Across the pond

it’s Sunday. I know because the vicar has just walked past my house walking back to his house. He looks happy. He still has his long black cassack on and he is swinging his white surplice from side to side. Since it’s 9 AM he has probably been doing 8 o’clock Communion. And is now already savouring the bacon and eggs he can now eat with a clear conscience. Like all good vicars he has held his greed in check and fasted before he sipped the consecrated wine.

Actually, I don’t think he is a Christian Socialist, but he has one of the qualities that I admire in Christian Socialists. He is the opposite of a fundamentalist.

Though they talk to God every day they also listen to the Voice of Reason and Reason’s Apostles on earth, the Scientists. Though they are deeply serious men they enjoy a laugh and can spot a paradox when it trips them up.

Equally many scientists manage to combine a commitment to the scientific discipline with a faith in Jesus Christ, Allah, Buddha, or one of the many other Gods who have ruled, and still rule, some human hearts.

Praise the Lord that we have such men, and women, as these.

Probably, more of the non-religious scientists are the biologists. Because they have collected enough evidence, with some help from the geologists, to demonstrate conclusively that the world was not created in seven days and that Adam and Eve lived several million years earlier than the Bible tells us.

(Correction the Bible tells that God did in six days, and rested on the seventh. God did not work 24/7.  But since he was doing such  big job he probably did not stop to sleep on those six days.)

Probably more of the religious scientists studied physics, who have not managed to prove the negative.

The biologists have found the evidence which shows that God did not create Adam and then create Eve from one of Adam’s rib.

The physics lot have not managed to prove that God did not create the earth, our universe and all the other universes. So, maybe, the big bang, was detonated by God (or a bunch of Martian-like figures from yet another undiscovered universe).

Not very probable. But not impossible.

So on this Sunday morning as we move into all the unknowns of the twenty-first century, let us praise the Lord for those who believe in Holy Matrimony between the two great guiding principles of life, Faith and Reason.

Because we need ‘em both. Despite all those rival messages on the London buses, neither religion nor agnosticism, is primarily about ‘enjoying ourselves’.

Regular readers of this blog will have observed that I am in a manic phase, as I was last night when I wrote that too long,  too confused blog about journalistic truth. The words are forming so fast in my head that when I write them down I miss out whole paragraphs.

Since I have missed church I’d better confess here.

I sinned last night, Lord. And I am still showing what a miserable sinner I am this morning. Although my main skill is that of hack journalism I am writing as if I was a Philospher.

Or a Prophet.

Time for me to put aside such childish aspirations.

Time for me to do another thing I can acutally do quite well. Cook some bacon and eggs. And Break my voluntary Fast.

Bye for now.