Thanks to Kika for the email.

A story on the BBC News website caught my eye today:

“The Church of England has declared organ donation to be a Christian duty, in keeping with giving oneself and one’s possessions freely.”

For me, organ donation is one of those great moral dilemmas. On the face of it, I think it’s a sound idea - helping others to live after your death, but the selfish side of me says that I would like to go to the grave intact, thankyouverymuch - I especially don’t want things removed if I’m not quite dead yet.

And what if I found myself in the position as a recipient? Would it be hypocritical to receive a donation without having been a donor myself? I’m not sure right now, but I’m erring on the side of no.

There’s an interesting (possibly biased in favour of donation) summary of various religions’ positions at organtransplants.org.

I suppose, even if I come down on the side of not being a donor, it’s better to have thought about it and decided than to be oblivious to the issue in the first place.

I love my family to bits, but sometimes I think they’re maybe just a little crackers. For example, my mum’s take on pest control:

Says it all… thanks to Steve for the link…

I’ve been considering the question of evolution after seeing the Strange Maps evolution thing, linked by Henry.

It seems that in the US, one in three adults believes firmly in creationism as opposed to evolution (according to this bit of literature from the pro-creation lobby). There are a couple of things I find interesting there… firstly, the question:

Why do so few Americans accept evolution when so many people in Iceland do?

My initial response to this is that a proportion of Americans tend to be nutjobs, whereas Icelanders, while terminal alcoholics, certainly seem to be more together on the whole ‘reality’ thing.

But that led to a thought… I wonder if Americans have a propensity for not believing in evolution because they can’t imagine a time-span long enough. Icelanders have their epics and their sagas and their old types of writing and their runes and ice ages and thousands if not millions of years of history to think about. Perhaps a young whippersnapper like America just can’t imagine themselves far enough into the past to give evolution enough time to work.

I had to laugh on the Strange Maps site, one of the pro-creation comments was:

There is a junkyard across the street, I don’t see it turning into an airplane.

That is one of the worst cases of analogy I have ever seen in my life*. Junkyards don’t reproduce. The commenter hasn’t watched the junkyard reproducing over millions of years. The junkyard (assuming the two previous points were ok) may not evolve into an airplane, if that’s not the best survival tactic. It’s more likely to sit there and just evolve a plastic roof to stop it rusting so quickly.

But what would I know? I only have a science background to degree level. They must have brainwashed me, the pinko lefty liberal higher education monkey boys.

(* except maybe this one)

You’ve probably noticed that my blogs have become far less personal* these days, and more curiosities and links and stuff. I really wish I could blog everything that’s going on, but it’s all really heavy. But good. Believe me, it’s all good.

If I had a ‘friends filter’ like LiveJournal, I might be tempted to write more, but I probably wouldn’t because I like anything I make public to be really public, not pseudo-public.

So anyway… life’s good. Slightly surreal at times, big things are going on, and I’ll let you all know later. Hope that’s ok?

Oh… and huge thanks to everyone. You know who you are. I love you all. (And I’m not even drunk, so you can’t blame that).

Oh… incidentally, I found what an atheist swears oaths on this week. It’s nothing. They just have to say a few more words instead.

(*discussions of my John Thomas notwithstanding)

Well, that was absolutely fascinating. There’s a series on Channel 4 TV at the moment called “The Beginners’ Guide To …” with the name completed with various religions. Today, on Sarah’s recommendation, I watched the L Ron Hubbard program. As you’re probably aware, L Ron Hubbard is the founder of the most bizarre, cultish, dangerous and outright stupid religion ever invented. Or is he? Read on…

The presenter, Hardeep Singh Kohli, made an excellent job of taking us through the initial stages of a follower. He made a point, straight away, of separating the Church of $cientology from the philosophy of Scientology - an important distinction.

The most interesting thing about the program was that it all made sense. It only very briefly touched on the alien mythos associated with the beliefs - but made the fair point that if we accept angels and demons, then surely aliens are actually a more likely proposition. The brainwashing allegations were covered quite well - the philosophy lies somewhere between counselling and confession and aims to clear out mental baggage, and provide tools for effective communication. The training required to succesfully run a counselling session (called an ‘audit’) requires the ability to ask a question and not be swayed by any avoidance tactics from the interviewee. It’s this mental control which could appear like brainwashing - but it appears to be a case of the scientologist being in control of their own mind and emotions.

If you’re even half interested and get to catch a repeat, I’d recommend it. I’m not off to sign-up right now, but as the program pointed out - ‘Scientology’ is a very dirty word in much of the western world and needn’t be.

Truly illuminating. Top marks to Channel 4, and Mr. Kohli.

Please note that the following blog and comments are not the place for posting answers or discussion, that time will come as I address each question in future blogs.

It is question time!

Ever had one of those niggling questions about God/Religion/Christianity that you can’t get a straight answer to? Well now you can post related questions here and I will do my best to research them and provide impartial answers, or at least some guidance for further discussion.

Feel free to post anonymously, but please include your real email address which I will not divulge on the site. In fact, if you really want to ensure anonymity, mail your question to me: stu@0105.pygmygοat.net and I’ll put it in the comments for you.

The floor is open…

Do you know what bugs me so much about so many pieces of Christian promotional literature? Shall I tell you? Yes, I shall.

The thing which bugs me most about so many pieces of Christian promotional literature is the level of self-reference. Now, maybe Sikh, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist and FSM literature are similar - I don’t have a huge amount of experience of being handed those in the street, but it’s the Christian literature I am most aware of.

What do I mean by self-reference?

I mean phrases such as (the fictional): “Christianity is the best religion because, as it says in Mandy 3:05 - ‘Jesus is really great and saves everyone’” and “It is absolutely necessary to denounce homosexuality because Trevor 4:12 says ‘It is absolutely necessary to denounce homosexuality’”

I’m being a little extreme here, but the point I’m trying to make is that this is extremely ‘closed loop’ thinking. Certainly, those justifications are valid for anyone who sees the bible as a truth. Probably, the people writing such leaflets can’t see the problem in the logic.

However, if you come out of the loop and are ambivalent or even hostile about the veracity of the bible, then how will reference to those very books help to sway your belief or understanding?

There’s also the alienation factor. Bible passages are not the easiest literature to read at the best of times and using them in a logical argument has a detrimental effect. If you’re asking someone to question their belief system and very being, then surely using simple language would be a benefit? Then they only have one major mental obstacle rather than multiple.

If there is no way to promote Christianity without reference to itself, then maybe it doesn’t have such a strong argument in its favour. If there are ways to do this - and I’m sure there are - why do more people not do it?

An open invitation to Christians - update your literature, eschew the self-reference, and bring us some accessible and logical argument!

Well, the BBC’s short The Convent series has now finished, and I have a feeling of disappointment and … well, a lack of closure. It seems to have run very differently than The Monastery in interesting ways.

Firstly, and probably most importantly, the discipline of some of the attendees was diabolical and downright rude in places. I found this strange because Franciscans (the nuns) are supposedly much more strict than Benedictines (the monks). However, it seemed that they were less able, or less willing to bring the visitors into line - I think maybe if you have chosen to live a Franciscan life, you have an in-built desire to join the discipline. Sure, it’ll be difficult, but your desire to live the life influences you perhaps more than the peer pressure from your community.

The Benedictine monks on the other hand, quickly complained at the lack of discipline in the visitors and within a short space of time, they were all living the life as closely as they could. It was a rare occasion if a service or meeting was missed, whereas in the convent, it seemed to be the norm.

In the final episode, two of the visitors escaping the enclosure to visit the pub just took the biscuit for me. They didn’t benefit as much as they could have done from the experience, one of them even demonstrating some extreme frustration that it wasn’t clicking. Well, maybe if she’d done her best to join in the community, something more would have happened. Disappointing.

It was obvious that the cost to the nuns of having visitors (both emotional and material cost) was great, and they seemed far more put-out than the monks at Worth ever did. As I have suggested before, it’s just so difficult to tell whether the differences were due to the Female/Male difference, the Franciscan/Benedictine difference or something else.

It seems that at the end of the forty days, none of the women in the Convent had really got anywhere. They had started their journeys but still didn’t really have anything sorted out at the end of the time. In the Monastery, it pretty much seemed that they’d all come somewhere, and had a good grip on where to go from here. The activity of the last few days in the Convent was that which was happening in the first week or so of the Monastery.

So… disappointment.

But, what was more disappointing was the fact that the nuns were musing whether the conduct and rudeness of the four ladies (to one degree or another) was indicative of the population at large. I would hope it isn’t the case, but who knows? I’m also disappointed that the nuns, while portrayed as loving, kind people, didn’t seem to wield any authority over the visitors. Maybe they could have provided more guidance or discipline - it seems to me they were basically walked over, and I find that disappointing on several levels.

I do have to add, though, that as with the monks in the Monastery, each of the individual nuns shone as a fine example of a human with a loving heart and amazing wisdom and insight. So w00t for the nuns!

If anyone saw the series, I’d love to hear your opinions on the matter…