A Christmas Poem, by GK Chesterton

On Christmas Eve, I was at the in-laws, and we watched Carols at Kings.  One of the readings was a poem by G K Chesterton, one of my favourite Christian writers, which I was really struck by.

Accordingly, I have delved into Google, and found it, to put on here:

A Christmas Poem

There fared a mother driven forth
Out of an inn to roam;
In the place where she was homeless
All men are at home.
The crazy stable close at hand,
With shaking timber and shifting sand,
Grew a stronger thing to abide and stand
Than the square stones of Rome.

For men are homesick in their homes,
And strangers under the sun,
And they lay their heads in a foreign land
Whenever the day is done.

Here we have battle and blazing eyes,
And chance and honour and high surprise,
But our homes are under miraculous skies
Where the yule tale was begun.

A child in a foul stable,
Where the beasts feed and foam;
Only where He was homeless
Are you and I at home;
We have hands that fashion and heads that know,
But our hearts we lost---how long ago!
In a place no chart nor ship can show
Under the sky's dome.

This world is wild as an old wife's tale,
And strange the plain things are,
The earth is enough and the air is enough
For our wonder and our war;
But our rest is as far as the fire-drake swings
And our peace is put in impossible things
Where clashed and thundered unthinkable wings
Round an incredible star.

To an open house in the evening
Home shall all men come,
To an older place than Eden
And a taller town than Rome.
To the end of the way of the wandering star,
To the things that cannot be and that are,
To the place where God was homeless
And all men are at home.

GK Chesterton

The British Tea Experiment

One of these days, I'm actually going to put some original writing up here, but it's been over a week since my last post, so I'm putting up another existing piece.  Again, this has already been on Facebook.


The British Tea Exeriment

One of the things doing the rounds online recently is an account of the horrible and infamous Russian Sleep Experiment.  (If you've not read it, you can find it here, but be warned, it really is quite gruesome, as well as entirely fictional).  Now, it might be assumed that we further west wouldn't subject our people to similar horrifying 'studies'. I can now reveal that this assumption has turned out to be incorrect.

If you are British, you may find some of the following upsetting or disturbing. If you're not, try not to let it get you down.

Recently the Ministry of Defence has declassified a number of files dating from the 1940s through to the early 70s, casting light on the attitudes and practices prevalent amongst the establishment during the height of the Cold War.

One of these files has revealed details of an experiment studying the effects of severe deprivation carried out in a high security installation in the New Forest during the summer and autumn of 1954.

5 men, all volunteers from the armed services, were sealed into a series of air-tight chambers. They were to be denied all outside contact for 3 months, living together in just four rooms; a dormitory, a kitchen, a bathroom and a living area. A microphone was placed in the living area, and each volunteer was required to use this to give an update of their mental health, thoughts and general well-being. A number of hidden microphones were concealed throughout the rooms, unknown to the volunteers.

Direct observation was through a number of port-hole style windows, consisting of bulletproof glass, leading into dark rooms outside the sealed chambers, so that the scientists could look in unobserved.

The 5 volunteers were given everything they would need to survive for the three months, including food, drink, clothing and toiletries. However, for the 3 months, 92 entire days, every volunteer would be completely deprived of tea. It had been speculated for some time that Britons might be able to survive for extended periods without tea, and the implications, especially for military logistics would be considerable. More than one British army in World War 2 had been outmaneuvered by the enemy because it needed to carry bulky tea caddies and water heaters, slowing down the pace of march. If soldiers could be weaned off tea, these could potentially be dispensed with.

On the 1st of August 1954, the volunteers entered the rooms, and the doors were locked and sealed behind them.

For the first day, everything proceeded smoothly. On the second day, all 5 volunteers complained of slight headaches, but were otherwise fine. On the third day, the headaches had abated, and they seemed perfectly healthy.

By the end of the first week, all 5 volunteers were observed to be irritable and sluggish. Their speech was slurred and indistinct, and all 5 were showing signs of fatigue and depression.

By the middle of the second week, the volunteers' mental health was deteriorating rapidly. When they thought the others weren't around, each would come to the main microphone, begging, pleading and bargaining for just one cup of tea, accusing the others of various crimes and misdemeanours in the hope of ingratiating themselves with their observers. The hidden microphones picked up sounds of sobbing. Finally towards the end of the second week, one of them was observed pulling the compost out of a pot plant, putting it in a saucepan and pouring boiling water over it, before adding milk, and drinking it with every appearance of enjoyment, before laughing hysterically. Another sat on one of the armchairs, apparently holding an invisible cup and saucer, taking occasional slurping drinks from the 'cup'. He offered his fellows some from 'his pot', but they avoided him. During this time, all 5 abandoned any semblance of personal hygiene.

Throughout the third week their behavior became increasingly erratic, and their speech continued to deteriorate, their consonants becoming indistinct. All 5 men's upper lips were observed to become considerably more mobile, while their moral fibre was shown to be considerably eroded. Two were observed to hug for longer than the legal maximum of three swift pats on the back that Her Majesty’s government stipulates under the Physical Affection Between Men Act 1933.

The volunteers started to show alarmingly Communistic tendencies, sharing all of their food, water and underwear. They stopped speaking to the main microphone altogether, and towards the end of the week, one of them smashed it whilst ‘trying to redistribute it to his fellow beings’.

Towards the end of the third week, all 5 were observed to sit on the floor with 2 packets of Jammie Dodgers, carefully prising apart the halves. They then used the jammy sides to stick these to the glass of the portholes, until every single one was completely covered, and the scientists were unable to see in.

The hidden microphones continued to pick up muttering and sobbing, but it was vague and slurred. The volunteers were frequently heard to refer to each other as ‘man’. On the twentieth day of the experiment, one of the volunteers was heard to use the words ‘peace and love’, in that order. The scientists heard what sounded like tearing cloth, and the sound of someone humming.

At the end of the fourth week, the decision was made to abort the experiment, and find out what had happened. This decision was made after a strange strumming noise was heard, before all 5 volunteers were heard to sing ‘Kum by yah’ through several times, despite none of them having being exposed to this song prior to their confinement.

The scientists unsealed the chamber and, protected by several soldiers, entered the rooms. What they saw inside those rooms shocked and horrified them. 2 of the soldiers accompanying them needed a sit down, while years later, one of the scientists emigrated.

They found the 5 volunteers unshaven, disheveled and incoherent. They had started growing out their hair, and all 5 wore unkempt beards. They had torn the legs of their trousers, and used material cut from the upholstery of the arm chairs to widen the cuffs, causing them to flare out at the sides. One of them had carefully unraveled fibres from the bedsheets, and respun them into cords of varying thicknesses, which he attached to a frame made from pieces of broken furniture, to create a crude guitar.

The volunteers were removed to a nearby medical unit, an operation made more difficult when all five volunteers viciously engaged in non-violent protest, savagely sitting on the floor with linked arms, whilst taunting the scientists and soldiers with vile suggestions that they ‘give peace a chance’.

Once they had been removed to a high-security ward, and strapped firmly to their beds, all 5 were given plenty of sweet tea, with a variety of biscuits, and the speeches of Sir Winston Churchill were played on loop twelve hours a day. For some time afterwards, they continued to refuse to shave or wash, and babbled incoherently about ‘free love’ and other horrible and uncivilised concepts.

Under this treatment, they began to recover, and after several weeks were discharged and sent to Bath to take the waters.

The laboratory was shut down, and the entire experiment classified 'Top Secret', but at least now we know of the darkness that lurks inside. That madness, hidden deep within the soul of even the most upstanding Briton. Now we know the horrible fate we all will face, if ever the tea runs out!

Glorious Victory!

So, back towards the beginning of the month, I talked a little bit about the National Novel Writing Month (abbreviated to NaNo), and how I was involved in it again this year.

To recap, the goal  is to write 50,000 words of a single piece of original fiction, between 00:01 on November the 1st, and 23:59 on November the 30th.

I started off well, and built up a head-start in the first week.  This dropped back a little bit, but I continued steadily for another week or so, then my wife came back from a two-month placement in Jerusalem, followed shortly afterwards by us both coming down with fairly nasty colds.  As a result, the writing went right down the pan, and by the night of the 28th, I was only on 33,604 words, and had pretty much given up hope of success.

But then the fighting spirit of my barbarian ancestors (or possibly just a combination of stubborness and pride- I leave you to decide which is most likely) asserted itself.  On the Friday, I managed to write about 4,500 words, bringing me up to about 39,000.

Most of Saturday was spent in a marathon writing session fuelled by large quantities of tea, and a bag of chocolate-covered raisins, and I managed to write 11,842 words, bringing me up to a total of 50,001 words.  I registered this on the NaNo site, and have joined the ranks of many proud winners right across the world.

To say that I am feeling really rather smug about this is something of an understatement.

On Evil (Part 3)

The existence and abuse of choice, and the nature of the world

 

This is quite an easy one.  If there is an option for us to do good, then by definition, there must also be the option not to do good.  As has been said by someone once, often that is enough for evil to triumph.  As well as a simple lack of action, there is often the option to do something actively evil.

So why would God give us the option of doing evil, or even of not doing good?  If God desires good, why would He even allow the option of evil?

This comes down to the issue of Free Will, which to me is one of the most important theological and philosophical concepts (Can you tell that I have Arminian inclinations?).  Humans have been given the faculty of choice.  We have been told multiple times, and through various different channels which choice God wants us to take, but ultimately, the choice is ours.  Thus, if we choose Good, it truly is Good.  If there was no choice, it wouldn’t be good.  There is no merit in an automaton following its programming.  I don't think anyone has ever praised a train-driver for his navigation.

And when it comes to evil in the sense of pain, of suffering caused not by people directly, but by natural disaster, it seems to me that there is something similar.  As far as I can tell, these diseases, floods, famines etc are just consequences of the way the world is formed.  The possibility of harvests neccesitates the possibilty of famines.  The existence of life-sustaining water results in the possibility of life-destroying floods.  Could God have created a universe in which you can't drown, or in which crops can't fail?  Of course.  It would require a complete reworking of the laws by which the universe operates, but God could quite easily create a world without the possibility of suffering.  But then, it would not be this world, and we would probably be complaining about someting else instead.

As was pointed out by the villain in the horrendous Hellblazer film they made with Keannu Reaves, what we think of as virtues are really reactions to some form of adversity.  Courage can only exist when we are afraid, and thus when there is something to be afraid of.  Fortitude can only exist when there is suffering to deal with.  Strength can only exist when there are burdens.  For there to be hope, there must be despair.  For compassion, others must be suffering too.  This is not to say that God causes others to suffer just so that you could win some brownie points by being compassionate, but without that suffering, there could be no compassion at all.



So those were my thoughts on evil.  Something a bit more fun for the next one I think!

On Evil (Part 2)

Pain and suffering as necessary biological mechanisms

As I said in Part 1, if you're considering evil, you have to consider pain as well, since evil is most readily identified through the suffering it causes.

The question 'Why does pain exist?' is basically a biological one.  Pain is a necessary biological mechanism that warns an organism that it is being damaged.  Without pain, there would be nothing to stop a creature from headbutting a wall or walking across sharp rocks.  The damage sustained would severely risk its ability to mate and pass on its genes.  Thus pain is an essential system born of evolutionary necessity.

This can be applied to other forms of pain as well.  Grief could well be an evolutionary spur to keep your loved ones (especially offspring) safe.  Shame is a mechanism by which we are taught not to do wrong.

I think that often when people discuss 'evil', they are thinking of natural disasters, such as the recent hurricane in the Philipines, or of famines and droughts.  Why would God allow people to suffer is these ways?

Again though, it seems to me that this 'suffering' is merely a biological mechanism.  Hunger is that system that tells an organism that it needs food.  If there is no food around, that message becomes stronger and more unbearable, until the creature is suffering from it, but if it didn't, the drive to find food, the drive to survive would be that much less.  Exactly the same is true of thirst, or cold.

To deliberately hurt someone, or to deprive them of food or drink, is definitely evil.  The fact that pain exists can't really be said to be evil in and of itself.

Righ then.  'But then,' we are asked, 'isn't God directly or indirectly depriving people of food, water and shelter by allowing disasters to occur to innocent people, and by allowing evil people to exist?'

Evil as the absence of Good

This isn't a new point of view, but as far as my thinking on evil goes, there is no such thing.  That's not to say that there isn't a condition that we call evil, but rather than being a thing in its own right, the word 'evil' denotes the absence of something else, in the same way that ‘hole’ denote a place where the ground isn’t, or ‘gap’ is what we call the part of a wall where the wall is not.  It is also true of coldness and darkness.  They are not things in and of themselves, as heat and light are forms of radiation.  They are the words we use to describe the situation in which there is no (or comparatively little) heat or light.

To say that there is no such thing as evil might seem to trivialise it, and be rather wishy-washy.  It could be seen as an excuse to do nothing about it.  However, just because I know that technically there's no such thing as cold doesn’t mean I don’t turn on the radiator, or try and steal my wife's hot water bottle.  Humans can only exist within an incredibly tiny band of heat.  Too cold, or too hot and it could kill us in seconds, or less.  I believe that there are flames of goodness, and a burning, scorching Sun.  There may also be absolute zeroes of goodness, but I do not think any human has ever achieved that.

My point then is that I believe that God has not created evil, but He has created a world in which we may not always be as good as He might like, and that is what I will try and ponder next.

On Evil (Part 1)

Warning- I have never formally studied theology or ethics, the following are purely the thoughts and speculations of an amateur, an 'armchair theologian' if you will.

 

One of the most common arguments I tend to see against the existence of God, or at least of an interested, omnipotent and benevolent God is the existence of evil, or the existence of pain.  They seem to think that this is a pretty good one, but the more I think about it, the weaker it seems.  There are three or four separate answers to this, which I plan to try over the next few posts, probably interspersed with other, lighter stuff.

Part 1.  The existence of evil from an atheistic perspective

To start off, we need to figure out what atheists mean by 'evil'.  A common theist argument is the existence of certain core universal moral values, implying an objective morality, and therefore a source for that morality.  The reply is that these are merely the natural result of budding, burgeoning societies, and that these ‘universal morals’ are actually just behavioural adaptations to living in increasingly large and complex social groups, and which aid cooperation between individuals and groups of individuals, helping ensure the survival of these groups and individuals in the best Darwinian traditions.

Well okay, but in that case what the atheists are telling us is that those things which we label as ‘evil’ aren’t really.  They are merely things that impede social cohesion and cooperation.  We call murder ‘evil’ because if everyone went around killing people when they felt like it, your society would swiftly collapse.  Likewise stealing, or lying, or random destruction of property.   However, these things are not in reality ‘evil’.  There are no evil things; there are no good things.  There are just things, which are either beneficial or harmful for one group or individual than other things, and what is beneficial for one individual or group may be harmful to another.  After all, the tribe in the next valley may not be so keen on your social cohesion and cooperation when your well-organised army invades their village!

By appealing to evolutionary science, atheists have intentionally removed the concept of objective morality from the equation.  They say that if God is good, He wouldn’t allow evil, while at the same time claiming that there’s no such thing.

A possible answer to this may be that although the atheist does not believe in evil, as a believer in objective morality themselves, the theist does, and so needs to explain it.  Fair enough.  That's what I'll be trying to deal with next.

National Novel Writing Month

Well, once again I'm taking part in the National Novel Writing Month.  The aim is to write 50,000 words in 30 days.  Quality is not an issue.  All that matters at this stage is quantity.  This is the fifth time I've participated, and so far I've succeeded three times.

This year I'm working on a contemporary fantasy that's been knocking around my head for a while, partly based on the plot of a roleplay game I ran for friends last year.  Most of the novels I've done for NaNoWriMo have been based on plots I originally came up with for RPGs.  They tend to be fairly action-heavy, fast-paced adventure stories, that are light on deeper meaning but are relatively easy to throw out.  I've found that sword fights are excellent for soaking up wordcount if you describe them well enough.

Over the years, I've noticed a pattern.  Early on, I build up a reasonable headstart in wordcount terms, then around the middle, something goes wrong and I fall behind, and scrabble to catch up in the last week or so.  I've followed this pattern again this year, and I've fallen about a day behind, although actually this year it's because something is going right, but I've been busy with that rather than throwing out the words.  In fact, right now I should be writing, not blogging, but never mind.

The website for the National Novel Writing Month can be found here:  http://nanowrimo.org
My user-name is Dr Magister, if you want to have a look at how I'm getting on.

Hopefully in 18 day's time, I will bragging about my glorious victory!

On Religion as a Source of Evil

It is often claimed that religion is a cause of great evil, or even the cause of all evil, that all it does is divide people and cause wars, or that it exists, and was created, solely as a tool for the wicked to control the ignorant and the weak.  These opinions frequently come up in on-line forums whenever religion is mentioned.  Only a couple of days ago, a friend of a friend of Facebook commented on a post, saying that "religion is all about control".  I cannot, and do not disagree that great evil has been done in the name of religion.  However, to use this as an argument against the existence of religion doesn’t seem very sensible.

If I have a hammer, I can use it to knock nails into a wall, or a piece of wood.  This is what it’s for.  However, the design that makes it an excellent tool for banging in nails also makes it an excellent tool for crushing skulls and breaking bones.  A car is a wonderful thing for getting from point A to point B.  It’s large enough to sit in, and moves very quickly.  These qualities of size and speed mean that cars are also extremely effective at killing or seriously injuring people.

 It would, presumably, be possible to take a hammer or a car, and modify them in such a way as to make it impossible to break heads or run people over, but in that case you would also remove the ability to hammer in nails, and travel swiftly from place to place.

We have been given religion for specific purposes.  To bind us together, to encourage moral behaviour, to teach us about, and bring us closer to God, to support us in times of trial, to guide us when we’re uncertain.  The aspects that allow it to do these things are the very aspects that also make it a fearsome tool for encouraging hatred and bigotry, for enforcing the control of the few over the many, for sowing discord, and disruption, and creating an environment of fanaticism and wilful ignorance.

These are serious problems, and no reasonable believer can or should try to deny or downplay them, but the fault for these things no more lies with religion, than the fault of the murder lies with the hammer, or the hit-and-run with the car.   These are the faults of human beings.  It would perhaps be possible to remove the potential for causing harm from religion, but by doing so, you would remove the (I believe greater) potential for doing good.

The fact (and I believe that it is a fact) that religion does a large amount of good is frequently ignored.  Opponents of religion focus on crusades, inquisitions, jihads, persecutions, pogroms and sectarian violence.  They, either intentionally, or out of ignorance, ignore the schools, hospices, hospitals, care-homes, homeless shelters and orphanges, they ignore the disaster relief charities, the children’s charities, the homeless charities, all set up and maintained as a result of religions teachings and religious sentiment.  It is bad that these are ignored, because they are, like the crusades and inquisitions, a matter of public record. 

However, it is what isn’t recorded that I consider to be more important.  What is not a matter of public record are the millions of tiny, personal acts of mercy, of love, of forgiveness, of grace, of charity, of generosity that occur every day, probably even every hour, which are inspired by the religious beliefs of those carrying them out.  What isn’t recorded is the flame of hope when all seems lost, of faith when the universe seems cold and uncaring, of strength when the weight seems too much, of perseverence when the obstacles seem too high.  And it can be pointed out, quite fairly, that such things can occur entirely without religious beliefs, but I think that there would be far fewer of them, and the flame would burn that much more dimly, and would gutter and go out far more often.

Have great evils been done in the name of religion?  Undeniably, but I believe, and will always believe, that the aggregation of tiny, unrecognised goods outweighs and overshadows those great evils many times over, if only you are willing to take them into consideration.

Fighting Vikings in my Head

I was talking to my wife online the other day, when a couple of lines suddenly popped into my head.  I wrote them down, and they unfolded into an entire poem, which I've now polished up a bit, and present to you now.  Again, this first surfaced on Facebook, but has been extended and refined.  That this came to me whilst talking to my wife is something no-one should speculate on...

Fighting Vikings in my Head

The world can be quite nasty,

It can leave you full of dread,

Don’t let it get you down though,

Just go to sleep instead.

I forget about my worries,

When I’m wrapped up warm in bed,

And I smile as I’m sleeping,

Fighting Vikings in my head!

I stagger home exhausted,

Having earned my daily bread,

And I feel stretched and see-through,

Like my soul is thinly spread.

But I'm taken when I dream to,

Where the heroes fought and bled,

And my cares are all forgotten,

Fighting Vikings in my head!

You might just think I’m snoring,

You might think I’m overfed.

The truth though’s very different,

And I stain the North Sea red,

As I wield sword and shield,

And my foemen’s blood is shed.

So you hear me chuckle softly,

Fighting Vikings in my head!

So when you’ve turned the light off,

And your last good nights are said,

Pulled the duvet all around you,
And your eyelids feel like lead,

Step aboard your longship,

And leave behind your bed,

Say farewell to all your worries,

And fight Vikings in your head!

Copyright Thomas Jones 2013