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!

Foolishness and Wisdom – Theory & a contemporary example

 A chance remark about J K Rowling being involved in some controversy got me talking with someone recently and they admitted that they knew nothing about the subject, which was trans-gender rights. We didn’t talk long but I said that I would go away and write something which I hope would explain how I have come to my view.

When I started, I soon realised that I needed to use some of the philosophical and psychological learnings I’ve made over the last few years of study.
So here is my first attempt to look at the situation in that way.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8U2caURO-d4

Above is a link to a talk by cognitive scientist, Dr John Vervaeke. If you don’t want to watch it all, watch from 26 mins 30 secs in for a few minutes but here’s a quote.

“Knowledge deals with ignorance. Wisdom deals with foolishness. Knowledge & wisdom are NOT the same thing. You can be very intelligent and very foolish; and there is no contradiction there at all”.

To be wise, you have to be able to take multiple perspectives of the thing you are considering and find, where possible, a meeting point. This takes a real desire because taking multiple perspectives requires serious effort and can also require you to take seriously & find value in viewpoints you don’t like or share.
Single perspective closed-minded tribalism is SO much easier. BUT without making that effort to look at the problem from multiple perspectives, you can’t see the bias within the single perspective that you’ve inhabited, often unthinkingly, or perhaps I should say, unchallenged, for years.

It’s the old saying, ‘you can’t see the wood for the trees’.
You can find yourself expending all your efforts merely to rationalise in knee-jerk reactive fashion, why what you already believe is right, & any alternative view wrong.
Never stepping back outside the trees to see the wider landscape, the wider perspective, and genuinely questioning in good faith whether this long-held single perspectival belief is in reality the best one.

As Plato pointed out, we are finite beings. We are not gods. We are bound to circumstances and fate in powerful ways. And if we forget that, we fall into hubris. Hubris (arrogance) prevents us opening our hearts & minds to seek truth.

So, onto the specific subject I was asked to explain my thoughts on, the trans-rights issue.

In the same way that falling feels like flying until you pull the chord on the parachute and it doesn’t open, so policies that massively change the accepted societal norms, like the SNP have just passed into law, allowing people of one biological sex to identify as, and then be treated in every way as if they really are the opposite biological sex, can feel like a positive change until the reality of what it actually means in practice hits home.
For example, biological and often physically unaltered men in female sports, bathrooms, prisons etc will not end well for far too many biological women.
And rest assured, it will be the vulnerable, and particularly women, and specifically those from the lower socio-economic groups who don’t have the resources to avoid the problems, who will lose out most.
I suggest that what we see in a governmental policy like this is a single-perspective ideology filled with god-like hubris. Foolishness.

While I shouldn’t have to state this, I will, in the hope (probably vain) of preventing the more hysterical feedback.
I’m with J K Rowling on this issue, whose view can be summarised as: dress how you like and identify how you like but DO NOT tell other people that they must pretend biology isn’t real, and that you are reducing or removing their rights in order to make yourself feel better.

Now, lest people again jump to the wrong conclusion about my views, wisdom is certainly not refusing change.
Obviously. How could it be?
Rather, it’s being able to look at an issue from many perspectives and tell which societal changes will be overall positive to society, and which will be overall negative, WITHOUT having to risk conducting the experiment in real life to find out.
Some experiments are simply too dangerous if they go wrong (see Communism & Fascism but also the Wuhan gain of function lab leak for a contemporary practical example).

We are too ready, I believe, to let people off with foolishness if it doesn’t directly affect us;
We are too ready to let people off with foolishness just to be non-judgemental; because being non-judgemental is supposedly ‘nice’ and being judgemental ‘nasty’.

But it’s not that simple.

Like all catchy soundbites, it’s yes, BUT…… 

Speak to a rape victim or the parent of a child killed by a drunk driver, or the parent of a child being bullied at school, for example.
Don’t judge? Don’t speak out? Keep silent?
Some things MUST be judged, otherwise we have slavery, chaos, and anarchy.

What are we saying when we say, ‘oh, we mustn’t judge other people’? We all make judgements about others every day.
The fact we only think it doesn’t mean we didn’t make the judgement.
Do we think accidental foolish actions or the foolish actions of the well-meaning, are somehow OK?
So it’s the intention that matters most, not the results of the action?
This feels right on a superficial level but is surely nonsense if you think more deeply.
Indeed, such an attitude is itself another somewhat self-indulgent foolishness.

The outcome of an action HAS to be the crux of the matter, because some actions (some foolishnesses) have adverse consequences on others which didn’t need to happen.
Some actions then lack wisdom, and wisdom should be at the heart of all we do as much as possible.

In complex societies like ours, there are questions for which there is – NO - perfect - answer. And believing that every problem for every group or individual can always be solved is another foolishness.

And when it comes down to it, the total acceptance of the trans-activist agenda by the Scottish government is, I believe, a case in point.
Sometimes, the best we can do will still leave a minority feeling unhappy; pretending otherwise, which beliefs and policies like this do, is more foolishness.

Wishful thinking is not wise.

Trying to make one very small group happy by giving them rights the basis for which are NOT borne out by accepted & proven scientific knowledge? Really?
Trying to make one very small group happy by giving them rights that require you to remove the rights of others? Really?

Boy, you’ve got to tread very carefully doing that.

And the SNP with their Green party coalition partners have rammed this through with foolish speed.
It is single-perspective ideology and great hubris writ large.
It’s foolishness.

J S Mill spoke of the tyranny of the majority and certainly, that can lead to bad results. But even worse is a tyranny of a minority.
At least the majority getting their own way has some natural logic to it.

But we are currently living through a tyranny of the minority, and not of the minorities you may immediately think of, but of the elite at the top of society around the world who feel themselves untouchable in any meaningful way.
The trans-gender activist agenda couldn’t possibly gain the traction it has without the support of many powerful & influential people.
What you or I think of it wouldn’t matter in the slightest if the elite, the powerful, the influential in society, didn’t want it.

They are imposing/allowing/facilitating, society altering policies of which the trans-agenda is only one (others are, mass immigration, gender theory, critical race theory, intersectional theory, covid alarmism, climate alarmism and the like) all hiding behind a claim of safety/of kindness/of tolerance/of inclusivity.
And it’s irrelevant how many of these specific issues you agree or disagree with, because the gaining of your agreement is totally irrelevant to those pushing them forward.
Their purpose in turning society upside down is the belief that THEY, the elite class, the good guys as they see themselves, will still be in charge after it all goes to hell in a hand cart, and their position in society will be not only unaffected, but strengthened.
Strengthened by diminishing, if not removing, democracy.
Leaving the wealthy, the influential, the well-positioned a free unconstrained run.
Removing the ability of the majority opinion to change or even influence policy; that’s what these elites are after.
They are acting from a single perspective and with god-like hubris.
It's foolishness.

So, my working hypothesis, which seems to fit what is actually happening, (irrespective of the official narrative), is that they are trying to bring about a global technocratic dictatorship of the elite class, by destabilising the societal norms of the liberal democracies, in terms of social behaviour, energy availability, food availability, travel availability, and finance availability. 
It’s these things that the individuals within a democracy rely on to understand and function independently of the apparatus of the State.
Perhaps I should just say that when I keep saying ‘THEY’, or the 'elite', ‘they’ can be symbolised & embodied by the WEF, which is basically a club of the most wealthy & influential people; the self-styled elite of global society.

They are using a host of seemingly unconnected ‘foolishnesses’, to get us all distracted and arguing, in the hope that we won’t realise that there is a much larger creeping authoritarian agenda.
We can’t see the wood for all the trees they have us frightened of and bickering about – and I’ve already given examples of these distracting ‘trees’ (exaggerated alarmism over climate & covid, wars, energy shortages, cost of living problems, mass immigration, gender theory, critical race theory etc).
The constant use of fear and division is destabilising society in order to distract us from noticing the over-arching purpose.

Which is what?

Well, in my hypothesis, it looks remarkably like Huxley’s ‘Brave New World’.
That was written in the early 1930s, so of course the details will be different, but the basis of it seems to be coming to pass, certainly at the high or meta-level.
The population is forced into groups (intersectionality). Groups of greater or lesser importance, from which it is next to impossible to escape, and the only people with any real autonomy, and who get to decide everything, are those in the top elite group.
The WEF members & their wannabe acolytes.
The rules don’t apply to them, rather, they decide the rules that they apply to everyone else.
We saw this in practical terms when so many people in positions of power & influence were caught ignoring the Covid rules – rules THEY had put in place or supported.
And in a wider context, almost daily, we see stories of those with money or influence getting away with behaviour an ordinary person would not. Of mega-wealthy unelected people & corporations buying undue influence over governments and administration of States.

I am concerned that the WEF ‘group think’, is that representative democracy hasn’t produced the ‘right’ results (Brexit/Trump); it’s had its chance and failed; and so must be done away with.

It can’t be said openly for obvious reasons, so it is being done by stealth.

It’s a REgression to the time before the franchise was made universal to all adults, when the elites decided everything and the rest had to simply accept it and know their place.
That this is in fact a regression back to the historical norm, elites being in charge and the plebs doing as they’re told, doesn’t make it right or good; and it certainly isn’t progress, quite the reverse.
The enslavement of humans by other humans has always been the global historical norm, but few would argue this means we should return to it.
And yet, fundamentally, this is what’s happening with our democracy via the rapid overturning of key societal norms.

If something is foolish, it shouldn’t be happening.
It is not in any way wise to look the other way just because the issue isn’t currently affecting us, or it’s too much effort to fight it, or we want to tell ourselves what kind tolerant people we are, or the people doing it convince us they truly believe in it, or they bribe us in some way, or they distract us by manufacturing lots of ‘trees’ to get us lost among.

Foolishness, whether accidental or well-meaning or knowingly dangerous, is still foolishness, and must be identified, called-out and resisted.

Now, this must NOT be done with hate in our hearts - but it must be done.

That’s wisdom - but it also takes courage - because those creating all the distracting foolishnesses - are both very determined - and very powerful.
They’re playing for high stakes, (the effective rule of the world) and they propagandise, and bend, break, or simply make new rules, as they deem necessary to win.

Thanks for readinging. By for now.

We are not God!

 

This blog is looking at just one of the many forms of hypocrisy we see in our society. 

We are not God, and neither should we try to be. We are simply not capable of fulfilling that role without corruption. To put ourselves in this position is bad for us AND bad for everyone else.

We all know the saying about the hungry person.

‘Give someone a fish and they aren’t hungry that day. Teach them how to fish and they can stop themselves being hungry for the rest of their life.’

When we give the fish and stop there, what have we done?

For sure the giving of the fish is a good thing; we aren’t letting them starve; so we’ve done ‘good’.
But if we don’t continue on to teach them how to catch the fish for themselves, but rather put them in the position of being reliant on us for ever, we have corrupted that original good deed.
They are now dependent on us. We have their lives in our hands. We have now cast them in the part of slave and us as master. We are their God – and they must be grateful.

That’s unacceptable, morally.

Why should we take to ourselves, and be proud about it, the mantle of being free independent souls who have control over our own lives, but deny that freedom, that independence, and that positive feeling of self-esteem, of purpose, of meaning, to others?

Yet so often, this is what we see.

From politicians who promise permanent and ever increasing handouts. Permanent State largesse for life, as long as you keep us in power. All you have to do is vote for my Party, and nothing else is expected or required of you. In fact the less we hear from you the better. The last thing we want is you feeling genuinely independent.

Or the charities who claim to care about those they help but who don’t care enough to want to be put out of existence by actually succeeding. They don’t want to be so successful that they close down because they’re no longer needed. Too much money, too many jobs, too much moral self-congratulation involved to want the reason for their charity to actually end.
That’s a corruption of the original good because it tempts people to claim that things haven’t got better, when they have; worse, not to try as hard as they might to fully succeed.

And the Church of England. With its constant bowing down to whatever the secular liberal fad is of the day.
Where has that got Christianity in this country?
The church has been constantly ‘modernising’ for over 50 years now and yet, and yet – regular church attendance has dropped by 90% in the last 50 years and the average age of the regular Church of England attendee is over 60.
We don’t have enough clergy to properly cover even those reducing number of churches that still have a meaningful congregation.
And in the latest 10 yearly national survey, for the first time ever, less than 50% put themselves down as Christian.

So the constant modernising has utterly failed by any serious measure. But does that give the leadership pause to wonder if perhaps we need a rethink? Nope, not a bit of it.

The Church of England used to be called the Tory Party at prayer. It’s not been that for decades. It’s now the Liberal Democratic Party at prayer. Woke, wealthy middle-class eco-socialism. A socio-economic political institution masquerading as spiritual Christianity.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, always outspoken against any attitude or political policy that wouldn’t be welcomed by Blair  or Clegg, and yet, when a woman was arrested in this country last week because she was stood across the road from an abortion clinic, causing no actual trouble, just silently praying, we hear nothing from the wealthy former corporate oil executive now posing as a man of God; the head of the church; living in luxury.

And as we’ve always known, the root of this form of corruption is almost always position and/or money, one way or another.

Those at the top in politics, or business, or the law, or media or academia or even the church - their relative wealth & influence means they have no real skin in the game anymore. Their grasp of the daily life of the majority is tenuous at best. Their views are either closed-mindedly set in the unreality of decades ago or based on socio-economic ideological theory, not the practical daily reality of the majority.
They make decisions affecting millions, sometimes without even being elected (Bill Gates; WEF; UN bodies; media barons, judges, quangos etc). Decisions that don't affect THEM in any meaningful way.
There are rarely, if ever, meaningful repercussions for bad decisions by these elites. They are putting themselves in the position of God.

And that needs to be changed somehow. Because it's always the poorest in society that suffer when elites, playing God, make society changing decisions.

I think we need far more plebiscites/referenda to act as a counter to the elected dictatorships we currently have.

Look at the damage to women’s rights being done by the SNP currently. All the polls in Scotland show that the majority don’t agree with biological males being allowed in biologically female toilets, changing rooms, sports, prisons etc but when the elected dictators play God, putting their socio-political ideology first, there is nothing can be done to stop them, apparently.

It all comes down to people abusing their positions and placing themselves in the position of God.
For God is always right; never needs to consider the effects of actions on those who will be negatively affected; never needs to think whether they are throwing the baby out with the bathwater; never considers that slow & gradual change may be better than sudden rushed enforced change; never considers whether a referendum of the people may be the best way to deal with an issue because, of course, the ignorant bigoted peasants might give the wrong answer – again!

NO – much better to connive, back-stab, lie, toady, bribe and corrupt your way up the greasy ladder and then impose your dogmas, lord it over the masses - God-like.

They’ll thank you for it eventually – or be miserable and die. Either way, the self-proclaimed gods win!

Whoop de do! Hooray!

Unrighteous Self-Righteousness

There's a lot of anger and righteous indignation being seen in both mainstream and social media about a lot of different societal issues. A lot of people speaking of themselves as good and of those who differ as evil.
Here are some thoughts, deliberately couched in quasi-Christian language, but applying to all, religious or otherwise.

When you take upon yourself the judgement of God, you instead become the Devil.

You must not allow yourself to judge that your cause is not merely right, but righteous. 

For in judging yourself righteous you convey upon yourself moral permission to behave in any manner, free of guilt.

How so? 

Because if I am, like God, righteous, then however I decide to behave must be righteous. It can be nothing other.

Righteousness can, by definition, do no evil.

So however bad my actions may look, you are simply unenlightened to the righteousness of them.

Whatever the consequences of my actions, my righteousness makes those actions good. 

No criticism of me is valid, no harm caused by me is undeserved or unnecessary. It is legitimate for me to decide what is the greater good. The end does indeed justify the means and being righteous, I can decide both.

Beware of thinking of yourself as righteous & morally superior, for in your conceit will lie not only your own downfall but that of many others.

Mask Studies

I’m fortunate to live near some very high-level and well-known bio-medical & scientific research establishments. This means that, either through my work or socially, I know quite a few folk who work in these places, some of them high-up the scale.

Below is a conversation I had with one such researcher a couple of days ago. This is not a verbatim account of course, but it IS an accurate summary.

___________________________________________________ 

Me: So, tell me, how are research studies into things like the efficacy of wearing masks actually done?

Researcher: How do you mean?

Me: Well, to what extent do the studies try to model the real world situation with masks?

Researcher: By real world situation, you mean…?

Me: Well, there are a variety of different types of mask being worn by the public; some prevent virus particles coming in or out better than others; many are hard if not impossible to fix in place such that there aren’t any gaps; a lot of folk wear the same mask over and over; many remove their mask to cough & sneeze or to take gulps of fresh air; you have to take your mask off to eat or drink; that sort of thing.

Research: Oh, right, I understand. It would be almost impossible to replicate that accurately, so the studies don’t really take any of that into account. 

Me: That doesn’t sound great.

Researcher: Well, what would be the point?

Me: What would be the point of studying how things actually work in the real world, rather than how we want them to work in a fictional perfect world?

Researcher: I get where you’re going with this but really, there’s no point. Look, we don’t need research into whether masks are effective if you use an inferior grade mask or if you don’t wear it properly or you keep taking it off for various reasons because we already know they aren’t effective in those circumstances. Obviously they aren’t, right? How could they be? So, the research looks to see if the correct grade masks worn properly are effective.

Me: OK - but you don’t need to research that either do you? 

Researcher: Why not?

Me: Because obviously, if everyone wears a recommended grade of mask, and wears them correctly at all times, they WILL be effective.

Researcher: Right, but there needs to be properly researched studies that say this.

Me: Why?

Researcher: So that the decision makers have got bona fide studies that they can point at, to show that masks are effective in slowing the spread of the virus. 

Me: But these studies make assumptions that we know aren’t replicated by people going about their normal lives. So doesn’t that make them a bit pointless?

Researcher: [Smiles wryly and shrugs apologetically] Ours is not to reason why.

CV19 - The State of the Nation

It’s so easy, as we have done for almost 2 years now, to focus solely on Cv19. 

But we should talk just as much about all the other things that the Cv19 policy response affects, and recognise that they will be responsible for the misery and/or premature deaths of millions in the coming years.

Economic stagnation with high tax low growth due to our colossal borrowing for Cv19. Along with Climate Change taxes & higher energy bills, this will shorten some people’s lives as well as making many more miserable.

Non-Cv19 physical health - cancer, heart disease and many other illnesses not diagnosed, or diagnosed too late. This will shorten some people’s lives as well as making many more miserable.

Mental health deterioration in many, especially among young adults and those with no family support, forced into isolation. This will shorten some people’s lives as well as making many more miserable.

The colossal NHS back-log created by the ‘all that matters is Cv19’ policies the NHS has been allowed to adopt. This will exacerbate the usual winter struggles of the NHS and will shorten some people’s lives as well as making many more miserable.

Educational disruption for tens of millions of children. This may not shorten lives, but it reduces the life chances of the poorest children in particular, thus making their lives worse than they could have been. 

Civil liberties cast aside as if they are mere whims, not rights earned over countless generations. Who knows where this will lead but nowhere good, we can be certain of that.

Do I feel very sorry for people who have had someone close to them lose their life due to Cv19? Of course! 

Do I feel very sorry for people who have been made seriously ill by Cv19? Of course!

But I also feel very sorry for all those who have and will lose their lives or are desperately ill because their illness was demoted & treated as of less importance long after the seriousness of Cv19 was known to be far less than originally feared.

I also care about the mental health deterioration to many and the educational harm to our children.

And I also care about how easily we have allowed ourselves to be convinced of the necessity of giving up our civil liberties and freedoms.

Policy affecting 68 million people has to be based on more than panic, hype & political expediency, especially when not backed-up by the reality on the ground. 

We have an Infection Fatality Rate of well under 1%, which was the case even before the vaccines, and an average age of death ‘with Cv19’ of 82 which again was the case before the vaccines.
This average age of death, by the way, means that Cv19 has been so devastating that it has had ZERO impact on the average life expectancy in the UK. 

We have overreacted, and this disproportionate response will come back to bite us in coming years, particularly if we repeat the mistakes.
That we overreacted initially is understandable; that we are even contemplating further lockdowns & vaccine passports (& worse!), even now we know that Cv19 is nowhere near as bad as feared, is inexcusable.

It’s very simple, really. Some people think that Cv19 has been a big enough problem to justify all the collateral damage I have listed above. 

I do not.
I believe that the collateral damage from our short-sighted, Cv19 only, policy response will be far worse than Cv19 itself.

I struggle to believe that those on the side of censoring debate, only allowing carefully selected & interpreted information to be released, using propaganda techniques to instil greater fear than warranted, mandating medical treatments & restrictions, harming the economy, harming mental health & non-Cv19 physical health, disrupting children’s education, using those children to shield adults, allowing the division of society into clean and unclean, good and evil, and curtailing civil liberties, is the side history will judge favourably. 

Although of course, as Orwell realised, they will just erase, re-write & interpret the history to suit themselves if given the chance.

The question for all of us as individuals is, ‘will I continue to aid and abet them?’

Covid-deniers and Anti-Vaxxers - What are they thinking?

Over many months, I’ve been listening and discussing Cv19 with various people on social media who have not taken the vaccines & are more sceptical about Cv19 generally. Here is what I believe is an accurate synthesis of their views.

Most that don't want this vaccination aren't anti-vaccinations or even necessarily anti THIS vaccination. They have all their other vaccinations with no issue.

They just want to wait until there are 3/4 years of data before deciding whether to take this one or not. 

After all, that's the usual timescale before a new vaccination is given a licence, because new treatments that seem to work prima facie, can have longer-term side-effects that may make the cure worse than the virus. 

Remember, we are not dealing with a virus akin to the Black Death here. If we were, we would have 25 -30 million dead from it in the UK alone by now. In reality, we have around 0.5% of that figure, and that is ‘with’ Cv19, not ‘of’ Cv19.

In fact, the average age of death 'with' Cv19 is 82, which is the normal average age of death in England & Wales.
Under 55, the ‘with’ Cv19 deaths is so small as to be statistically insignificant, very sad for those people & their families though it of course is. 
And even the over 75s who catch Cv19 have a 4 in 5 chance of surviving it.

So the claim is NOT that Cv19 is a hoax, or that the vaccinations are completely useless. 

It’s that the severity of Cv19 is exaggerated, and demonstrably so; that the efficacy of the vaccinations is exaggerated (you can still both catch & transmit it AND need boosters every 6 months) & with long-term consequences unknown; and that, because of these exaggerations, it is perfectly reasonable to want to wait for the normal long-term data on efficacy and side-effects to come in before taking the vaccination, particularly for the majority at almost no risk.

Moreover, the exaggeration of the Cv19 risk has caused policies to be brought in which cause far more societal damage, both short and long-term, than the virus itself. 

Just think of all the money we don’t have that’s been borrowed resulting in inflation and much higher tax levels; all the cancer and other non-Cv19 diagnoses and treatments missed with the consequent backlog of many millions of cases putting pressure on the NHS, the very thing we were supposed NOT to be doing; the mental health toll with, for example, an almost 50% increase in mental health referrals in the 15-19 year old population; the disruption to an entire generation’s education which always affects the poorest most; and the various civil liberties given-up with some at least, unlikely to be returned.

With a compliant media (both mainstream & social), we have been propagandised into believing that the Cv19 risk is magnitudes greater than it really is; that the vaccines are more useful than they really are, (particularly for the under 65s); and that the restrictive rules brought-in were far more necessary and useful than they really were. 

We have spent a colossal amount of money in the wrong way and far too many seem very happy to demonise anyone who asks perfectly reasonable and, frankly, obvious questions, as either stupid or evil or both. 

But Covid-deniers or anti-vaxxers, the vast majority of these people are not.