Responding to ISIS

I wrote this for folks at church; some people have found it helpful, so I thought I'd share it more widely. Here are a few quick thoughts on how to respond to the threat of Islamic fundamentalism, which has obviously been in the news a lot recently with the execution murder of Alan Henning.

1. Remember God's Justice

Lots of the Psalms can appear quite bleak at first reading. But actually, they were written precisely to help God's people respond to difficult situations like the rise of the Islamic State. Here's Psalm 10:7-15, for example.

7 His mouth is full of lies and threats;
trouble and evil are under his tongue.
8 He lies in wait near the villages;
from ambush he murders the innocent.
His eyes watch in secret for his victims;
9 like a lion in cover he lies in wait.
He lies in wait to catch the helpless;
he catches the helpless and drags them off in his net.
10 His victims are crushed, they collapse;
they fall under his strength.
11 He says to himself, “God will never notice;
he covers his face and never sees.”

12 Arise, Lord! Lift up your hand, O God.
Do not forget the helpless.
13 Why does the wicked man revile God?
Why does he say to himself,
“He won’t call me to account”?
14 But you, God, see the trouble of the afflicted;
you consider their grief and take it in hand.
The victims commit themselves to you;
you are the helper of the fatherless.
15 Break the arm of the wicked man;
call the evildoer to account for his wickedness
that would not otherwise be found out.

And the Psalms keep pointing us back to God's justice. He will do what is right. He will repay those who attack and murder the innocent; he will repay those who have been hurt unjustly, and those who have hurt them.

2. Don't be afraid

It's easy to be afraid of the seeming rise of Islamic fundamentalism. But the fact is, the Bible is very clear that God's people will always be opposed. The way the UK has been for centuries, where Christians are free to practice our beliefs and even in positions of power, is very much the minority position in world history. We should not be surprised that people who do what is right are sometimes attacked. We shouldn't be surprised that Christians are attacked and persecuted. We should remember and support them (and see Open Doors for ways to do just that). The Bible is also clear that we don't need to be afraid of those who oppose us. We know the end of the story – we know that Jesus wins.

But that final victory does not come about by us fighting. Even in the final battle in Revelation, in Rev 20:7-9, all the armies of the world gather to attack God's people, but God's people do not need to fight to defend themselves. God wins the victory, and God will defeat Islamic fundamentalism, whether sooner or later; we do not need to be afraid.

3. Love our neighbours; love our enemies

Our call is rather different. We are called to love those who hate us; to pray for those who persecute us. Christianity did not conquer the Roman Empire by military force; we conquered it by patient suffering and love for the oppressed. We should pray for those in authority in ISIS and those who seek to kill Christians, that their hearts would be changed just as the Apostle Paul's was.

We are also called to love our neighbours. It's important to recognise that there are many Muslims who are appalled at the things being done in the name of Islam. We should love them and seek to support them and defend them from those in this country who would seek to hurt them.

Cranmer on Gosnell

Cranmer has done an excellent post about the Kermit Gosnell trial.

"The nation cries out for a latter-day Shaftsbury or Wilberforce in Parliament who will bang on about this barbarism ad nauseam, day after day, week after week, until something is done about it."

Some of the comments are slightly confused though. It's perfectly consistent to be anti-abortion but pro-death penalty. After all, the babies haven't done anything wrong, and it's still possible to believe that we can do something that forfeits our right to live. I don't think the death penalty is appropriate though - I think there's too much potential for abuse with wrong verdicts and so on.

In fact, from a logical point of view, it's much easier to be pro-death penalty and anti-abortion than vice versa.

Steve Chalke and Homosexuality

It is being widely reported that Steve Chalke has "come out" in favour of gay marriage. Here's his paper on it, and here are some more resources on it. Peter Ould, whose thinking I generally find very helpful on issues around homosexuality has started a reply here, which show that Chalke's work on the Bible passages is somewhat lacking.

I agree that at times the church has been guilty of hatred of people who experience same-sex attraction, and that we need to repent of that. However, I don't think we should change the Biblical understanding of marriage in order to do that - that would seem to be something of an extreme over-reaction.

I'd want to add three more questions for Steve Chalke:

1. Why do you put people into boxes marked "homosexual" or "heterosexual"? Isn't that part of the problem?

2. Is there any evidence in the Bible either that sex outside marriage should be permitted or that marriage should not always be between a man and a woman?

3. Do unhappily single people have the gift of celibacy?

More on Women Bishops

Three of the best articles I've read about the women bishops vote:

• Philip Giddings' speech at Synod. Philip is the chair of the House of Laity, and explains why he voted against.
• Tom Wright's comment on it, and some of the arguments. For what it's worth, I think he's wrong on Junia but agree on almost all the rest.
• Frank Field's comments on Newsnight. Frank is a former governmnet minister, a keen advocate of women's ministry and a lay canon at Chester Cathedral.

On Women Bishops and Yesterday's Synod Vote

It's worth saying right from the start – I'm not on Synod. Had I been able to vote yesterday, I would probably have voted “yes”. But I grew up in the conservative evangelical camp, and I know a good proportion of the 44 clergy who voted “no” yesterday.

I think it's important to debunk a few myths.

First, this isn't about equality. I know to outsiders it looks like it is, but it isn't. It's actually about identicality, and there's an important difference. Everyone (I hope) on synod agrees that men and women are equal in status and in the sight of God. Everyone agrees that men and women are not identical on a purely biological level. The question is to what extent men and women's differences work out as differences in the roles they play within church.

Secondly, this isn't about rights. No-one has the right to become a bishop. It isn't a “promotion”. It's a horrible job where you can't be part of a normal church fellowship and work far too many hours with far too many people who expect you to have all the answers. Jemima Thackray wrote a great piece in the Telegraph this morning where she argues that the real question should be whether women can have the opportunity to serve in this job. In some ways the even more important question is “Is God calling women to serve in this way?”. Women who say they should have the right to become bishop shouldn't have it, because they don't understand what they say they want.

Third, this isn't about traditionalists in the house of laity spoiling everyone's party. Yes, this time it was voted down because people thought it didn't cater well enough for those who would rather not have a woman bishop. Personally, I'd have voted for the motion because I think it does cater well enough for conservative evangelicals, even though conservative evangelical friends say it doesn't. But last time, 2 years ago, the archbishops proposed a motion which would have catered well enough for them. It was overwhelmingly passed in the houses of clergy and laity, but voted down by modernists in the house of clergy. If those clergy had passed it then, we'd have women bishops by now.

So what is this actually about? It's about how we handle profound disagreements. The Church of England as a whole has been rightly trying to keep people on board, and be as accommodating as possible to those who have good reasons for disagreeing with women bishops, while still trying to move ahead with them. The problem is that the Church's structures are somewhat Byzantine, and sometimes working at counter-purposes and it therefore moves very slowly indeed.

What we haven't done enough of, I think, is actually discussing the reasons for disagreement rather than stating them. For example, a lot of the opposition hinges around one paragraph in Paul's first letter to Timothy. I have listened to a fair bit of the debate, and I've only heard that paragraph discussed by those against women bishops. Now I can see several ways to argue that the paragraph doesn't apply to women bishops today, but I don't really see that argument being engaged with at a national level. Of course, all that discussion should have happened decades ago, but as far as I can tell it just hasn't been done.

The C of E will get there in the end, but in the meantime we need to be patient, we need to be loving, and we need to keep listening to each other, and not just letting it wash over us, but engaging with what the other person is saying. Then, maybe, we'll be able to move on from this and work together for God's glory.

Vaughan Roberts - "A Battle I Face"

Vaughan Roberts has done a superb interview with Julian Hardyman, in which he (Vaughan) speaks honestly about his struggle with same-sex attraction.

It's a really good read - I've got a huge amount of respect for Vaughan anyway, and that just went up another notch or two. Someone needed to say what he has said, and I'm glad it was him.

Abortion v Infanticide

An interesting article here.

My conclusion: Ethics fail.

Their logical conclusion "killing babies no different from abortion" is quite possibly valid, but not new - Peter Singer has been arguing it for years, and it was basically the Roman position thousands of years ago. However, their ethical implications are deeply skewed.

Having demonstrated that abortion and infanticide are morally equivalent, they have three options:

• They could try asserting that ethics are societally defined and conclude "isn't that interesting?" but maintain that one can be wrong and the other right.
• They could use the widespread revulsion against infanticide to say that abortion is therefore not just an issue of women's rights and is (at least in most cases) wrong.
• They could use the widespread acceptance of abortion as a product of women's rights to say that infanticide must be correct too.

Of course, I'd take the second option. We think infanticide is wrong because it is - that's what our consciences tell us. I strongly suspect that the reason that the proponents of abortion are so shrill and so irrational in their defence of it is that deep down they know it to be wrong as well.

Free to Be Guilty?

I don't know if you've been following the story of the Costa Concordia disaster off the coast of Italy. It's one of those stories that has a kind of morbid fascination for many. At the heart of it is the captain, Francesco Schettino. It seems that he told the coastguard he would be the last person to leave the ship, but that he left 4 hours before some of the other survivors, then claimed that he had “tripped and fallen into a lifeboat” and refused to go back onto the ship.

Perhaps what is most striking about Schettino are his pathetic attempts at self-justification. It seems fairly clear that it is his fault the ship was too close to the island, his fault that they were so slow to start the evacuation of the ship, and his fault that he left the ship before that evacuation was complete. And yet he keeps trying to find excuses and shift the blame. Or maybe that's just the way the media presents it...

We criticise Schettino for his behaviour, and rightly so, but it seems that so often we do the same things. We say “I'm sorry I'm late – I got stuck behind a really slow driver” or “The food's burnt because you distracted me while I was meant to be cooking.” We shift the blame because we don't like the reality that we are guilty, and we'd rather make it sound like someone else's fault. Or is that just me?

The Gospel, however, paints a very different picture. Jesus died for us so that we could be forgiven. Or, to put it another way: We as individuals are so guilty that the only way we can be forgiven is for the Son of God himself to die for us. I am so guilty that I needed Jesus to die for me, and you are just as guilty as I am. There is no room for self-justification; there is nowhere left to hide.

What does self-justification say about us? It actually says that we don't like the gospel. We don't want to admit that we are so guilty that Jesus had to die so we could be forgiven. We would rather try to cling to the dirty rags of our own self-righteousness than accept the new clothes that Jesus offers us.

The gospel is good news. It is the news that God loved us so much that he gave his only son to die and be raised again so that we can be forgiven; that we can have a righteousness that is from God by grace through faith because our own self-righteousness can be never be good enough; that we can know God and need never be ashamed because he offers us a new life.

So let's feel free to be guilty! When we mess up, which we do and will go on doing, let's be honest about it. Let's not try to find any more pathetic excuses, but be honest with one another, repent genuinely and forgive one another from the heart. Let's trust that we are righteous because of God's righteousness given to us rather than because of our own attempts to be good. If we rely on our own goodness, we will fail. But if we rely on God's goodness to us in accepting us, forgiving us and transforming us, then he can never fail.

Then maybe we will learn not to look a fool like Captain Schettino, and will have more of the open, honest and forgiving community that God calls us to be.

(first published in church magazine)

The Death of Osama bin Laden

‘As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign LORD, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live. Turn! Turn from your evil ways! Why will you die, people of Israel?’
Ezekiel 33:11, NIV

I've been meaning to write this post ever since I heard about bin Laden's death, but it's been a very busy couple of weeks. It raises all kind of questions, but I'm going to think about three of them. Was what happened just? Was it right? And should Americans have rejoiced the way they did?

First, was it just?

Osama bin Laden had personally declared war on the US. He claimed responsibility for and delighted in the events of 9/11, and clearly intended to continue to do such acts whenever he was able to do so. Had the USA captured him and put him on trial in any court in the world (except possibly those operating under Sharia Law), he would have been found guilty, and in any court that allowed the death penalty, he would have been sentenced to death. There was no possibility of reasonable doubt about his guilt, or about the seriousness of his actions. The killing of Osama bin Laden was, without a doubt, just.

But was it right?

That is a harder question. Was it right for the US to send a team of heavily armed Navy Seals into Pakistan without permission and to assassinate an unarmed man? Again, perspective helps here. The US is at war in Afghanistan, a war which had as one of its major aims to kill or capture Osama bin Laden. The war spills over the border into Pakistan, and Pakistan is officially on America's side in that war.

For the US, acting without Pakistan's permission was a necessary part of the operation. If they had asked for permission, they would have put the Pakistani government in a difficult position. Either they grant permission, in which case they get even more protests from their own population, or they refuse it and lose all US support. Far better for the Pakistani government not to have to make the choice at all. Furthermore, had the US told Pakistan of its intentions, the Pakistani authorities are sufficiently compromised by links to Al Qua'eda that it is highly likely that bin Laden would have been notified and enabled to escape. In addition, if any country (except Russia or China) had been knowingly harbouring bin Laden, it is likely that the US would have if necessary declared war on them to get at him. Much better for them, and much better for the host country, not to have to bother.

Was it right to kill bin Laden given that he was unarmed? I have already pointed out that he would have been sentenced to death anyway, so the only issue is the manner of his death. If one is in battle, and a sniper has the opportunity to shoot the enemy commander, they do not worry too much whether or not he is armed at the time. Even if it was not in battle, if in WW2 a German tank column was moving through Europe, and a British sniper caught sight of the German General Rommel and shot him, even if he was not even carriyng a gun at the time, that would be regarded as perfectly legitimate. And bin Laden clearly thought he was at war with the US. I don't see what the moral difference is.

In addition, there are problems associated with keeping bin Laden in prison. It would provide an incredibly high-profile target for protests and suicide bombings, and it could be argued it was far better tactically to kill him and bury him at sea. Having said all that, I think if it would have been possible to capture and put bin Laden on trial, that may have been even better.

I don't mean better from the point of view of justice at all - I mean from the point of view of what bin Laden seemed to understand so little about - mercy. Of course he didn't deserve it - if he had deserved it, it wouldn't have been mercy. To allow him the possibility of repentance would have been a very merciful thing. Of course, to allow him the possibility to give a memorable speech inciting the Muslim world to unity and hatred of the West would have been a very dangerous thing, so it would have had to be handled carefully.

And so we come onto the question about whether it was right to rejoice. I think relatives of those killed in 9/11 could have rejoiced. But ultimately God does not rejoice in the death of sinners, but rather that they turn from their wickedness and live. If bin Laden had turned around and become a force for peace in the world, even a living demonstration of the power of God to change sinners, that would have been cause for rejoicing. As it is, it seems that he is just one more unrepentant sinner going to Hell. That isn't something to rejoice in, especially when we recognise that it is what we deserve too - it is where we would be but for the grace and mercy that God has shown us.

Royal Wedding

What a day! What a celebration! It's great to know that we can still all get behind celebrating something as wonderful as a Royal Wedding!

Of course, it also reminds us of the glorious reality behind marriage. My wife predicted a whole spate of Christian posts on it, but I've not seen that many. The best however, has to be this one from Barry Cooper (who is famous for not being Rico Tice). Quotes below.

But we can focus too much on sin. Today is a day where a Royal Prince, who will (God-willing) one day be King, marries a commoner, and she therefore becomes Royal. What a great picture in itself of what God has done for us!

In a shocking revelation, the palace has confirmed that the Prince has married a prostitute.

The woman has not yet been publicly named. But sources close to the palace have revealed that as well as being a serial adulterer, she is also known to be a notorious drunk, an inveterate liar, and a grievous hypocrite.

When asked why he would set his love on such an undeserving bride, the future King replied, “I have always loved her. I loved her from the very beginning, before she even knew me. And I will continue to love her, regardless of who she is. Nothing can separate us, not even death.”

Some have complained that, given her profession, such a woman could never become Queen. But the Prince was unrepentant: “If I am King, and I choose to marry her, then she becomes Queen. Whatever she may be, her status changed forever when I joined myself to her. Whatever she may do, she has been irrevocably welcomed into my family. Everything I have is now hers. And everything she has, I have taken upon myself.”

David Starkey on why the new intolerance of Christians is bad...

Gay historian David Starkey warns about a state imposed liberal morality.

My comment - I think that to an extent we brought this on ourselves by focusing on law when we should have focused on grace.

Hat tip to Cranmer.

The Student Riots

The big news story of the last few days has been the student riots in London, specifically the way they attacked national institutions, including the Cenotaph and the Prince of Wales. Whether the destruction of the Glastonbury Thorn was part of the same thing is an interesting question.

Newspapers, the BBC, and so on condemn the violence, and rightly so. But they miss the point. I think this is the start of something much bigger. This looks to me like the beginning of the end of an era in Britain.

After World War 2, the British people voted for the setting up of a comprehensive welfare state - education, healthcare and so on all free at the point of delivery. It achieved unprecendented social mobility - both my parents were the first in their family to go to university, and there were thousands like them. A generation or so - those born between 1940 and 1970 - got rich on the prosperity this afforded. And now, having built a bridge from poverty to wealth, and crossed over themselves, they are destroying the bridge behind them.

Of course, there is a certain inevitability about all of this. After the ill-judged massive expansion of university education under Labour, especially without maintaining the same standards of attainment or level of work required, it was inevitable that we would be unable to continue to have largely state-funded places at universities. To restrict funding to just those universities and courses where graduates either benefitted society as a whole and/or had to work so hard during their degrees that they did not have time to spend vast amounts of time and money drinking or working would seem elitist. Furthermore, it is clear that graduates earn far more than non-graduates.

But of course the problem is that the proposed changes do not target graduates - it does not target the people who have benefitted from the years of government subsidy. They target those who will do so in the future, and are written by those who have already done so in the past.

I rather suspect that this is the first of the rebellions against the baby boomers - the "richest generation ever". Their parents made the world a place where they could prosper. They prospered, and now they are stopping their children from doing so rather than taking the consequences of their own actions.

Of course, there are plenty of people in that generation who care for and look after their children well - I am blessed to have them as both parents and parents-in-law. And I don't especially blame the current government - Labour would have delayed the conflict for a few years, but the clash would have been even worse when it came. I rather suspect it is that generation as a whole acting in their own corporate interests rather than in the interests of future generations.

And now their children - especially those born after 1990 or so - are angry. They aren't able to buy houses without their parents helping them. They can't afford the insurance on cars. And now they're meant to be starting their adult life £40k in debt because their parents' generation would rather make them pay than stick 1% on the top rate of income tax for those who have already graduated. I really don't think we've heard the last of it.

Edited to add this:

• Why is it when we bring children up to value their own rights rather than society that we are surprised when they attack symbols of that society?
• Why is it that we anounce a change in pension age, and take a decade to bring it in, but we anounce a change in student tuition fees and bring it in almost immediately?
• Why are we surprised when education has been about how important it is to get good grades and get into university, we then add thousands of pounds to the cost of doing so, and students are annoyed?

I'm not saying for one moment that the student riots were right, only that they were understandable and forseeable consequenes of government action since at least 1997.

Sex and the Pope

There's a really interesting article by Peter Hitchens here about people's response to the Pope's visit. It's well worth a read - here's the section that struck me most...

The special condemnation reserved for the Romish church also suggests, absurdly, that such horrors never took place, or were covered up by, liberal secular institutions. They did, and have been. Yet this is never advanced as an argument against the secular liberal state (and it would be a bad argument, if it were).

The sex scandal is not, as it happens, the real reason for the anger directed against the Bishop of Rome. If it were, then the undoubted case against the Roman Catholic hierarchy could be made without all the puce-faced exaggerations, straightforward lies and total lack of proportion which infect it. It is overblown precisely because it is not the true issue, but a pretext.

This is what it is really about: the sons and daughters of the sexual revolution, the inheritors of 1968, are actively infuriated by anyone who dares to suggest that their behaviour in their personal lives might be, or might ever have been, selfish and absolutely wrong

Burning the Qur'an?

There's a big row about some American nutter who decided to burn a Qur'an and then decided not to, but lots of Muslims rioted anyway.

And there's something about the whole story that I just don't get. It's obviously big enough for world leaders to intervene...

Most of the Muslims I know and have known have been reasonably intelligent, socially moderately normal people. There were a few oddballs, but I know plenty of non-Muslim oddballs as well. Most people in poor countries I know and have known have also moderately normal.

So is there something about Muslims in Afghanistan that means they stop maturing at about the emotional maturity of a stroppy teenager?

Or is it a normal, mature and sensible human reaction to riot and kill people because some silly chap on the other side of the world bought a Qur'an with his own money and then set fire to it? And let's be honest, he didn't set fire to it, and the one he would have set fire to was probably only an "interpretation" of the Qur'an (i.e. translation), which the Muslims don't even think is holy.

I'm a committed Christian, and have a very high view of the Bible. And to be honest, if someone down the road bought a Bible and set fire to it, or used it as loo roll, I don't especially mind - they can do that if they want to. I might like to have a chat with them about why they felt that way, but they're free to do it.

I am fully aware that people blaspheme God, and say all kinds of nasty things about him, and disrespect him in all kinds of different ways. Now I disagree with them, but I figure that God is big enough to deal with that himself.

So what is going on? Is there a new thought police in town? Do Afghan Muslims have an emotional age of 13? Is the God they believe in too small to look after himself? Or is the media whipping up a storm in a teacup to sell copies?

I don't know, but there's something odd going on...

God, Stephen Hawking and the BBC

The currently most-read article on the BBC website has this headline "Stephen Hawking: God did not create Universe". As a Christian who has studied a fair bit of physics, I'm going to discuss that. Quick summary of my conclusions: Hawking has got it a bit wrong, but the media are over-sensationalising it as usual. And in the process, they are providing a massive amount of free advertising for Hawking's new book.

It's worth pointing out that I haven't read Hawking's article, because it's behind the Times' paywall, or Hawking's book, because it hasn't been published yet. But at this stage of his career, Hawking is far more a populariser of ideas than an original thinker, so I've got a pretty good idea where he is coming from on this...

The BBC quotes Hawking as writing:

Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing.

Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist.

It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going.

Science and Religion

It's worth explaining a few things from these quotes. Firstly, Hawking's philosophy of how God acts in the universe. Hawking seems to have a kind of "God of the gaps" idea going on here - he only sees it as "necessary to invoke God" when there is no other explanation for something.

Of course, Hawking isn't stupid enough to go down the classic God of the Gaps line. He'd probably draw a distinction between when it is "necessary to invoke God" - i.e. when there is no other explanation for something, and when it is possible to invoke God - i.e. when there is an explanation for something that includes the possibility that God is behind it. The Christian answer - that science describes the way that God chooses to run the world - would be treated as when it is possible to invoke God rather than when it is necessary to do so.

Hawking is still wrong though. Rowan Williams is better (quoted on the front of the Times Online today):

Belief in God is not about plugging a gap in explaining how one thing relates to another within the Universe. It is the belief that there is an intelligent, living agent on whose activity everything ultimately depends for its existence.

In other words, Rowan Williams (correctly IMO) asserts that God's existence and action is necessary for science to keep working at all. God and Science aren't competing explanations for the same phenomenon.

Of course, the journalists seem to have even less understanding of this, and think that because Hawking says it isn't necessary to invoke God, he's denying God was involved at all. That's partly because it sells more papers or gets more people looking at the website, and partly because they don't have sufficient understanding of the topic to report accurately on it.

Creation and Quantum Fluctuations

The other thing that is worth explaining is what it means for Hawking to write that "Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing."

In quantum physics, things do sometimes just appear out of nowhere, and then vanish again. But when they do, the total amount of energy involved multiplied by the time they last for has to be less than about 10^-34 Js. So an electron / positron pair, for example, could only last about 10^-21s - one thousand billion billionth of a second. And something bigger would last even less long. So we don't see them very often and they don't usually make much difference to the universe on a big scale.

But that is the only known way of getting something out of nothing. So if the universe wasn't created - it just happened - that's the only known way for it to happen. The problem with that of course is that the universe has lasted quite a while - roughly 14 billion years. Therefore, in order for this theory to work, it needs to have almost exactly zero total energy.

The only known way of having a sufficiently large amount of "negative energy" is through gravity. Imagine that there is a lump of rock a very long way from the Sun, and it isn't moving. Now imagine that it falls towards the Sun, and in doing so it speeds up. It has clearly gained kinetic energy because it is moving. At a year 7 level, we'd say it has converted Gravitational Potential Energy (GPE) to Kinetic Energy (KE). But at the start, its total energy was zero, and at the end its KE is positive, therefore its GPE must be negative.

It's often asserted in astrophysics circles that Black Holes have zero total energy, because all the negative GPE cancels out the positive energy from their mass. And therefore it is possible to get something out of nothing if the something is a black hole because it has zero total energy. On the other hand, I've done a masters course in astrophysics, and I've never once seen that calculation done, or even referenced. Personally, I don't believe it, and I believe it even less when it comes to saying the universe as a whole has zero total energy, but am happy to change my mind if given a good reference that doesn't just assert it.

If it was true, it should mean that you get black holes popping into existence and staying there quite often, and we don't see that happening.

But the idea here is that many cosmologists think that that is what happened with the universe - it popped into existence as a kind of unstable black hole with zero total energy that then exploded. And that's what Hawking means by saying that gravity allows the creation of something from nothing.

(Images from NASA)

Politics and the General Election

I figure I ought to do at least one post on politics...

Contrary to people's impressions of me when we get talking about politics, I've voted for almost all the major parties, and a few minor ones as well! And a lot of that is because the issues I think are the big ones aren't even on a lot of radars.

For example, the biggest issue for me almost every time is abortion. Because I think that abortions are killing human beings - whether or not it's exactly on a par with infanticide is largely irrelevant - I think it's very important that we as Christians should stand up for the vulnerable and oppressed, in this case the unborn. So I have difficulty seeing how Christians can vote Lib Dem (as they're usually the most pro-abortion of the major parties). Having said that, I've voted Lib Dem at least once in a local council election... But abortion just isn't on most parties' radar. So even though I'll often vote for the most pro-life of the candidates standing, the Conservatives are the most pro-life of the major parties and I'd expect the most a Conservative government might do is reduce the limit from 24 weeks to 22 weeks.

I don't think any of the people with a realistic chance of becoming Prime Minister are in it because they want to serve people - they're in it for what they can get out of it (in terms of power, prestige, etc). However, even then, there's a difference between aiming to be in power in 6 years' time (likely to mess stuff up) or to be thought of as a good Prime Minister in 50 years' time (likely to do a better job).

And that's why I'll probably be voting Conservative this time. That and the fact I have moderately strong leanings towards small-statism, which does at least seem to be an issue in this election.

It's worth adding that if it wasn't for their policy on abortion, I might well be supporting the Lib Dems.

Bits and Bobs - Cremation, Autocracy and Creationism

Cremation

Russell Moore has written an interesting article on cremation. I'm still not convinced either way about cremation, even (or perhaps especially) after presiding over a fair few. My worries aren't to do about the question of resurrection - it's to do with the attitude to humanity, the importance of the physical body, and respect for the dead. Moore concludes:

Sometimes the “culture wars” that really matter aren’t the ones you’re screaming about with unbelievers in the public square; they’re the ones in which you’ve already surrendered, and never even noticed.

Church Autocrats

On a not intentionally connected note, Mark Meynell has written about how church autocrats work. Interesting, true to my experience, and a worthwhile checklist for ministry.

As I may have mentioned before, one of the main things I've learnt from coming through some quite traumatic leadership experiences in Christian circles is that godliness is the most essential quality for leaders, especially humility.

Evolution Argument Gets Worse

Once again, possibly connected is this really sad bit of news. Bruce Waltke, who is a seriously good Bible scholar, has left his job at the Reformed Theological Seminary after a video he made about evolution attracted a lot of hostile attention.

In an earlier version of this post, I incorrectly stated that he was sacked (sorry!). RTS's comment on the issue is here, but from my POV the seminary should have stuck by him if they thought he was right to be allowed to say what he said. They try defending their corner by saying they're a confessional seminary. Confessional in the sense of sacking someone who doesn't believe something the Church has always agreed on (like the divinity of Jesus) - fine. Confessional in the sense of not sticking up for a seminary professor who points out the intellectual and apologetic difficulty of taking a popular but contentious line on the interpretation of one Biblical passage - mad and bad. And I thought RTS was meant to be OK...

Bits and Bobs - Livingstone and legalism

John Piper quotes David Livingstone:

For my own part, I have never ceased to rejoice that God has appointed me to such an office. People talk of the sacrifice I have made in spending so much of my life in Africa. . . . Is that a sacrifice which brings its own blest reward in healthful activity, the consciousness of doing good, peace of mind, and a bright hope of a glorious destiny hereafter? Away with the word in such a view, and with such a thought! It is emphatically no sacrifice. Say rather it is a privilege. Anxiety, sickness, suffering, or danger, now and then, with a foregoing of the common conveniences and charities of this life, may make us pause, and cause the spirit to waver, and the soul to sink; but let this only be for a moment. All these are nothing when compared with the glory which shall be revealed in and for us. I never made a sacrifice.

The Telegraph had an interesting article about Christians fleeing from Iraq.

And Mark Driscoll describes how to become a legalist:

Stupid Journalists - Scrabble Rule Change?

During my time, I have known the real-world situation underlying quite a few news stories. And I can't remember a single one where the story has been reported accurately, except where they've just copied a press release. And even then, they sometimes manage to mess it up (and sometimes the press release wasn't completely accurate anyway).

I remember one case where a pupil of mine had followed someone else's instructions to make a robot which could sense when it was about to hit a wall and stop in time. Or it could have done, if the motor was powerful enough to move it. Cue a carefully worded press release suggesting that it could be made into a robotic guide dog (i.e. given a pretty awesome AI, more powerful motor, etc), a news sensation erupted, including an invitation to go on daytime television to demonstrate it.

However, this story just about takes the biscuit, and the BBC news website is far more trusted than their actual journalistic integrity warrants. Of course, they hadn't checked the story with the manufacturers, and here is the true story. If you can't be bothered checking the links - BBC report that the official rules of Scrabble are changing massively. Actual truth - a new game is being released which is a bit like Scrabble.

HT to Ben Green on this one.

Wesley Owen

Wesley Owen bookshops are up for sale. It will be a sad day if they close down - the local Wesley Owen is very good and is the only Christian bookshop within 30 mins drive of here...

Added to which, Wesley Owen and STL distribution (also up for sale) provide the services necessary for most of the church bookshops and bookstalls in the country.