By Diana Holbourn
During Becky's Last Term at University, she Takes Interest in Controversial Debates Between an Atheist and a Christian she Knows
Book five of the online Becky Bexley series. Chapter 2 continued.
This series accompanies the books about what Becky does at university and afterwards, which you can find out more about on my author website. (The online series is in draft form.)
(To recap: The previous page ended with Deborah talking about things she's read about bad conditions in Mother Teresa's homes, after she'd previously quoted her as saying things that gave the impression she thought suffering was good for the world.)
Then Deborah said to Judith, "I wonder why God allows so many bad things to be done in his name. I'm not just talking about Mother Teresa, but you know - there are lots of cults that teach false versions of what's in the Bible, and the religious wars that have supposedly been fought for God's glory, and corrupt popes over the centuries who've claimed to speak for him, and faith healers who dupe Christians out of money because they fraudulently claim that God can perform miracles through them, - and the examples could go on and on! How can God tolerate it going on century after century, giving him a bad name?"
Judith said, "I don't know. But maybe God waits to punish people who do bad things in his name in the afterlife."
Deborah said, "But why doesn't he stop bad things happening in his name in the first place? And for that matter, why doesn't he stop other bad things? I still think a truly good God could have made a world with a lot less suffering in it. I've heard some Christians say suffering is allowed by God because it's meant to be a part of life, to help mould people to be more compassionate, because when people know what it's like to suffer, they can care more when other people do; or it gives them a chance to develop their caring sides by helping other people who are suffering, so they'll be nicer to be around, and they'll have better characters when they get to heaven or something.
"But if Christians take that to its logical conclusion, won't that mean they'll have to think it might be against God's will for scientists to do things like try to find cures for diseases, because if they're successful, they might eradicate a fair bit of suffering? Won't it seem to make sense to them that the more suffering there is on earth the better, because it'll mean more opportunity for people to develop their caring sides? The likes of Mother Teresa aside, there might be Christians who are conflicted about that idea, if they care about eliminating suffering as much as possible. I'm glad I'd never have dilemmas like that! It makes it sound as if it's an advantage to be an atheist, since we're free to form our own opinions, like the opinion that the more eradication of suffering there is the better!"
Judith said, "Really though, it isn't actually the case that Christians have to believe all suffering's good, and that no one should try to get rid of any of it if we believe some of it can have benefits. I'm sure there'll always be enough suffering to go round, no matter what new cures for diseases are found, and what other efforts people make to improve the world. And besides, one thing compassion does is motivates some people to try to find cures for diseases and ways of eliminating pain and so on; so if God wants people to be more caring, you'd think that must be part of what he wants some of his people to do. You can tell from the Bible's commands about how people ought to spend their lives doing good for others that he wants his people to help other people improve their lives."
Deborah said, "Maybe. But I still think an all-powerful and all-knowing God who was actually good could have made the world a much better place where a lot of suffering just didn't exist in the first place. I've heard that thing about how suffering was brought into the world because Adam and Eve sinned; but that's never made any sense to me. For one thing, why would the supposed sin of two people have to affect billions of others who didn't have anything to do with what they did wrong? It doesn't seem logical. Is your God an illogical God? That's apart from being cruel."
Judith said, "Well if you take the Genesis story literally, and there's some division in Christianity about whether it should be taken like that, it wouldn't be illogical, because once sin was brought into the world, it was going to affect everyone no matter what. You know: The way people turn out is partly to do with the way they're brought up; so whatever sins the parents commit are going to rub off on the children in some way, like if they yell at the children a lot, the children themselves might well get into the habit, and shout at their own children a lot, which will likely get them into the habit themselves, and so on. That kind of thing."
One of the group said, "That's a good point. I've heard the idea of original sin criticised by other atheists. Well, actually, I've thought myself that it didn't seem fair that the Bible says everyone's bound to be a sinner just because Adam and Eve brought sin into the world. But it makes a whole lot more sense the way you put it. I'll have to remember that explanation, and tell any atheists I come across if I hear them get insulting about the idea.
"Actually, that's not the only insulting thing I've known atheists to say about the Book of Genesis. I've had debates with a few of them on forums, where they've ridiculed the idea of the world being created in only six days, saying scientists have discovered it took millions of years, or something like that, and that everything developed gradually, instead of coming into being at once.
"I said things like, "Maybe you're right. Actually, it seems quite likely that the things God did were way more complicated than the way the Bible describes them. But they couldn't have been explained in complex detail in the Bible, because no one would have understood them. Imagine God saying to Moses, who's thought by a lot of Christians to have written Genesis down under God's inspiration:
"'Here's what I want you to write. You won't understand any of it; you won't even know how to spell it. And frankly, no one else will understand it either, for at least three thousand years. But have patience; sit down with the biggest set of animal skins you can muster to write on and a great pot of ink, and just write what I tell you. Don't ask questions; you live in an age where people haven't yet learned the convolutions of the laws of physics, the sophisticated technicalities of biology ... oh sorry, I've lost you already, haven't I; never mind, Moses; just write what I tell you, because in three or four thousand years' time, people will understand it ... if all copies haven't been thrown away as exasperating incomprehensible twaddle by then!'
"I hope you don't mind me talking about this stuff, Deborah. I'm not really making fun of atheists; and the conversations I'm talking about were quite friendly really. ... Well, a bit friendly anyway.
"Another time, I was debating an atheist who said Genesis contradicts science, and that any Christian working as a scientist would have to live a kind of double life, believing in Genesis in church on Sunday, but then tucking the belief out of the way somewhere in their brain and letting their real-world beliefs out when they went to work, so they could do their job, which they wouldn't be able to do otherwise, because science and Genesis are so contradictory they'd have to give up science altogether if they couldn't bury their belief in Genesis while they were at work.
"I joked sarcastically, 'Yes, of course they would, since as you're well aware, Genesis is the pinnacle of a Christian's faith - what it's all about! And there's no room for investigation into how God might have carried out what it says he did. As it says in Genesis chapter 1 verse 3:
"'This book must be read as a scientific textbook; it contains the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Every word in it has been chosen with exacting precision, and every translation of it will henceforth contain equally exacting precision. Anyone who speculates as to whether any of its words are not precise scientific data is to be sentenced to clean the toilets in hell for eternity!'
"But the atheist I was talking to said it would be wrong to conveniently read into Genesis anything it doesn't say, to get around the fact that it contradicts science. Not that I meant people should do that. But he said the only alternative to believing that Genesis happened literally is to believe in God, but to 'consider all scriptures to be mythical and intended for metaphorical interpretation, not a literal one.' He said he suspected that's hard to do.
"I thought there were one or two logic problems with that idea. For one thing, the only reason most Christians must believe in God is because the Bible says he exists. So I joked, 'Of course it must be hard to do that, old thing! After all, if you believe everything you ever read in the Bible is mythical, and then try to believe what you read about God's existence in the Bible is not mythical, so you're basically trying to believe it's mythical and non-mythical at the same time, I suspect you'll at least need to refresh yourself with a nice cup of coffee and a biscuit after a few minutes, if the effort hasn't made you want to lie down with a headache!'"
One of the girls grinned and said, "Imagine if your parents had always taught you that people from a certain country don't really exist, but they're just mythical people, like the Greek gods of old, and that any stories about them in history books are really just fireside stories that people in the olden days would tell to entertain each other, or to scare each other with in the same way they'd tell ghost stories, because they had to make their own entertainment in the days before they had television and things; and then one day you met someone who told you they're from that country, and you said, 'Come on, you're just having me on! Everyone knows that country doesn't really exist! Where are you really from?'"
They giggled.
Then the one who'd been talking about her conversations with atheists said, "Anyway, in another conversation I had on a forum, another atheist was ridiculing the Book of Genesis, asking me how I could possibly be silly enough to believe it when it's so unscientific, because no one who had any knowledge of science could really believe the world could have been created in six days. They said religion's a bad influence in the world, partly because it stands in the way of people's belief in proper science by teaching such unscientific things!
"Well apart from the fact that I've never heard of it 'standing in the way of people's belief in proper science', I said that Genesis was never meant to be a science book! I said, 'The Bible's meant to teach moral lessons, not to teach science! I think it's very likely that things happened in a much more complicated way than the Bible says they did. But just imagine what it would be like if instead of keeping things simple, it had gone into complex minute detail about exactly what happened when the earth was formed, with sentences like the kind of thing you might find in Wikipedia, like, "Earth's atmosphere and oceans were formed by volcanic activity and outgassing that included water vapour. The crust, which currently forms the Earth's land, was created when the molten outer layer of the planet Earth cooled to form a solid mass as the accumulated water vapour began to act in the atmosphere."'
"I said, 'Imagine how long just the glossary of Genesis would have to have been to explain what on earth a lot of those words meant to people who'd never had any education. Just the glossary of Genesis would have to have taken volumes! Just imagine if readings in church today were packed with that kind of detail. Preachers would say, "Now, we're going to have a reading from Genesis chapter one"; and it would be full of detail like that, and there might barely be even one mention of God, even if they read for minutes and minutes! So it would kind of miss the point of what the Bible's supposed to be about!'"
Most of the girls laughed. But then Deborah said, "It's all very well for you to joke about this stuff; but there are Christians who are really dogmatic about believing God created the world in a literal six days; and they want to stop the teaching of evolution in schools. So it's no wonder some atheists are so critical of the Book of Genesis. There really is so much religious insanity in the world, what with there being all kinds of strange and extreme beliefs, that I think the world actually needs a lot of atheists to try and change people's minds, and bring their thinking into the modern era."
The girl who'd been making the jokes made another one, saying, "Maybe you're right. Maybe every religious neighbourhood in the entire world ought to have its own little group of crusading scientific atheists in it, constantly critiquing the religion that's predominant in their neighbourhood, as a check against excesses and fanaticism. Those atheists will probably make themselves unpopular in some places. So they should all wear some kind of protective clothing, - maybe body armour, and then a thick layer of sponge all over themselves, so if anyone throws anything at them, it won't hurt. They can be known as the sponge people, or spongers, perhaps.
"I suppose in hot climates, they might be a bit too warm doing that; so they could wear rubber or a metal shield or something all over themselves instead, so if anyone throws anything at them, it'll just bounce off. There, they can be known as the bouncy people, or bouncers, perhaps."
Most of the girls chuckled. But Deborah said, "I don't think rubber would stop people being hurt by flying objects, unless it was such a thick layer they'd still be too warm! And even then it would only work against small ones. And like I said, it's easy for you to joke about this stuff; but religious bigotry and ignorance is a serious problem."
One of the group said, "Yes, it probably is actually. I'd just like it better if some atheists didn't get so insulting about Christians when they criticise the Bible. I don't mean you. I'm thinking of some people I've encountered on Internet forums. I had conversations with one once who used to like to be insulting, saying Christians have inferior thinking skills, and that most of us haven't got much of a clue about good science. ... Well, I haven't myself; but I'm pretty sure some Christians have.
"But one day He said he could prove that Christians like me must have problems with our brains that make us believe things that anyone with good thinking skills wouldn't believe at all, because we believe things like that it's actually possible for a man to die, start decomposing, and then to rise to life three days later, with not even any health problems whatsoever! He was talking about the resurrection of Jesus. He said Christians must be really gullible, and that we must have to repress our common sense, to believe things like that. He said, 'Try reading a science book about how quickly the brain decomposes after death! How would it be possible for the trillions of brain pathways in the human brain to be reconstructed, when Jesus' brain would have all decomposed and turned to mush by the time three days were up!'
"I said, 'Well obviously it would be impossible for you or me to do that to a brain. Probably not even the most scientifically advanced atheist could do it! But That doesn't mean God couldn't; and what if instead of allowing Jesus' brain to decompose, God simply implemented some scientific process not yet known to man that prevented it from decomposing in the first place?'"
Most of the girls grinned. But Deborah said seriously, "Actually, the fact that God would allow his own son to go through the horrendous process of crucifixion seems to be more proof that he doesn't give much of a stuff about suffering, since if he did, why would he be OK with that?"
Judith said, "Well don't forget that the Bible says Jesus himself is a part of God; so he wouldn't have been crucified without agreeing to it. It might just seem like needless suffering to you; but some people who become Christians and really want their sins forgiven can be awestruck that Jesus would care so much about them that he'd go through crucifixion to pay for their sins so God will forgive them. And some people who've sinned really seriously but who want forgiveness might feel as if it's only appropriate for something serious to have been done to pay for their sins, since if Christianity taught that they could be forgiven just like that, as soon as people committed to changing their ways, they might feel as if they still owed some kind of debt.
"And some people might get the immpression that if forgiveness was that easy, it must mean God doesn't take sin very seriously, so they might think it was OK for them to carry on doing it. Well, I think some people still do think that. But the Bible teaches that that's a wrong thing to think.
"And as well as those things, Christians going through a lot of suffering can be encouraged by thinking that Jesus can have some understanding of what they're going through, because he knows what it's like to suffer."
Deborah said, "That brings us back to the topic of why God allows so much suffering in the world! Again. If he was that caring, you'd have thought he'd stop it going on!"
Judith said, "A lot of Christians must have thought the same thing too. I don't know why there's so much suffering in the world. But apart from that the Bible says God wants humans to do what they can to prevent and stop it, I think I know of a few reasons why God doesn't eliminate it. For one thing, you're right that some Christians think some of it could serve some purposes, such as improving some people's characters because they can develop their caring sides when they see it, or when they've been through it, because they can become more sensitive to the feelings of other people in need, which might benefit other people around them, because they'll be more caring towards them. It's possible that everyone would be more like spoiled brats if God had created the world without suffering, and we'd all always got everything we wanted; and that itself would cause suffering for others, so it would mess the world up, and mean God's intentions backfired.
"But as it is, if going through some suffering makes some people more caring, I think it'll serve them well in the long run, because it seems from the New Testament that caring people are more likely to make it to heaven, which will benefit them for eternity."
Deborah said, "Suffering doesn't always make people's characters better though, does it. It can cause depression and bitterness and anger; and people who suffer a lot as children can develop horrible anxiety disorders and depression that can last for decades. And some people who are abused as children go on to be abusers. And if suffering was that good at making people caring, you'd expect the parts of the world where the most suffering goes on to have the nicest people; but I think they tend to be places where there are high crime rates, often with high levels of gang violence, domestic violence, and other kinds of abuse."
Judith replied, "That's a point. Maybe it's just that certain kinds of suffering can make certain kinds of people more caring or something; I don't know. But I've heard quite a bit about people who've had various problems going on to want to do a lot to help other people who've got them."
Deborah said, "That might not be evidence that people are actually becoming more caring though. A lot of them might have been caring before, but just realised how much of a need there is to help people with certain kinds of problems after they suffered them themselves, so they went on to help those, instead of spending their time helping other people who they might have helped otherwise. Or they might devote more of their time to helping other people than they did before, but it doesn't mean they weren't caring before. And they might often do that because they think they don't want their suffering to have been all for nothing, so they want to make sure that at least something good comes out of it. So they're not actually becoming more caring than they were before, but just making sure their suffering was worthwhile in some way, so it doesn't seem pointless."
Judith said, "I suppose so. But I think there's probably still something in the idea that suffering can sometimes make people more caring, or sensitive to the needs of suffering people around them, because they can identify with them more. I've heard stories about that happening. I mean, I know they can't be taken as good evidence that it works for everyone, because they're only stories about a few individuals; but they've made me think there's something in it, like I read something a counsellor said about how people had told him he'd become more sensitive to their feelings after he went through some grief after his wife died."
One of the girls said, "I've heard there are some studies that have found that a lot of people who've suffered badly have more empathy for other people who are suffering than the general population have, on average, and that a higher percentage of them are involved in trying to reduce suffering than the percentage in the general population who are, - not necessarily just the kind of thing they've suffered, but other kinds of suffering too."
Deborah said, "Maybe. But ongoing suffering can be really wearing on a person, like if it goes on for years. Then it might cause lasting depression, and things like that, which can make people not feel like doing much of anything."
One of the girls said, "Maybe people often have to have got over their suffering before they feel like helping other people with theirs, because while it's going on, it might be taking all their energy to just deal with it; but then maybe after people have found a way to get over it, and come to terms with what happened, so thinking about it doesn't upset them so much any more, a lot of them want to pass on what they've found out, to try to help other people who are suffering the same things, because they know how horrible it is, so they care about them more than they would have done if they hadn't suffered much."
Judith said, "Maybe. I don't know. Maybe the effects suffering has on people's compassion for other people depend on what kind of suffering it is and how long it lasts, and other things like that.
"But anyway, since it seems suffering doesn't always have any positive effects, and it can have very harmful ones, there must be other reasons why it's allowed to happen, as well as that one.
"I've heard a theory that another reason God allows it might be that if he intervened a lot in the world to protect people, or just good people, it would actually make scientific progress a lot slower and harder, because some things wouldn't be predictable, so some laws of nature couldn't have been made with any certainty.
"Here's the kind of thing I mean: Say if when some people fell off a cliff or a roof they fell to their deaths, but more godly people were gently propelled back to safety again, or if everyone was saved, but any object would just fall, or say if a child could throw a precious possession of their parents out the window, and sometimes instead of crashing to the ground, it would float back in the room again, because God didn't want the parents to suffer losing it, because they were among the better people in the world, and so on, scientists could never have worked out the laws of gravity, since they wouldn't have been able to work out why gravity caused effects some of the time but not others, or why it affected objects but it didn't affect people if they fell from high places.
"And I think calculating the effect gravity will have on things is important for a lot of modern inventions, like air travel and space flight. I'm not sure how. You've probably got a much better knowledge of this kind of thing than I have, Deborah, because you've studied a whole lot more science than I ever have. But I remember reading something or other about how the inventions would have been impossible if scientists had thought they wouldn't be able to predict how gravity would work in various situations.
"Or imagine if among people working with lead, or in a house covered in peeling lead paint, some people got lead poisoning, but people who were good enough to be favoured by God didn't, and scientists couldn't work out why only some people got affected. It would have been hard for them to work out that lead was even a toxin, since they might have wondered if something else entirely was causing the symptoms of the people who got ill. Imagine if some people could chew on things made of lead all day without getting ill. It would have been confusing for scientists, and it could have really held back progress when it came to discovering the harmful effects of lead, so medical treatments for lead poisoning might not have been invented.
"You'll probably say God could have made lead non-toxic in the first place; but I'm just using that as an example. It probably isn't the best one.
"Or if there was an earthquake, and the houses of some families that weren't very nice fell down and crushed them, while the houses of nicer families that were built in exactly the same way, on exactly the same kind of ground, didn't fall down, scientists might try to work out what made some houses fall down while others were left standing, and when they couldn't work it out because the houses were exactly the same, they might give up, or miss the fact that the houses weren't strong enough to withstand earthquakes, instead of concluding that there were weaknesses in their structure, and looking into methods of improving the design of the houses in the area so they could withstand earthquakes.
"That kind of thing. It might have seemed to a lot of people that it wasn't even worth studying science if the world had seemed such a mysterious and unpredictable place that it seemed impossible to understand much at all about the way it works. If that had happened, a whole lot of inventions and discoveries we take for granted might not have been made, so humans couldn't have had anywhere near the quality of life we can have today."
Deborah said, "That makes sense. Or at least it would, if it wasn't for the fact that it seems from the Bible that God doesn't actually want humanity to progress. I'm thinking of the story of the Tower of Babel in Genesis, where it says God objected to the people even just building a tower, saying that if they were allowed to succeed, they'd be able to do anything they liked; so he made it so they all spoke different languages from then on, so they couldn't understand each other, so they scattered over the earth instead of sticking together. What kind of a tyrant must God be to do that!"
Judith said, "Actually, I don't think it would have been just them building a tower that God objected to. I read an interesting article that says God's reaction was almost certainly nothing to do with being angry about them building a high tower. They were building a city as well, according to Genesis; and it says they said they wanted to build it so they could all stick together instead of being scattered over the earth. That sounds nice. But the article I read says it might have been more sinister than it seems, because there are one or two hints in the story that the people could have been under totalitarian control, being made to stick together, instead of just wanting to.
"The article says that when God made lots of the people speak different languages so they scattered around the earth, it wasn't in reality a punishment, but he was just trying to make them do what he'd actually ordered them to do before but some of them hadn't wanted to, and some of them maybe had, but they were stopped in their tracks. The creation story says God told humans to fill the whole earth and multiply. And it says that after the world was flooded in the time of Noah, God told them to go out and fill the earth again. But the tower of Babel story says they wanted to all stick together, and built a city to try to make sure they would. So God might have just been trying to make them obey the command he'd given them before.
"If the article's right, it's possible that the leaders of the people living at the time wanted to control the rest of them, making sure they all thought the same way. The evidence for that isn't crystal clear at all; but the person who wrote the article reads significance into the fact that at the beginning of the story, it says everyone had the same language in those days, and also 'the same words'. I don't know if it's the right interpretation of it, but the article says that that phrase seems to have been implying that the people all had the same opinions and thought alike, so they used the same words because they were always talking about the same things in the same way.
"It says God must have thought that was dangerous, because it isn't natural for everyone to hold the same opinions and think alike, so it implies that they were under a kind of totalitarian control where they were actually being told what to think. I don't know how valid that theory is; but the writer of the article reads into the text that instead of just being scared that they'd be scattered over the earth and that would make it more difficult to survive or something, the powerful people there didn't want people to go and form their own communities, because they wanted everyone to do what they wanted them to; so they were trying to make it so people wouldn't leave and set up independent communities.
"The theory goes that the reason the tower was built was that it was designed to be a watchtower, from where everyone could be spied on to make sure they didn't leave and set up their own communities elsewhere, or didn't set up projects that would be out of line with what the leaders wanted them to do. So God making them speak different languages would actually be protecting the people, by enabling them to go and do that.
"Like I said, I don't know how valid that theory is; but the article I read claims that there are clues that it's correct, saying the story's sandwiched between two lists of family trees where it mentions the names of a whole load of people, and yet it doesn't mention any names, as if to poetically symbolise that people in the city of Babel were pretty much anonymous, because they were all supposed to be pretty much the same, thinking the same things. And the chapter before it indicates that people were already beginning to scatter over the earth, and their languages were beginning to differ; so the Babel story suggests that the leaders were trying to reverse the process, trying to control everyone by making them live in the same place.
"So the theory goes that when God made the people speak different languages so they scattered throughout the world, it was actually a blessing, because it meant they'd be free to adopt their own ideas and forms of government and so on. Again, I don't know how valid that theory is; but it's an interesting one."
Deborah joked, "Well it's nice to think God likes the idea of free speech. Maybe it means he won't mind me criticising him, and he can happily tolerate atheists criticising the Bible.
"But about that stuff you were saying before about how God can't intervene much in the world because it would mean scientists couldn't work out the laws of nature and make lots of the progress they have: Does that mean you believe he doesn't answer prayer, so there's no point in praying to him? You must be in a small minority of Christians if you believe that!"
Judith said, "No, I think he still answers prayer; but maybe he doesn't answer it in really major ways, and that's the reason why."
Deborah said, partly for fun, "OK, here's another thing then: If you believe God always hears prayers, it must be quite a job for him! He must have to somehow listen to every word everyone in the world says all the time, and every thought they think, to make sure he catches their prayers when they say them, and even hears the prayers when they say them in their minds. Wouldn't it be confusing for even God to have to listen in to billions of people's thoughts at once, and distinguish each individual thought stream from the others, as well as taking in loads of prayers on different subjects at once? What kind of being is he?
"Is it possible he's got a billion heads, all with separate brains or something? Imagine them all getting headaches at once from having to listen to billions of people's thoughts and words chattering away while he's listening out for prayers! And how does he have the energy and brain power to answer some prayers at the same time as he's listening to everyone's words and thoughts? Do you think he's got extra heads just for thinking about how to answer prayers and then making sure what he's decided to do about them gets done, so he can do that at the same time as he's listening to everyone?"
Helen joked, "I dunno; maybe instead of listening in to everyone, he's got billions of super-computers, with one trained on each of us; and maybe they've all been programmed with an algorithm that detects certain phrases and keywords, like when someone uses the word 'God'; and the computer copies them down and transmits them to God, - although it would have to be programmed to filter out what had a high probability of just being blasphemy, like when someone used the word 'God' as a swear word. And maybe it can sort prayers into urgent, important and low priority, so God can tell which ones to look at first. Maybe he sets aside some time every couple of hours to look through the latest prayers, the way one of us might check our emails."
Sandra joked, "Or maybe he's got keyword-activated thought-tapping devices trained on each one of us, that start recording when they detect a word that sounds like the first part of a prayer, so it can just transmit relevant things. I don't know if it's true, but I heard that governments can tap phones using devices that start recording when they detect certain keywords, that might mean the people they're listening to are up to something suspicious, like if they're spying for an enemy power or something. And if humans can invent things like that, I'm sure God could have invented something more sophisticated."
Becky smiled and said, "What if the spies are using code words? Governments might have spent millions of pounds on that technology, only for it not to work when it really matters!"
Sandra chuckled and said, "Well, I don't know much about it really, or even if it really exists. It might just be a conspiracy theory."
One of the girls smiled and said, "Imagine if God would do anything anyone asked him to, no matter what. So someone could ask for a million pounds, and immediately they'd have it, or someone could pray that the sun would start shining, and immediately it would."
One of the others grinned and joked, "That would be good! I might have you turned into a turnip, Deborah."
Deborah joked, "Oh yeah? Well if you did that, I'd break the habit of a lifetime and start praying myself. I'd pray that God would turn you into a marshmallow!"
The girl who said she'd have Deborah turned into a turnip smiled and said, "It wouldn't do you much good, because if you forgot to ask God to turn you back into a human, you wouldn't be able to eat me!"
Deborah grinned and said, "Oh, I'm sure I'd think of praying to God to turn me back into a human again!"
One of the group smirked and said, "Hey, we could pray to God to make Deborah become a Christian instantly, and that she'd want to stay one for the rest of her life! That would be one way of converting people!"
Deborah said, "Or I could pray that you all became atheists! Mind you, if God's existence was really obvious, because he always did everything everyone wanted, I suppose I'd stop being an atheist myself."
One of the group said, "Wow, imagine how much people might be able to scare other people by threatening to pray, if God really did do everything we asked! Imagine if Judith said, 'Right Deborah, I'm really fed up of your questions, and I'm annoyed with you for asking them, so I'm going to ask God to make all kinds of weird things happen to you and your family. I'm going to ask him to make all the walls of your parents' house morph into plywood, and turn their roof to paper. I'll ask him to make their washing machine always jump out of its place when it spins and chase them across the room. I'll ask him to make their kitchen table often tip up, so they don't dare use it in case everything falls off when they're having a meal.
"'And I'll ask him to make holes in all your socks, and to turn all your meat into dog food. Then I'll pray that he makes your alarm clock keep waking you up in the middle of the night, by rising into the air, positioning itself above your head, and shouting, 'Get up, lazy bones!' I'll ask him to turn your hair into straw as well. Then I'll pray that he makes you get stones in your shoes every day, when you aren't even anywhere stony, and that he makes your radio only ever play one song, without a break, and that it’ll be a song you don't like.
"'Then I'm going to pray that he causes a cold wind to blow all around your parents' house even in summer, so it never gets warm, and that he makes clouds just outside your windows, - only your ones, - so the sun never comes in.'"
Judith giggled and said, "I'd never do that!"
Deborah grinned and said, "Well if anyone did threaten to get God to do those things, I'd suddenly become a Christian, just so I could ask God not to do any of them, knowing he'd answer me. And I could immunise myself against anything bad ever happening to me and my family by praying that nothing ever would, no matter what anyone else prayed.
"Or I could deter people from threatening to pray that bad things happened to me by threatening to pray that bad things would happen to them in return if they did that. That would stop them!"
One of the girls chuckled and said, "Corr, the world would be in chaos if everyone carried on like that! Imagine if the American president threatened the government of another country that he'd pray for everyone in their country to die of smallpox if they didn't buy fifty billion dollars' worth of export goods from America, and then the government of the other country threatened that unless he rescinded that threat in writing immediately, they'd pray that God would break up the earth's crust and tip America over, or turn it right upside-down, lifting it several hundred metres off the ground, leaving it hanging in mid-air, so the people there didn't drown in the sea, but they would have to spend all their time clinging to things in America for dear life to stop themselves falling off.
"And then imagine if their official government threat went on, 'An alternative idea we have is to pray to God to bring the moon down to earth for a while and blow everyone in your country onto it, and then zoom it back off into space again and put it back where it belongs. We might ask God to set up huge powerful wind machines at one edge of America, and strategically place the moon at the other edge, so everyone in the country gets blown right across America and onto it. We'll tell God that if his wind machines aren't powerful enough to blow them all onto it in one go, then as the people at the edge where the wind machines are get blown further and further inland and across America, he can move the wind machines after them, so everyone gets blown nearer and nearer the moon, until they all get blown onto it. Then, he can hoist it up into space again and send it on its way back to where it used to be. In fact, we'll tell him to move it miles and miles further into outer space than it is today.
"'Or if we're feeling merciful, which you certainly don't deserve, we'll just ask God to instantly exile everyone in America to Antarctica instead. Then, you'll all be far too busy running around to keep warm to threaten our country with praying to God for us all to be destroyed with smallpox ever again!'
"Of course, if the American government wanted the other country to buy fifty billion dollars' worth of exported goods from them, they could always do things the easy way and avoid all the threats by just praying that they would!
"But just imagine: Praying to God would become like the idea of the nuclear deterrent: Every government would think they could simply prevent other countries from attacking them by threatening that if they did, they'd pray for their country to be destroyed. But if that didn't stop some governments from using the prayer weapon of mass destruction, the whole world could end up as a massive pile of rubble!"
Judith said, "Yes. But then, bad things would stop happening once everyone realised that all they needed to do to stop them was to pray that nothing bad ever happened to their country or anyone in it. If everyone did that, just imagine how it would be! The world would become an amazing place where nothing bad ever happened!"
One of the girls grinned and said, "I can imagine God having some big dilemmas, if people prayed that God would destroy a country, but people in that country had prayed that nothing bad would ever happen to it, and God didn't know which of those prayers to answer, because he was supposed to do everything people asked, but it was impossible for him to do both."
The girls grinned.
But Then Deborah turned the conversation serious again, by saying, "The idea of God even just listening to everyone's prayers does make him sound weird though. I mean, the Bible makes it seem as if he could be listening to the prayers of people in real distress, like people desperate for food because they've had to go without for a while, at the same time as he's looking down at the world and seeing over a billion different things going on at once, taking each one of them in at once, some of them that would be really upsetting to us, like people being tortured, - but at the same time, he can calmly pay attention to all kinds of minor prayers, such as people praying that they'll do well in their exams. How could he coolly concentrate on responding to the little things if he's being upset by the big things? And if he isn't upset by the major suffering, what kind of a God must he be? Or do you think he might be just used to it or desensitised to it now, having seen so much of it? But then, if it had upset him at first, you'd have thought he would have done more to stop it."
One of the girls said, "I don't know how God can concentrate on all kinds of major and minor things at once. But maybe he delegates the care of a lot of people to angels, who answer little prayers themselves, but pass the big things to God. I've got no idea how things really work though; it's just a theory. It might not be that likely. The Bible doesn't explain anything about that kind of thing."
Deborah said, "It all sounds a bit strange. Here's another thing: If God can see everything at once, doesn't that mean he'll be able to be sad and happy at the same time, like when he's watching people being killed in war in one part of the world, and joyful church services where lots of people are becoming new Christians in another? How could he do that?"
Judith said, "I've got no idea about that kind of thing."
Deborah said, "Maybe God just doesn't care about a lot of the suffering in the world. I mean, lots of prayers seem to go unanswered. Just think about how many prayers must go up to God from big communities suffering famine! There are lots of Christians in Africa, so lots of people must pray to him when disasters like that strike them. I suppose you'd say God can't intervene supernaturally to save them because if the world was a mysterious unpredictable place where lots of miracles happened, it would slow down scientific progress because scientists wouldn't have a clue what was going on. But God could bring about natural interventions, like where people go out as aid workers with food for starving people."
Judith said, "Well maybe sometimes when that does happen, God's moved them to go out there because he's answering people's prayers. No one would ever know."
Deborah said, "That gets us back to the subject of why God allows suffering in the first place. Why would he allow harvests to fail because rains don't come or swarms of locusts ruin them, and that kind of thing?"
Judith said, "I don't know all the answers. I don't suppose anyone does. There's only one reason I know for sure about why God allows some suffering, I think, and that's to do with physical pain: I know pain exists as a warning to protect people, like if you touch a hot stove, it's the pain that'll make you draw back quickly so your hand doesn't burn, ... or doesn't burn much. People who've lost the pain sensation, like people with leprosy, can get injured sometimes because they haven't got pain to warn them when they're doing something that might be dangerous.
"I know that doesn't help people suffering chronic pain that won't get better whatever they do. Hopefully there'll be more medical discoveries about how to cure that.
"A lot of suffering's caused by man's inhumanity to man though; and to stop all that, God would have to prevent people from having free will. I mean, that might be a good thing in some cases! But I don't know what it would be like to live without free will. What about when people are really tempted to do something bad? Either their emotions would have to be switched off so they stopped being tempted, or maybe some kind of physical force would have to stop them acting on them, even when they were tempted to do something they didn't know would be a bad thing, like when someone was tempted to take their family on an expensive holiday, not realising they were destined to lose their job a few months later, and their holiday money would have come in useful to buy important things like children's clothes.
"And one difficulty is that solving one problem sometimes creates others, such as if governments make laws preventing the price of food rising more than a certain amount, to help poor people who are finding it hard to afford it, but then a lot of food producers think it isn't even worth producing it any more because they'll hardly make any profit, so a lot of them stop."
Deborah said, "Yes. But there's a lot of suffering that isn't caused by humans, like the suffering caused by long droughts and volcanoes and earthquakes and hurricanes. Surely a good God would have designed a world without those. How could a perfect God design a harmful world? Surely to keep on believing he's good, you have to believe that harmful things are somehow good for us, so he's got people's best interests at heart really, which would have to mean it's good for children, or that good can come out of it, if they're crushed to death when earthquakes happen and their houses fall down, or if they die in famines caused by long droughts, and that kind of thing."
Judith felt a bit upset by the conversation. She said, "I don't believe that. But I have heard that some good can come out of earthquakes. I don't know all the answers, especially since I haven't got a science qualification; but as tragic as it is when earthquakes and other natural disasters happen, I have read that as strange as it might seem, volcanoes and earthquakes and hurricanes provide long-term benefits to humans, as catastrophic as they can be when they happen. Earthquakes and volcanoes can bring up minerals from under the earth that increase the fertility of a lot of the soil around them - well, the soil that isn't covered in lava boulders and things like that, I suppose; but that means crops are easier to grow so people can get more food. And hurricanes can deposit a lot of rain on the earth, which makes the earth more fertile too. You probably know a lot more about that kind of thing than I do, being a science student.
"But I've heard that natural disasters are often a lot more catastrophic than they need to be, because of reasons like that property developers can build homes on land that used to be left alone because rivers often flood on it, or they can build houses that aren't earthquake-proof in areas where there are earthquakes, even though the technology exists to make them earthquake-proof, but it's more expensive. And there's been a lot of deforestation to make way for farms and houses and things in coastal areas in some countries where they have cyclones sometimes, and tsunamis because of earthquakes in the sea; and that's caused problems, because the forests used to absorb a lot of the energy from the tsunamis and cyclones so they weren't as bad when they got further inland.
"I don't know if it would have been possible for God to have made a world where the fertility of the soil got replenished without things like volcanoes. But I've read that scientists think the earth wouldn't be so fertile without them, and even that humans wouldn't have been able to live here in the first place, because gasses spewed out by volcanoes first created the atmosphere. At least early warning systems are being developed now so people can evacuate areas when a volcano's going to erupt soon, and when a hurricane's on the way, and things like that."
Deborah said, "Yes, but couldn't an all-powerful and all-knowing God have designed a world where the long-term benefits some natural disasters bring could have been brought about in a different way that didn't involve natural disasters that cause suffering, and where all the volcanoes that helped to create an atmosphere it was possible to live in went extinct before humans ever populated the earth?"
Judith said, "I don't know if there is a way that the planet could be as fertile as it is without earthquakes and things, so God could have designed things in a better way. I really don't know much about this stuff at all. If you come across a Christian who's a scientist and ask them, you might get a more informed answer."
Deborah said, "I don't know how many of those there really are. There was a survey of top scientists in America that found that almost all the ones who responded to the survey were atheists.
"It makes sense that not many if any are religious, because scientists have to have really enquiring minds, searching out the causes of things, keeping an open mind to several different possible ones, and being willing to investigate new information that contradicts what they thought before, and to change their minds if there's good evidence for it; and that conflicts with faith, which is belief without question. Anyone who thinks, 'There's no need to investigate the reasons why this originated because God just made it the way it is', or, 'Oh well, it must be like that because God wanted it that way', or, 'I just believe what the Bible says', won't be interested in looking further into things like why the earth's the way it is, and won't want to investigate things that might cause them to doubt their faith so they feel uncomfortable, at least if their beliefs are precious to them.
"And anyone who believes man and animals arrived on the earth fully-formed, as it says in Genesis, is going to have a hard time enquiring into or listening to other scientists talking about what science has found out about the possible origins of life on earth, like that it could well have been created by chemicals that happened to combine to form things like amino acids that are building blocks of life, and the organisms became more complex over billions of years till humans gradually developed."
Judith said, "Actually, I'm not sure there's as much of a conflict between religion and science as you think there is, because even if a scientist thinks God made something, they might still want to work out how it was done. They might not just assume it was done in some supernatural way that couldn't be understood by man. I've heard that quite a few scientists who've made impressive discoveries, and even won Nobel prizes for physics and chemistry, have been Christians."
Deborah said, "I've heard that physicists are the kinds of scientists who are most likely to be Christians, because the universe looks so impressive that some of them can easily believe God caused it to come into being; and the scientists least likely to be Christians are biologists.
"I'm not surprised. I mean, Christians are always saying God's a God of love; and yet, since you believe he created everything in the world, that must mean you believe he created malaria-carrying mosquitos that cause hundreds of thousands of little children and other people a year to suffer horribly and die. And you must believe he created the parasitic worms that get spread by certain kinds of flies in some tropical countries that cause horrible diseases like river blindness. You must believe God created the fleas that spread the bubonic plague, that wiped out so many people hundreds of years ago! You have to believe he created bacteria that spread horrendous infections like diphtheria and tetanus and tuberculosis! Would you like to get a disease like that? No, I don't suppose you would! Next time you get stung by a wasp, remember you believe God created wasps. So much suffering in the world is caused by creatures you must believe this supposed God of love created!
"You believe God created all that, and yet you still tell us he's a God of love! I don't understand how you can do that! I mean, what kind of being would plan, design and then create lots of creatures that he knew would harm and kill the humans he supposedly loves! He sounds more like an insane, sadistic, psychopathic evil scientist, working away secretly in a laboratory, thinking up all kinds of different nasty ways people can be killed in his repulsive mind, and then inventing things to kill them with! If someone on earth did a thing like that, he'd be locked up in prison for life, without the possibility of parole, for industrial-scale murder, and you'd approve of the decision, unless you take Jesus' teaching about forgiveness to truly sickening extremes, so you just wanted him forgiven instead of sent to prison! So how can you think of a God who does all that as a God of love, and not a murdering evil psycho God who you wouldn't want anything to do with?
"Why do you even believe God's good? A good person would prevent creatures and natural disasters from causing suffering if it was in their power to do that, and you'd approve. But you believe God's all-powerful, and yet he doesn't do it; but instead of concluding that must mean he isn't as good as you thought he was, like you would if a human had the ability to do that and yet they didn't, you somehow instead believe God's much more good than humans! It's a contradiction. I think you must only believe it because it's what you've always been taught.
"Like I said before, if you believe in evolution, you just don't have dilemmas and logical problems like that!"
Judith began to feel a bit agitated! But she kept her cool, and said, "Well, I don't know all the answers. And I don't know how valid this is, but I read in a Christian book that maybe when bacteria were first created, and other creatures that harm humans now, they were harmless. After all, most bacteria are still harmless, and lots are good for us; so maybe they all were at first, and then some underwent genetic mutations because of excessive radiation from the sun, or some chemical interaction they were exposed to, or whatever else causes genetic mutations, and the mutations made them harmful, in the same way that genetic mutations in people that have gone on to be passed down the generations have caused hideous diseases in humans, like cystic fibrosis and sickle cell anaemia. Maybe that's evolution for you - DNA gets damaged and deteriorates over time in some ways, and the damage gets inherited by the next generations."
Deborah said, "If you say so; but just supposing bacteria and other disease-causing creatures really were originally all harmless, when they became harmful, why wouldn't a loving all-powerful God have wiped them out, or changed them in some way so they stopped causing disease? Imagine how many children must have suffered and died from horrible diseases over the ages, and how many thousands or hundreds of thousands of mothers must have sat by the bedsides of children dying of horrible diseases in the days before there was decent medical treatment, desperately praying to God for their children to be cured, only for nothing to happen and for the children to die painful deaths!"
Judith said, "I know. It sounds horrible! I don't know all the answers, like I said. But I don't know if a world without disease would have been any better, in the time before technology was invented to increase crop yields so a lot more food could be grown in the same amount of space, because if no one was ever killed by disease so the population was always a lot bigger, there might not have been nearly enough food to go around, so lots and lots of people might have died of starvation instead, especially since it was common for couples to have a dozen or more children in the days before contraception was invented. Mind you, I think that was partly in the hope that some would still be alive to look after them in their old age, in the days before countries had welfare states."
Deborah said, "Well couldn't God have designed things so the world was free of disease, but women's bodies were made in such a way that they couldn't have another child till, say, three years after they'd had one? That would have made it easier on women anyway, since it's not healthy to have too many children close together, besides being tiring!"
Judith replied, "Well, that sounds like a good idea on the face of it. Maybe that would have worked for the best. I don't know though. It might have been hard on women whose children died in other ways, like in accidents, in the days when parents needed all the labour they could get to help with work on their farms and so on; and the population could still have grown to catastrophic levels, especially because in a world without disease, presumably hardly anyone would ever die, so most people who were ever born would still be around now. There wouldn't be room for everyone on earth."
Deborah said, "Well that's true. But then, couldn't God have designed a world where people were immune from disease till they were about sixty?"
Judith said, "Possibly. I don't know if that would definitely have been better, or whether it would have had consequences we don't know about."
Judith was about to continue. But just then, a friend of a few of them, Dave, came over and said, "You all look a bit glum! Would you like me to try and cheer you up?"
One of the girls joked, "No, it's OK, we like feeling miserable."
Dave quipped, "Oh. Well in that case, next time I've got a boring essay to write, I'll ask one of you to do it for me!"
One of the girls grinned and said, "That's fine, if you don't mind a really low mark, considering none of us have studied what you're studying, so we probably don't have a clue about it! Or maybe I'll just give you one of my essays to hand in. It's on a completely different subject from anything you're ever likely to do yours on, but maybe you could hand it in and tell the tutor you know it's nothing to do with what he asked you to write, but you think he'll find it really interesting, so it would be nice if he could give you marks for brightening up his day with it."
They giggled.
One of the others joked, "Or why does it even need to be an essay at all? You could hand in a book about the history of spies, or an article from the Internet you print out about the latest developments in science or something, and tell him you know you won't get any marks for what you were supposed to be writing about, but it'll be nice if you can have some marks for giving him something interesting to read."
One of the group grinned and said, "If tutors gave people good marks for that, students could get through their whole university degrees without even studying a word of the subject they'd come to university to study! Imagine if some of them went for job interviews and told the interviewers what degree they'd done, and the interviewers would say it sounded impressive and ask them about it, only for them to have to admit that they didn't actually know a thing about it, because they'd passed it by giving their tutors all kinds of interesting articles they found on the Internet about the latest celebrity gossip an political scandals, and the most nutritious kinds of pet food, and things like that!"
Deborah grinned and said, "If things got that bad, I suppose people could pass degrees by just keeping their tutors stocked up with a free supply of chocolate!"
One of the others smiled and said, "Or if our tutors kept us stocked up with chocolate instead, in return for us actually doing our work, it might be an incentive for us to get on and do it!"
They laughed.
Then one of the girls said, "I was doing an essay on a subject I'm not all that interested in not long ago, and it was beginning to feel like a boring slog; and it was getting near the deadline for handing it in, and I was invited to a party, but I thought I'd better not go, because I needed to spend time finishing it off in time. I was complaining to someone about that, and he said, 'I expect everyone has to make hellish sacrifices in life.'
"I thought, 'Hellish' sacrifices? Could that mean that instead of hell being like a fiery furnace, as the Bible seems to say it is, it's really more like a university, where some of us will have to spend all our time doing boring essays for eternity?"
They all giggled.
Dave left them after a few minutes, and the conversation became serious again. Judith said, "Anyway, we were talking about God allowing diseases before, weren't we. I was about to say that the thing is that if everyone had followed the Bible more closely, I'm pretty sure there would actually have been a whole lot less disease around than there was. To give one example, the Old Testament Law of Moses commanded that people with certain skin diseases should be isolated from the community, which would have reduced infection. It's possible that some later governments took inspiration from the laws to quarantine people with certain diseases, which would have reduced infection rates during some epidemics. I heard someone say at least one did anyway. I'm not sure how true it is.
"And there were Old Testament laws to stop mildew spreading, which could otherwise have ruined things if it had got onto them. They commanded that people should show clothing with mildew in it to the priests, and it should be isolated for a week, and if the mildew spread in that time, the clothing had to be burned. But if it hadn't, it had to be washed to see if the mildew would fade afterwards or not.
"And if mildew appeared in houses, the stones and plaster with it on had to be taken out and thrown into some isolated area and replaced with other ones. And the whole house had to be broken down and replaced if it still spread soon after that. That was in the days before chemical anti-mould spray and that kind of thing. Hopefully a community would have paid the costs of the replacement houses, so they didn't all fall on the owners. ... I mean the costs, not the houses.
"And there were laws about how people needed to wash themselves or their hands and their clothes after touching dead animals and dead humans, and wash whatever they'd been in contact with after they'd done that, and even that they should break a pot or even an oven and throw it away if a dead animal or insect fell in it, and not eat any more food out of it.
"So a lot of Jews would likely have been very careful to keep things like flies out of the pots they used for food; and since flies can carry germs that cause diarrhoea and things, that could have protected them a fair amount from that kind of thing.
"And there are other laws about hygiene. Actually, I think I mentioned some of them last week, didn't I, like the law about burying excrement after doing some; So Jewish communities throughout the centuries might have been a fair bit more hygienic than communities around them often were, and that might have meant some diseases didn't spread in them as much as they did elsewhere.
"I read that in medieval times, streets could often be filthy, with bits of animal carcasses and dung just being thrown into them, or into rivers people used to get water to drink; and there were open sewers running through the streets, and people just throwing rubbish out onto them, so it would have been really easy to pick up diseases carried in faeces such as e-coli and cholera and typhoid; and the dirty streets were breeding grounds for animals like rats that could sometimes carry diseases, including plague.
"And I've read that houses could be pretty unhygienic too, with rushes and grasses often being used to line floors, before carpets were common and affordable; and often the bottom layers of them weren't replaced very often, and they were often covered in vomit and leftovers from food, and all kinds of other things. I don't know why people didn't clear everything out more often. Maybe some of them did. But I don't know how easy it would have been to have got new rushes and grasses in the cities. But dirty ones would probably often have been breeding grounds for disease.
"And then there was the doctor in the 19th century who wondered why more women in his hospital died in childbirth under the care of doctors than under the care of untrained midwives, and started thinking it might be to do with the fact that they would often go straight from handling dead bodies in the morgue to helping women give birth, and might be transmitting disease to them; so he told them to wash their hands thoroughly after they'd handled dead bodies; and when they did, the death rate fell so much that fewer women died under their care than died under the care of the untrained midwives. Then he tried to recommend the same thing to scientists and doctors all over Europe, but most of them rejected his ideas, which he was really upset about.
"It was only in the later 19th century that lots of people began to understand that germs cause diseases. If all doctors and other people had been following Old Testament Jewish laws before then, there wouldn't have been so much of a problem with spreading germs, apart from that the Old Testament doesn't command people to use soap, I don't think, although it does mention sprinkling some water mixed with ashes over people to cleanse them, which might possibly have helped a bit. I'm not sure how available good germ-killing soap was in those days. Maybe not that available. I think some people did make a kind of soap though, boiling animal fat and wood or vegetable ashes together. Maybe that would have killed a fair number of germs."
Deborah said, "Well those Jewish laws would have helped then. But why couldn't Jesus have taught his disciples about germs, and about some medical treatments no one knew about in those days? After all, if God's all-knowing, he must have known about them then. Why did humanity have to wait till fairly late into the 19th century before it was discovered that germs even existed? If Jesus could have spent his time teaching his disciples about medical treatments, it would have been more useful in the long-term than healing people there and then, although I suppose you'd say it was more useful for the people at the time to be healed right there and then."
Judith said, "Partly, yes, although before there were decent medical schools and the technology to discover which germs caused what diseases, and microscopes powerful enough to see germs, I don't know how long people would have believed in germs, or what good use they could have put the belief too. It's an interesting idea; but I don't know how possible it would have been for Jesus to have spent years inventing microscopes and lots of other kinds of medical technology and running a medical school in those days. It would have been a tough task, making it all from scratch, and teaching lots of other people how to, as well as using it to cure people. And the communications technology would have to have existed as well for that kind of knowledge to have been spread around quickly and put to use in other parts of the world a lot. It would be well over a thousand years before even the printing press was invented. And it was pretty laborious and took a long time to copy books by hand before then.
"And if Jesus' disciples had spent their time working as amateur doctors and microscope and other medical technology makers, maybe they wouldn't have had time to spread the gospel, and Christianity would have died out before it really got going. You probably wouldn't see a problem with that, but if people's eternal lives are at stake, it matters; and I've read quite a few testimonies of people who used to live lifestyles where they were doing harm, who were inspired to give them up when they became Christians. I've read a couple of books about Christians who worked among gangsters, and then a lot of those became Christians and gave up violence. I've even read about whole communities like violent tribes, some where there was even a lot of cannibalism, that turned their lives around and stopped being warlike and violent and cannibalistic when they heard the gospel and were converted to Christianity."
Deborah said, "That sounds good. But still, for all the good Christianity might sometimes do if some people genuinely do give up harmful lifestyles to follow it, I think the world would have probably been a much better place if religion had never been invented, considering all the wars it's caused over the years, like the Crusades and other wars, and inquisitions and persecutions where people got tortured for being the supposedly wrong religion, and that kind of thing."
Judith was about to reply, when one of the group said, "Blimey some of this conversation's depressing! And I've got a suspicion it's about to get worse! I need to go and get another drink!"
One of the others smiled and said, "You 'need' one? That sounds a bit ominous! You're not a budding alcoholic are you?"
The girl who wanted a drink said, "No! Allright, I just feel like having one!"
A few of them went and got drinks.
When they sat down again, one of them smiled and said, "Talking of war, as one or two of us were obviously about to, I was thinking the other day: If they'd had the Internet in Hitler's day, I wonder if it's possible that he'd have had so much fun arguing with people, or got so engrossed in it, that he wouldn't have wanted to tear himself away from it long enough to put evil plans to kill people into operation! Maybe he'd have enjoyed himself so much just telling people he was fantasising about killing them that he'd never have got around to ordering people to do it for real. But who knows!
"Actually, I wonder if something like that could have happened in the Middle Ages, with religious and government leaders taking all their hostility against so-called heretics out on them by hurling abuse at them all day on forums and Facebook and things, and taking far too much sadistic delight in doing it to be interested in burning them at the stake, and whatever else they did to them. Imagine a court sentencing heretics to have to spend their lives being trolled all day on Facebook by government officials who had the responsibility of enforcing right religion."
The girls giggled. Then one said, "Have you heard that saying about sport being a modern substitute for war, and that the reason there isn't as much war nowadays as there used to be might be because there's more sport? You hear football commentators say it sometimes when a match is getting a bit dirty or something. I can imagine that being the famous last words just before World War III breaks out! Actually, I heard a really gross quote from a match once, where one of them said that there was a problem because England hadn't 'split' the nationality of the opposing team 'open' yet. They said they really needed to 'split' them 'open'. ... Sorry. I'll pass a sick bucket round in a minute if you like. I think what the commentator really meant is that England needed to split the opposing team's defence open or something. But it did sound a bit warlike!
"But anyway, I think the idea about sport being a substitute for war goes that it gives some people an outlet for aggression, that more people might have used to get by going to war in the old days, and that it gives the fans an adrenaline high that makes them feel more alive, partly because it taps into primal tribal loyalties that can give them a sense of excitement about their team winning, while they're enjoying hating the team they're playing. So the theory goes that that's another thing they don't have to get by fighting any more. I don't know if there's anything at all in this theory! But another reason some people think there's a similarity between sport and war is because fans and players can get an ego boost and think their team's got a lot of glory when they win. Something like that. I don't know whether some unnecessary wars in history wouldn't have happened if there had been international sporting tournaments instead.
"But just imagine if instead of England and France often being at war in medieval times, and things like that, they'd had a load of international sporting tournaments instead, so history books would be full of stories about sporting victories instead of wars! Imagine if history exams were mostly about sport, so people had to answer questions about things like the famous penalty shoot-out in 1399, where they said England lost an important football match to Bulgaria, and the glorious England victory in the European Cup of 1407, instead of a lot of them being about war!"
One of the girls grinned and said, "I made some jokes about sport on an Internet forum I was on not long ago. There was a fan of American football there. I said I didn't know anything about the game, but that it would be good if it could be more entertaining. I said,
"'I think they ought to change the game to make it more attractive to tourists who don't have a clue what the game's about, but feel compelled to watch it anyway to find out, for some reason, if there are such people. It all sounds far too technical to me, but they could change that.
"They could make it so instead of having a ball and goals, - do they have those? Anyway, they could have two big washing-up bowls instead of goals, with tin mugs in them, and they have to kick more tin mugs around and try to get them into the washing-up bowls; and the team that gets the least mugs into the washing-up bowls in the end has to stay behind after the other one's gone and do the washing-up in both of the bowls. Or they could kick a washing-up sponge around, and whichever team ends up with it in their washing-up bowl has to wash up all the beer glasses the fans have been drinking out of at the end.
"Or they could all pretend to be dogs who have to play the game on all fours, and they're only allowed to convey the ball anywhere in their mouths, so it has to be a convenient size. Or some could pretend to be dogs and some would act as their owners, and it would be the job of the owners to keep the dogs from fighting. And if any dog became too troublesome, a kind of penalty would be awarded that would involve a player from the opposing team being able to put a special harness on the dog who caused the trouble, so they couldn't move too fast or do anything without the owner letting them. All sorts of things could be done to make those games more fun!'
"And on another day, I joked, 'Do you know that in the old days, the entirety of America was one big football - that's to say soccer - pitch? One goal was at the southern-most tip of America, and the other goal was at the most northerly tip. The teams were very fit! Games used to take days and days because of the distance the players had to run between the goals. But they loved it. The spectators had to be very fit as well, because in order to see the whole game, they had to run up and down the entire length of America following the players. They all had a great time. But then some spoil sports came and built on the land, and people started living there, so the game had to be scrapped.'
"And one day, someone said there was once a sign outside a sports stadium in America that someone had put there offering to sell a family member in exchange for a ticket to a game. I think tickets are pretty expensive.
"I joked, 'Wow, that's dedication to sport! Maybe inside the stadium, there is, or should be, a sign that says, "This Way for the Bar. If you bartered away your soul or anyone else's for a ticket instead of paying for it in the proper way, you'll probably still have lots of money to pay for enough beer to drown your sorrows at your team's latest defeat and your regret at paying such a price for such a depressing game. Don't hold back."'
"Then I joked, 'Hey, maybe all the yelling the fans do during games sometimes gives them sore throats; so maybe they could sell throat lozenges on sports grounds and make loads of money! Or maybe they could sell hot drinks of honey and lemon or something, only that might sound a bit sissy, so macho men would be too scared to buy them and risk other men thinking they're sissies. Maybe they could have lots of little tents in sports stadiums where only one person could go in at a time, and they'd drink what they bought in there before coming out, so no one could see what they were having; and besides the honey and lemon drinks, they could sell something in the tents called Nuclear Furnace or something, that could be a little cocktail of all the worst cheap and nasty beers they could find. So then any men who'd worry about their reputations if people around them knew they were buying warm lemon and honey could tell their friends they were going in to swallow a "Nuclear Furnace!"'" The girls chuckled.
Then one of them said, "You know it gets said that it's as if some people worship some celebrities and sports stars? I wonder if that's sometimes some kind of substitute for religion, and some people worship them in the same way some people used to worship God.
"Imagine if in the Middle Ages, the dominant religion in this country had been the worship of some sports stars instead of Christianity! Imagine if there had been a football league like there is now, and the royals were all supporters of Queens Park Rangers, and a royal decree was announced in about the year 1400 that commanded that everyone in the country had to worship the Queens Park Rangers team. Imagine if it said that supporting other teams would be permitted, since after all, teams would need support if they were going to be able to carry on playing, but that three times a year, everyone in the country had to go and worship Queens Park Rangers, by going to their ground and kneeling and singing hymns of praise to them; and if anyone refused, they would be flogged; and if anyone was caught actually mocking or insulting the team, they would be burned at the stake."
Deborah said, "That's just the kind of thing I can imagine them doing! Some nasty things went on in those days, didn't they!"
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