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 culturally and politically.

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 & unjust laws) 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?