Sunday thoughts

Cardinal Keith O'Brien, head of the Roman Catholic church in Scotland, said in a recent interview for BBC1's Sunday Politics in Scotland, that it is "immoral" how the less well-off had been made to "suffer" for the failings in the financial services sector.The cardinal's somewhat intemperate language would suggest that he considers issues in terms of the absolutes of good and bad, rather than in more nuanced shades and tones. He fails to recognise that the ethics of the current UK administration continue to remain validly self-consistent, best characterised by the phrase 'rich people looking after rich people'. I find myself in agreement with the cardinal's sentiment. In my ethical framework it is not okay that the welfare state is, in part, being dismantled. To add insult to injury, the abrading is happening in order to pay for the problems created by a sector that has no need for the welfare state. Let the banking and financial sector pay for its own mistakes. In my political analysis, the UK economy is far too dependent on the City of London-based financial sector. I should much rather the UK economy were based on skilled and high-tech manufacturing, but with an emphasis on reducing consumption. If there were economic austerity to be faced by ordinary people, let it be because the economy of the UK were being rebalanced away from financial services towards sustainable ways of living.

The same cardinal, who is well-known for speaking out on controversial issues, recently lambasted the UK government for wishing to provide a legal definition of marriage. The cardinal believes that only the Christian church ought to be allowed to define marriage. A major part of the problem is that the Roman Catholic church, amongst several, has a conservative and extremely outdated view of what constitutes an appropriate relationship, whereas the British public, along with populations across the economically developed world, have been rejecting en masse practices that belong (at best) to a different era. By seeking to bring up to date the concept and practices of marriage, the UK government is patently seeking to revive its popularity. Therefore, it seems to me, this is an issue of competence. I defend the assertion by the UK parliament of its right to determine issues that apply to people across the country. I also defend the right of the Roman Catholic church to determine its own attitude towards marriage.If the Roman Catholic church does not wish to embrace the practice of marrying same-sex couples, it does not seem necessary to force them to do so. Gay couples can choose to marry in a civil ceremony (and I'm not sure how this would differ from a civil partnership) or in a church of another denomination. I am certain that the Religious Society of Friends will be enthusiastic to hold gay weddings for Quakers.

It is looking increasingly likely that, in due course, the Anglican church will split in two over issues of sexuality. Gene Robinson's enthronement in a see of the Episcopal Church in the US exposed attitudes in the worldwide Anglican Church that appear indistinguishable from homophobia. In an effort to keep the Anglican communion in one piece, Archbishop Rowan Williams, head of the Anglican Church, introduced a covenant to which each of the Anglican national churches was expected to sign up. However, the Church of England refused to sign it on the basis of its exclusion of gay clergy. It is far from clear to me why both the Anglican and Roman Catholic Churches are so willing to see themselves portrayed as irretrievably homophobic.Recently, the Catholic Education Society contact the Roman Catholic schools in the UK, inviting them to use in school assemblies material concerning the Roman Catholic church's objection to gay marriage, and urging the schools to encourage their pupils to sign an on-line petition against gay marriage. It is not hard to imagine the effect this may have on young people who feel uncertain or uneasy about their emergent sexuality.

The Church of England is feeling challenged about the likely reduction in the number of its bishops who sit by right in the House of Lords (the upper chamber of the UK parliament). That the bishops are present at all owes itself to the fact that the Church of England is the established church of England - despite the fact that the House of Lords scrutinises legislation that applies variously or severally to the four countries of the UK. On the face of it, this sounds like an excellent reason for removing all of the bishops from the House of Lords. However, I believe that there is a place for senior representatives of each of the major religions and Christian denominations, including the churches in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. As a scrutinising body, the work of the House of Lords would be enhanced by having the views of as many as possible of the constituent bodies that make up the complex organism that is the UK

Having visited Auschwitz-Birkenau

One of my sisters recently visited Auschwitz-Birkenau. I have never had the courage to visit that grim place, and I respect her for doing so. In response to her visit she found herself asking versions of the primary questions listed below that she was kind enough to e-mail me. I have added some searching, self-reflective supplementary questions because that is my nature. It is not my intention to remove anything from her experience by developing her material in this way. Rather, my purpose is to engage with her material in ways that are relevant to my process. As recorded elsewhere, I am currently active in considering a new non-religious ethical framework for society. It is in this context that my supplementary questions can best be read.

Q1. What is the character of someone who believes that other people are a sub-species and unworthy of life? Are there occasions when I treat someone, or some group of people, with less than the full respect that belongs to humanity?

Q2. What possible ethical framework could permit medical doctors to perform "experiments" on living people, and subsequently kill those people with phenol injections? In what ways do I behave unethically towards people, even if those people live in a different continent? I buy electronic goods that I suspect were manufactured in Chinese sweat-shops; I buy food staples that may have been grown and harvested by poor and oppressed people working the farms and estates of trans-national corporations.

Q3. What did the recipients of second-hand clothes / false limbs/ glasses / suitcases / etc., believe about their provenance? Do I always enquire about the provenance of the clothes I wear and the food I eat?

Q4. How could anyone feel okay about making cloth from the hair, and lampshades from the skin, of people for whom they have contempt, and what kind of person would want to possess objects made from those materials? What will people of the future think about the choices I have been making during my life?

Q5. Why did the Nazi machine go to the lengths of transporting Jewish people from places as far away as Greece and Portugal (taking up to 10 days in freight trains) to Birkenau, only then to murder them?

Q6. How did the tens, or even hundreds, of thousands of people who were involved at some level in the premeditated murder of Jewish, Roma, gay and disabled people across Europe, subsequently reconcile themselves with the wickedness in which they had participated, or at least with which they had colluded? How do I reconcile myself with knowledge of the hurt and pain I have caused people during my life?

Q7. Why didn't the Hungarian 'underground resistance' disseminate the news from escapees about what was happening in Birkenau, and thus prevent half a million Jewish people from being transported there in 1944? How guilty am I for allowing people to believe what I have known not to be true.

Q8. To what extent did the UK and US governments keep quiet about Auschwitz-Birkenau? Why do I stand by without complaint and permit the UK government to deport from the UK refugees from strife-torn parts of the world?

Q9. Are the Italian authorities currently dehumanising the Roma people, and thereby moving in the same direction as the Nazis? Is my conscience as squeaky clean as I should like people to believe?

Q10. By what signs could I recognise that the people around me have gone a step too far? Would I be prepared to recognise that a line had been crossed? What would I do about it were I to see it happening?

***

The following poem is widely attributed to Pastor Martin Niemöller (1892–1984) about the inactivity of German intellectuals following the Nazi rise to power and the purging of their chosen targets, group after group.

Original

Translation

Als die Nazis die Kommunisten holten, habe ich geschwiegen; ich war ja kein Kommunist. Als sie die Sozialdemokraten einsperrten, habe ich geschwiegen; ich war ja kein Sozialdemokrat. Als sie die Gewerkschafter holten, habe ich nicht protestiert; ich war ja kein Gewerkschafter. Als sie die Juden holten, habe ich geschwiegen; ich war ja kein Jude. Als sie mich holten, gab es keinen mehr, der protestieren konnte.

When the Nazis came for the communists, I remained silent; I was not a communist. When they locked up the social democrats, I remained silent; I was not a social democrat. When they came for the trade unionists, I did not speak out; I was not a trade unionist. When they came for the Jews, I remained silent; I wasn't a Jew. When they came for me, there was no one left to speak out.

***

In 2003, American punk rock band NoFX paraphased the poem in the song "Re-gaining Unconsciousness" on the album War on Errorism

First they put away the dealers,

keep our kids safe and off the street.

Then they put away the prostitutes,

keep married men cloistered at home.

Then they shooed away the bums,

then they beat and bashed the queers,

turned away asylum-seekers,

fed us suspicions and fears.

We didn't raise our voice,

we didn't make a fuss.

It's funny there was no one left to notice

when they came for us.

***

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil, is for good men to do nothing." (frequently misattributed to Edmund Burke.)

***

14:50 Wednesday 16 July 2008, Cafe, Murray Library, Sunderland

My sister visited Auschwitz-Birkenau last weekend. I am filled with tears simply imagining the experience. I wish never to visit the place which is as close to hell as I ever need to hear about. Besides, my credentials go a long way to excusing me the ordeal. As a lifelong pacifist, a Quaker for 25 years and a vegan for nearly 15 years, it would be difficult to mistake where I stand on issues relating to the wickednesses perpetrated in that evil place. On most of the occasions when I have visited Amsterdam I have been in the Anne Frank House, which I have also browsed online. I have visited the holocaust memorials in both Paris (several times) and in Berlin (where I should also like to visit the new memorial to the gay people who were murdered by the Nazi regime). Also in Berlin I have twice visited the harrowing Topography of Terror exhibition next to the Martin Gropius House. In both Sunderland (Crowtree Centre) and Newcastle (a gallery off Pilgrim Street) I have attended holocaust exhibitions. I have not only attended the anti-apartheid demonstration outside the South African Embassy in London when white-skinned people ruled South Africa, but I have also picketed Barclays Bank in Durham for its collusion with the apartheid regime. Perhaps more controversially, I make a point of reading the website of the far right British National Party in order to understand their poison. I have attended anti-racist training workshops, although I have never led any. However, I have led gay-awareness and mental health awareness workshops. My daughter has multiple disabilities, and as one response, I use British Sign Language. During the first five years of my life I was brought up in close proximity to a Jewish family (Marion and David Bernard and their three children) in north-west London. As a counsellor I have examined in detailed, and hold up for ongoing examination, my opinions, attitudes and thoughts. As a Quaker, my beliefs are subject to perpetual examination. Superficially, then, my credentials appear kosher. However, I have written almost nothing about any of this in a way that positions me in relation to other people - I rarely stand up to be counted. I am, in fact, indistinguishable from the narrator or Niemöller's poem. Neither do I do much that makes a practical, positive difference. It is not sufficient that I have a preference for the light of truth and love, and that I reject the darkness of ignorance, fear and hatred. I have lost sight of the fact that it is my duty to be creating light, and my responsibility to be shining as a beacon against the darkness of falsehood and hypocrisy. Compared to the bleak days of the 1930s and 1940s, I live in blessed times. Compared to the darkness that enshrouds the populations of Zimbabwe, Burma and North Korea, the UK is "summertime, and the living is easy" ... but I have, for too long, chosen to sit on my hands. My comfortably-won credentials do not, in fact, excuse me from visiting Auschwitz-Birkenau. The first question for me to ask now is whether I am able to stir myself into action before making that grim pilgrimage.

Some thoughts about a non-religious ethical framework

This post is in the process of being moved to its own website:

http://www.newethicalframework.googlepages.com/home


Some thoughts about a non-religious ethical framework

Introduction

It is my fantasy that in times long past, when life for most people was uneducated, tough and frighteningly easy to lose, the various Christian churches played an important role in developing an ‘ethical framework’ that has led to what is currently the aging ‘ethical scaffolding’ of UK and western society. However, despite their former value to society, the role of churches passed its sell-by date at least a century or two ago. Our world is not the simple, fixed world of Genesis, although there are many in different churches who would have it otherwise. Our complex world is the creation of Copernicus, Galileo, da Vinci, Newton, Lavoisier, Priestley, Lyall, Hume, Watt, Stephenson, Armstrong, Darwin, Curie, Rutherford, Einstein, Marconi, Freud, Crick, Watson, Pauling, Sagan, Hawking, Berners-Lee, Gates and ten thousand others.

The vacuum left by the departure of the churches from the centre ground of social existence has long now been occupied by a consumerist materialism (including the use of legal and illegal stimulants), the consumption of passive and voyeuristic entertainment (Hello-style journalism and television), and an obsession with glamour and celebrity (including royalty), sport and get-rich-quick competition. I believe that the ethical values to which these concerns point serve well the organisations that profit from them, and serve poorly the needs of ordinary people to negotiate the hurdles, perils and disappointments of life, and to live satisfying and fulfilling lives.

It is also possible to hear much criticism of some churches for providing too little public steer on issues of the day, and yet encounter other churches (e.g. fundamentalist Right and the conservative Amish in the US; Jehovah's Witnesses in the UK), and religious sects (e.g. the Taleban in Afghanistan; radical Madrassas in Pakistan) that insist on such a rigid steer that individual people are granted little freedom, and non-followers may be at risk (e.g. attacks on doctors who run abortion clinics in the US; Islamic terrorism). A new ethical framework would encourage searching for information and understanding when considering contemporary issues, would prize compassion, and would provide the principles for addressing the issues.

Although a non-religious ethical framework would in time replace past religious ethical structures, it would also build on many aspects of their insights, ideas and philosophy. For example, the Mosaic 'commandments' and the Christian 'beatitudes', although expressed in a manner unattractive to many people, address a wealth of important ideas such as respect for self, for family members, for community, for people who are disempowered or powerless, for strangers. Lifting rocks that now overlie the variously-identified virtues and vices (for example, the 'seven deadly sins' and their complementary virtues), long-mocked because of the sham and hypocritical authority to which people were made accountable, reveals a treasure trove of personal values. Buddhism is built on an impressive foundation of ideas and values. However, this is not to suggest that a non-religious ethical framework would be merely an eclectic hotch-potch of recycled ideas. It is important that the framework would be underpinned both by a deep existential philosophy, and some congruent theoretical principles.

Sin

Within a new ethical framework there would be only a weak concept of sin. Instead there would be both the recognition that most people most of the time are doing what they think best. If they are acting in ways that others consider to be wrong, there is likely to be a reason for it. However, the person who is acting in a manner than meets with the opprobrium of others may be acting out of a lack of compassion for other people. One of the central tenets of a new ethical framework would be the explicit balancing of looking after self with compassion for other people: neither total selfishness nor total selflessness are sufficient. Therefore the concept of sin would be largely relegated to a need for a rebalancing. Similarly, a new ethical framework would avoid generating a sense of guilt. Not only would there be no concept of original sin, but the entire framework would try to avoid opportunities for feelings of guilt. A new ethical framework would be tolerant of personal weakness (e.g. transgression and superstition).

Law

A new ethical framework for society would not replace legislation. This is important for several reasons. First, legislation is usually about requirements and prohibitions, whereas a new ethical framework would attempt to be empowering. Second, legislation is mostly made at the national, regional and local levels, often reflecting the will of the people, whereas a new ethical framework would attempt to be universal. Third, most legislation is about protecting other people (recognising that to eveyone else, I am also 'other people'), whereas a new ethical framework would focus on self , and would almost certainly propose much higher standards of conduct than is usually required under legislation. It might be hoped that a new ethical framework would, in time, influence legislation.

Texts

A new ethical framework would not be a code, or rule, by which to live. It is important that the spirit of the framework, not the words used to describe it, is what is prized. Therefore, there would not be one text alone that defined the ethical framework. Indeed, in a general sense, every text ever written, every image ever created, every movie ever made, would contribute to the understanding of the framework. For example, the written works of Adolf Hitler show us something about what can go so badly wrong, how people can so easily be scapegoated, and how easy it can be to slip into that way of being. The 'Godfather' movies may show us that a thoroughly despicable ordering of society offers attractions that may beguile. However, much more specifically there would need to be some comprehensive texts that outlined, explained and described the framework. Like some temples and shrines in Japan, and like many dictionaries, these texts would be extended, revised and updated with regularity and frequency. These texts would be publicly available online. There may need to be simple texts for people with little education, whether young or not, texts aimed at educated adults, and texts for more academic people, as well as co-ordination between the texts. There would also need to be a vast, annotated 'reading' list pointing people to existing works that could help to explore specific issues. Included in this list would be the religious texts of the major religions the world over: the Tao Teh Ching, the Baghavad Gita, the Bible, the Koran, the later Sikh Gurus, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, and so on. Each annotation would caution against revering individuals in such a way as to sanctify, or worse, deify, them.

Values

I should like to contribute to the development of a new, positive, dynamic, responsive ethical framework, wrested from the clutches of institutions such as the church, state and corporate capitalism. This new ethical framework would be based on the altruistic values of charities, the internationalism of NGOs, the work values of trusts and co-operatives, the environmental values of Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, the relationship values of person-centred counselling, the social awareness values of minority cohesion groups, the justice values of community action groups, the self-improvement values of the WEA and the Open University, spiced with a celebration of craft and artistic endeavours of all kinds.

Putting together the above, how is it to be presented? The written and oral traditions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, condensed into rigid canons, have become weapons with which to defend and attack. That is a bad model. Deification of a person or a cabal is an even worse idea. The new ethical framework would need to be flexible enough to be expanded/contracted and changed to respond adequately to circumstances. It would be in the hands of many, and not merely an elite, but neither would it be merely populist (no 'beauty-contest' cell-phone voting).

Some words describing the ethos of the ethical framework

Harmony, resonance, spiritual, inspiration, aspiration

Compassion, love, truth, authenticity

Diversity, heterogeneity, pluralism

Path, way, journey

An ethical framework for the everyday and for seeking deeper meaning

One of the faults of much organised religion is that it attributes greater significance to people who are able to engage more fully in religious activities and who are able to run the organisation: popes and bishops, imams and rabbis, priests and monks. A new ethical framework would not focus on the individual but on processes. A person might involve themselves for much of the time at an everyday level of ethical awareness, for example taking decisions informed by their ethical principles. That same individual might spend some time seeking after deeper meaning. On other occasions that some person might lead others in their exploration. Although many religious clergy might claim that they are no more special than any member of their congregation, that is not how most people view them. The new ethical framework, in focusing on processes, would refuse role titles, and would only describe processes. These processes would include:

everyday functioning

seeking truth / meaning

leading others in their search for truth / meaning

Person and self

A deep respect for self would be good, so that self-aggrandisement at the expense of other becomes no longer necessary. Self-development would become a permanent aspiration, and counselling would be seen as a valuable activity in which to participate. The material, emotional, intellectual and spiritual needs (Maslow) of each person would be elevated. Without safety, food and a place to live, a person has little opportunity to achieve their full potential.

Relationship to others

To replace the sneering, contemptuous, cynical, exploitative attitude that appears to pervade public discourse worldwide, a new ethical framework would focus on one's relationships with family, community and society, alongside a deep respect for people. Courtesy and politness, as found in Japan, would be prized. Fundamentally permissive, a new ethical framework would prize social diversity, and would consider social conformity to be unnecessary and often unhelpful. Nationalism in any form would not be encouraged at the everyday level of processing, and at other levels of processing would be discouraged.

A respect that acknowledges their experience, their story, their aspirations, their reality. The Kantian ethical principles of beneficence, non-maleficence and justice would serve well, providing a framework for looking after family, neighbour, community, society, the world community and the natural environment. Attitudes of self-respect, humility and giving dignity could replace the Pop Idol -type aspirations that has come to infect the 21st century West.

Relationship with the natural environment

There would also be a deep respect for the natural world, including land, sea and air, animals and plants. To pollute would be as though to soil one's own home. To treat living things callously would be as though to treat one's parents, siblings and children with contempt.

Spiritual dimension

Esteemed places are already reserved for wonder, awe and mystery. Superstition, however, will play no part in this new, humanist ethic, neither pagan astrology nor theistic beliefs. Souls, an after-life and reincarnation will be acknowledged as concepts that distract and make truth more elusive. From dust my body was formed, and to dust it will return. From oblivion I was created, nurtured into awareness, until I am annihilated. De facto, I live the interval between oblivion and annihilation in a spirit shaped by interaction. Like piano strings resonating to sounds in the environment, my spirit resonates with the spirits of others, and maybe in turn causes the spirits of yet others to resonate. Spirit may live on, through dance, images, music, words, and for a short while in memory. However, at death my life is over: there is no longer an 'I', no 'me', no awareness. No place for the concept of an immortal soul.

Nor is there any requirement for a god. The concept of a deity is unhelpful as it turns away from the spirit. Therefore there would be no need for mediators of religion in the form of priests, bishops or popes. However, a new ethical framework would be permissive, for whilst not requiring theistic and other religious beliefs, neither would it exclude the believer. A new ethical framework would also permit a personal morality to sit within the framework.

Geology versus new creationism

I recently received the following e-mail. The e-mail was unsolicited, from someone who does not know me and about whom I know nothing. No explanation was offered as to the reason why the e-mail was being sent to me, nor what prompted its dispatch.

***

Hello,

I wish to inform you that the so-called "biblical calculations" of the age of the Earth at 6009 years old is grossly inaccurate and compiled by dubious scholars. The bible's literal time frame allows perfectly for a very old world.

Very few people realize that the creation of the cosmos and the reordering of the world in seven days are two different events. Genesis 1:2 should actually be translated "the earth became formless and void," not "the earth was formless and void." The author of Genesis did not have all the different states of being in the past tense that we do today. English has evolved such that we have "was," "had been," "were being," "became," "had become," "were becoming." Moses (assuming his was the author) used the same word, sometimes rendered "was", sometimes rendered "became."

The creation of the world is Genesis 1:1. It was written very tersely and briefly; Moses, insprired by God, felt no need to get into detail about it. There was a fall in this created world, and it descended into chaos in 1:2 (we don't know exactly what caused the fall, but it may indeed have been Lucifer's (Satan's) rebellion against God). The seven days, which many people inproperly refer to as "the Creation," was God's restoration of the world into what we know it as, with plants and animals, periods of the Sun and Moon, humankind etc.

Thus there is an indefinite time specified between the Creation and the restoration of six days. The harmonists that try to argue that God may have created the world to appear old in every way against science to test our faith should stop wasting their time. The need look no further than Genesis 1:1-2 to see that God created the world an unspecified time before the six days of restoration. If today's science says the Earth is 4.6 billion years old, which they have to in order for Darwinian evolution to have had enough time, then that massive amount of time in human terms would be mostly before the 6 days of restoration.

Lastly, this doesn't mean that from restoration onward there have been 6009 years. (By the way, the 6009 years was counted many years ago, so it should be several decades higher now.) This time frame was mostly derived from adding the years of Adam to Abraham, Abraham to Jacob, Jacob to Jesus to attain the years of the ancient world. As recorded by Matthew, often unimportant generations are skipped. He wrote in three sets of 14 generations. However, comparing it to Luke's astonishingly historically accurate gospel, we realize that Matthew indeed skipped generations unimportant to achieve his literary form of 3 times 14 (Luke skipped one or two from Matthew's as well). This is fine, because "son of" actually is considered to be "descendant of," as in Jesus the Son of Adam or Jesus the Son of David. In sum, don't use archeaology's established views of 10000 years of human civilization to disprove the 6000 years in the bible that some oddball scholars decided to enumerate.

Thanks.

***

I can only imagine that the person, whose e-mail address suggested that the author is based in western Canada (a gorgeous part of the world that I look forward to returning to some day), has read some of my weblog postings in which I include minor geological references.

I studied geology for three years at university, and recently read the history of the drawing of the first geological map of Great Britain. I live on the site of a Victorian coal mine. I take an interest in geology wherever I go, including examining the stone facias of buildings, and (much to the resigned boredom of my wife and daughter) watch every geology programme that is broadcast on UK television (including the repeats). I am fascinated with the European, Russian, Japanese and American space programmes, closely following each mission on the internet (and for recreation, using Google Earth, I sometimes locate the International Space Station), because I have an interest in lunar and planetary geology.

The Big Bang occurred 13,700 million years ago, creating the universe and all matter within it. Red shift in the spectra of the most distant objects, and residual microwave cosmic radiation shows us the age of the universe (since the Big Bang). Many galaxies and stars are much younger than the age of the universe. Our solar system, the Sun, its planets and dwarf planets, their moons, the asteroids and comets, were all formed out of stellar dust only 4,600 million years ago. Radioactive decay paths and rates show us (for example the half-life of uranium-238 decaying to thorium-234 is 4,500 million years) that many of the rocks in orbit around the Sun date from the time of formation of the solar system: some of them have landed on Earth and on the Moon as meteorites and can be seen on display in museums.

Planet Earth initially coalesced from the solar cloud of stellar dust and debris 4,540 million years ago. Early in its life, when only 10 million years old, proto-Earth, the planet that became Earth, was struck by another small planet (often called Theia). The result was the Earth we know today, made of the two previous planets, and the separation of Earth and the Moon. The Moon, being significantly smaller, cooled rapidly and lost its geological processes, so the Moon we know today has remained utterly unchanged in most respects for billions of years. Earth, on the other hand, being so larger, cooled more slowly, and thermal processes in the core and mantle keep the surface of the Earth geologically active - witness the Boxing Day tsunami. When I studied geology at university in the 1970s, plate tectonics was still new, and still being discovered and proved. I could have applied to work a stint on one of the ships that was still mapping the mid-Atlantic Ridge (the constructive boundary between the European and North American sides of the Atlantic Ocean).

Also back in the 1970s, it was generally held that life really got going on Earth about 500 million years ago, everything before that being termed Pre-Cambrian. I recall being taken to see the Durness Limestone, a rock formation in northern Scotland where there is evidence of Pre-Cambrian unicelluar organisms. At the time this was interesting, and slightly worrying. However, it is now recognised that unicellular life actually got going about 3,500 million years ago, that is, only a billion years or so after the formation of the solar system, and possibly only half a billion years after the planetary collision that formed the Earth and Moon. It was in fact multi-cellular life that got going 500 million years ago, including, for example, the fascinating trilobites. The animals that are everyone's favourite, the dinosaurs, appeared about 135 million years ago, flourished for 60 million years, and then progressively disappeared until finally vanishing altogether (other than those that evolved into birds) with the Yucatan asteroid 65 million years ago. Whilst mammals existed before the dinosaurs, they did not flourish until the dinosaurs had left the stage.

The primate pre-cursor to humankind diverged from ancestral gorillas about 8 million years ago, and from ancestral chimpanzees, about 5 million years ago. Several different human species evolved, including Neanderthal humans who existed from 350,000 years ago to 30,000 years ago. Over the past 100 thousand years modern humans (like ourselves) and Neanderthal humans coexisted for a while, of which there is recently-discovered evidence in southern Spain / Gibraltar. However, the most recent ice age finished off the Neanderthal humans, leaving us to piece together the story, and sadly to vandalise the Earth.

The astronomical and geological story of the universe, our galaxy, our solar system, our home planet, and life, is one of surprising twists and turns, full of wonder and seeming miracle. I find it fascinating and deeply inspiring. What is more, I am not required to suspend my disbelief, nor to believe any person or text, neither am I required to hold articles of faith. The evidence is in the rock, and I can search it out for myself. The proof of the geological history of Earth, and of the development of life, is not in words, in a book, but beneath my feet.

I recognise the poetry of Genesis 1, and resonate with the reverence for Earth and life that it evokes. I wish that many more people shared that reverence. However, there is little value to be gained in attempting to wring scientific precision from the passage, for that would be to mistake Genesis 1 for scientific reality. It would be like wondering whether the toilets on the starship Enterprise are water flush or vacuum and disinfectant: Star Trek is a fine drama but it is not a documentary.

I do not know why the author of the unsolicited e-mail chooses to fret about misunderstandings, mistranslations and misreadings of Genesis 1; and to be insistent that creation happened in more than a single period of six days; and was concerned to let me know. I imagine that they wish to promote a marginally more credible Creation story. As far as I am concerned, the astronomical, geological, palaeontological and archaeological stories that I have come to know are far more awe-inspiring that any text. In this context, what the books of the Pentateuch teaches us is how Iron Age people in the Middle East conceptualised the natural world in which they lived. The value of scriptural texts is not in the realms of science, but as a dialogue about human values and spirituality. Asteroids and granite are unable to speak to me about meaning, mercy or compassion, whereas with the Bible, Koran and the Tao Teh Ching, I am able to have a conversation about how I might live my life, the choices I make, and how I might interact with other people. Ecclesiastes 3 says little of geological value (the reference to gathering and scattering stones relates to home-making and moving on), but says much about accepting the just-is-ness of existence. Job 28 does address geology, and whilst the purpose of the passage is to emphasise the unfathomableness of the wisdom of God, the value of the passage lies in the awe that it inspires for our planet, not because the passage is of scientific value. Genesis 1 belongs in this latter category.