| Edward Graham Macfarlane
108 Forthill Road Broughty Ferry Dundee Scotland DD5 3DR tel & fax: +44 (0)1382 730971 Email: globdem@sol.co.uk |
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| Chapter 9
Musings and Memories I am now over 73 years of age - and it isn't really necessary for me to get worked up internally about the obstacles to human unity like part-world patriotisms, internationalist papers and politicians and popes etc. - so, in this chapter I am going to take a break from what might be called political intellectualism and just reflect in an objective way about memories which come back to me from the past and how they link up with life in the present. I can remember a Forfar minister who once asked me to speak from his pulpit after reading some of my early letters in the Courier about human unity. Well that invitation was accepted by me but never carried out by the minister who never wrote to me or ever contacted me again. I have often wondered why that should have been because he seemed to be quite genuine about allowing me to speak to his congregation at the time. I think he must have sought the advice of some of his fellow ministers and been warned against allowing a kind of early Bishop of Durham - that's me! - to speak to "simple Christians" who might never have questioned the Creed principles of virgin birth and resurrection as historical facts. As a teacher I often had opportunities to talk to classes of pupils, both boys and girls, if their teachers were off duty for some reason. There was one class of girls in particular I remember who were due for a period of religious instruction. So I told them frankly that I rejected belief in the Bible. 1 said it was wrong even from the first three words of Genesis -viz. "In the beginning... "How can anybody be sure?" I asked, "That there ever was a beginning to the universe." "How can anybody be sure that the universe is not everlasting and is therefore without beginning and without end?" Now not even the Pope has an answer to that. It is a proposition which would defeat Billy Graham or any of the so called spiritual leaders of American or English or Middle East etc. countries. I also remember a Unitarian minister in Dundee (a Mr. Whitford) who helped me along towards demolishing the standing of spiritual oracles like the Parish Minister of Dundee - who once attacked humanism in the local Courier and was immediately counter-attacked by me in a letter which naturally was not published by the Editor of the Courier! There is one quotation from a book on the "Higher Criticism of the Bible", which Mr Whitford gave to me, which has always remained with me. Dealing with the need to allow critics of the Bible to come freely to their own personal conclusions, the writer - whose name is immaterial -wrote as follows, "To prescribe the findings of a critical investigation of the Bible is to preclude the investigation." Now that was a titbit of scholarly lore which I could fully appreciate because the fact that British Christian oriented newspapers always seemed to prevent a discussion of religious ideas continuing with complete fairness to both sides in the discussion really annoyed me times without number. And it is still going on - quite unabated after over fifty years of my experience of it. I have often thought I could make a fortune if I had free access to the rejected letters in the "buckets" of all the main newspapers in the world. There is a goldmine of real opinions there which have been, like the flower in the desert, "born to blush unseen". This will change when agnostic constitutionalism is established. It is really this basic conviction that all human beings are made of the same flesh and blood and are capable of understanding each other if the historical barriers of ancient languages and brain-washings could be overcome that has inspired me to try publishing this book. How else to dodge phony democratic journalists? And it isn't true that people do not change in their personal outlook of ideas as life goes on. I myself am just a case in point. Indoctrinated as a Scottish Presbyterian political progressive in my childhood I have, by dint of much trying, learned some important lessons which 1 am now trying to pass on to others. For example if I, as a throughly taught God-believer in my youth, can learn to talk to atheists and other brands of believers (Jews, Moslems, Hindus etc) as fellow human beings caught in a common net of unjournalistic: confusion, can come through to see a way to unite us all into a single world civilization - surely there is hope for humanity in general. I can no longer describe myself as a Scottish Presbyterian because I now regard myself as a Global Agnostic Democrat progressive. As a "progressive" I believe mankind has a scientific task to perform in the universe. Nearly everyone I meet is able to say that their views about religion and politics have been changing with the passing of the years and this is hopeful from my idealistic viewpoint because it seems to me to mean that there is hope for the realisation of my hopes for constitutional human unity even if not many people are actually thinking on that matter at the moment. For example, I visited my sister Fanny - who is now 75 and living on her own in a sheltered house in Auchterarder - recently, and I found - a bit to my surprise I must say - that she too is not quite so sold on religion as she used to be. I actually asked outright if she was still attending the church as she used to do but she just shook her head. Then I said, "Do you still believe in God?" She didn't answer directly but said, "To tell the truth I really don't know what to believe any more." Now this was as welcome a statement to me as it was unexpected because it fitted in perfectly with my wish to see everybody admitting frankly to being agnostic - in the simple sense that none of us really know what to believe. Some of us feel strongly about our beliefs and I have met Christians who say openly that they put their Christian beliefs above and before anything else whatsoever - before their duty to Britain or the Queen or to Parliament or even their politics. Of course I think that kind of thinking is a recipe for Christian Fascism or Roman Catholic Fascism if the speaker is a Roman Catholic but it is difficult to get such addicts to see this logicality and the danger of it. Of course I know that many people keep to their religion and ignore politics completely. I know Christians who do not use their political vote and have no intention of ever doing so - and if I ask them how they expect to have the best government chosen if they do not use their votes they just say something like, "It is all in God's hands." This is crass superstition of course - just like the clerics who suggest that York Minster was struck by lightning because David jenkins denies the current Church Creed. But Archbishop Hapgood stage-managed the consecration nevertheless and both he and the new Bishop of Durham will no doubt continue to live off their church connections after the maner of the "Vicar of Bray" song we used to sing in our school in Auchtermuchty. Anyhow I thought I'd ask Fanny what sort of thing had made her begin to be really doubtful ' about religion and she said "Oh, lots of things!" But I pressed her, "What sort of things." "Well" she said, "I was doing a crossword puzzle recently and I came to this clue -'Adam's first wife'- but there were six spaces to be filled, so this stumped me because I had always thought that Adam only had one wife whose name was Eve. And of course the three-letter Eve did not fill the spaces in the puzzle. So I had to wait to see the solution to get the answer." At this point I am tempted to leave the reader without the next ordinary follow-up to that statement which is to supply the answer to the riddle, "Who was Adarn's first wife?" But I have never believed in mind-teasing or witholding answers to questions where a simple statement of fact can fill the gap. "Well," I said, "What was the given answer?" Fanny's reply was, "Have you ever heard of Lilith?" "Yes," I said, because I had heard of Lilith. "But, to be truthful, I could not have stated that Lilith was Adarn's first wife." When my wife and I got back from Auchterarder that day I immediately went to my Oxford Dictionary to see if Lilith was mentioned and found no reference to the word. Then I tried my Encyclopedia Britannica and I found the explanation in it. "LILITH, a female demon of jewish folklore, equivalent to the English vampire. The personality and name ("night-monster") are derived from a Babylonian-Assyrian demon Lilit or Lilu. Lilith was believed to have a special power for evil over children. The superstition was extended to a cult surviving among some Jews even as late as the 7th century A.D. In the Rabbinical literature Lilith becomes the first wife of Adam, but flies away from him and becomes a demon." I find this little story delightful because it demonstrates the high quality of my sister's mind as well as puncturing the Protestant conceits that their ministers are to be followed no matter what their personal opinions may be. I also find a roguish humour in suggesting that the Protestant "demons" Adam and Eve may be seen as such by Rabbinicals as "tit for tat" for the Christian editor of the Encyclopedia Britannica suggesting that Rabbis believe in demons. There is a devastating simplicity of advocation of agnosticism about all creeds contained in this story if we apply the Christian rule "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.--- Why should Christians of
any sect assume that their Creed is true?
yesterday, said secularism and permissiveness seemed to be attacking the foundations of Christian civilization. Our foundations in the personal, cultural and political areas were all under attack and in danger of being destroyed. (There then followed a resume of the sermon which claimed Christians had the right to give ethical guidance and secularism had led to the rejection of any divinely given absolute values). Then the report continued as follows:- "the result was that we were faced with a situation in which competing systems of greed threatened to tear our society apart. "The general public are confused. They are kept in the dark about the real issues and because there is a complete absence of moral authority, they do not know where to look for leadership." Dr Douglas stressed: "It is precisely and only because man is more than an animal and because there are abiding moral standards shown to us in Jesus that evils like injustice and racism must be opposed and will, one believes, eventually be overcome." As you can imagine, if you have grasped the principles of Cosmopolis as a form of society which is superior (in our view) to a Christian Protestant dominated society, I tried to rebut these "authoritative" pronouncements by Mr Douglas - because, as an agnostic democrat, I do not recognise his right to the pretentious description as used by the sycophantic Christian -upholding editor such as that of the EVENING TELEGRAPH, - but my letter was suppressed and thus the readers were "kept in the dark" not by me but by the Christian protestant Editor of the EVENING TELEGRAPH. In my letter I called for the cessation of the tradition of a " kirkin' of the council" - on the rather obvious grounds that not every council member would be a Protestant Christian - and that it was therefore unbearably presumptuous of Mr Douglas or any other orthodox Church of Scotland member to presume that his views warrant being taken as undoubtedly credible moral authority. Herein lies the basic importance of the suggestion in this book that we need to promote a fundamental re-constitution of our society here in Britain. The assumption freely and protectedly made by Christian Protestants by the out-of-date journalism of a Christian Democratic tradition and theory of society which has been handed down to us from the past - that Christian Protestant moral assessment of problems or ethical guidance by churchmen is SUPERIOR to the views of those of different sets of beliefs is quite unjustified. Christian thinking may be mistaken, just as marxist thinking or jewish thinking or moslem thinking or roman catholic thinking or atheistic thinking or any other form of positive belief thinking may be mistaken. It is right here that I assert that acceptance by everybody of a doctrine that no living person has any right to claim that his religion or irreligion has the quality of being the one and only true reflection of the ultimate Truth about the proper purpose of human beings to adopt in their quest to be "good citizens" whilst here on earth. Mr Douglas presumes that he has access to the secret of the universe and 1 presume that he has not or at least we cannot be certain that he has. Now it is up to the reader to choose between agnosticism as a fair basis for our human society or which of the fanatical positive creeds to opt for. Since the editors of Christian newspapers and marxist newspapers and Roman Catholic newspapers and American newspapers and Moslem .newspapers and Evangelical newspapers and Christian Scientist newspapers .and Soviet newspapers and French newspapers and all other part-world nationalist or biased creed newspapers do not allow fair discussion of inter-beliefs problems this book has had to be brought out to try to broach the issue of global agnostic democracy as the fairest possible way to run world civilization once we have surmounted the difficulties of weaning the minds of people away from thoughtless adherence to traditions which create a world in which there is international and other kinds of social chaos. As the author of this book I assert without much fear of contradiction that the various forms of biased journalism practised in various separate nations is the CHIEF BOTTLENECK in the spreading of human understanding which has kept the general public "in the dark" about what must be done to procure a civilized world out of the maelstrom of conflicting social doctrines tied to so many forms of patriotisms and allied to so many forms of cocksure beliefs which are really all very dubious indeed. Surely the time has come to expect human beings in all lands to be able to see the ideological follies of having a world full of so many selfish nations with self-styled moral authorities in every country having the presumption to assume that they alone know the secret of the knowledge of good and evil. All these self-proclaimed know-alls about ethical authority must be pulled off their perches and told they know no more about ultimate good and evil than you and I or our sisters or brothers on the streets of the cities of the world. This is why democracy has been resorted to by so many different states in the world already. Christians and Moslems and Roman Catholics and Marxists are all guilty of phony self-assurance about their own righteous-ness being in line with the ultimate nature of universal Truth. This Truth (with the big "T") has really been hidden from us all and it is because we choose beliefs to serve as a substitution for our agnosticism in practice that we must turn to one-person-one-vote majority voting for the peaceful resolution of the differing policies which stem from our differing beliefs. |
| Edward Graham Macfarlane
108 Forthill Road Broughty Ferry Dundee Scotland DD5 3DR tel & fax: +44 (0)1382 730971 Email: globdem@sol.co.uk |
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| my writing |
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