A History of Ireland - 5. Fenians, Parnell & Home Rule

Part 5 of A History of Ireland

William Smith O'Brien

Fenians.

The origin of the Fenian movement, like the United Irishmen before it, seems unlikely today. One of its leading founders was again an Ulster Presbyterian, by the name of John Mitchell. He founded a newspaper, The United Irishman, in which he advocated a common nationality for all Irishmen, Protestant and Catholic, and openly preached republicanism and rebellion. On his arrest, the leadership of the movement was taken up by an upper-class Protestant, William Smith O’Brien who had been a Westminster MP for many years. In many ways, O’Brien was the archetypal Irish Englishman. He spoke with an English upper-class accent and had been educated at Harrow, yet he, like Hugh O’Neill, was conscious of the fact that he could trace his origins back to the ancient High Kings of Ireland. O’Brien was a descendent of Brian Boru.

In 1848, the worst year of the famine, O’Brien had a warrant out for his arrest. An attempt to execute it by a party of the Irish constabulary at Ballingary, was met with barricades and some forty people, some armed. The police retreated to a nearby house to consider their options and were followed there by the crowd. The owner, a widow named MacCormack, was out at the time but her five children were in. The police entered the house and smashed up the furniture to use as makeshift barricades and a state of siege ensued. The police fired a volley and the besiegers took cover behind walls. During the siege, more shots were fired. Two of the besiegers were killer and several more were wounded. The siege was eventually lifted, some two hours later by the arrival of more police. This was the so-called Rising of 1848. It is also known as ‘the battle of the Widow MacCormack’s cabbage garden’.

James Setephens

One of O’Brien’s lieutenants at Ballingary was James Stephens, an egotistical Kilkenny Protestant. He escaped and went to France where his contacts with the radical left gave him new ideas for solving the problem of Ireland – a people’s revolution. On St. Patrick’s Day, 17 March 1858, he and a few others swore an oath:

... in the presence of God, to renounce all allegiance to the Queen of England, and to take up arms and fight at a moment’s warning to make Ireland an Independent Democratic Republic, and to yield implicit obedience to the commanders and superiors of this secret society...

This society was to become the Irish Republican Brotherhood. Soon after its formation, Stephens visited America where, together with John O’Mahony, he helped found the Fenian Brotherhood, named after a band of mythological Gaelic warriors. It was to be an American counterpart of the IRB, with the intention of securing material support for the IRB from embittered émigré Irish population; the 1,500,000 who had recently fled the Potato Famine. Stephens’ relationship with the Fenian Brotherhood was far from warm however, and he showed frustration at the lack of real material support in the quantities he had hoped for, with the words:

Irish tinsel patriots [with their] speeches of bayonets, gala days and jolly nights, banners and sashes, bunkum and filibustering, responding in glowing language to glowing toasts on Irish Independence over beakers of fizzing champagne

For all Stepehns’ efforts, his arrest and romantically daring escape from Richmond Jail, aided by two warders who were members of the brotherhood, the Fenian Rising was a failure. He was deposed in 1866 to be replaced by the American Civil War veteran ‘Colonel’ Kelly, with effective military command under the control of the French soldier of fortune, Cluseret. One Rising, planned for 11 February 1867, was called off at the last minute when the English authorities were ready for an attack on Chester Castle, where it was hoped a large number of arms were stored. A new Rising, planned for 5 March 1867 was averted when a self-appointed ‘General’ Massey, another American civil war veteran, was arrested the day before at Limmerick Junction, as he got off a train. He turned Queen’s evidence, and Cluseret promptly packed his bags and left for France.

The 'Manchester Martyrs'
Allen, Larkin and O'Brien

Almost as an afterthought of history, the Fenian movement gave Irish nationalism its symbolic martyrs. Kelly, and a Captain Deasy from Cork, were arrested in Manchester almost by chance, on a charge of loitering. During their transfer from Bell Vue prison the polce van was stopped and surrounded by about thirty Fenians who tried to batter the doors open. Inside the van was Police Sargent Brett. A shot was fired at the grill in the door. Whether this was deliberately to shoot Sargent Brett or an attempt to open the door is not known, as the perpetrator was never caught. Sargent Brett, however, was fatally wounded and three of those present, Allen, Larkin and O’Brien were later arrested and hanged though none of them had fired the shot. They were convicted because they were present and had ‘common purpose’. They have entered Irish mythology as the Manchester Martyrs.

Parnell.

Charles Stewart Parnell

Charles Stewart Parnell dominated British parliamentary life in the 1880a. It was Parnell, and Irish Protestant landlord, who brought about one of the great British social reforms – the relationship between landlord and tenant in Ireland. He also gave the demand for Irish national independence under the Crown an effectiveness never before achieved.  His rise to prominence by the age of forty, in just over ten years of active politics, had been meteoric. His fall was even faster. He was brought down overnight by sexual scandal. He had one central theme to his politics. He had asked, in his maiden speech in 1875:

Why should Ireland be treated as a geographical fragments of England...? Ireland is not a geographical fragment but a nation

In 1879 it began to become clear the Ireland was on the edge of another great famine on the scale of 1844-49. American wheat was flooding the European markets and farm prices were dropping, making it difficult for the small tenant farmers to pay rents. Additionally, disastrous weather between 1877 and 1879 had caused the potato crop to fail again. In those same years the number of evictions had quadrupled. In fact, famine was only averted by massive charitable distribution of food on a scale far larger than during the 1840s. It was this that had brought a Fenian named Michael Davitt to the realisation that what the Irish needed, in addition to political theory and nationalism, was practical help in surviving. A good year in Ireland was one in which you got through the winter without too much suffering. Davitt recruited the young MP, Parnell, to the cause of land reform. At a meeting of tenant farmers in Westport in 1879, Parnell said:

A fair rent is a rent the tenant can reasonably afford to pay according to the times, but in bad times a tenant cannot be expected to pay as much as he did in good times ... Now, what must we do in order to induce the landlord to see the position? You must show them that you intend to hold a firm grip of your homesteads and lands. You must not allow yourselves to be dispossessed as your fathers were dispossessed in 1847 ... I hope that on those properties where the rents are out of all proportion to the times a reduction may be made and that immediately. If not, you must help yourselves, and public opinion of the world will stand by you, and support you in your struggle to defend your homesteads.




Parnell's Birthplace, Avondale House, Wicklow

These sentiments and Parnell’s campaign seem, at first sight, at odds with his background. He was the son of Irish Protestants who owned a 5,000 acre estate in County Wicklow. His social circle included other local prosperous Protestants, many of whom he was related to. However, two major political philosophies had converged on Parnell.

• His father’s family was from the older generation of Nationalist tradition of Irish Independence, represented by the United Irishmen, which had opposed the Union. His great grandfather has been one of the Union’s strongest opponents and Parnell’s country home displayed the colours of one of the Volunteer regiments.
• His mother was American, and Americans were then closer to their own war of independence and anti-English sentiments were still strong. Her grandfather had been a famous American admiral who has taken part in the war of 1812.

So, as a rebel, with strong traditions of Republican Nationalism, and an inherited antipathy to the English, Parnell entered the Westminster parliament.

The Land League, with Parnell as its president, and with its top officials all former Fenians, now had representation at Westminster in the form of an articulate and radical MP who had no truck with the political establishment, and who, it appears, delighted in taunting the Government  at Question Time. It had brought the secret agrarian societies into mainstream politics in a way that neither the United Irishmen nor the Fenians had previously managed. Davitt has identified their major political concern and had shown them a way to address it. The tenant farmer and landless agricultural labourers of Ireland, the descendants of the disposed Gaels had entered politics.

The Land League became increasingly violent as it enforced its rules no only on landlords, but on tenants too. Though the parliamentary Party officially denounced violence, this was often done ambiguously. Joseph Biggar, MP for Cavan, for instance, condemned the shooting of landlords because ‘the assailant frequently missed and hit someone else’. Parnell was scrupulous in dissociating himself from violence in the ‘Land War’ as it became known, and he was always careful to deprecate violence. Possibly as an alternative to violence, Parnell introduced alternative methods of intimidation, which was to become known as ‘boycott’ after the land agent against whom it was first used. At an outdoor meeting at Ennis in 1880, he asked:

What do you do with a tenant who bids for a farm from which his neighbour has been evicted?  Now I think I heard somebody say “Shoot him” – but I wish to point out a very much better way, a more Christian and charitable way ... You must show what you think of him on the roadside when you meet him, you must show him in the street of the town, you must show him at the shop counter ... even in the house of worship, by leaving him severely alone, by putting him into a sort of mortal Coventry, by isolating him from the rest of his kind as if he were a leper of old, you must show him your detestation of the crime he has committed.

Parnell thus brought the question of land in Ireland to the forefront of the English political scene. Prime Minister Gladstone, though broadly sympathetic to the Irish, was determined that law and order should be restored as a precondition of any reforms and introduced the Coercion Bill to bring this about. The Coercion Bill gave the police and the military special powers and suspended some civil liberties and was fought by Parnell and his followers in the House. At one point, they forced the House into a 41-Hour continuous sitting which had to be suspended by the Speaker. Parnell and thirty-five of his MPs were suspended and escorted from the House by the sergeant-at-arms.


Gladstone

Though Gladstone introduced land reform which gave the Land League much of what they had campaigned for, Parnell was by then a hostage to the extremists within the movement. The reforms gave tenants security provided they paid their rents and made it legal for them to sell their tenancies, together with any improvements. It also set up Land Courts and rent tribunals. The Land League’s objectives however was a complete abolition of landlords and the transfer of land to the tenants, so the reforms, welcome thought they were, did not go nearly far enough. Parnell knew he could not afford to compromise and so antagonise his Fenian supporters, especially those American Fenians upon whom the League depended for finance and who had ultimately nationalist aims. Though he later denied it, he is reputed to have said:

When we have undermined English misgovernment we have paved the way for Ireland to take her place amongst the nations of the earth. And let is not forget that this is the ultimate goal at which all we Irishmen aim... None of us, whether we are in America or Ireland, or wherever we may be, will be satisfied until we have destroyed the last link which keeps Ireland bound to England.

Matters were rapidly coming to a head between Parnell and Gladstone when Gladstone attacked Parnell with the following:

If there is still to be fought in Ireland a final conflict between law on the one side and sheer lawlessness on the other then I say, gentlemen, without hesitation, the resources of civilisation are not yet exhausted.

To which Parnell replied:

It is a good thing that this masquerading knight-errant, this pretending champion of the rights of every other nation except those of the Irish nation, should be obliged to throw off the mask today, and to stand revealed as the man who, by his own utterances, is prepared to carry fire and sword into your homesteads, unless you humbly abase yourselves before him and before the landlords of the country.

Recreation Time for the Land League
in Kilmainham Jail

Gladstone then committed what might be seen as a major folly. He had Parnell arrested and confined in some comfort in Kilmainham Jail, Dublin. It made a martyr of Parnell and, at the same time, absolved him of blame for the increasing violence of the Land League. The Land Act was actually working rather well and the League was becoming out of touch with the mood of their supporters amongst the tenant farmers whom they professed to support. Parnell how began to turn his mind to the question of a Dublin parliament in an Ireland united to England only through the Crown. However, personal matters were to intervene which would bring about a crisis in the Home Rule Party. Parnell had earlier become embroiled in a sexual entanglement with a Mrs. Katherine O’Shea, the wife of the MP for County Clare, Captain William O’Shea, late of the Eighteenth Hussars.

The Land League was beginning to lose the support of the tenant farmers whom they had been trying to persuade to pay no rent at all. Parnell thus had good political and private reasons to be free from prison.  He agreed to the ‘Treaty of Kilmainham’, an unwritten agreement with Gladstone to look sympathetically at the remaining problems of the tenants in return for Parnell agreeing to cool things in Ireland. I particular, Gladstone agreed to look at the question of Irish national aspirations. Parnell was released and all looks well for a new age of co-operation between the Home Rule Party and Glandstone’s Liberals.

Lord Frederick Cavendish, MP

However, events were to intervene. William Foster, Chief Secretary for Ireland had resigned because he disagrees with Parnell’s release and had been replaced by Gladstone’s nephew, Lord Frederick Cavendish. On the day of his arrival in Dublin, together with his under-secretary, Thomas Burke, both men were set upon and were murdered as they walked across Phoenix Park by four members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood. There was evidence of connivance by at least one high official of the Land League, which had close links with Parnell’s Home Rule Party. This event effectively ended any possibility of co-operation with the Liberals on the Home Rule question.

In the 1885 General Election, which had been fought on a wider franchise that included agricultural labourers, the Home Rule Party won eighty-six seats and held the balance between the Liberals and the Conservatives who had tied for seats. Gladstone’s response was to propose a form of internal self-government for Ireland, under which a Dublin parliament would have powers to legislate only on Irish internal matters but subject to a sovereign Westminster parliament.

Whilst Parnell supported the Bill, realising that it was probably the best on offer under the circumstances, it split the Liberals asunder. A significant faction of Gladstone’s party voted with the Conservatives who were, in Lord Randolph Churchill’s phrase, ‘playing the Orange card’. The Bill also brought the Ulster Protestants into play in opposition to it. The link between the British Conservatives and the Irish Unionists had been established. Surprisingly, it was Gladstone who was least compromising to Ulster Protestants and Parnell who sought to placate them. Parnell said:

We cannot give up a single Irishman... The class of protestants will form a most valuable element in the Irish legislature of the future, constituting, as they will, a strong minority, and exercising a moderating influence in making laws. ... The best system of government should be the resultant of whatever forces are in that country... We want all creeds and classes in Ireland.

The Ulster Protestants however continued to drill and to prepare to fight.

The Home Rule Bill was lost, due to Liberal defections, in 1886. Though this was a setback, it was not seen as more than that. The cause of Home Rule has been raised in the British parliament and a British party now has is as a cause. Parnell’s stature was greatly enhanced and was enhanced still further when two letters published by The Times in 1882, which appeared to implicate Parnell with the Phoenix Park murders of Cavendish and Burke, were proved to have been forgeries written by a Richard Piggott for money. Parnell had actually received a standing ovation when he next entered the House of Commons.

William O’Shea has been playing a waiting game. At first, he had even encouraged the liaison between his wife and Parnell, but when Katherine’s rich aunt eventually dies and left her a considerable fortune, he sued for divorce – and his share of the fortune. He had realised that, had Katherine’s aunt got a whiff of sexual scandal, she would have changed her will to exclude her. The effect of the ensuing scandal on Catholic Ireland, and on non-conformist England (the power-base of the Liberal Party) was immediate. Parnell the adulterer became the butt of music-hall jokes and the laughing-stock of the Press.

In December 1890, in Committee Room 15 at the House of Commons, Parnell was replaced as party leader by 45 votes to 29. The party split into Parnellite and anti-Parnell factions and the Home Rule question became subordinate to the question of whether an adulterer could be allowed to lead the Irish nation’s party. Parnell tried to cling to power and succeeded only in alienating the Church and the people. He lost three by-elections in a row, just a year after he had been uncrowned King of Ireland. His health deteriorated and he died on 6 October 1891. Maybe the hope of a peaceful transition to Home Rule and Irish independence died with him.

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A History of Ireland - 2. Tudors and Plantation.

Tudor 'Plantations' in Ireland

Part 2 of a History of Ireland

Tudors.

Soon there was a new line of English monarchs with new ideas of a modern, centrally controlled nation state. They were determined that the anarchy of Ireland was to end. In 1515 Ireland was described as:

More than sixty counties called regions inhabited by the King’s Irish enemies... where reigneth more than sixty chief captains wherein some call themselves Kings, some Princes, some Dukes, some Archdukes that liveth only by the sword and obeyeth unto no temporal person... and every of the said captains maketh war and peace for himself... And there be thirty great captains of the English folk that follow the same Irish order... and every of them maketh war and peace for himself without any licence of the King...

In 1534, Henry VIII decided to put an end to this intolerable state of affairs. The House of Fitzgerald, earls of Kildare, and nominally representing the English Crown, was in open rebellion. Henry decreed that all lands in Ireland were to be surrendered to the Crown and then re-granted. His daughter, Elizabeth I, was to enforce this new control with a ruthless severity.

The effect of this was that the Gaelic chiefs no longer held land according to Gaelic Law but by the King’s Law and the King’s good will. The Irish were described by one contemporary writer thus:

The Irish live like beasts... are more uncivil, more uncleanly, more barbarous in their customs and demeanours than in any part of the world that is known.

A missionary zeal to civilise pervaded English society and Ireland was seen as a wild land to be tamed, much as the Spanish saw the New World. They were no less ruthless. Elizabeth herself wrote:

"We perceive that when occasion doth present you do rather allure and bring in that rude and barbarous nation to civility by discreet handling rather than by force and shedding of blood; yet when necessity requireth you are ready to oppose yourself and your forces to those whom reason cannot bridle."

Necessity required force to be used often it seems, and it was applied with frequent and unprecedented savagery by a largely English soldiery. Sir Henry Sidney, one of Elizabeth’s deputies, wrote:

I write not to your honour the name of each particular varlet that hath died since I arrived, as well by the ordinary course of law, and martial law as flat fighting with them... but I do assure you, the number of them is great, and some of the best, and the rest do tremble for the most part... Down they go in every corner and down they shall go...

It was said of Sir Humphrey Gilbert, another of Elizabeth’s deputies:

His manner was that every head of all those which were killed in the day should be cut from their bodies and brought to the place where he encamped at night, and should be there laid on the ground by each side of the way leading to his own tent, so that none should come unto his tent for any case but commonly he must pass through a lane of heads, which he used ad terrorem – the dead feeling nothing the more pains thereby. And yet it did bring a great terror to the people when they saw the heads of their dead fathers, brothers, children, kinsfolk and friends lie on the ground before their faces...

So the foundations for the traditional hatred of the Irish for the governing English were lain.

The common resentment for the new English rulers spurred on the process of assimilation between the Irish and the Old English (the Anglo-Irish), but it was religious differences that were finally to complete the process.

The Protestant Reformation utterly failed to make any real inroad in terms of converts amongst the Irish for two reasons:

1. Most of Ireland was simply too remote and inaccessible for England to impose a new religion as well as a new order. The Catholic Church was unassailable behind a landscape of bog and scrub in a land of few roads. The fact of the hates enemy having a different religion strengthened the Catholic Church rather than weakened it.
2. For political reasons, Elizabeth had no wish to antagonise Spain still further by outright repression of the Catholic Church in Ireland, and forcibly converting its followers to Protestantism. Though nominally part of the Protestant Reformation, the Irish were almost completely untouched by it.

Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone

The last stand of the great Irish chiefs was to be made in the wilds of remote Ulster by Hugh O’Neil, Earl of Tyrone, whom, paradoxically, had been cultivated by Elizabeth as her protégé in order to secure English penetration into the last and least accessible of the four provinces. Tyrone, however, had different ideas. He was conscious of his descent from the Ui Niall, High Kings of Ireland for centuries before. Ulster was still little different to the territories they had ruled and he wanted it to stay that way.

He formed an alliance with another Ulster Gaelic chief, Hugh O’Donnell, and almost succeeded a few miles north of Armagh in 1598 at Yellow Ford where he defeated an English army. However, Tyrone was not fighting for Ireland; he was fighting for himself in the great tradition of Irish chiefs. A Spanish fleet was sent to Ireland to help him and it anchored in the south off Kinsale. Mountjoy, the Protestant deputy, marched south and laid siege to the Spanish in Kinsale, and Tyrone and O’Donnell marched south to lay siege to the English in turn. It resulted in the final battle for Gaelic Ireland. Tyrone made the mistake of attacking the English in the open. His soldiers, whose special skills were more appropriate to fighting in bogs, were routed and scattered north in disorder. Tyrone submitted to the Crown and obtained a pardon, much to the fury of the English administrators of Ireland.

At the end of the Tudor period, Ireland had, for the first time in its history, a centralised government and the appearance of a nation state, albeit within the English State. However, its people now had a common enemy and a unique identity. An identity reinforced by a different religion, which had become an integral part of this political identity. The Gael were Catholic Irish; they were determinedly not Protestant English.

Plantations.

Such are the thin threads of history that the Gaelic rebellion of Hugh O’Neill and Hugh O’Donnell led, in a roundabout way, to the present troubles in Northern Ireland and to Protestants there insisting on a separate identity, a distinct way of life, and the right to march triumphantly through predominantly Catholic areas wearing orange sashes and bowler hats.

Hugh O’Niell was allowed to remain in Ulster under the watchful eye of English officials infuriated by his pardon. They plotted against him, falsely accusing him of treason and fining him for practicing his Catholic religion, and insisted he run his province according to English Law, not Gaelic Law as he wished. Finally, in fear of his life, he and O’Donnell's heir, Rory, the Earl of Tyrconnell, took flight in a French ship from Rathmullen, on 4 September 1607. This lent credence to the stories of treason and Tyrone’s and Tyrconnell’s land were forfeited to the Crown.

The ‘Flight of the Earls’ has huge symbolic significance for the Gaelic Irish as it represents the banishment of the last of the line of ancient Gaelic tribal leaders from Irish soil. That it was quickly followed by colonisation by non-Irish people gives it special poignancy.

The Crown so acquired the four counties of Donegal, Tyrone, Derry and Armagh, and they, together with the counties of Cavan and Fermanagh became subjected to the most systematic attempts yet to plant Protestants from England and Scotland. This was the ‘Plantation of Ulster’ which had been worked out on a government drawing board between 1608 and 1610.

Protestant Plantations in Ireland

Plantations had been tried before in Leix and Offaly in the 1550s, in Munster in the 1560s and 1580s and twice on a small scale in Ulster in the 1570s. They had all foundered for lack of either people or capital, or had been destroyed in rebellions of those whose land had been appropriated. Ulster was to be different, both in scale and in provision of capital through the City of London companies.

The ‘Irish Society’ was formed and, in 1610, it was given responsibility for colonising the forfeited lands of the flown earls in the same way that the Virginia Society was colonising North America. It was the Irish Society, which exists to this day and has an office close to Derry Cathedral, which changed the name of Derry to Londonderry. The land was divided between the London liveried companies – drapers, salters, fishmongers, haberdashers, etc. The plan was to apportion eighty-five percent of the land, via these companies, to English and Scottish settlers who would not be allowed to take Irish tenants. Five percent was to go to former soldiers who were allowed to take Irish tenants, in effect becoming a new middle-class of landlords, and the other ten percent was to go to native Irish. These former owners of the whole land now had to pay double the rent that the settlers paid and they got the least fertile land.

Land Distribution

However, things did not go entirely to plan. Corrupt administrators often allowed the Irish to remain as labourers (which were in short supply) or as tenants paying higher rents, so returning a handsome profit without the need to use capital to import English and Scots. By 1622, there were about 13,000 settlers, about half-and-half English and Scots, but they lived amongst the native Irish. So, the political objective of totally colonising the forfeited lands was lost and the Irish remained outside the ‘civilising’ pattern of English Protestant culture.

The result of this was a Gaelic population that remains numerically strong, yet was embittered and resentful, and a Protestant minority which felt insecure and beleaguered but believing in its cultural superiority and its right to be masters in its new home. The settlers forfeited their farms for security against the dangers that lurked in the woods and bogs outside their windows, fearful of the 3000 former bowmen of the flown earls who were reputed to inhabit the woods and bogs and other wild places of remote Ulster.

Ulster Population by Religion

While the official Ulster Plantation in the west was struggling to succeed, another more successful privately organised Protestant plantation on the Ards Peninsula in the East was going from strength to strength. Just a few miles across the water from Scotland, this area had been the scene of many comings and goings between the two countries for many centuries before the Reformation. The immigrants had usually been almost indistinguishable from the Irish and had usually rapidly assimilated with them. However, in 1606 a private deal had been done between two Scottish Protestants, Montgomery and Hamilton, and a local Gaelic chief. This eastern Protestant plantation prospered and became the bridgehead by which, for over a century, Scottish settlers flooded into Ulster. From there they spread through the town of Belfast and over the whole of Down and Antrim and into the gaps in the official plantation in the west. The geographical distribution of the two populations of Ulster still follows this pattern, established over 300 years ago.

The success of the eastern settlement meant that the majority of settlers were Scot and Presbyterian rather than Anglican, and, when they first arrived, they were penalised by the Anglican Church as dissenters. It is a matter of record that, on one Sunday alone, 500 Presbyterian crossed to Stranraer in Scotland to receive the sacrament in a way forbidden to them in Ulster.

So developed the traditional independence of spirit in Ulster’s Protestant culture. Not Irish, not English and not Scot. They became Ulster men and women. They became the standard-bearers of the ‘true faith’ beset by enemies. They were alone and isolated in a hostile land, and they had no one to turn to but themselves. Their worst fears were realised on 23 September 1641 when the Gaelic Irish Catholics rebelled.

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A History of Ireland - 1. Celts, Vikings and Normans

Passage Grave at Knowth, Boyne Valley

Part 1 of A History of Ireland

The Beginning

The first traces of Irish life can be found in the passage graves in the Boyne Valley at Dowth, Knowth and Newgrange dated at about 3000 BC. These are the graves of tribal kings of Neolithic agriculturalists, who are assumed to have arrived in Ireland from Neolithic Europe, via the island of Britain although recent research suggests they may have come from the Iberian Peninsula, spreading via the coast of modern France and southern England and Wales.

They were invaders and were themselves replaced in turn by successive waves of invaders from Britain, France and Spain who brought bronze and iron. The last of these invaders were the Iron Age Celtic Gaels who brought with them the Gaelic language and Celtic traditions that were to become the distinguishing features of the Irish. They arrived in Ireland about 2000 years ago.

The island of Ireland remained almost completely free from Roman influence during Rome’s 400-year occupation of most of Britain. No Roman administrator is known to have set foot on Irish soil and, at the end of Roman rule in Britain, Ireland remained pagan, living by agriculture, raiding and fighting one another; a society of shifting alliances and changing patterns of power and influence

The traditional High Kings of Tara were not, in any modern sense, kings of a united people. Rather, they were holders of semi-sacred symbolic titles and had no law-making powers. Yet, despite this lack of a central authority the Irish tribes had a great deal in common. They spoke the same language and followed a common code (the Brehon Law). They shared a tradition of poetry and music and the same legendary history. One of the distinguishing features of Irish culture was, and is, its resilience.

The Coming of Christianity.

Illuminated page from the Book of Kells

This Irish culture suffered its first major shock with the triumph of Christianity over the Kings of Tara and the banishment of paganism from the island, with the assistance of the Romano-British missionary later canonised as St. Patrick. Such was the resilience of the culture that it was able simply to absorb the new religion, indeed to embrace it with an enthusiasm that has lasted to this day, yet to remain essentially Irish and Gaelic. Monasteries were built in Clonmacnoise and Monastarboice, which provided the setting for a Gaelic golden age. It was in these monasteries that the details of Irish society were first written down and works of art, such as the Book of Durrow and the Book of Kells were produced.

Vikings.

In AD 795 a second great shock occurred. An armada of open boats filled with strange warriors from unknown lands beached at Lambay Island off the Dublin Coast. The Vikings had arrived. They slaughtered, burned and ransacked their way into Irish life. More than a century later these ‘Danes’, who were mostly of Norwegian origins, were remembered as

...immense floods and countless sea-vomiting of ships and fleets so there was not a harbour or landport in the whole of Munster without floods of Danes and pirate..."

Viking Invasion of the British Isles

Only the High King, Brian Boru, in 1014, was able to mount any defence against these invaders when he raised an army sufficiently large to defeat a combined army of Noresemen of Dublin and the Irishmen of Leinster at Clontarf. However, the other kings of Ireland simply stood by, waiting to see what pickings were to be had when the battle was over. There was no organised national resistance.

The Vikings settled and became part of Irish society in their turn. They built the coastal towns of Wexford and Arklow, and Dublin itself, and settled into the Gaelic pattern or warring kings.

Normans.

The next great shock was on 1 may 1170. A small group of Norman English, having set sail from Wales, landed at Baginbun in Southwest Wexford and established a bridgehead. From this bridgehead was to flow eight centuries of conflict.

The leader of this band of Normans was a baron of the English King, the Earl of Pembroke, known as Strongbow. He had been invited by the King of Leinster, Dermot Macmurrough, who needed the superior Norman war technology of armour ad archery to fight his High King who’s own soldiers still used slings and stones. Strongbow captured Dublin for Macmurrough and as a reward was given Macmurrough’s daughter in marriage. When Macmurrough died, Strongbow became King of Leinster.

Trim Castle on the banks of the Boyne. Built by Hugh de Lacey between 1172 and 1224.

Ireland now had a king with feudal ties to the English Crown and England had a claim to Leinster. It was, however, only a claim under English feudal laws and had no validity in Gaelic law. Henry II of England, fearing the establishment of a nearby independent Norman kingdom, moved against Strongbow to subdue him and to enforce these feudal ties. In so doing, he took on the problem of subduing the Irish almost by accident.

The effect was immediate. Norman adventurers stormed into Ireland and devastated Gaelic society. They formed alliances with some chiefs and seized land and cattle from others. They built huge castles to protect their gains and penetrated into all parts of the island except the wild and remote central Ulster. They overwhelmed the Irish with their superior military technology and became, in effect, local kings. Though they owed nominal allegiance to the English Crown, they were acting in their own interests and English control was weak or non-existent.

Norman Ireland in 1300

Normal-English carpetbaggers had replaced native Irish tribal leadership almost entirely. The Irish had a new and foreign ruling class, and they ruled by strength rather than by consent. The Gaels had become a subject people and were to remain so for another 750 years, until the formation of the Irish Free State in 1922.

In time, these invaders too, like the Vikings before them, became Irish in character, adopting Gaelic and intermarrying with the native people. They too settled into the Irish pattern of warring petty kings and adopted Gaelic Law. Numerous attempts were made by the English to stop this process of assimilation. An early Irish parliament at Kilkenny in 1366 tried to legislate against it by outlawing the wearing of Irish clothes, Irish hairstyles and the use of Irish laws by ‘the English born in Ireland’. It was to no avail. English influence shrank to almost non-existence to a small area around Dublin enclosed by defensive, isolating ramparts, known as ‘the Pale’. The term ‘beyond the Pale’ entered English to signify anyone whose behaviour cannot be coped with or controlled.

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A History of Ireland - 3. Rebellion, Cromwell and Jacobites

Massacre at Porterdown Bridge.

Part 3 of A History of Ireland

The Gaelic Rebellion.

The Gaelic rebellion had its greatest impact in Ulster because that is where most of the Protestants in Ireland were. It was in Ulster that the worst atrocities were enacted. The facts are difficult to disentangle from mythology but the Protestants firmly believe the accounts, and this is what now matters. One such incident is still depicted on the banners of the Orange Lodges today. It took place in November 1641. A party of 100 Protestants, who had been taken from their homes, stripped and robbed, were taken to the bridge at Porterdown and, so it is alleged, were there thrown and driven over the parapet into the river to drown. Those that could swim were shot or clubbed on the head as they came ashore and some Catholics even got into boats and bashed them with oars as they were drowning.

Did this event really happen? Are the numbers and manner of their deaths accurate? Whatever the truth, Protestants believe it, as atrocities undoubtedly did occur on both sides during the 1641 rebellion. It confirmed in protestant minds the hostility of the Gaelic people to them and increased their isolationism and insecurity still further. The Royal Commission which followed the rebellion, records:

And for this deponent and many others were stayed behind, diverse tortures were used upon them ... and this deponent for her part was thrice hanged up to confess to money, and afterwards let down, and had the soles of her feet fried and burned at the fire and was often scourged and whipt...

And a great number of other Protestants, principally women and children, whom the rebels would take, they pricked and stabbed with their pitchforks, skeans and swords and would slash, mangle and cut them in their heads and breasts, faces, arms, and hands and other parts of their bodies, but not kill then outright but leave them wallowing in their blood to languish and to starve them to death.

The spectre of these events, real or imagined, still looms large in the Ulster Protestant psyche.

As the English parliament became more puritan and moved towards civil war with the King, so the Irish Catholics of both races became more and more to identify with a common cause. In 1641, at Clownes Castle, County Kildare, the former defensive bulwark of the Pale defending the seat of English government in Dublin, an event took place which had enormous symbolic significance. James Eustace, an English Catholic, drew his sword for Catholicism against the English government. It was here too that Protestant atrocities were recorded. Women and children were slaughtered and the garrison was hanged when it surrendered. Eustace’s ninety-year-old mother was killed when her jaw was smashed to get the keys to a secret room in the castle, which she was hiding in her mouth.

The people of Ireland were being driven by atrocity into two religious camps regardless of race. This process was to be given added impetus by a man who was to arrive in Ireland at the end of the decade. His name was Oliver Cromwell.

Cromwell

Oliver Cromwell

Cromwell, the puritan leader of the Protestant Parliamentary force which had won the English Civil War against King Charles I, arrived in Ireland in 1649 to seek the Royalist armies which were in alliance with the Irish Catholic rebels. He struck first at Drogheda, north of Dublin.

An English Catholic, Sir Arthur Aston, a veteran Royalist of the Civil War, commanded Drogheda. Cromwell’s superior artillery soon breached the walls but the first attempt to storm the breach led to considerable losses and the attempt failed. This so infuriated Cromwell that he showed no mercy when the garrison finally fell. He wrote:

Being in the heat of action, I forbade them to spare any that were in arms in the town

Cromwell at Drogheda

It seems likely that women and children were also caught up in the action and Cromwell later admitted that no priest was left alive. Some of the defenders, including Aston, had been driven to a high tower known as Millmount. When Aston surrendered, his officers were immediately slaughtered and Aston himself was clubbed to death with his wooden leg. Other defenders, who had managed to cross the river, took refuge in, amongst other places, St. Peter’s Church. Cromwell had it burned down and those who got out were massacred. One hundred and twenty people had taken refuge in another tower. Of those who surrendered Cromwell wrote:

The Officers were knocked on the head and every tenth man of the soldiers killed and the rest shipped to the Barbadoes (sic) ... I think that we put to the sword altogether about 2,000 men ... [this was all done in the spirit of God] and therefore it is right that God alone should have all the glory.

Cromwell’s campaign in Ireland was devastating. All Irish Catholics, as suitors of the ‘Whore of Babylon’ (the Pope) were to be trodden under and the Irish Protestants were to triumph. From Drogheda, Cromwell’s Protestant New Model Army moved south to Wexford where it ran amok in the town killing at least 2,000, of whom 200 were women and children slaughtered in the marketplace.

With his triumph complete, he set about establishing Protestant rule with characteristic puritan zeal. All Catholic lands east of the Shannon were confiscated and given to his soldiers and those who had financed his campaign. Those dispossessed were driven west of the Shannon to the barren and remote provinces of Connaught. The final humiliation of the Catholic landowners was total. It was, however, only the landowners and their families who were transported across the Shannon. Their former tenants and labourers stayed behind to serve their new, hated, Protestant masters; masters who had been responsible for the massacres of Drogheda and Wexford.

Land Ownership in Ireland Before and After
Cromwell's Penal Laws

Catholic land ownership in Ireland had shrunk to fifty-nine percent by the time of the 1641 rebellion. Cromwell reduced it to twenty-two percent. By 1695, this had shrunk further to fourteen percent and by 1714 to just seven percent.

With the restoration of the monarchy and the succession of the Catholic James II in England, Irish Catholics looked forward to better times, and their optimism seemed well-founded for a while. Catholics were appointed to high office in Ireland and a Catholic-dominated Irish parliament revoked the Cromwellian land settlement. However, it was not to be. England was about to change its Catholic King for a Protestant one and part of the drama was to be played out on Irish soil.

Siege of Londonderry

In the autumn of 1688, tension in Londonderry had been high as rumour spread that Catholics in Ireland, loyal to King James, had been massacring Protestants again, as they had in1641. Then the city received news that a new garrison was to be sent to Londonderry in James’ name to relieve the previous one. The new garrison was a Catholic regiment – Lord Antrim’s Redshanks.

The city became divided between loyalty to the still legitimate King James and the fear of a Catholic garrison as a time when Catholics were believed to be massacring Protestants. The Protestant Bishop of Londonderry and other Protestant establishment figures found it unthinkable that they should try to keep royal troops out of a royal garrison, but the independently-minded Presbyterians had no such qualms. The official decision had been taken to admit the troops when suddenly thirteen apprentice boys of the city seized the keys to the gates of Londonderry and, on the 7 December 1688, slammed them shut in the face of the Redshanks. Presbyterian Protestants had again been let down by the establishment and had had to save themselves.

Breaking the Boom

The siege of Londonderry got started in April 1689 but was not total until June. It lasted some six weeks at full intensity. At the start of the siege, a ship with troops loyal to William arrived in the Foyle, but its captain, deciding the city had no chance of holding out, withdrew again. More ships, with supplies arrived in May but by then the besieging army had constructed a wooden boom across the river. Meanwhile, 30,000 Protestants were within the city walls.

There was starvation and sickness through the summer and dogs, cats, mice, candles and leather were eaten. Thousands died of starvation and disease. At one point during the siege, a shell containing the terms for surrender was fired into the city. The reply was simple, defiant, “No Surrender!” It has become the watchword of Ulster Protestantism.

On 28 July 1689, the British ships in the Foyle at last decided to break the boom, and, under fire from the Jacobites, they finally sailed into the quay with supplies and the siege of Londonderry was over. The raising of the siege led directly to the defeat of James II in Ireland. In 1690, William landed at Carrickfergus Castle and won great and decisive victories at the Boyne and at Aughrim. All Catholic armies in Ireland surrendered in 1691 and thousands of Catholic troops were sent into exile where they became the ‘Wild Geese’ who served in the army of Louis XIV of France. Orange had triumphed over Green and the Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland was assured.

The Ulster Protestants had held out and triumphed over adversity, defiant to the end, and confident of God’s support and protection. The "No Surrender!" tactic had worked, as they knew it would. They also learned one other lesson from the presence of the British ships in the Foyle: though they may need Britain, they are essentially on their own, and it is that sense of self-reliance and defiance in adversity which is at the heart of Ulster Protestant psychology 300 years later. The siege Londonderry still goes on. The Ulster Protestant is continually on guard against the Papists who committed the atrocities of 1641 and who tried, and failed, to starve them into submission in 1688.

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So You Want To Be An Apologist For Christianity

Important note:
If you were looking for the Muslim Apologists' Handbook you've got the wrong one. You need So You Want To Be An Apologist For Islam. Some of the words a slightly different and you don't want to find you've promoted the wrong god by mistake, do you.

So you've decided to be an internet apologist for Christianity.

You're going to come up against a lot of people with facts, logic, reason, complicated arguments, and evidence; people who've studied the Bible; people who've even studied science and maybe have degrees from universities.

Have no fear. None of this should bother you if you use the following guide:

So You Want To Be An Apologist For Islam

Important note:
If you were looking for the Christian Apologists' Handbook you've got the wrong one. You need So You Want To Be An Apologist For Christianity. Some of the words a slightly different and you don't want to find you've promoted the wrong god by mistake, do you.

So you’ve decided to be an internet apologist for Islam.

You’re going to come up against a lot of people with facts, logic, reason, complicated arguments, and evidence; people who’ve studied the Qur’an; people who’ve even studied science and maybe have degrees from universities.

Have no fear. None of this should bother you if you use the following guide:

Why Species?

First a definition:

In biology, a species is one of the basic units of biological classification and a taxonomic rank. A species is often defined as a group of organisms capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring. While in many cases this definition is adequate, more precise or differing measures are often used, such as similarity of DNA, morphology or ecological niche.

Wikipedia - Species

For our purposes, the second sentence is probably enough. We could get picky and point out that, say, fish, living isolated in a lake somewhere are actually NOT capable of interbreeding with other fish in another isolated lake.

Another important thing to remember about the identification of a 'species' is that this is a purely human concept used for classification and description so that scientists can talk about this or that 'species' and know which biological form they are discussing. Nothing actually happens to the group of organisms being described when human taxonomists decide that this or that group should now be regarded, not as a variety or sub-species, but as a separate species in its own right.

When Creationists claim that evolution can only occur at the 'micro' level, i.e., within a species, but not at the 'macro' level, they, to be charitable, have not grasped this essential piece of basic biology: that classification is a human concept; nature does not read the rule book and is not bound by our conventions.

Now to dispel a common misconception about speciation. Speciation is a result of evolution but it is not the purpose of it. Evolution has no purpose and no pre-determined goals. The scientific Theory of Evolution (TOE) explains speciation but it does not require it to occur and nothing ‘intends’ a new species to arise.

So why does speciation occur at all?

Creationists Promise to Lie for Money

Just in case anyone thought I was exaggerating in my blog A Puzzle for Creationists when I said:

Given a jigsaw of pieces of evidence to put together, a creationist will start with an absolutely unshakeable conviction that it’ll be a picture of a god. This is called ‘faith’. This is the one thing which cannot be, under any conceivable circumstances, wrong. The picture MUST be of a god.

I’ve reproduced the Institute of Creation Research (ICR) oath below.

The ICR is a source of most creationists ‘facts’ and ‘evidence’ in the form of findings of so-called creation scientists.  Members of the ICR must swear this oath before they can publish through the ICR or receive financial support from it.

Needless to say, no self-respecting genuine scientist, least of all one who wishes to keep the respect of his peers, would ever give an undertaking that his research would produce a required result prior to receiving funding for it or as a condition of having it published. The whole idea of an a priori commitment to a given result is absolutely anathema to science. The merest suspicion of it is sufficient to raise a huge question mark over both the research and the researcher.

The existence of this oath is sufficient to completely and irretrievable discredit the entire body of ICR ‘science’ and of those who contribute to it. Only those who KNOW genuine research won’t produce the required answers would require someone to swear an oath to come up with the required results.

Note: not one single assertion in the statements and oath below is supported with the slightest wisp of physical evidence.  The entire thing hangs on a sky-hook of superstition which makes no contact with reality at any point.

The following is taken from Holysmoke.org:

The Institute for Creation Research began in 1970 as a division of Christian Heritage College, the later established by Henry Morris, Tim LaHaye and Scott Memorial Baptist Church (of San Diego, CA) as "the first college in modern times formed in order to provide a liberal arts education based specifically on strict Biblical creationism and full Biblical controls in all courses." (Henry M. Morris. History of Modern Creationism. Master Books Publishers, 1984; p.222.)

Below is the ICR's statement of faith, written in 1981 when ICR became formally independent of Christian Heritage College and was no longer governed by its statement of faith. This must be signed annually by all ICR staff and by its trustees. According to the ICR's by-laws, it cannot be changed. The statement of faith has two parts -- the "tenets of scientific creationism" and the "tenets of Biblical creationism." Also reproduced is a portion of the "ICR educational philosophy" which appears in the Institute's Graduate School catalog. My source is appendix G of the book cited in the preceding paragraph:

The programs and curricula of the Graduate School, as well as the activities of other ICR divisions, while similar in factual content to those of other graduate colleges, are distinctive in one major respect. The Institute for Creation Research bases its educational philosophy on the foundational truth of a personal Creator-God and His authoritative and unique revelation of truth in the Bible, both Old and New Testaments.

This perspective differs from the evolutionary humanistic philosophy which has dominated most educational institutions for the past century, providing the most satisfying and meaningful structure of a consistently creationist and Biblical framework, and placing the real facts of science and history in the best context for effective future research and application.

More explicitly, the administration and faculty of ICR are committed to the tenets of both scientific creationism and Biblical creationism as formulated below. A clear distinction is drawn between scientific creationism and Biblical creationism but it is the position of the Institute that the two are compatible and that all genuine facts of science support the Bible. ICR maintains that scientific creationism should be taught along with the scientific aspect of evolutionism in tax-supported institutions, and that both scientific and Biblical creationism should be taught in Christian schools.

1) The physical universe of space, time, matter and energy has not always existed, but was supernaturally created by a transcendent personal Creator who alone existed from eternity.

2) The phenomenon of biological life did not develop by natural processes from inanimate systems but was specially and supernaturally created by the Creator.

3) Each of the major kinds of plants and animals was created functionally complete for the beginning and did not evolve from some other kind of organism. Changes in basic kinds since their first creation are limited to "horizontal" changes (variation) within kinds, or "downward" changes (e.g., harmful mutations, extinctions).

4) The first human beings did not evolve from an animal ancestry, but were specially created in fully human form from the start. Furthermore, the "spiritual" nature of man (self-image, moral consciousness, abstract reasoning, language, will, religious nature, etc.) is itself a supernaturally created entity distinct from mere biological life.

5) The record of earth history, as preserved in the earth's crust, especially in the rocks and fossil deposits, is primarily a record of catastrophic intensities of natural processes, operating largely within uniform laws, rather than one of gradualism and relatively uniform process rates. There are many scientific evidences for a relatively recent creation of the earth and the universe, in addition to strong scientific evidence that most of the earth's fossiliferous sedimentary rocks were formed in an even more recent global hydraulic cataclysm.

6) Processes today operate primarily within fixed natural laws and relatively uniform process rates but, since these were themselves originally created and are daily maintained by their Creator, there is always the possibility of miraculous intervention in these laws or processes by their Creator. Evidences for such intervention should be scrutinized critically, however, because there must be clear and adequate reason for any such action on the part of the Creator.

7) The universe and life have somehow been impaired since the completion of creation, so that imperfections in structure, disease, aging, extinctions, and other such phenomena are the result of "negative" changes in properties and processes occurring in an originally-perfect created order.

8) Since the universe and its primary components were created perfect for their purpose in the beginning by a competent and volitional Creator, and since the Creator does remain active in this now-decaying creation, there do exist ultimate purposes and meanings in the universe. Teleological considerations, therefore, are appropriate in scientific studies whenever they are consistent with the actual data of observation, and it is reasonable to assume that the creation presently awaits the consummation of the Creator's purpose.

9) Although people are finite and scientific data concerning origins are always circumstantial and incomplete, the human mind (if open to the possibility of creation) is able to explore the manifestations of that Creator rationally and scientifically, and to reach an intelligent decision regarding one's place in the Creator's plan.

TENETS OF BIBLICAL CREATIONISM

1) The Creator of the universe is a triune God -- Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. There is only one eternal and transcendent God, the source of all being and meaning, and He exists in three Persons, each of whom participated in the work of creation.

2) The Bible, consisting of the thirty-nine canonical books of the Old Testament and the twenty-seven canonical books of the New Testament, is the divinely-inspired revelation of the Creator to man. Its unique, plenary, verbal inspiration guarantees that these writings, as originally and miraculously given, are infallible and completely authoritative on all matters with which they deal, free from error of any sort, scientific and historical as well as moral and theological.

3) All things in the universe were created and made by God in the six literal days of creation week described in Genesis 1:1-2:3, and confirmed in Exodus 20:8-11. The creation record is factual, historical, and perspicuous; thus all theories of origins or development which involve evolution in any form are false. All things which now exist are sustained and ordered by God's providential care. However, a part of the spiritual creation, Satan and his angels, rebelled against God after the creation and are attempting to thwart His divine purposes in creation.

4) The first human beings, Adam and Eve, were specially created by God, and all other men and women are their descendants. In Adam, mankind was instructed to exercise "dominion" over all other created organisms, and over the earth itself (an implicit commission for true science, technology, commerce, fine art, and education) but the temptation by Satan and the entrance of sin brought God's curse on that dominion and on mankind, culminating in death and separation from God as the natural and proper consequence.

5) The Biblical record of primeval earth history in Genesis 1-11 is fully historical and perspicuous, including the creation and fall of man, the curse on the creation and its subjection to the bondage of decay, the promised Redeemer, the worldwide cataclysmic deluge in the days of Noah, the post-diluvian renewal of man's commission to subdue the earth (now augmented by the institution of human government) and the origin of nations and languages at the tower of Babel.

6) The alienation of man from his Creator because of sin can only be remedied by the Creator Himself, who became man in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, through miraculous conception and virgin birth. In Christ were indissolubly united perfect sinless humanity and full deity, so that His substitutionary death is the only necessary and sufficient price of man's redemption. That the redemption was completely efficacious is assured by His bodily resurrection from the dead and ascension into heaven; the resurrection of Christ is thus the focal point of history, assuring the consummation of God's purpose in creation.

7) The final restoration of creation's perfection is yet future, but individuals can immediately be restored to fellowship with their Creator, on the basis of His redemptive work on their behalf, receiving forgiveness and eternal life solely through personal trust in the Lord Jesus Christ, accepting Him not only as estranged Creator but also as reconciling Redeemer and coming King. Those who reject Him, however, or who neglect to believe on Him, thereby continue in their state of rebellion and must ultimately be consigned to the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels.

Source: www.holysmoke.org

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Tweet Link

A Puzzle for Creationists.

In science, you amass the facts, examine them carefully to ensure they’re right and relevant, then you fit them into the bigger picture and so add a little more too it.

You're never absolutely sure what the picture is going to be and you know it's always possible that this bit or that could be out of place, or doesn't belong at all and that, as more and more pieces are added, you may have to re-arrange the pieces, even completely rebuilding whole sections.

And always there is the excitement and anticipation of getting closer and closer to the complete picture, never sure quite what the finished picture is going to look like.

And then you realise your picture is just part of a much larger, more complex and astonishing one..

Contrast this with Creationism.

Religion and Unnatural Sex

Bonobo (Pan paniscus)

One of the appeals of Abrahamic religions (Christianity, Judaism and Islam) seems to be its obsession with sex. It provides an excuse for loudly jubilant condemnation of any sexual activity other than for procreation between people who have been granted permission to procreate by one of their god’s representatives, in a special ceremony called marriage.

Even for these favoured people, sex is supposed to be something of a guilty activity, definitely not for enjoyment, especially for the woman, and not something to be discussed in polite circles.

For a possible explanation of how this sex obsession became a central part of the religion meme, see The Evolution of Gods.

This seems to appeal to fundamentalists in particular, though not exclusively so, because it gives them an excuse to interfere in other people’s lives at the most private and personal level and so ensure that they aren’t getting more fun out of life than the person doing the condemnation.

One of the excuses put forward to justify this sanctimonious condemnation and interference is that sexual activity is in some way degrading; not worthy of an exulted creature like Man who is above such base, ‘animal’ activity. Animals don’t know any better and are driven by base instincts but Mankind is possessed of intelligence and so should know better. Getting pleasure from sex is being like an animal.

Let’s look at that in some detail.

Of all known non-human species, hardly any use sexual activity socially or for pleasure. Two exceptions to this are bonobos (so-called pygmy chimpanzees, and one of Man’s closest relative) and dolphins. Both these species are amongst the most intelligent of all non-human animals.

Almost without exception, sex between males and females of all other species is for procreation. Even amongst the other great apes sex only occurs during the female’s oestrus period when conception is likely. In these apes, females only become receptive at a particular time in their oestrus cycle when conception is most likely.

On the other hand, sex between humans is possible and frequent outside the female's oestrus period; indeed the oestrus period is only detectable by measurement of body temperature and then not with any certainty. The human female is almost always potentially arousable and sexually receptive regardless of the point in her ovulatory cycle.

Human females cease to be fertile in mid life, yet many women find their sexual appetite actually INCREASES after the menopause and sex becomes more pleasurable, not less. For these couples there can be no possibility of procreation yet sexual activity continues, often in advanced years.

Clearly, sex has evolved in humans for other uses than just procreation. Sex is used socially to maintain pair-bonds between a man and a woman for the long childhood of offspring and to retain this pair-bond into grandparent hood. And, as with our close relative, the bonobo, sex is not restricted to male-female sex; sex is used recreationally and for social bonding between some same gender couples too. This strongly suggests this behaviour has its origins from before divergence of Homo and Pan.

Sex is not purely procreational in humans; sex is recreational and a social activity too, unlike its function in most animals. In short, recreational and social sex is one of the things which distinguishes us from most other species where sex serves an almost entirely procreational function.

Ironically, the very thing which sanctimonious Christians, Jews and Muslims insist mankind should use sex for, is the one thing which almost all other animals use it for. The use of sex for recreational and social purposes which they most decry is one of the basic things which set us apart from almost every other species and is probably due in part to our intelligence.

If censorious religious bigots had their way, sex would not elevate mankind above other animals; it would reduce us to their level. We would truly be behaving like animals when it came to sex.

The tension this produces between the very strong desire for sex and the feelings of guilt it produces in people infected by the religion meme for even feeling these desires, let alone giving in to them, is a very frequent cause of mental health problems. Religion imposes an intolerable burden of unjustified guilt on people who are merely behaving naturally in ways in which millions of years of evolution have prepared them.

And of course, priests, rabbis and imams offer the only 'salvation' from this guilt. Without them and their magic spells and incantations, and above all, their permission or 'blessing', all is lost once you have yielded to the ‘temptations of the flesh’. Please give generously so that we can help other poor ‘sinners’... Yeah, right! Much easier than working for a living.

If Christians, Jews and Muslims truly wanted to celebrate our ‘elevation’ above the level of other animals, they would promote and extol recreational sex. Couples should be exhorted to enjoy sex for the sake of pleasure and to use it for social bonding and group cohesion, the way it has evolved almost uniquely in humans and certainly in ways which are unique to species with a high level of intelligence.

Clearly, they are pursuing some other agenda. Whatever it is, it’s nothing to do with humans being better than other species.

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Middle For Diddle or Shifting The Evidence

One of the more amusing claims of the Abrahamic religions is that their god created the entire universe just for somewhere for its special creation, Man, to live. It’s the same anthropocentric view which the early authors of the Bible took for granted and so told stories of a creation with humans as the only important species on a world around which everything else revolved. A view regarded as ‘common sense’ even some 500 years ago, so much so that to doubt it was a heresy.

Creationists require no more evidence for this view than that these stories were eventually written down in a book. However, some of the more educated Abrahamic theists who know that science shows these stories are just that, still cling to this anthropocentric view.

These people accept the evidence of an expanding universe, that the rate of expansion extrapolated backwards shows an origin as a singularity some 13.5 billion years ago, though they like to place their god in this process as the instigator of the Big Bang. They will readily accept the evidence for expansion in the Red Shift, and of the Big Bang itself in the cosmic background microwave radiation - which is exactly as we would expect it to be if there was a Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago.

They accept that Earth is a small planet orbiting an average star somewhere in an arm of a spiral galaxy; that this star is one of several hundred billion stars which together form just one of several hundred billion similar galaxies in a vast universe.

However, many (though it has to be said, not all) of these educated theists will point to one single fact as evidence that somehow Earth is at the centre of it all.

They will point to the fact that the Red Shift is the same in all directions and is directly proportional to the distance between Earth and the object being observed.

This, they will claim, is proof that everything is moving out from Earth equally in all directions, so Earth must be at the very centre of the Universe. Earth must occupy the very point at which the Big Bang occurred and thus occupies a very special place in creation.

So, let’s look at this claim in some detail.

Firstly, a short explanation of the Red Shift, and why it shows an expanding universe.

[Skip the next five paragraphs on the Doppler Effect if you know it already.]

The Red Shift appears to be a form of the Doppler Effect, something with which everyone will be familiar, even if they didn’t know it had a name. Everyone will be familiar with the phenomenon of the sound of an approaching train or emergency vehicle with sirens, seeming to change in pitch to a lower register as it passes.

What is happening is that sound waves are being compressed as the train or emergency vehicle is moving towards you and being stretched out as it moves away. The pitch of a sound is a measure of the wave length so peaks closer together are heard as a higher pitch than those further apart.

This is the same phenomenon by which police radar traps can measure the speed of a car by bouncing radio waves off it and measuring the change in wave length. The change in wave length is directly related to the speed of the car relative to the radar gun.

The same phenomenon is observed with all moving objects which emit or reflect electromagnetic waves, like radio waves, microwaves or light. The light emitted by an object like a star which is moving away from the observer, will have its light shifted to a lower wave length than would be the case if it were stationary relative to the observer. If it were moving toward the observer the light would be shifted toward a higher frequency.

In colour terms, a higher wave length means the light is bluer; a lower wave length means it is redder. This is the ‘Red Shift’ and how we know that, on a large scale, objects are moving away from us.

Now, on first sight this appears to confirm the anthropocentric view that we are at the centre of things since the Red Shift is the same in all directions.

However, there is one little inconvenient fact for this theory:

All the evidence shows that the Red Shift is the same for all points in the universe. It matters not where you place the observer.

So, what’s going on?

The universe is expanding, just as the Red Shift shows, but it is expanding not by all objects moving away from one another, but by the space between them increasing. This is a small but subtle difference. In fact, the Red Shift is not a true Doppler effect. The Red Shift is caused by the light having further to travel as each peak is transmitted because the space through which it is travelling has increased.

To understand this, consider dots drawn on the outside of a balloon as it is being inflated. The dots are not moving across the surface of the balloon out from some central point; rather, they are moving away from one another because the rubber between them is being stretched. And this holds true for every point on the surface of the balloon. An observer on any one spot would appear to see all point moving away at a rate which is directly proportional to their distance from the observer.

Earth is at the centre of the universe but so is everything else, because the singularity was the centre and the singularity is expanding as space is created.

The centre of the universe is all of the universe, just as it was in the singularity.

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Show Me The Transitional Forms

European red squirrel, Sciurus vulgaris

In any debate with Creationists one phrase is bound to come up, either as an opening gambit, or, when you’ve answered just about every other misconception, falsehood and fallacy about evolution. That is the Creationist ‘killer argument’, “Show me the transitional forms”.

Any Creationist worth his or her salt will have used this phrase ad nauseum, in almost every debate and will have been told ad nauseum, that the Theory of Evolution neither predicts nor requires a complete set of transitional forms either extant or in the fossil record in the geological columns, for any evolutionary chain, and there are very good reasons for this.

Fossilisation is an extremely unlikely event for any species other than those, like some marine species, which inhabit specific fossilisation-friendly environments or whose dead bodies fall into such environments fairly frequently. Even so, the probability of being swiftly eaten by a scavenger is hugely greater than the probability of an intact body settling down undisturbed for the time needed for fossilisation to occur.