Atheists cause floods!

When there were serious floods in northern India in 2013, caused by the Saraswati river bursting its banks, it was important for scientists to analyse the facts and see if action could be taken to mitigate the effects of future flooding. They therefore called in experts to give their opinions and included in the witnesses was the regional Minister of Water Resources (this story comes courtesy of the Hindustan Times).

However, despite having access to the most reliable data on rainfall prior to the flooding event, the lady in question preferred a completely different explanation. This was that atheists had been defecating and urinating near the sacred Hindu shrine at Kedarnath (see picture).

She wasn’t actually saying that there were so many atheists pissing in the river that they had caused it to flood – which would have taken some doing – but they had angered the gods to such an extent that they had ordered the torrential rains that were the immediate cause of the flood.

According to the minister, relieving oneself near the shrine had been illegal since 1882, but in recent years the area had been visited by hordes of non-believers who cared nothing for the sacred nature of the shrine and did their business anyway.

The minister pointed out that she had been instrumental in reinforcing the ban since the flooding event and that the river had behaved itself ever since. So therefore she must have been right in her analysis all along!

© John Welford

Creationist nonsense

A great deal of fun can be had by listening to Creationists – particularly the “New Earth” variety – and marvelling at the amazing arguments they come up with to, for example, debunk evolution, support the idea that dinosaurs coexisted with humans, and generally claim that every word of the Book of Genesis must be taken to mean exactly what it says and that it states nothing short of the absolute truth.

When challenged with evidence that contradicts their assertions they come up with all sorts of weird and wonderful ways to justify their opinions. These can be categorised under a number of headings, including refusing to consider scientific evidence, putting forward highly dubious “evidence” of their own, and making extraordinary claims to show that the evidence, far from refuting their claims, actually supports it.

Refusing to consider the evidence

The evidence that Planet Earth is vastly older than the 10,000 years that Creationists claim it to be is surely irrefutable. You only have to look at the geology of the land we stand on and the hills and mountains all around us to see that. The story of how various rock layers are formed and transformed is a complex and fascinating one, and is surely clear evidence that many processes have taken place over a vast period of time, simply because it is impossible for them to have happened any more quickly.

However, the Creationists would have us believe that the world was created almost exactly as we see it, with all its complexity, a mere 10,000 years ago! The only changes to the original that they are prepared to accept are a modicum of erosion and the effects of Noah’s Flood!

We can date the age of rock layers formed by volcanic activity (which include the very oldest ones we can see today) by analysing the chemical elements found in them. In particular, the method known as radiometric dating works by looking at certain radioactive elements, each of which has a definite “half life” which means the time during which half of a given quantity of that element will have decayed into other elements that are more stable.

The dating process involves measuring the quantity of undecayed radioactive material in a rock sample and setting it against the amount of its decay products. Because the half lives of all radioactive elements and isotopes are known, it is then possible to work out at what point there would have been a different proportion of decayed to undecayed material. This can be done for a number of radioactive elements within a given rock layer, and if the calculations produce the same results, there can be no cause for doubting the conclusion.

The method shows conclusively that the oldest rocks currently visible to us (i.e. the Precambrian) are around 4 billion years old.

 However, this sort of evidence is completely ignored by Creationists, and it is by no means the only example of deliberate ignorance on their part.

Dubious evidence

If the entire Universe was created in six days, for the sole purpose of amazing a certain species called Man, then clearly nothing in the animal kingdom could have evolved and all species that have ever existed must have lived together from the day of their creation. That day, according to Genesis, was Day 6.

But what about the dinosaurs? How could they possibly have lived alongside Man, given that they are not around today? The Creationists claim to have found evidence that shows this to have been the case.

One such piece of presumed evidence is on a bed of limestone at the Paluxy River in Texas. There are several places around the world where dinosaur footprints have been found, and others where footprints of early man can be seen, but in this instance they appear to be in the same place – walking alongside each other imprinted in rock that is 120 million years old!

Of course, the Creationists deny absolutely that the rock is that old – because they deny that any rock is more than 10,000 years old despite all evidence to the contrary (see above) – and they therefore regard the Paluxy footprints as cast-iron evidence of the truth of Genesis.

However, they simply delude themselves if they believe the footprints to be genuine. There is a possibility that the human footprints – or at least some of them – were deliberately carved in the rock as a hoax, or it is the case that the smaller prints were made in the mud (that became limestone) by a different species of creature to the one that created the more obvious dinosaur footprints.

It is only possible to believe that the Paluxy footprints prove the truth of Genesis if you accept the Genesis dating in the first place. If you do not, then the prints will not convince anybody, if only because the fossil record never contains dinosaur and human fossils in the same geological strata.

Another intriguing but phony piece of creationist evidence is a small carving in the stone wall of the 12^th century Ta Prohm temple at Angkor, Cambodia. At first sight this looks like a depiction of a stegosaurus – a dinosaur from the late Jurassic (c. 150 million years ago) that is characterised by having a double row of vertical bony plates along its spine. The carving shows such plates along the back of a creature that otherwise looks more like a hippo than anything else.

Some Creationists are utterly convinced by this carving as firm evidence that dinosaurs were seen by humans in early modern times. However, there are – as one might expect – various objections to this claim.

One is that there is no evidence that stegosauri existed in what is now southeast Asia. Fossils have been found mainly in North America and western Europe.

Another is the fact that 12^th century Cambodia was home to the highly civilised Khmer Empire that was capable not only of building vast temples and palaces, complete with carvings, but producing art in many forms and written records. If stegosauri were around at the time, would there not have been more evidence than a single stone carving?

There is a simple explanation for this error, which is that the “plates” are illustrations of background vegetation and were not intended as part of the animal that is depicted. The fact that the carver has produced similar shapes on the outside of the circular “snake” frame to those on the inside should surely settle the matter once and for all. However, dyed-in-the-wool Creationists are not so easy to convince!

Extraordinary claims

Creationists are so convinced that the Genesis account must be correct in all particulars that they always come up with explanations of how observed but inconvenient facts can be twisted to suit their world view.

One example takes us back to the dinosaurs. They accept that fossil dinosaurs have been found, although they also claim that Noah took two of every species on board the Ark – young and therefore small specimens, naturally! They also accept that dinosaur fossils have been found in large quantities in certain locations and that fossils can only form under certain circumstances, such as sudden burials.

Geologists are perfectly happy to assume that sudden burials can result from flash floods, but when a Creationist gets hold of this notion they regard it as absolute proof – the flood in question must be the one that floated the Ark! According to them, all the dinosaurs that were alive at the time of the Flood perished at the same time, and the rocks in which their fossils are now found were also laid down at the time of the Flood.

Needless to say, this account is so full of holes as to be utterly unsupportable. As mentioned earlier, it is perfectly possible to date rocks as belonging to different ages, and the layers that contain dinosaur fossils cover many millions of years of geological history.

Another difficulty for Creationists is that they claim that God created the lot no more than 10,000 years ago but we know for a fact that we can look out into the Universe and see objects from which the light has taken more than 13 billion years to reach us!

That is not a problem for our Creationist friends, as long as you assume that the laws of physics can be stood on their heads and claim that the speed of light is not the constant we always thought it was! If the speed of light was once a lot faster and has since slowed down (or is it the other way round?) then everything is apparently possible!

And so it goes on. One nonsense follows another and the Creationists tie themselves into all sorts of ridiculous knots as they continuously refuse to understand the nature of Myth. Every civilisation in history has invented its creation myth as a means of explaining to children how things came to be the way they are. Genesis is only one such myth, and it makes sense to recognise that fact. Believing a myth to be the truth only displays the fact that one has refused to grow up and leave such “just so” stories where they belong – firmly on the Fiction shelves!

© John Welford

Could Jesus have been a time traveller?

I have this idea for a novel that would certainly cause more than a little controversy. Of course, it’s always possible that it has already been written and it caused no controversy whatsoever, and if that is the case, please tell me, somebody!

Suppose, just suppose, that Jesus was a time traveller. We all know that time travel is impossible, as far as we can tell, but in a few thousand years’ time, assuming that we haven’t fried ourselves off the planet by then, maybe it won’t be impossible at all. Suppose somebody from the future went back to the year dot (almost literally). How would that person appear to the people he encountered?

Just consider the facts, as far as we know them. A remarkable person appeared in Palestine about 2,000 years ago. Leaving aside all those Christmas stories which have the distinct whiff of myth about them (sorry if this offends anyone), this person appears out of nowhere and starts doing amazing things, like turning water into wine and curing people from terrible diseases. He even manages to cheat death, but then disappears, apparently into thin air, not long afterwards.

We know that some apparent miracles have perfectly rational explanations, given our current level of knowledge. For example, modern methods of artificial respiration would have looked very miraculous at that time, with an apparently dead person coming back to life. There’s an Old Testament story of Elijah doing something very much along these lines – perhaps he was a time traveller too?

What about that “water into wine” miracle? A fairly common trick by modern conjurers is the “magic kettle”. Members of the audience shout out the drink they would like and the conjurer pours it from the kettle for them. A pint of beer, sir? No problem. A glass of red wine, madam? There you go. I don’t know how the trick is done, but I have seen it performed. A barrel of wine when you’ve only got water? Why not?

Mind you, the loaves and fishes miracle has always had a rational explanation for me. There are all those people, who have apparently brought nothing with them, demanding to be given free food. Sorry, says Jesus, I didn’t know that catering for you lot was part of the deal. Is anyone willing to share? Step forward one young lad who has had the foresight to pack a lunch, and does not mind handing it over. Shamed by this example of generosity, the rest of the crowd admit that they have got something after all, and there’s enough for their mates as well. For me, that’s a miracle anyway, with no supernatural explanation needed, and the story has more value when understood in that way.

No doubt there are plenty of other apparently miraculous happenings in the Bible account that can’t be explained at present but might be no problem at all if we fast-forward a few centuries.

However, let’s get back to the plot. The little matter of the promised “second coming” falls into place if my theory is correct. Of course there would be a second coming if a time traveller said so. Scroll forward a few thousand years and there he is again, in his own time.

I’m sure there are plenty of holes in my theory, but, well, it’s a thought, isn’t it?

© John Welford

Adam, Eve and the apple that almost certainly wasn't

The traditional English Christmas carol “Adam lay ybounden” contains the lines:

“And all was for an apple
An apple that he took
As clerkes finden
Written in their book”

The carol dates from the early 15^th century and is just one example of the commonly held belief that the “forbidden fruit” of the Garden of Eden (Genesis Chapter 3) was an apple. However, this is not stated in Genesis, and there have been many other suggestions as to what it might have been.

Fruits mentioned in ancient Jewish texts have included figs, grapes and tamarinds, and some Muslim scholars have suggested that Eve gave Adam an olive. However, this was not an important issue for Jews and Muslims, who have traditionally been unconcerned with pictorial representation of religious scenes, but that was not the case with Christians, for whom a picture was always worth at least a thousand words.

If an artist was going to portray the scene in the Garden of Eden, with Eve being tempted by a serpent to pick a fruit and offer it to Adam, the fruit had to be of a particular kind. In the early church, the grape was preferred in the Latin-speaking west, but the Greek-speaking east preferred the fig.

A third option – namely the apple – gained currency quite early on, possibly helped by the fact that the Latin word “malum” can mean either “apple” or “evil” (although there is a subtle difference in pronunciation depending on which meaning is intended).

As Christianity moved into northern Europe, depictions of apple trees in Garden of Eden scenes became almost universal, as opposed to figs or grapes, which were not common plants in that region whereas apple trees were.

Added to this, the apple had a long history as a mystical symbol, and early Christian missionaries were quite happy to turn a pagan symbol into a Christian one when it suited them to do so.

By the 12^th century, the apple was firmly established in the Christian imagination as the fruit that led to the Fall.

However, one thing that is absolutely certain is that no “clerke” would have found “apple” written in their book, because – if that book was the Bible – it wasn’t!

© John Welford

How myths evolve: the example of Lord Dufferin

Myths are extremely powerful. They have given rise to most of the world’s religions and have thus played a massive role in the history of every country on the planet. But when it comes to determining how close the myth is to truth, huge difficulties arise. In one sense, this does not matter – what is important is how many people believe the myth to be true or are unwilling to dig too deeply in case their prejudices prove to be ill-founded.

An example of how a myth can arise and be widely accepted, but can also be seen to be based largely on fantasy, is the story of Lord Dufferin and his apparent saving from a terrible death.

Lord Dufferin was a British diplomat who – so the story goes – was having a break in 1883 at a country house in Ireland. One night he heard a noise outside and went to investigate. He saw a man staggering across the lawn as he carried what turned out to be a coffin. The man’s face was contorted with hate and utterly loathsome. Lord Dufferin stepped forward to confront the man and walked right through him, after which the man and the coffin disappeared.

When Lord Dufferin told the people who lived at the house what had happened, none of them could give him a clue as to what he might have seen. There were no local ghosts who fitted the bill, and the man’s description meant nothing to anyone.

The story now moved on ten years, to when Lord Dufferin was British Ambassador to France. He attended a reception at a hotel in Paris, where the main event took place on the top floor and nearly everyone used a lift to get there from the entrance hall.

Lord Dufferin and his secretary joined the queue for the lift and eventually reached the head of it. However, when the lift doors opened, Lord Dufferin was horrified to see that the lift operator was the same man that he had seen carrying a coffin across an Irish lawn, ten years before. He refused to get into the lift and pulled his secretary back as well. The crowded lift ascended but, when nearly at the top, the cables broke and the lift plunged all the down, killing everyone on board, including the lift attendant.

Lord Dufferin tried to find out who the lift attendant was, but nobody knew. The hotel had only employed him as a casual worker, and nobody ever came forward to claim the body.

And so the tale stood, as a classic ghost story involving a ghastly apparition that saved a man’s life. Although the lift accident was in 1893, it was not until 1920 that an account appeared in print. It was included in a paper written a French psychologist named De Maratray and then in a book entitled “Death and its Mystery” by a French astronomer named Flammarion.

So it must have been a true story, then?

Neither De Maratray nor Flammarion had checked their facts. Had they done so, they would have discovered that the lift accident had actually occurred in 1878, which was five years before Lord Dufferin’s supposed Irish vision. The accident had nothing to do with a diplomatic reception, and Lord Dufferin was in Canada at the time!

It appears that a similar story was first told in 1892, involving a woman who had a dream in which a hearse stopped outside her house and she was asked by its driver “Are you not ready yet?”. This question was asked by a lift attendant when she paused as she was about to enter, which she then refused to do. As you might expect, the lift crashed and the man was killed.

This story was told by another unreliable raconteur but that did not stop it doing the rounds and growing in the telling.

One variation was regularly told by a certain Lord Dufferin, who knew full well that he had nothing to do with it. He told it to an impressionable young nephew, but put himself into the story. The nephew believed everything he heard, having no reason to doubt his uncle’s story. He grew up to be a well-known writer, his name being Harold Nicholson.

Nicholson also passed the story on, with Lord Dufferin as the main character, and one of the people who heard Nicholson’s version was De Maratray, the French psychologist.

And so the myth was born. So many myths start in very similar fashion!

© John Welford

The two Umbertos

On the evening of 28 July 1900, King Umberto I of Italy dined with his aide in a restaurant in Monza, where he was due to attend an athletics event the following day. When the restaurant’s proprietor came over to greet the King, it was apparent that the two men bore a striking resemblance to each other.

When the two men got talking, a whole string of coincidences was revealed.

Both the King and the restaurateur were named Umberto. They had both been born in Turin, on the same day. They had both got married on the same day, and both their wives were named Margherita. Umberto the restaurateur had opened his establishment on the same day that the other Umberto had been crowned King of Italy.

The King invited his double to attend the athletics event the following day. However, after King Umberto had arrived at the stadium he was told that the restaurateur had died that morning in a mysterious shooting accident. Umberto was expressing his grief at this sad news when an anarchist in the crowd pointed his gun at the King and shot him dead.

What a string of coincidences! Were the two men possibly long-lost twin brothers? Was the restaurateur murdered by somebody who thought that they were shooting the King and then went to the stadium to kill the “right” man when they realized their mistake?

But that still doesn’t account for the other remarkable similarities in the lives of the Umbertos.

© John Welford

The Ritten Earth Pillars, Italy

These extraordinary structures can be seen in northern Italy, in wooded ravines on the Ritten plateau, which is near the city of Bolzano. There are three groups of these pillars, in separate valleys. They are at a height of around 3250 feet (1000 metres) above sea level.

Jagged, tapering clay spires, some of them coloured in shades of red or violet, stand up to 130 feet (40 metres) high, most of them being crowned by a block of stone.

These pillars were created at the end of the last Ice Age, about 10,000 years ago. As glaciers moved across the land they carried rocks of various sizes hundreds of miles from their original locations, as well as vast quanties of softer "boulder clay". When the glaciers stopped and melted, the rocks were left in place on a thick layer of boulder clay. Rainwater then carved gullies in the clay, but where there was a rock, the clay beneath it was protected. The pillars seen today are the result.

One factor that could have accelerated the formation of the pillars was the development of agriculture in the region in the 13th century. Clearing the forests to create pastures and vineyards could have laid the land open to the erosive power of rain.

Not surprisingly, pillars like these - and they are found in a few other places around the world apart from here - have gathered a certain amount of folklore and superstition around them. They are known in north Italy as "little men" and "earth mushrooms". In France there is a group known as "young ladies with their hats on".

The pillars have been there for thousands of years, but they will not last for ever. If a rock falls from the top, the rate of erosion of the pillar will increase considerably until there is nothing left. This will eventually be the fate of all the pillars.

However, a fallen rock may then serve to protect the boulder clay on to which it has fallen and a new pillar will form. This process could continue until the base of the boulder clay layer is reached.

© John Welford