A Sceptic's view of our socio-political discourse

As I read and watch and listen and think, I realise that the main reason there is so much error, so much unhelpful & confusing noise, is because so many people start espousing their views from Step 2. They take Step 1 for granted. This corner-cutting (from either arrogance or laziness) is an error because all it does is almost guarantee the reaction of the watcher/listener/reader. i.e. you aren't making anyone truly think; and without genuine thinking, no-one changes their mind; in which case, what's the point?

If the watcher/listener/reader agrees with your assumed Step1 view, they will nod in approval. If they disagree with your assumed Step 1 view, they will immediately start finding fault with you. Thus you achieve nothing valuable.

What do I mean by Step 1 & Step 2? I'll give a current example.

In the current UK virus enquiry, it's all about who said what to whom and when and whether we locked-down too late or not. This is Step 2, with Step 1 being deliberately (I suspect), ignored.

Re-visiting Step 1 would entail things like, looking at what was forecast to happen and what actually did, and genuinely (as opposed to backside covering or reputation defending) assessing the extent to which what we did or didn't do affected those initial forecasting models. After all, the models were wrong on a massive scale and we need to open-mindedly understand why so we can avoid the same errors next time.

Additionally, re-visiting Step 1 would mean assessing whether more harm was overall done by the virus itself or by the policies put in place to combat it, yet this isn't happening.

Therefore, the enquiry is pointless since those who agree with the establishment (politics and media) consensus about Step 1 will nod approvingly or concentrate on the drama of personality clashes, while those who think huge mistakes were made at Step 1 will dismiss it entirely. Therefore, no truly useful purpose will be served by the enquiry, yet at great expense. It is smoke & mirrors and no genuinely useful learning will come of it.

The same problem arises on all major societal issues of our time. Climate change; immigration; the NHS etc.

The establishment consensus (political and legacy media) has decided that Step 1 is a given and that's it's not worth, or worse, verging on an ethical crime, questioning the establishment's Step 1 view. They label it dis- or mis-information and use that as an excuse not to allow such questions to be asked or such views to be heard.

Therefore, all speeches, discussions, news articles etc start at Step 2, leaving those with perfectly legitimate, reasonable and logical questions about Step 1 feeling frustrated and disaffected.

'So what?', the happy to assume Step 1ers may ask.
Well Brexit tells you the answer to, ‘so what?’

The establishment took Step 1 as obvious; unquestionable except for a small minority of deplorables and evil-doers. i.e. to them, the benefits of being part of the EU were clearly greater than any dis-benefits. As such, they took the result for granted and ran a sneering, arrogant, dismissive, half-hearted campaign. The same was largely true when Trump was elected in the States. Step 1 was taken as a given by the majority of the establishment and it came back to bite them.

So, to me, it's vital that we have continuous conversations about Step 1 as well as discussing possible actions in Step 2. By doing so, changing times, changes in society, changes in economic circumstances, changes in technological capabilities etc can continue to feed in to the discussion. We can be dynamic and swift-footed rather than stayed and plodding, usually 5 or often many more years out of date in our thinking and policies.

But will it happen?
Well, it is for the moment on certain social media platforms but a) you have to make the effort to find and engage with them; and b) Governments all over the world are bringing-in legislation effectively given themselves the ability to shut-down information that questions the establishment view.

The only hope we have is a mainstream media which questions everything and everyone with power and influence in as objective a fashion as possible, irrespective of their personal views.
Sadly, the mainstream media is largely dominated by a narrow view of social morality and only robustly questions people or ideas they don’t agree with. This is becoming more and more true in policing as well.

This is the establishment blob and it is no good for any society as it gradually strangles the freedoms of its supposedly free people.
We are moving inexorably toward a soft-dictatorship imposing elitist views of how society should work. And, as ever when elites impose their self-serving esoteric views, it’s the poorest who suffer most.

Middle-class complicity is how they will get away with it.

Not that the middle-classes will be immune from the debilitating effects of the elite’s imposed predilections; rather, by the time they realise that it’s not only the poor that are adversely affected, it’ll be too late to do anything about it. The stranglehold will be complete.
We will have returned, albeit in modern guise, to a feudal system.
Instead of absolute monarchs or Big-brother dictators, we will have a synergy (a new fascism) between undemocratic, and thus unaccountable, global quangos (think the UN and the WHO) and large global corporations. It will be a dictatorship not of a single individual, but of a vastly wealthy global elite served by their brainwashed useful-idiot apparatchik wannabes.

Pity.
We almost had a democratic system that worked tolerably well.
But in the end, are we really surprised that the intellectual and financial elites were only prepared to play the game of democracy while they got the answers they wanted?

Thoughts after reading an angry social media post

This is a post seen on a social media page for my home town.

‘If there’s one thing that boils my blood it’s people correcting someone on their spelling or punctuation. You seriously need to get off your high horse and think before you speak. They may be dyslexic, have mental health issues or learning difficulties, brain injuries etc. There are so many reasons why someone may struggle. Seriously get a grip. There’s far worse things to worry about’.

Fortunately, I don’t comment on spelling/punctuation in social media posts as I make a few rushed errors in that regard myself. Nevertheless, the post was telling, and thinking both philosophically and psychologically has brought these thoughts/comments/musings to mind:

1. If something as trivial as noting spelling errors makes your ‘blood boil’, you have a very low tolerance level and must be a very angry person most of the time; I suspect exaggeration;

2. The post is self-referential in that the poster is getting on their high horse about something when there are far more important things to worry about; i.e. a total lack of self-awareness that they’re exhibiting precisely the behaviour they’re criticising; this is an error often seen in emotional outbursts;

3. Emotional outbursts along these lines often have a subtext, something like, ‘I know you’re right but you’ve hurt my feelings, so I’ll make an aggressively defensive response which will make me feel better; it’s knee-jerk lashing-out;

4. Self-righteous emotional posts are worrying; the worst behaviours are exhibited by the self-righteous, and emotionally charged self-righteousness is a real recipe for disaster;

5. We can’t go through life only saying anything critical when there is no possibility of an exception or where someone can’t help it. We deal in generalisations because, with 5 billion people on the planet, to do otherwise would mean we could never criticise anything or anyone; and whatever some may say, that would NOT be a positive move;

6. How are standards maintained, ideas challenged, new ideas formed if we decide that only mean & nasty people would ever criticise anyone else? It’s so childishly preposterous, it’s laughable; and of course, the poster feels quite happy to criticise others whenever it suits them; so it’s the old ‘it’s ok for me, not for thee’ hypocrisy;

7. Of course, what people who post in this way mean is, ‘don’t criticise me or people who agree with me, or people who I have decided don’t deserve it; however, anyone not in these categories are legitimate targets – criticise them as much as you like’; narcissism;

8. This is the level of cognitive anlysis and emotional control displayed by so many on social media. My worry is that if they behave like this on social media, do we really think it’s likely that they can behave any differently in the real world? Or if they can, will the next generation be able to who know nothing else but communication via social media?

9. My answer in this situation is two-fold: 1. When a social media post makes you angry, never type the response until you’ve calmed down and given proper thought to the matter; and 2. either ignore posts you find provocative OR find a way of disagreeing using a calm non-aggressive form of words.

Is it always right to help others?

No, not always. Most of the time, of course, but not ALWAYS.
Let me address some of the times where it is NOT right.

To be clear, in what follows, I’m not talking about the trivial &/or the occasional situation here, but the important &/or the repeated.
Neither am I talking about when dealing with very young children or the physically or mentally incapable adult.
Neither, of course, am I talking about helping people to do something that you clearly know or believe to be wrong.

So, caveats over, I propose the following:

Do not do for someone else anything they are capable of doing for themselves.
If you do, it’s a form of theft, since you are taking away their agency and imposing your own.

Don’t make a dependant out of someone else.
Don’t decrease their possibility in life just to exercise your own or to make yourself feel good.
Don’t remove their purpose, their agency, their ability & responsibility to act in a meaningful way in life.

Be an enabler to their agency, their blossoming, their Being, not an inhibitor.

Teaching &/or doing things for someone are not exactly the same as enabling.
Enabling is about giving them the tools and encouragement to learn how to or actually do things for themselves.

This is so hard, particularly with your children or frail elderly folk.
You care so much; but it’s not about fulfilling your desire to care or to be a knight in shining armour, it’s about what’s best for them.

Don’t pretend to yourself that you are a caring person unless you always centre the other person’s best outcome, not your own, and consider more than merely the immediate-term.

The child must learn resilience, self-sufficiency and to cope with failure at some point.

The frail old person must still feel useful; feel capable at some basic level; still have a reason to be here. Don’t take that away unless there’s absolutely no alternative.

Say things like,
‘you can do that for yourself. Have a try and then I’ll help if necessary.’
OR
‘see if you can work out what to do. Have a go. Ask questions. Don’t worry about getting it wrong. Making mistakes is how we learn. I’ll be here to answer questions, to guide and help you, but only when you’ve tried yourself.’

In the end of course, it’s about judgement of when to help and when not.  
Good judgement comes of wisdom.

So just make sure that you’re making that judgement having carefully considered what’s best for them, and realising that what's easiest for them is not necessarily what’s best for them, and at the same time, what's easiest or most advantageous for you, is also not necessarily what’s best for them.

Wisdom: What is it?

Wisdom isn’t something you’re born with.
High intelligence, yes, but it is foolish to equate intelligence with Wisdom.
Indeed, high intelligence can be a hindrance since you may come to believe that your above average intelligence means what you think can’t be wrong; or worse, that those who disagree with you only do so out of stupidity.
Such arrogance leads to condescension, then self-righteousness, then authoritarianism as you impose your ‘better’ way.

Wisdom requires constant striving toward a goal never completely attainable.
You have to think; really think; which means challenge yourself, not simply seeing how you can justify continuing to believe what you already do.
You have to be humble enough to be open-minded, which means you have to question, always, and be prepared to accept answers you don’t like; accept that maybe you’ve been wrong.

Wisdom is not simply the search for Truth, because Truth can have many forms and is often dependent on the perspective of the seeker. Thus, many see Truth but narrowly; a mere partial glimpse they mistake for the whole.
Wisdom is about humility, openness, and fair, as opposed to tribal, judgement. Wisdom requires the acknowledgement, difficult though it makes things, that there is rarely ‘right’ solely on one side, only ‘wrong’ on the other; that humans are complex and the mix of them into larger societies brings more complexity still; that complex problems will require complex solutions, not sledgehammer silver-bullet simplistic ones; that sometimes your choice is about finding the least-worst option; that a perfect option with happy outcomes for all is often simply not available, however unfair or frustrating that seems and whatever our utopian desires; that short-term expediency must be compared to longer-term considerations and hard choices made.

Above all, wisdom is glimpsed, afar-off, by those willing to put their preconceptions to one side and earnestly seek their own improvement, rather than deciding they already ‘know’ and so have the right to do nothing but point out errors in others and enforce their capitulation to your will upon them.

To many, Wisdom is whatever they say it is, or an old wives’ tale, or an abstract concept that can be ignored as it gets in the way of ‘real’ life and ‘real’ progress.
But as with yin & yang, along with Truth, Wisdom combines to be that soft glow of inner peace visible over the horizon.

There are two paths offered that reach across the difficulties and trials of life to reach and relax into that glow. One path is paved with solid yet slippery stones secured by attention, humility and contentment. The other path is paved falsely, with a surface-only perfection there to lure and deceive you made of self-righteousness, hubris, anger, resentment and hatred.
Should you follow the first path, wisdom is the light and warmth on your face that grows with each step; the soft warm breeze carrying the most delightful scent. Take the other path and on your back the warmth cools and the scent fades with every inward looking self-regarding step.
And here we have the rub; that most smarting cut.
The false path can, to the undiscerning superficial glance, seem to be true and straight and smooth. It appears easy and thus the better choice. It snares the inattentive, the easily pleased and the shallow.
The better path may be up hill, with cracks and tussocks and knee-high weeds to negotiate. 

Why would you choose such a path?

Why choose the road less travelled?

Perhaps to seek the purpose and meaning of adventure?

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Some postscript thoughts from Marcus Aurelius, Roman Emperor 161 – 190 AD, and Stoic philosopher

“Do not allow the actions of others to disturb your inner peace, for their ignorance does not define your worth or happiness”

“Humility is the foundation of all virtues, for it allows us to approach every situation with an open mind and a willingness to learn from others”

Lies & Hypocrisy: How adherence to political ideology destroys Truth

Truth requires that we don't lie.

So, don't say things you don't mean; don't go along with things you don't agree with; don’t give your opinion as though it’s fact when your only source is the TV or newspaper; don’t speak categorically about important issues unless you’ve made proper effort to look at the issue from multiple perspectives; and even then, do so cautiously and with humility.

Now imagine if everyone operated like this all the time, with no exceptions.

Of course, there are better ways of telling the truth; choice of language so as not to deliberately cause offence for example, but if EVERYONE behaved this way and society (including the law) expected it, I don't see what the downsides would be.
Many of the reasons we lie would dissolve over time if we always told the truth. 

Having said that preamble, let me give a current example for the main argument I want to put forward here.
Please note that it’s not about this specific topic, I could have picked a number of others, rather, this topic illustrates my wider point.

In the news at the moment (is it really news or tittle-tattle?) is a row about sexist remarks Lawrence Fox made. Simultaneously, we have allegations from many years ago about sexual harassment/abuse by Russell Brand.
There are regular examples of this sort of ‘news’ every year on various different topics but they have one thing in common; the premise of the discussion is set-up to deceive, either in whole or in part.

So let’s look at misogyny and then ask the correct questions.

The usual question is, why are so many men misogynists or, why don’t men speak out against misogyny?
But these are the wrong questions because they are attempting to frame the discussion in a way that makes assumptions that they don’t want to discuss; because to discuss their assumptions might lead to questioning them, and that might uncover an agenda less high-minded than they would claim.

The better questions are: What is misogyny; not in a dictionary definitional way, but in real life? Who decides where the line on what it’s acceptable for a man to say about women is to be drawn? Would the line be in the same place in all situations? Where women display the same behaviour, (i.e. misandry), is the line the same, if so why, if not, why not?
These sort of nitty-gritty truth-seeking questions acknowledge complexity (as opposed to pretending both the problem and solution are simple & obvious), introduce honesty, and then a consensus can be negotiated without resorting to emotional hyperbole, or have pre-formed opinions taking over and scuppering the discussion.

Now, I know why these questions aren’t asked in the mainstream media; too long-winded; too intellectually difficult; would make a hard & fast conclusion almost impossible; wouldn’t get viewers/sell newspapers.
All true, but all very bad reasons for choosing a simplistic narrative and pushing it as though it’s obviously and undeniably true.
Very bad for societal cohesiveness and harmony.

Let’s take another example. A few months ago, a prominent women’s rights campaigner, Kelly-Jay Keen, went to hold a rally and give a talk in New Zealand. She was physically attacked by biological males claiming to be women (trans-activists) and the police did, in effect, nothing to prevent it. Blatant misogyny and of a far more dangerous type than thoughtless words. Yet the authorities took the side of the aggressors and those who condemn Laurence Fox & Russell Brand were mostly silent; indeed many made excuses for the aggressive activists.

So why are some forms of misogyny not acceptable yet some others apparently are, even when they seem worse than the forms loudly condemned?

The answer is simple; it’s about political ideology, not misogyny.
Misogyny is just a vehicle used to push the wider ideology.

Similarly, it’s about political ideology not racism; political ideology not climate change; political ideology not Brexit; political ideology not pandemic responses; political ideology, not whether a person born as one sex can change to the other.
Again, these are vehicles used to disguise societal changes being made or called for on ideological grounds. Too often, they are vehicles we use to show which tribe we are closed-mindedly in allegiance with.

You often hear activists in these areas complaining about the general public not getting behind their cause sufficiently, usually accompanied by stereotyped name-calling (stupid, gammon, Karen, fascist etc).

Well, perhaps the general public simply see the activists exaggerating their case and ignoring competing facts.
Exaggerating the problem and exaggerating the benefits from their simplistic silver bullet ideological solutions.
It’s not always the ones frothing at the mouth and making the most noise who get it right.

What evidence have I for the assertion that ideology, not really the actual topic being discussed, is behind a lot of what we hear & read?
For political ideologues, who are the majority of those inhabiting our mainstream media, if someone in their tribe behaves badly, they make excuses for it, play the significance down or keep totally silent.
Only when someone is deemed an ideological opponent do they call out the very same bad behaviour, and often in hyperbolic terms.
What more evidence do you need of ideological capture than people’s tribal hypocritical behaviour?

Similarly, you'll hear people protest that they are NOT political ideologues.
Well, there's a simple test which holds true for the vast majority.
Take any one of the examples I've given: misogyny; climate catastrophe; racism; Brexit; changing sex, and ask their view.
You can then, pretty accurately, predict their view on all the others.
Yet they're NOT a political ideologue?
We lie hypocritically to ourselves All the time; whenever it suits; because it's easier than wrestling with our conscience; cognitive dissonance is such a bore isn't it?

This is why honesty, truth, is so vital, and its loss so catastrophic.
With so many seemingly happy to go through life exhibiting hypocritical double standards whenever it suits their socio-political preferences to do so, how can we expect to have a fair and cohesive society?

How has it come to pass that, in order to be hailed as a decent moral person, we are told that the speaking, or at least nodding along with, lies, half-truths and blatant exaggerations is not only acceptable but obligatory?

What are we doing when we put more emphasis on confirming our existing ideological biases, than traits and behaviours such as honesty, truth, fair play, good-faith discussions, reasonable compromise and other far more collegiate and genuinely caring attitudes?
Selfishness and foolishness is given prominence over openness and wisdom.

And unfortunately, many people are so busy leading their lives, that they simply accept this sort of media dishonesty and indeed, join in with that type of tribal thinking.
It’s easier to simply believe what you read in newspapers and hear on TV, and then parrot unnuanced soundbites and slogans of the politicians or celebrities or TV News or newspaper we like, than to think about the issue for ourselves, listen to alternative views, discuss it openly, and come to a reasoned and reasonable conclusion.

Many have this uneasy feeling about our country at the moment.
This feeling stems from the dissonance between what we see happening and what we’re told is happening.
Between what common sense seems to tell us and what we’re told we should think.

Until we stop allowing mainstream media, politicians, large corporations and celebrities to decide for us what we should think on vital societal topics, we will continue to have discord and a feeling that things are rotten in the state of Denmark (or in this case, Britain).
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PS I was going to call this piece, ‘It’s political ideology, stupid!’ but decided to try and persuade you to come to that conclusion for yourself with me.
How did I do?

Behaviour: Nice? Kind? Good? or Appropriate?

You see ‘be nice’, ‘be kind’ ‘just do good’ posts on social media all the time.
What is happening there?
Is it a soundbite which sounds and feels good to the poster (and they think will make others like them more), or are they superficial  enough to actually believe it?
The motivations behind our behaviours are nuanced (whether some realise it or not).
Just saying ‘be nice’, ‘be kind’, ‘do good’, doesn’t cut it as a serious outlook on life.

‘Oh, but you know what is meant’, will be the complaint.
Well, no I don’t, certainly not always, and my concern is that the people saying it don’t really know what they mean, other than superficially, either.
Who gets to decide what counts as nice, kind or good behaviour in any situation?
If you, why? If them, why?
Surface level thinking without the nuance either of degree or accounting for exceptions, leaves you open to awkward questioning that can cause you to contradict yourself or even appear hypocritical.

So this type of warm & fuzzy yet pointless exhortation is a real curse of social media and time-handicapped TV slots; they make the complex sound easy which can lead to doing or saying what’s expedient (cowardice), not what’s right (courage/truth/honesty), which is a very dangerous and therefore foolish thing.

Surely a more accurate exhortation would be for us all to act appropriately in every situation, which of course, requires wisdom, which I define as good judgement.
Good judgement in turn requires the ability to see and then weigh-up both the immediate and future effects of your behaviour, both on the individual/group on the receiving end and, importantly, upon yourself.
[Tip: sometimes you have to make a choice between two less than ideal outcomes.]

We can all see that appropriate behaviour is much more socially mature than any exhortation of the ‘be nice’, ‘be kind’, ‘be good’ type, because it allows much more freedom of choice over how you judge it best to behave in any given circumstance.

Who decides what is appropriate behaviour? You or them?
It has to be YOU.
Otherwise, you can be forced into doing or saying things that you believe to be false or at least, unwise purely to gain the other’s approval.
Knowingly doing or saying things you don’t believe or don’t believe are the best course of action is the sort of cowardice that eats away at your soul, piece by piece.
It's shaming; and if we get used to acting shamefully, we will eventually find that, in tricky situations, we can’t act any other way.
We become very good at justifying our shameful behaviour because it’s easier than looking ourselves in the mirror and deciding to find the courage necessary to change from expedient behaviour to appropriate (honest) behaviour.

I accept of course that in most situations, we will all agree on what is the appropriate behaviour and often, even very often, this will coincide with what most would class as nice, kind, good.
Equally, we should all be socially well-adjusted enough to know how to put a differing or unpopular view across so as not to cause immediate antagonism. But here’s the rub:

It's not in the vast majority of ordinary daily life scenarios that properly understanding what is appropriate or wise behaviour matters.
It’s in the minority of difficult, awkward, potentially embarrassing or dangerous situations that appropriateness or wise judgement, as opposed to expediency, is so important.

If your priority at all times is not to upset anyone; not to contradict them; to say or give them what they want, whatever they want, you’re not exercising wise judgement, merely following a somewhat cowardly formula of obsequiousness, harmlessness and servility.
Is it really so important that, regardless of circumstance, regardless of truth and honesty, our main driver should be simply not to risk someone thinking or saying that we’re not a nice person? Really?
It shouldn’t be.
That’s weakness, both of intellect and character.

Now the other person may well fully accept that weak behaviour; may even praise and thank you; shower you with gratitude; tell you how wise you are; tell you what a nice, kind and good person you are.
But that doesn’t mean you’ve behaved in the most appropriate way; the wisest way; the way that’s in their or your best interests.

By the way, I am by no means claiming never to fall into the same trap. But I’m hoping that awareness and attention to it at least allows me the hope of improvement; an improvement which the shallow over-simplicity and cowardice of complicity and expediency never can.

We are all alone - accept and embrace it constructively

We are all alone, born alone, die alone, and—in spite of True Romance stories—we shall all someday look back on our lives and see that, in spite of our company, we were alone the whole way.
I do not say lonely—at least, not all the time—but essentially, and finally, alone.
This is what makes your self-respect so important, and I don't see how you can respect yourself if you must look in the hearts and minds of others for your happiness.

Hunter S. Thompson

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My initial reaction is that, while superficially it may seem a bleak and anti-social message, ultimately, he's right.

Only I am ME.

And, while relationships with others are both necessary and enriching in many ways, the relationship with yourself is the one that truly decides the level of your inner contentedness*.

Requiring the approval of others before you can approve of yourself is emotional and psychological outsourcing.
Psychological cowardice even; and cowardice is shaming; and shame devours a little of our soul each time, unless we put it right.

Speak with others, work with others, play with others, discuss with others, learn from others.
But you must come to terms with yourself for yourself, and within yourself, in order to gain the true benefits of these external interactions.

This doesn’t mean that you don’t listen, learn and evaluate while interacting with others.
Rather, that allowing the actions, words and opinions of others to be the main arbiter of how you view yourself, is ultimately unhealthy.

Only I am ME is an ultimate truth.

Embrace it to the full.

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* I try to shy away from using the word ‘happiness’.
It can mean different things to different people in differing situations, and not all are good. Some people are ‘happy’, when something bad happens to someone else, for example.
So I prefer the concept of contentment, as it speaks to me of a calm inner peace not endangered by overly emotional bias.

Parents must be the key moral authority for their children, not those who work for the State

Since Marx, there has been no successful dictatorship based upon a political ideology that hasn’t removed the role of the parent as the arbiter and teacher of morality to their children and replaced it with the ideology of the State or Leader.

Just remember that when you hear people say that parents should not be told of certain things their children say to, for example, teachers and doctors.
The exclusion of the parents; the telling of children that their parents are NOT the key authority in their lives is exactly what Stalin, Mao, Hitler, Pol-Pot, Kim Il-Sung, Castro etc did.

Only in clear cases of parental abuse should the State authorities override the wishes and views of the parents.
And simply having different socio-political opinions to the currently prevailing Authority, is NOT abuse.

The true (original) meanings of Faith, Sin & Prophecy

Researching the earliest Christian thinking, which is highly neo-Platonic, I’ve been reading and listening to a variety of sources.

I recently came across a discussion about the way in which certain words, usually used in a religious context, have been altered in meaning in relatively recent times.
These alterations in meaning may account for some of the misunderstandings and mis-readings both within Christianity, between Christians and atheists, and between Christians and other religious thinking generally.

So I wanted to share Dr John Vervaeke’s brief description of three words used in our language that didn’t originally mean what we use them to mean now.

Faith didn’t used to mean ‘believing in things for which there is no scientific evidence’. That’s a historically recent idea.
Faith was your sense of Da’ath, the sense that you’re on course, on the right path, the right Way, involved and evolving with things as life progresses.
Knowing what to do at life’s turning points (kairos); how and when you need to change something in your life; who you need to change into.
We think this way still — how it’s going, is this relationship on course, am I progressing, is this the kind of person I want to be, is it going well, etc. That’s Da’ath.

Sin in the original meaning is the sense that you’re off course, off the path not the modern sense of simply doing something immoral.
If I become self-deluded or closed-minded, I can become off-course, step off the path and so lose or damage my faith, lose that sense of Da’ath without realizing it; become sinful.

Prophecy isn’t about telling you what’s going to happen, but rather a call to awakening. The job of the prophet is to wake you up right now to how you are off course (sinful). A prophet is not a fortune teller; a closer analogy might be a mentor or trusted friend who wakes you up to something you needed to see and be made aware of. So you can move away from sin; to get back on the path; to return to faith in your life.

Make of that what you will!

Official authority: not fit for purpose

We have reached a point where ‘authority’, in the guise of carefully chosen ’experts’, politicians and media, have been found to be saying untrue things and/or getting things badly wrong so often, and on vitally important matters, that we no longer know who or what to believe.

Or rather, we can justify believing what ‘authority’ tells us when it suits us, and not believing what ’authority’ tells us when it suits us, because, let’s face it, we’ll be right half the time whether by luck or judgement.

Which means we are in a VERY bad place societally.

And it’s entirely the fault of the stupid games played by politicians, large corporations, unelected global organisations, academia and the media, who collectively make up the ‘authority’ I speak of.

Money, ambition and political ideology are put ahead of honesty, truth & decency.
Wisdom is a known but abstract concept; foolishness and hubris the norm.

But not all the academic experts/media/politicians etc can be like this, surely?

No, but their worlds are very opaque and cliquey; full of poor behavioural incentives.

In academia, certainly in science, money rules, so the provider of the finance influences the research to be undertaken and also, tacitly, what the expected answer is.
You can get blackballed very easily, even if you have tenure; made persona non-grata, making your life unpleasant, and even moving away and getting a job in a different University, very difficult; not for anything you do academically, but for having the wrong political opinions or questioning the prevailing cultural narrative.
This all incentivises not rocking the boat and capitulation to the bully, not honesty & integrity.

The media owners recruit people who think as they do, and it’s made clear what the editorial line is they are to take.

Large corporations are, almost literally, a law unto themselves. Vast amounts of money at stake will have that effect, especially when they and governments are closely linked.

Global organisations are run by ‘appointed’ former (and often failed) politicians, accountable to…who, exactly? It’s jobs for the boys, or rather, jobs for those with the correct ideological opinions, that can be trusted to say what they’re told to, in return for huge salaries.

Politicians? Well, if you wholly trust anyone who volunteers themselves to have power over others, you really are naïve. Some are well-meaning but the system is tribal, hence divisive and corrupting, making independence of thought and constant integrity very difficult to maintain.

None of the people who make up our elite institutions, either locally or globally, want, or have the courage, to take responsibility for errors and failures.
Protecting their personal positions, agendas and the institutions in which they sit, are far more important to them than honest civic duty, professional integrity or truth.

The ends justify the means.

And since they’ve convinced themselves that their view of societal utopia is not just right but righteous (like a religion), they have no compunction in using disgraceful methods (e.g. propaganda) to achieve those ends.

Ask yourself why it’s always those at the bottom of society, never those proposing and making the massive societal changes, who always come off worse from these panics and crises that elicit the grandiose, even extreme, plans and schemes to save us all from supposed catastrophe?

And the answer to all our problems that we are being gradually driven toward is, supposedly, global government.
Global government will prevent the next pandemic; prevent climate change; stop wars; give stable economies; remove famine etc, etc.

No it won’t!
And the level of naivety required to think it will, is akin to a brainwashed cult member.
Wishful thinking doesn’t make things so.

Of course, to achieve this cloud cuckoo land utopian vision (which is essentially global communism), it’s obvious that democracy has to be moved as far away as possible from the positions of power.
The Brexit vote and Trump election demonstrated that very clearly,apparently

How much do you think your personal vote matters now, when you are one of several tens of thousands in your local parliamentary constituency?
How much less would it count if you were just one vote out of billions?
On that scale, how would any individual be able to weigh-up the merits of candidates and Parties from all around the world?
How would the honesty of and fair play in any global vote be capable of being determined and verified?

The further from the levers of power the individual voter is, the easier they are to manipulate and/or simply ignore.
No, if you think nation-state politics is corrupt, you ain’t seen global politics!

So, meaningful democracy must be removed if our global betters are to be allowed to get on with making the world the perfect place, without interference from the ignorant plebs and deplorables.

Why is this obvious issue (to anyone awake) not a massive societal debate?
Because the people causing the problems and promoting the anti-democratic solutions are happy for us to be asleep; they are precisely those who control what is and isn’t discussed on a societal level and who are of course, the last ones who want these matters publicly discussed!

Look at the difficulties Sadiq Khan is having with his car tax pretending to be for environmental reasons, when it’s obvious that it’s a combination of a money grab (via tax or fines) and globalist environmental crisis ideology gone mad.
The philosopher Sebastian Morello, speaking of the woes in the Roman Catholic Church at the moment, recently wrote this of the Pope - but it applies equally to what Khan does in London:

"This, of course, is exactly what belongs to the psychology of an abusive man: he oscillates from begging to be loved and listened to [my cause is righteous, honest!], to throwing his fists around. A central reason why abusive people behave in this way is because they have lost authority. They can no longer be believed or trusted, and so they resort to begging, sentimental gestures, and then violence."

The answer, authority thinks, is to bring about a system in which people are told their views count but in which, in reality, they don’t [look at the, effectively, zero action on illegal immigration for example].
Constant distraction via manufactured and exaggerated crises, combined with divisive faux moral causes, justifying worsening people’s standards of living and watering-down personal freedoms is the way it’s being done.

‘We’re your saviours in this chaotic world, and your wise moral guides; aren’t you lucky we're here? Do what you’re told’.

I would recommend reading Toby Ord’s book, The Precipice, on existential risk. We are very near the precipice now, I suggest.

Also, watch this discussion between Eric Weinstein and Chris Williamson which covers a lot of the topics (and many more) in this blog. Eric Weinstein - Why Can No One Agree On The Truth Anymore? (4K) | Modern Wisdom 676 - YouTube

I’ll leave you with a poem by Charles Bukowski from The Last Night of the Earth Poems

people are worn away with
striving,
they hide in common habits.

their concerns are herd 
concerns.

few have the ability to stare
at an old shoe for
ten minutes
or to think of odd things
like who invented the
doorknob?

they become unalive
because they are unable to

pause

undo themselves

unkink

unsee

unlearn

roll clear.

listen to their untrue
laughter, then
walk away. 

 

Men directly competing against women in strength sports is unfair

This post is partly my own but also uses research by biologist, Zach Elliott. 

There are still some sports organisations who don’t, or pretend not to, understand the inherent physical advantages post-puberty males have over post-puberty females.

I just don’t understand how that can be.

Now this may be because I am thinking about this from a simple basis of facts and the logical conclusions that follow, as opposed to emotionally or politically.

Do they genuinely not understand the science of the male performance advantage?
The strength difference between male and female bodies is vast.
[I’ve foot-noted the relevant research.]

On average, males have:

- 57% more grip strength [1]

- 65% more leg strength [2]

- 90% more total upper body strength [3]

- 162% more punch power [4]

To put these numbers in perspective, on average, males are only 7% taller than females, yet on the population level we easily see the considerable height differences between them.[5]

The percentage strength differences are immense not marginal.
How else would very mediocre male athletes who never won anything against the best men be able to compete on equal terms or even beat the best biological women in the world? 

Even at the elite athlete level, the difference in world records make it clear.
Whether short distances, 100m; medium, 400m; or really long, 10000m, the difference is around 10%.

In the 100m at the recent World Championships, not only would the winner of the Women's race not made the final in the Men's, she wouldn't even have made the semi-finals!

The musculoskeletal differences between equally trained males and females are so large that there is no way males can compete fairly with females.

And no, taking drugs to lower testosterone does NOT in any meaningful way negate the puberty-given strength advantage of males over females [6]

The answer to me is that, since we seem to have decided to affirm rather than treat this mental illness, we do away with the MEN category and replace it with an OPEN category. This way, anyone who is or identifies as whatever they like, can enter the OPEN category but only biological adult human females can enter the Women or Female category.

Guess how many women or trans women will be winnig in the OPEN category?
And of course we know why if we take the identity politics out of it.
Why some institutions can't, won't or are afraid do this is the real question.

For more detail see:

[1] Bohannon, R., et al. (2019). Handgrip Strength: A Comparison of Values Obtained from the NHANES and NIH Toolbox Studies. American Journal of Occupational Therapy, 73(2).

[2] Lassek, W. D. and Gaulin, S. J. (2009). Costs and benefits of fat-free muscle mass in men: relationship to mating success, dietary requirements, and native immunity. Evolution of Human Behavior, 30, 322-328.

[3] Morris, J., et al. (2020). Sexual dimorphism in human arm power and force: implications for sexual selection on fighting ability. Journal of Experimental Biology, 223(2).

[4] Ibid.

[5] Roser, M., et al. (2019). Human height. Our World in Data.

[6] Emma N Hilton and Tommy R Lundberg (2021) Transgender Women in the Female Category of Sport: Perspectives on Testosterone Suppression and Performance Advantage

Rights AND Responsibilities not OR Responsibilities

Looking back at a discussion from 4 years ago, here are my current thoughts on Jordan Peterson’s view of how we speak to young people about rights and responsibilities, with thanks to Giles Davis and Michael Snow for their contributions to the original discussion which are incorporated here.

This is my understanding of Peterson’s view:

‘Young people are being fooled about ‘Rights’.

‘It’s better for young people to focus on their responsibilities rather than their rights. Rights, though important, are inherently selfish; they are about me. Responsibilities are selfless; what I must do for others or wider society.

Young people have been cared for all their lives thus far. As adults they need to give back to the world. But it’s not merely an issue of obligation. All people, including youngsters, need meaning in their lives. Meaning is to be found in responsibility, what can I give, not rights, what do I get.

People find meaning in the responsibilities within their careers, their family, their friends, charitable work they do for others, the education they pursue and the voluntary obligations they undertake within society.

It’s not the rights that are granted to you so that you can be awarded your rewards and privileges that will make your time-limited life on Earth worthwhile. It is instead the sacrifices you make to the highest good that you can conceptualize and strive to attain. The responsibility you take for yourself and within society.

Beware the pedlars of more and more ‘rights’. They wish to turn you into someone who is simultaneously privileged and victimized.
Whining; narcissistic; noisy; demanding; chronically resentful and unhappy; distracted from seeing the bigger picture; everything in dualistic conflict.
Importantly, always looking to authority to give you something; to make your life better; infantilising you.

Instead, take on responsibility; shoulder them willingly; make yourself useful to others; stop telling others how evil they are and how righteous you are; find the heaviest burden you can bear and bear it stoically, forthrightly, admirably and without complaint.

___________________________________________________ 

To me it's about balance, as with most things. It's good that young people are aware of their rights (i.e. not to be abused), but they also need to be aware of their responsibilities. One without the other potentially leads to problems. Both/And not Either/Or. Yin & Yang must be in balance.

But we aren't very good at getting balance on social change in the UK. We see something that we think needs changing and instead of aiming for balance, so often the pendulum moves to the opposite extreme, which is just as bad, (an extreme), from the situation before change was initiated.

It's because activists & campaigners are very good at calling for and making the case for change at a political/societal level but don't think through to the end game.
Zealots seldom do.
In a sense, they get caught up in the frenzy of war but don't have a clear idea what the peace should look like or how to bring it about in a fair way
They seem happy with the victor simply becoming a tyrant, since they assume they will win. It’s the mindset of Hitler and Stalin and Mao etc.
They also give no thought to the unintended consequences of their campaigns on wider society.
Total victory is the only goal; the aftermath will have to take care of itself.

But as I’ve said above, under the ideas of non-dual philosophy, one needs to get away from the idea of EITHER/OR rights and responsibilities, and look at BOTH/AND.
It's the right of every human being to find out who and what they really are. And more, it’s their responsibility to find that out.
To discover. Dis - cover.
In other words to pull back the veil; to come out of what one is not, to comprehend really and truly what one is.

That is the real right AND the real responsibility of each and every one of us.

Memory: are we letting the past dicate our present?

You know how decades later, we remember really clearly things from our childhood, teenage and early adult years? 

For example, I know I remember poetry and music learnt in those years, yet music I learnt new in the last 15 years, I have to almost re-learn from scratch when coming back to it only a year or two later.

My point is that the experiences in our formative years really imprint themselves on the areas of our brain that deal with memory (hippocampus; neo-cortex; amygdala).

This can be a good thing. 
As well as factual information retrieval, having clear memories of your distant past to memorialise relatives long dead or friends long lost touch with is useful psychologically. Memories to cherish. 

But it can also be a bad thing, depending on the subject and how it affects you now.

The evolutionary purpose of memory is NOT so we can remember the past in the sense of an historical record or a memorial or nostalgia. 
It's so we don't repeat stupid mistakes and negative behaviours, and so that we DO repeat behaviours that were positive and worked for us.

That’s why societal (not just individual) memory, is so important. 
Chaos ensues when we ignore or tear-up the lessons learned from the past with hubris (foolishness), as opposed to changing carefully and at a pace that that doesn’t cause chaos (wisdom).

When it comes to our socio-political views, we can find ourselves thinking and therefore speaking about them in a way that may have been true (as least as we thought) then, but isn’t true, or at least has changed significantly, now.

Views set in stone on important matters before our brains have finished developing (around 23 for most), and before we have had wide experience of society, will often not be nuanced in the way wisdom would require.

I was fortunate as a teenager in that, being a good singer and good all-round sportsman, I was asked to join clubs & societies outside of school, where I mixed socially with adults of all ages, classes and political persuasions.

However immature I’m sure I seemed to some, I benefitted and matured much faster for these experiences, than if the first time I had meaningful interaction with adults outside of my family and education, had been when I started my first job. 

Is the lack of these wider adult social interactions, replaced by online peer-group interactions, the source of much teenage and student angst for example?

Whatever, it's so important not to get sucked into having a closed-minded view, based on something we read, or heard, or were told, or experienced, often decades ago. 

Open-mindedness and a willingness to cast-off past views where appropriate, is difficult, but also liberating for you and even for others.

Difficult because it requires you to genuinely, in good faith, re-visit your long-held opinions and admit the need to change, which can be painful. Pride and embarrassment can be hard negotiators.

Liberating because, just the willingness and ability to try, makes you a better person, and who doesn’t like that feeling? 

But also because in changing your mind, shifting your position, even if only on some issues, and only partially, you are acknowledging the fact that society and individuals change, and that you are willing and able to adapt. 

We’ve all had some sort of epiphany in life; where we have a sudden light-bulb moment of realisation about something we thought we knew then realised we were wrong, or a problem we couldn’t fathom and now we get it. 
Even when the subject is trivial, it’s a wonderful feeling isn’t it?

Liberating also for others because, along with this more open, honest, free way of thinking, will come a change in your character; often materialising in a happier more energised manifestation of your humanity.
It may even nudge others to make some changes in themselves.

Now, it won’t cause joy or liberation to closed-minded people who feel comfortable (I would say trapped) in that mode of being, and comfortable with how you were before; your towing of the same line as them; your mutual bolstering of each other’s self-righteous, tribal, closed-minded egos.

But by being open-minded; genuinely exploring other views and possibilities; not seeing changing your mind as threatening who you are; seeing well-considered change as right, not embarrassing; seeing the past as something to learn from, both the good and the bad, but NOT something that should control your behaviours and views many years later, you become free; seeing things more clearly. 

A good practice for this is to steel-man a viewpoint you disagree with. To think as though you're going to debate in favour of a view you disagree with. 
Done with integrity, this shows you that other viewpoints are often neither stupid nor evil; even if you still, on balance, disagree.

So, as well as using our memory for memorial; nostalgia; error minimisation; and necessary information retrieval, let’s use it to reassess our values; our purpose; and how we interact in society. 

Importantly, such change doesn’t have to be seismic.
Drastic change often throws the baby out with the bath water.

I recall a situation, 20 years or so ago, when a couple married for 15 years and with early teenage kids split-up because the woman had had a cancer scare, and the reappraisal of her life changed her so dramatically, that, among other things, she ended the marriage. Her husband’s comment was that she became a totally different person. While this may have been right for her, there is certainly no need for that degree of change in order for the advantages of an open non-agenda-driven reassessment of your views & attitudes to show themselves.

For example, it can simply come in changing what you choose to do with your leisure time; how you express yourself; how you interact with others; being clear as to what is truly important; whether to change your job or work-life balance.

With open-minded calm reappraisal, putting defensive pride in your previous views to one side, you often gain insights such that new ideas, understanding, meaning and purpose outside of your usual routine, starts to emerge.

Positive purpose, not the purpose of the insular, the tribal, the ideologue; the activist zealot, which is ‘my way or else’. 

Rather, the purpose of the wonder-explorer, the wise traveller; the seeker of wisdom.

So let’s use our memory for the obvious things, yes, but not let it control who we are now; for with a questing and open mind, who knows who and what we could become?

Message to the rationalist atheist: It's NOT science or spirituality - it's BOTH

I disagree with you, the rationalist atheist, only about one material thing and one consequence of that.
The key material issue is that I think the universe was brought into being by some creating source, whereas you think it just happened coincidentally, out of literally nothing, without a creating source. [The more recent idea that the universe has 'always' been there is just a cop-out, an attempt not to have to explain how it came about].

To many religious or spiritual people, your view on this is just as irrational as you claim theirs to be. How can 'something' come from 'nothing' in anything other than agenda-driven hypothesising?

After the creator issue, you and I agree on everything that science can explain. That you don't seem to accept that there is anything science can't or at least won't in the future be able to explain is, I assume, our only other disagreement.

A view that science will eventually explain literally everything about the human condition, including consciousness and how it is derived, let alone the existence or not of a creating source, sounds like faith to me; that thing you disparage in the religious.

I'm not attracted by semantic arguments about supposed difference between the words faith and belief. The Christian creed starts CREDO, I believe, not I have FAITH.

The two words are often used interchangeably; indeed I do so.

Where you use the word 'belief', to simply mean what you think you know at the moment, I would use 'understanding'. i.e. 'my current understanding is X, but I'm happy to change that with suitable evidence'.

I am in agreement with that, but as a 'creator source' of the universe is impossible to either prove or disprove in your rational scientific terms (not finding something doesn't mean it's not there; not knowing something doesn't mean it's not there to be known), arguing about the existence or otherwise of this is pointless, since we simply think about it in totally different ways, and that won't be reconciled by science, because to me, science is just one way of interpreting the universe, the Earth and Humanity, whereas for you, it seems it's the only way.

Both/And not Either/Or would make the world a much more contented place. 

Hence my recommendation of Michael J Snow’s book, Mindful Philosophy. The closed-minded will struggle with it, of course; the open-minded should find much that is helpful to their well-being.

Science needs to be rescued from the political ideologues

Until yesterday (historically), it was accepted in science that there is no such thing as unquestionable consensus.
Indeed, that the concept of consensus or ‘settled science’ is lazy; unimaginative; restrictive; dangerous.
Any agreement was, at best, what we think we know at the moment.
But that it was unquestionable, either scientifically or morally, would not have been a mainstream view; indeed would have been vehemently resisted by the majority.
We mustn't stifle learning by restricting inquiry, was the majority view.
Judgments about the efficacy and/or desirability of ideas must come after they have been investigated, not before.

Unquestionable scientific consensus equals complacency & laziness at best; and, as anyone who's been awake in recent years has realised, serious error and tyranny at worst.

Consider all the knowledge and discoveries that wouldn’t exist if, for example, Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Einstein, Darwin, let alone engineers and medical scientists, had just shrugged their shoulders and gone along with the prevailing mainstream view of their time.
Forget life-saving blood transfusions, pass me the biggest leech you can find and cross your fingers.

Science, in its pure and proper sense, is about constant questioning, hypothesising and testing to form theories that appear to work, but that are still subject to further questioning, hypothesising, testing etc.
And this has worked well because, until recently, science wasn’t conducted based on the pre-formed answers required by those funding the research, or the personal political agendas of the scientists or those on the Boards of the companies they work for.

Politicised science should be anathema, not only to scientists but to the rest of us who depend so much upon what science does for us.

But if the blatant politicisation we see of subjects in the Arts, Humanities and soft-sciences (sociology; psychology) is allowed to bleed into the hard sciences, the errors and indeed deliberate misusing of science will increase, bringing misery to the majority of humanity before very long.

Thoughts on the Church of England

Recently, Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury and wealthy former oil company executive who, compared to most in this country, let alone globally, lives the life of luxury, announced that the Church of England would be giving £100 million away to assuage the guilt that HE has decided it has, for its part in the slave trade.

I saw the article about it on Twitter and I made a reply which has, if not gone viral, certainly had an awful lot of views, an awful lot of likes, and an awful lot of retweets. I don't claim any great insight; I think it's a statement of the obvious. I said:

“what would Christ have done with all that money? Answer? He wouldn't have had it as it would have been given away to the poor as it came in. Think of all those in need of money now, and Welby’s concerned about slavery that WE, the British, pro-actively ended over 200 years ago? Justin Welby, as he repeatedly shows, is a political animal not a spiritual one”

My point then is, what on earth is the Church of England doing having £100 million spare to just give away on the whim of a politicised & therefore unworthy Archbishop?

I know they have old church buildings to maintain and the salaries of their (ever reducing number of) clergy to pay, but that has presumably been taken into account before this announcement, and anyway, having that much spare cash is utterly obscene and utterly out of keeping with the example given by Christ, that any Christian Church of any denomination should amass these kinds of sums of money.

The Church of England has now been ‘modernising’ for 60 years. And of course, when they use the word ‘modernising’, what they really mean is changing to fit in with the transient fads of a secular and increasingly atheistic society.

And what has this constant pandering to the secular atheists achieved in that time?

·        a 90% reduction in regular attendees;

·        An average age of regular attendee of over 60;

·        A reduction in available clergy of 25% (many parishes rely on retired clergy & reduced services);  and

·        Less than 50% putting “Christian” on the most recent 10 yearly national census for the first time

Now I thought it was common knowledge, because it's common sense, that doing the same thing over and over but expecting different results is a sign, if not of madness, then certainly of foolishness. But apparently not in the Church of England.

Now the one thing I would not accuse the leadership of the Church of England of being is unintelligent. However as Dr John Vervaeke, a cognitive scientist at the University of Toronto has pointed out, it is perfectly possible to be very intelligent and also very foolish, and there is no contradiction in that whatsoever. Knowledge and wisdom are not synonymous.

For the last several decades there has been a group think among the leadership, - and of course via training, now among many of its clergy, - that you can describe as ‘secular’ in the broadest sense of that term.
More specifically a politicisation of the Church of England. And very specifically the following of certain politically left-wing secular, materialist & often atheistic societal fads & tropes.

It used to be said of the Church of England that it was the Tory party at prayer. This has not been the case now for many decades. It is now very much the Liberal Democrat party at prayer. Well educated, wealthy, middle class, out of touch with the masses, and pandering to every secular woke fad that comes along.
I’m afraid that, while the liturgy still uses ridiculously archaic terminology like, I don’t know, God, Jesus Christ, Holy Trinity, and recites the Lord’s prayer and Apostles creed (words suitably altered of course), it has become a mere veneer, trying to hide the Church of England’s blatant secularisation & politicisation encapsulated by, as I said in my opening remarks, the wealthy former corporate executive who lives the life of a king, certainly in comparison to Christ and his disciples, let alone 90% of the global population, Justin Welby.

Back in the late 1960s & early 1970s when the move was made away from the 1662 Prayer Book language of thees and thous, it was said that the old language is why attendance was falling. This turned out to be untrue and I suspect those advocating for it suspected as much and were operating politically. Politics rather than spirituality is behind most major change in ALL Christian denominations.

I highly recommend Andrew Doyle's new book ‘the new Puritans’, because the Church of England has now turned into a far-left puritanical cult.
What's the difference between a cult and a religious denomination? At the basic level, numbers! And when you look at the number of people within the population who attend church even once a month, let alone more, the numbers are fast dwindling to those of a historically relevant yes, but currently irrelevant, cult.

To borrow from people in the political sphere when they can no longer be a member of or vote for the party they have voted for all their lives, ‘I haven't left the Church of England; the Church of England has gradually left me.’

While starting from a lower base in terms of numbers in the UK, it is hardly surprising that the Roman Catholics and eastern Orthodox Church are not haemorrhaging adherents to anything like the extent of the Church of England or indeed, other secularising Protestant denominations.
What we are learning is that without maintaining the transcendent mysticism of God, the ethereal nature of Language and traditional doctrines, - secular atheism and politicisation wins out remarkably quickly. Indeed, the modern C of E has encouraged it.
Programatic secularism is the term that the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, used to describe this deliberate programme of gradual steps toward moving the church into the secular and away from its traditional spiritual doctrines.

So, the time has come for the Church of England to be disestablished, because the number of adherents and therefore its spiritual usefulness to Society, no longer warrants it.

Our new king, Charles the third, said recently that the Church of England has a special role in the life of our nation. All this comment goes to show is how out of touch he is with the reality. He is 75 after all. He’s living in the past. It used to have a special role but outside all the ceremonial function at coronation's, royal weddings and in his private chapels, which of course is all King Charles ever sees, it no longer does, as the latest national census clearly shows.
That being the Head of the Church of England is one of the props to the institution of the monarchy itself, is not a good enough reason to continue pretending that it is either relevant, or, required to have special status. It should be disestablished and made to stand, or I sadly suspect, fall, on its own two feet. I don’t like saying that, but we need to be honest about it.

The sad thing is that many ordinary members of the Church of England, those who attend regularly and give their time, resources and efforts to support their local church, are not like the hypocritical politically motivated leadership at all. They are being led by donkeys, hypocrites and charlatans who care more about political ideology, patting themselves on the back for how kind & caring they are in secular terms, than the poor.
Don’t tell me that the Church of England has got £100 million to give away for assumed guilt about something we abolished well over 200 years ago, and in the same breath tell me they care about the poor in their own society.
It is an arrogant elitist institution, or at least is being led by arrogant elitists, and that must stop.

The traditions, liturgy, doctrines and practice of the Church of England have gradually been watered down, secularised, over the last few decades. Why?
Supposedly to make the church more accessible – but accessible to whom?
To stay ‘relevant’. But relevant to whom?
As all the data demonstrates, to those who neither believe nor care.
In attempting to pander to secularists, political ideologues & full-on anti-theists, all the church has done is reduced the number of its formerly constant adherents.

And now, the C of E is setting-up a commission looking into whether or not God is gender neutral and perhaps we should stop saying ‘Our Father’.
So they will, presumably, be altering the Holy Bible itself, altering the words spoken by Christ himself when he spoke of ‘my Father’.

The Church of England just becomes more secular & more politicised, and shrinks ever toward a cult that cannot abide, let alone proclaim, its own God-given ethereal & metaphysical traditions in anything other than post-modern atheist materialist terms, which dooms it to reducing into oblivion at worst, cult-status at best – and that’s not much of an ‘best’ is it?

Thinking out loud on why the existence of a Creator is just as likely as not

 An attitude which you often hear is: ‘The only way to know, or experience, or believe in a Creator, would be through the human construct of material scientific evidence. We have no such evidence and so can conclude that no Creator exists.’

Now, while this is understandable on a basic level, I suspect that this is human-centric, hubristic, single perspectival thinking, which is almost the definition of foolishness, in cognitive science terms.

So here are my thoughts & conjectures.

My eyes can only capture a limited spectrum of light. My ears can only hear on a limited spectrum. The human brain is limited to the concepts and modes of thought that it is capable of reaching.

Think of an ant colony in the desert. It has neither seen a human nor can conceive of a being so long lived and so much more intelligent. We are beyond their comprehension. Yet we exist.

The universe is so vast, it is inconceivable to me that we are the only sentient beings capable of self-awareness, and high-thought functioning.

A Creator may be to us what we are to the ant colony. A Creator maybe in a space or have an existence our brains simply cannot comprehend. Other sentient creatures in the universe may have evolved further than us and may have a closer more direct knowledge of, and link with, the Creator.
We only have human language & human symbols to explain our understanding of what the Creator is to us, but they are not likely to be accurate representations. Maybe if we evolve to a higher level of understanding and consciousness, we will become more directly aware of the Creator and see the Creator more clearly.

Maybe, as our life span is to a mayfly, so our concept of time is but the blink of an eye to the Creator.
Maybe the Creator is one of a species of beings beyond our understanding.

But I think it's narrow minded hubris to look at this in a purely human-centric materialist way and say, like doubting Thomas, ‘unless I can touch it or feel it or see it or measure it, it doesn't exist. In fact it CAN’T exist.’

It's much simpler to think that way of course. Simple perhaps to the point of naivety and intellectual laziness. But in a universe this large and this unlikely, that way of thinking is probably human-centric hubris.

When those who don’t believe in a Creator/God say, ‘I’ve never seen a miracle’ OR ‘a good Creator would stop anything bad happening to anyone’, they are being superficial & simplistic.
Firstly, some people both throughout history & now, claim that miracles HAVE happened to them. Dismissing them as delusional or charlatans is an ideological not open-minded position. Miracles can take many forms.
Why is that so hard to accept?
And why should each individual not be able to decide for themselves whether or not an experience they’ve had is a miracle?
Why do the materialist atheists get to decide?

In terms of a Creator intervening to stop bad things happening, there are times when we interfere with lesser cognitive creature & times when we don’t.
So, we intervene in the lives of animals, we intervene in the lives of insects, birds etc but at other times, when we could intervene, we don't.
Does that ‘sometimes we do intervene, sometimes we don’t’ behaviour mean we're de facto evil beings? Does that mean we've ceased to exist?

People try and say that you either believe in evolution and rational scientific materialism (the doubting Thomas principle explained above) OR you believe in a Creator. But I don’t see that these things are in conflict unless you have a very narrow way of looking at the world and the universe.

Why is it so unbelievable that the Creator put the evolutionary process in place?
Remember, to the Creator, our experience of time may not be theirs. We think the Earth & Universe are incredibly old but it may be a matter of minutes to the Creator.

Why could it not be that the Creator is pleased that we are finding out how his creation works? Maybe even wants us to?
Maybe this is a journey of discovery that leads us to see the Creator clearly.

Science does NOT clash with the existence of a Creator unless we arrogantly & hubristically assume that we are the highest form of BEING, of knowledge & consciousness, and also that what we know now about the laws of physics for example, is as much as we can ever know; people 1000, 2000, 3000 years ago thought the same.
And why could it not be that there is another dimension where the laws of physics & time are wholly different?

Then there are those who claim we don’t have freewill. That the universe is simply the equivalent of a highly sophisticated pre-programmed computer game.
But a hypothesis like that, which serves no practical purpose, indeed is counter-productive, is what my father called ‘trying too hard to show how clever you are’.
We certainly behave, and MUST behave, as if we have free-will, so I see no practical benefit in claiming we haven’t.

BUT there is a downside to a Creator giving his creations freewill of course, which brings us back to the, ‘a good Creator wouldn’t let bad things happen’ trope.
The downside of freewill is that we will make mistakes, do bad things from time to time. However, these are hugely outweighed in number by the good things we do.
There are far more pleasant, nice, fair, honest, kind transactions between people every day across the world than bad or nasty or UNkind ones.
However, because the good outweighs the bad, because friendliness, kindness etc is the norm, we tend to ignore it; familiarity breeds contempt; we take it for granted to the point of forgetting about it.
The commonplace ‘good’ is ignored and the rarer ‘bad’ emphasised. Just look at the news every day.

And there is the possibility that for this world and our lives to be ‘real’, (i.e. meaningful), there has to be a genuine danger of failure and suffering. Further, to achieve ‘true reality’ that failure and suffering has to be actual, not merely pretend or threatened.
The spoilt brat has never known suffering and is the poorer, less societally useful person for it.

So, in summary, when we look at the vastness of our universe, it seems to me that a Creator, & one who intervenes sometimes & not others, is perfectly possible, even likely. We just can’t properly comprehend them, as the ant doesn’t comprehend us. And we are likely missing the point when we complain that the Creator doesn’t behave how we would want them to behave if they were human – they are NOT - any more than we are an ant.

All of my ramblings here are off the top of my head conjectures, of course, but then again, so are the theories of what sparked the creation of the universe, and what was there before.

It’s conjecture that there IS no more than our universe, and that there IS no more to the existence of the universe than the laws of physics as we know them.

But of course, we won’t truly know any of this until we die – what an adventure!