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In one of the strangest BBC articles I've seen in ages, the BMA has complained that Christians are more likely to prolong the life of their patients by suggesting pallative care - and that's a BAD thing, because everyone should be a functional Atheist at work.
In this weird and rambling article, the BBC claims (conflictingly) both that Christian doctors should leave their principles at the surgery door, and work in a purely dispassionate, objective way and also that they should have their patients interests at heart.
I thought doctors were supposed to be following the hypocratic oath, which is primarily concerned with doing good and at the least, not harming the patient.
This does rather all smack of secular propaganda, for example, it's an article attacking religious people, but no viewpoints of Christians are offered, so there's no balance. It does however put forward 'Dying with dignity' agenda across, a pro-euthanasia organisation. It also uses the way in which the secular industry's pro-death media campaign has shifted public opinion over the decades (by publicizing a number of cases of people who want to die) to then put the pressure on Christian doctors.
The reality is that one's beliefs (or lack of them) actually do influence a person's professional conduct, because they influence one's ideas and goals. This is true for religious people and secular people. There's no neutral setting and defining oneself as being neutral doesn't change that.
One of the biggest issues with assessing climate change is how we link climate with weather. We know that climate change ought to produce a corresponding change in weather patterns, but we can't demonstrate that individual weather events are a product of climate change and in the minds of most people weather is what we see (natch), not climate.
So, although the Russian president attributed the recent heatwave to climate change, even New Scientist are far more cautious in doing so.
I think the way to resolve this is not to look for demonstrations of extreme events, but to relate all weather events to climate change. This is how:
Essentially, if climate change is being driven by global warming then what we're saying is that there's more energy present in the earth's system, because heat is a measure of energy and temperature is: ºC = J/(Kg * SpecificHeatCapacityOfAtmosphere).
Extreme weather events are powered by the extra energy in the system. So in a sense all we have to do to relate weather events to climate change is calculate (even roughly) the energy in any particular weather event and add it all up. We can then provide a total and a probability that this total thus far lies within the natural variance. We make these two figures part of normal weather forecasts.
This technique will work well for relatively local weather as well as global weather and as weather events add up to a convincing argument for climate change people will want to see the Climate Change Weather Index falling - they'll want to do what it takes to reduce flooding, heatstrokes, air-conditioning and blizzards.
Be prepared to be shocked, the Arctic is seriously likely to reach a record-breaking low extent this summer. I thought I'd write a short blog on why; and why I think the arctic is in its death throws.
This year's Arctic record low will be easy to understand. We're predicted to have a record-breaking ground and sea temperature; we've had record breaking increases in CO2 (3ppm in a year, during a recession I might add); the ice volume anomaly has already broken records by about 100% (compared with 2007). The ice-extent itself declined from a near 1979-2000 average in early April to below the record low for this time of the year (which occured in 2006) so if it tracks at the same rate it'll take until July at the earliest before 2007 catches up. However, it will almost certainly accelerate.
So far so bad, but actually it's much worse. Climate Scientists have been predicting imminent new record lows since 2007, because the 2008 and onwards Winter ice has been thin and therefore prone to melting - so the ice extent over the past few years has been deceptive. In fact summer 2008 and 2009 were almost as bad as 2007 and it should have been newsworthy even though it wasn't terribly surprising.
The real killer though isn't the thin ice, but that so much of the Arctic ice is no longer solid, but broken regions of ice held together by refreezing - rotten ice. There are numerous first hand reports confirming this; that is, detailed satellite picture analysis and fly overs. I think we should now consider the Arctic to really be basically a mass of loosely connected ice-floes primed to float south at the slightest provocation. This 'ice-mass' is moving quickly as some Arctic explorers recently found out.
That's the problem - the Arctic ice no longer even needs to melt as such, it can just drift into oblivion.
Did anyone ever tell you what happened to the great ancient library of Alexandria? It was like a major wonder of the world and held so many classic texts that its destruction precipitated the half-millenium long Dark Ages. I've spent roughly 22 years under the unhappy impression a mob of brutal, ignorant Christians burnt it to the ground for the crime of being heretical. It turns out someone beat us to it.
By centuries.
You can read the entire story here. The point of this blog isn't really to shift the blame though, but my story of this story - how I kept coming across this myth and how different & more complex a more accurate history is.
This is how it goes. In my middle childhood to mid-teens I embraced Atheism, consciously understanding what it was about and genuinely valuing how science and reason had helped humanity progress beyond religion (as I understood it then). Part of this meant I was really into popular science literature and this is where I came across the story via the otherwise brilliant book Connections by James Burke. 
I've summarised it above, but the basic idea is that the late 4th century Christians, being opposed to reason and knowledge burnt it down in a riotous act of wanton vandalism, because esp, the Librarian was female.
At the time that made sense to me and I guess I internalised its point, but by the time I was doing my PGCE in 1990/1991 I'd become a Christian and forgotten it all; so I was quite shaken when a rather angry Atheist on my course launched into a tirade on the concrete walkways of UEA, using this an a prime example of why he really couldn't stand Christianity and Christians.
OK I thought, well Christians are perfectly capable of messing up badly. So the (indirect) shame stuck with me for about 10 years until I found myself on the Anvil Workshop course in 2001. Here I got a slightly different version of the story where the riot was caused because the female Librarian had moved the Library to a pagan temple (which the Christians wouldn't visit).
And that's still pretty bad and yet on this course I learned a few things that didn't quite add up. Firstly, many of the early Christian leaders had had their theological training at Alexandria and so were well versed in Classic literature. Secondly, the Septuagint (an ancient Greek translation of the Old Testament often quoted from by the writers of the New Testament) was translated at Alexandria too. It doesn't make quite so much sense for these types of people to want to burn it all down.
I should have started questioning the story a few years later when I found out that the Christianisation of Ireland beginning with St. Patrick (a real person, who never drank Guiness ;-) ) resulted in generations of Irish Christians who made the acquisition, preservation (and reading) of ancient literature a high priority. These amazing people were responsible for maintaining the majority of all such texts Europe had access to until the influx of books from the middle east after the Crusades.
I kinda just assumed they'd got them from elsewhere. It turns out that the history is both simpler and more subtly complex. To put it simply: Christians didn't burn the Library, it's a myth. More subtly, they couldn't have, because Alexandria had multiple libraries.
It's actually a conflation of stories. Alexandria had been burned down in ancient times, but not by Christians - Julius Caesar had accidentally done it in 48BC during an attack on the port. What the Christians did burn in AD391 were the Pagan temples by decree of Emperor Theodosius and although one of the temples had been used as part of a library there's no record of whether there were any books left in it by then.
So, our predecessors appear to be innocent on this particular count - jolly good :-) ! So what happened to all its books during the Dark Ages? Come to think of it, what happened to the Dark Ages? - I've heard contemporary historians figure that's a myth too ;-)
Introduction
It should be obvious that God loves green, he made so much of it. So why is it that a significant number of Christians figure that trying to combat Climate Change is against his will?
This is an admittedly long blog exploring the question as it applies to the book of Revelation. Revelation is always a minefield when it comes to making pronouncements and like the many other people who have rather bizarre interpretations of the book I’m similarly unencumbered by a theology degree; though unlike many I’m also lacking in the milleniumism department.
Assuming that someone actually reads this blog who doesn’t know the Bible very well - Revelation is the last book in the Bible and rounds it off in spectacular style, with a grande conclusion where everything’s sorted, shiny and perpetually new. It’s the bit in between that causes all the controversy. Despite what many people think, Revelation isn’t a complete bloodbath: the first three chapters are mini letters to actual 1st century churches in Turkey and the last two are the happy finalé. Amongst the remaining 17 chapters only Chapters 6, half of 8, 9, half of 11 and 16 have an apparent bearing on the subject. And to cut to the chase, one verse stand out in terms of clarity with respect to God’s judgment:
“...The time has come to reward your servants, the prophets, and all your people, all who have reverence for you, great and small alike. The time has come to destroy those who destroy the earth.” Rev 11:18b.
We'll need to look at a number of facets of the Bible to show why this is the case.
Scripture Interprets Scripture
OK. What this means is that you shouldn’t jump to conclusions about verses in the Bible until you’ve grasped the whole thing. It’s a bit of a chicken and egg situation, but it’s helped because some parts of the Bible are clearer than others. For example, the Bible certainly does say “God Is Love” - ( John’s first letter, Chapter 4, verses 8 and 16). The Bible also says God gets angry (e.g. Romans 1:18). Since the Bible never says “God is anger” we conclude that God’s anger is secondary to his love, and moreover, it should be understood in the context of him being Love itself. The Bible itself confirms this when it says in several places:
“The Lord is slow to become angry and full of constant love” (e.g. Psalm 145 v 8).
So it’s not wise to apply isolated verses, for example even my quote of Rev 11:18b above, unless the verse somehow fits into the general flow of the Bible. So, if the Bible claims God thought it was a really good idea to create an amazing universe and earth then even verses that appear to talk about God wanting to destroy it should be read cautiously.
Revelation Is Highly Symbolic
Of all the books in the Bible, when it comes to the book of Revelation, we have to tread carefully, because it really is very symbolic. For example, in Chapter 1 v 16 Jesus is described as having a sharp two-edged sword coming out of his mouth. The writer (John) isn’t saying that Jesus is gagging because of a dangerous obstruction. He’s merely expressing the power of Jesus’ voice. Later Jesus’ voice is described like a powerful waterfall. It doesn’t mean John felt like he was being deafened by crashing hiss and couldn’t make out what was being said. Similarly, chapter 12 is about a woman, a son and a Dragon. It’s very weird with the dragon throwing 33% of all stars from heaven; trying to kill both her and her son and them being whisked away from danger. Actually, it’s a highly symbolic description of the Good News of Jesus. Relax, it’s happened.
But just because it’s symbolic, it doesn’t mean it’s just useless and confusing. It’s really like that to inspire and encourage - you might think your life is pretty humdrum, but from God’s perspective it’s all completely wild!
Not Everything That Happens In Revelation Is Done By God
Let’s look at a bit of Revelation that’s all about destruction. Chapter 6 is about four horsemen. What happens is that the ‘Lamb’ (a symbol for Jesus) opens five ‘scrolls’ and four horses and riders pop out and cause havoc: War, Taxes (maybe), Death and Martyrdom. The last scroll causes lots of devastation: the sun goes dark, the moon goes red; stars fall out the sky and the sky disappears.
So, assuming this is a prophecy about actual earthly devastation (which it might not be), then does it mean that Jesus is basically killing everyone and wreaking the planet?
No. And this is why: because the fifth scroll represents martyrs and Jesus certainly doesn’t kill his followers. My personal take on it is this: Jesus’ opening sealed scrolls (which in ancient times typically contained proclamations) means Jesus is simply revealing things; not doing the things that are being revealed.
Similarly, in Chapter 8, angles blow trumpets and all sorts of ‘earthly’ disasters happen. For example:
“Hail and fire, mixed with blood, came ouring down on the earth. A third of the earth was burnt up, a third of the trees, and every blade of green grass.”
Nasty. But again, none of this is attributed to God in chapters 8 and 9. Instead these things happen after an Angel (which means “God’s messenger”) blows a trumpet (“i.e. makes an announcement). The latter part of chapter 9 is about disasters that fall on people via human/horse-looking locusts headed by an ‘angel’ king called “The Destroyer.” I’d hazard a guess, but with a name like “Destroyer” this king and henchmen are probably not on God’s side. And in any case it’s centred on people, not the ecology (in fact in v4 the ‘locusts’ are told not to harm plants, only people).
God’s Anger Isn’t Like Ours
Even when God is angry, it doesn’t necessarily mean he’s acting directly - he may be acting through someone or something else. And it doesn’t mean that if he’s acting through people that these people are God’s faithful people.
For example, let’s look at Jeremiah 25. Jeremiah takes place during the reign of the last kings of Judah (the ‘better’ half of Israel) and covers the destruction of the country, primarily through the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar. In chapter 25 we read this (from v9):
“I am going to send for all the peoples from the north and for my servant, King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylonia. I am going to bring them to fight against Judah and its inhabitants and against all the neighbouring nations. I am going to destroy this nation and its neighbours and leave them in ruins for ever, a terrible and shocking sight.”
Here, Nebuchadnezzar is called God’s servant. But it’s clear from other Old Testament books that he isn’t one of God’s people - he acknowledges God sometimes, but basically he’s a ruthless pagan tyrant. He’s not one of the good guys, he doesn’t live an exemplary life, you wouldn’t want to meet him.
So, God sends Nebuchadnezzar to invade Judah, but the commands he gives to Judah aren’t to join or support the Babylonian army or act like them. Instead we read, a few chapters earlier:
“The Lord told me to go to the palace of the king of Judah, the descendant of David, and there tell the king, his officials and the people of Jerusalem to listen to what the Lord had said: ‘I the Lord, command you to do what is just and right. Protect the person who is being cheated from the one who is cheating him. Do not ill-treat or oppress foreigners, orphans or widows; and not kill innocent people in this holy place. If you really do as I have commanded, then David’s descendants will continue to be kings...’” Jer 22:1-4a
The only way to take this is that God’s punishment is to allow evil people and their forces to destroy Judah for their failure to be just and right. So, the people who bring the disasters are destructive (and wrong) and the solution is to act justly, righteously and lovingly.
In the modern context, surely it means this. If as Chapter 16 implies, God has an ultimate intention of bringing environmental disaster then those who bring it - i.e. those who cause environmental damage are themselves the bad guys, not God’s people, i.e. the equivalent of the ‘Babylonian Army’.
Furthermore, God’s commandment to us is to act righteously. At the time, it wouldn’t have been an excuse to say “Well God is sending the Babylonians to trash the place so I might as well grab all I can and dispose of anyone who gets in my way while it’s possible.” In a similar way it’s not acceptable to say “Well God is sending an environmental disaster, so I might as well buy a new SUV, invest in ExxonMobil and go on yearly holidays to Mexico.”
In this sense God is acting like a Gaia hypothesis. The Gaia hypothesis treats the earth as a living organism, which acts a reassert its survival if threatened. In this case we threaten the earth and so Gaia would bring disasters in order to eliminate the threat - the important thing being that the organism survives, even if we don’t.
I’m not sure that Chapter 16 of Revelation (the 7 bowls of God’s anger) applies in our near future, even if you read Revelation as actual predications of the future. There’s two main reasons: firstly, since we don’t know when Jesus returns we don’t know when any of this other stuff would happen either. Secondly, when it happens may be conditional on our behaviour, as in Jeremiah 22. For as long as we act justly, it won’t happen.
Conclusion
We have to be careful about how we interpret the book of Revelation - it’s symbolic for precisely that purpose. If we take a consistent look at what God is like and how we’re supposed to be then we find that what is there makes sense and holds together. God loves us yet detests people abusing his creation. If we push him far enough though he can relent - allowing disaster to fall, even allowing it through the actions of evil people and systems. In the end though, as it says in Rev 11:16b:
“...The time has come to reward your servants, the prophets, and all your people, all who have reverence for you, great and small alike. The time has come to destroy those who destroy the earth.”
God, right now, wants us to combat climate change. Over a period of 250 years we’ve transformed our society from largely agrarian to highly industrialised. 19th century Christians saw the implications of industrialisation and fought hard for better living and working conditions for its victims. It’s time for us to take this baton of God’s love and carry it into the 21st century.
In part 2 I’ll look at some of the practical consequences of what’s actually happening here and now. I’ll be looking at why compassion for South American orphans, Ghanians in shanti towns; Bangladeshis, Sub-Sarahan Africans, Assamese Indians means caring for the planet and why God’s healing is so much more than just a Band-aid on a near-fatal wound.
And they’ll be more pictures!
Watching BBC Four's Micro Men last night took me back a few decades to when I was a lowly footsoldier for Sinclair in the 1980s. There's no doubt, the company rivalry that took place in Cambridge was mirrored in every schoolyard in the UK. And the drama was good, the BBC got the feel of the whole, crazy techwar down to a tee; from the seat-of-the-pants entrepreneurialism to the acceptability of smoking; to interspersing real 80s footage with the drama; to the personal obsessions of the rivals.
But what of the footsoldiers? Being only 12 to 15 at the time I was oblivious to the internal politics but well aware of the day-to-day conflict. There's no doubt, the rich kids got the Beebs and the scruffnecks got the Speccies. Worse still, school patronage of Acorn disadvantaged the more ordinary kids because schools often wouldn't let them do computer science homework and projects on their Speccies whereas the richer kids could do their homework on their computers - moreover, teachers would take school BBC micros home over the weekend so their middle-class kids could get extra time for free. We had to pay for our disadvantage!
OK, so how important was all this? For us, it meant something because we were developers and not just users. Our machines were platforms for our future careers where we learnt primarily problem-solving skills that would equip us for life. Consider how these 'toys' were the springboard for the British video games industry to the point where 80s kids still dominate these companies because modern children almost never learn to program. And consider how many of the younger generation of software developers still say, "yeah well I learnt to program on an old Amstrad CPC that was tossed to me in my teens..."
The true beauty and power of these machines was their simplicity -
which is also what fuelled the tribalism so effectively. The Spectrum was a terrible computer, I went through 4 or 5 before I got one that worked! It had an awful keyboard; a slow BASIC language; a painful printer; chronic expansion potential and embarrassingly blocky colour. But at least it wasn't a BEEB with it's overpriced, snotty-nosed elitism; painful 6502 processor; weedy 32Kb RAM; boring motherboard and pebble-dashed casing. Yuk ;-)
If you really want to relive some of this you need more than an emulator - so why not check out Libby8dev : A spare-time tribute home micro built with A powerful Z80, RAM, Firmware and glue logic on Veroboard. Yep, I figured out how to do the entire glue logic with a single microcontroller!
For only £9.99 I'll send you an AVR + firmware IC and it'll be a doddle to build. Then you can join the team and share in the world of shoe-string development with its crazy highs and lows; missed deadlines and geektastic experience full of wires, hacked circuits and solder-singed eyebrows. You also get the weekly project memoranda in courier 10-pitch!
