepted by an audience, regardless of the common assertion that is exactly what is happening.

So at the moment, I accept the theoretical possibility of life after death and even mediumistic communication – but I’m not a huge fan of talking to the dead.

Anyway time for Tesco! If anyone actually read this far do comment, and I admre your patience with my dull uninteresting nonsense.

cj x

The Story of St. Edmund

Story time! As son of a pagan Dane, from Bury St Edmunds, you can see my interest!

I wrote this years ago – in places I use Suffolk dialect, and it’s written from the perspective of someone in 1220 Bury St Edmunds….

‘This is the tale of Saint Edmund, long regarded as the Patron Saint of England, though I understand some Crusaders pay reverence to St. George who slayed the dragon’ he announces… ‘though I have heard that owd George was foreigner!’

‘Some say four hundred years ago King Alcmund was King of Saxony, across the North Sea from here. He had no heir on account of the fact he kicked his missus when she was pregnant, and needing a son decided to go on pilgrimage to Rome and make amends. While there he was a staying in the house of a widow of noble estate, and she did see a brilliant burst of light like the sun burst from his chest and prophesied that he would give birth to a child whose fame should like the sun reach all four corners of the Earth. When he got back his missus Siawara got with sprog roight quick and gave birth to young Edmund.

Over ‘ere King Offa of East Anglia, for we was a nation in our own right then, had no son because his heir Fremund had got it into his head to become an hermit! Thus Offa had to go a looking for an heir, and went off on pilgrimage to the Holy Land. On the way he stopped at Alcmund’s, and thought Edmund a fine fellow, so when he died on his way back he left word and his ring that Edmund was to be the new King.

Young Edmund took leave of his father who was right sad to see the young bor go, and sailed to England landing at Hunstanton in Norfolk. Where he
landed he gave praise to God for his safe journey and twelve sweet crystal springs sprung up out of the ground; to this very day they cure the sick
and folks take the water away in skins for those who be a needing it.

He was a good and wise King – by the time he was thirteen he knew his Latin Psalter off by heart, and at fourteen he came to be crowned King of East Anglia. During the year he prepared for his crowning he lived at  Attleborough, and his crowning was carried out by Bishop Humbert who anointed him on Christmas Day with the Holy Oil, he having scarce a month turned fifteen.

The coronation was held at Bures near Sudbury, where a royal palace stood in those days… The site where he was crowned is now the Church of St.Stephen on the hill overlooking the River Stour.

For ten whole years he ruled justly and well, as it is said -

‘Against poor folk shut not was his gate,
His wardrobe open all needs to relieve,
Such royal mercy did his heart move
To clothe the naked and the hungry feed,
And sent he alms to folk that lay bed ridden.’

Then two Danish brothers, evildoers and Pagans, named Hubba and Inguar invaded and landed at King’s Lynn with a huge army. This is how that came to be -

Some years before King Lothparck., the father of the Danish brothers was  blown in a gale to the coast of East Anglia. He was received at Edmund’s
court and treated royally as his status deserved, and taken hunting by  Edmund and his huntsman Beorn. Lothparck was a brilliant huntsmen and
every one admired him; this fair put Edmund’s hunter Beorn’s nose out of joint! When Lothparck went off to take a ship home Beorn waylaid him in
the woods and murdered him.

Lothparck’s faithful greyhound uncovered his master’s body, and Edmund was furious. He sentenced Beorn to be set adrift in a boat, and this was done
.
Fate however blew the exiled Beorn straight across the North Sea to Denmark. There he laid the blame for Lothparck’s death not on himself but
on Good King Edmund! The Brothers swore to avenge their father and set off for England.

The Danes rampaged up to Scotland, burning York and sacking Ely. Then
they made their way down to Thetford, where they made a great camp, and prepared to finish the business that had brought them here in the first
place. The King’s army fought well, but they were few, and the Danish
army thousands strong. Finally there was a great battle and to avert
further killing Edmund was forced to flee. He hid under Hoxne bridge, but a bride and groom crossing to their wedding saw him and betrayed him to the Danes, and as a result the bridge is cursed so no newlyweds will cross it to this day. Edmund was surrounded and meekly surrendered himself to their mercy, but they had none.

They demanded he should surrender his treasure, and reign as a subordinate King. Bishop Humbert tried to persuade him to give up, but he refused, unless Inguar accepted Christ as his Saviour and became a Christian. Edmund was tied to a tree and shot full of arrows, and then “haggled all over by the sharp points of their darts, and scarce able to draw breath, he actually bristled with them like a hedgehog.” He continued to call upon Christ, so they struck off his head and carried it into Haeglisdun Wood where they threw it in a thicket.

The following Spring the Danes had left and the East Anglians went looking for the head. They found it miraculously preserved, with a wolf guarding it
who led them the head by it’s howls. The wolf gave up the head, and it was carried off to join the body – when the two were put together they
miraculously reunited with only a thin thread like red seam showing where he had been martyred. The saint’s body was brought to Bury, and the
pilgrims visit the Shrine to this day.

Many kings have paid tribute to Edmund – Edward the Confessor took him as his personal saint, and too many miracles have happened to tell ye all now. Canute was a great follower of the Saint; his own father was struck dead by the wrath of the Saint when he threatened to lay hands on the shrine, and that is how it came to be that Canute gave the Liberty of Saint Edmund to the Abbey at Bury and that the Abbot rules us as the rest of the land is ruled by the King, on behalf of the King.

I think I have shown that Saint Edmund was a Glorious Saint and Martyr andmuch better than anything London town can provide talk of!’

Why do I think the New Testament narratives contain historical truth?

One of my friends over on my ghost forum wrote:

Much of the discussion I have had…  is regarding the bible. I asked the question – “How do you know the bible is a true record of what happened in Jesus’ life? That the disciples (or whoever else wrote it) didn’t elaborate on the stories in order to promote the religion that would have been seen as a ‘breath of fresh air’ at the time of Christ – hope when all else was gone.”

I thought this was interesting, so I hammered out a very quick reply, which I thought I would share…

To answer this properly would require a huge amount of time, so briefly – we don’t know the authors of most of the New Testament (henceforth NT) books. If Jesus dies in 1933, the Gospel accounts we have today were written between 1965 and about now – 2009 (just subtract 1900 to get the real dates). So the question is can we be certain about accounts written a long while after the events?

Well the first thing many people do not realize is that in the NT as well as the four gospels of Matthew Mark Luke and John we have the Epistles, which are divided in to two groups – the Pauline Epistles, and the Pastorals. The Pauline Epistles are all accredited to Paul of Tarsus, a persecutor of the early Church who converted – a bit like if James Randi became a medium and a major figure in Spiritualism over night. Paul also crops up a lot in one other books, Acts of the Apostles (also in the NT) which tells the story of the early Church after Jesus died. It’s a really fun story – you can find it here -http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Acts;&version=31;9; It was probably written by the same person who wrote Luke, so we call the author Luke.

Now of the Pauline Epistles Biblical Scholars (who are called Biblical Critics) believe seven were actually written by Paul. He was writing using my timeline example in the 1950’s, and died about (19)64 or (19)65, probably killed in Rome by the Romans. So his works date back to within 20 years of the crucifixion – more importantly if Jesus was crucified in (19)33, then he converted and began his ministry in (19)35 or 19(36), and knew a lot of people who were eyewitnesses, including Jesus’ brother James. So we have pretty direct testimony. (The other epistles were mainly probably written circa 1980 to 2010). All these dates are subject to debate, but these are mainstream scholarly figures.

So why believe the gospels contain truth about Jesus? Would we believe a ghost testimony from 1933? Was Borley Rectory really haunted? IT depends on the quality of the evidence. We all know stories can grow in the telling (though evidence suggests much in the paranormal/miraculous may be rationalized and forgotten) but one thing is pretty certain – there was a historical teacher called Jesus, who lived, died on a cross executed by the romans and inspired the movement today known as Christianity. Various kooks have tried to argue that he never existed, or that he was a version of a pagan deity, and older story given new life – but these claims are while popular (and they even got repeated by Stephen Fry on QI, who gave the Mithras December 25th rubbish) absolute nonsense. I have as it happens written a chapter of a book recently on them, and i can promise you it’s bilge. I might well post some extracts later. All mainstream historians agree there was a historical Jesus who was crucified. (A good mainstream study of what is called “the historical Jesus” is EP Sanders book, but the Jewish scholar Geza Vermes has written some excellent stuff too from an explicitly non-Christian perspective. There are also some good atheist  books on the historical Jesus as well.)

Anyway, what we now have to establish is the order the books were written. With the Epistles, I have already mentioned the most likely dates. The Gospels are more complicated – almost all scholars agree Mark cam first, and was available to and used by Matthew and Luke (traditional names for the authors) when they wrote their books. However Matthew and Luke also seem to be aware of each other – but who wrote first? This question of which order these thee gospels were compiled is called the Synoptic Question, from the Greek term for similar or same – because they all tell much the same story. (the end of Mark is missing, and a bit tacked on to complete it – more on that another time.)

The remaining gospel, John is totally different – Jesus in it goes off on long speeches which are not like the ones in the other gospels, and it is more “theological” – less of a history, more of what Jesus meant. Most scholars date John last, but it may well contain elements, particular the Passion narrative – the bit about the crucifixion – which are older than the rest, indeed possibly the oldest of all our sources!

It is interesting that they disagree on which day Jesus was crucified – the Synoptics say the Passover, John the Eve of the Passover. Nonetheless, despite details varying in all the gospels, the general story is the same. We find the same traditions, littles stories called pericope, from the Greek word for beads, which were preserved and handed down by the earliest Christians, and the authors each told the story according to how they saw it , arranging the pericope in a string to make the story as they told it. You see how that works? Now if the Church had actually invented the whole thing, then we would actually expect the stories to agree far more. But they don’t. Look at the Resurrection accounts. Original Mark if it ever had one is missing – Paul certainly knew about it, and yet the other Gospels all tell different accounts of who went to the tomb first, and exactly what happened that day. This is what one would expect of a real event, muddled by years and retelling. If they invented the story, well they’d have got the story straight.

Secondly there is a key thing called the criterion of embarrassment. The heroes of the story, the Apostles, often look like real dumb asses. Peter, arguably the most important disciple, denies even knowing Jesus three times. They squabble over who gets to be head honcho in heaven., They repeatedly fail to understand him. And even Jesus says things that were awkward for the early Church – it strongly seems that he expected the world to end at any time, and God to end history before the disciples were all dead. Yet they died, and the world goies on. (this is actually not as fatal as it sounds, but it is a very important issue – the end of the world is something we call the Eschaton, the study of it Eschatology.) Then Jesus says his mission is to the Jews, not the Gentiles who he likens to dogs. This was really quite a problem for the church which was rejected largely by the Jews but flourished among Gentiles. I could go on, but you get the idea. So yes, the accounts are real enough – otherwise none of this “embarrassing” stuff would be in there! OK, so why trust them? Very early on people start making up all kinds of claims about Jesus, so there has to be some measure of what is a real account, and what is rubbish. Generally the books believed to be real became part of the Bible – this is called the canon, the development of which books constitute our modern New Testament. For a book to be in the canon, it had ot be credited to an eyewitness, and apostle, pretty much. Because from the beginning that was how it worked – those who were with Jesus in his life, and saw what actually happened were given the leadership – they were the Apostles, and authority was investyed in them. When they died off the Gospels were posibly written to preserve their beliefs.

There were other books – mainly much later, but some early, which were rejected by the Church, as not fitting what the eyewitnesses taught. Many of these are known as gnostic gospels, and i’ll talk about them another time, but they won’t (with one possible exception) get you any closer to the historical Jesus. And now I really, really must go to bed.

Anyway hope of some interest to someone – it really is written for people with absolutely no idea about these things, and yes I know one could easily dispute bits.

cj x