Bruce Charlton's Notions

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Comment - I could have summarized this argument more briefly simply by stating that liars should not be trusted; or that any argument strong enough to throw out the evidence that humans have adapted in response to selection will also throw out not just the rest of science, but also common sense. However, for a Leftist, this outcome is a feature, not a bug.

Also, I now perceive that this entire anti-adaptationism strand emerged from the New Left, affirmative action, 'equal outcomes' evolution of progressive politics from the mid-1960s; and the consequent political need to suppress a century of research into IQ and personality differences between human groups.

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From Behavioural and Brain Sciences 1999; 22: 889

Abstract: Steven Rose regards oversimplification of biology as the supreme sin, inevitably leading to evil consequences, and requiring an unique distortion of scientific practice to avoid it. To avoid this, he proposes a short-cut to scientific knowledge by defining certain areas of biology that are intrinsically flawed. But this achieves only a subordination of science to politics. There are no general-purpose shortcuts for evaluating the validity of theories, and no substitutes for testing specific theories using relevant evidence.

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Steven Rose is against “reductionism” in science. For his major example, he invents a theoretical framework termed “ultra-Darwinism” and characterized by intellectual bankruptcy and moral depravity.

The insistent refrain of Lifelines is: “things are more complex than that.”

But this is not enough, because in science things are always more complex than that – science is a search for simplified, unifying theories. The proper question is whether or not the simplification is useful, whether or not the simple model works as a theory, whether its consequences are consistent with the test of further observations.

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Hence it is clear that what Rose objects to is inappropriate simplification, rather than simplification per se. But inappropriate simplification is merely a type of bad science – simplification is inappropriate when it does not work. So, Rose is against bad science.

Nothing controversial about that. The problem then becomes: how can we tell bad science from good? How can we tell oversimplification from the right amount of simplification?

To paraphrase Einstein: theories should be as simple as possible, but no simpler. In other words, we should simplify as much as possible (because simple models are more rigorously testable and more useful), but we will know that a scientific theory is oversimplified when its consequences are inconsistent with structured observation.

An oversimplified theory will not be predictive, because it has missed out important variables. Simplification is bad only when it does not work. In opposing oversimplification, however, Rose conflates the pragmatic and the ethical. For Rose, oversimplification in biology is evidence of moral depravity. He does not accept that any wickedness due to oversimplification is accidental; he is trying to argue for a special logical link such that oversimplification inevitably leads to evil consequences. Implicitly, he sees oversimplification as the supreme sin, requiring an unique distortion of scientific practice to avoid it.

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Rose is transfixed by a specific ethical danger: that biological theories about human being may be oversimplified and that such oversimplified biological theories are more likely to be misinterpreted, misapplied, and used to justify moral harm than are any other sorts of theory.

With this in mind, throughout Lifelines Rose is trying to find a formula by which we might know in advance of testing whether a biological theory is oversimplified. The idea is that theories and scientists grouped under the ultra-Darwinist umbrella will be condemned a priori.

It seems to me that Rose wants to do this in order that the general public (who lack specific scientific knowledge) can prevent themselves from being hoodwinked by repressive political propaganda, probably right-wing, that is masquerading as science.

In trying to rule out this particular source of harm, Rose has implicitly set himself the task of constructing a general-purpose shortcut to measuring the truth of scientific theories – to know whether a theory is valid or vapid without having to go through all the hard work of reading, understanding, observing, and experimenting. In other words, Rose is seeking a shortcut to scientific knowledge.

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If I am right about the fundamentally ethical drive behind the writing of Lifelines, this would explain why Rose hardly seems to have read about, let alone made the intellectual effort to understand, the major work in evolutionary biology over the past 20 years. Yet this has been a period of remarkable progress during which the theory and practice of evolutionary biology had been transformed. A few of these major advances are name-checked; but never explicated, engaged with, or refuted.

Throughout Lifelines, Rose fails to confront the best and most recent scientific work and attacks obviously inferior studies, garbled media reports of research, or old papers from the 1960s and 1970s that have often (as is the way for most science) since been revised or superseded.

This is merely shooting fish in a barrel.

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Mistakes may be forgiven in a book of this scope. But some are evidence of a failure to do the elementary homework necessary for a person who is purporting to critique and redirect evolutionary biology. For example, on page 227 Rose writes “to cling to ‘the gene’ as the sole unit and level of selection under these circumstances, as Maynard Smith and the ultra-Darwinists do, seems perverse.” Well, it happens to be the case that Maynard Smith is co-author of a book (Maynard Smith & Szathmary 1995) called The major transitions in evolution (which was also published as an essay in Nature; Szathmary & Maynard Smith 1995) – a major work on exactly the topic of the many units and levels of selection that Maynard Smith is supposed to have perversely ignored.

Maynard Smith’s book forms part of a significant branch of mainstream evolutionary biology that includes important work by David L. Hull, Richard Dawkins, and some others who are elsewhere categorized in Lifelines as being among the single-gene-obsessed ultra-Darwinists.

Perhaps Rose does not know this work or understand its implications – or perhaps he knows but has excluded it. Whatever the explanation, this line of evolutionary research torpedoes Rose’s major argument. Scientists like Maynard Smith have already achieved a level of understanding of multi-level selection and interaction far beyond that called for in Lifelines.

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Evolutionary biology is a science like any other, if it is allowed to be. It should not be treated as a special case. Blending ethical and social criticism with science, as Rose does, is a recipe for dishonesty and double standards. He has subordinated human biology to politics, and is mainly concerned to fit human biological knowledge into a pre-existing agenda of what is acceptable.

By contrast, I would argue that biology is oversimplified only when it is untrue; and not because simple theories are uniquely susceptible to misapplication. An oversimplification of human nature might be used to justify repression; but then again, tortured casuistic logic or a denial of human nature can be used to justify repression with equal facility. Hence, “reductionism” and “ultra-Darwinism” are merely boo-words, and are irrelevant to the proper practice of science.

The validity of a specific theory can only be determined by the laborious work of evaluating its consequences on the basis of specific relevant evidence. There are no short cuts to science, and no substitutes for substantive knowledge.

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As I have mentioned before, I don't read many novels these days - but one author I return to with renewed delight is Barbara Pym (1913-1980).

I find her early books (those written up to the time of the posthumously published An Unsuitable Attachment) to be completely enjoyable: even after several readings.

The type is 'comedy of manners' - with a generally satirical edge.

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I hesitate to 'recommend' Pym as her subject matter is so narrow: the doings of a thin social stratum of lower-Upper Class English people in the middle of the Twentieth Century - a world of librarians, minor academics, anthropologists and editors, spinsters and their paid companions, 'distressed gentlefolk'; and the High Anglo-Catholic church with its Archdeacons, vicars, and especially the young as-yet-unmarried curates - who are often the romantic interest. In sum, the the exact world of the author's own experience.

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But after a few re-readings I became aware that the underlying motivation of the novels was almost the opposite of their surface.

Because Pym writes so much about church life - from its services to its fund-raising 'jumble sales' - that when I was an atheist I had assumed Pym was a Christian.

But I now perceive there is not the slightest molecule of faith in her books. So rather than being about the Christian life, they form a very detailed representation of an a-religious society built mostly around the church and its activities.

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And, although Pym writes about 'romance' - in that (as with all classical comedies) the books tend to be about courtship leading towards marriage; they are anti-romantic, since there is a strong anti-man animus which arises from the fact that her heroines are only attracted by men they dislike.

Indeed, Pym's women seem to be motivated almost wholly by the looks of the men, almost without regard to their character or position; although there is also (and this is more usual) an attraction to high status.

So there is a sense of men as irresistibly attractive beings to whom a woman is drawn - and to whom she offers the sacrifice of her love, time, indeed her whole life - expressed in one novel in terms of a recurrent trope that 'men need meat' - giving the man the best meat and the largest share of meat, in a time of rations and shortages.

Men, on the other hand, are unaware of the fact that they are cosseted and privileged by women, simply take for granted that women are serving them left, right and centre.

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This perspective on the relation between the sexes is peculiar and essentially false - and I think, almost unique to Barbara Pym. In a nutshell, it is inverted: that the average reality is one in which men are attracted to women for their looks (mostly) and good looking women are pursued and privileged and cosseted (even though they may be unaware of this, may take it for granted).

Pym's autobiography makes clear that this was, however, her own experience; and one which dominated - and in a sense ruined - her own life.

As so often with women geniuses there is, therefore, a strongly masculine aspect to Pym: as evidenced by her male-like sexual attraction for looks she herself felt and which she incorporated into her novels; and her inverted world in which the men were the courted sex.  

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But it does make for good novels and much humour. (And bears similarity to the world of Bernard Shaw's plays and novels, where the same inversion is seen; but presumably for opposite reasons.)

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It is possible that Pym's perspective was exacerbated by her own situation in the post Great War era where there was such a shortage of upper class men, that the few remaining were competed-over; and a high proportion of upper class women never married - against their own wishes.

Barbara Pym was not herself good looking; yet she was attracted mainly by looks - so (since she was not in any serious sense a Christian) she had a love life of hopeless passions for unattainable men, and intermittent affairs with handsome wastrels, and on the fringes of the homosexual subculture (which was very much a part of the Anglo-Catholic church by that time).

It was these bottled resentments and frustrations which - in her youth at any rate, when there was energy and freshness, and when she seemed uncannily to forsee her own likely future - led to the edge of the humour in her novels.

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At any rate, she is one of the absolute favorite novelists I have discovered in later life, and one of the most wholly-enjoyable.

And perhaps it is this strange paradox - whereby the obvious surface level is so utterly contradicted by the implicit subtext - that makes her books endlessly re-readable.

If Pym had had the slightest glimmer of Christian belief, she might have made an excellent (Anglican) nun; but this was never on the cards, and she lived for her writing; which life was sadly cut-off by her inability to publish Unsuitable Attachment. 

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Recommended books - any of the early work, none of the later work; but my favourites are Excellent Women, Less than Angels and No Fond Return of Love.

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I find this kind of music utterly marvellous and deeply spiritual.

It was originally English, went to New England then spread to survive mainly in the Deep South.

But this is a truly great poem by Charles Wesley - "And am I born to die?" done by an American Indian choir.

What happens is that the choir breaks into the four voices (treble, alto, tenor, bass) in an inward-facing square. (The music is designed for participation - not passive listening).

First the choir tunes to a chord, then sings the notes in a kind of tonicsolfa, then sings the words: you need to read the words as you listen.

The style is almost wholly based on block chords, with not much in the way of melody.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fU_QFvkPJvw

Lots more on this website

http://fasola.org/

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Excerpts from his first statement:

http://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/articles.php/2692/#Audio

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I want to say at once that one of the biggest challenges is to follow a man who I believe will be recognised as one of the greatest Archbishops of Canterbury, Rowan Williams. He is some one with a deep love for Jesus Christ, an infectious spirituality, extraordinary integrity and holiness, immense personal moral and physical courage, and of course one of the world's principal theologians and philosophers...

Comment: "one of the greatest Archbishops of Canterbury" - This ludicrous remark is a combination of dishonesty, incompetence and ignorance.

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The work of the Church of England is not done primarily on television or at Lambeth, but in over 16,000 churches, where hundreds of thousands of people get on with the job they have always done of loving neighbour, loving each other and giving more than 22 million hours of voluntary service outside the church a month.

Comment - It is significant that he does not mention among these secular activities anything Christian that churches should do; such as worship, Biblical teaching or evangelism.

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We have seen the wonderful hospitality and genius of the people in this country inside and outside the church during this marvellous year of Jubilee and Olympics.

Comment: What in Heavens name has the Olympics to do with the Church of England?

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Because of that vast company of serving Anglicans, together those in other churches, I am utterly optimistic about the future of the church.

 Comment: any serious reader will switch off at this point. Optimism is believing that things will turn-out well, and has nothing whatsoever to do with Christianity (which is about hope) - but anyone who sees any grounds for optimism in the catastrophic state of the C of E is either psychotic, demented, or calculatedly dishonest: in other words anti-Christian. Only an anti-Christian could be optimistic about the future of the Church of England - which teeters on the verge of irrevocable corruption - and it is absolutely vital that its leader recognize this, and operate on this basis. 


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...The House of Bishops is very wise. 

Comment: no comment. 


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The Anglican communion, for all its difficulties, is also a source of remarkable blessing to the world. In so many countries it is one of the main sharers of reconciliation and hope in Jesus Christ. Anglicans today stand firm in faith alongside other Christians under pressure in many places, especially in northern Nigeria, a country close to my heart. 

Comment: To say that Christians are 'under pressure' in northern Nigeria is a disgusting euphemism, literally disgusting.


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...This is a time for optimism and faith in the church. 

Comment: What? The opposite is true - it is the time for Christian renewal of a horribly corrupt, wordly, expedience-driven institution which formally resembles the official 'Sergian' Russian Orthodox church under Stalin (de facto a branch of the government). 

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I know we are facing very hard issues. In 10 days or so the General Synod will vote on the ordination of women as Bishops. I will be voting in favour, and join my voice to many others in urging the Synod to go forward with this change...

Comment: This is why he got the job.


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We also face deep differences over the issue of sexuality. It is absolutely right for the state to define the rights and status of people co-habiting in different forms of relationships, including civil partnerships.  We must have no truck with any form of homophobia, in any part of the church. 

Comment: Anyone above the age of consent who uses the word 'homophobia' except in order to highlight its revolting abuse as a totalitarian weapon of nihilistic oppression is on the side of evil. But here is the most 'passionate' part of the speech - the statement of 'principle' - and a focus on a vile, commissar's weasel-word providing unambiguous evidence of his intention to persecute real Christians.


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The Church of England is part of the worldwide church, with all the responsibilities that come from those links. What the church does here deeply affects the already greatly suffering churches in places like northern Nigeria, which I know well. 

Comment: 'greatly suffering' is better than 'under pressure' - but he doesn't mention who is applying the pressure, causing the suffering...

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I support the House of Bishop's statement in the summer in answer to the government's consultation on same sex marriage. I know I need to listen very attentively to the LGBT communities, and examine my own thinking prayerfully and carefully. I am always averse to the  language of exclusion, when what we are called to is to love in the same way as Jesus Christ loves us. Above all in the church we need to create safe spaces for these issues to be discussed honestly and in love.

Comment: The bile rises. " I am always averse to the  language of exclusion' - apparently except when the exclusion is being applied to Christians. Then he is very keen on the language of exclusion - having just said "no truck with any form of homophobia, in any part of the church".

And focus on another vile, abusive, commissar's weasel word with 'LGBT': a very obviously disparate constituency, currently-united only in political demands for institutional preferences and unrelenting opposition to marriage and the family (hence real Christianity).

But when Welby says "Above all in the church we need to create safe spaces for these issues to be discussed honestly and in love." this is where he hits rock-bottom; since he is using rhetorical tricks to put his opponents beyond the pale, as if there were any real Christians who would oppose such a notion; and yet at the same time he conflates proper Christian behaviour with 'safe spaces' - accepting without argument that most of Christianity is 'unsafe' for people of non-normal sexuality; and accepting that the solution to this 'hostile' environment is an essentially bureaucratic process of allocating specific times and places and persons (as if in a school timetable) for 'these issues' - implicitly set apart from Christianity - to be 'discussed honestly' - implying that at present these issues are dishonestly discussed specifically among Christians - and 'in love' again defining the Christian problem as being lack of love. Pah!

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The first speech of the head of the third largest Christian denomination in the world is dishonest from top to bottom, inside and out.

This is utterly inexcusable from a Christian leader, and is indeed so extreme as to reveal Justin Welby as an anti-Christian; one whose energies and efforts will be devoted to subversion and elimination of the real Christian elements within the Anglican communion.

This is, in short, the last nail in the coffin of the Church of England, and the point where break-up of the denomination becomes not just a regrettable probability but a Christian necessity - the only hope for survival of Christianity within Anglicanism. 

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Well at least we know where we are, and what needs to be done.

We have gone from Archbishop Rowan, who was muddled, ineffective, pompous and mostly bored-by and indifferent-to Christianity; to Justin - who is the first systematically anti-Christian Archbishop of Canterbury.



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In listing the three greatest understanders of Christianity in my personal judgment, it should be clear that what is being judged here is me, not the vast numbers of theologians who have vastly greater insight than myself but who I have not read, or not understood.

Anyway here they are.

1. St John the Apostle and Evangelist; author of the fourth Gospel, letters and Book of Revelation. Who knew Christ, was the first to understand and recognize Christ and his ministry, the disciple whom Jesus loved - and one of the most intelligent people in the history of the world.

2. St Paul the Apostle - Aristotle to St John's Plato; a different but equal intelligence; who met the resurrected Christ and was divinely inspired.

3. Blaise Pascal. The wonder of the modern world, a gift for us. Like John and Paul he completely understood the problem of the world and the human condition; and understood that only Christ offered an answer: that there is no other answer, not even in theory.

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http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/what-is-point-of-tale-of-turin-turambar.html

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So much bad news for Christians, from so many quarters - yet not unexpected, simply a confirmation and clarification that things are not about to get better.

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(Things will not get better by stealth or behind the scenes. If there is a renewal, a reversal of the trend of decades, then it will be preceded by a cataclysmic wave of public, explicit repentance - something that could not and would not be hidden. It's not the kind of thing we would only discover from the voting in an election; not the kind of thing we would need to read about in the newspapers. It would be obvious - for those with eyes to see - wherever we turned.)

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I find some sense of relief in knowing that the uncertainty is over, concealments are being cast-aside and the all-out onslaught has begun: the onslaught of Leftism on Christianity; principally on the marriage and family, as constituting the basis of the Christian life.

This is where the hammer blows are falling thick and fast.

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(Naturally, since we are dealing with the Left, this is being done dishonestly and indirectly - by means of promoting anything and everything that is not marriage and the family, by weakening marriage and the family due to the miseries it inflicts upon individuals, or due to the misery of those who don't have them, of due to... oh any club will do the job. e.g. 'The family' is media-portrayed - implicitly and by statement - as a hotbed of violence and abuse, by reporting the violence and abuse inflicted by non-family members and casual sexual acquaintances and stating that this is family. And so on.) 

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What should we do?

Not try to stop it. Did that work?

Don't cooperate with it? Yes, of course, absolutely: do the right thing (emphasis on 'do').

But strategic political activity cannot be beneficial because the people are unrepentantly evil; they do not acknowledge their own evil.  How, then, could politics lead to anything but more evil (political organizations being staffed almost entirely by people who publicly, explicitly, aggressively want evil things?)

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Know our enemies, know that they are enemies.

Don't try to win by argument - arguments can only be won from shared premises, we Christians do not share premises with secular Leftists (and secular Leftists are almost everybody. When you are arguing in public, not just the arguer, but the mass of the audience will be hostile to you).

If it cannot be avoided, and if you must argue; then for Heavens sake argue from explicitly Christian premises.

"We are Christians, we believe xyz, therefore want what we want and not what they want, because we are Christians."

("And if you are not a Christian, then you cannot understand. If you want to understand, please become a Christian. Please.")

That is the essential argument, that should be the basis of every argument: that is what must be made clear. 

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What's in a face? Quite a lot, as a rule.

Is this the face of a leader?

The new Archbishop of Canturbury

Or the previous Archbishop of C:


What possible hope can their be for a church whose leaders - at a time of desperate crisis LOOK LIKE THAT.

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Twas not always thus. Christian leaders of the past varies in their physiognomy - but they were bull-necked tough guys, or obviously Holy, or shrewd and subtle, or intense types, or inclined to the Friar Tuck:

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It seems that a chap called Justin Welby is going to become the leader of the third largest Christian denomination in the world (my denomination...) - a man who makes-up in inexperience what he lacks in distinction; and who - if he fails to display any visible sign of exceptional holiness - is an accomplished bureaucrat.

It is hard to imagine a less inspiring or hopeful choice for the job.

The appointment is an absolutely typical outcome of committee voting, since I doubt if there was any single individual on the panel (or indeed in the whole Anglican Communion) who would have had Welby as their first choice; so we have a person who has the position purely because anybody better met-up-with intransigent opposition.

On thing seems for certain: the Holy Ghost had nothing to do with it.

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Having read Fr Seraphim Rose, Peter Kreeft and Rupert Sheldrake on the subject of angels; I was surprised to discover Billy Graham had written a book on the subject (Angels: God's secret agents). I was even more surprised at how excellent the book is.

I had always (and long since before I became a Christian) pretty much dismissed Billy Graham as being corny and somehow manipulative - I personally hate large crowds, and the idea of going around preaching to vast hordes and trying to bring people to make a public conversion seemed, somehow, wrong.

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Well, even though it certainly would not suit me, I am forced to admit that I was probably the one who was wrong.

At any rate, Billy Graham's book is evidence of a sincere and deep Christianity; and displays many gifts of memorable exposition.

As might be expected, Graham's account is strongly focused on the Scriptural evidence (whereas, by contrast, the other accounts of angels have given most attention to Aquinas, Dionysious the Aeropagite and the early church Fathers plus more recent Saints. But the conclusions are very much the same.

Angels are seen as very important, and it is beneficial for the Christian to know something of them and their activities.

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The only major difference between Graham and the Roman and Eastern Catholic accounts of angels, is that Graham specifically states at one point: "We are not to pray to angels. Nor are we to engage in 'a voluntary humility and worshiping' of them. Only the Triune God is to be the object of our worship and prayers."

My interpretation (as one who does pray to angels) is different; that we are not required to pray to angels (as we are required to pray to God).

But that prayer is a form of communion, not of worship - and that since angels exist it is reasonable that we commune with them through prayer. Indeed, it is hard to imagine how else their presence might be acknowledged.

There is a potential danger of idolatry, of course; but any serious Christian will know the infinite difference between God and any other potential object of prayer (angels, Saints and other departed souls, the Blessed Virgin Mary)

Plus, of course, any strong prohibition on prayer to angels will thereby reject many or most of the Holiest Christians who lived - before the Reformation and in parts of the world outwith Protestant churches. I therefore regard a strong prohibition as self-refuting - while accepting that among new Christians and weak Christians, any prayer life other than a focus on God via Christ could be misleading and hazardous.

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Still, this is probably the only passage in the book which would evoke significant disagreement among Christians - and it is only three sentences!

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Most importantly I have been delighted (belatedly) to discover the worth of the world's most famous evangelist - and to have benefited from his wisdom and insight.

And what I take away is that even the most evangelical of Protestants has a more 'catholic' view of the world than most would expect; acknowledging the world as alive and filled with unseen presences (good and evil) engaged in spiritual battle, focused upon Man, helping and hindering, strengthening and attacking...

Furthermore, Graham expounds clearly and strongly the idea of the Christian as one adopted into God's family.

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So, the combination of joining a Heavenly family, and of the world as filled with intelligences, means that Graham's style of Protestantism is rich, various and personal; and would have the Christian 'at home in the world' - in relationship with the world - in a manner that Protestants have often been said not to allow; so that Graham's vision of earthly life seems somewhat 'medieval' in the good sense, for instance as described in C.S Lewis's The Discarded Image. 

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Voting is a Leftist process. The outcome of a vote has zero intrinsic validity because it has zero personal responsibility.

Therefore when the Left engages in voting fraud, as it increasingly does at every level from mass immigration, mass generation of dependency, rigging of electoral districts, down to manipulation of voting procedures, intimidation, fake votes, open and public ballots, false counting and the rest of it - then the Right cannot complain.

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Because if the Right does complain, it unavoidably puts itself into the position of arguing for something it ought to be against - voting.

For the Right it is voting which is the problem, not whether voting is done fairly or foully.

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The Left recognizes that the process of voting is meaningless - what matters is getting the 'correct' answer.

The Right ought to agree - the difference being that the Right knows the Left has the wrong answer.

It is the Left's ideology which is evil, not the mechanism by which they impose it.

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[Having said that - to lie is evil; the Left's voting fraud is itself evil, because it is dishonest: doubly-dishonest in its operating covertly behind lyingly idealistic justifications, and dishonest in its denial that it is happening - its covering-up.]

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The Left is engaged in wholesale censorship of material in the public domain - from school textbooks right through to the cover-up of massive government evil-doing.

It is tempting for the Right to argue against this as censorship and argue instead for freedom of speech, freedom to publish oppositional views, or a 'balance' of views, or whatever...

But the Left is correct to use censorship - censorship is necessary and desirable. The Right should not attack the Left for using censorship.

However, the Left censors Good: excludes God from the agora; from schools, administration, newspapers, movies and the television.

The Right should be clear that it wants and needs to control the public discourse, just as the Left now does; but for the opposite purpose.

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The Left uses affirmative action, quotas and preferential policies to appoint members of favoured groups to desirable positions, to allocate resources, and to propagandize their status; and it is temping for the Right to oppose these on grounds of functionality or merit, and instead to advocate group-blind policies, or objective and impartial hiring and promotions.

But the Left is correct to perceive that partiality and prejudice are inevitable and instruments of social improvement.

The problem is that the Left is evil, and so deploys preferences and quotas to exclude those who most deserve them, and to destroy society rather than to sustain it.

The Right needs to embrace the partiality and prejudice which the Left has imposed; but reverse its valence.

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In general, the Right should be distinguished from the Left primarily in terms of its purpose, not its procedures.

The Left wants an atheist, nihilist and hedonic society of existentially-isolated individuals; the Right wants a religious society.

The main methodological difference is that the Left is free to lie and cheat and deny and fabricate - since that is consistent with its own demonic motivations; while the Right must be realistic and truthful, since from a transcendental perspective the means cannot be dissociated from the ends.

For the Right, the means are, indeed, very much part of the end.

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Two things.

1. Kept alive by the will of God. Essentially because we have something yet to do - repent, accept forgiveness, love, praise, serve...

2. Because we cling to life.

Possible because we have been equipped with free will, so we may defy God and refuse to die when we are called. For a while.

(This is, of course, a profound sin.)

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So, part of the increase of human 'lifespan' we observe today in the West is due to reducing the contigent causes of premature death; but part is also due to the refusal to die when called, clinging to a-bit-more-life at any cost and at any price.

And we can, I think, observe that this artificially-extended lifespan is a Faustian bargain - a false hope, a trick, a depraved state.

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Death is a terrible thing, due to original sin and the process of synergystic accumulation of sin which was set into play by the original sin.

Thus death was not part of the original plan (or hope) but is a terrible punishment.

Death is un-natural, in an ultimate sense, but must be accepted as just and inevitable in this world, because death is a consequence of what we are.

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Yet death is now the way to eternal life - and the only way to eternal life.

We therefore must suffer the terrible and unnatural punishment; but on the other side of death we are promised an infinite gift.

Justice and mercy.

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Death may be premature; but there is a proper time for death; which we know when it comes - except we blind ourselves.

Death cannot be defeated, nor can it be eluded; but death can be deferred.

However the price of refusing the call, when it comes, is immediately to fall into an appalling and increasing state of corruption, from which deteriorating state the likelihood of repentance dwindles and dwindles.


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Since we know God is Good, and that 'everything' is therefore Good; yet we also know that evil is real, then what happens to evil?

If there ever has been evil in the universe, then surely it cannot be gotten rid of - maybe it it sequestered somewhere, in Hell?

But then the universe would not be Good...

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But evil is the destruction of Good; evil is, then, de-differentiation: the undoing of created order.

Thus evil is - at this ultimate and metaphysical level - a chaotic rearrangement.

Thus evil does the same as entropy, that is it undoes divine order: but does this will-fully, with malice, from pride.

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Thus the main metaphor for evil has often been fire - and fire is the heat released by disordering the stucture of that which is burned: an excellent metaphor for the action of evil.

Since evil cannot create, it operates by destroying - and lives-off the heat generated by increasing disorder.

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So what happens to evil?

It strikes me that because evil destroys creation, and that includes itself; then evil can be undone and made as if is had not been; since chaos is the raw material of creation.

(Primary creation is from nothing, secondary creation is order from chaos. )

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So evil destroys itself and - if God wills - leaves not a wrack behind.

Reality remains untainted. Wholly Good.

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Well, it seems to make a sort-of sense...

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I am not a Mormon, however I believe that Mormons bears signs of being 'a people' who have been blessed by God.

By 'blessed by God' I  mean that - somewhat as the ancient Jews had a role in the scheme of salvation for Mankind - so do Mormons have some such role.

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And that role is to bear Christian witness to the core importance of marriage and family.

I suspect that Mormons were inspired, created and sustained to carry this message for and to the Christian world through times when it was first neglected, then brought under ever-greater attack.

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In other words, I think that this element at least was divinely-inspired in Joseph Smith and the other founders of Mormonism; and the faithfulness to this message of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (including the later revelation, or clarification, that marriage must be monogamous) has been the reason why the Mormons have grown and thriven; until now when they are the only large Christian denomination in the West which has an average of significantly more than two children per woman.

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(Consider - all other Christian denominations in the West have in practice embraced willed sterility; since the other examples of fertile Christians - like the Amish - are not part of the West. This unique witness in actuality, strikes me as a fact of huge significance.) 

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Furthermore, Mormons display what is generally regarded as the highest average level of good behaviour of any large group in the West.

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For me, these facts - plus the fact that this continues after 180 years, or eight generations; means that Mormonism is essentially-true and essentially-good - despite all that can be said about its theological concreteness, simplifications, errors and/ or incompleteness; its faults and its limitations; and the fact that like any human thing in this world it is fallen and corrupt.

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All that can be said against the Mormon people is overwhelmed by the vital nature of the core message they carry and exemplify, concerning the centrality of marriage and family to Christian life; a message which happens to be the single most important and urgent thing that the modern world needs to know.

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In the West fertility is below replacement for almost all groups or 'peoples'.

Although fertility is higher for the more-religious than the less- or un-religious; fertility is below replacement levels in all peoples except for devout Mormons and the self-isolated groups such as ultra-Orthodox Jews and Amish.

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Chosen sterility in a people (I will use sterility as shorthand for below replacement fertility) is an unambiguous sign of evil in that people; because it derives from selfishness, short-termism, denial of human community (denial that one is part of a people), nihilism (denial that reality is real) and a turning away from the divine.

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(Note: chosen sterility in an individual person is not an evil, however, but may instead be the highest good; when this is a consequence of that person's vocation within their people and in relation to the divine.)

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Over a timescale of not-many generations, willed (chosen) low fertility has been destroying itself.

And over a timescale of half-decades, the evil of which low fertility is an indicator is currently killing itself by uncontrolled, unlimited, open-ended and denied mass migration/ immigration.

So what will replace it?

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Two types of people:

1. The deliberate high fertility of the traditionally and devoutly religious (of various religions).

2. And the accidental high fertility of the less-intelligent and feckless.

These demographic trends are happening very fast indeed, visibly for those with eyes to see, and at a global scale.

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The metaphysical lessons are maybe something like the following:

1. Any religion which leads to high chosen fertility is more-true than any ideology (or religion) that leads to chosen sterility.

Above replacement fertility is necessary but not sufficient for any religion with validity.

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2. It is better for humans to be unintelligent and chaotic than for them to suppress their fertility.

In a teleological sense, it seems that if a people misuse their intelligence and conscientiousness and choose sub-replacement fertility then they will be replaced by groups with higher fertility - any group with higher fertility.

And the low fertility peoples will find themselves helpless to stop this from happening, because the low fertility is evidence of their state of evil - their atomism, their short-termist hedonism, their preference for abstraction and distraction over experience and common sense.

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Evil is self destroying because evil is destruction of the Good; our society is evil because it hates the Good; and our society is will-fully (applying intelligence and working hard at the job) destroying itself.

The West is not being destroyed by God, and could be saved if it repented and asked God for help; but the West will not ask God, and God will not (it seems) intervene without being asked.

When - as a people - we are turned away from God and in service to evil, God will just let our people have what we want, and it will kill us.

Because we are sinful men, and what we want will kill us if we get it.

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(An illustration: the West denies that it is a people; and assert that we are instead a collection of detached individuals. Our punishment? That this assertion becomes reality, and as a people we perish, and exist in the alienation and existential loneliness of love-rejecting and un-loving individuals.)

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The unrealism of our people is so abhorrent to God (so detached from reality) that the universe would prefer that we were replaced by the adherent of any other fertile people - whether from any fertile religion, or even by other humans who are simply too unintelligent and too chaotic in their lives to be able to control their own fertility.

We are that bad.

If we stubbornly refuse to stop ourselves, we  - as a people - will have to be stopped; and we will be stopped.

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My recent post on voting

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/voting-is-instrument-of-devil.html

produced a lot of interesting comments - but I spent an inordinate time trying to re-explain what I was saying - and something similar happened on a thread at Orthosphere.

But the problem was typical of much of my commentary and critique over the past couple of decades, and the reason seems to be that I think in a different way from many people.

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I tend to think in terms of abstract principles or systems; and often I want to discuss these, but in fact it seems hardly anybody else wants to discuss principles or systems, or can stop at principles and refrain from jumping back to motivations or jump ahead ahead to implications.

The trouble is that going from principles to motivations make it subjective, while jumping to implications entails a further step, which may or may not be clear - at any rate the move from principles to practice is seldom clear and uncontroversial.

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When I spoke about not voting, many commenters assumed (often, it seems automatically) that what I really meant was that I personally disapproved of those who voted; and they rushed to defend the motives (or results) those who vote.

I find this again and again in the response to my writings; that most people look at what is being said, and then jump behind it to make assumptions about the motivations of the person who said it.

Everything is assumed to be about motivations, and what people actually say is assumed to be a 'rhetorical' tool for influencing the behaviour of others.

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So that for me to criticize the system of voting as a way of making decisions, is assumed really to be merely a product of my motivation; an expression of negative emotion (disdain, dislike etc) towards the people who vote.

Then people line-up and either support the fact that I attack (supposedly) voters because they too dislike voters; or attack me for having (supposedly) attacked them. 

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I experienced this at an international media scale a few years ago when I wrote about the effect of social class difference of intelligence on college admissions - specifically the mathematical certainty that the more selective is a college, the bigger the social class difference in admissions.

But this factual observation was - on the Left , and up to the level of the British government, either regarded as me personally claiming that there were social class differences in intelligence (which is an un-refuted finding  more than 100 years old, as well as being common experience); or else an expression of hatred for the working class and the poor.

This misinterpretation went up to very high levels, and I got it even from world famous academics in qunatitative science.

I think we are dealing with human nature here - near enough.

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Human nature cannot discuss principles and systems (except perhaps in very exceptional situations, and probably the focus is tenuous even then).

So when principles and systems are on the agenda, as they must be from time to time - for example when a club or a country needs to decide the procedure by which a leader is chosen - the actual discussion will not be about them.

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So, with the stuff about voting, my major point was that the idea of getting a group together and having a vote is an utterly bizarre notion of how to make a decision, and it is hard to understand why anyone might ever imagine that it would be a good way to proceed.

On top of this, there is the problem that a vote destroys individual responsibility for decisions, which makes the decision non-moral, which means it is in fact a-moral (wicked, evil).

So the principle of voting, as a way of making decisions, seems to be utterly without any basis either in expediency or in pragmatism or in metaphysics, or in anything.

It is just what we have. 

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Of course, once voting had already-become established as the default method of decision making and had also become regarded as the only basis for a just and equitable decision and so on, then this generates its own expedience and even a kind of rationality.

If people are used to voting and have been inculcated with the idea that it is good; then they will usually accept the results of a vote. 

But there was no coherent basis for privileging voting in the first place. 

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Having noticed this fact (it seems like a fact) I find that I draw the conclusion that I personally shouldn't participate in votes - but that inferential jump form system analysis to personal behaviour is not logically entailed.

It is, however, made easier for me by my religious belief that ethical behaviour has beneficial effects even when the causality is non-obvious - even when such behavior seems invisible and powerless.

So that, although a worldly and expedient and linear-causal analysis may suggest that not voting is just to abandon responsibility, to disappear-oneself from decision-making, or to allow evil to happen, or to fail to take simple steps to prevent harm; I have an imprecise but confident belief that (if my decision is real and properly motivated) then not voting will have a good effect, in some way, but by means which I (almost certainly) will never know about (at least, not in this life, in this world).

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To put it another way, for a Christian it is hard to imagine any act which does not have some (permanent) effect towards either good or evil - Surely that is what life is.

Nothing is trivial (or rather, we can never know that any particular thing is trivial) - hence we must treat everything as important; even when we had hardly even imagine how it could become important.

No man is an island, and all humans are in it together ('it' being life in relation to salvation).

So I am not much swayed by arguments based on expediency, when I am pretty sure that what is being asked of me is participation in a system which I understand is irrational and necessarily immoral.

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Does participation in a system of which we disapprove make any difference? Well, yes, it must (or we must assume that it may).

How might this work? 

Thinking about such matters using a 'morphic resonance' analysis - it would seem that participating in a process strengthens it, while refusing participation does not strengthen it; and perhaps by participating in something other than the voting process tends to strengthen some other rival process.

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/why-i-resisted-fields-and-forms.html

On this basis, whenever we go along with something we believe is bad, when we ourselves comply with a bad process; then we actually fuel that process (by invisible patterning mechanisms): we make that process more powerful and increase its range and scope.

That would fit in with the fact that evil always wants compliance; in fact evil is usually satisfied with compliance (and does not require assent).

In some way (morphic resonance is only one way of conceptualizing the process), simply going-along with evil, just going-through-the-motions prescribed by evil, actually strengthens evil.

But that makes another assumption to go with my first one.

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The first assumption (to recap) was that it is valid to discuss the abstract process of voting in terms of its rationale (or rather, lack of rationale).

We live by processes, even if the processes are - in practice - conflated with assumed-motivations or presumed-outcomes of processes: in fact we often do not know enough to assume or infer these things. The processes and systems should be able to stand on their own two feet...

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By which I mean, processes should be valid when understood from a traditional Christian metaphysic - they should make sense in exactly the way that voting does not.

Many people seemingly can't or won't do this; or maybe I am not actually doing it, although I think I am? - at any rate this topic doesn't seem to get very far with most people.

However, it seems that, in practice, most public discourse, and probably all effective public discourse is very simple and prescriptive, and conflates principles with practice, effectiveness with morality and many other things - it coalesces around basic dichotomies - and all attempts to make it anything else are apparently doomed to fail.

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Which is why evil works by processes.

Once evil has imposed a process - like voting - then that process becomes de facto ineradicable qua process.

If voting is indeed evil, then we are apparently stuck with it until it is swept away by some other change; because the subject matter of voting-as-a-process is one which cannot ever occupy a public agenda.

As things stand, the only way to get rid of voting would be to vote on it...


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There is a striking difference between, on the one hand, the evangelical Protestant emphasis on the Christian's assurance of salvation - that when born-again we know we are saved by adoption into God's holy family; and, on the other hand, the Orthodox ascetic - the monk or hermit - who may continually be praying for mercy, and on guard against deception by demons, and deeply uncertain about his own eventual salvation.

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On the one hand, the Orthodox monk is spiritually far more more advanced in Holiness than the usual born again evangelical; yet is is the evangelical who has assurance.

Is there a contradiction?

Not necessarily.

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Since the monk is obviously Holy, and lives for Christ, yet regards his soul as in peril; Catholics might regard the confidence of the evangelical as necessarily deluded.

Evangelicals might say that monasticism is the problem, its temptations are too great; and the monk is corrupted by spiritual pride - imagining that his status (or 'job') sets him above others, and thus falling into wickedness.

(After all, Protestants must believe that monasticism is bad, and deny absolutely that it is a valid path to salvation for anyone at all; or else why did they utterly abolish monasteries? Why are there no evangelical monks or nuns?)

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My understanding is that the apparent contradiction is solved if salvation is regarded as both qualitative then quantitative.

The Christian is saved, and with assurance, when converted, when born-again.

Then begins the process of sanctification or theosis - working-towards union with God during life on earth. This is the main purpose of Christian life.

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The evangelical focuses on holding-onto salvation. He knows that the only thing which could lose his salvation is if he himself rejects it and turns away from God.

Therefore evangelical spirituality is - in a sense - a repetition of the born-again experience, a re-living, a rehearsal: turning to God again and again - daily, hourly. To feel, again and again, the gratitude and love of accepting Christ.

The monastic needs or wants more; wants to move forward on the path of sanctification or theosis, to become himself more like God. To start on the path which, if completed, would lead to Sainthood (as conceived by Eastern Orthodoxy; to live in Heaven and on earth simultaneously, to be an intermediary).

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The monastic path is real, and really is a higher path - a more desirable goal; but it really is more hazardous.

Its hazards are profound, and amount to the loss of salvation - essentially by corruption from original sin - that is spiritual pride, causing the monastic to substitute himself for God; and corruption from personal purposive evil (Satan, devils, demons) who - it seems from numerous accounts - are attracted by spiritual ambition.

So ascetics are apparently almost-always subject to demonic attack, demonic deceptions, terrors and temptations.

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Climbing a rocky mountain is more hazardous than staying on the plain below - one may be impatient to reach the top, climb too fast and become exhausted and fall into a crevice and to death; one may delude oneself that the peak has been reached and pride oneself on reaching the top when there remains much yet to climb; and one may neglect to recall that every mountain slope is the abode of devils who will try to throw the climber into volcanic fissures before they reach the summit.  

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The key concept is spiritual ambition.

Spiritual ambition is a good motivation; but must be balanced by humility or else will be corrupted into worldly ambition, or remain spiritual but become evil (turned away from Christ).

The true monk has great spiritual ambition, strives for greater holiness; but any ambition can be corrupted into pride is opened to deception in its understandings.

Under modern conditions, the perils of spiritual ambition are greater than ever. Past monks would submit to the authority of a Saint or Spiritual Father, who would watch them for signs of corruption, and ensure that the pace of sanctification did not proceed faster than the safeguarding humility which must increase to match it.

Even despite such safeguards, there were still hazards, and Holy Men fell and were lost.

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Nowadays spiritual ambition is even more hazardous - and those who claim sanctification have often very obviously been corrupted, when evaluated by the discerning Christian.

The high mountains are real, but the 'low road' of evangelical Christianity may be all that is possible for most modern men.

We who live in spiritual isolation, and lack the wise authority of a Holy Father, should be wary of spiritual ambition - and fearful of losing the salvation of which we are indeed assured - assured so long as we do not ourselves cast it away.

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I was reading my new copy of the excellent English Standard Version (ESV) Study Bible and came across some notes which suggested that because 'Abba' was used (in the time of Jesus) to address adult parents, then 'Daddy' was an inappropriate, indeed disrespectful, translation of the word.

Yet, I used the Daddy translation myself, only a few weeks ago:

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/from-jehovah-to-daddy.html

The ESV attempt to label the word 'Daddy' as disrespectful made me see red, for a number of reasons!

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In the first place, translation is not a word by word process, every translation is incomplete and potentially misleading, historical context is imperfectly understood - and all the rest of it. So there is no perfect word, no word free form the possibility of misinterpretation. Translation is always a question of priories - what it is wished to emphasize. 

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But there is a very good reason to translate Abba as Daddy, and that is to bring out a son or daughter's child-like love-of, trust-in and reliance-upon their (good) Father - which goes far beyond the biological relatedness conveyed by the word Father.

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What is more, my Ulster relatives (for instance) called their parents Daddy and Mummy for all their lives - it is not simply a child's endearment.

In fact I repent having stopped calling my own parents Daddy and Mummy during my teens (a transition I found difficult) - since dropping that appellation was certainly not a matter of increased respect but almost the opposite; shame at seeming childish, wishing to be trendy - in a nutshell an assertion of independence.

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(Thus 'Daddy' signaled willing dependence; dropping 'Daddy' signaled rebellious independence. Which of these usages best applies to the proper nature of our relation to God?)

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Of course none of this perhaps applies to Americans, who probably imagine Daddy to be an English upper class affectation - and who themselves seem to lack an equivalent word to 'Daddy' as it is used among working class people in the borders of England and Scotland (which includes most of my ancestors, including the Northern Irish Protestants). For Americans 'Daddy' may indeed be disrespectful - like 'Pops'.

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But for me the idea that God is our (adoptive) Daddy if we accept his invitation; that we are asked to become Sons and heirs of God, and that Jesus will be our Heavenly Brother - well, this is exactly the kind of thing we need to hear; and something we ought to try and live by, and which the word Daddy perfectly expresses.

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"...I am so made that I cannot believe..."

That is true, but at least get it into your head that, if you are unable to believe, it is because of your passions, since reason impels you to believe and yet you cannot do so.

Concentrate then not on convincing yourself by multiplying proofs of God's existence but by diminishing your passions.... Learn from those who were once bound like you...

These are the people who know the road you wish to follow, who have been cured of the affliction of which you wish to be cured: follow the way by which they began.

They behaved just as if they did believe...

That will make you behave quite naturally, and will make you more docile.

"But that is what I am afraid of."

But why?

What have you to lose? 

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Pensees, by Blaise Pascal - excerpted from the Penguin edition page 152.

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The whole idea that voting could be a valid method of making any kind of decision at any level of practice is so bizarre, so stupid, so lacking in rationale, so frequently refuted by personal and public experience that I find it hard even to begin discussing the matter.

Voting is an instrument of the devil - perhaps quite literally, and if so one of his most lethal inventions.

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Where there is a vote, there there will be no good; since there will be no responsibility.

Where there is a vote, there the decision-making process has become a matter of psychological manipulation; displacing virtue and truth, trampling beauty.

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Casting lots, reading entrails - these are models of rationality compared with voting - since it is at least possible that a near-random procedure might be influenced by good spirits or organizing fields tending toward cohesion and harmony.

But what beneficent influence could possibly penetrate the self-gratifying maelstrom of the human mind engaged in canvassing, debating, bribing, intimidating, and voting? 

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Once people have become used to relying on a procedure as utterly indefensible as voting to make their most important decisions, once they have been induced to regard voting as if it was not just ethically acceptable but in fact the pinnacle of goodness, the one-and-only ethical behaviour; then these people are embarked on a path of apostasy, inversion of values, and self-destruction.

People who have given their allegiance to voting as the most valid, authoritative and moral decision-making procedure have been manipulated into a self-reinforcing psychosis in which a system of zero validity, zero authority and zero morality is treated with quasi-divine reverence.

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This is a situation of enmeshed wickedness that cannot be disentangled and remedied one strand at a time, but only cast aside totally with overwhelming disgust - in sudden recognition of the revolting thing that is voting.

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[For an excellently written essay on what was 'electric folk' music, go to the Wikipedia - accessed today.]

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In order of release:

1. Steeleye Span - Parcel of Rogues. It in 1973, when this album had just been released, that I heard on the radio "One Misty Moisty Morning" - and was smitten.

2. Ashley Hutchings and others - Morris On, 1972 (but I didn't hear it until a couple of years later). Electric Morris dancing and song! I borrowed an accordeon, so I was John Kirkpatrick; my friend Gareth got a bass guitar, so he was Ashley Hutchings - and that was the totality of our electric folk band...

3. Ashley Hutchings and John Kirkpatrick and others - The Compleat Dancing Master, 1974. A sequence of words and music about dancing from medieval (the time of Chaucer) to 19th century (Thomas Hardy) with a wonderful cast of actors and musicians. The perfect 'concept album'.

4. Steeleye Span - Commoner's Crown, 1975. It is very hard to choose (how can I miss out mentioning "Thomas the Rhymer" from Now we are six?) but I suppose this was the very best of Steeleye's albums, with "Long Lankin" as its summit; and I love "Bach goes to Limerick".

5. The Albion Country Band - Battle of the Field, 1976. A minor miracle of interlocking parts - including Martin Carthy at his uncompromising best in "Gallant Poacher" and the weirdly wonderful oboe of Sue Harris...

Ah, what an era. Short but deliciously sweet.

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