Christmas! Which Christmas?

Which version of the nativity tale is your favourite?

Forget for a moment that the European midwinter festival which originally (and still does) celebrated the mid-winter solstice when the sun at midday is at its lowest and the day is the shortest; when the sun begins to return and holds out the promise of summer and the promise of the green shoots of spring and fresh food rather than the frugality of winter and the fear that the stores or food and fuel were not enough to see us through. A festival celebrating the great continuing natural cycle of birth, growth, maturity and death.

Forget all that and pretend, as Christians do, that the festival they plagiarised and claim for themselves is really about the birth of Jesus and celebrates a real birthday on 25th December. Which of the two different versions in the 'inerrant Bible' is the one being celebrated?

Two different versions? How can this be?

Surely everyone knows the traditional Christian Nativity. We see our children acting it out in practically every school in the country and it is depicted on myriads of Christmas cards, sheets of wrapping paper, adverts, displays in churches and shopping centres throughout the land.

The Official Story
Mary and Jesus have to travel to Bethlehem for a census but find no room in the inn, so they're put up in a stable. There Mary gives birth to Jesus and the family are visited by wise men from the east led by a star and bearing gold, frankincense and myrrh, and some shepherds who have been told about it by an angel. Then they have to travel to Egypt to escape being killed by evil King Herod who has ordered every child below the age of two to be killed. They stay in Egypt until Herod dies then they go home to Nazareth, where Jesus grows up.

The problem is, neither of the Bible accounts contain all those elements.

Let's do what Bart D. Ehrman recommends when reading the Bible. Instead of reading the 'gospels' of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John and the writings of Paul and others in sequence as narratives, read them in parallel so you get a horizontal view of the 'history', rather than separate vertical ones.

Fortunately, only two of the 'Gospels' mention the origins of Jesus. Neither the author of Mark nor that of John saw fit to mention the virgin birth or Bethlehem and open with Jesus as an adult. Paul also ignores Jesus's birth as do the other New Testament writers, which is interesting in itself, but from our point of view it means we only have two accounts to compare.

First I'll go through the narratives then line up the summaries:

Matthew's Tale
Verses	Notes
Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea in the days of Herod the king, behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem, Saying, Where is he that is born King of the Jews? for we have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him. When Herod the king had heard these things, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him. And when he had gathered all the chief priests and scribes of the people together, he demanded of them where Christ should be born. And they said unto him, In Bethlehem of Judaea: for thus it is written by the prophet, And thou Bethlehem, in the land of Juda, art not the least among the princes of Juda: for out of thee shall come a Governor, that shall rule my people Israel. Then Herod, when he had privily called the wise men, enquired of them diligently what time the star appeared. And he sent them to Bethlehem, and said, Go and search diligently for the young child; and when ye have found him, bring me word again, that I may come and worship him also. Matthew 2:1-8	This all happens when Herod was King of Judea which Roman records show must have been before 4 BCE, when Herod is known to have died. Who these 'wise men' are we are never told. The hint is that they were astrologers. Note: they were not led to Herod by the star only saying that they had seen 'his' star in the east. It's not until they leave Herod that the star guides them to Bethlehem and stands over the house where Joseph and Mary seem to live with the child Jesus (as though a star can stand over a particular house!) The 'prophesy' which 'Matthew' alludes to is "But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting." (Micah 5:2) which, in the context in which it appears in Micah, takes a stretch to make it fit but Matthew is keen make sure everyone knows that Jesus is the Jewish Messiah and so tries to make his story look like the fulfilment of ancient Jewish prophesies.
When they had heard the king, they departed; and, lo, the star, which they saw in the east, went before them, till it came and stood over where the young child was. When they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceeding great joy. And when they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother, and fell down, and worshipped him: and when they had opened their treasures, they presented unto him gifts; gold, and frankincense and myrrh. And being warned of God in a dream that they should not return to Herod, they departed into their own country another way. Matthew 2:9-12	Here then is where the 'wise men' find Jesus as a 'young child' (not a baby!) and he is in a house. Nowhere does 'Matthew' say this happened soon after the birth of Jesus! There is nothing to suggest this is a 'nativity' story. We get another clue about this in a moment. Strangely, the 'wise men' are warned not to return to Herod, though they appear not to have told Joseph and Mary the reason for this.
And when they were departed, behold, the angel of the Lord appeareth to Joseph in a dream, saying, Arise, and take the young child and his mother, and flee into Egypt, and be thou there until I bring thee word: for Herod will seek the young child to destroy him. When he arose, he took the young child and his mother by night, and departed into Egypt: And was there until the death of Herod: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Out of Egypt have I called my son. Matthew 2:13-15	So Matthew gets Jesus into Egypt so another prophesy can be fulfiled. This time he delves into Hosea to find the one he wants: "When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt." (Hosea 11:1). An even bigger stretch than the Micah 'prophesy'. Talk about taking random Bible quotes out of context! But the device Matthew uses to get Jesus into Egypt is even more far-fetched...
Then Herod, when he saw that he was mocked of the wise men, was exceeding wroth, and sent forth, and slew all the children that were in Bethlehem, and in all the coasts thereof, from two years old and under, according to the time which he had diligently inquired of the wise men. Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremiah the prophet, saying, In Rama was there a voice heard, lamentation, and weeping, and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not. But when Herod was dead, behold, an angel of the Lord appeareth in a dream to Joseph in Egypt, Saying, Arise, and take the young child and his mother, and go into the land of Israel: for they are dead which sought the young child's life. Matthew 2:16-20	So, Herod orders the destruction of all the children under two years old according to the time which he had diligently inquired of the wise men. The wise men told Herod that the child had been born up to two years earlier! Clearly, Matthew is not describing the birth of Jesus but something he wants us to believe happened when Jesus was a young child, so that the ancient Jewish prophesies would be fulfilled. The reason he never mentions a baby is because his tale isn't about one; it's about fitting the hero of his tale into the pre-conceived mould of a prophesied Jewish Messiah. Oh! And there's another 'prophesy' handily fulfilled, this time by Jeremiah: Thus saith the Lord; A voice was heard in Ramah, lamentation, and bitter weeping; Rahel weeping for her children refused to be comforted for her children, because they were not. (Jeremiah 31:15) Curiously though, none of the other apostles mention this mass slaughter and Luke claims John the Baptist was six months older than Jesus but sees no reason to explain how he escaped the slaughter. No other historian mentions it either, not even Christians' favourite Jewish historian, Josephus. It's almost as though it never happened so far as anyone except Matthew is concerned. Let's not be too concerned about the likelihood of Herod believing the ancient prophesies given by Yahweh to the Jewish prophets, but deciding to give up the chance of eternal life and salvation and just try to get the earthly manifestation of Yahweh killed. Like so often with Matthew, you need to suspend rational thinking to believe him. That just leaves the problem of getting Jesus into Nazareth, which is where he is supposed to have come from, when his birth was 'prophesied' to be in Bethlehem...
And he arose, and took the young child and his mother, and came into the land of Israel. But when he heard that Archelaus did reign in Judaea in the room of his father Herod, he was afraid to go thither: notwithstanding, being warned of God in a dream, he turned aside into the parts of Galilee: And he came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets, He shall be called a Nazarene. Matthew 2:21-23	It's a shame the same message which told him Herod was dead didn't tell him about Archelaus but it all turned out well in the end. The interesting thing here is that Joseph, Mary and Jesus are apparently going back to Bethlehem where they lived until fleeing to Egypt. They only decide to go to Nazareth, where Jesus is to grow up, when Judea turns out to be too dangerous. Lastly, so desperate is Matthew to show that everything was prophesied that he appears to have found a prophesy here that none of the 'prophets' he alludes to saw fit to record anywhere. No where in the Old Testament is it recorded that any prophet ever said He shall be called a Nazarene. Maybe Matthew just assumed it must have been prophesied so thought he must have overlooked it, or, like so many modern Christian apologists, he relied on his readers taking his word for it and not actually checking.

Luke's Tale
Verses	Notes
And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed. (And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.) And all went to be taxed, every one into his own city. And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judaea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem; (because he was of the house and lineage of David:) To be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child. Luke 2:1-5	Here we need to believe the the entire Roman Empire was to do something totally unprecedented: every male was to take his family to the town or village one of his ancestors from 1000 years earlier had lived in. Imagine the disruption! And how on earth could everyone do that? Do you know which town or village any of your ancestors lived in in 1012? Which ancestor of the trillion or so would you pick and how would the authorities know you had the right one? (For more on this see The Ancestor's Likely Tale). But more to the point perhaps is why on earth would Caesar order such a thing? Why would the Romans want to know how many people were currently not in their home towns but in the home town of a remote ancestor from 1000 years earlier? But of course, Luke needs to emphasise that Jesus, a Nazarene, was 'of the house of David' and was born in Bethlehem, because that's what the prophesies say. What else would compel a husband to take his heavily pregnant wife on such a journey if it wasn't the direct orders of the Emperor himself, and why else would the Emperor give such an order? Well, there was a census of sorts in 6 CE, if the Judeo-Roman historian Josephus is to be believed, so what better device than a real event, even if it needed to be stretched beyond breaking point. 'Luke' was probably writing this stuff when no one would remember the actual census but might have heard of it. At least 'Luke' gives us a clue to the date: Cyrenius was governor of Syria between 6 CE and 12 CE, so he is firmly setting the birth of Jesus between 6 and 12 CE.
And so it was, that, while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered. And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn. And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men. And it came to pass, as the angels were gone away from them into heaven, the shepherds said one to another, Let us now go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which is come to pass, which the Lord hath made known unto us. And they came with haste, and found Mary, and Joseph, and the babe lying in a manger. And when they had seen it, they made known abroad the saying which was told them concerning this child. And all they that heard it wondered at those things which were told them by the shepherds. But Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart. And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things that they had heard and seen, as it was told unto them. Luke 2:6-20	Here then we have the full Inn, and the manger (no lowing cattle though and not explicitly in a stable for that matter!) about which Matthew is totally silent. But, how to show that this was indeed the Messiah and how to explain how Luke knew about it? Cue angels, and shepherds who alone are selected to be given the great news and told that the sign would be a swaddled babe in a manger, which of course they duly find, so the world gets to know about it (or rather the author of Luke gets to know about it) because Mary, not being one to boast, is keeping mum.
And when eight days were accomplished for the circumcising of the child, his name was called Jesus, which was so named of the angel before he was conceived in the womb. And when the days of her purification according to the law of Moses were accomplished, they brought him to Jerusalem, to present him to the Lord; (As it is written in the law of the Lord, Every male that openeth the womb shall be called holy to the Lord;) And to offer a sacrifice according to that which is said in the law of the Lord, A pair of turtledoves, or two young pigeons. And, behold, there was a man in Jerusalem, whose name was Simeon; and the same man was just and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel: and the Holy Ghost was upon him. And it was revealed unto him by the Holy Ghost, that he should not see death, before he had seen the Lord's Christ. And he came by the Spirit into the temple: and when the parents brought in the child Jesus, to do for him after the custom of the law, Then took he him up in his arms, and blessed God, and said, Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word: For mine eyes have seen thy salvation, Which thou hast prepared before the face of all people; A light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel. And Joseph and his mother marvelled at those things which were spoken of him. And Simeon blessed them, and said unto Mary his mother, Behold, this child is set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel; and for a sign which shall be spoken against; (Yea, a sword shall pierce through thy own soul also,) that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed. And there was one Anna, a prophetess, the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Aser: she was of a great age, and had lived with an husband seven years from her virginity; And she was a widow of about fourscore and four years, which departed not from the temple, but served God with fastings and prayers night and day. And she coming in that instant gave thanks likewise unto the Lord, and spake of him to all them that looked for redemption in Jerusalem. And when they had performed all things according to the law of the Lord, they returned into Galilee, to their own city Nazareth. Luke 2:21-39	So Mary and Joseph remain in Bethlehem where Jesus is circumcised and named after eight days and until Mary has waited long enough after the birth of a male child to be purified according to Jewish tradition (40 days). Even though she was allegedly free from sin and had given birth to a parthenogenically conceived child who was also free from sin, she still needed a ritual period of purification, apparently. Moving on... Having gone to the Temple in Jerusalem to sacrifice obligatory doves (why would the birth of God need a sacrifice to er... God?) and there being told yet again by a couple of holy relics that Jesus was a special child, as though angels, shepherds and a virgin birth weren't enough, they went back home to Nazareth.

To summarise these and put them side by side then:

Matthew

Luke

Jesus is living in a house in Bethlehem where Mary and Joseph live, some time before 4 BCE. Some wise men come to see him, having read of his birth in the stars a couple of years earlier and inadvertently tip Herod off about the supposed prophesy of a new Governor being born having been fulfilled. Herod orders the killing of all boys under the age of two just to make sure he has the right one. No one else notices this. To escape this killing, Joseph and Mary take the child into exile in Egypt until Herod is dead, when they try to return to their home in Bethlehem. But Judea is still too dangerous so, instead of staying in Egypt, they go to Nazareth, where they could have gone in the first place because apparently the King of Judea's writ doesn't extend there.

Jesus is born in a stable in Bethlehem some time between 6 and 12 CE because his parents had to go there 'for a census'. Some shepherds are told about him by an angel and go to see him, then tell people about him. Mary decides to keep quiet about it. We aren't told whether Joseph told anyone or not. After 8 days Jesus is circumcised and named. After 40 days, when Mary is 'pure' again, the family take Jesus to the Temple in Jerusalem to have some doves sacrificed. While there a couple of old people tell Joseph and Mary that Jesus is the Saviour. Then they go home to Nazareth

So how can these two accounts be reconciled and woven into one single narrative of the birth of Jesus? In fact, are they both intended to be accounts of the birth of Jesus? That latter question is not at all answered by the Bible and never does Matthew claim he is writing about the birth of Jesus. All Matthew is bending over backwards to do is to show how Jesus's life fulfilled some ancient Jewish prophesies.

The Rest on the Flight into Egypt; Orazio Gentileschi

Firstly and very clearly, a major stumbling block here to reconciling these into a single narrative is the mutually exclusive birth dates. Jesus could not have been born when Herod was alive when his parents had gone to Bethlehem for the census ordered by Caesar when Cyrenius was governor of Syria, simply because Herod died ten years before Cyrenius became governor.

So, the story of birth in a stable followed by flight into exile in Egypt cannot both have the reasons ascribed to them by Matthew and Luke.

Secondly, there is no way to reconcile the account of the family remaining in Bethlehem for 40 days until Mary's purification, then travelling to the temple in Jerusalem, and from there directly home to Nazareth, with Matthew's account of exile in Egypt and then only going to Nazareth when returning home to Bethlehem was still too dangerous, if Matthew's story is an account of the birth of Jesus.

One way round this would be to assume that Luke's account is of the birth of Jesus while Matthew was relating events when Jesus was about two years old, after the family had moved from Nazareth and were now living in Bethlehem. We are given the distinct impression by Matthew that the 'child' was about two years old and that the wise men were visiting a child they had been told about after his birth.

Unfortunately, this places the events Matthew is describing in about 8 CE, some twelve years after the death of Herod. It also flatly contradicts the story about Jesus spending his childhood in Nazareth - the basis for the title 'Jesus of Nazareth'.

But, if we accept Matthew's account of Herod's genocide and ignore the fact that historians failed to notice it, the whole of Luke is rendered implausible since it places the birth of Jesus at some time before 6 BCE, twelve years or more before the earliest possible date of the census under Cyrenius.

Quite clearly then, save inventing a different King Herod who lived at about 12 CE, there is no way to reconcile these two accounts and so synthesise the traditional Nativity celebrated throughout Western Christendom. There are really only three ways to explain this flagrant conflict in the Bible:

Have a great Yule!

1. They are both made up by the Gospel authors.
2. One or the other was made up by someone who didn't know the truth but was pretending he did.
3. They represent different traditional versions of a Messiah myth, artificially attached to the Jesus myth by the Gospels' authors.

And we haven't even considered the complete absence of any hint of an actual date, or even a season, by which we can place it anywhere near to mid-winter.

Sorry Christians, but your plagiarisation of Yule just isn't supported even by your 'inerrant' contradictory book of gospel truths. Like the rest of your holy book, it is the errant work of men. In this case, not very imaginative ones and ones who were less concerned with truth and honesty than in pushing their own agenda - a tradition carried on by the priesthood and apologists for Christianity to this day.

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Fundamentalists Should Have Sex Like Rabbits

Moment of Ovulation

Creationists really have got their knickers in a knot over sex, especially when they insist the only purpose of sex is procreation and that doing it for pleasure or as a social activity is somehow sinful, something to be ashamed of, and not what their assumed intelligent designer designed us for.

If this were so, and if we had been intelligently designed, there would be a link between ovulation (egg production) in women and intercourse, and not to an almost complete disconnect between sexual activity and ovulation. As it is, women ovulate every 28-30 days on average whether or not that have had sex. Even virgins and sexually inactive women produce a monthly egg or two. Unless they are pregnant or breast-feeding a baby, healthy women normally ovulate every month from the age of puberty until the menopause, usually between forty-five and fifty-five years of age - some thirty to forty years.

Whether or not they become pregnant will depend entirely on if and when they have sex and if a live sperm happens to come across a viable egg in the right place in her reproductive plumbing.

An intelligent designer who intended sex to be only for procreation would have designed this process so that women only had sex when they were sure to get pregnant and that every instance of intercourse resulted in pregnancy. It's not as though such a system hasn't been designed. If you believe in this intelligent designer you will believe it designed the process so I'm afraid you are hooked on your own logic here.

Ironically, one of the best examples of sexual activity being designed to ensure pregnancy, thus ensuring its purpose is exactly what religious people insist sex is for, is to be found in the very mammal frequently cited as an example of promiscuity - the rabbit.

My first job as a school-leaver many years ago was as a laboratory technician in Prof Geoffrey Harris's Neuroendocrinology Research Unit in Oxford. One of the things we were investigating was hormonal control of ovulation, using rabbits. Prof. Harris had discovered that the hormone which causes the ovary to shed its eggs is produced by the pituitary gland in response to 'releasing factors' (we were trying to find out exactly what they were) which are produced by special nerves in the stalk attaching the pituitary to the brain. These 'releasing factors' are transported to the pituitary gland in blood by a microscopic 'portal system' of small blood vessels which ensures they are concentrated and delivered to the front lobe of the pituitary where they cause the pituitary to produce 'lutenising hormone' into the blood, which, when it reaches the ovaries, causes an egg to ripen and be shed.

One drawback to using rabbits is that you have to be careful how you pick them up, otherwise you can induce them to ovulate - which is not what we wanted as we were trying to induce this with hormones.

The reason we were using rabbits is because they are spontaneous ovulators, that is, they don't have an oestrus cycle but ovulate when mated. In rabbits, there is a simple reflex system which is initiated by mating, either by direct stimulation of the vagina, or even by a male mounting and attempting to mate - and this is where we needed to be careful. If you stroke a female rabbit's back, or her hind quarters, you can simulate the act of a male mounting her and cause her to ovulate, so you need to pick them up by the scruff of the neck and keep contact to a minimum.

So, in rabbits, which have sex like rabbits - duh! sex is for procreation and the system ensures a high degree of success, where most sex acts lead to pregnancy.

So, Creationists, if your 'intelligent designer' designed this system in rabbits, why didn't it use the same system in humans where all the components are present and just need to be set up correctly to work the way you claim it intended them to work?

In fact, this system has probably been switched off in humans and in at least our close cousins, the bonobo, because sex for pleasure and for other than procreation is so beneficial in terms of pair-bonding and social interaction and where sexual activity continues well past the menopause where is can have no procreational purpose whatsoever.

Of course, Darwinian Evolution has no problem at all explaining these differences. With both humans and rabbits the respective system used produces more surviving descendants given the long, slow childhood of human children which benefits from a pair-bond between parents, compared to the short period of maturity in rabbits which are independent of their mother in a few weeks, sexually mature and in a few months and in whose nurturing fathers play no part at all.

If the religious views of Creationists were sincere, and they knew what they were talking about, they should be advocating humans behave like rabbits when it comes to sex. At least that might go some way to filling the rows of empty pews most European priests are seeing most Sundays nowadays.

This is of course just one of the problems Christians and Muslims have with trying to shoe-horn reality into the primitive superstitions of misogynistic and sex-obsessed Bronze Age tribal leaders who believed in a flat earth, magic, talking snakes and that rain is water dripping through holes in the canopy over the earth from which the sun and moon are hanging.

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No God In The Bible

Prof. Bart D. Ehrman

Reading Bart D. Ehrman's excellent and very readable book, Jesus Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible, I was struck by the following:

At about the time I started to doubt that God had inspired the words of the Bible, I began to be influenced by Bible courses taught from a historical-critical perspective. I started seeing discrepancies in the text. I saw that some of the books of the Bible were at odds with one another. I became convinced by the arguments that some of the books were not written by the authors for whom they were named. And I began to see that many of the traditional Christian doctrines that I had long held to be beyond question, such as the doctrines of the divinity of Christ and of the Trinity, were not present in the earliest traditions of the New Testament but had developed over time and had moved away from the original teachings of Jesus and his apostles.

These realizations had a profound impact on my faith, as I think they did on that of many of my fellow seminarians at the time and continue to have on many seminarians today. Unlike most of my seminarian friends, though, I did not revert to a devotional approach to the Bible the day after I graduated with my master’s of divinity degree. Instead I devoted myself even more wholeheartedly to learning more about the Bible from a historical perspective, and about the Christian faith that I had thought was taught by the Bible. I had started seminary as a born-again fundamentalist; by the time I graduated I was moving toward a liberal form of evangelical Christianity, one that still saw the Bible as conveying important teachings of God to his people, but also as a book filled with human perspectives and mistakes.[my emphasis]

Ehrman, Bart D. (2009-02-20).
Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (And Why We Don't Know About Them) (p. 16).
Harper Collins, Inc. Kindle Edition.

What struck me most was not the fact that so many seminarians promptly put aside all they've learned about the history of the Bible, which casts so much doubt on it's authenticity, and revert to the simple devotional approach they took to college with them, or their intellectual dishonesty. I have come to be totally unsurprised by the intellectual dishonesty which underpins much of theology and especially in those who make, or intend to make, a living selling it to mostly theologically unsophisticated people. What struck me was the final sentence, emphasised above.

Hard Questions For Christians

It's obvious from watching the daily interchanges between Christians and non-believers in social media like Twitter and Reddit that there are several question which any but the most stupid Christians simply will not answer, not even to say they don't know the answer.

It seems what they crave more than anything is certainty. Anything, even thinking of how to answer some questions, will not be permitted if it would introduce the slightest uncertainty. Either that, or they know the question exposes an invalid assumption, even a lie, in their faith.

The closer you get to the heart of their 'faith' the more defensive they become and the less likely you are to get an honest answer without having to wade through torrents of prevarication and diversionary tactics, often descending into abuse, condescension, indignation and accusations of persecution, or excuses to break off the conversation and offers to "agree to disagree".

Thank You. Be Humankind. Feed The World

Thanks to everyone who clicked on the ads and bought things from Amazon. Together you have raised a nice little donation to Oxfam:





Keep up the good work.

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Be Humankind. Feed The World.

Graveyard Of The Gods

Just imagine if you went to your doctor with a problem and he consulted a 2000 year old book to find out what the problem was and what treatment to give you. Would that be the professional thing for a doctor to do?

Imagine if you went to a lawyer with a legal question and he consulted the laws of Rome or the laws of the Goths from 2000 years or more ago to see what your legal rights are. Would that be what you would expect a professional lawyer to do?

Imagine someone standing for election as your representative in government and she was advocating a return to the tribal laws of, say, fifth century BCE China or Zimbabwe, or at least making them the basis of your legal system. Would she earn your vote and be taken seriously as a professional legislator?

Spot The Loonies

Here's a good game.

According to Christians, Christians are good people who love others, never judge because they believe that's their god's prerogative, and always try to forgive. Because their god is watching over them, they can be relied upon to always be honest and truthful, and never to try to mislead with misinformation because bearing false witness is a sin and their god sees everything and never forgets. People, being the creation of their perfect god are all of equal worth, obviously.

Atheists, on the other hand, are evil people who have no way of telling right from wrong and so can't be trusted to be honest. Because they don't believe a god created everything, they have no respect for it and give nothing any value beyond its utility value.

So, if Christians are right, it should be easy to guess who said the following.

Give it a try, then hover over the word 'Show' to see who said it.

(If you don't agree with Christians, you may find this easier.)

Order From Chaos

One of the things which seems to baffle people is how order can come from a chaotic system without help. After all, if the system is truly chaotic, what could give it direction, assuming of course that order implies some sort of direction?

This confusion is often seized on by people who push religions for a living, to sell the idea that there must be some sort of directing intelligence doing it, with the implication that this directing intelligence must be the locally popular god in which ever culture they are marking their snake oil. This predominates in Creationism where it's the single most used argument by Creation 'scientists' to keep their normally scientifically illiterate market buying their books and voting they way they are told to vote. But it can also be found in other areas of science where professional religious apologists tend to go to find confusion, ignorance and misinformation to exploit.

I'll take a few simple scientific principle to illustrate how order can and does emerge spontaneously from chaos in ways which we often take for granted.

1. The Gas Laws

Most people will have heard of the Gas Laws. These Laws are regarded as some of the most basic fundamental laws of physics, explaining how volume, pressure and temperature of gasses are related.

There are two such laws complimenting each other: Boyle's Law and Charles's Law. They explain much of how internal combustion engines and steam engines work. Don't worry about the technical stuff too much. That's not the point of this blog. There isn't going to be an exam at the end of it.

Boyle's Law.

Boyle's law (sometimes referred to as the Boyle–Mariotte law) states that the absolute pressure and volume of a given mass of confined gas are inversely proportional, if the temperature remains unchanged within a closed system.[1][2] Thus, it states that the product of pressure and volume is a constant for a given mass of confined gas as long as the temperature is constant. The law was named after chemist and physicist Robert Boyle, who published the original law in 1662.[3]

Source: Wikipedia - Boyle's law

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Charles's Law

Charles' law (also known as the law of volumes) is an experimental gas law which describes how gases tend to expand when heated. A modern statement of Charles' law is: At constant pressure, the volume of a given mass of an ideal gas increases or decreases by the same factor as its temperature on the absolute temperature scale (i.e. the gas expands as the temperature increases).[1] It was first published by French natural philosopher Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac in 1802,[2] although he credited the discovery to unpublished work from the 1780s by Jacques Charles.

Source: Wikipedia - Charles's law.

To understand what's going on with these gasses in closed systems, we need to understand what pressure is. Pressure is the total force exerted by all the molecules of the gas as they hit to wall of the container. Some of their kinetic energy, depending on their velocity and the angle at which they strike the wall, is transferred to the walls of the container which would be pushed outwards if it could move - which is why balloons get bigger as you put more gas into them.

The total force exerted on the wall of the container will depend on the average energy transferred multiplied by the total number of molecules striking the walls of the container per unit of area at any one moment, which is proportional to the density of the molecules in the container. If we reduce the volume of the same mass of gas (by making the container smaller) we increase the density of the molecules in that mass so there are more of them to strike the walls of the container per unit area of wall. (Boyle's Law)

But, molecules of gas are moving randomly and chaotically within the body of the mass of gas in the container. When they strike the wall of the container, nothing is directing them to; they simply happen to be randomly moving in a trajectory which hits the wall (of course, if they didn't strike other gas molecules on the way, they would eventually strike a wall because they are in an enclosed system. As it is, they are zig-zagging about chaotically because they are also striking one another. The probability of any one molecule striking a wall at any one moment is randomly distributed somewhere between certainty and impossibility.

So, individual molecules are randomly striking the walls of the container in a truly random and chaotic, therefore unpredictable, manner.

How much energy they have will depend on the temperature, which is why pressure rises when the temperature rises (Charles's Law). However, not all molecules will have the same energy; the distribution of energy amongst all the molecules will fit a bell curve, with some having more than the average and some less. When the temperature increases, it's the shape of the bell curve which changes as the average energy increases. For any individual molecule, however, it's energy will still be random. The angle at which they strike the wall is also randomly distributed between 0 and 180 degrees to the surface of the wall.

So, the amount of energy individual molecules transfer to the walls of the container which they randomly and chaotically strike is also random and chaotic, therefore also unpredictable.

And yet, from a chaotic system, we get emergent order, which is so dependable we even call it a Law - which in science means we can be certain it will happen under normal circumstances such as the universe continuing to exist.

There is no magic or direction, nor intelligence required to produce the Gas Laws, merely the chaos of randomly moving gas molecules with randomly distributed kinetic energy. What we have there is an example of a 'law of mass action' where we can only predict what the average outcome will be from properties which fit bell curves, like the kinetic energy of gas molecules and their direction of travel.

So, the Gas Laws, upon which steam power and motor car engines depend, are emergent properties of chaos.

2. Clouds

The thing about clouds is that they look different depending on how far away from you they are.

Normally, when you look at them from the ground and they're up in the sky, they look like distinct things. We talk about them as though they are distinct objects. They can even look like solid objects, at least solid enough for ancient superstitious folk to imagine gods and angels standing on them.

When we fly into them in a plane, we realise they have no real outline; no edge as such.

When they are at ground level, or we are up a mountain at cloud level, we realise they are just microscopic droplets of water suspended in the air. Inside this fog we don't see the cloud as a thing at all; it's just different air which is difficult to see through.

And yet, in these pictures on the right we can see shape and form; we can see structures, even patterns. Surely there is order in clouds, isn't there? And this is not the usual humans looking for patterns and seeing faces and castles in the air, Jesus in toast and virgins in dropped ice-cream, sort of structure. (It's a pity for Muslims that there aren't more pictures of Mohammed otherwise they could see him in their toast as well.)

And yet the individual droplets of water or particles of ice which make up clouds are randomly distributed and randomly moving about and were formed from a chaotic weather system.

So clouds have no definable outline and are composed of chaotically moving particles formed in a chaotic system. And yet they look like discrete objects and have structure.

Again, structure is an emergent property from chaos. Not quite such predictable order as the Gas laws, but we can be fairly sure that, given certain meteorological conditions like wind direction and speed, temperature gradients as we go up through the atmosphere and humidity, we will get particular 'types' of clouds (in other words, clouds with different structures). We can also make a fairly good guess about what the weather is going to be from this emergent order from chaos, which took no direction and no intelligence to emerge.

There are other structures which flow from the emergent nature of clouds from chaos, of course.

Under the right conditions, the microscopic water droplets start to join together into larger droplets which become too large to stay in suspension in the air, and fall out as rain. They may also form the incredibly ordered snow flakes, the precise form of which is also random and emergent from chaos.

The next section deals with this.

3. Flowing Water

Falling rain eventually reaches the ground where it erodes the land into river valleys, chalk hills into caves and gorges, wears jagged rocky mountains into rounded hills and rough stones into smooth pebbles. Flowing rivers carrying eroded silt form sand bars, oxbow lakes, river beds and mud flats. All emergent structures out of chaos.

In Southern England we have a wonderful structure called Chesil Beach (from Old English ceosel or cisel, meaning "gravel" or "shingle") made entirely from pebbles. This entire 18 mile long structure was an emergent structure formed by the chaotic action of water molecules. As you go from one end to the other, the pebbles change in size. They have been graded into order by the same chaotic actions of water molecules.

Rivers, seas and oceans are composed of countless billions of water molecules all moving chaotically. It would be impossible to take any single water molecule and accurately predict its movements even for a few seconds because that depends on what the water molecules around it are doing, whilst what they do in turn depends on other water molecules. And yet, give something directional like gravity, order will begin to emerge and structures will appear in the water, some brief and transitory, some longer-lasting, but all being unpredictable. An order of sorts emerges from chaos.

Look at this video of a gentle stream. It's worth watching anyway. You will see little eddies forming, ripples on the surface of the water, peaks and waves and splashes. All of these are emergent structures, emerging from the chaos of mass action responding to gravity alone.

No intelligence and no direction save the natural force of gravity is required.

All of these examples of order emerging from chaos, and especially the latter of order emerging under a natural force giving a direction such as gravity, illustrate a basic principle of evolutionary biology.

They illustrate how order can emerge from randomly imperfect replication of genes under the directing influence of natural selection to give structures and forms best able to replicate genes in that selecting environment. Evolution by natural selection is an iterative process, complete with directing feedback system which requires no more direction nor intelligence than does water flowing down a stream.

And it is as mindless and majestic as flood water washing away bridges, cars, buildings and people.

Further reading:

• Stewart, Ian & Cohen, Jack; The Collapse of Chaos: Discovering Simplicity in a Complex World; Penguin Books Ltd, London 1994; IBNS 0-14-0291253
• Gribbin, John; Deep Simplicity: Bringing Order to Chaos and Complexity; Radom House Inc, New York, 2004; IBSN 1-4000-6256-X (US Version)
• Gribbin, John; Deep Simplicity: Chaos, Complexity and the Emergence of Life; Penguin Books Ltd, London 2005; IBSN 978-0-141-00722-9 (UK Version)
• Gleick, James; Chaos: Making a New Science; Vintage, London, 1998; IBSN 0-7493-8606-1

Stacking Up The Odds

How come Evolution can create such hugely unlikely things that it's hard for people who don't understand, wilfully or otherwise, how Darwinian Evolution works without being directed?

To understand this you need to understand a few simple ideas.

How many ancestors have you got?

This should be quite simple to calculate. You have two parents, four grand parents, eight great grand parents, etc, etc. So, for every generation you go back, the number of ancestors doubles. You can imagine this as a fan shape going back in time, starting with you, each line splitting in two at every generation. Suppose we want to know how many ancestors we had a thousand years ago, we need to know how many generations there have been in a thousand years - approximately forty, assuming the mean age of parents at child birth is about twenty-five years. Then, we start with two and double it, forty times. In other words, 2⁴⁰ (2 raised to the power of 40), which is 1,099,511,627,776 (a little over one trillion) ancestors who lived in the year 1000 CE.¹

No Women Allowed!

The great thing about the Bible is, with only a little imagination and creative reinterpretation, it can mean just whatever you want it to mean. Whatever excuse you're looking for, for whatever you need to excuse, can usually be found with only a few minutes random search.

Take for example today's news that the General Synod of the Church of England has voted against allowing female bishops.

Firstly, I can't think of any reason at all why any self-respecting woman would want to be a leader of a church which doesn't want her. For that matter, I can't think of any honest reason why anyone would want to be a member of any organisation which specialises in pushing superstition onto gullible and vulnerable people and children, but that's neither here nor there.

For some reason some women do want to be Anglican bishops but those who have already made it through the stained-glass trapdoor have decided to slam it shut and pile tea-chests on top of it to keep it all for themselves, in their kind, caring, compassionate, Christian way.

Where did they turn to to find the excuse they needed? Why, the bigot's handbook, aka, the Holy Bible, of course! Where else?

The Power Of The Story

Once upon a time, in a continent not far away, there dwelt a puny ape who had learnt to walk upright so it could see further than other men without needing to stand on the shoulders of giants.

This little ape wanted to find dinner and wanted even more not to be dinner. But, the trees it once lived in had mostly gone away because the rains which used to come very often now came less frequently, so it could no longer shin up the nearest one to avoid the lions or swing from branch to branch to escape the leopards. Instead, it had to learn new skills if it was going to leave any descendants - and if it hadn't, how would we know about it now?

One of the things it acquired was the ability to recognise patterns. How useful it was to recognise the tracks of the animals they were hunting, and to recognise the tracks of the animals who were hunting them. They were probably the only animal which could look at animal tracks and read the information in them - what made them, which direction they were going in, how long ago they were made, and how many there were. This ability may have created the environment in which a large brain could evolve because the puny little ape could now make good use of a large brain and could catch the high protein dinner needed to grow it.

With pattern recognition came the ability to recognise sequences of events and to arrange them into a story. They could tell the story of those two leopards that came down to the water hole two hours ago, and then went up near to trees. They could also tell the story of how that gazelle was walking with a limp and would be easy to catch, and they could tell the story of how they would be welcomed home if they caught it and 'invited' it home to dinner...

Maybe it'll earn the opportunity to pass those pattern-recognising genes on to more offspring - though they wouldn't have known about the genes of course. They would have known the value of a good meal and their mate would have known the value of a good provider of good meals when it comes to rearing the children, and how to reward and keep a good thing when she saw it.

And so they evolved the ability to tell stories because those with that ability contributed more genes to the gene pool. They interpreted the world they saw in terms of stories. They worked out what would happen next and they worked out what probably happened before. The leopards came from that rocky outcrop. Best not go there. The world of these creatures became a world of a past and a future with the future caused by the past and they lived in the story they wove from the patterns they saw all around them.

And we've inherited these pattern-recognition genes because they helped our East African ancestors to pass on their genes and we are the descendants of those who left most descendants. It has even been said that, rather than Homo sapiens (thinking Man) we should be called Homo narans (story-telling Man) because so much of our thinking is actually storytelling.

We develop this ability very early in life. Show a three year-old a series of pictures and ask then what is happening, and they will joint them together with a story. They will even make up a story to explain what's happening in a single picture and they will tell you what will happen next. They do this because they assume there is a story. We see stories in everything.

We looked at tall mountains and said, "Some day a man will climb to the top." and so we climbed to the top of tall mountains and fulfilled our prophecy.

We looked towards the North and South Poles and said, "Some day someone will go there!", and so we went there and fulfilled our prophesy.

We looked up at the moon... and, because we couldn't allow it to be a Russian, it had to be an American. And it was so, and the prophecy was fulfilled because the prophesy said it would be.

So Homo narans has evolved another ability - the ability to create self-fulfilling prophesies.

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Once upon a time, when we were in the childhood of our species, at a time before we had discovered iron or invented the wheel, a small tribe of Homo narans wanted to justify driving some people off their land and taking it for themselves, so they invented a story of how it had been given to them by a spirit in the sky who had chosen them for special treatment. Later on a scribe wrote it down, then someone included it in a book of tales and origins myths.

After many years they in turn were driven off their land by invaders but they remembered the tale of being the 'chosen' people and being given the land by a magic spirit in the sky and joined it to another story that one day a magic king would come to 'save' them when they get their god-given land back, build a temple, cast some magic spells and sacrifice a bull. Then they can have the whole world all for themselves, just like their magic spirit in the sky promised.

Another version of this story said the magic king had already appeared but had now gone away to wait for the chosen people to build the temple, when he would come back and kill them and everyone else who doesn't believe he's already been once, so some other specially chosen people will have the world all for themselves instead.

Two thousand years later, some people who believe they are the special people (how could it be anyone else?) are still working to ensure this prophecy from the infancy of mankind is self-fulfilled. One group is ensuring that the most powerful nation the world has ever known is on side and helping to fulfil the prophesy by supporting Israel as it wages genocidal war against the people who have lived in Palestine for thousands of years, on the land the story says a magic spirit gave to its chosen people.

The Triumph of Death, Pieter Bruegel The Elder

They are doing this in the hope that the legendary magic king will come back and kill everyone so they can have the world all for themselves. It's that thing we call Armageddon, in which we all get to die!

The worry is, that many people think this would be a good thing and have a lot of influence on people who could do it tomorrow if they wished.

We do not have to fulfil this insane prophecy, people!

It's a story we made up when we were too ignorant to know any better! We can change the story.

We have to change the story, or the very ability that allowed us to conquer the world, to climb the highest mountains and go to the moon could be the very thing which ensures our extinction.

Imagine!

"We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better." - J. K. Rowling

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Is Religion A Mind Virus?

Look at the lovely viruses!

Ever since Richard Dawkins introduced the idea of memes in The Selfish Gene people have speculated on the nature of religion when seen as a memeplex. There are two ways to view the religion memeplex:

1. Is it a meme which has evolved within the human cultural memome (the memetic equivalent of the genetic genome) because it conveys benefits to the carrier and is thus differentially selected for in the evolution of cultures
2. It like a virus in that it conveys no benefit to the carrier and may even be harmful but it subverts the replication mechanism and converts the host to a machine for producing viruses.

Why Creationists Lie To Us

Having written a number of blog posts on how creationists lie to us, it only seems fair to take a look at why they do it.

First, a little background:

Creationism as a political movement is largely a late nineteenth / early twentieth century American invention; it's often forgotten that Darwinian Evolution, when it was first presented as a scientific theory, did not cause a major outcry in mainstream Christianity, at least in England.

Most educated people had come to accept that the universe was a changing place and was not created as is a few thousand years ago; that the earth had a long geological history, though they estimated this in tens of thousands, perhaps millions, rather than billions of years. Evolution was just an extension of this principle of change and development into the realm of biology.

Most people didn't seem to understand it well enough to realise how thoroughly it undermined the notion of divine creation. In fact, mainstream Christianity had become more deist than theist.

Misguided Evolution

Here's a strange claim from theologian and Christian apologist, Alvin Plantinga. One seriously wonders if he thought it through before writing it down, or whether, as with so many religious apologists, he wasn't writing to persuade doubters and convert non-believers but to help believers cope with the cognitive dissonance caused by trying to hold on to faith in the teeth of reality.

Plantinga is one of the Christian apologists who has accepted the overwhelming evidence for Darwinian Evolution but has also accepted, unlike some other apologists like Francis Collins, that Darwinian Evolution, properly understood, abolishes the need for a god in any theory of the origins of life - that in turn utterly destroys the nonsensical doctrine of original sin and causes the entire Christian religion to collapse under the weight of its own absurdity in fact.

But Plantinga has a vested interest to defend, so that logic can't be allowed to get in the way; a work-around has to be found, even if that work-around is as absurd as the superstition it is designed to defend.

Seriously Weird Stuff

One of the things science teaches us is humility.

We can't really begin to understand things unless we are prepared to put aside our vain ego and resist the temptation to dismiss things just because they don't 'seem' right, or we find them hard to believe. This is the classic mistake Creationists make with Evolution, or often, with nearly all science - "You can't tell me... blah... blah... blah!". For some reason they seem to believe the universe must be easily understandable so anything which is hard to understand can't be right.

As someone once said (and I can't find who!), "Relativity is not hard to understand; it's hard to believe". I mean, it just doesn't seem right that no matter how fast you are moving, the speed of a beam of light coming towards you is the same as the speed of light going away from you. And yet every measurement ever made confirms that this is true and that it is time which changes when you go faster or slower.

The reason Einstein was able to conceptualise this idea was because he was able to ignore intuition and trusted the maths instead. Einstein allowed the evidence to lead him instead of assuming a right of veto over reality. Very many people, especially religious people, find it difficult or impossible to be that humble. That doesn't seem right to me so it can't be true; I don't know how to explain it so my guess must be right; that conflicts with my belief so the fact must be wrong.

Take, for example, the 'size' of the universe: we know when it started and that it started very small - as near to nothing as it's possible to get - and we know how long it's been expanding for, so we should be able to calculate its size - shouldn't we?

But the problem is, the space we are trying to measure isn't flat; it's curved.

Another thing we know about the universe is that it's not infinitely big. How do we know this? Simply by looking up at the sky. If the universe was infinite then every line you can draw from your eye would land on the surface of a star, and so the sky would be uniformly bright, even at night. It isn't, so the universe is not infinite. (This has been argued against on the grounds that it could be that the light hasn't had time to reach us yet).

But the universe is not like a balloon being inflated. A balloon is being inflated into something. Not so the universe. The universe is expanding into itself because all time and space are inside the universe. When the universe expands, it's the amount of space inside it which increases. There is no outside because there is no time and/or space for an outside to exist in 'outside' the universe, so the universe has nothing to expand into.

Because it has no outside, this means the universe doesn't have an 'edge'. In other words, the universe is finite but unbounded.

It also means that, if you could somehow stand outside the universe, the universe would not exist for you. It could not exist because there is nowhere outside the universe for it to exist in and no time for it to exist. Physical existence only has any meaning in terms of occupying space and time. Nothing can exist without space and time.

This is the reason we couldn't detect other universes. They don't exist in our Universe's spacetime so, so far as this Universe is concerned, they don't exist at all.

The universe only 'exists' inside itself. Asking what is outside the universe is as daft as asking what what is north of the North Pole. A bit like an ant walking endlessly round a wheel, wondering when it's going to get to the end.

It's also as daft as asking what there was before the Big Bang. (See now how the so-called Cosmological Argument so beloved of religious apologists depends on your intuitive rejection of what the evidence tells you? But why the need to explain a 'before' when your explanation implicitly accepts an arbitrarily designated cause that had no 'before', and logic tells you that there could not have been a 'before' without space and time?)

So, like Doctor Who's Tardis, the universe is very big inside but very small outside. In fact, 'outside', the universe is still the same 'size' it was at the moment of the Big Bang.

So what size is the universe?

Here's another thing to think about that just doesn't seem right:

The further you look into space, the older is the space you are looking at, because it takes time for the light you are seeing to travel from what you are looking at. But we know the universe is expanding and once occupied a point of infinite density and (almost) zero space 13.8 billion years ago.

This means, if you could see far enough to see light which started out 13.8 billion years ago, you would be seeing the Big Bang. But, the Big Bang wasn't a very long way away; it was here. In fact, it was everywhere. It was inside you, or rather inside the space you occupy, just a long time ago.

So, the further you look into space, the closer what you are seeing gets to you - but the longer ago it was. You are not so much looking further, you are looking back in time.

So, what is this massive universe with no edge and which doesn't exist outside itself made of?

Well, empty space really. Most of the universe is empty. By far the largest part of you is empty space. In fact, if it wasn't for the electrical charges carried on the electrons surrounding the atomic nuclei of the atoms you are made from, you would be invisible. Photons would mostly go right through you unmolested. It's actually the repulsion forces between atomic orbital electrons which makes things feel and look solid.

Take for example a hydrogen atom consisting of a single proton as a nucleus with a single electron around it (I say 'around' because it doesn't really exist as a single particle like a miniature planet orbiting a sun, but as a kind of a cloud surrounding the nucleus - yes, electrons really are in all possible places at the same time like a wave, or a probability function of being in any particular location).

So where is this empty space? Imagine the hydrogen nucleus magnified up to the size of a football and sitting on the centre spot at Wembley Stadium (for non-Brits, that's the English national football ground in the western suburbs of London, which is in South-east England). The electron 'cloud' on the same scale would be a sphere with its edge in Durban, in South Africa. The empty space is not only the space between atoms but the space inside atoms.

So, only a minuscule portion of the universe is in the form of particles or quanta of energy; the rest is 'empty' space. And yet that empty space is not 'nothing'. It exists in space and time.

And that's where it starts to get really strange and full of electromagnetic 'fields', like radio waves, magnetism and gravity, and vibrating 'superstrings', branes and other weird stuff like coiled-up micro-dimensions, and where virtual particle-antiparticle pairs spontaneously generate without cause and then annihilate one another.

Very strange and hard to believe - but well worth the effort.

So much more honest than settling for 'magic' and giving up trying, and then just pretending you know best like so many people who use religion as their excuse do as they pretend it gives them a short-cut to knowledge and wisdom, but usually end up looking scientifically illiterate and intellectually dishonest.

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How Christians Lie To Children

Mrs Cecil Frances Alexander

For sheer repugnant nauseatingly mawkish sentimentality and the grotesque sentiments it explicitly advocates, this Anglican hymn probably takes some beating - though I am open to persuasion on that point if you can find an even more repugnant one...

It is still sung in primary schools and Sunday schools, though there have been attempts to ban the third verse from state schools.

Refrain
1. All things bright and beautiful,
All creatures great and small,
All things wise and wonderful,
The Lord God made them all.

2. Each little flower that opens,
Each little bird that sings,
He made their glowing colours,
He made their tiny wings.

Refrain...

3. The rich man in his castle,
The poor man at his gate,
God made them high and lowly,
And ordered their estate.

Refrain...

4. The purple headed mountain,
The river running by,
The sunset and the morning,
That brightens up the sky;−

Refrain...

It trolls on for another three equally odious verses but readers may like to read that third verse again...

It was written by Mrs Cecil Frances Alexander (nee Humphreys), who was born in Dublin, the third child and second daughter of Major John Humphreys (of Norfolk, land-agent to 4th Earl of Wicklow and later to the second Marquess of Abercorn) and wife of William Alexander, later Bishop of Armargh and Anglican primate of Ireland.

It was written especially for children whom Mrs Alexander felt needed to be reminded not only what a lovely little planet God had provided for them but how he had thoughtfully provided them with a neat social order with the rich in their castles and the lowly at their gate.

Skibbereen, Ireland, 1847

This charming little piece of unashamed combined social and anti-science propaganda was written in Ireland in 1848, the third and most devastating years of the Great Famine when upwards of 500,000 'lowly' Irish men, women and children were starving to death outside the gates, whilst their wealthy land owners in their castles were exporting food.

Meanwhile the English gentry parliament in London was refusing to distribute relief supplies for fear it would destabilise the laws of supply and demand which God had also thoughtfully provided to help ensure the social order was maintained and the rich continued to get richer by living off the labours of the lower orders. What did a few hundred thousand dead Irish matter when there were plenty more where they came from?

Particularly pleasing is the way it sets impressionable little children up with a twee little rhyme about flowers and little birds, before equating them with a rigid and god-given class system so these lucky little children would know their place and understand why they should stay in it.

Of course, this was a sincere eulogy to God and had nothing at all to do with the French Revolution of February 1848, the publication if the Communist Manifesto in the same month, workers uprisings throughout the Austro-Hungarian Empire and a massive Chartist rally in London, audaciously demanding universal adult male suffrage and paid MPs so you didn't need to be rich to represent people in parliament, all within a few weeks of one another; events which had simultaneously concentrated the minds and slackened the bowels of the English ruling class.

How fortunate we were to have such a thoughtful ruling class to explain these things to us simple plebeians and such a kind, caring Anglican Church to promulgate it down to the lower orders and ensure we got the lesson early in life.

Apropos of nothing in particular, our present government is led by the rich son of an aristocrat. Most of his senior ministers have similar backgrounds. Their political party is known colloquially as 'The Nasty Party'. Some of their families still own castles although many of them were thrown out of Ireland by a curiously ungrateful people almost a hundred years ago. I don't suppose we'll ever really understand why.

[Edit] The day after writing this, the Old Etonian with aristocratic connections and relative of former Tory grandee Richard Austen (RAB) Butler, Justin Welby, was confirmed as Archbishop of Canterbury (pastoral head of the Anglican church) by UK Prime Minister, David Cameron, an Old Etonian with aristocratic connections.

It is not clear whether either of their aristocratic families still live in castles but it's reassuring to see how the English class system so beloved of the Anglican Church of 1848 is still very much alive and kicking, even if almost no one now takes any notice of the church and its vicars spout their weekly sanctimonious snobbery at almost empty pews in return for their wages.

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