Bad advice on fracking from the Churches

This demolition of his local Churches’ stand against fracking (original title Lancashire Churches get Fracked!!), by my friend the Rev Michael Roberts, is well-informed and timely, not least when fracking is, in some places, an election issue. Michael was, as he explains, a field geologist before he became a priest, and is a distinguished authority on the history of the reaction of the Churches to the last two centuries of earth and life sciences, topics that for him have personal, as well as general, relevance.

For me, the affair raises wider issues. It illustrates the dangers of a Church giving advice on complex technical questions, which should lead us to question its very real secular powers. Are the Bishops in the House of Lords now going to campaign to ban fracking? Is a Church that generates the kind of nonsense that Michael so skilfully demolishes fit to run State funded schools, as CofE does in England and will increasingly, if the present Westminster administration is returned to power in May? Is it fit to have unelected representatives on every Local Authority Education Committee, as CofE does in England and CofS in Scotland, alongside a representative from the Catholic Church and, in Scotland, any of a ragtag collection of others? And what shall we say of those political parties that most misleadingly raise panic over fracking (English Greens), or pusillanimously ask us to wait and see (Scottish Greens, SNP)?

There are those who will welcome any scientific folly from the Churches, as weakening the forces of religion. I am not one of them, for many reasons, as I have explained elsewhere.

But it its time I let him speak for himself:

Peddling and Scaling God and Darwin

A critique of the CTIL discussion paper

The Challenge of Fracking

Shale gas exploration & proposed extraction in Lancashire

Michael Roberts

(retired priest Diocese of Balckburn)

formerly an exploration and mining geologist

Summary

This document The Challenges of Fracking   http://www.ctlancashire.org.uk/data/uploads/documents/issues/the-challenges-of-fracking-discussion-document-january-2015.pdf  was produced through the Environmental Committee of the Diocese of Blackburn and has been circulated since January 2015 by Churches Together in Lancashire  with the endorsement of the all church leaders from the various denominations. Thus we can take it that it is the official view of all the Lancashire churches.

It would be good to give a very brief review of a few hundred words, but technicalities and complexities of the subject matter prevent that. To summarise the paper as false and misleading is true but helps no one. I now briefly list the errors and expand on them in the main body of this review. These…

View original post 4,224 more words

Are Dreams Incompatible With Materialism? Discovery Institute thinks so!

They reach this conclusion using a version of Dembski’s improbability argument. No, this is not Poe and it is not self-parody. It is for real. (You can visit the Uncommon Descent page that makes this argument, here, and I have used donotlink so that they will not benefit from your visit.). The improbability of any given dream is suitably enormous (it is) and specific (is what it is, not anything else). It follows, by the application of Dembskian statistics, that every dream is Intelligently Designed.

The author, apparently one N.Kendall by way of Barry Arrington, boasts “This is just one of several disproofs of materialism that I have tried out on atheist websites. Never once had anyone lay of glove on it [sic]”.

So there you are. Prepare to be converted from your sinful materialist ways. Laying of gloves optional.

In memoriam Nikki Braterman; appeal for bone marrow donors (and for preserving the NHS)

Nikki shortly before her illness, with Geoffrey and their children Phoebe and Oscar

I wrote the original version of this post in September 2014, when the search was on for a bone marrow donor for my daughter-in-law Nikki. In fact, a suitable donor (not ideal, but close enough to look very hopeful) was found, and an apparently successful transfusion performed. Unfortunately, a few days later, before the transplanted stem cells had time to proliferate, she caught an infection and died. 

 I am renewing my appeal in Nikki’s memory. To register as a potential donor is easy. The more potential donors there are, the greater the chance of a good match being found for any individual, since we are all different, at the molecular level. This is true for all of us, but especially for those from what are, in the West, ethnic minorities, and for those of mixed race. Details of where you can register at the sites listed below. Different countries vary, but in the UK healthy individuals can register up to age 55.

With enormous courage, my son Geoffrey, Nikki’s widower, is speaking  about his experience with the NHS in Brighton at the special Labour Party event “Harry Leslie Smith Stands Up For Our NHS” this Sunday April 21 in Brighton. I do not usually use this blog to indulge in party politics, but would remind readers of the way in which the outgoing Westminster Government has, without any mandate, imposed large scale privatisation, restrictions, reorganisation, and confusion on this most fundamental of public services, which, David Cameron had assured us in debate, was “safe” in his hands.

Hi,

I desperately need your help to find a bone marrow donor for my daughter-in-law, Nikki Braterman who has acute myeloid leukaemia. Being Irish-European/Burmese, she has an extremely rare genetic make-up and we have not been able to find a match.

 Please help by doing three things:

 1- REGISTER as a potential bone marrow donor

 A simple swab or spit test will then determine whether you’re likely to be a match. If you are, then donating bone marrow is a fairly standard procedure these days, almost hassle free for the donor (it’s not a whole lot different to giving blood) and with a good success rate.

 Anyone who has European/Southeast Asian heritage – especially with a Portuguese name like De Souza or De Castro – would definitely be of interest.  However, all are encouraged to be tested as Nikki’s match may be from someone outside her ethnic grouping or you may save somebody else’s life.

 Please register with one of these organisations:

§  UK, aged 16-30: The Anthony Nolan Trust 

§  UK, aged 18-49: The British Bone Marrow Registry 

§  UK, aged 18-55: Delete Blood Cancer 

§  Australia (there’s a large Anglo-Burmese community in Perth): Australian Bone Marrow Donor Registry

§  US: Be the Match

§  Canada: One Match

§  Worldwide: Bone Marrow Donors World Wide

 2 – FORWARD this email to everyone you know, and especially anyone who has a Southeast Asian  or other minority or mixed race heritage

 3 – SHARE my Nikki’s story via the social media channels below to help raise awareness

  

More on Nikki´s story in her own words, a fuller list of registration centres, and more, at Perfect Ten Match

Thank you!

Earth’s Climate Evolution – a Geological Perspective on Climate Change

Yes, climate can change naturally. No, that is not why it’s changing now.

Earth’s Climate Evolution – a Geological Perspective on Climate Change

From Geological Society of London blog via my friend Michael Roberts

On the foundations of morality

There aren’t any. Nor can there be. And if anyone can refute me on this, I’ll be delighted. [Update: discussion arising from this post has convinced me that we all use multiple foundations, that they are mutually inconsistent, and that there is no way of choosing between them. My position here is very similar to that taken by Alex Rosenberg, of Duke University, who argues that moral judgments are not factual claims but emotional responses and spurs to action, and that there is no way of arbitrating basic disagreements.]

I have just finished reading Kenan Malik’s superb The Quest for a Moral Compass, which I am not competent to review, beyond questioning the judgement of those commentators who have compared it to Bertrand Russell’s History of Western Philosophy. Russell is concerned primarily with timeless questions of epistemology, Malik with our present moral confusions. And unlike Russell, Malik doesn’t ignore the existence of China.

Let me add, however, that Malik is not to blame for what follows here.

There are some questions which of their nature cannot be answered. A notorious example is Heidegger’s “Why is there something rather than nothing?” This can never be answered. Because let X be the answer. Then either X is part of the totality denoted by “something”, or it is not. In the first case, part of the explicand is being invoked as the explanation, which is absurd. In the second, X itself remains to be explained, and we are no further forward. There are various ways of cheating at this point, either by allowing X to be eternal, and thus not requiring explanation (Aquinas), or by claiming that X is, in some mysterious sense, “necessary”, and therefore exempt from the need to be explained (William Lane Craig, Plantinga), but neither of these would convince anyone who did not already have faith in the implied First Cause.

I have come to the melancholy conclusion that the question “On what can we base our morality?” comes into the same category. This is not news. It was, in a sense, spelt out by Plato in Euthyphro’s notorious dilemma. Are things good because the gods love them, or do the gods love these things because they are good? In the first case, the moral code is merely a by-product of divine whims, and would change if those whims happened to change. In the second, the gods themselves must be appealing to some higher principle; what is it?

As Malik points out in his masterly demolition of Sam Harris’s philosophical pretensions, the argument generalises. Harris would have us derive morality from science, and in particular from the principle of maximising “the well-being of conscious creatures.” Thus he would in principle justify torture, if it could be demonstrated as an effective way of extracting information, provided the gain in well-being achieved through our possession of the information extracted by it outweighs the victim’s sufferings.

But why should we regard maximising “the well-being of conscious creatures” as our measure of morality, even if we could quantify and define “well-being,” foresee how this would be affected by our actions, and accurately subtract one creature’s loss of well-being from another creature’s gain? As Malik points out, there is no reason why someone who accepts different principles – who regards, for example, inflicting torture as an insult to the nature of humanity that cannot be justified under any circumstances – should regard Harris’s arguments as the least bit convincing. As Malik puts it, Euthyphro’s dilemma applies with as much force to the appeal to the results of science, as it does to the appeal to the will of the gods.

Nor can we derive a solution from appealing to evolution, or to the nature of our humanity, or to the dynamics of history. It is perfectly possible to maintain, indeed I myself do maintain, that xenophobia is the result of evolutionary hardwiring, but nonetheless morally wrong. And few would maintain that to explain, for example, Stalin, or the Islamic State, in terms of historical forces is in any way to justify them.

And we can generalise. The same argument applies to any purported criterion for distinguishing right from wrong. We cannot live without moral principles, any more than we can live without confidence in the constancy of the laws of nature, but in neither case is it possible to justify our position without circularity. Perhaps we simply need to live with these uncomfortable truths.

To return to our starting point, the question “How do we justify our morality?” does not admit of an answer that does not beg the question. Because let X be the answer. Then either X is part of our moral code, or it is not. In the first case, we are invokingas justification part of what we are seeking to justify, and the most we can achieve in this way is consistency, not validation. In the second, X itself remains to be justified, and we are no further forward.

Which is simply an involved way of saying that there are no moral facts, only moral choices. And those who think otherwise scare me, even when they share my code.

The Quest for a Moral Compass, Kenan Malik, hardback Atlantic Books, May 2014; paperback April 2015. Disclosure: I bought the hardback version, but I’m a slow reader. Extracts from the book are being made available on Kenan Malik’s onw website, starting, coincidentally, today.

In Dublin, Beheading expositor speaks freely; potential victim censored

“And if he insists on being killed … then at the end, by the authority of the ruling body, it’s done.”

Sheikh Kamal El Mekki, who expounds with apparent approval the law on beheading ex-Muslims, spoke this February at Trinity College Dublin. Maryam Namazie, equal law campaigner, ex-Muslim and prominent critic of political Islam, was, after agreeing to speak in March, presented with conditions impossible to accept. We know from Trinity News, the excellent student newspaper, that El Mekki’s talk went ahead without restrictions despite concerns expressed by the President of the Students Union. We know from Maryam’s blog that her talk was cancelled, by the College, not her, and that she remains eager to speak there.

An earlier version of this post appeared on 3 Quarks Daily, and was sent on Monday March 30 to the three TDC staff named here, with invitation to comment. None has chosen to do so. So today, April 6, I am sending them this version.

El Mekki is on video (embedded in the Trinity newspaper report; also circulating under the curious title “The apostate – funny”), at an event organised by the AlMaghrib Institute (of which more below) in July 2011, describing how he explained to a Christian missionary the law about apostasy. The missionary was complaining because of his lack of success in Morocco, which he attributed to the law [1] against apostasy. In reply, El Mekki, visibly amused at the missionary’s predicament, draws an analogy between apostasy and treason (a justification that when examined makes matters worse), and goes on to explain

It’s not like somewhere you heard someone leaves Islam and you just go get him and stuff like that. First of all it’s done by the authorities, there are procedures and steps involved. First of all they talk to him, yeah, about, yanni, the scholars refute any doubt that he has on the issue, they spend days with him refuting and arguing with him, trying to convince him. Then they might even, yanni, threaten him with the sword and tell him ‘You need to repent from this because if you don’t you repent you will be killed.’ And if he insists on being killed that means really, really believing in that. And then, after the procedures take their toll, and then at the end, by the authority of the ruling body, it’s done.

“Yanni,” a common interection in Arabic, means “kind of.” I wonder how one “kind of” threatens someone with the sword. However, we are left with the impression that El Mekki would be opposed to recent well-publicised Jihadist beheadings, not out of any objection to beheading as such, but because of failure to conform to the proper procedures.

An on-line search also led me to here, where you can see El Mekki explaining why amputation is a more humane form of punishment than imprisonment.

Sheikh El Mekki’s response to criticism was reported by the student newspaper. He said that the clip had been taken out of context and was an excerpt from a 39-hour course in which apostasy is dealt with twice, and wrote in response to questioning

[In the clip,] I first deal with the issue from the historical standpoint as you have seen, and then I revisit the issue for the sole purpose of explaining to students that apostasy law is not something that we advocate, nor is it something that we are trying to revive or practice. You will be surprised how many people I’ve met while I was the chaplain at George Mason University, who thought they had the right to carry out that law in America…. I believe the best way to stop extremism is through moderate Muslims and Imams speaking against it.

I leave it to readers to evaluate this claim to be a moderate in the light of his views on amputation and beheading. For the full text of El Mekki’s statement, see Footnote [2].

El Mekki spoke at Trinity on February 25 at an event, open to all, jointly organised by the Muslim Students Association and a body called the alMaghrib Institute; for one of many critiques from within Islam of this Insititute’s strict Salafism, see this, from the al Sunna Forum. (Salafism is a rigid, fundamentalist, anti-intellectual form of Islam, closely related to the Wahhabism of Saudi Arabia.) It was the alMaghrib Institute that had earlier hosted his remarks on beheading and amputation. It has branches in 12 countries, including the US, the UK, Ireland, Australia and Canada. and offers its own degree and diplomas, the curriculum for which includes a module on “Signs of the last day”, which are “All Around Us”.

Trinity News reported that eight students had expressed concerns over El Mekki’s visit, among them the President of the Student Union, and an ex-Muslim student who is not willing to be named because of the implications for his own safety. However, Joseph O’Gorman, strategic development officer for the Central Societies Committee (CSC), told McGlacken-Byrne that he “cannot see why there can even be a discussion about cancelling the event or not”. According to the CSC web page , Mr O’Gorman

is responsible for the development of the CSC’s long term strategy. The SDO [Strategic Development officer, i.e., currently, O’Gorman] ensures that the support that the CSC gives societies matches their needs as much as possible. The SDO works with the College Civic Development Officer and the Dean of Students to ensure that College neither forgets the importance of societies to the well-being of students and of the College nor that societies exist for students not for College’s own strategic aims. The SDO is responsible for the training and mentoring of the CSC Executive and Officers.

Maryam Namazie (shown R at the Council of ex-Muslims of Britain’s 5th anniversary meeting) is an outspoken ex-Muslim, vocal opponent of the creeping institutionalisation of Sharia law in British society, and well-known activist on behalf of freedom of thought, women’s rights, and human rights in general. (I have written here before about her role in the successful campaign to persuade London’s Law Society to withdraw its ill-judged guidance on the drafting of Sharia-based wills.) She was invited to speak at Trinity College Dublin on March 23rd, and the event was openly advertised by Maryam and on the inviting society’s Facebook page.

After she had already bought her ticket, she was contacted by that society, to tell her that Trinity was imposing conditions on her talk. In Maryam’s words on her own blog and also on the One Law for All website,

I’ve just been informed, however, that college security (why security?) has claimed that the event would show the college is “one-sided” and would be “antagonising” to “Muslim students”; they threatened to cancel my talk. After further consultation with college management, they have decided to “allow” the event to go ahead with the following conditions:

* All attendants of the event must be 1) Trinity students and 2) members of the society hosting the talk.

* For “balance”, they require that a moderator host the event; Prof. Andrew Pierce of the Irish School of Ecumenics has kindly agreed to do so.

I, however, will not be submitting to any conditions, particularly since such conditions are not usually placed on other speakers.

I intend to speak on Monday as initially planned without any restrictions and conditions and ask that TCD give me immediate assurances that I will be able to do so.

Dr Andrew Pierce is an Assistant Professor in Ecumenics, and Course Co-Ordinator of the M.Phil. in Intercultural Theology & Interreligious Studies. It is not clear whether he was aware that he had been invited to moderate behind Maryam’s back. If he was not aware, he should say so. If he was aware, he has betrayed his academic calling by colluding in this disgraceful episode.

It is worth reiterating that, although the ostensive issue was security, Noel McCann, the TCD Facilities Officer, told one of the students involved in organising the event that Maryam’s talk would (unlike El Mekki’s?) show the college as “one-sided” and would be “antagonising” to “Muslim students”. He also asked how “could she come and say whatever she wants without a moderator” and “with half the world knowing about it”. He also threatened to cancel the talk and said that he was meeting with “highest management of Trinity” to discuss whether the event would be “allowed” to go ahead.

On learning that Maryam refused to accept these conditions, Trinity revoked the invitation, while leaving the student society involved and Trinity News under the impression that it was Maryam who had withdrawn.

In truth, Maryam remains eager to speak at TCD, as initially arranged and without imposed conditions, and has said so repeatedly.

So there we have it. According to TCD’s criteria, it is legitimate for a college society to host, at an open meeting, someone who gives every impression of approving the idea of cutting Maryam’s head off, provided due procedures are followed. However, Maryam herself is such a dangerous character that her presence requires a moderator, and the well-being of students demands that only members of the society that had invited her be exposed to her opinions.

I am sending Prof Pierce, Joseph O’Gorman, and Noel McCann copies of this piece, and invite their comments.

Disclosure: I have met Maryam and we have corresponded several times. I have not met or corresponded with any of the other individuals named here.

Sources: Maryam Namazie blog, Trinity News, others as shown. Photo of Maryam courtesy CEMB.

1] Laws Criminalizing Apostasy in Selected Jurisdictions (Law Library of Congress, May 2014) reports that

Morocco does not impose the death penalty against apostates under the provisions of its Penal Code. However, in April 2013, the Supreme Council of Religious Scholars issued a religious decree (fatwa) that Moroccan Muslims who leave Islam must be sentenced to death. Religious decrees are significant because Islam is the official state religion under article 3 of the Moroccan Constitution of 2011.54 Additionally, under article 41 of the Constitution, the Supreme Council of Religious Scholars “is the sole instance enabled [habilitée] to comment [prononcer] on religious consultations (Fatwas).”

Apostasy is explicitly punishable by death according to the legal codes of Afghanistan, Brunei, Mauritania, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. In Maryam’s native Iran,

While Iranian law does not provide for the death penalty for apostasy, the courts can hand down that punishment, and have done so in previous years, based on their interpretation of Sharia’a law and fatwas (legal opinions or decrees issued by Islamic religious leaders).

2] This, posted by a student on Facebook, is the fullest version I could find of El Mekki’s explanation:

That clip you watched was a five-minute excerpt from a 39 hour course in which apostasy is dealt with twice. I first deal with the issue from a historical standpoint as you have seen, and then I revisit the issue for the sole purpose of explaining to students that apostasy law is not something that we advocate, nor is it something that we are trying to revive or practise. You will be surprised how many people I’ve met while I was the chaplain at George Mason University, who felt they had the right to carry out that law! I believe that part of my responsibility as an educator is to work against any aspect that may lead to the radicalisation of Muslims. I have an entire course where one of the main themes is that bringing Sharia Law to the west has never been one of the objectives of Islam. At the end of the day, you find yourself attacked by Jihadi’s [sic] and extremists on the one end, and misquoted by those who have other agendas on the other. I make the above points crystal clear to students, but I have no control over which clips people isolate and pulled on the internet; and definitely no control over those who purposely take them out of context! Extremism is something that needs to be dealt with, yet those who deal with it in the Muslim communities are misquoted and made to appear as the ones that should be stopped from speaking. Doesn’t seem conducive to ending the problems that plague us! I will continue to be vocal and speak and critique what is wrong. I have not spared any one or group that advocates violence and that is what all our [the al-Maghribi Institute’s] instructors continue to do.

(I would invite readers to watch the clips in question, if they wish to evaluate this explanation.)

Noah’s Ark found says Self-nominated Scots Education Committee member

Yes, today is April 1st. No, this is not a joke.

The Reverend David Fraser sits, self-selected, as a full voting member on the Education Committee of Clackmannanshire County Council. So if you live in Clackmannanshire, he helps decide educational policy for your children, and if you teach in Clackmannanshire, he is, in a sense, your boss.

(Past tense; according to LinkedIn, he relinquished his place on the Committee in 2014. I do not know if my previous expose’ contributed to this. Edit: according to FoI response from Council, 2015, he is still in place, having nominated himself when asked to advise on who shoud represent the Baptist churches in the area)

Be afraid. Be very afraid. What you see next is straight from the Reverend’s Church’s web site. And there’s worse to come.

150,000 PEOPLE WILL DIE TODAY

THE COUNTER TO THE SIDE IS TICKING OFF THE NUMBER OF PEOPLE WHO HAVE DIED SINCE YOU OPENED THIS WEBPAGE. THE VAST MAJORITY OF THOSE PEOPLE ARE ENTERING HELL. CHRIST COMMANDED HIS FOLLOWERS TO SHARE THE GOSPEL WITH THOSE WHO ARE PERISHING… WHO HAVE YOU SHARED WITH TODAY?

And as for Noah’s Ark, a search on “Alva Baptist Genesis” turned up this:

Model “Noah’s Ark” at Dortrecht, Netherlands, as illustrated on Alva Church web site.

(What is shown here is an earlier model. There is now a full size version of the Ark, certified as seaworthy, but what many visitors may not realise is that these Arks are wooden skins over steel supports and resting on barges). The same web page links us to a video in which we are told that “Experts are 99.9% sure” that they have found fragments of Noah’s ark on – where else? – the slopes of Mount Ararat 2 1/2 miles above sea level. Straw in the wreckage is said to radicarbon date to “when Noah was afloat”, and “Skeptics are, as usual, skeptical, but for those who believe in the Bible literally, Noah’s Ark is a major find.”

The Reverend David Fraser is a Baptist, but this is an extremely broad description. For example, Steve Chalke, who was recently drummed out of the Evangelical Alliance for rejecting biblical literalism, is a Baptist minister. So to see what David Fraser believes, we have to dig a little deeper.

Fraser hails from Metro Calvary Church, Los Angeles, whose statement of belief includes biblical infallibility and inerrancy, obviously to be taken in a literal sense, a historical Adam and Eve, and that “man is totally depraved and of himself utterly unable to remedy his lost condition.” The Church also believes ” in the bodily resurrection of both the just and the unjust — the unjust to judgment and eternal conscious punishment in the lake of fire”.

You may be wondering why someone who believes that children are totally depraved and, unless they receive justification through God’s grace, are destined to eternal punishment in the Lake of Fire, is doing sitting on an Education Committee, rather than being locked away from them at a safe distance. Let me explain.

The educational systems of both England and Scotland emerged in something like their present forms in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, by the coming together of secular and church schools (a process that the last two administrations have done much to reverse). This led to the representation, as prior stakeholders, of the Churches. But which Churches?

In England, the answer was obvious; Church of England, and Roman Catholic.

And so, to this day, every Local Education Authority in England has, by law, one full voting member appointed by the local Catholic diocese, and one appointed by Church of England. 

In Scotland, as the diagram here shows, it’s more complicated. From the Great Disruption of 1843 onwards, the dominant Presbyterian church in Scotland was split between two major factions; the Church of Scotland, and the Free Church (after 1900, the United Free Church) of

Evolution of the Church in Scotland, from the reformation to the present. From Wikipedia article “Free Church of Scotland (1843 – 1900)”

Scotland. This schism was not healed until 1929, after the original Church of Scotland was disestablished. Meantime, various factions had split off in the process, to give a bewildering collection of splinter groups, mainly theologically conservative and even biblical literalist, as is the faction that, after a legal battle that went all the way to the United Kingdom’s highest court, won the right to call itself, at it still does, The Free Church of Scotland.

So during the formative years of the State school system, there were two major contenders for the role of leading Protestant Church in Scotland, and for this reason, to this day,

every local authority in Scotland (i.e., now, every Council) must have, on its Education Committee, three religious appointees, one Roman Catholic, one Church of Scotland, and one other.

The rules for pointing this “other” vary from authority to authority, but with major over-representation of the splinter groups referred to above, and their allies among theologically conservative Baptists such as David Fraser.

When, today, I checked on the website of David Fraser’s Alva Baptist Church, it had become much more difficult to navigate. It still tells us that ” We believe that God has big plans for this wee church and town of Alva”, but links to the Church’s specific beleifs, and to the Reverend’s “complete profile”, were dead. However, “Evangelical resources” took me to a page for Ray Comfort’s Living Waters, which in turn took me to the hard line Creationist Evolution Vs. God, endorsed by Answers in Genesis, the Institute for Creation Research, and Creation Today. All of whom believe, and consider it praiseworthy to believe, that all people and animals on Earth today are descended from a handful in the Ark who survived a world-wide flood covering the mountain tops, just at the very same time that the Egyptians, miraculously unperturbed, were in the middle of building the Pyramids.

And David Fraser, let me remind you, sits unelected on, and has full voting rights on, the Education Committee that decides policies and spending priorities for Clackmannanshire.

Nor is he unique. Among other examples, representatives on the Councils of Falkirk and North Ayrshire maintain that unbelief will be justly punished by a Hell that is physical, literal, and eternal. In South Lanarkshire, home to the Kirktonholme scandal, Nagy Iskander maintains that science and biblical creationism have the same degree of intellectual merit.

And the voice of these unelected representatives is no minor matter, since, as the Church of Scotland tells us, they hold the balance of power in 19 out of Scotland’s 32 Council Education Committees.

Is this what we really want?