THE LINKJournal of theScottish Unitarian Fellowship
CONTENTS
WHO’S WHO?Founder: Rev. Dr. Colin Wicker Chairman: Dr. Stephen Pearce
THE CARETAKER GROUPMinister: Rev. Eric W. Breeze Correspondent: Rev. Anne WickerSecretary: Wm. S. Stephen Treasurer: R. H. E. Inkson FOREWORDBy the Editor Springtime and Hopefulness are natural companions, the one restoring light, colour and energy to the winter landscape, the other embracing life expectantly. Optimism is the principal theme of this issue of The Link and we have tried to find and suggest ways of taking a positive line with the various contingencies of the daily round. Optimists are often caricatured as unthinking, self-satisfied, even simple-minded creatures, who don’t have a firm grasp of the realities of human existence on this planet; we are not of their company. Nor do we consort with the unworldly innocents who dwell apart in blissful contemplation and transcend the grime and strife of the peopled world. We are shoulder to shoulder with the great majority who share the heartaches, the broken dreams, the dashed hopes; who are daily appalled by "man’s inhumanity to man!" and are aware of all our human shortcomings, but who get up every morning, brace ourselves and plunge into the maelstrom of the day determined to do our level best, come what may. Unitarians have a tradition of community involvement at all levels and in this issue we highlight two issues which are causing concern, the continuing use of Depleted Uranium Weapons, and Third World Debt. Of matters of belief, we like to think we take an all-round view before reaching a conclusion (no matter how temporary that may be) so we offer two complementary items on The Creation. We would like "The Link to be an interactive magazine, to reflect the views, reactions and interests of our members. In other words we would like to hear from you. We are delighted, therefore, to welcome three new writers to our pages, all readers of The Link, Janet Briggs from Glasgow, Alistair Bate from Edinburgh and Anita Rogan of ‘Jubilee Scotland’. We hope that their contributions might encourage more of our members to get in touch. THE SCOTTISH UNITARIAN FELLOWSHIPThe S.U.F. the Church without Walls, tries to cater for people who wish a connection with a religious community but who for various reasons cannot, or do not, wish to become members of a traditional church congregation. Our Minister, Rev. Eric Breeze, can offer spiritual help or counselling by letter, telephone or personal visit within reasonable distance of Aberdeen. Rev. Dr. Colin Wicker will visit and/or perform religious services for our members, as far as he can. Rev. Anne Wicker will welcome your letters. Our principal means of communication with our membership is The Link and our website: www.suf.org.uk. The subscription for 2004 is £10.00 per person and is now due and should be sent to our Treasurer, R. H. E. Inkson, 39 Woodend Place, Aberdeen, AB15 6AP. Cheques made payable to Scottish Unitarian Fellowship. THE ANNUAL GENERAL MEETINGOur A .G. M. will take place on 8th May 2004 at 11.00am. at 8 Bonnybank Road, Dundee, DD1 2PJ, the home of our Founder. The Agenda will include the Steering Committee’s General Report, a report from the Editor and a financial report and statement of accounts from the Treasurer; Election of Office-Bearers, Chairman, Secretary & Treasurer. (This is an opportunity to confirm the members of the present Steering Committee in office or replace them); policy for the future of the S.U.F. and A.O.C.B. All our members are welcome to attend the A. G. M. and express their views etc. We would also welcome reactions, comments, suggestions, etc. from members by means of letter, telephone or e-mail. We are really anxious to hear then views of our members. THE IMPOSSIBLE DREAMBy Rev. Eric W. Breeze Do you have a dream? There is a well-known story about the two frogs that fall into a churn of cream. They desperately try to get out but to no avail. One frog says to the other 'its no use, there is no way of getting out', and he just sinks to the bottom. But the other frog didn't believe that all was lost and kept on saying to himself 'I will not give in, I will not give in'. And as he is saying this, his little feet were going like the clappers - and as we all know the cream eventually solidifies and he is able to jump out. We could say that this is the attitude we should take when we attempt to build upon all the good things in our lives. But, and this is the main point - we will not be able to do this if we have stopped dreaming. But perhaps we think it is childish to have our dreams - but it is so important. Perhaps we would prefer the Word 'vision'. In the case of our two frogs, the one just gave up, but the other held on to a hope, a dream, and a vision, of getting out. Many of our dreams have slipped away - but it is so important to keep all those good things, those wholesome things, the things that really matter for us, the things we treasure - it is important to keep them alive by building up, and keeping our dreams in front of us. Let us try to clarify just what we mean by 'having a dream'. What we don't .mean is something we do when we go to sleep. Dreaming is a form of creative thinking. Let me attempt to clear up a common fallacy by a quote from the ,writings of Dr. David Schwartz. He writes: "For some illogical reason, science, engineering, art, and writing get tabbed as the only truly creative pursuits. Most people associate creative thinking with things like the discovery of electricity or the polio vaccine, or the writing of a novel or the development of colour television. "Certainly, accomplishments, like these are evidence of creative thinking. Each forward step made in the conquest of space is the result of creative thinking, lots of it. But creative thinking is not reserves for certain occupations, not is it restricted to super-intelligent people. "Well, what is creative thinking? A low-income family devises a plan to send their son to a leading University. That's creative thinking. "A family turns the streets most undesirable lot into the neighbourhood beauty spot. That's creative thinking "Figuring out ways to simplify record- keeping, selling to the impossible customer, keeping the children occupied constructively, making employees really like their work, or preventing a 'certain' quarrel - all these are examples of practical everyday creative thinking." We could of course add our own - or for our church. You see the idea behind the process of creative thinking is trying to find new, improved ways of doing something. However there is one basic step that must be taken - a basic truth if you like. To do anything, we must first believe it can be done. Now there is nothing wrong in dreaming - provided it is guided by creative thinking. Another way of looking at this is to think in terms of possibilities. Basically it is the same thing. It's like playing a little trick on your mind - the game of possibility thinking. Instead of seeing why something cannot be done, we begin to think of possible ways it can be done. Even looking back at our past and focusing upon all the good and positive experiences - and then building upon this by thinking and dreaming creatively for the future. And the basis of all this is believing that something can be done - and at the same time trying to get rid of that word 'impossible'-or even trying to dream the impossible dream. Remember that well-known song: The Impossible Dream. To dream the impossible dream To
right the unrightable wrong
"The dreamers are the saviours of the world," says one writer. "Dream lofty dreams, and as you dream so shall you become." There is nothing wrong in having a worthy dream. We hold to all the good and positive things in our lives and all those good and worthy things we have done. - We then project this into our future - and think of the possibilities. We dream - we think creatively - focussing upon what can be done. And if we think it to be impossible, we still have our impossible dream. The late Sydney Knight said something very similar when he wrote: "Tomorrows' world will ask much of us: tomorrows' paths are unexplored. We have no maps of future time, and there are few signposts. Let us live as we would have tomorrow be." - "Let us live as we would have tomorrow be." There are certain things in life that we would say are impossible - but let us dare to dream the impossible dream - to think in a creative sense of where we want to go - to think in terms of possibilities. This is the key to all the great achievements in the world. "May our dreams and hopes be worthy of the best within us, and our lives be worthy of our dreams." CORRESPONDENCEFrom Rev. Anne Wicker. Dear Friends, Bill asked me to write about ‘hope’. Well, to be honest, I’ve not been feeling very hopeful lately. And I suspect the same is true for many of us. We all have our personal problems and I don’t intend to go into mine here. One major cause of these feelings of hopelessness in me is the state of the world today – its people and environment. Is there really cause for hope in a world where people seem intent on killing each other? Deceiving each other? Exploiting each other? Where the world’s natural resources and habitats are being depleted by human greed? Day after day the newspapers and television reports are full of depressingly routine, bad news. It’s almost as if we have become inured to reports of terrorist attacks, wars, murders and so on. Such events are not just occasional anymore. The are every-day occurrences. My lack of hope stems from the fact that we seem to live in a world which today is warped, crazy, dangerous, scary. Here in Dundee, I live in an area where every day I look out of my window and see young people who seem to have nothing better to do than hang around menacingly on street corners, throw stones at windows and throw down litter, the majority of which seems to me to end up in my garden. A scene, no doubt depressingly familiar in many of our Scottish cities. These young people are the future and their lack of respect for their environment and their general demeanour of hopelessness does not inspire me with hope for the future. And yet… Just the other day, I looked out of the window and amongst the usual accumulation of litter, I noticed something that immediately raised my spirits. A snowdrop had negotiated its way through the discarded crisp packets, looking small and fragile but fresh and white and beautiful amongst the ugliness of the litter surrounding it. That little snowdrop reinforced my belief that there is always a glimmer of hope in a world which so often seems ugly and hopeless. As a Unitarian, this is my view of Spring and Easter, a time of renewal, of rebirth, of hope, as signified by a small, fragile snowdrop, surviving the harshness of the dark winter months and growing proudly against all the odds. I wish you all a Spring season of love, joy and hope. Anne. IN OUR NAME?By Janet Briggs Glasgow C.N.D. held a meeting in our worship room. Two Unitarians were present when a retired American chemistry teacher presented a video on the uses and the effect of depleted uranium (DU). Uranium has 16 isotopes, which are chemically identical and all equally poisonous and carcinogenic. U235 forms less than one percent of any given mass of Uranium, but it is the only fissile part which is reactive in a nuclear reactor, or explosive in a bomb. For either of these uses, Uranium is enriched to maximise the U235 content. But it is not possible to remove all of the active ingredient, and so the residue, the so-called depleted Uranium is still radio active. This material is useless to the nuclear industry, and is sold very cheaply to armaments manufacturers and to the aircraft industry. Uranium is the heaviest of the heavy metals, and it is used as ballast in aircraft wings because it takes up very little room. DU is used in weapons because it is heavy which helps a projectile to fly true. It explodes on impact and then the Uranium burns at 5,000 degrees centigrade. It is most effective in piercing armour plate. As it flies through the air, tiny radioactive particles are shed, to be blown in the wind and settle on the ground. This radioactivity has a half-life of 2,400,000 years. Of course when the missile lands, explodes and burns, radioactivity is scattered in all directions. It causes skin rashes if touched. It can be breathed in, and it lodges in the lungs. It is washed into the streams and is taken up by plants or drunk. It causes cancers and mutations in people, animals and plant life. DU weapons have been used in the First Gulf War, in the wars in the former Yugoslavia and Kosova, in Afghanistan and in the most recent war in Iraq. Radioactive fragments litter the ground. Local people live, work and play among them. One German journalist met some Iraqi children playing with bullets. He took one bullet home to Germany for analysis. When he returned to the laboratory for a result, he was arrested and imprisoned for possessing a dangerous object! People is these places, and some of the returning military, have since suffered undue weariness, rashes, cancers, and some have produced grossly deformed children. These are the symptoms of radiation sickness, or it has been called, and denied, Gulf War Syndrome. Its victims can only wait to die. Civilians, and often soldiers too, have not been protected against this invisible threat. People in America and Britain, though are protected from hearing about it. Our governments do not want these activities to be debated publicly. Weapons of mass destruction cause sudden death or destruction in target areas, some with wide-spread or long-term effects. Weapons of indiscriminate effect cause wide-spread or long-lasting contamination liable to cause injury, chronic illness, slow death or severe birth defects. Both are outlawed in the first protocol of the Geneva Conventions. (This article first appeared in Glasgow Unitarian Church Newsletter "News & Views" Dec. - Jan. 2004.) ( The Ministry of Defence admits that 6.000 DU shells have been fired into the Solway Firth at the Dundrennan Range. It has been claimed that the highest levels of childhood leukaemia in Scotland are now to be found in the South West. Kenny Duncan of Clackmannanshire, a Gulf War veteran, has recently won his case that he suffers from DU poisoning as a result of his service in the Gulf War The Campaign Against Depleted Uranium was initiated in Manchester, in January 1999. Editor)
ACCENTUATING THE POSITIVEBy Bill Stephen It is now just over fifty years since "The Power of Positive Thinking" first outsold every other book on the American best seller list and continued to do so for the next few years. More than 20 million copies in forty-one different languages have so far walked out of the book-shops. When its author, the Rev. Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, died on Christmas Eve 1993, his death was announced by the White House press office. According to President Bill Clinton, "Dr Peale was an optimist, who believed that whatever the antagonisms and complexities of modern life brought us, that anyone could prevail by approaching life with a simple sense of faith, and he served us by instilling that optimism in every Christian and every other person who came in contact with his writings or his hopeful soul." These Christian and "other persons" number many millions: he spoke and they listened. He presented a weekly radio programme for 54 years, appeared regularly on T.V. mailed his sermons to 750,000 people every month, wrote 46 books, published a magazine "Guideposts" which currently has a circulation of 4..5 million, was a mega-star on the US lecture circuit, and the subject of a biography "The Joy of Positive Living" and bio-pic "One Man’s Way". Ten years after his death, the optimism bandwagon rolls on, driven by the Peale Centre for Christian Living. Amazon currently offers 240 different editions of his books, tapes and CD’s and "Guideposts" runs a very busy web-site. Clearly, there is a world-wide hunger for reassurance and millions have turned to Peale to satisfy it. Born the son of a Methodist Minister, in 1898, in Ohio, Norman Vincent Peale eventually trained as a Methodist Minister, served in a succession of churches before joining the Dutch Reformed Church so that he could become Minister of the Marble Collegiate Church on Fifth Avenue, New York, where he remained until his retirement 53 years later, in 1982. He was a committed Christian, and his faith was firmly rooted in the Bible, but he was extremely liberal in his interpretation of and approach to both. His was a God of Love, not exclusive, not judgmental, not vengeful, but forgiving, supportive and compassionate; a God for all humankind. Deeply influenced by William Joyce the psychologist and by Ralph Waldo Emerson, the Unitarian preacher and writer whose work he quotes frequently, Peale took religion out of the sanctuary and into the market place; he said he could not be of use to people unless he made contact with them; he abandoned the sententious, declamatory rhetoric of the pulpit for the easy flow of every-day speech; he tried to apply religion to the specific needs of individual people, to bring them emotional relief, to try to solve their problems. Personal counselling became such an important part of his work that he set up The American Foundation for Religion and Psychiatry, now known as the Institutes of Religion and Health. His mixture of common-sense psychology and simple faith appealed to millions and was enshrined in "The Power of Positive Thinking". His philosophy is simple. Mental attitude dictates how we live our lives. " A man’s life is what his thoughts make of it." Marcus Aurelius, quoted by N.V.P. Our feelings of inadequacy, failure, anxiety, despair, rejection, frustration; our lack of creativity, self confidence, mental energy and self-fulfilment can be traced to negative, self defeating mental habits. "Change your mental habits to belief instead of disbelief. Learn to expect, not to doubt. In so doing you bring everything into the realm of possibility" "The Power of Positive Thinking". A feeling of self-worth is the key to fulfilment and contentment. Peale claims this follows from a belief in the unconditional love of God. He makes no reference to non-believers, but one might assume that a firm conviction in the intrinsic value of life, whereby each individual has the same value as any other; or a belief in the power of belief, religious or otherwise, might serve a similar purpose. Faith in the existence of a positive, benevolent ideal or principle is paramount to his system. "Every individual forms his own estimate of himself and that basic estimate goes far towards determining what he becomes. You can do no more than you believe you can. You can be no more than you believe you are. Belief stimulates power within yourself. Have faith in faith. Don’t be afraid to trust faith. "The Power of Positive Thinking". His formula is consistent through all his writing. He addresses a particular issue e.g. "Attaining Peace of Mind". He defines his topic and establishes its importance to the reader. He then examines it in detail, in an informal, conversational style by moving the discussion forward, imperceptibly going through his agenda, telling short stories of people he has met and helped or who have helped and impressed him, extensively quoting their conversations as direct speech; referring to reports in newspapers and magazines; repeating the views of "experts"; drawing examples from world history and personal experience; and quoting from the Bible and world literature. This is all about real people, and how they came through by learning to be positive and upbeat.. All the while the authorial voice is commentating, emphasising, reassuring, persuading and gently allaying the sceptic’s doubts. By the end of the chapter all misgivings have been massaged away, and one is inclined to trust this warm, friendly voice and take it all on board. At the end of the chapter a summary often includes a list of action points. E.g. To achieve peace of mind: "(a) Do not rush – work, eat, and play leisurely; (b) Do not get overtired at work or play; (c) be moderate in eating, drinking, smoking, working – everything you do. Stay calm and serene. Do not fret or worry: (a) Remember the past is past; (b) Do your best today and let it go at that; (c) Do not be apprehensive of tomorrow –it will take care of its self – most worries never come to pass. (d) Put your trust in God and forget all fear." "Power of Positive Thinking" From the very outset, his work provoked fierce criticism and even antagonism from academic theologians, some of whom accused him of blasphemy, for "simplifying religion", and raising unrealistic expectations of it; and by psychologists who claimed "positive thinking" would in many cases do more harm than good. Indeed one of them wrote a book entitled "The Power of Negative Thinking". Peale, however, is not offering an easy option. His practical techniques for living a happy, fulfilled life, demand effort, commitment, persistence, and high moral standards, because they consist of astringent spiritual exercises. However, the continuing popularity of his work would suggest that his readers are prepared to cope with this. His work has inspired hundreds of imitators, both clerical and secular, and "self-help book" publishing is now very big business. Currently our local branch of Ottakars stocks several dozen different titles, some bannering the words "positive!" and "power" on the cover. According to a recent survey 47% of British people admit to reading inspirational books while less than half that number ever enter a church. Why do people prefer to go to their local book-shop or library to seek reassurance or consolation, seeking that elusive nugget of wisdom that will show them the way to fulfilment? Why do they not drop into their local church? Are the books more relevant; their message more accessible? Is the format more convenient; perhaps more private? Emerson wrote, "We mark with light in the memory the few interviews with souls that made our souls wiser; that spoke what we thought; that told us what we knew; that gave us leave to be what we inly were." This, according to Emerson, is the "priestly duty". Is this business of "touching souls" now more effectively performed by the printing press than by the pulpit? FOLK TALESBy the Editor 1. The mother of a friend of ours recently attained her 83rd birthday. Her health had not been good for some time, and being rather frail, her birthday celebrations were quite restrained. However, she received many cards and several small gifts. What does one give an infirm 83- year-old lady on her anniversary? One of her sons-in-law is a Minister of a fundamentalist church in the far west of Scotland. He found the fitting gift for her. He sent her a recording of a sermon he had recently delivered to his congregation. It was entitled, "Preparing for death". 2. The daughter of a friend is studying sociology at Edinburgh University. Early one afternoon, last October, she (Jane) was jogging in the Meadows when she slipped, sprawled her length on the grass and twisted her ankle. Being in some pain, she hobbled to a bench to take the weight of her foot for a while. A crow flapped away squawking reproachfully as she sat down. Lying beside her on the bench was an empty pizza container made of thick cardboard, as provided by fast-food establishments to keep their products warm. A smartly dressed young man walked by, striding briskly. Suddenly he stopped, fumbled in his pocket, retraced his steps, emptied a handful of coins into the carton, nodded brusquely in Jane’s direction and walked on. It occurred to her that she must look dishevelled and grimy after her fall. Her hair was plastered against her face and as she grimaced with pain, no doubt her expression looked grim and distressed. An elderly couple approached and the old gentleman stopped in front of her and put his hand in his pocket., while the lady tugged at his arm to pull him away, saying, "Come on. You don’t know what she’s on. She’ll likely be needing a fix." Nevertheless, he carefully put a 50p. coin in the carton as he was dragged away. Two teenage school- girls were sitting smoking on the grass a few yards away observing. They ran over to the bench dropped a cigarette and a stick of chewing gum in the box and ran off giggling. By the end of half-an-hour, by which time Jane had succeed in hailing a taxi, the pizza carton contained £4.33p in change, the cigarette and chewing gum, a rich-tea biscuit from a passing nursery school outing, and a free ticket to a disco. As she drove off, she saw the crow resume its occupation of the bench and ownership of the pizza box and its contents, from which, with great discrimination, it extracted the rich-tea biscuit. 3. A few days after Christmas we went on a lengthy ramble to undo the mischief caused by over-indulgence at the festive board. It was a bright, blue day but cold and a half gale was blowing full in our faces. We eventually arrived at a wide sandy bay on the North East coat of Aberdeenshire. Impressive breakers were sweeping up the beach bearing with them a school of excited surfers porpoising in the swirling spray. It was a long haul round the bay in the wind and an hour later we were relieved to reach the shelter of a promenade and its array of buildings. I decide to visit the gents toilet. I swung open the door and let it close behind me. The concrete floor was piled high with wet suits. A naked fifteen-year-old was sitting in one sink, one foot on the floor and his other leg stretched over the other sink . Perched on the pile of surfing gear was his chum, a tall, scrawny youth, also stark naked, his face grey with cold. He was standing on one leg, his arms outstretched, swinging his swimming trunks from the big toe of his other foot. As the door closed behind me a chirpy, little voice said "Hiya!" I looked round to see a chubby, blonde girl of about fourteen, smiling sweetly, with one eye glued to the spout of a video camera. Apart from a bare midriff, I noted with some relief, that she at least, was fully clothed. Clearly unabashed by my presence, the youthful voyeuse continued to film the antics of the naked exhibitionists, who seemed greatly encouraged by my presence. Intimidated by these surfers in the raw, I retired to the safety of the wild North-Easter and took counsel of roaring surf and the scudding clouds. JOSEPH PRIESTLEY ANNIVERSARYBy Bill Stephen The Rev. Dr. Joseph Priestley died on 6th February 1804 in Northumberland, Pennsylvania U.S.A, where he had settled as a political and religious refugee from England, ten yeas earlier. Born in Yorkshire in 1733, the son of a cloth-dresser. Priestley grew up to become one of the greatest intellects of his generation. Possessed of an energetic and creative mind, which constantly craved activity, he interested himself in several distinct disciplines, excelling in each, and in each contributing seminal works which were to help create the Britain of the 19th & 20th centuries. His years as a practising teacher produced books on the theory of education, model time-tables and curricula, a History textbook which became the template for the formal study of history in the English speaking world, and which earned him a doctorate from Edinburgh University. There was also an English Grammar and Manual of Rhetoric as well as works on Economics and Politics. His book extolling the importance of civil liberties, "The First Principles in Government" inspired the father of Utilitarianism, Jeremy Bentham, who credited Priestley with having coined the phrase, "The greatest happiness of the greatest number" the core ideal of the Utilitarian philosophy. He organised public libraries including those in Warrington, Leeds and Birmingham. As a scientist he enjoyed an international reputation for imaginative and innovative experimental techniques and as the discoverer of Oxygen (dephlogisticated air), carbon monoxide, nitrous oxide and ammonia. He made a journey to Paris to demonstrate his methods to Antoine Lavoisier who repeated his experiment and called the resulting gas ‘oxygen’. Priestley also invented carbonated water and became the progenitor of the fizzy drinks industry. His prestige was confirmed for all time when he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1766. As a theologian, he was instrumental in providing the developing Unitarian movement with a sound philosophical basis founded on several works, the most influential being "History of the Corruptions of Christianity". He had been brought up as a strict Calvinist by his Aunt, but quickly rejected the idea of Original Sin in favour of Free Will, and trained as a dissenting Minister. However he found the Unitarian Church more in keeping with his views and served as Minister to three different Unitarian congregations. He was of course a radical in politics as in theology and became extremely unpopular with the establishment for writing and speaking against the idea of a state established church i.e. The Church of England, by his vocal support of the American colonists in their struggle for independence and for his out-spoken approval of the aims of the French Revolution, while deploring the excesses of the Terror. During an anti-French riot in Birmingham in July 1791, his home, his library, his laboratory and chapel were looted and burned to the ground, many important scientific documents being lost for ever. He and his family escaped and first fled to London where he ministered for a short time to a Unitarian congregation in Hackney, and then in 1794 to America, where he was well known to Benjamin Franklyn and Thomas Jefferson. There, he lectured widely and in due course the first American Unitarian congregation was established in Philadelphia in 1796 and another in Northumberland. An outspoken, opinionated and forth-right thinker, Priestley quickly became a controversial figure in America as well, but his great contributions to chemistry, theology, education and political philosophy were recognised on both sides of the Atlantic. He was an advocate of free speech, independent, rational thought and the rule of conscience. Joseph Priestley, arguably, more than any other individual, deserves the credit for the firm establishment of Unitarianism in Britain and America. It is anticipated that various events will take place during this year to commemorate this anniversary. The 2004 Essex hall lecture at the G.A. in Chester, in April will be devoted to Priestley and will be delivered the astronomer and Unitarian lay preacher, Professor David Williams. LET THERE BE LIGHTby Alistair Bate At the beginning of the 19th century, a certain renowned scientist named Laplace produced a book on celestial mechanics that made him so famous that Napoleon summoned him to the palace. "Monsieur Laplace" said Napoleon, "you have not mentioned God in your book even once. Why is that?" Laplace replied, "Your majesty, I have not needed that particular hypothesis". Since that time, the scientific materialist perspective has come to dominate the secular western world-view and consequently, the argument from design for the existence of God has declined in popularity, though as we shall see, it now enjoys a new lease of life. First of all, I think it is important to look at why the scientific materialist perspective has come to dominate, and even win over good church going people in some cases. As Ian Crombie pointed out, "Atheism may encounter fewer intellectual difficulties, but that is because it is not a hypothesis but a refusal to look for explanations of a certain type". It is true that as a believer I have an agenda: I freely admit that, perhaps because of some personal weakness, I need to believe; but it is also true that some folks need, for whatever reason, not to believe. Perhaps they hate institutional religion, which in certain circumstances is understandable, or perhaps they have been dealt a particularly challenging hand by life in which case the question, "How can a God of love permit suffering?" forms a particular obstacle to belief. Again this is perfectly valid and understandable. Certainly, given a proper understanding of the arguments, a theist can claim to stand by that first pillar of Unitarianism, "Reason" just as much as any humanist, and I will now attempt to demonstrate how, in fact, a theistic or pantheistic perspective is actually more scientific than an atheistic perspective. There are a few theological arguments for the existence of God, the cosmological argument favoured by Catholics, the argument from design favoured by Protestants, including Unitarians, and the moral argument, a supplement useful in certain circumstances. Well, the argument from design took a bit of a knock in 1779 when the Scottish philosopher, David Hume, in his ‘Dialogues concerning Natural Religion’, propounded "a basic naturalistic hypothesis in which the universe consists of vast numbers of particles moving about at random. If there is any possible arrangement of them which will constitute a self-sustaining order, sooner or later in unlimited time, they will fall into that order." This seemed like a good argument and won a certain sceptical following. The Church of England countered the argument in 1802 when William Paley published his "Natural Theology". Paley pointed out that "If we find a watch on waste ground we are not tempted to think that it was formed by the random effects of natural causes. Its complex internal organisation and its precise aptness for indicating the time require us to infer an intelligent maker." Paley had presented the kernel of the ‘argument for design’ which still has power to convince the open-minded sceptic. In order to get a structure in the universe capable of supporting life we would require a ‘Big Bang’ so accurately focused as to compare it with shooting at a one centimetre square target from the other side of the universe and hitting it. Of course it’s possible; anything is possible, but I ask you, which is most probable: an intelligence behind the ‘Big Bang’ or a one part in ten to the power of sixty chance? So at the beginning of the 21st century we have reached, through the good offices of scientists, a rehabilitation of natural Theology. Many scientists, particularly physicists, admit this. Astrophysicist, Robert Jastrow, concludes his book "God and the Astronomers" with this: "At this moment it seems as though science will never be able to raise the curtain of the mystery of creation. For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries. Quantum mechanics states that particles can also behave like waves. This can be true for electrons at the sub-micron level, i.e. at distances measuring less than one micron, or one thousand of a millimetre. When behaving as waves, they can simultaneously pass through several openings in a barrier and then meet again at the other side. This "meeting" is known as interference. Strange as it may sound, interference can only occur when no-one is watching. Once an observer begins to watch the particles going through the openings, the picture changes dramatically: if a particle can be seen going through one opening, then it is clear it did not go through an other. In other words, when under observation, electrons are being "forced" to behave like particles and not waves. Thus the mere act of observation affects the experimental findings. This can only be more good news for theologians. For those sub-atomic particles to come together in the precise way they did to produce a finely tuned ‘Big Bang’ it seems more and more likely that there needed to be an Observer. The universe has produced us, intelligent, thinking creatures who have figured all this out. Why is this? Could it be that our mind is congruent with the universe because the universe itself is the result of mind? I shall end with this from physicist, Stephen hawking, "The odds against a universe like ours emerging out of something like the 'Big Bang’ are enormous. I think there are clearly religious implications…." "And God said, ‘Let there be light’ and there was light." (This is a slightly edited version of an address delivered at Glasgow Unitarian Church on 02/02/04 by Alistair Bate, Lay Leader in Charge .) GENERAL ASSEMBLY ANNUAL MEETINGS.The Annual meetings of the general Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches will take place at Chester from 14th to 17th April 2004.
SCOTTISH UNITARIAN ASSOCIATIONANNUAL MEETINGSThe S.U.A. Annual Meetings will be held at Scottish Churches House, Dunblane, on 12th. – 13th June 2004. Speakers will include the G.A. President, The Editor of the "Inquirer", and the National President of the Unitarian Women’s League. Among the topics to be explored will be Celtic Spirituality. The Annual Business Meeting will take place on Sunday morning and the Service of Worship during the afternoon. Leisure time and social events are included in the programme. Forms of application are available from Margaret Hill, 6 Ventnor Terrace, Edinburgh,EH9 2BL. (0131) 6674360. "TOUCHING THE VOID"By the Editor This is a film documentary based on Joe Simpson’s best selling account of the first successful ascent of the ice-clad mountain, Siula Grande, in a remote corner of the Peruvian Andes and of his strength of spirit and miraculous escape from death. In 1985, Joe Simpson, then aged 25, an experienced, skilful and dedicated mountaineer whose ambition was *To climb the world" set out with a younger companion, Simon Yates, to conquer this notorious peak which had defeated several previous expeditions. With only essential equipment and minimum supplies of food and water, Simpson and Yates, risk-takers both, assail the mountain and attain the summit. On the descent, Simpson plunges through a snow cornice and shatters his leg on the ice below. Yates undertakes to lower him stage by stage down the mountain. Their progress is slow, their food and water are exhausted and as night falls, they are enveloped in a ferocious blizzard. Yates, blinded, lowers Simpson over a precipice. Holding Simpson’s dead weight, Yates has no idea what has happened to him. For hours he anchors him but inexorable he begins to slip and eventually decides to cut the rope. Simpson who has been dangling in space in excruciating pain plunges a hundred feet into a deep ice cave and lands on soft snow. He is trapped in an ice tomb. The hours pass. He is angry; he is desperate; he is frightened; he shouts and weeps and curses his ill luck. He refuses to give up hope. He believes in his skill as a climber and his physical strength. At daybreak, sunlight appears from the far side of the cave. He struggles up a steep bank of snow and ice and after hours of effort and pain arrives on the surface. Below him is a glacier, then scree, a boulder field and beyond the track to the campsite. He is hungry and dehydrated, but decides to hop, shuffle and roll down the glacier. Achieving his principal aim of returning to camp seems an impossible dream, so he sets himself minor objectives, e.g. to reach a particular boulder in 20 minutes. He concentrates upon this and drives all negative thoughts of failure, pain, further injury, death out of his mind. For three days he crawls down the mountain, sticking rigidly to his positive plan. Eventually, on hands and knees he blunders into their camp and safety. Courage, determination, faith – positive thinking preserves his life against impossible odds. DON’T EVERBy John Dudman Don’t ever try to understand everything, some things will never make sense. Don’t ever be reluctant to show your feelings: when you are happy give in to it! Don’t ever be afraid to make things better, you might be surprised at the results. Don’t ever take the weight of the world on your shoulders. Don’t ever feel threatened by the future: take life one day at a time. Don’t ever feel guilty about the past: what is dome is done. Learn from any mistakes you may have made. Don’t ever think you are alone: there is always somebody there for you. Don’t ever forget that you can achieve so many of the things you can imagine. Imagine that! It is not so hard as it seems. Don’t ever stop loving or believing. Don’t ever stop dreaming your dreams. (From the Blackpool Unitarian Calendar, quoted in the ‘Inquirer’ of 21/02/04.) A BRUSH WITH DISASTERBy Bill Stephen ‘Martha at the Corner’ occupied the end cottage of our terrace. She was, I reckon, in her late forties, a strong buxom lady with a round, pink face permanently disfigured by an ugly scowl. She fought an endless war against grime and any creature who might bring it into her home. Every morning she swept the area in front of her house, scrubbed her doorstep, the adjoining semi-circle of pavement and the windowsills bone-white, washed the door and window frames, polished the glass, burnished the door brasses and sprinkled pepper on the door-posts and at the corner of her house to discourage any dog from lifting its leg. She used her scrubbing brush like a weapon, digging the bristles into the surface as if in revenge for some injustice life had dealt her. Resentment and frustration seemed to power every sweep of her strong, right arm. Indoors, the cast-iron cooking range shone like ebony, floors and furniture gleamed, the crockery twinkled, the curtains and cushion covers looked fresh from the ironing-board. Martha’s husband was in the Royal Navy, so she shared her home with her bed-ridden mother-in-law, Agnes, whom my friends and I visited regularly on the way to Sunday School. We were ushered into the front parlour where Agnes greeted us and handed each of us a little paper bag of sweets. She sat up in bed, facing the window, dressed in a pink bed-jacket, white shawl and small lace cap. An immaculate white and pink counterpane covered her bed and snowy white pillows supported her. On her left was a tall cabinet displaying a dazzling white dinner service and a tea set, wedding gifts which had never been used, but (according to my Granny ) were washed six times a year by Martha. Various china ornaments glittered on the mantle-piece and on a table covered by a heavy embroidered cloth, stood three clear, glass domes, under which sheltered, three elaborately gowned china dolls, presents from Agnes’s late husband, on returning from distant fishing expeditions. Among the many enemies who threatened the purity of her home, the worst was Norman the carter who lived on the opposite corner across the way, and more particularly, his black Clydesdale, Cosey, who was accompanied by swarms of flies in the summer, scattered corn and hay from her nosebag and regularly deposited mounds of ordure yards from Martha’s door, samples of which she complained frequently penetrated her ‘cordon sanitaire’. In spite of being an ill-matched pair, he being five feet tall and she among the largest of her race, Norman and Cosey were a successful team until Cosey lost her nerve. One day in 1941, during an air-raid, a bomb exploded quite close to them and, panic-stricken, Cosey bolted. Loud noises, thereafter, upset her badly. From time to time, the local anti-aircraft batteries would indulge in target practice, aiming at a drogue pulled behind an aeroplane. A battery was sited near the beach a few hundred yards from Norman’s house. It was dinner-time. All was quiet. Norman was adjusting Cosey’s nosebag. She was standing as usual at the side of the house, harnessed to her flat-bed cart on which was secured a boat’s mast, which projected by several yards beyond the tail of the cart. Without warning, the anti-aircraft battery opened up. Terrified, Cosey tossed Norman against his house, dislocating his shoulder, pranced into the main road, was brought up short by the building in front of her, reared and plunged, reversed, jack-knifed her cart and drove the mast at a sharp angle through Martha’s parlour window. It crossed the end of Agnes’s bed, caught the side of the china cabinet bringing it crashing down upon the glass domes, and gouged a furrow in the fireplace wall, tumbling the china ornaments on to the hearth stone. Martha, who had been dusting the door, snatched up her mother-in-law from the bed and carried her to the living room. Now beside herself with terror, Cosey turned right and bolted up the main street dragging the cart behind her. The mast once again scythed through the room and exited by the window bringing with it part of the window frame, the counterpane and curtains caught on the iron cleats screwed to the mast. Incredibly, no-one was injured, but twenty years or more of polishing and dusting had been swept away in a matter of seconds and the treasures of a life-time smashed beyond repair. Everyone expected that Cosey or Norman or both would succumb to Martha’s anger which was much respected in our street. A rumour that she had snatched him by the collar, thrown him in amongst the devastation and stood over him until he had swept up the mess certainly sounded in keeping with what was assumed of Martha’s character but it was quite wrong. Martha did all herself. Through the long winter of 1941-42, the room was emptied and stripped, the window repaired, the wall re-plastered and redecorated and the furniture replaced. By the end of April, Agnes was back in her parlour. A smiling Martha ushered us in, as if to admire a newly won trophy. A different cabinet, now displayed a few surviving pieces from the dinner service and tea set; another set of ornaments occupied the mantle-piece and the china dolls, their extravagant dresses repaired and laundered, posed on their table-top but without the protection of their glass domes. Martha stood by the door, beaming, savouring her victory over adversity and perhaps despair. No sweets now, but each of us received one of Martha’s scones and a caution not to drop crumbs, with just a hint of the famous scowl. I learned many years later, that as a young woman, Martha had had several miscarriages and became severely depressed. Keeping their home spotless for her husband and mother-in-law became the main purpose of her life. During the war, preserving it intact for his return motivated her days and months and allayed her fears for his safety. She had learned not to dwell on past catastrophes but to work purposefully day by day and plan positively for the future. Martha now rests in her lair beyond the sand-dunes, and her cottage is now occupied by strangers, but walking past it the other day, I instinctively kept my distance from her doorstep….I still daren’t risk that scowl! (Cosey, by the way, found employment in a remote peat moss where the only sounds were the calling of wild birds; Norman became a sweeper–up in a local factory. ) TO ACHIEVE SELF-CONFIDENCEFrom "The Power of Positive Thinking" by Dr Norman Vincent Peale.)
Formulate and stamp indelibly upon your mind a mental
picture of yourself as succeeding. Never permit it to fade. Always
picture ‘success’ no matter how badly things seem to be going at the
moment Whenever a negative thought concerning your own
personal powers comes to mind, deliberately voice a positive thought to
cancel it out. Do not build up obstacles in your imagination. Minimise
them. Difficulties must be studied and efficiently dealt with to be
eliminated, but they must be seen for only what they are. They must not
be inflated by fear thoughts. Do not be awe-struck by other people and try to copy
them. Nobody can be you as efficiently as you can. Remember that most
people despite their confident appearance and demeanour are often as
scared as you are and as doubtful of themselves. Make a true estimate of your own ability, then raise it
10% Do not become egotistical, but develop a wholesome self-respect.
Believe in your own God-released powers.
PHILOSOPHY OF LIVINGBy Rev. Eric W. Breeze A good friend of mine is an alcoholic - although he has been dry for many years now. He once took me to a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous - basically for me to get first hand experience of what it was like. I came away quite impressed - not only because of those who stood up to admit that they were an alcoholic - but because of the philosophy behind the AA itself - especially the 12 suggested steps. Only once does the 12 steps mention the word 'alcoholic' and only once does it mention the word 'alcohol'. We can literally put our own problem in place of those two words and follow the same 12 steps for whatever troubles us. Taken together they provide a sound Philosophy for living. The sad fact about alcoholics however that once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic, and the first and most difficult step to take is to simply admit that one is in fact an alcoholic. The Fist Step then is when one admits that they have a problem and that their lives had became unmanageable. Now if we look at this from a wider context - beyond that of the AA - we can clearly see that this is an essential step to take for any problem we might have. How can we overcome any problem or hurdle in life if we don't admit to ourselves that we have a problem! It's as simple as that - yet it can be so difficult for most of us. The Second Step is one that some may reluctantly take as well - especially if they have had problems in believing in something greater than themselves. The second step says that 'we came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity'. But The Third Step clarifies this. It says: 'make a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him', or understand Him. And this last part is in Italics. Now from a Unitarian point of view this is interesting, for it is giving one the complete freedom of interpretation of what one understands by the term 'God'. This is where we can easily substitute the word 'God,' for the word 'Spirit', or the 'Spirit within', or any other name we prefer. So when it comes to our own particular problem - again it can be anything that gets us down - we turn our lives over to that 'Power' within ourselves. The Fourth Step is one that everyone can do regardless of what religious stance they may take. It is making a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. Again, this is not an easy step to take, because it does mean being completely honest with ourselves, our attitudes, our actions, and our character - and then trying to do something constructive to correct whatever we have found wrong. The Fifth Step follows on from this. We admit to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our problem - but first and foremost we admit our problem to that 'Power' within ourselves. The Sixth Step is allowing ourselves to become open to that Power - basically making ourselves ready for our defects of character to be removed The Seventh Step is that of simple humility for our shortcomings to be removed. The Eighth Step entails making a list of all those we have harmed in any way - and then making a promise to make amends. Again this is not an easy step to take, especially if the people and the events go back several years. With The Ninth Step we put the eighth step into action - we make amends to such people wherever possible. The only time we don't do it is, if it may cause further pain or distress - so really we have to be careful here with a little bit of wisdom and forethought. The Tenth Step means making a constant inventory of ourselves, and when we are wrong, to promptly admit it. Now these steps are not easy, but they embrace a kind of philosophy of living that can be applied regardless of what religion one belong to - or even if one simply believes in a Higher Power of some kind, or the Spirit within. Names are not really important for these steps to be effective. The Eleventh Step in an interesting one. It seems to be the natural outcome of all the other steps. In this eleventh step we seek through prayer - and, yes, meditation, to improve our conscious contact with God - but again it emphasized, and it is in Italics - God as we understood Him. And once we come to a personal inner awakening, so to speak, we seek through prayer and knowledge to carry that higher will out. And in our Twelfth Step, once we have had that inner spiritual awakening - or if you like - having had a personal experience and an inner knowledge of what it is like in having certain difficulties, pains and inner conflicts - we are then able to extend the hand of friendship and help to others - we carry the message of these steps to those in need. But we also do this by continuing to put these principles into practice in all our affairs. If we look at this more carefully we will see a whole philosophy of living that actually works - if of course it is applied. As in everything it must be done - the principles must be carried out in our every day lives. I am a great believer that no matter how much we read about spiritual or religious matters, if there is no actual practice of those principles in ones every day life, then any spirituality that may be gained can only be superficial. It was well said by Jesus that it is only by their fruits that we will know them. - And this is true for anything in the spiritual life. And step twelve actually addresses this -, as it should. The beauty of those 12 Steps is that each person approaches them in his/her own way and with their own understanding. Primarily it is a way of overcoming some kind of adversity in life - but at a deeper level it also provides us with a philosophy of living. There is one well-known prayer that many alcoholics use - but you will also recognize it. 'God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.' Hope you have found this of interest. FACE UP TO WORLD DEBTBy Anita Rogan JUBILEE Scotland's current ``Face Up To World Debt'' campaign has invigorated an issue many thought had disappeared when the clocks struck midnight on 31 December 2000. Thousands of campaigners from churches across the religious spectrum had come together to call for world leaders to grant a modern-day Jubilee, echoing the 50-year biblical event when Israelite kings granted slaves their freedom and money lenders wrote off their debts. It was a way of giving those shackled, by whatever means, their freedom and the chance to start again with a clean slate. This idea of wiping the slate clean found increasing resonance as the new millennium grew closer. In 1998, some 70,000 protestors, of all ages and religions, formed a chain around the G8 summit in Birmingham to call for the crippling debts of poor countries, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa, to be written off, in order to give many of these new democracies the chance to use their resources to cope with their considerable problems of drought, famine and HIV/AIDS. Taken aback at the unexpected strength of public feeling, the leaders of the richest and most powerful governments felt they had to act, and in 1999 at the next G8 summit in Cologne, they agreed to write off $110 billion of third world debt. So, five years on, what has been achieved? Sadly, not as much as we had hoped. So far, less than a third of the debt relief promised to poor countries in 1999 has been forthcoming, just $36 billion to date. Those debts that have been written off have undoubtedly made a difference. Uganda, which is one of the few countries to have received debt relief under the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) programme, has been able to double the number of primary school children currently receiving free education. However, with regards to other countries, the HIPC initiative still leaves much to be desired. Drought-struck Zambia, which was due to receive much-needed debt relief in December 2003, was devastated to have this denied at the eleventh hour. Western creditors decided she was no longer eligible for relief because, despite orders to further reduce spending on healthcare, the government refused to do so. Zambia's life expectancy rates have plummeted from 54 years in the 1980s to just 37 years due to the country's sweeping HIV/AIDS epidemic, which currently stands at almost 20% or one in five of the adult population (1999). As a whole, African countries currently spend four times as much on repaying their international debts as they do on the healthcare of their citizens, despite the fact that many have the highest rates of HIV infection in the world and are experiencing plummeting life expectancy rates among the most economically-productive members of society. Politicians and members of the public need to face up to the fact that third world debt is still a very real problem for many struggling impoverished countries, and that, despite all the fine rhetoric. thousands of children are still dying of curable diseases because money which should be spent on healthcare is instead being used to repay debts on loans, many of them run up by previous governments and irresponsibly lent. Jubilee Scotland's current ``Face up to World Debt'' photo campaign has been taken up enthusiastically by both our local groups and campaigners across Scotland. As well as supporters putting themselves in the picture (frame) about debt, writers Ian Rankin, Iain Banks and Doris Lessing, adventurer Benedict Allen, and activist and journalist George Monbiot have also pledged their support to publicising the existence and continuing problem of third world debt. The photo petitions were handed in to local MPs at the end of the year and special thanks must go to Anniesland MP John Robertson, who managed to hand his petition in to none other than Prime Minister Tony Blair. Jubilee Scotland works closely with the Scottish Parliament's international development group, and in November, we arranged for a selection of our ``famous faces'' to be exhibited in the Scottish Parliament, where party leaders Robin Harper (Green) and Tommy Sheridan (SSP), as well as labour MP Sarah Boyack and lib-dem Robert Brown, also put themselves in the frame. The ``Face Up to World Debt'' campaign will continue to run for the early part of this year, pressing home the following facts about debt relief:
Much still requires to be done on the debt relief front but we believe that politicians respond to public pressure. Demystifying third world debt, showing the effects such crippling debts are having on the poor and the benefits which result from debt relief are our continuing aims. Sunday 16 May 2004 will be the anniversary of the ``human chain'' in Birmingham which really put third world debt on the political agenda. For any congregations wishing to mark the occasion we have produced a ecumenical pack which is full of useful information. With the wholehearted support of members of the public, including the Christian community, we remain confident that the poor of the world will at last receive their long-overdue Jubilee. More information on the work of Jubilee Scotland can be found at www.jubileescotland.org.uk. BEGINNINGSBy Bill Stephen The coincidence of two, recent news reports appearing almost simultaneously encapsulated the century-old controversy between Creationism and Charles Darwin’s Theory of Evolution. Reuters U.K. reported on the world-wide campaign by atheist, agnostic, rationalist and humanist societies to have February 12th. (Darwin’s birthday) recognised internationally as Darwin day, and that this should start in 2009, the bi-centenary of Darwin’s birth. It was also reported that the Labour Party in the North East of England has allowed Creationists to take charge of the funding and administration of a school which is teaching creationism, thus perhaps, introducing to the U.K. the bitter dispute that his been waged in educational circles in many of the Southern States of the U.S.A. since the 1920’s when the ‘Butler Law’ was passed forbidding the teaching of evolution theory in state schools. (The subsequent Scopes "Monkey Trial" when John T. Scopes of Dayton, Tennessee was accused and found guilty of teaching evolution theory was dramatised in the film Inherit the Wind.) There are two principal Creationist groups. (1) The ‘hard core’ creationists believe that the world and everything in it was created by God in six days, exactly as described in "Genesis Ch.1". about 6,000 years ago. (2) The Intelligent Design Theorists may accept a form of evolution but claim that the universe is so well ordered and dependent upon incredibly intricate arrangements and complex processes that blind chance could not have been responsible and, therefore, some superior intelligence – not necessarily a god- must have designed it. Intelligent design and not chance is the progenitor of all existence, This is a view favoured by some religious liberals. The Theory of Evolution described in Darwin’s Origin of Species combines random mutation and natural selection. Natural Mutation says creatures sometimes have off-spring which differ from their parents in a certain characteristic. Natural Selection says that if that characteristic helps the creature to survive long enough to reproduce, then it will be passed on to the next generation. Creationists attack Evolution Theory because it undermines one of the arguments for the existence of God, the Argument from Design, and removes Creativity from God and bestows it upon blind Nature. They also join the Intelligent Design (I.D.) supporters, in rejecting its materialism. Life, they say is not a mechanical process, but a creative purpose, a mind, imposing order upon the material world, and from outside it. Materialism is rampant, they say in every sphere of human activity and has been inspired and encouraged by the teaching of Evolution Theory to the detriment of spiritual matters. The opponents of Creationism, of course, have their counter arguments, particularly against the Argument from Design. The human mind, they say, likes to organise complex structures into patterns, even when they are not intrinsically there. ( In fact it appears that the universe is constantly moving towards disorder and is not as well organised as it may seem.) We also like to interpret coincidences and similarities as if they had been purposely arranged. If there is a Design, it tells us nothing of who or what thought it up, what its purpose is, and what its connection with any of the world’s religions may be. The Problem of Evil dilemma also seems to argue against a designed universe. The evolutionary process as it is, inevitably results in suffering and death of individuals and whole species and would presumably, therefore, not feature in a perfectly designed world which would surely exclude such barbarities. Finally, on a more positive note, Evolution Theory explains the development of the various species adequately without recourse to any other hypothesis. Evolutionary Theory or Darwinism, as it is now frequently referred to, continues to develop beyond biology and controversially invades other disciplines, including psychology, sociology, cosmology, human culture, including philosophy & religion. It has been argued by some Universal Darwinians that human creativity is rooted in the evolutionary processes of variation (Mutation) and natural selection, i.e. that the human mind is the product of blind chance and the purposeless mechanisms of the material world. Religion is a product of the human mind. Divine creativity is traditionally explained in terms of human creativity. It would seem to follow then that religion is a consequence of evolution. The slogging match between the opposing sides has been conducted world-wide generating a flow of books, journal articles and T.V. programmes and has recently spilled over on to the world wide web. In the U.S. the debate is not just about Religion and Science, it is about power: who will decide what should be taught in schools, - the parents, the teachers, the local school boards, the State Legislatures, or the Supreme Court. The Creationists have developed an efficient organisation with a sophisticated propaganda machine, possess an annual income of many millions of dollars and apparently, have the support of the president, George W. Bush. In the U.S. the Creationists argue, that since Evolution is "just" a theory which can never be proved absolutely true (as Science deals in hypotheses not absolutes) it ought not to be taught as the sole account of the origin of life on earth and that other accounts such as that in "Genesis Ch.1" ought also to be taught as a valid scientific theory in the Biology class. (Incidentally, although there are at least another dozen creation myths, only the Biblical one is taught as Science.) The Genesis account is not the result of Science, and to associate it with science teaching is to produce confusion in the students’ minds as to the nature of Science and of Spirituality. At another level it encourages the Religion–Science polarity which leads to conflict and which is helpful to neither. Bad or pseudo-science leads to bad or pseudo-religion and vice versa. It would be unrealistic to claim that religion and Science need never collide, but they do have their separate spheres. They deal with different aspects of existence. Science deals with fact and religion with meaning or purpose, i.e. faith. A faith is not primarily a factual belief, an acceptance of a few propositions such as "God exists". It is the sense of having a place of one’s own in a much larger whole, whose larger aims includes one’s own and give them meaning and purpose even to the point of self sacrifice. This kind of faith is very wide-spread and is important in our lives; even people who may be sceptical about religion have faith in something, be it humanity, or democracy or Nature or the future perfectibility of human-kind etc. Such faiths are seized upon by people whose lives lack any other meaning. Education which leads to enlightenment and greater tolerance is to be applauded; education which is covert propaganda for partisan purposes and the pursuit of power is to be deplored. I hope the establishment of a Darwin Day and of Creationist classes in N.E. England schools are both motivated by the former. If the latter, we may live to regret it. IS RELIGION THE PROBLEM TODAY?(The good-will religions) By Rev. Eric W. Breeze Is religion the main problem in the world today? Many people would say a definite yes to that. Recently I heard a radio show criticizing 'religion' for being the main source of all the worlds conflict - and in particular the extremes of religion. There are certainly many conflicts within religion, as well as extremes - However, I think you will find that this sort of thing is on the outside - the periphery, the surface of religion. That is where most of the extremes fie. The other problem, for most people, is looking in on themselves, so that the only viewpoint is their own - which, if we are really honest, is not all that clear. It's a kind of one way process, looking only at ones own belief, and nothing else. And unfortunately this is what most people see - and they judge accordingly. If for a moment we can clear away all the dogmas and creeds, all the shallow fundamentalist attitudes, we will see that most of the Great World Religions are religions of love and peace - and they would all say, in one way or another 'do unto others as you would have them do unto you.' So when you clear away all this surface stuff, and all the external baggage, you will find, at the centre, they are basically good, true and beautiful - they are what is often termed the "good-will religions". I have mentioned it before, but I really do think that it is worth reminding ourselves that, there is a vast difference between 'religion in-it-self', and that which is done in 'the name' of religion. I offer the following extracts taken from quotes from The Pocket 'World Bible as an example of what we can find if we took deeper. In the Upanishads we read: Who knows that one whose dwelling is
love, he indeed is a teacher. From Buddhist texts: Hatred does not cease by hatred at any
time. Hatred ceases by love. From the Zoroastrian Scriptures: He who relieves the poor makes Ahura King. Whether one is lord of little or much, let him show love to the righteous. From the Confucianist Scriptures: What you do
not want done to yourself, do not do to others. From the Scriptures of Taoism: Keep in good terms
with men. He who loves the world as he does his own body can be entrusted
with the world. From the works of Pre-Exilic Hebrew Prophets: Take away from me the noise of thy songs, for I will not bear the melody of thy voice. But let justice roll down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream Can two walk together, except they be agreed? ... Let no man strive, or reprove another. I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings... Do justly, love kindness, and walk humbly with thy God... You will see, that from the above, if you strip away all that narrowness and intolerance and prejudice - this is what you find - something truly good. This goes beyond the surface, the violence, the fundamentalist attitudes, the religious fanaticism, the extremist, and the bigots - and those who would judge all religion purely on a superficial level, and then of course blame religion for the cause of all the worlds problems. The Pocket World Bible says more or less says the same thing: 'Unfortunately, there is frequently a wide gulf existing between the statements of the scriptures and the religious and secular practices of those whose canons they are. All scriptures have had their interpreters and commentators, those who would add to them and those who would detract from them and those who would fit them to their own uses.' And then it goes on to say, that 'Organised Hinduism, Oriental Buddhisn-4 Taoism and Confucianism to-day bear little relation to the ideals of the Upanishads, of Gautama, Lao Tze, or Confucius. Nor do the lives or even the protestations of the average Jew and Christian adequately reflect the words of the Hebrew prophets and Jesus.' Is religion then the problem for all the ills of the world? Some may believe that this is the case, however, I personally think they are missing the point of it all. They see only the surface - they see only what is done in 'the name' of religion. It is of course a personal belief, but I sincerely do believe that we can get to the heart of religion by getting to the heart of the various sacred scriptures - and also by getting to the heart of men and women everywhere. If we do this then we might bring some sanity to religion and to the world. I offer this quote for reflection: 'At a
famous meeting of the Free Religious Association of America held in Boston
during the last half of the nineteenth century a somewhat overzealous
minister quoted certain passages from the Christian Gospels, adding that
these could not be matched in the sacred books of any other religion. At
this point Ralph Waldo Emerson, who was in the audience, rose and said
quietly, "The gentleman's remark proves only how narrowly he has
read."' I would hope we would see that there is a vast difference between what is done and practised purely at the surface of religion, and what we find and what is practised at the heart.
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