Knights and the Force.

The government has an honours forfeiture committee! Wow, who'd have remembered. The few times that the infamously wicked have been stripped of their honours most of us will have forgotten the how of it. It should be said that those who have lost their titles in the past have done so for deeds much more nefarious than Mr Goodwin, usually involving people dying and or being tortured. But the government seemed to think that the public wanted him further punished, and this was about the only thing they could legally and swiftly do without asking anyone else's leave, save of course Her Majesty's.  But they have surely opened up a can of worms here. Everyone who is commenting thoughtfully on this is bringing up the question of all the others whose behaviour also helped get us into the financial mess. Will we, for the sake of moral consistency, see others pulled down too? No pressure from them was publicly forthcoming for Stephen Hester. What will this year's round of  Bankers Bonuses' reveal I wonder? 


More interesting however, is a comparison between the government's treatment of this, and their active involvement in forcing massive pay cuts on the Police Force. The Government won't interfere with publicly funded Bankers' bonuses, but when it comes to any other public body, they are swift to put the boot in. I am unable to believe that here is a government that really has the interests of the low paid, the disadvantaged, the marginalised, at heart. I hope I will see things which make me change my mind, for I do not want to be sucked into a stereotypical anti Tory myth about their bias to the well off, but that belief was certainly one of the things that made me vote labour to get Blair in, and abandon my more liberal normal voting instincts so that I could put my voting shoulder to the wheel as it were. I do believe that when the Tories came to power they had to be firm to resolve the debt crisis, and have gone along with some of their austerity package. But they could give just a little bit more to those whose need is greatest, and they could take more from those who do not need at all, and perhaps in the process, stem the tide of uncertainty and insecurity surrounding those treasures of British life, our NHS and our education system. 

Tyred out

I bought winter tyres in November. I also bought snow chains and a collapsible snow shovel, all of which fit neatly on top of my spare tyre in the boot. I kind of knew, when I bought them, that the deluge of snow and weeks' long icy weather would not hit us this year, because of course the very act of buying these things was, to be quite superstitious about the matter, to tempt fate to make my purchases unnecessary. (Well almost unnecessary - winter tyres work better than normal ones at temperatures below 7 C and we have had our fair share of low temperatures.)
I am undecided about the usefulness of superstition. Presumably at least some superstitions are built up from a basis of experience, like the wisdom of not walking under ladders! My main reason for being undecided is that it seems on the face of it to be an abandoning of faith in a God who is in control to a set of circumstances which, combined with luck, govern the future. However, we all believe that certain things do govern future events. If I step off a cliff, gravity will decide what happens thereafter. The laws of science just don't seem as irreligious as things like fate and superstition. But if these things, rather like proverbs, come to us from out the fount of human wisdom and experience, then maybe they are more reliable than some of us (me) might give them credit for being. Just because the basis for some of them has been lost in antiquity does not mean that there was not a rational, sensible beginning to them. Of course I wouldn't want to open the door to all superstition with these thoughts, as some superstitions seem now to be plain daft. The one about tempting fate might be a case in point...until we start thinking about it. Usually the reason we make the supposition that we are tempting fate is that we know that the circumstances we are trying to guard against, don't actually strike with the kind of frequency that our behaviour is anticipating, or, we know that the risk we are taking is being done in the face of good evidence that any success will be against the odds. So, behind the irrational seeming thought, there lies a bit more than a grain of truth. So, will I walk under a ladder should there be one in my path today, well, if I did I might be tempting fate....but there again, my experience suggests I'd get away with it, touch wood. 

World Order and stuff

In the search for the "God" particle, the Higgs boson, the net seems to be tightening, giving the scientists at Cern an ever shrinking field in which to look for results. There was an excellent program on progress so far on T.V. a few nights ago. Among the theories which the scientists are using, are theories of symmetry and super symmetry. Basically these theories predict that everything has an opposite number, so for matter, there is anti matter, and so on. Here's a summary definition of super symmmetry taken from superstringtheory.com: One of the predictions of string theory is that at higher energy scales we should start to see evidence of a symmetry that gives every particle that transmits a force (a boson) a partner particle that makes up matter ( a fermion), and vice versa.This symmetry between forces and matter is called supersymmetry. This I think means that force and matter are being suggested as possible dance partners in this need for symmetry.


Anyway, many of the scientists being interviewed in the program seemed to be saying that if perfect symmetry obtains, then in the end we get absoutely nothing, zilch, for everything cancels itself out. Matter and antimatter destroy each other on contact, and so on. So, for matter to have been able to come into existence, there must have been a flaw in the physics, some kind of imperfection in the process, in order for asymmetry to kick in. This idea that the universe needs a kind of built in imperfection is mind blowing. Leonard Cohen has perceptively sung "There is a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in." It is of course a given in Christianity. The brokenness of humanity is the prerequisite for the Incarnation and subsequent crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Without the brokenness you don't get the salvation. It feels like the more we learn about science, the more it conforms to Christian theology. So much for those who think that science and  faith are opposed to each other. Perhaps Science is the super symmetrical partner to religious faith.

Independence for Scotland?

Why is Scotland becoming so keen on independence, or at least on the Scottish National Party? I remember my father faithfully voting for the SNP election after election. In those days, Perth was a Tory stronghold, one of the few blue islands in an overwhelmingly red Scotland. In my headstrong pre voting teenage years I used to dismiss this as a completely wasted vote. Well, I think my dad gets the last laugh. But it's from our political past that we get a clue as to where the strong SNP support comes from. The solid working class support base for Labour has largely vanished. The old industrial landscape of pit, mill and factory are a thing of the past, and with their demise, so also the Labour vote. The sons and daughters and grandchildren of these Labour voters are not to be relied upon to continue the family political solidarity. Indeed, the phenomenon of large groups of people engaging in similar types of behaviour is rapidly fading. Year on year, viewing figures for the top Christmas programmes decline. Compare the Queen's Speech nowadays with viewing figures 30 years ago. The difference is in tens of millions. It's the same for Eastenders. Or look at football match attendance statistics, political party membership, or even numbers shopping in our High Streets on a  Saturday afternoon. I remember when on a Saturday, Perth High Street and Edinburgh's Princes Street and Glasgow's Argyle Street could be guaranteed to be a sea of moving bodies. So, it's not just the Church which is seeing falling attendances. We just don't do the same huge crowd turn outs any more. It's not that we're not shopping as much, or watching telly on Christmas Day, or watching football as much. We are - but we're just doing these things differently. There is more choice, more variety, more ways of doing the same thing - we can pick our time, our preferred media, our version. So in this way the political landscape has changed along with everything else. The SNP do not have as big a support base as old Labour used to have, but the emergence of other parties like the Lib Dems, has weakened and diversified the overall vote, and in Scotland at least, the SNP have a broader political appeal than the Lib Dems and the other 2. It's not so much about independence as who is perceived to be able to do the job best.
This comment has some bearing on Church attendance. People who shake their heads at the supposed spiritual decay of the populace need to think more carefully. We are no less spiritual that we have ever been, I believe. We are just being offered more choice in the ways in which we express our spirituality. This I think means that there still are great opportunities for the Church (of every shade and description), we just need to engage a little more realistically with ways which might attract today's seekers.

Higgs Boson

Why does stuff have mass? One would have thought it just does, but wow, there is a reason that things bind together, to make 3D stuff. Apparently the Higgs particles are part of the answer. What they won't answer is the question why there is stuff at all, because that question can be applied to the Higgs particles. Questions about ultimate origins of anything, including the particles with no mass, which would whizz about at the speed of light forever were it not for the Higgs particles, still remain. Scientists are still scratching their heads about gravity, dark matter, anti-matter and matter and the relationship between these last two. Isn't theoretical physics wonderful?
In the spiritual realms, the great question is, why is there evil if an all powerful perfectly good God exists? The traditional answer from the Christian stable has to do with the gift of love and free will. Love, which I believe is the divine attribute alluded to in Genesis 1.26, needs free will to be love at all. Free will is the very thing which can undo love, by choosing not to. Not even God can work logical impossibilities, like making love independent of free will. The consequence of the choice to depart from the high ground of love is charted in Genesis Chapter 3. But some like Martin Luther, see in that chapter a promise to fix at least the damaged relationship between people and God: Ch3.15, where God, speaking to the Serpent says that the offspring of the woman will crush his head, while he will strike at his heel. Some see this as a promise to deal with the power of evil and as alluding to Jesus Christ. Admittedly this is hotly disputed. I like to read it as the instant response of a distraught God to the catastrophic consequences of sin. I hear him say, "I will fix this" in that moment. Christmas in my opinion, is to theology what the Higgs boson might be to Theoretical Physics. Christ has come. God keeps his promises.

Kyoto

2 degrees celcius. If the average temperature of our planet increases by just 2 more degrees, we will be outside zones previously known in the entire history of mankind, and we have been around for around 200,000 years or so, according to science. This means a scale of unpredictability of unprecedented size. No-one knows quite what exactly this might mean for planet earth and humanity, and all life. Massive population shifts are certainly predicted, but these do not come about alone, or without conflict. Quarrels over diminishing and less accessible fuel resources and other naturally occurring necessities would be highly likely too. Quite a doomsday kind of scenario. All the more so when you listen to the experts talk with apprehension about the fact that agreements are not likely to really kick in until 2020. They talk of a tipping point beyond which it would be impossible to reverse the heating up process, because the warming itself unlocks more greenhouse gasses which in colder conditions are trapped in the seas and forests of our planet. They worry that the tipping point will be reached well before we get our act together to stop the process.The process, by our chronological standards seems slow, although the momentum is vast, but by Earth's own chronological standards we are positively hurtling into a new era. Our 200,000 years is a drop in the ocean of Earth's time frame. David Attenborough has even made his own plea, using evidence gleaned from his massive experience of globe trotting and observing the planet.
So, Kyoto, and what it represents could be as important as life and death. Unfortunately, for as long as it is not this generation's power wielders' lives and deaths, no-one is going to hit the absolute panic button. I think it probably is too late to stop us going into uncharted waters. (No pun intended.) So what is left for humanity? Well, the uncharted waters need not, might not, mean an end for humanity, nor even some kind of apocalyptic doomsday scenario, but what will be needed is a spirit of co-operation and mutual help and sharing on a scale the like of which we have never seen. History does not give us much cause for hope. However, a changed landscape and planet just might give us the motivation to give up fighting for individual national survival, to co-operating for corporate international survival. We can but hope, for the children of our grandchildren.

26-1

As soon as I heard that David Cameron had faced off 26 European leaders and vetoed their agreement last week, I felt that this was indeed blogworthy. You have to hand it to him, it takes some degree of courage to face a whole roomful of people, particularly when they are heads of governments, and stand your ground and disagree with them to the point of becoming isolated from them. His cool acknowledgment of Sarkozy as he brushed past him in the meeting room spoke volumes. I was reminded of one of my favourite verses in the Bible by all this: Exodus 23.2 "Do not follow the crowd to do wrong". Now, please do not take this as a ringing endorsement of Cameron's politics in all this. It might well be that in following this crowd, he would have been doing right. I am only expressing my admiration for one act of boldness, which is not admiration of the matter about which he was being bold, nor is it even agreement about the correctness of his stance, and to be even more brutal, I shall shortly take away some of the praise I have just lavished upon him. But, to hold my theme for a moment more, I have always thought that people put more weight on what the majority do, than whether what they do is right or not. Indeed for some people, the principle of democratic decision making is so strong, that for them, the rightness of a decision almost depends on how that decision has been made. If by democratic means, then it is right. Peer pressure is a powerful thing. I had a parishoner write me on the subject of inviting the congregation to decide matters pertaining to church policy, on the grounds that democracy was self evidently the right way to do this. If this were the case, the government would hold referenda on every law change they were proposing. But within church circles, the argument which runs, "People say", or, "A lot of people are saying..." is a powerful tool.
Anyway, back to Cameron. The man vetoed the move to tighten up banking regulations because he was concerned about safeguarding the English financial and banking institutions, many of which do their main business from within the City of London. The Tory party receives over 50% of its income from the City Institutions. A moment ago I said peer pressure is a powerful thing. One might also reflect that, money talks.