Viking lenses in a Stockholm Museum

Handled some-Viking age (11th century) optical lenses at the State Historical Museum in Stockholm. These are presumed to have come from Constantinople. I found that a couple of the lenses functioned very well, whilst others were completely ineffective.  It’s thought they may have been used as burning glasses or by goldsmiths. 

What led me there was curiosity about why the telescope wasn't invented until 1609.  I still haven't found an answer to this question.  If anything, the high quality of the big lens in the photo makes the mystery even deeper; but there again, I'm not really capable of assessing what’s a high quality lens and what isn't.

Tigers in ancient Rome

Tiger hunting a bull (?).
Mosaic from Capitoline Museum, Rome

This is about the Romans and India. In a museum in Rome in May 2009 I saw a huge 2nd century AD fresco taken from a palace in Ostia, depicting a tiger. A lion would have been one thing, but it being a tiger took me aback.  A curator I spoke to said that the Romans had been quite familiar with tigers from the hunts staged in the Colosseum, and tiger bones have been found underneath it. 

Now, I was used to the idea that the Romans brought African animals to the Colosseum - but from India … ha! How to transport a tiger all that way?

Then I thought, they probably brought the tigers as cubs and reared them in Rome, in the menageries attached to the Colosseum.  That would certainly mitigate the transport difficulties.

The next puzzle is, what sort of conversation did the Romans have with the Indians about tigers? “I see you’ve got some tiger cubs in a cage, I'll take the lot”.  That would presuppose the Indians themselves kept captive tigers. Did they? Or perhaps : “Any fierce animals in that jungle?  I'll pay a good price for them if you catch me some”.  

Christian God influenced by Hinduism

At this point I'll mention that the Christian idea of God may be influenced by Hinduism and Buddhism. Bear with me while I trace the connection to tigers. In the 3rd century Plotinus popularized the One and Ineffable God and though he wasn’t a Christian, the Christians were happy to incorporate this sort of God.  According to Karen Armstrong [1], Plotinus wanted to go to India to study their religions. In the event, he didn’t actually get there.  Nevertheless, if he harboured this ambition, we can take it that he must have had a fair familiarity with Indian religions in the first place. 

Lastly, about 10 years ago I read a book by Mortimer Wheeler Rome beyond the Empire (1954), about Roman trading posts around the coast of India, and there was mention of an anonymous Greek merchant who sailed all the way round India as far as the Bay of Bengal, around 60 AD. Maybe he's the one who brought back the first tiger cubs.

I could write much more about Rome and maybe I shall. We stayed in a wonderful apartment in a non-tourist area next to the deservedly renowned covered Testaccio market where we bought all our provisions fresh every morning.  And it was only a couple of metro stops from the Colosseum.  The apartment is currently listed at http://www.vrbo.com/187343 but may soon migrate to www.nandasitaly.com. Highly recommended. 

    [1] Karen Armstrong, A History of God, 1999, paperback edition, pp 124, 127

Is Christianity a religion of blood sacrifice?

So I thought; but it seems I was misinformed.

I listened to an RTÉ radio discussion, originally broadcast at Easter. A truly fascinating piece of radio, both because of the twists and turns of the discussion and because it revealed that the Christian religion is understood only by theologians (according to theologians).

RTÉ presenter Gay Byrne

The presenter, Gay Byrne, assumed the role of the Catholic layman interviewing three Catholic academics. These were

* Mark Patrick Hederman, the Abbot of Glenstal

* Prof Sean Freyne of Trinity College Dublin (TCD), Visiting Professor of Early Christian History and Literature at Harvard

* Margaret Daly-Denton, a New Testament specialist who holds a PhD in Biblical Studies from TCD.

Gay Byrne put it to them that Christianity is a religion of blood sacrifice.

“I have problem for you all – I have read Mr Dawkins [background “huh!”] – and he sets out the Christian belief thus: God always was and always will be, He created the world, created Adam and Eve, who in the Garden did something wrong. God became so angry, He condemned us all to hellfire and damnation forever, unless he was soothed in some way. Then this omnipotent, omniscient God sends down this man Jesus who is put to death in the most horrific way, and this was the only way this God could be appeased. Dawkins says this is bizarre and anyone who believes it is mad. And I have to agree with Dawkins! Help me with that!”

The Abbot of Glenstal, Mark Patrick Hederman, came in first with the bumper book of British birds gag (Dawkins on theology is about as convincing as a tract on evolution by someone whose only knowledge of the subject is from The Bumper Book of British Birds.)

Having delivered himself of this second-hand witticism, he continues, that what Gay has outlined “is one theory, which existed certainly, of why the world was sinful and how it was reconstructed. But I don’t think there is any theologian today who actually believes that caricature.”

You're telling me this now?!

Gay Byrne is taken aback. “Well now you're telling me ‼” he expostulates. “It’s what we have believed ! … there are billions of Christians around the world who do believe what I just said.” At this point the whole radio audience including me is shouting out “here here”.

Abbot Mark Patrick Hederman

Fine, replies the Abbot, but there were people who believed the world is flat! Gay resisted the temptation to lob one into this open goal.

But I haven't told you what the Abbot’s initial reaction to Gay’s question was. His first words were: “I was taught the same thing, as a child I was taught that every time I committed a sin it drove another nail into Jesus’ hand and I remember thinking, I wish he hadn’t bothered!”

Prof Freyne admits he too was taught this. “But gradually over time, I've had the time to study and think more about it.”

Gay now sums up the discussion so far : Dawkins is not misrepresenting the teaching of the Catholic faith, and what you, the theologians, are saying to me now is, that the Catholic (Christian) faith has been abominably badly taught down through the ages.

Prof Freyne’s lame defence to this is that “there is a lot out there in the public arena going back to Vatican II and the Dutch catechism … the whole issue of evil in the world”

And Margaret Daly-Denton – listen to this one – has the gall to agree that the Christian faith has been abominably taught “and Dawkins is an example of it”.

You can see that the theologians were struggling a bit. I daresay that by bringing Dawkins into it, Gay Byrne put them off their stroke.

Did the Resurrection happen?

Regarding the rest I'll be brief. In answer to the question “Why then did Jesus come, what did he do, and what was his mission?”, we are told that He came to give us divine life, to offer us the possibility of being members of the blessed Trinity, and to live for ever with Him as divine beings.

A comment about the resurrection. A cousin of mine gave me a book purporting to give conclusive evidence from the gospels for this event. As it turns out however, these three Catholic theologians consider that the gospels contain no evidence for a bodily resurrection, nor do they claim that anyone witnessed it. Luke’s gospel goes out of its way not to be misunderstood on this point, by relating the road to Emaus story.[1] Two disciples, joined by a stranger, recognised him as Jesus only when he broke bread. The point of this carefully constructed episode and the fact that the two disciples didn’t recognise the stranger immediately, is to get across the point that “this is not a revivified historical Jesus; that this is the Risen Lord”.

I highly recommend this entertaining and informative programme which was one of a 4-part series. You can download it the from the RTE website. It's called Passion Players Pgm 4: Jesus of Nazareth.

Church handout supports sacrifice theory

A thought : Is a religion what the theologians say it is; or what its adherents popularly believe it to be?

And a postscript, proving that that Gay Byrne has described church teaching accurately. On one of my infrequent visits to a Catholic church I recently picked up a mass leaflet from which the following are extracts.

*   Under the heading “Word of God”, we have: “Jesus Christ, the Son of God, came to this world to save the whole of humanity from sin. He died on the cross for everyone without exception”.

*   To a reading from Isaiah 53: 10-11, the suffering servant passage, the leaflet adds this commentary: “This is a mysterious sinless person who suffers for the sins of the people and who will be rewarded for his suffering.”

*   A reading from Acts 13: 46-49 appears under a rubric which reads : “the Son of Man came to give his life as a ransom for many”.  And the reading itself contains the words: “For the Son of Man himself did not come to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many”. 

*   Eucharistic prayer III contains the words “Through his cross and resurrection he freed us from sin and death”.

It would be pointless to go on. The three theologians seem to me to have invented a new religion. A better one no doubt, if it’s purged of the dreadful blood sacrifice elements.  But new for all that.

[1] Luke 24:13-35

Cold War may have been by mistake

It seems the Cold War may have happened by mistake. After Stalin’s death between 1953 and 1955 there was an opportunity for détente. The USSR applied to join NATO and offered to reunify Germany on condition of it being neutral and demilitarised. And they really meant it. They weren't acting the maggot, as they say here in Ireland. So says Prof. Geoff Roberts of University College Cork (UCC)..

This is not an original idea, he says, people in the West were saying this at the time. The point is, after going to Moscow to study the archives of the foreign ministry, he concludes this contemporary view, that the Soviet proposals were in earnest, was well-founded.

What about the West’s politicians? Did they (a) share his view of Soviet good faith, take it for a sign of weakness, and decide to put the boot in? Or (b) did they not believe that the Soviets' proposals were serious?

His answer - Western politicians genuinely doubted Russian good faith. So in this sense both sides were acting in good faith, insofar as both sides genuinely believed the other was in bad faith. Lefties and liberals in the West were for détente. Western governments feared these elements were being duped. The Soviets ran a sophisticated campaign amongst the populations of the West, they didn’t just rely on diplomatic channels.

All this is from a UCC History Postgraduate Seminar, 25.02.2009. Anyone is entitled to walk in off the street to attend these seminars, but so far as I can tell, I am the only one who does so.

Prof. Roberts has covered the Soviet collective security campaign in the 1950’s in “A Chance for Peace? The Soviet Campaign to End the Cold War, 1953-1955” (Cold War International History Project Working Paper No.57) (63 pages)

Catharina Hooft and Her Nurse

To the National Gallery in London to see Dutch portraits. Rembrandt and Frans Hals. A strange thing, they couldn’t paint children, they made them look like little adults. I was aware that medieval painters did this, but I was surprised to find that the Dutch masters still hadn’t mastered it. This one’s Frans Hals, Catharina Hooft and Her Nurse, around 1620.

Is the baby's head big enough? I'm not sure. Has the artist has made the head to body ratio that of an adult? But Betsy Wieseman, a curator at the National Gallery, points out that the picture is interesting in another way, that the nurse is not in a subservient role, and is just as much the subject of the painting as the rich child. In 17th century Netherlands, she says, if you encountered someone walking down the street or at market, you might not be able to distinguish from dress or demeanour whether they were servant or master. As portrayed in the film of Girl with the Pearl earring, she said.

The exhibition catalogue says that in the seventeenth-century the rising Dutch merchant class was eager to record its newly-found prosperity by commissioning an unprecedented number of portraits, of which this is a sample. It is now thought of as the golden age of Dutch Baroque portraiture.

Betsy Wieseman mentioned this picture on BBC Radio 4’s Start the Week in August 2007.

Image courtesy of about.com (art history)

Muslim students and creationism

Harun Yahya - idiocy

I was dismayed by a Muslim meeting about creationism.

It was at University College Cork, held by the Muslim Cultural Society, on 18th Feb, and was billed as “The Atlas of Creation - a nightmare for Darwinism”. Never was an event more aptly named. The blurb said : “This conference will present the collapse of the theory of evolution because this theory constitutes the basis of all anti-spiritual philosophies. Since Darwinism rejects the fact of creation—and therefore, God's existence—over the last 140 years it has caused many people to abandon their faith or fall into doubt. This talk will focus on scientific refutation of Darwinism through fossil record and palaeontology.”

The extent to which my worst fears were exceeded, exceeded my worst fears.

It was a 4-hour event with two lectures plus Q&A. The audience consisted of 60 Muslim students and me. This must have been a very high proportion of the Muslim students at the college. What dismayed me, was not just that the event took place at all, but that the audience evidently lapped it up. Not a glimmer of dissent or debate.

Harun Yahya was the main speaker and you can get a flavour of his idiocy from his website . Here's a sentence plucked at random: "Harun Yahya is well-known as an author who has written very important works disclosing the imposture of evolutionists, the invalidity of their claims and the dark liaisons between Darwinism and bloody ideologies." 

I got my question in first, hoping that others would come in behind me. But none did so. I said I was disappointed the Muslim Cultural Society had chosen to make anti-science their theme, and asked, why didn’t they focus on the story of Arab and Muslim science being the foundation of European science?

Afterwards they were all very polite about it, thanked me for coming, and tried to convert me!  Jim al Khalili is the man they should be inviting, I suggested to one of the organisers.  I don’t think they will.

Are the Muslim students at UCC unusual?

Revealed : how a 2600 year old mistake caused problem of evil

Archbishop Rowan Williams

Just listened again to John Humphrys interviewing Rowan Williams on the BBC. The crux of the interview was the problem of evil. Rowan Williams had only the lamest of answers. It will all be healed by God in his good time, probably after death.

When Humphrys parodied this as “don’t worry, you’ll go to heaven”, Williams failed to convince. I’ve listened, and I’ve read the transcript, and all he has to offer is this:

“ My faith tells me, and it's very hard to believe in these circumstances, but it tells me and I trust this, that the world, yes, is such that suffering arises in these unspeakable ways. It also tells me that what God can do with those circumstances and those persons is not exhausted by the world, there's more.”

Yes that’s it. Really.

I trace his difficulty back to 600 BC. This is when the Jews invented their religion, and in doing so took a critical wrong turn. The elite were exiled by King Nebuchadnezzar to Babylon. Having sat down by the waters and wept as they remembered Zion, they assimilated a lot from Zoroastrianism. Already 400 years old at the time, this religion venerated a single, universal, merciful God. The exiled Jewish elite came to recognise this concept as far superior to the failed tribal warlord they had followed hitherto.

They didn’t overthrow Jehovah, they reformed him. But in doing so they made a bad mistake, the consequences of which poor old Rowan Williams is struggling with to this day. And their mistake was to reject the key point about Zoroaster‘s god (Ahura Mazda).

All-powerful is good, but weak is better

That key point is that Ahura Mazda was not all-powerful, but weak, engaged in unequal strife with the forces of evil, unable to prevail on his own, and needing humankind to come to his assistance.

If they’d taken my recommendation they would have stuck with this formula. But no, they made Jehovah all-powerful. It seemed a good idea at the time, I suppose.

If only they had got it right all those years ago. Then, instead of having to say how hard the problem of evil is, Williams could now say: yes indeed there is evil, but God doesn’t will it, nor does he allow it, he is powerless to prevent it; and will remain so until you lot forsake your sinful ways and come to his aid to combat the malign forces that have brought this state of affairs about.

He could hold has head high defending that sort of religion. Instead he's now stuck with stammering and stuttering his way through the problem of evil.

The interview was one of a 4-part series called Humphrys in Search of God: 31 October 2006. I can't find it any more on the BBC website so maybe it’s been deleted. But John Humphrys has made the interviews the basis of a book, In God We Doubt: Confession of a Failed Atheist (2007). (Subsequently bought it second hand in Cork 19/5/2010.)