Spain's Stolen Babies: Where Angels Fear To Tread

Without spending much time on this -- I'm swamped with work -- I was sent a link to a blogpost this morning that's worth addressing simply because misconceptions should be tackled as quickly as possible.

The blog in question seems to tend toward the obsessive, not to mention lacking in knowledge of what it is it's opposing -- it could learn a lot from Sun Tzu's greatest precept -- but I'd agree with more if it than the author would expect and its author has posted a couple of fairly reasonable comments on other blogs, so it strikes me that it's worth engaging.

You'll know the story, of course, if you've been watching telly this week. There was a programme on BBC the other night called Spain's Stolen Babies, which claimed that under Franco numerous Spanish Catholic doctors and nuns misled the parents of newborn children that their babies had died, whereas in reality they'd been sold on to more 'desirable' couples. What the BBC documentary revealed* was horrific, and what it suggested was far worse.

That said, it was only a TV programme. No serious historical work has been done on this. We need to tread cautiously.

As far as I can figure out, it looks like there have been about a thousand certain cases of this sort of thing; the programme's 300,000 figure was just speculation. That's one of the things Caroline Farrow was getting at on her blog, linking to some useful articles: that we just don't have the data to judge, and until we do it makes no sense to be shrieking about it. It's horrible, but we just don't have enough information to evaluate how historically significant this was, let alone into what was driving this, whether individually or systemically. I have my own suspicions of how this will play out in terms of numbers, time, and geographic prevalence, but they're just speculative too. As long as facts are thin on the ground, the only honest and reasonable think for anyone to say about the situation is that we just don't know. I think a prudent reserve is the best response to this.

William Oddie made some interesting points about the documentary on the Catholic Herald site, and though I think Oddie was slightly wrong in what he said, it wasn't in the way the anonymous author of the Catholic Internet Watch blog seem to think.

Oddie's completely right to say that the same principle was at work in Franco's Spain as in today's United Kingdom, that being that the State knows best and has the right to decide that children would do better when reared by people other than their natural parents. The fact that there are more checks and balances here in England than in Franco's Spain doesn't change the fact that the same principle is in play. That said, he's wrong to omit the issue that those who engaged in this activity in Spain seem, at least sometimes, to have had a financial interest in doing so. That's an important omission.

(Though again, until the facts are in, we shouldn't be rushing to any kind of judgement on this. It was just a TV show, after all.)

On a broad historical point, the fact that Franco's gang had taken power with the support of Hitler and Mussoline doesn't really mean anything; his opponents were backed by Stalin. It doesn't make sense to view the Spanish Civil War with external eyes: it was a profoundly Spanish conflict, and one in which both sides were glad of whatever help they could get, from wherever it came. Certainly, the defeated side was no more pleasant than the victorious one, as is shown by how they raped nuns and mutilated and killed thousands of priests. Orwell, who'd gone to Spain in naive support for the Republican forces, was turned off his natural allies to a massive degree when he realised their willingness to trade atrocities with Franco's people.

The CIW blogger is spectacularly wrong, I'm afraid, to say:

'And those priests and nuns were not just authority figures; they were the face of a religion possessing divine authority to determine whether you go to Hell or not.'

I'm not sure whether he sees this as being reasonable grounds for said priests being murdered or mutilated and said nuns being raped, though that seems to be the case, but that aside, he's completely off the mark when he says the Church possesses -- or claims to possess -- divine authority to determine when people go to Hell or not. In point of fact, the Church never says anybody is destined for Hell, and it does not teach that anybody is there. Indeed, it's theologically impossible to say that anybody in particular is in Hell.

That the blogger thinks that the Church makes such claims really just shows his complete incomprehension of what it is he's attacking. Again: read Sun Tzu.

The rest of the piece is little more than an ad hominem attack on Oddie for having once said he found himself agreeing with Stephen Green's Christian Voice group more often than he disagreed with them. Green seems a fairly unpleasant piece of work, but note that Oddie has never said  he agrees with Green all of the time, or on what issues, merely that on balance he found himself agreeing with him more often than not. I can think of lots of people who I'd agree with more often than not, while nonetheless differing from strongly on some major issues.

It concludes by turning to a couple of forum threads, one of which raised the question of whether the Pope would have known of this. The blog takes the view that these are just instances of Catholics whining and feeling victimised by the media; I'm not sure that's fair. The problem with the bulk of the media, surely, is not so much bias -- not that there's not plenty of that -- as ignorance, with ignorance of both science and religion being particularly prevalent. This ignorance results in all sorts of crazy ideas, such that many people seem convinced that the Pope wields absolute control in the Catholic Church. As John Allen puts it:

'The implied image seems to be that he sits behind a computer terminal deep inside the Apostolic Palace, making all the decisions for the Catholic Church. However entertaining it is to think such thoughts, reality is a good deal more prosaic.'

So, lest Catholics panic or anti-Catholics sneer, let's be clear on this: whatever was happening in Spain, it's almost 100 per cent certain that the Pope didn't know about it, much less command it. There's very likely that hardly any Spanish bishops ever knew about it either. And indeed, in a very important sense, it doesn't make sense to say 'the Church' did this or even that 'the Church' was complicit. People throw out such claims all the time. They should take some time to find out and think about what the Church is.

Hint: it's not a corporation with a pyramidal structure and clear lines of command.

* I say 'revealed'. The story was new to me, but wouldn't have been new to anyone who'd read Time magazine back in March, the New York Times in July, or Business Insider a fortnight back.

Nugent's Nonsense: Spilt Ink in the Irish Times, Part 3

I'm increasingly convinced that either the Irish Times has a surplus of paper and ink or else Michael Nugent knows where some very embarassing bodies are buried, because his latest piece on atheism is even worse than his previous ones, and it's hardly doing the paper any credit to have that wasting space on its pages.

Entitled 'Atheists and religious alike seek to identify foundation of morality', this week's article addresses the issue of morality, and soon gets to the heart of the matter: either morality is something subjective that we make up or else it is something objective that exists independently of us; in practical terms, he says, this matters little as we all have the same task, that being to decide together what we believe to be right and wrong.

I'm not sure whether this is of quite such practical irrelevance as Nugent feels, not least because if morality is an objective reality, rather than a mere matter of opinion, then this invites serious questions of how such an intangible thing could be an objective reality. I'm also not sure how he envisages us getting together to decide what we all believe to be right and wrong: if people on the far side of the world decide it's perfectly moral for them to kill baby girls while they're still in the womb, who are we to tell them that this is morally wrong unless we believe that there is an objective morality which transcends cultures and fashions?

Enter the Straw Men...

Still, dodging the fact that a transcendent morality is an idea with serious implications, and that an absence of transcendent morality would reduce morality to the basic and toothless principle that it's nice to be nice, Nugent pooters on:

'So what criteria should we use? Most religious people believe that their god (small "g") dictates what is right and wrong. Most atheists believe that we have to work it out ourselves.'

Yes, there's that category mistake again, resolutely confusing the ideas of 'God' and 'god' just like he's done in the last two articles. You'd really think that by now somebody would have pointed out to him how different the two concepts are. Or else you'd think that if somebody had pointed this out, he'd have understood. Maybe he's just not very bright.

That aside, though, watch how Mr Nugent lines up his straw men. The idea that most religious people believe that their deity dictates what's right and wrong and that they don't have to work it out themselves -- aside from spiking the argument very quickly and very conveniently on one horn of the Euthyphro Dilemma -- is complete tosh. Religious people, even when believing that they've somehow received moral guidance from their deity, nonetheless have to spend a lot of time wrestling with moral issues. That's why moral theology tends to be a huge field of study. Matters aren't simple, and most religious people are smart enough to realise this.

What's more, Christians tend to recognise that all of us do and can work out morality for ourselves, with the proviso that at some level God defines our morality and empowers our moral behaviour, regardless of whether or not we acknowledge his role in this. We believe there's a Natural Law, a transcendent morality to which we should all subscribe, and that we're gifted with the faculties necessary to discern this transcendent morality. Look at Romans 1:19-20, which says: 'For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. Ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made,' and 1 John 4:19, which recognises our moral behaviour as an expression of God's love 'We love, because he first loved us'.

Nugent's line that religious people believe their god dictates what's right and wrong doesn't really hold up for Christians, as it happens; I can't speak for devotees of other religions, but Christians have always recognised God as not merely being a being who dictates what's right and wrong, but a being who is the defining expression of rightness. That's what Aquinas's 'fourth way' is about: that we recognise an ultimate standard of goodness, which we call 'God'. This is the running theme of 1 John, as it happens: not that God tells us what's good, but that God is love, and that as such all goodness is an expression of him, empowered by his love.

Nugent's First Difficulty

As far as Michael's concerned, there are two problems with the religious view of morality -- or the religious view as he understands it, which is of course not quite the same thing: 

'Firstly, different people believe that different gods are telling them that different things are right and wrong. Even when people believe in the same god, they often believe that this same god is telling them that different things are right and wrong.'

The first sentence doesn't really work, not least because it rests on the idea of different gods. Religious people tend to believe there's only really one God, and that he communicates just one morality; if we differ on God's nature or indeed on the nature of the morality he communicates, this is merely because people have misunderstood, for one reason or another.

And no, this isn't a new way of thinking. The Romans did it all the time: they didn't think a Roman god led away the souls of the dead Romans and a German one led away the souls of dead Germans; they instead thought Mercury and Wodin were the same deity, worshipped under different names. Likewise they didn't think there were lots of different sun gods or thunder gods, handing over duties when in someone else's territory; they assumed a basic pantheon which was understood differently from culture to culture.

As for the next sentence, all Nugent's really saying is that religious people have to think about what morality entails, and what might constitute moral or immoral courses of action. I'd hardly call this a problem. It's only a problem if you take the view, as Mr Nugent appears to do, that religion is something that should stop our thought; the reality, in my experience, is that it gives our thoughts a reliable foundation.


Michael's Second Difficulty
Nugent's next point really brings home the significance of the category error he's been making throughout this series:

'Secondly, there is the question that Plato raised in his dialogue between Socrates and Euthyphro: if you believe in a god, what criteria does your god use to decide what is right and wrong? Do gods cause random torture to be wrong, based on an arbitrary decision, or do they identify that random torture is wrong, based on independent criteria? If it is the former, then they could just as easily have decided that random torture is right, and so morality is arbitrary. If it is the latter, then there is a foundation for morality that exists independently of gods.'

The Euthyphro dilemma asks a very good question in the context of gods, such as the Greek Olympians or the Norse Aesir, but it's a false dilemma when dealing with the concept of God, as understood by pretty much every religious person who might read the Irish Times. Remember Aquinas's fourth way? God is the ultimate standard of goodness, or, as the New Testament tells us God is truth and God is love.As such, Christians don't believe that God either decrees or discerns what is right; rather, God embodies -- for what of a better term -- rightness, and rightness is an expression of God.


Dodging a Bullet
Look at that second problem Michael thought he could see in religious approaches to moral questions. Embracing the false dilemma that the Euthyphro proposes for Christians, Nugent says that gods, if they exist, must either decree what is  right, based on arbitrary criteria, or discern what is right, based on independent criteria. This, of course, is far less of a problem for God than it is for us. We're faced with this question: do we decide for ourselves what we decree good and bad, or do we discern it based on some independent criteria? And how does Michael Nugent express this? Watch...

'This brings religious people into the same place as atheists in seeking to identify the foundation of morality. Many atheists believe that the best criteria to use is: what effect does this action have on the well-being or suffering of sentient beings?'

Yep, he dodges the question of whether morality might, in fact, be wholly arbitrary and instead assumes that morality is objective and has a foundation which we can identify. This isn't something that just can be assumed if you're an honest atheist: I know quite a few and they are quite open about the fact that, in principle, it makes no sense for them to claim that there is an objective and binding morality. It's Hume's famous is--ought problem: you cannot construct an 'ought' from a universe consisting solely of 'is'. Bertrand Russell used to lament this fact, saying that he wanted to be able to condemn as immoral the actions of the Nazis, but his philosophy didn't allow him to do so.

And so, having evaded the very serious possibility that there may in fact be no objectively binding and discernible morality, and that what we call morality may simply be a cultural phenomenon, the collective names for a whole matrix of fashionable social codes differing according to time and place, he turns to Sam Harris as the voice of authority.


Sam Harris clearly trumps Plato
It's bizarre, isn't it? Last week we had him babbling about Richard Dawkins and Stephen Hawking's latest work, while this week it's the Euthyphro Dilemma -- misunderstood -- and Sam Harris. It's as though he has a shelf entitled 'Stuff That Backs Me Up'. I wonder how much he's read that challenges him. How familiar is he with the work of scientists who find religious belief and science entirely compatible? Has he read Aquinas, perhaps with the help of Edmund Feser, say? Has he read any Plato other than the Euthyphro?  How familiar is he with Aristotle? Given what he goes on to say, it really looks as though he's read no Aristotle and only looked at Plato with a view to dragooning him in support of his own views...

'Many atheists believe that the best criteria to use is: what effect does this action have on the well-being or suffering of sentient beings? The neurobiologist Sam Harris examines this in his recent book, The Moral Landscape. He argues that the worst possible world is one in which all conscious beings are suffering to the maximal extent for no reason. He argues that, in principle, every step away from that world is right, and every step towards that world is wrong.'

Now, in The Moral Landscape Harris argues that there are indeed moral facts, relevant to the well-being of conscious beings, and that these facts can be discerned by taking the consequentialist line that the moral argument is that which maximises the most well-being. Leaving aside the huge question of what constitutes consciousness, it's notable that Harris makes no effort in the book to define well-being. Given that this is the crucial variable in his hypothesis, that's quite an oversight, and it's striking that Mr Nugent doesn't seem to be aware -- or at the very least to be bothered -- by it.

That aside, Harris basically reduces morality to a crude question of what produces the most good, something that'd have caused Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle to raise sceptical eyebrows. The fact that Nugent seems not remotely uneasy with this suggests that he's hardly read Plato at all, which leaves me wondering why he felt so confident wheeling out the Euthyphro dilemma, though it does explain why he was oblivious to its irrelevance to the question he was asking. The Euthyphro Dilemma isn't a rhetorical trick, after all; it's a serious question, that has an important place in Platonic thought, and Mr Nugent really should do something to find out what Plato thought about natural goodness in general, perhaps by reading the Charmides, the Lysis, and of course both the Symposium and the Republic.

And then he should look at Aristotle, to figure out where Aristotle disagrees with Plato, and why. He might like Aristotle.

That's not the only problem with Harris' thesis, of course. One of the major problems with it is that he effectively denies that we have free will, something which is necessary to the whole concept of moral action. Nobody in their right mind ever tries to argue that the weather is either moral or immoral, save insofar as it can be useful, because weather is a physical phenomenon, wholly incapable of controlling itself.

Harris tries to get round this by talking of the illusion of the illusion of free will, but nothing he says refutes the idea that if we're purely and exclusively physical beings then our thoughts must likewise be purely and exclusively physical phenomena, subject to all the laws of physics. If he's right, then our wills are not free; they might be free from coercion, but they're not even marginally free from causation, and there's no way we can claim that 'we' control them, as 'we' are ourselves nothing more than physical phenomena. Thought, will, and identity: all three, to a materialist worldview, are simply physical phenomena, no more meaningful than the wind in the trees.


And Religion is Bad because?
Nugent takes the view that in light of Harris' argument, religion distracts us from discerning right and wrong because, he says:

'... religious commands are not based on maximising the well-being or minimising the suffering of sentient beings.  Instead, they corrupt actual real-life morality with imaginary ideas of supernatural souls and imaginary consequences in an imaginary afterlife.'

He seems to be opposed to religion because it's not a narrow consequentialism, but I really don't think that works, not least because there are all manner of moral dilemmas that Harris' thesis won't help us in, not least because he never defines, and thus cannot quantify 'well-being'. Saying that imaginary ideas of souls, consequences, and an afterlife corrupt the argument is a fair point as long as it's the case that such things are imaginary; if they're not imaginary, then taking them into account clearly doesn't vitiate morality in any sense.

Frankly, even if we take the view that we can't be sure, then the jury's out. Religious ideas must have been responsible for at least as much good as evil. Take, as one obvious example, how the American Declaration of Independence declares, 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.' The equality of man, and man's most basic rights are rooted in the idea of man as the creation of God. Our modern conceptions of human rights are based on Enlightenment values of such, which were in turn based upon older religious values, notably the key one that we are all made in God's image.

Look at the Greeks, for instance, and you won't find a trace of such an idea. The whole idea of universal rights is, in essence, a religious one, and is, more specifically, a Christian one. Others have adopted it, and treated it as an axiom in its own right, but good luck deriving such a principle in a purely material universe.


A Facile Contrast
He goes on:

'Certainly, the Christian Bible distracts us from identifying right and wrong, because the Christian god conveys instructions that we intuitively know are wrong. The Bible says we should love our neighbour, but stone him to death for gathering sticks on the Sabbath.'

I've already talked in my first piece about Mr Nugent and Atheist Ireland, about how this leaves me wondering whether Mr Nugent is even aware that not all Christians use the same Bible, so I won't get into that here, barring to growl at this 'god' nonsense again.

More importantly, there's something rather pernicious in how he orders the two Biblical injunctions. Seven of the eight Biblical instances of the phrase 'love your neighbour' are from the New Testament, unlike the Old Testament reference in Numbers to a man being stoned for gathering sticks on the Sabbath. The sentence would read rather differently if its elements were more honestly placed in their proper order.

The Old Testament is basically about two things: what's wrong with the world, and how God readied the Jewish people for the coming of Christ. As such, Old Testament morality is often best understood as the morality of an army on the march, where discipline is everything, utterly necessary to maintain the cohesion of the group while it's en route to its destination; I say that not merely theologically, but historically and anthropologically too, and from having studied the seemingly trivial concerns of modern armies and how they build esprit de corps. Extreme punishments and rulings over when and how certain actions can be carried out fit naturally into that model. It's in that light we need to think of the injunction against working on the Sabbath.

The New Testament, however, changes things. It's been a precept of the Church from the beginning that the Old Testament must be read with reference to the New Testament, holding that the meaning of the Scriptures cannot be discerned save when understood as a unity within the Church, read by the light of Christ. Jesus expanded the definition of neighbour beyond a narrow Jewish identity, and also opened up the Sabbath by saying that it was made for man, and man was not made for it. Contrasts such as this can't simply be set up to be mocked: Christians, as a rule, have throughout history been smart enough to notice apparent paradoxes.


And Finally...
Michael wraps up by saying:

'Religion assumes that man is incapable of making moral decisions without supernatural guidance. But we are. It is a skill, and our understanding of it evolves as we practise empathy and reciprocity.'

A fairly sweeping generalisation about religion there, don't you think? Of course, 'religion' assumes no such thing, because religion is a word we use to describe a range of practices and beliefs and so forth; it's not a person, or even a corporate entity, capable of assuming anything.

That aside, Michael sets up a spectacularly false contrast, wholly misrepresenting religion to suit his own purposes.

Certainly it can be said that Christians have always held that we can make moral decisions without guidance through any kind of supernatural revelation. The basic moral law is part of nature, as I've said, such that we can discern it through our reason, and we are all able to love, being empowered to do so by God's own love: we love, because he loved first.

Nugent's Nonsense: Spilt Ink in the Irish Times, Part 2

I'm getting to a point where I think I should be submitting articles to the Irish Times. It seems clear they'll publish any old muck, and will pay for it too. This week sees Michael Nugent attempting to put the first shreds of meat on the feeble argumentative bones he advanced last week, and it's far from a successful attempt.

God is not a 'god' (small 'g')
Mr Nugent starts this week's post with the following statement:

'There is good evidence that our universe came about naturally, which is more persuasive than the evidence that it was created by a god (small "g"). And there is good evidence that humans invented the idea of gods, which is more persuasive than the evidence that gods exist.'

Now, the first thing is that it's disappointing to see this 'a god' nonsense being trotted out, especially with the heavy-handed aside that we should note how Nugent spells the word with a 'small "g"'. As I explained last week, this this a massive category mistake; it seems logic's not Mr Nugent's strong point. There is not merely a different of degree between, say, Aristotle's Uncaused Cause and Homer's Zeus; there is a fundamental difference of kind between the latter, a mere 'god', and the former, identifiable with God as understood by the great monotheistic religions.

This isn't a mere pedantic distinction, as blurring these categories is a rhetorical trick indulged in far too often by those who either don't know or don't care that the terms 'God' and 'a god' are radically different. I have never met anybody who's believed that the Universe was created by 'a god', and I'm not aware of anyone who believes that there's evidence that 'gods' exist.

If you pay attention to the rest of the article, you'll also note that Nugent offers no evidence for his view that the Universe came about naturally, or indeed that humans invented the idea of gods. The latter point, at least, is hardly surprising, given that the more-than-11,000-year-old temple remains at Göbekli Tepe show that humans were religious in an era before what we normally call civilization. There is no evidence that this prehistoric religion was an 'invention'; how could there be? Does Nugent have access to prehistorical writings that detail how it'd be fun to tell people of life having a meaning beyond that which meets the eye? 

Another false contrast, Michael?

Onward he trundles, bizarrely contrasting science with theology as though they both were directed towards the same ends, despite one being the study of nature and the other being the study of God:

'... what scientists like Dawkins typically mean by evolution theory is the study of how biological life evolved after it came about. The study of how biological life first came about is called abiogenesis.The study of how our universe developed from the instant it began to expand is called cosmology. And science has consistently proved a more reliable way of studying all of these questions than has theology, which is like discussing the rules of quidditch with people who believe that Harry Potter is a documentary.'

I'm not entirely sure how much theology he's read, such that he feels so confident in dismissing it in this fashion, but I suspect it's very little, at least to judge by how he seems convinced that theology has ever really been devoted to the question of how the Universe developed or how life first came about. I'd be curious to know how many theologians have ever studied these question in the context of theology; as there can't be many of them, such questions being largely outside the theological remit. I can't even think what branch of theology such questions would fall within.

That said, it is worth noting that around 400 AD, the most influential Christian theologian of them all, St Augustine of Hippo, argued that the Scriptural accounts of Creation in Genesis were clearly intended as poetic expressions of deep truths about the Universe and not as a scientific description of how the world came into being. While exhorting Christians to learn more -- scientifically -- about the Universe, Augustine argued that God must have brought the Universe into existence in a single moment of creation, but endowed it with the capacity to develop, containing as it does divinely ordained causalities that can later emerge or evolve, arguing also that time is as much an element of the created order as space. Surprisingly modern, eh?

The Harry Potter reference, for what it's worth, is rather insulting, not to mention remarkably stupid. In what sense is theology like discussing the rules of Quidditch with people who think Harry Potter is a documentary? Harry Potter is intended as fiction, as an entertainment and nothing more, such that anyone who thought mistook it for a documentary would have to have missed the point in a spectacular fashion. Is Mr Nugent really claiming that theologicans miss the point of -- say -- the Bible, and that the Bible was never meant to be taken seriously? Because if he really is saying that, I think it's pretty clear who's missing the point.

But then, as we've already seen last week, it appears that neither reading ability or clear thinking are among Mr Nugent's strengths.

A Curious Gap

And so, misrepresenting religion as a kind of science-substitute dependent on a 'God of the Gaps', Mr Nugent considers the Big Bang, reeling off a list of scientists -- Nicolaus Copernicus, Isaac Newton, Thomas Wright, Edwin Hubble, and John A. Gowan -- whose work led, incrementally, to our current understanding of the Universe. For some reason he omits Georges Lemaître, the Belgian astronomer and professor of physics who first postulated the Big Bang theory. Can you imagine why this might be? Three explanations spring immediately to mind. 

1. Nugent doesn't know what he's talking about.
2. Nugent is embarrassed that his Wikipedia entry is longer than that of the man who came up with the idea of the Big Bang theory, and thinks it's better if he doesn't draw attention to this fact, as it might cause people to suspect that he's been bigging himself up.
3. Nugent is fully aware that his thesis would be somewhat inconvenienced by the fact of the Big Bang theory having been the brainchild of a Catholic priest -- for so Lemaître was, as well as being an astronomer and physicist, eventually becoming a Monsignor and a member of the Pontifical  Academy of Sciences.

I suppose it could be a mixture of all three.


Something Comes from Nothing (as long as that Nothing is Something)

Nugent crows about the consistent pattern of scientific explanations 'relentlessly replacing theological answers,' though I'm not sure what examples of such he has in mind, and then says that given this pattern he's confident that if there's a meaningful answer to the question of what preceded the Big Bang, it'll be a natural one, identifiable by science; Nugent is confident that however the Universe came into being, 'a god' had nothing to do with it:

'We are most likely to find the answer to this question in the field of quantum physics. This shows that, at a subatomic level, random energy fluctuations can and do cause tiny particles to randomly come into and go out of existence. And Stephen Hawking in his latest work suggests that these fluctuations plus gravity could have brought our universe into existence without inventing a god.'

Yes, just look at that for a minute, because it seems that Nugent takes seriously an argument that proposes that the Universe could have spontaneously come into existence, provided it was preceded by the natural phenomenon that is gravity, itself being a property of matter. Yes, you read that right. He's saying that the Universe could have come into existence, providing it already existed.

I know, this is a bit unfair: you'd not know it from Nugent's article, but Hawking doesn't really mean the Universe when he uses the word 'universe'. Rather, he's postulating that 'our' universe is a space-time contiuum which is just one of many such, which we might call a system of universes. Not that there's any evidence whatsoever for this, or any scientifically meaningful way of testing such a hypothesis, but whoever let such niceties stop people wheeling out untestable speculations while burbling about the 'scientific method'?

A Defeat in More Ways than One

This morning didn't go quite according to plan. Having spent the last week ill and very busy, such that the blog's been very low on my list of priorities, I'm now away at a retreat centre. I got up at half five this morning, well ahead of everyone else so I could watch the rugby -- well, the Celtic clash between Ireland and Wales at any rate -- before everyone else appeared for Mass, which is how our day together was to begin. So anyway, up I got, unlocking the common room door, turning on the telly, grabbing the remote, and pulling up a chair, only to discover that try as I might I couldn't get the telly to play. Channels would notionally appear, but without a signal, and eventually I conceded defeat.

I know, I could have watched it on my netbook, but I couldn't remember the wifi codes, not having had a pen to scrawl them down when we'd been told them, so in the end I gave up, and resigned myself to a couple of hours' reading and writing before Mass.

Unable to resist the temptation to find out how things were going, though, I eventually texted a friend at home in Dublin, one having keen eyes, an analytical mind, and a deep knowledge and love of the game. How had it gone thus far?

'Ireland the better team but not converting,' she said. 'Early try for Wales 0-7. Lots of pressure from us but no tries and we opt not to kick goals x 3. Eventually score pen in front of posts. Wales score pen straight back 3-10. ROG having poor game. HT. 2nd half. Ireland out of traps fast. Messy but try scored on sideline by Earls. ROG converts. 10-10 now 48 mins.'

That sounded awkward but ultimately encouraging, and I was about to text to say so when she sent the grim update, 'Wales hit back with try 10-15'

'Thank you,' I replied. 'Bit surprised it's ROG rather than Sexton today. Also, blast on the update. This clearly could go either way. Wonder why we didn't go for those goals. Hmmm. Thank you.'

'Exactly. Makes no sense to play ROG and eschew kicks,' she said, reading my mind, 'He's trying to go into contact as well and keeps losing the ball. Sexton on at 55 mins with Reddan.'

Moments later there was another  text, dashing my hopes that Sexton would change things, bluntly saying 'Wales over again. Horrific defence from Ireland. 10-22. We don't deserve it, I'm afraid.'

'Blast,' I said, 'That's hugely disappointing. It's no longer that we're playing better but not achieving, then?'

'Welsh execution clinical. They have fewer chances but are taking them. Few of our players not performing. Earls good in attack, poor in defence. Trimble replaces at 72 mins. Still 10-22.'

And then a few minutes later she wrapped it up, 'Will finish 10-22. Wales deserve it. Kidney has questions to answer re selections and tactics.'

'Thanks,' I said, baffled by choices but grateful for the updates, 'It does sound deeply perverse to have gone for O'Gara and not kicked. Still, I'll wish Wales well in the semi. Neither England nor France deserves to go through.'

I turned on my phone later on the day, during a coffee break, to see my housemate had texted to say that we probably both wished we'd stayed in bed this morning. France versus Wales it was to be, so. Come on Wales!

Nugent's Nonsense: Spilt Ink in the Irish Times, Part 1

In Edinburgh a few years back I saw a terrible play, but one which I'll not name as it was written by someone I know, and I'd rather not humiliate him further: the reviews at the time were bad enough, with one describing the play as 'flatulent'. Intended as an attack on religion, the play was -- aside from being dramatically dire -- embarrassingly ill-informed. Weeks afterwards the play came up in a conversation with the friend with whom I'd seen the play, and atheist though she was she was left in stitches as I scornfully explained how the author -- her friend, of a sort -- hadn't got even the most basic stuff right.

Sun Tzu, the ancient Chinese philosopher of war, got in right when he said:

'Know yourself and know your enemy, and in a hundred battles you will never taste defeat.' 

But then, my English teacher was spot on too when he used to advise us to write about what we know. It's the same principle: don't go attacking things unless you understand what you're attacking.

Michael Nugent: Superman

All of which brings me to Michael Nugent, who has a column -- the first of a series -- in today's Irish Times, and who seems no better informed than my friend's dramatic friend. The series is a response to a rather feeble series of articles in the summer.

I don't know if you know Michael Nugent, but if you take a look at his lengthy Wikipedia entry you'll see that he's clearly a Very Important Man, somebody destined to be remembered for all time. To put Michael's greatness into context, among those with more modestly sized entries are: Filippo Brunelleschi, inventor of linear perspective, architect supreme, and one of the greatest figures of the Renaissance; Charlotte and Emily Brontë, who respectively gave the world Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights; Ludwig Feuerbach, perhaps the most influential atheist ever; Gregor Mendel, the father of genetics; Ana Pavlova, the most famous ballerina the world has ever seen; Kevin O'Higgins, one of the most important founding fathers of independent Ireland; Georges Lemaître, first proponent of the 'Big Bang' theory; Sophie Scholl, martyred member of the White Rose, regarded by many as the greatest German of the last hundred years* ; Jack B. Yeats, arguably the greatest Irish artist of the last century; and Patrick Leigh Fermor, who was until his recent demise surely the Greatest Living Englishman.

The entries on Vermeer and George Eliot are only slightly longer than Michael's. And he's only fifty! Imagine how long his entry will be if he lives another ten, twenty, or thirty years! Michael Nugent, it would seem, is a giant.

Atheist Ireland: A Puzzled Parish

Michael is chairman of Atheist Ireland, a tiny pressure group, with a paid-up membership no larger than the typical Mass attendance on any given Sunday in my parish at home. It  first came to my attention while trying desperately to be prosecuted for challenging Dermot Ahern's blasphemy legislation, publishing as it did a list of 25 supposedly blasphemous quotations. Leaving aside how it's arguable that many if not all of the quotations had literary, artistic, political, scientific or academic value and that as a rule they were not intended to outrage substantial numbers of believers, it's quite clear that publication of this list in order to make a point about free speech was, by virtue of its political character, explicitly exempt from prosecution under section 36.3 of the Defamation Act 2009.

If Atheist Ireland had been trying to prove how toothless Ahern's legislation was, they made their point well, but if they genuinely believed it was a threat, well, all this shows is that they're not very good at reading. Ahern's law was designed to be unenforceable: in accordance with the needs of the Constitution it technically closed a legislative loophhole, while being worded in such a way that it would be impossible for anyone to be successfully prosecuted for blasphemy.

One of the most curious features of Atheist Ireland is its 'Read the Bible Campaign'; I'm not sure why it doesn't have a 'Read the Qur'an Campaign', though it might be because that might seem provocative, or a 'Read the Tanakh Campaign, though it might be because that might seem anti-semitic, or a 'Read the Bhagavad Gita Campaign', though it might be because they have no idea what any of the Hindu scriptures are. Anyway, it seems an odd campaign, as it suggests that far from having a secular agenda, Atheist Ireland has an almost exclusively anti-Christian agenda -- even an anti-Catholic one -- and that it pushes this agenda in an extraordinarily ignorant way.

'Atheist Ireland actively encourages people to read the Christian Bible,' it begins, though this surely invites the question of 'which Christian Bible?'

Do Atheist Ireland mean the 73-book Catholic Bible, as used by most Christians in Ireland and indeed the world? Or does it mean the sixteenth-century's 66-book Lutheran Bible, as used -- sometimes in association with other holy books -- by about a third of the world's Christians? Or does it mean the 77-or-so book Orthodox Bibles as used by the various Orthodox Christian groups? Do Atheist Ireland even realise that Christians don't agree on the contents of the Bible? Does Mister Nugent know this?

I'm rather intrigued by this question, because I'm assuming that when Mister Nugent thinks of the Bible he thinks of the 73-book Catholic version, that being by far the most common version to be found in Ireland. This would make sense, as he seems to be making the implicit case that if wavering Irish Christians read their Bibles they'd realise it was all rubbish. As he puts it, 'It makes many assertions that are scientifically absurd and ethically unjust. And it undermines two key cornerstones of the Christian faith: the Ten Commandments and the story of Jesus.'

Well, aside from errors and dubious assertions in his little proposal, the very notion of the proposal in itself shows how little Mister Nugent understands the Catholicism he opposes. A project like that could well prove deeply damaging to the faith of a Protestant who takes a Sola Scriptura approach to the Bible, but shouldn't have any impact whatsover on Catholics. 

Catholics ought to know that the Church predated even the earliest New Testament books by about fifteen years, that the New Testament was written within the Church reflecting the already existing belief of the Church, and that the books of the New Testament were primarily written to be proclaimed and prayed within the Church. They should further know that it was the Church that kept, protected, compiled, and canonised the Bible as we now have it, doing so informally from the second century on and formally at a series of local councils around the end of the fourth century, confirming the decisions of those councils at the Second Council of Nicea in 787.

The Church knows that Bible has no shortage of passages that are problematic, to put it mildly, if they are read out of their proper context. Reading them in context means understanding them as manifestations of whatever genre in which they were written, in connection with their time and intended audience, in association with other Biblical books, and as perceived through time by the Church which recognised and canonised them as inspired Scripture. The Church's traditional way of reading the Bible has always been nuanced and layered, wholly unlike the more obviously literal ways of reading the Scriptures that were promoted and became common during the Protestant Reformation.

If I can quote Yves Congar's The Meaning of Tradition on this, as it well expresses the mainstream Catholic line on this:

'The reality contained in the sacred text would be described as its literary, historical, or exegetical meaning, but its dogmatic meaning is found outside the text, considered materially, which supposes the intervention of a new activity, namely, the faith of the Church. The place where this is found is precisely tradition as understood by the Fathers; it is there, in this setting and in these conditions, that the holy Scriptures reveal their meaning -- a meaning that is not simply the one accessible to philologists and historians but that which must nourish God's people in order that it may be God's people in the fullest sense.'

Atheist Ireland seems a small and rather silly group, to be honest, and I doubt it's in any way representative of most Irish atheists. I certainly hope it's not. Still, it's a platform of sorts, I suppose, and something to justify Michael being given a series of columns in what was once Ireland's newspaper of record.

Thoughts on Today's Folly

Today's column seems to be little more than a parade of sweeping generalisations and questionable assertions, but I'd not fault it for that as it's clearly intended as an introduction; I imagine Michael's planning on putting a veneer of meat on these flimsy bones over the coming weeks.

Two things, though, are worth saying now.

Firstly, early on he says this:

'Do you believe in a god (small "g")? Atheists reject the idea that your preferred god exists, in the same way that you reject the idea that other gods exist: because there is no reliable evidence that they do exist, and lots of reliable evidence that they are ideas invented by humans.'

This is a colossal category error, and one that I've seen wheeled out loads of times by the likes of Richard Dawkins. Atheists  need to get past this 'I just believe in one fewer god than you do' nonsense.

I don't believe in 'a god', anymore than does your typical Protestant, Muslim, Jew, Deist, Aristotelian, Platonist, or a host of others; indeed, I'd say we all recognise that there's but one God, the God who is the Necessary Being, the Uncaused Cause, the Prime Mover, the Ultimate Standard, the Lawgiver. This is a concept of God wholly different from the gods of the Greeks and the Vikings, and so forth. 

No Greek would ever have claimed that the philandering Zeus was perfectly good, just as no Viking would ever have said that the existence of the Universe couldn't be understood without Odin's existence underpinning it. So no, I believe, not in 'a god', but in God. And I believe that God is one and the same with God as recognised by the likes of Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Maimonides, Averroes, Voltaire, and Thomas Jefferson; we may understand Him differently, but we all recognise that the Godhead subsists in the one being.

And in case anyone thinks I'm off on a limb on this one, take a look at Nostra Aetate, the Second Vatican Council's 'Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions'; just because Catholics believe Muslims are wrong on the nature of God, say, and on the divinity of Jesus, this doesn't mean they're wrong on everything. We all worship the one God.

The other thing worth homing in on is this. Nugent says the following early in his article:

'Why are atheists so certain that gods do not exist? Actually, most of us aren’t. We merely reject the assertion that one or more gods do exist, based on the best currently available evidence. We would change our minds if we were given new and credible evidence that we are mistaken.'

I shall be looking forward to him detailing what he would consider to be 'new and credible' evidence.

* And someone about whom everyone should know

Who Referees the Referees?

Well, today's not been a good day on the sport front. I was at my cousins' for most of the day, stranded there with an unexpectedly immobilised bike -- a new inner tube is needed, it seems, and some fresh repair patches -- and took advantage of their telly to watch the Merseyside Derby, them all having gone off to the match themselves.

It was an ugly, nasty, messy match, wholly ruined by Jack Rodwell having been sent off less than halfway through the first half for having done something which was scarcely a foul at all, and hardly something that warranted a red card. After that Everton ceased the swarming advances that had already promised so much and committed themselves to a frantic defence, occasionally venturing a sketchy counter-attack. If we fouled after that, we did so in a panic. The game had been ruined.

And that, frankly, was the icing on a rather foul cake, as I'd already been disgusted that morning by England having cheated Scotland out of a place in the quarter finals of the Rugby World Cup. You remember the episode in the last minute of England's match against Argentina when an England player held back an Argentinian for just long enough for his attempt at a foot rush to be wasted, following a sustained Argentinian attack on the English line? 

As the commentator said: 

'Oh, he pulled him down it seemed... the officials are unmoved...every South American in this main stand wasn't... Argentina feel they should have had a penalty...'

Well, the referee and his henchmen didn't care, and England, having played in a deeply cynical way for the whole match, scraped a 13-9 win.

What rule was broken there? 10.4 (f) looks like the key one:

'Playing an opponent without the ball: Except in a scrum, ruck, or maul, a player who is not in possession of the ball must not hold, push, or obstruct an opponent not carrying the ball.'

The sanction for that's a penalty kick, of course, although 10.2 (a) comes into play if the offence is deemed to have prevented a try, and of course the referee can always caution and even send off players for such offences too.

That was a few weeks back, but today we saw exactly the same thing happen again, in more or less the same part of the pitch, with Chris Ashton likewise obstructing a foot-rush, and at a time when Scotland had numbers ready to come to support: Just listen to the commentator:

'Blair... to Parks.... Ford... finds Paterson. Scotland running through the hands easily with Danielli who chases his own kick. Was he obstructed? Beautifully taken, but picked up by De Luca, who couldn't take it cleanly... the ball was knocked on... so much to talk about. Awww.... was that the opportunity for Scotland to nail their try?'

Was he obstructed? Yes, he certainly was. Look at Ashton there, grabbing Danielli with both hands, his left hand on his shoulder, his right hand reaching around across his chest and with both neither leg supporting his weight on the ground as Danielli breaks free of him.

And was it Scotland's opportunity? It certainly looks that way. After all, look at how the Guardian described the event at the time:

'Was this Scotland's chance gone? Danielli chips and chases down the left, and so nearly latches onto the ball deep in the corner. He can't get to it, but de Luca is just behind him. All he has to do is pick the ball up, take two steps, and plonk the ball down for a try, but he lets the ball slip through his hands like a bar of soap, and the chance is gone. Oh my. You can't be passing up opportunities like that, especially when you play in a team who struggle to score tries.'

That's how close Scotland came to scoring there. And no, nobody bothered after the match bothered to talk about Ashton's obstruction, despite it having been a clear instance of such, and something that may well have thwarted a Scottish try. I guess there was too much else to discuss, and maybe it seemed mean-spirited to take the shine off Johnson's lumberers. And so England won 16-12, having for the second time in the tournament scraped a victory by four points, each time having managed their win after shamelessly and illegally obstructing an opposing player trying to foot-rush towards the goal line.

There was a time when English people would rather lose honourably than win through cheating. Sic transit gloria mundi...


(And in the meantime, I look forward very cautiously to tomorrow.  Should Ireland beat Italy? Yes. Will they? Who knows... given how this World Cup is going, it's entirely possibility that Italy will play out of their skins, hammer us in the scrum, panic us, and win a very ugly match. These things happen. Fingers crossed that they don't, so.)

Deceitful Cassandras...

I think Peter Oborne's rant on Newsnight yesterday was useful. Jon Worth's response to it is pretty much on the money:

'Extraordinary "debate" on Newsnight last night between Amadeu Altafaj Tardio (Ollie Rehn’s spokesperson) and Peter Oborne. Oborne repeatedly calls Altafaj Tardio "the idiot in Brussels", a phrase that Paxman also uses, and Oborne is equally vile towards Richard Lambert, giving him a copy of Guilty Men.

I don’t know whether I am more annoyed by Altafaj Tardio who was just rubbish (but hell, he’s employed by Rehn, so are we remotely surprised?), Peter Oborne who was vile and offensive, Jeremy Paxman who let Oborne rant on and on, or Newsnight for having invited Oborne and Altafaj Tardio onto the programme in the first place. Oborne’s vitriol might have a place in the Daily Mail but it surely has no place on Newsnight.'

Pretty much, I say, but not quite.

The episode had some value, not least is providing those of us who've long argued that the BBC doesn't have a bias towards the Union with a handy little stick with which to beat those who claim it does. Look at how the National broadcaster invited Peter Oborne onto its premier current affairs show, allowing him to insult a spokesman for an EU Commissioner and to insult those who'd advocated an EU project that had been on the cards even before the UK joined the then EEC. Look at how the presenter of that show himself addressed the spokesman as 'Mister Idiot from Brussels', allowing Oborne to rant freely to a point where the spokesman walked off.

Anything who thinks Chris Patten is compromised in his position as chairman of the BBC Trust by virtue of having been an EU commissioner between 2000 and 2004 -- with all that that entails -- should make a point of keeping their mouths shut in future. After last night, you can't say anything.


Self-fulfilling Prophets...
Aside from the sheer gratuitous bad manners shown by Oborne, I get irked by this sort of carry-on for a host of other reasons, not least that most of the people sneering about the troubles facing the common currency now are people who've opposed it from the start. It reeks of an 'I told you so' attitude, but hardly in an honest way, not least because the game's not nearly over yet, and they may yet be proven wrong.

If Britain is to sneer about France and Germany never having applied the EU's own rules properly, thus having undermined it from the start, they should give some thought to how the United Kingdom stood sniffing at the sidelines when the project was being launched; perhaps these problems could have been headed off with British help.

To hear these people whine is almost like listening to a footballer complaining about his team losing a match, in a situation where he himself has chosen to sit out the game. Imagine, say, Carlos Tevez whinging about Manchester City having been beaten by Bayern Munich the other day, despite him having refused to go on when summoned from the bench, or Roy Keane whinging about Ireland having been knocked out of the 2002 World Cup, despite him having gone home rather than playing. Imagine. That's what it's like.

An unfair analogy? No, I don't think so.


The Origins of the Euro
See, the thing is, monetary union has always been part of the European project, and the UK knew that all through all the years it was so desperate to join. The Treaty of Rome's primary aim, as stated way back in 1957 in the first sentence of the treaty's preamble, was to lay the foundations of an ever-closer union among the peoples of Europe. In order to do this, the EEC aimed to eliminate the barriers that divide Europe, to strengthen the unity of their economies, and to implement a common commercial policy. The second article of the treaty makes clear that the EEC had never been intended to be merely about establishing a common market:

'The Community shall have as its task, by establishing a common market and progressively approximating the economic policies of Member States, to promote throughout the Community a harmonious development of economic activities, a continuous and balanced expansion, an increase in stability, an accelerated raising of the standard of living and closer relations between the States belonging to it.'

Yes, those are my italics. A common currency had always been on the agenda, as a necessary tool to harmonise the development of Europe's economies, and it was in 1969 that work first began on establishing it. The then Prime Minister of Luxembourg, Pierre Werner, was commissioned by the six EEC countries of the day to head a group to look into the practicalities of economic and monetary union and in particular the issuing of a single currency. Werner's report was submitted in 1971, before the UK joined the EEC, and the UK was informed of the direction in which the EEC was heading; it was free not to join, but it did so anyway, signing the Treaty of Rome in 1972.

The plan wasn't implemented, of course, for various reasons, not the least of which related to the convulsive effects of the Oil Crisis, but it was only ever put on the back burner -- monetary union was always on the agenda.


And then there's Mrs Thatcher...
Thatcher is, of course, the hero of so many British Europhobes, whose apotheosis as an anti-European divinity has only ever possible by the determined refusal of so many to consider her early role in championing the European project, and by their ignoring how it was she who signed 1987's Single European Act with all that entailed...

Thatcher, of course, had been a prominent member of the Heath Government that had brought their country nto the EEC, despite opposition from the Labour party of the day. She was one of those who signed Britain up to a process of ever-closer union with her neighbours, and who knew that that ever-closer union was always intended to involve a currency union and the abolition of the pound. Just a few years later, in early 1975, she vigorously affirmed that this had been the right thing to do, praising Britain's accession to the EEC as Ted Heath's greatest achievement and saying of him:

'This torch must be picked up and carried by whoever is chosen by the party to succeed him. The commitment to European partnership is one which I full share.'

And then, on 8 April 1975 she openly championed Britain's full and determined participation in all aspects of the European project, and did so using arguments that are as valid now as they were 36 years ago.

I know I've talked about much of this before, but I've been meaning to get into that 1975 speech for a long time, and it needs context. I'll look at the speech itself tomorrow, I think.

Ah, Fintan, you're letting yourself down...

Fintan O'Toole has yet another disappointing article about Martin McGuinness in the Irish Times this week. Barring certain issues I've always respected Fintan's views, but I really feel he's embarrassed himself whenever he's said anything on the issue of this presidential election. This week his general thesis is that 'five propositions advanced by McGuinness’s defenders still remain to be dealt with.'

Now, as I said, I'm no fan of McGuinness, but this kind of carry-on is embarrassing for all concerned. How is one ever expected to take Fintan seriously again when he comes out with this series of straw men?

1. Martin McGuinness is acceptable to the DUP in the North, so it is hypocritical to suggest that he should not be president.

This rather simplifies this point, which I've not been alone in making, and Fintan deals with it through some impressive sleight of hand. 

'Martin McGuinness's role as deputy first minister is a function of the unique system of government created by the Belfast Agreement,' he says, as though the Good Friday Agreement had been come into being of its own accord. It did nothing of the sort, of course: the system of government created by the Belfast Agreement was created by the negotiators of the Belfast Agreement, which included the Irish Government, and by those who ratified the Belfast Agreement, those including the Irish electorate, 94 per cent of whom voted to insert a new article 29.7 into the Constitution, subsection 1 of which states:

'The State may consent to be bound by the British-Irish Agreement done at Belfast on the 10th day of April, 1998, hereinafter called the Agreement.'

The Good Friday Agreement had been opposed by the DUP, and the results of the Northern Irish referendum on the agreement make it very clear that it was voted against by the majority of Ulster's unionists. If the DUP had to embrace McGuinness and Sinn Féin as the price of entering government, this is because it's a price we set.

The Presidency, on the other hand, says Fintan, is not party political: 'it's the personal embodiment of collective values.' Is it? Or is that just what Fintan thinks it should be? Because I've been looking quite hard at articles 12, 13, and 14 of Bunreacht na hÉireann, and I don't see anything there that says the Presidency is the personal embodiment of anything.

2. The past should be forgotten – what happened during the conflict is now irrelevant.

Fintan doesn't believe this should be the case, but can appreciate, he says, that others might take this line. Unfortunately, he says, McGuinness and his supporters are inconsistent on this, such that, he says, 'Sinn Féin doesn’t actually believe that past atrocities should be forgotten. It demands accountability for war crimes – except when they were committed by the IRA.' Again, this isn't quite true. It's not really the case that Sinn Féin makes an exception for the IRA -- it doesn't demand accountability, as far as I know, for crimes committed by the UVF, LVF, UDA, INLA, or other groups.

If anything, it seems they demand accountability only for war crimes committed by the forces of the Crown, in the name of the Crown, against the subjects of the Crown, and they do so in light of how the Good Friday Agreement did not entail any amnesty, implicit or explicit, for the perpetrators of those crimes.  

3. Eamon de Valera was elected president and Martin McGuinness would be no different.

Fintan's dismissal of this point is as curt as it is simplistic:

'Where is the evidence that de Valera committed, ordered or sanctioned war crimes? His one outing as a military commander was during Easter 1916, at Boland's Mills, where there was no fighting. The War of Independence was run by Michael Collins – Dev spent much of it in the US. During the Civil War, he was undoubtedly the political figurehead of the anti-Treaty side, but he had no control over the IRA.

In February 1923, he privately complained that he could only view the war "as through a wall of glass, powerless to intervene effectively".'

Does Fintan think the 1916 Rising was an attack against a peaceable and largely undefended city? If he does, how does he get round the fact that de Valera was involved in planning and leading such an attack? More importantly, does Fintan really think that Michael Collins ran the entire War of Independence, during which atrocities certainly were committed? And does Fintan really think that de Valera, the President of the Republic, would have been incapable of breaking that war to an end had he so tried? As for the Civil War, which de Valera largely provoked -- does Fintan really think de Valera was a mere victim of circumstances? Should we accept one private and self-serving claim as a full exoneration for his part in starting a war that killed thousands of Irish people in just a couple of years?

The fact is that both Sean T. O'Kelly and Eamon de Valera opposed the new state established under the Treaty, and warred against it, with O'Kelly having been imprisoned for his opposition to the State. And both men wound up holding the Presidency, for a total of twenty-eight years between them.

4. Martin McGuinness is like Nelson Mandela.

Other than both men having had a record of friendliness with Colonel Gaddafi, and both having followed paths that took them from violence to peace, I've never been convinced that this was a particularly convincing comparison, so I'll let Fintan go on that...

5. It is preposterous to suggest, as I did last week that, as president, Martin McGuinness "could, in principle, be liable to arrest for war crimes under international law".

Yes,  it is. It was preposterous then and is no less preposterous now; and comparisons this week between McGuinness and Dick Cheney don't help Fintan's very silly case. 

The comparison is utterly facile: were Cheney to be tried he would be tried by the International Criminal Court for events since 2002 in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere in commection with rendition. Why 2002? Because the ICC has no remit over war crimes committed before that date. Indeed, no organisation has such a remit. 

Perhaps Fintan can tell us which war crimes Martin McGuinness has committed since 2002?

L'esprit de l'escalier: Third Thoughts on Redefining Marriage

All of this, of course, still leaves us with one big question: even if marriage always has been understood in a certain way, and even if religious people continue to understand it in that way, what harm could it possibly do to change how we legally define it? After all, doing so would make some people feel happier about themselves, and it's not as if anybody's talking of forcing religious institutions to celebrate same-sex marriages...

'What harm could it do?' That's the big question here. Because if a symbolic change can be enacted without a practical price, surely it'd be churlish to obstruct it. But what if that legal redefinition, that symbolic change, indeed incurred a practical price? 

It seems to me that there are quite a few areas of concern on this, such that I think the price to be paid for such an insubstantial change is far too high.

Religious Wedding Ceremonies, or, when ability becomes obligation...

As we all know, laws don't mean what politicians say they mean; they mean what they say, and they mean what judges say that means, and judges do not interpret laws in isolation but as part of the law of the land taken as a whole. As such, any law that gave religious bodies the right to solemnise same-sex marriages, but that said religious bodies would have no duty to solemnise such commitments, would have to be read in light of the Human Rights Act and other equality legislation, notably the Equality Act (Sexual Orientation) Regulations.

What does this mean? It means that once it's legally established that religious same-sex wedding ceremonies can happen, it's only a matter of time before the refusal of a religious body to solemnise same-sex wedding ceremonies is deemed illegal. Tolerance will not be enough; approval will be mandatory.

I don't think this will affect the Catholic Church too much, but I can see the Anglicans getting into real trouble on this one. You can see how it'll happen, of course; a couple of liberal vicars will disobey their bishops and celebrate same-sex weddings, legally registering them as they go, thus setting a precedent, and once that happens, some poor evangelical vicar will get it in the neck for refusing to do the same thing.

Serious amounts of 'damages' will wind up having to be paid as the price of acting in accordance with one's own conscience, the rules of one's institution, and the original intent of the law of the land. This isn't a 'slippery slope' argument. This is the way the law works, and is how we've seen equality legislation being interpreted thus far.


Civil Ceremonies, or barring people from jobs...
As we also know, there have already been difficulties in the UK with marital registrars who have refused to register civil partnerships; some have resigned, whereas others have faced disciplinary proceedings. One lady, Lillian Ladele, who'd worked as a registrar in Islington for years, was deemed to have committed gross misconduct for having swapped shifts so that she did not personally have to preside over civil partnerships; she was denied opportunities for promotion, disciplined, and threatened with dismissal. This wound its way through the courts, with the Court of Appeal finding that Islington Council had done nothing wrong, Lord Neuberger ruling:

'It appears to me that, however much sympathy one may have with someone such as Ms Ladele, who is faced with choosing between giving up a post she plainly appreciates or officiating at events which she considers to be contrary to her religious beliefs, the legislature has decided that the requirements of a modern liberal democracy, such as the United Kingdom, include outlawing discrimination in the provision of goods, facilities and services on grounds of sexual orientation, subject only to very limited exceptions'

Note that she hadn't attempted to block civil partnerships from being registered; she had in fact arranged things so that that registration could take place, but without her involvement.

I have no doubt that there'll have been other registrars who've had difficulties with civil partnerships who nonetheless have continued in their jobs and presided over them in acceptance of the fact that civil partnerships were new things, officially-sanctioned social mechanisms to give same-sex couples the same rights as married couples, that were nonetheless never intended to be identical to marriages.

And I have no idea how they'll cope now, especially if there's no allowance to be made for disagreements in conscience. There'll be a lot of people who'll think the government can call a dog a duck if it wants to, but it still won't be able to quack.

I'd expect that such people will have to choose between their jobs and their beliefs, and will be forced either to lose their jobs or to become hypocrites; what's more, I think that if the State henceforth is to require registrars to register same-sex unions as marriages, regardless of their personal beliefs, it will effectively be barring people from applying for such jobs.

It's worth looking at the second part of the ninth article of the European Convention on Human Rights, to which the UK a signatory:

'Freedom to manifest one's religion or beliefs shall be subject only to such limitations as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society in the interests of public safety, for the protection of public order, health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.'

Look at that. Freedom to manifest one's beliefs should only be limited if it is necessary to do so. Not useful. Not desirable. Necessary. As I explained the other day, the Convention does not regard same-sex marriage as a right, so it's not something that's entitled to protection. I'm not sure the State should be seeking to redefine something, to a purely cosmetic end, if the cost of doing so is to force people to act against their consciences or to block people from having jobs.

Remember: civil-partnerships already have all the substantive rights of marriage. Frankly, I'm not sure anyone should be looking for the State to pat them on the head if the price of their feeling better is for somebody else to lose their job, and I'm not convinced the State should be indulging anyone who thinks their feelings are worth more than somebody else's livelihood.


More Problems for the Anglicans, or the question of establishment...
As I said the other day, given the fact that Parliament has licensed the traditional liturgy of the Church of England, there's a powerful sense in which Parliament speaks through the Church of England, indeed, there's a sense in which the Church of England is an arm of the State. As such, it's the State that speaks when the Church of England declares:

'... that so many as are coupled together otherwise than God's Word doth allow are not joined together by God; neither is their Matrimony lawful.'

I realise this might be seen as a technical issue rather than an issue of basic justice, but the established Church, as an arm of the State, can hardly announce on a regular basis that lots of bonds sanctioned by the State are in fact unlawful. Indeed, I don't see that any marriage could be lawfully redefined in England without Parliament formally changing the status of the Church of England, such that it would cease to be an expression of the State; and what that would do to the Queen, Defender of the Faith that she is, I really don't know. After all, back in 1953 she took a coronation oath in which she was asked:

'Will you to the utmost of your power maintain the Laws of God and the true profession of the Gospel? Will you to the utmost of your power maintain in the United Kingdom the Protestant Reformed Religion established by law? Will you maintain and preserve inviolable the settlement of the Church of England, and the doctrine, worship, discipline, and government thereof, as by law established in England? And will you preserve unto the Bishops and Clergy of England, and to the Churches there committed to their charge, all such rights and privileges, as by law do or shall appertain to them or any of them?'

To which she responded:

'All this I promise to do. The things which I have here before promised, I will perform, and keep. So help me God'

Given her oath, I'm not sure the Queen could sign into law any law that redefined marriage; as such, redefining marriage could well turn out to be a step towards disestablishment. Call me old-fashioned, but that seems an odd thing for a Conservative-led government to work towards.

Can you really imagine David Cameron declaring that he supports the disestablishment of the Church of England, 'not despite being a Conservative, but because I am a Conservative'?

Recognition of Marriages, or an Orwellian law that affects everyone...
There's a typically snide kind of response that is often thrown in the faces of people who have issues with same-sex marriages, which tends to take the form of 'Well, if you don't approve of gay marriages, don't have one! Nobody's forcing you to!'

This is problematic in a number of ways, but not the least of the issues with such a line is that it confuses weddings and marriages. A wedding is merely a ceremony in which a marriage is recognised; it lasts an hour, a day, or a week, depending on your culture and the type of wedding. A marriage, on the other hand, is a much more protracted affair, typically understood as lasting until one of the two partners dies.

If the State redefined marriage to include same-sex covenants it would effectively be demanding that everybody recognise those same-sex covenants as being marriages, irrespective of what people might privately believe. It shouldn't be hard to see how that could have an effect on religious people, of whatever faith, who simply believe that same-sex unions cannot be marriages.

Mainstream Christian teaching would be open to prosecution under section 5 of the Public Order Act. The law doesn't require there to be an intention to insult, after all. It just requires people to feel insulted, in a context where the insulting person could be expected to realise that there might be somebody around who'd feel insulted or demeaned by what's being said or written.

Ordinary priests, teachers, and parents would become open to hate speech legislation.

If any service, or facility, or anything at all is offered to married couples only, well, the State would now be explicitly saying that it must also be made available to same-sex couples, regardless of your own views on what marriage is.

This would be a profoundly illiberal development, establishing a precedent for the State to redefine any pre-existing and generally recognised concept and to demand that people accept its new definition. Does anybody want that? Does anybody want the State to have a coercive power to redefine the very words we use in order to drive any ideological agenda, however noble we might think that cause to be?

Because if you're tempted to say the State should to be able to redefine words to suit your agenda, you're giving it the right to redefine them to suit somebody else's...


And then there's Unknown Unknowns...
I was ahead of the curve in disliking Donald Rumsfeld, having read years back of how he'd basically ended Kissinger's career at the top of American politics because he believed Kissinger was a wimp. That said, I thought he was the subject of a lot of unfair criticism after he said, in February 2002, that:

'There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don't know we don't know.'

I thought that was a perfectly clear, sensible, and systematic sentence. My main problem with him saying it was that he didn't seem capable to taking on board the implications of what he said, as had he done so, I'd imagine the Bush regime would have been rather less keen to lead the charge to invade Iraq. There are some things we simply cannot foresee in any sense, and we should keep this in mind when considering such a radical change to an institution that predates the State and has long been the foundation of British society. We have no idea what the consequences might be...

Much opposition to government same-sex marriage relates things directly to children and the fact that a same-sex marriage is, by definition, sterile: it cannot, in and of itself, ever produce a child. There's a level at which this opposition is, of course, redundant: thanks especially to changes in UK adoption law, there's a sense in which same-sex relationships are already recognised in UK law as environments in which children can be reared and nurtured*. That said, I don't think we can get away from the fact that seeking to redefine marriage in UK law is part of a general process over the last half-century which has seen marriage eroded almost out of existence. Only half as many Britons are getting married now as were getting married -- from a smaller population -- in the 1960s, and almost half of the marriages that now take place end in divorce. The idea of marriage as a stable bond that acts as the foundation of a balanced and secure family in which children can be born and raised has been undermined for decades.

Only a few weeks back Britain panicked as thousands of teenagers ran riot, plundering and ransacking her cities, terrifying ordinary people everywhere. For all the nuance we need to apply in thinking about this, it seems clear that the roots of these riots lay in two main phenomena.

I've talked already here about the economic strategy of the right -- and that includes Blair who largely followed Thatcher's line on this -- having rendered millions of less-able and ill-educated people surplus to Britain's economic requirements, leaving them hopeless and frustrated in deteriorating and soul-destroying sink estates. This is a reality that pundits on the right seem, in the main, unwilling to face.

The other issue, however, is one that should discomfort the left. There seems little denying that the riots were a symptom of a much broader social breakdown, and that well-intentioned social liberalism -- which dominates Britain's attitude to social policy -- must bear much of the responsibility for this. Dying to Belong, the Centre for Social Justice's 2009 study into gang culture, identified family breakdown as a key driver in gang culture, noting that experience of early divorce or separation massively increased the likelihood of crimes being committed in youth and early adulthood.

That's not to say, of course, that same-sex partnerships or 'marriages' will cause crimes; such a claim would be as absurd as it would be offensive. However, it's important to recognise that marriage, long recognised as the bedrock of British society, has been under attack for decades; it seems to me that if the Government seriously wants to address the problems of social breakdown in modern Britain, it should be trying to protect and support the traditional institutions of British society, rather than seeking to redefine them out of existence.


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*Whether this will prove a good thing is another matter: it might be absolutely fine -- for the sake of the children, I hope so -- or it might not. Though what tiny amount of evidence there is suggests that there's no harm done through children being raised in any environment in which they could never have naturally arisen, there is simply next to no real evidence on the subject.

Same-sex adoption was illegal everywhere prior to 1995, as far as I can tell, and it's really only been in the last decades that national legislatures have voted to legalise the practice: the fact is that hardly any children, raised in same-sex households, have grown up yet. They might well turn out to be the best people who've ever lived but we just can't say based on the scanty information we've got. There's a sense in which people passing opinions on this matter are passing them based on the earliest preliminary stages of a well-intentioned social experiment. It's not normal practice to adjudicate on experiments until the results are in, and it's especially bad form to do so when you've a strong vested income in a certain outcome...