Cassandra Voices

Tag: Karl Popper

  • The Big House: Censorship of the Medical Profession in Ireland

    ’From my experience of my patients on the front line since March 2020, I estimate that between 1% and 10% of the Irish population have suffered from a serious traumatic stress disorder, depression and suicidal ideation as a direct result of the government instigated media propaganda and lockdown, which works out at between 48 000 and 480 000 people of this country. This must be seen as a national tragedy, if not a massive crime against the Irish people, perhaps the worst since the great famine..’
    Dr Gerry Waters submission to the High Court, prior to his suspension from the medical register, April 2021 as quoted in the British Medical Journal.

    Looking out upon a ‘snot-green’ sea, I wonder how our ancestors explained the emergence of the craggy rocks and pools. Today we might smile at the idea that the ebb and flow of the tide being the work of ‘spirits’ or gods of sand and stone. Yet perhaps there is a ‘spirit’ of our time? The zeitgeist; a shared belief-system that interprets our world and is the ultimate arbiter of truth itself?  Perhaps it is this ‘spirit’ that future generations might equally recognise as a thing that is drenched in myth and fallacy?

    Lately it seems that truth, like the tide, is constantly shifting. Our mute and collective response to Covid-19 policies suggests we have indeed entered a ‘Post-Truth’ era, where truth has gone the way of video and record stores, to become almost entirely subscription based.

    I was once of the belief that science served to shape and guide public opinion. I have lately come to feel that when science does not align itself with public opinion, it is dismissed as the ramblings of a madman.

    In recent years the most basic scientific principles, even the simple notion of ‘cause and effect’ have been temporarily suspended. Presently, science is in the service of the zeitgeist. It no longer informs public opinion, instead it is used as a drunk might see a lamp post; more for support than illumination.

    Newton’s Third Law…

    During and prior to Covid, Europe and Ireland, enjoyed several years of what economists call ‘quantitative easing’. In layman’s terms this means printing lots of money in order to keep people content, or at least to keep them spending.

    The world is apparently a better place when we are all spending freely. Economists call this ‘economic growth.’ Strangely the cause and effect of this simple expedient is entirely lost on most people. The countless billions that have been pumped into European economies in recent years, now means that money is worth less, which is generally referred to as inflation.

    At home, in addition to inflation, our Covid-related crises: deaths in nursing homes, suicides, mental health, missed cancer diagnoses, along with enormous political blunders, were all effectively obscured by a bonfire of some fifty billion euro.

    The light of that conflagration was bright enough to relegate our home-grown crises into the shadows of relative obscurity.

    The idea that we are experiencing inflation as a consequence of two years of fiscal dissipation is, either roundly ignored or blamed upon other crises.  One does not hear such a strange assertion on RTÉ, which itself received a significant share of that fiscal dissipation for its ‘public service’ broadcasting.

    We hear nothing about the government’s responsibility for social destruction and economic waste. Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine must have come as a relief. Now the priority is that ‘Putin must go’, an idea seemingly oblivious to the fact that much of the world might have to go down with him.

    All in this together?

    As Minister for Health for the initial phase of our Covid crisis, Simon Harris stated notoriously: “Remember this is coronavirus Covid-19 – that means there have been 18 other coronaviruses and I don’t think they have actually successfully found a vaccine for any.” Less comically, both he and members of NPHET are still protected from any review into nursing home deaths.

    Nor are the main opposition parties, including Sinn Fein, blameless in respect of the temporary madness. I suspect that when they inevitably get hold of the piggy bank they are unlikely to call for any kind of revision to the narrative. We were ‘all in this together’ after all.

    Nonetheless, as inflation continues and war escalates, the appetite for truth will surely grow, albeit at a remove from the big glasshouse on Nutley Lane.

    When it is safe to speak and ask honest questions, and once the capacity for relating cause and effect returns, calls for a review of the past two years of policy might yet begin in earnest.

    Any colour as long as its black..

    Some truths seem to persist for longer than others. Scientific truths endure not because they are more precious than myth, but simply because they are (or they remain) largely inescapable.

    During the Covid years, scientific truths succumbed to a form of relativism. Thus, one could have any scientific ‘truth’, as long as it was consistent with the fear-frenzy and the dominant narrative that Covid was the only challenge our government ought to address.

    In contrast, unpopular truths became the subject of a formal and informal censorship. Science has become strangely ‘right wing’ in its obedience to pharmaceutical companies and its lack of tolerance for essential questions and contrary facts. Yet Karl Popper once argued; ‘the demand for scientific objectivity makes it inevitable that every scientific statement must remain tentative for ever.’

    In the presence of industry-led censorship, neither science nor democracy functions properly. Yet many people still believe that the scientific discourse is free. Sadly, unscientific views on masks, lockdowns and administering genetic vaccinations to children and pregnant women are (for the moment at least) considered to accord perfectly with the scientific evidence.

    Entire national policies were based upon a flawed epidemiology of Covid. That epidemiology was described almost everywhere in the context of ‘deaths per million’, despite Covid being from its inception a disease with a cohort-specific mortality.

    Indeed, mortality itself was defined in the context of deaths ‘with’ Covid-19 as opposed to ‘from’ Covid-19. PCR testing remains the gold standard in determining a ‘Covid case’ as opposed to detecting traces of virus in an asymptomatic individual who has recently been exposed to the virus.

    In response to Covid-19, foundational principles of science and epidemiology were turned on their heads to satiate a politically profitable narrative. Such contortions are unsustainable in the long term.

    The majority desperately feared Covid, and so an aggressive cold virus – dangerous to the elderly and infirm – became a disease almost entirely inflated by a politically inflated fear.

    Science was annexed to supply an array of ‘facts’ to substantiate this fear and pursue the enormous wave of Covid ‘research’ funding from a strange marriage between Big Pharma and the State. Fearmongers were given seemingly unlimited time on TV and radio. In contrast, ‘contrarians’ were issued with legal threats and ongoing investigations.

    Latter Day Inquisition

    It is worth bearing in mind that science has generally co-existed with unscientific ideas. Thus, religion and science have jousted for centuries. However, when governments depend upon science to justify draconian laws and unprecedented spending; to question ‘the science’ becomes a direct challenge to the government itself.

    When governments depended on the Church for legitimacy, for anyone to question its religious tenets was a dangerous heresy, rooted out by Inquisition if necessary.

    In respect of the medical profession the government has a powerful tool to silence doctors, which is the Irish Medical Council (IMC). The Medical Regulator acts as ‘Grand Inquisitor’, answerable only to the Minister for Health.

    During the Covid crisis, anyone in my profession who openly criticised the Science associated with policy, was immediately condemned as a ‘conspiracy theorist’.

    These ‘misinformed medics’ represented, (and in most cases still represent) a ‘clear and present danger’ to public health. They were heretics were to be rooted out; removed from society like a cancerous prostate gland.

    The danger we pose is not towards public health, but rather towards the public’s understanding of the issue. The social operation is ongoing, and the IMC remains its enthusiastic surgeon.

    Enemies of the People

    It is not an easy thing for a doctor who spends the best part of his or her working life trying to solve people’s immediate problems, to be suddenly turned into a kind of pathology, and confined to the world of the anti-vaxxer and right-wing conspiracy theorist.

    Yet that is the fate of any doctor who voiced criticism of Covid-policy. We remain under formal investigations, heading towards the end-game of sanctions and potential strike-offs. The personal struggles behind these investigations are given no public attention.

    The necessity of belonging, to a society, to a fraternity of peers, even continuing to belong to one’s own family, all become tenuous when one is considered a pariah. For some, including myself, the isolation has led to a breakdown of sorts. My own ‘crash’ came in the form of simply running out of gas: facing up to the fact that my ‘gas’ is considered as a form of flatulence by most of my colleagues.

    I have worked hard at keeping my family together, and that has been as much as I can handle, finding solace in bee keeping and a polytunnel. For other colleagues and their families, the consequences have been far more devastating.

    In the mid-nineteenth century the Hungarian physician Ignaz Semmelweis suggested that surgeons were spreading disease by not washing their hands between operations. He was ostracised for his conspiratorial assertion. Ridiculed and vilified, he ended his days in a lunatic asylum.

    Irish communities draw their strengths from being close knit, but this can lead to a damaging conformity, as our history with the Catholic Church readily demonstrates. Neighbours and friends soon learn who the ‘anti-vax’ doctor is. A whisper at the school gate or a snub in the supermarket may not qualify as an assault, yet it can be just as hurtful to the spouse or daughter of a ‘dangerous’ doctor.

    There are, and were, many Irish doctors who publicly and privately rejected much of our conflicting and often, frankly, comical Covid policies. Too many to list here.

    However, the pressures brought to bear from without, and the enormous financial incentives for the majority of GPs, were sufficient to ensure that serious questions, or even discussion, in respect of policies, was cancelled from the outset. Some GPs have their bicycle clubs sponsored by Pfizer and were most keen not to bite the hand that feeds.

    https://twitter.com/theRiverField/status/1254488307054120960

    Whistleblower

    I occupy a rather unpleasant space as one of the first to speak out against ‘scientific’ polices that led to upwards of a thousand deaths in Irish nursing homes over a period of a few months in early 2020.

    I stood at bedside and watched my patients die, whilst a spouse or loved one sat crying in the car park or staring through the window outside. I struggled to obtain medicines, oxygen and PPE.  Many, if not most, deaths were the consequence of a policy of dumping untested hospital patients into nursing homes to make way for a Covid-19 ‘tsunami’ that ultimately manifested in empty makeshift hospitals and tic-toc videos of dancing medics.

    An enduring myth in respect of those who died in the nursing homes is that that the ‘tragedy’ occurred everywhere equally. Yet throughout Europe, during the first wave, the highest per capita death toll in care homes occurred in Ireland. We hold the dubious record of being second highest in the world after Canada.

    Those who complained about these deaths to the regulator, became the subject of investigation by the regulator, while those responsible are feted as heroes.

    In March of 2020, I attempted to ‘whistle blow’ on the unfolding catastrophe of incompetence, and deprivation within the nursing homes. I resigned my Ministerial appointment in the hope that the Medical Council might investigate what might be considered as criminal manslaughter.

    Yet they chose to ignore the dead and investigated me instead. In the media I found myself being dismissed as a ‘far right’, ‘conspiracy theorist’ and ‘anti-vaxxer’.

    Far right is funny, as I am proudly left and liberal in my thinking. Anti-vaxxer is even funnier, as I have given more vaccines than I have had hot dinners. But ‘funny’ is perhaps the wrong word because it conceals some of the hurt endured by own family.

    In one article in the Independent I was described as among those doctors giving ‘horse de-wormer’ to Covid patients.

    Propaganda is a powerful tool. The wild accusations came late in the pandemic and seemed designed to highlight the ‘ridiculous’ things going on outside of the general medical adherence to ‘official guidelines’.

    Dr Gerry Waters

    Other Doctors who went much further than I could have gone have suffered more than insult and isolation. They and their loved ones are more courageous, and deserving of a voice that will be heard as soon as science is liberated from the shackles of dominant interests.

    One such man is Dr Gerry Waters who adamantly refused to administer Covid-19 vaccinations to his non-vulnerable patients, and refused to refer patients for farcical PCR testing. From the start of the pandemic, he fully comprehended, who is, and who is not at risk from Covid-19.

    He recognised that masking and injecting children was ethically and scientifically wrong, and fully understood that the essential impartiality of science had been hijacked by politics and media. In a partial validation of Dr Waters’ fears, the Irish public have smelled a rat, and to date, less than 25% of eligible children have taken the vaccine. Our rather expensive over-stock (some 4 million doses) is presently being donated to Mexico and elsewhere. A mere €25 million to be added to the bonfire.

    Dr Waters stayed true to his conviction that, beyond protecting the elderly, Covid lockdown policy was socially destructive and itself seriously pathogenic.

    Doubtless, he was of the same view as a friend of mine, a former dean of medical studies at RCSI, who told me: ‘we would have been far better off, had we done nothing at all.’ Imagine what could have been done to improve the country with the billions that were wasted?

    Some Doctors in Ireland remain convinced that many people, old and young, could be alive today were it not for the inept response and draconian measures. Effectively, what began as a rallying cry to ‘protect the vulnerable’, culminated in policies that effectively threw them under the bus. Instructively, suicide statistics and missed diagnoses, for the Covid period have yet to be released.

    After speaking the truth as he saw it, Dr Waters was rapidly investigated, tried, and subsequently suspended from the medical register; deprived of a livelihood and compelled (it would seem) to live out the remainder of his days in ignominy.

    https://twitter.com/BillyRalph/status/1458052402372923392

    Resigning from my Practice

    I am somewhat pleased that I managed to avoid administering this genetic vaccine. I contend to this day that many or most GPs in Ireland haven’t the faintest clue as to what a genetic vaccine actually is, never mind how they work and what are the potential risks involved. Unlike Dr Waters I took the less courageous step of simply resigning my post, before vaccinations became part of public policy.

    For a time, I had been able to separate my practice of medicine from my convictions. Indeed, I have been doing that for years. I suspect most doctors operate with this contradiction most days, at least when we write prescriptions for medicines that many people don’t require.

    At the start of the pandemic in 2020 I could work within the guidelines; refer for testing; visit my nursing home; wear a silly mask in the supermarket. As long as I showed that I was formally participating in the farce, I was relatively safe from the regulator.

    However soon after resigning, they placed me under investigation, although they could find nothing to hang me with; except my opinion, contradicting NPHET and Professor Luke O’Neill, and a vocal stance in respect of the nursing home dead.

    A lot of people, including many of my former patients were unhappy to see me closing the practice. Yet, regardless of my practical adherence to policy, my position as an advocate of only vaccinating the vulnerable, became untenable.

    Every week I would hear from nurses, teachers, students and employees who were being threatened with dismissal unless they received the vaccine. I have never witnessed such a blatant assault on human rights. I shudder to this day when I recall how so many people were coerced and intimidated by the government, and by members of my profession.

    Formal resignation from the HSE was my only option, as long as I wished to continue working as a GP. Private GPs are not contractually obligated to vaccinate anyone. I could manage by doing private work for a friend, and out of hours work at an on-call centre.

    Formal Censorship

    To state that the IMC was satisfied with silencing whistle-blowers or making an example of Dr Waters would be a gross understatement. Almost every doctor in Ireland who refuted policy and did not resign from their post, was either fired or placed under investigation.

    Thus, Martin Feely a respected surgeon and clinical director of the Dublin Midlands Hospital Group, was forced to resign; Dr Pat Morrisey a principled and dedicated GP in Adare was both fired from the board of Shannon Doc, and placed under ongoing investigation by the Medical Council.

    Offending doctors received written warnings from the then President of the Council, and others were placed under investigation for failing in their new duty to: ‘promote public health guidelines.’

    One legacy of our colonial administration is a very efficient tax system, another is the efficient censorship of heretical opinions.

    After two years as a member of the IMC I am entirely convinced that it is neither fit for purpose, nor does it have a practical leg to stand on when it comes to regulation. For the most part it makes its own work as it presides over a ‘General Register’ with little or no regulation at all.

    Thus, untrained specialists are invited to come to Ireland from almost anywhere in Europe, and practice wherever and however they see fit, without specialist training; a situation that supplies regional and rural hospitals with ‘affordable’ specialists.

    The public must suck up the consequences and the IMC keeps itself busy with the inevitable mistakes and complaints. For unqualified and untrained specialists, the back door into Ireland is through the front door of the IMC.

    How to burn a heretic..

    The most difficult consequence for a doctor who is placed under investigation by the IMC is without a doubt the process of investigation itself. I recognise this as a ‘gamekeeper who has turned poacher’.  Much of my time at the IMC was spent on the Council’s Preliminary Complaints Committee, tasked with conducting the initial investigation into complaints against doctors.

    Once entangled in the Kafkaesque web of a formal inquiry, there is no escape until the investigation is completed. In many cases this takes several years. Formal letters are sent back and forth, requesting clarifications and further information, which must be formally replied to.

    One cannot leave the country to work or volunteer abroad. One cannot easily change job, as any new or prospective employers must be informed that an investigation is ongoing. One’s professional life is essentially frozen beneath a question-mark.

    Doctors who were openly critical of the Covid response, have been under investigation for over two years now. The IMC has chosen (with the notable exception of Dr Waters) to prolong these dissections for as long as possible.

    It seems that what is important for both the government and the Council is that doctors critical of policy should remain under investigation for as long as possible. Anything he or she might say or do, any comment made whilst under investigation, can readily become part of the investigation itself.

    Moreover, to refuse to engage fully with an investigation, to refuse to reply to the regular formal correspondence, is itself grounds for an immediate suspension.

    The absurd basis of the investigation into me, is that I made an appearance at a public demonstration in 2020 and ‘may not have sanitised my hands between hand-shakes.’

    To my knowledge, all of the GPs under investigation are locked into the process based on equally frivolous grounds. The pretext for investigation is unimportant, the investigations are sufficiently punitive and sufficiently censorious, hence their protracted duration.

    Heads Above the Parapet

    Perhaps the main reason for my now coming out of ‘hiding’, to tap impotently upon my keyboard, has been recent correspondence from the IMC. Some doctors have recently been informed that the investigations will now proceed to the next level of ‘formal hearings.’

    After the IMC has finished its investigation process, it can then decide either to close the case, or proceed to a full Fitness to Practice Hearing. In this instance the doctor in question must appear before the Council’s court room, and plead a case for their continued right to earn a living. As these cases relate to a doctor’s opinion rather than any clinical practice, medical insurers have declined to pay for legal representation, and the doctor must pay for his own legal counsel.

    There is a rich irony here, in that most if not all of the doctors under investigation, have themselves lodged formal complaints with the IMC in respect of registered doctors on NPHET, for ‘unscientific policies’ or financial conflicts of interest.

    For example, several Doctors have lodged complaints against the President of the Irish College of General Practitioners in respect of his openly encouraging medical discrimination against non-vaccinated patients.

    Also, at the height of the pandemic, Leo Varadkar re-registered as a doctor, helping to ‘man the phones’ and visit halting sites to test the Travelling Community. It was all a rather vulgar PR stunt lapped up by the media with a relish normally reserved for freshly baked cake.

    However, when Dr Varadkar re-registered he became open to complaints to the IMC, along with Dr Holohan, and several other key policymakers. Without exception, not one of these complaints have been investigated. Instead, it is the doctors who lodged them who find themselves under ongoing investigations.

    At a point when Leo Varadkar was found to have been leaking sensitive and lucrative contract details to a friend in General Practice, the then President of the Medical Council was busy issuing written warnings to fellow GPs that they had an ethical duty ‘promote government policy’.

    Call for Caution

    Some doctors in Ireland felt a moral and scientific obligation to understand how Covid vaccines work prior to administering them. Many advocated caution, particularly in respect of pregnancy and young healthy children.

    My friend in Wexford is one example. A respected GP, a man of science and integrity, he vaccinated all of his elderly and vulnerable patients in keeping with HSE guidelines, but when it came to pregnant women and healthy young children he called for caution.

    He reminded colleagues of their ethical obligation to ‘first do no harm’, and made no secret of his concerns and fears. In doing so he stepped outside of the public health policy, and into the crosshairs of the IMC.

    Each IMC investigation and each insulting article in the media, along with the invective and scorn that is heaped on contrarians from within the profession itself, comes at a cost. In his case, a deep personal cost.

    The most painful barbs are the ones that are cast into one’s private life. Spouses and children are no less attached to a doctor than they are attached to any husband or wife. Even with the best will in the world no doctor can keep the ramifications of an investigation from creeping into the most intimate spaces.

    Those who objected to Covid policies are treated to daily realities that are small thorns: a neighbour looking at you with scorn; former friends crossing to the other side of the street; wives or children being subjected to insult or abuse simply because they are related to the newly christened ‘right-wing’ or ‘anti-vaxx’ doctor.

    My friend in Wexford tried hard to toe the line whilst preserving his integrity and an uncompromising commitment to the welfare of his patients. He has a family and bills to pay. Full resignation from the HSE is not a financial option for all. He tried to work within the guidelines, whilst at the same time urging caution. He continued to work, for the sake of his patients, his family, to pay his mortgage, and help his daughters get through college.

    Were he on his own and without dependants he (and probably me) might have stood tall and offered the Medical Council the two fingered salute, as Gerry Waters had courageously done.

    He (like me), tried desperately for a time to justify his position to our profession, to our colleagues, with articles, references, papers from the most esteemed of Medical Journals etc. He pointed to the lack of safety data on the vaccine during pregnancy and in children. It was to no avail. His position was akin to a lamb trying to convince a pack of wolves of the virtues of vegetarianism.

    Nonetheless, he defended his position upon an internet forum exclusive to GPs; and despite my words of caution, they tore him to pieces.

    A couple of months ago, my brave friend found himself parked in a lonely spot in Wexford. When the authorities located him, he had taken enough pills to silence the wolves forever.

    After two weeks in intensive care and a return from near death, he returned home to count his blessings, recover from his ordeal, and begin a life-long process of recovery.

    Absolute Power

    As a member of the IMC I was always intrigued at the efficacy and authority that a wealthy quango can wield. There is a sense of limitless power within the inner circle – reminiscent of a well-funded Big House – with a special relationship with the Minister.

    At the IMC there is a department devoted to briefing and monitoring the press for issues that relate to the medical profession. Before each Council meeting a member of this office addresses the Council with a summary of what is happening in the media. It runs a little bit like “…and now what it says in the papers.”

    I mention this to highlight that my friend, the Wexford GP, his near death, and the harrowing experience of his family and many of his patients, was highlighted in the national papers and the local press. Having gone missing for some days, news of his disappearance was reported in the national media.

    There can be no doubt that the Medical Council was well-briefed about his ordeal. Yet within a week or two of his discharge from hospital he (and by proxy his family) received his letter from the IMC, informing him that he has been placed under formal investigation for his failure to promote Covid vaccination policy. He now faces an impending fitness to practice hearing, whereupon it will be decided if he too will be deprived of an ability to earn a living.

    In its role as Grand Inquisitor, the Medical Council has destroyed the professional lives of many doctors, before, during and after Covid.

    In my view, Irish Medicine is as rotten as any pathology it might pretend to address. This is a rot reflecting a wider rot in our political system. Perhaps it extends deep into the zeitgeist itself.

    There is much to address in Irish medicine including inter alia our current mental health crisis, polypharmacy, corruption within the medical schools, defective specialist training schemes, deaths in nursing homes, relationship between pharmaceutical companies and research institutions, tensions between the public and private health sectors, and a general lack of regulation, but none of these seem to be of any concern to the IMC.

    When the dust settled at the end of our last national crisis, the banking regulator was ultimately recognised as being guilty of catastrophic failures in respect of its duties and obligations. I suspect that if science is ever liberated from special interests, and media is free from a particular type of agenda, history will be seen to have repeated itself yet again.

    Our teetering or collapsing system of medical care in Ireland is equally the consequence of an incompetent, and morally bankrupt, regulator.  As usual, there is no one to ‘police the police’, only a fickle public opinion, and a Minister who is as much dependent on the regulator as they are answerable to him.

    As a post-colonial society, and in the ‘spirit’ of our times, we tip the cap, with the same deference as ever to the ‘Big House’.

  • Public Intellectual Series: Religion

    Say it to me if you have something to confess
    I was born on the wrong side of the tracks like Ginsberg and Kerouac
    Bob Dylan, Key West (2020)

    Notwithstanding my loathing for fundamentalisms of all strands, I have always preached from a gospel of love, or at least a form of reason that leads to moderation in the Public Intellectual Series.

    Ideas about religion and the existence of God based on reason, such as that articulated by Thomas Aquinas, must yield to the facts as these emerge. The ideas contained in natural philosophy – with its harmony of the spheres – available to a medieval monk has been superseded by the discoveries of the Enlightenment that brought the hitherto unknown field of science. Yet, this yielded quantum physics that permits a layer of uncertainty, wherein the nature of an object may shift depending on one’s perspective.

    The ‘uncertainty principle’ seems to have been anticipated by the Ancient Greeks, as Albert Camus explains in his essay ‘Helen’s Exile’ (1948):

    Greek thought always took refuge behind the conception of limits. It never carried anything to extremes, neither the sacred, nor reason, because it negated nothing, neither the sacred nor reason. It took everything into consideration, balancing shadow with light.

    This he contrasted with ‘Our Europe’ which:

    off in the pursuit of totality, is the child of disproportion. She negates beauty, as she negates whatever she does not glorify. And through all her diverse ways, she glorifies but one thing, which is the future rule of reason.

    We may find, therefore, an excess of reason breeding dogmatism that gives rise to unreason, or even scientism. Thus, the subtlety of the Greek mind, now reflected in the thinking of Jurgen Habermas, permits a space for religion in the public sphere, but certainly not the rule of religion, or a single moral vision.

    An awareness of the limitation of reason, or really any one individual’s capacity to reason in a divinely inspired way is not, however, to dismiss the true nature of objective facts in a given situation. As Karl Popper (‘On the Sources of Knowledge and of Ignorance’ (1962)) points out:

    belief in the possibility of a rule of law, of justice, and of freedom, can hardly survive the acceptance of an epistemology which teaches that there are no objective facts; not merely in this particular case, but in any other case; and that the judge cannot have made a factual mistake because he can no more be wrong about the facts than he can be right.

    Therefore, dogmatism of all kinds – especially couched in religious terms –  should be excluded, but we must also accept facts insofar as we are capable of ascertaining these, using the intellectual tools inherent in science and history that have served public intellectuals through the ages.

    Extremism of Our Times

    Where divine revelation is treated by true believers as factual is truly dangerous. Thus moral philosopher Professor John Finnis assumes the existence of one God ‘the Almighty’ to be self-evident, leading to a fixed moral view that does not allow for diversity, or even mild eccentricity, within our private lives.

    In recent writings, Finnis illustrates a dominant extremism of our time. Marriage is for him exclusively between a man and a woman. Therefore, gay marriage is not a good. Furthermore, marriage involves sexual congress, which has as its aim the production of children. Not sex for the sake of having sex, but only for conception. Thus, Finnis considers homosexual congress and sex outside marriage as intrinsically shameful, immoral and harmful.

    Some argue that he derives such normative conclusions about homosexual relationships from factual premises of heterosexual physical contact. Moreover, in the civilised world, many of the practices Finnis sanctions are considered by homosexual and heterosexual couples both within and outside of marriage as part of normal sexual congress and behaviour.

    The issue highlights how sexuality has warped contemporary Christianity, negating more important issues around the real suffering of human beings in this world, a concern that Pope Francis is at least beginning to address. In his latest encyclical Fratelli Tutti (‘All Brothers, 2020) Francis condemns, ‘a concept of popular and national unity influenced by various ideologies … creating new forms of selfishness and a loss of the social sense under the guise of defending national interests.’

    Shaming Culture

    The advent of shaming culture as opposed to a justice culture, involves the demonisation of others and is a reversion to social primitivism, akin to burning witches at the stake, or René Girard’s idea of the reconciliatory victim or scapegoat. It is allied to a rise in Populist hysteria and religious mania.

    The leading contemporary Jewish philosopher in the U.K., Jonathan Sacks, in a balanced way seeks to exonerate religious belief from its critics. In God’s Name (2016) is a defence of religion in terms of the values it produces. Sacks rails against extremism, a theme he revisits in Morality (2020), where he outlines positive religious values, including a focus on dignity, associative levels of responsibility, community and a sense of public service and the common good.

    Jonathan Sacks

    Christian jihadism encompasses such forays as the invasion of South America by Spanish Conquistadors and the Crusades, leading to mass slaughter and the destruction of indigenous civilizations. In modern times the Blairite justification, couched in Christian terms, for the war on Iraq was also used to mask narrow self-interest in oil.

    Sacks equates altruistic evil with the thinking within the neoconservative group, wherein we are considered good and those outside our group are evil. This leads to the arrogant assumption that we are doing it for ‘their’ own good, killing multitudes will pave the way for democracy.

    Crusades, whether modern or ancient, are invariably cloaked in the garment of religious ideology, but are really about resources and the ruthless pursuit of self-interest. They also still permit mass murder. The connection between religion and unbridled capitalism has long been evident, and is, alas, woven into the fabric of institutionalised religion.

    All of these examples are truisms historically about the search of the Church and its believers or fellow travellers for gold and money – the Kingdom of Mammon, as opposed to the Kingdom of Heaven.

    Both Christopher Hitchens, and indeed Richard Dawkins, have written extensively about the new forms of religious extremes we are witnessing, with the finger of blame primarily being pointed at Islam. That religion of course provides graphic examples of brutal beheadings, mass executions, stoning to death for adultery, planes hitting the Twin Towers, as well as the murder of journalists.  All of this is unconscionable, but much of the rage can be traced to neo-imperialism in the Middle East, culminating in the invasion of Iraq. Christopher Hitchens’s greatest intellectual error was to support the Bush-Blair invasion of Iraq.

    Power Vacuum

    So what is the root cause of Islamic extremism and Evangelical and Catholic extremism?

    Blame is rightly attached to the misguided and illegal wars in Iraq, and going all the way back to the 1920s, the creation of client regimes in the Middle East. The unintended consequences of the occupation of Iraq led to a power vacuum in Syria, which gave an opportunity to well organized religiously inspired militants.

    This, however, was the culmination of long-term trends within Islam, wherein successive generations had been radicalized by preachers who exploited a loss of identity in the face of Western consumerism, segregation and enduring poverty.

    In Marxist terms, religious fundamentalism can be traced to growing disparities of wealth and structural inequality, as well as a lack of opportunities to gain a rounded education, with all too great an emphasis on technical or scientific education for economic advancement, as opposed to a broad liberal education that inculcates critical thinking.

    Primarily, however, this extremism speaks of a need to belong to a cause, leading to belief in something ethereal, no matter how ludicrous. Belief in an afterlife defines people’s existences and justifies, as far as they are concerned, even self-immolation.

    But the secularist response in France especially – under the aggressive application of laïcité – to ban or regulate the wearing of the burka or nijab, upheld in the European Court of Human Rights in the SAS case, only appears to inflame the issue. This is really little more than a sideshow to a wider collapse in values.

    A Group of Women Wearing Burkas. Afghanistan women wait outside a USAID-supported health care clinic, Afghanistan, 2003.

    As the wheels come off the economic system as we know it, and where people are searching for words and expressions to convey their understanding of the withering of societal bonds, extremist Christianity has stepped into the void to provide solace.

    In the United States, at least, we are seeing an unholy synergy developing between Evangelical Christians and right-wing Catholicism. Far-right demagogues, led by Trump, have articulated a view that ‘our’ country is being overrun by immigrants and that the dominant ethnic group must ‘take back control’ from a phantom intellectual Marxism, liberal elites, or straight socialism – all emanating from the decadence of the mixed race cosmopolis.

    This a descent into the racist abyss, where those we disagree with are scapegoated and targeted. It is a product of a dangerous dualistic mode of thinking, which Sacks identifies with a need to define God in relation to the Satan residing in others. This is the demonisation of those we disagree with, which is also evident in social media vilification.

    Real Suffering

    The suffering expressed through religion is the genuine sigh of oppressed creatures. In Marxist terms, the abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.

    In a world of poverty, of diminishing resources and human degradation the appeal of an afterlife is obvious. What the Christian far-right in the United States and elsewhere offer is the establishment of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth, which involves a veneer of protection against the unbelievers. This leads to isolation of the righteous few in gated communities, segregating the chosen people from the disaster they have inflicted on others.

    The pandemic has led to the recrudescence of a millenarian ethos and sense of doom that is creating a society not dissimilar to that found in Margaret Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale, enforced against men and women alike.

    The philandering Donald Trump is merely a front man for larger interests, who control the puppet on the chain. He dances to the beat of the dark money of the Republican Party, appointing the Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court was his parting gift.

    End of Days

    Another hallmark of the present distorted religious influence of the neoliberal world order is the denial of climate change, and the employment of post-truth reasoning – the denial of objective facts underpinning the rule of law as Karl Popper saw it – to justify this.

    The Italian physicist Carlo Rovelli, in his simple and illuminating Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, closes his account, with a reflection on how centuries of discoveries affect an understanding of ourselves. While generally positive, one stark passage stands out for its relevance to the challenge of addressing climate change.

    I believe our species will not last long. It does not seem to be made of the stuff that has allowed the turtle, for example, to continue to exist more or less unchanged for hundreds of millions of years; for hundreds of times longer, that is, than we have even been in existence. We belong to a short-lived genus of species. All of our cousins are already extinct. What’s more, we do damage. The brutal climate and environmental changes which we have triggered are unlikely to spare us. For the Earth they may turn out to be a small irrelevant blip, but I do not think that we will outlast them unscathed – especially since public and political opinion prefers to ignore the dangers which we are running, hiding our heads in the sand. We are perhaps the only species on Earth to be conscious of the inevitability of our individual mortality. I fear soon we shall also have to become the only species that will knowingly watch the coming of its own collective demise, or at least the demise of its civilisation.

    Carlo Rovelli

    This exemplifies the difference between a man of science and objective facts, and those of a fundamentalist bent that place mankind atop the pyramid of Creation.

    More terrifying than where Ravelli places us in the grand scheme is the end of days preacher who cannot countenance that we may indeed be just an irrelevant blip on this Earth, but instead sees the Earth as something created for us to plunder and exploit.

    Cognisant of this threat, Noam Chomsky recently claimed that the Republican Party is the ‘most dangerous organization in world history’ He has deliberately corrected many interviewers who mistakenly stated that in fact he said it was the most dangerous organization in the world today.

    Chomsky also mentioned in a BBC Newsnight interview that there has to be connection between the denial of science, and active attempts to undermine it, with the belief of nearly 40% of the American public that the Second Coming will occur by 2050.

    Why would a deluded mind bother saving life and civilization, when it is prophesised that it will all be over soon? Christian End of Day’s logic, or lack thereof, is not so prevalent in agnostic Europe at present, but the breakdown of the social order through the austerity shock doctrine, and now the coup de grâce of the pandemic, leaves the continent exposed to those same forces, which may be articulated in an equally millenarian scientism that sees human beings as vectors of disease.

    Loss of Meaning

    In a 2004 essay Václav Havel foresaw much of what we now find in a piece called ‘What Communism Still Teaches Us,’ describing ‘supposed laws of the market and other invisible hands that direct our lives.’ There remains an abject lack of humanism in neoliberal politics and society, comparable in certain ways to Communist totalitarianism, not least in the brainwashing of the young through solipsistic social media.

    With the loss of religious forms, however, many living in modern technocratic societies experience a loss of meaning, and even a moral void. The social structure of religions fostered close relationships and inculcated a sense of community, as well as charity, the protection of human dignity and a commitment to public service. The Bible injuncts kindness towards strangers, and to do unto others as you would wish them to do to you, which also derives from Aristotelian philosophy.

    To rectify contemporary problem such as poverty and environmental degradation, undoubtedly we need to shift from a conception of ‘I’ to ‘we’ as Sacks argues.

    In The Godless Gospel, Julian Baggini also calls for a form of religion shorn of hatred for our age, where we develop personal and social goods through deeds not pious words. Through this we may realise our best intentions and develop empathy and compassion, a commitment to personal humility and an obligation and commitment to the truth. Above all we should try and do as little harm as possible he asserts.

    All of these are good values that Christianity may teach to those of a secular persuasion lacking in moral clarity.

    Thus from a secular perspective, Jürgen Habermas understood how religion engenders social integration, and is the basis for communicative action. As far back as 1978 he argued, from an agnostic perspective, for the necessity of religious ideas to humanise society. Those of faith must learn to communicate reasonably, which means the renunciation of violence and extremism. We must learn to talk and communicate our differences, agreeing on facts to ground the rule of law.

    Pope Francis

    Pope Francis’s experiences in the barrios of Buenos Aires appears to have shaped an empathy towards those afflicted with extreme poverty and subjected to degradation. He preaches tolerance, engagement and social and economic justice. This has largely been stripped of the condemnation of sexuality and sexual expression evident in his predecessor John Paul II.

    Let us hope the liberation theology that is intrinsic in Francis’s message is not tainted by the dark money of the Vatican, and he does not go the way of John Paul I, or ‘God’s Banker’ Roberto Calvi, found hanging from Blackfriars bridge in 1982, just outside the site of my Chambers.

    Christian socialism is a potentially vital force if it reflects the values of what Philip Pullman calls that great man Jesus, but not the values, as he equally presents, of that scoundrel Jesus Christ. This latter is a distortion of New Testament values, dedicated to the accumulation of capital, a lack of compassion and political manipulation.

    If inequality grows any further – amid ever-greater accumulations of wealth – then neoliberalism may well give way to neo-feudalism. Viewed in this regard it is easier to understand the potential for an alliance between church and capital in subjugating the masses. The Book of Genesis sanctions man’s dominion over the earth which has led to a scorched earth approach towards environmental regulations that will ultimately impoverish us all. For too long Christianity has married the exchange of goods with the exchange of gods.

    Scopes Trial

    In parts of American Darwin’s Theory of Evolution is accorded equal weight and validity as Creationism in schools. Children are taught that the world was created by God the Almighty in the space of seven days.

    It’s been a long time coming. In the Scopes Trial of 1925 – where a High School teacher was put on trial for teaching Darwinism – the legendary American attorney Darrow anticipated what happens when a society abandons reason altogether.

    Can’t you understand? That if you take a law like evolution and you make it a crime to teach it in the public schools, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private schools? In addition, tomorrow you may make it a crime to read about it. Soon you may ban books and newspapers. Then you may turn Catholic against Protestant, and Protestant against Protestant, and try to foist your own religion upon the mind of man. If you can do one, you can do the other. Because fanaticism and ignorance is forever busy, and needs feeding. And soon, your Honor, with banners flying and with drums beating we’ll be marching backward, BACKWARD, through the glorious ages of that Sixteenth Century when bigots burned the man who dared bring enlightenment and intelligence to the human mind!

    In a period of declining belief in a broad liberal education, and where the art-repeneur has taken over from true artists, there is a desperation for something to cling on to, whether Creationism, neoliberalism or even scientism. We are living in an age of pervasive ignorance, which can be traced to our putative higher educational institutions, where students are taught to believe and comply. Or as Foucault would have it, punishment is becoming internalized through control vectors.

    Lost in all of this is the message of Christian socialists such as Pope Francis, Sacks, and even their ideological fellow-traveller Habermas. This is a form of Christian decency that reflects the needs of human beings battling for survival in an increasingly hostile environment, where adequate nutrition, shelter, health care, education, housing and even dignity are denied.

    Thus organised religions appear to be experiencing an existential battle between the neoliberals and Christian socialists. Exclusionary family values that are a hallmark of religious neoliberalism conceal a corporate existence and controlled sexuality. Its tenets are designed to diminish any radicalisation among the young.

    But let us hope a new-found empathy with the Wretched of the Earth can emerge, in Catholicism at least under Pope Francis, and perhaps other Protestant more tolerant faiths. This would reflect the moderation and human decency of public intellectuals in this series such as Jürgen Habermas, Albert Camus, George Orwell and Edmund Burke, all of whom in their own ways rejected the moral absolutes that lead to human degradation.

    No Time to be Making Enemies

    On his deathbeds the great Enlightenment intellectual Voltaire (1694-1778) was asked by a priest in attendance to renounce the devil. Voltaire considered this advice, but approaching the pearly gates he decided against doing so: ‘This is no time,’ he said, ‘to be making new enemies.’

    At this stage in our history it is important to be open to all belief systems, including Christianity in spite of its diabolical history. Christianity, and other religions, must confront a dark past, but can provide moral guidance in the face of a culturally dominant neoliberal cost-benefit analysis of life. Dogmatic secularist should concede that there are lessons to be drawn from religions. These may help generate a genuine brotherhood and sisterhood among human beings to confront the real evil in this world.