Bell, Book and Candle

Exorcism is not just unscientific - the concept of evil makes us all Bart Simpson.

BBC's Sunday Morning Live today had a discussion about exorcism and a woman claiming that it cured her alcoholism. Leaving aside the scientific aspect - regular readers will know what I'd say on that - there is another aspect to consider.

Belief that bad things are caused by an outside agency is the supernatural equivalent of the Bart Simpson defence - a bigger boy made me do it.

The word 'evil' is problematic. It's used by non-believers to describe certain sorts of human behaviour and by believers to describe the agency of the devil. Both use it to identify something that is allegedly inhuman, alien or Other. And that's the problem. Whether it's alcoholism, homosexuality, mental illness, unruly children, child abuse or serial killing, 'evil' sources the cause as something outside human nature.

Even though many non-believers use it as a catch-all with a whole range of nuances, there is still too often a sense that this is not regular human behaviour. But it is, everything humans do is human nature, we can't just pick the bits we like or easily understand. Neither is it evidence of our 'animal nature', something to be tamed or that we must rise above, it's part of human complexity.

A secular authority uses the judicial system to deal with this 'evil', some religions use exorcism.

Exorcism - or deliverance as some churches call it - is founded on a victim mentality that is perversely comforting. We are not responsible. We are at the mercy of supernatural attacks and only God can protect or liberate us. In addition, sometimes it's the most religious who are the most assailed so it becomes almost a badge of piety to be possessed. The woman on Sunday Morning Live who blamed possession for her alcoholism was handing over responsibility. She saw alcoholism and other afflictions not as a disease or as a choice but as something that was inflicted on her, something which she had no power herself to overcome.

Like many of us, she wanted to blame someone or something for what happened to her. No one can help being born with a propensity for alcoholism or psychopathic behaviour but 'blaming' our genes or environment isn't satisfying. As humans, we look for something with human-like intentions because that is both easier to conceptualise and to distance from ourselves.

One response to her was that whatever gets you clean is good. But this way of thinking leaves people like her open to further possessions. Anytime something bad happens, responsibility is handed over to the devil. If God doesn't deliver you the first time, keep going until he does. Not only does this attitude make us victims, it infantilizes us, holding us in a suspended state of child-like irresponsibility, pushing away both blame and understanding.

A watered-down and more secular version of this Devil-think is the idea of luck, which looks to ascribe outside causes to agencies that can be propitiated or neutralised through ritual. It may appear less harmful than a belief in possession, but it's part of a continuum, a position that acknowledges science but then over-rides it. It's like instances where people know there is a scientific reason for something happening - livestock dying or being burgled, for example - but then go on to ask why here, why now, why me? And the answer is something Outside.

Calling behaviour evil can be a way of saying 'it couldn't happen here, we're not like that'. But as we saw in Norway recently, it can and does happen in all of our 'heres'. Putting photos of killers with red-eye in the paper and calling them the face of evil really doesn't help prevent that. We're all capable of behaviour that we're not proud of and the only way to prevent it, either as an individual or a society, is to recognise it, not to think of it a some sort of alien invader.

We're not Mediaeval peasants who can execute a pig for killing a child or blame a curse for making our crops fail but our minds haven't changed in just a few hundred years. Belief in exorcism or even (bad) luck is still a kind of contamination theory: something infects us or attacks us or breeds inside us - something that can be contagious and that has a cure of the same order. Whether we think it's the devil or some sort of allegedly secular evil, this is sci-fi/horror movie thinking.

Max von Sydow is not going to turn up to fix us and neither is Sigourney Weaver. The Alien is us.

Lying for Jesus (Yet Again)

The pro-choice charity Education for Choice has first-hand evidence that pregnancy crisis centres based on a 'Christian ethos' are using scare-mongering, emotional blackmail and lies to try and put women off having abortions. The Guardian coverage of the story tactfully talks about 'inaccurate information' but let's call it like it is. Lying.

EfC sent women undercover to centres including some run by the organisation Life. One of the undercover EfC women was given a leaflet that claimed 85% of abortions are carried out using vacuum aspiration. It stated that 'the unborn child is sucked down the tube' and that 'the woman should wear some protection. She has to dispose of the corpse.'

Another centre tried to persuade the woman to put off the decision and another handed out its 10-step 'road to abortion recovery', including steps entitled 'guilt and shame' and 'forgiveness'. The EfC women were shown baby clothes and talked to in emotive terms to manipulate them. There were also the usual lies about mental illness and cancer caused by abortion.

I'm confident in calling these lies because I've looked at some of the research the claims about cancer and mental illness are based on.

The Government is considering farming out services to 'independent' organisations, which would include those with religious motivations. In this instance, it appears that 'independent' mean 'independent of scientific fact and the NHS's own guidance on abortion'.

MP Nadine Dorries wants women to be forced to go for counselling before they can have an abortion - and this counselling cannot be provided by any organisation that also carries out abortions, for example Marie Stopes International.

Her original intention was to make this change an amendment to the Health and Social Care Bill but it is now possible that the change will be made without a parliamentary vote. It appears that her ally Frank Field MP could be working with the Department of Health to introduce these new counselling arrangements via regulatory change instead.

If practices at the organisations investigated are anything to go by, this would be very bad news indeed for women and their partners. Only two out of the ten centres EfC visited gave accurate advice and only one mentioned centres which provided abortions. These are not good odds for someone who chooses to go for counselling and even worse odds for anyone being forced to have it.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about a consultation on advertising pregnancy advice centres. The proposal is that they must state whether or not they will refer for abortion. Perhaps they should also be required to display their beliefs on large signs outside the building. Then women would really be able to make an informed choice about whether to go in or not. Some would and that's up to them.

This Government is constantly banging on about transparency so any proposal to use organisations that base their activities on lies, subterfuge and ulterior motives masked as offering 'choice' does not bode well for the Big Society.

Memento Mori - Dealing With Death

Some evolved survival mechanisms are the skeleton in the cupboard.



The death of celebrities or large numbers of regular people provokes an outpouring of shock, public grief and an intimate examination of their lives which, with the benefit of hindsight, led inevitably to their deaths.

The reaction that we are pleased to have is that the death of Amy Winehouse and the deaths in Norway provoke empathy both for the dead and for their families.

At the same time as feeling empathy, we have another reaction that it's not always quite as comfortable to admit to. Publicly-reported deaths always serve as a memento mori, a reminder of the fragility of life. The death of young people provokes particularly complex reactions; both Winehouse and most of the Norwegian dead were young.

News of any death creates cognitive dissonance, the discomfort caused by holding conflicting ideas simultaneously. So empathy for the dead and grieving creates and becomes entangled with fear of our own death. It's uncomfortable to feel sorry and afraid at the same time; we want the empathy but not the fear. Humans are (as far as we know) the only animals to be aware that we will die and we have to deal with that when we're reminded of it.

Memento mori means roughly 'remember you will die'. It's also used as a term for artefacts. These date back to antiquity but became widespread in Mediaeval times. They were a means of reminding people that death - and Judgement - were never far away to keep them close to the Church. Images of skulls, skeletons and the Grim Reaper are widespread in religious art for this purpose. The Book of Common Prayer still has the line 'In the midst of life we are in death. Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust'. Carpe diem and all that.

As well as being aware we will die, we also have the ability to push this thought away. At the same time as empathizing, we also remind ourselves that Winehouse was an addict whose life was a mess and that we don't live in Norway.

We start to collect reasons why such deaths could never happen to us - this is the survival mechanism. This reaction can tip over into blaming the victim - Winehouse brought it on herself, for example. Some of the coverage majors on the 'fact' that she'd been on an 'ecstasy and booze binge'. Her many appearances while drunk or drugged are poked into, along with comments on her appearance - 'Amy also appeared unhealthily thin, with scabs on her face and marks on her arms, wearing scruffy clothes' in the Sun, for example. Her 'friends' are quoted as saying they were afraid for her before her death, that it was inevitable.

The shock of Norway is that it was Norway - a low-profile country where nothing much ever happens from an outside perspective. But it was Norway and we don't live there, we dodged the bullet through the good luck of geography. Calling the massacre of over 80 people (at the time of writing) a national tragedy helps bind their nation together but it also serves for the rest of us as a comfort that it wasn't our nation.

There is sometimes a certain Schadenfreude in our response too, a pleasure in the suffering of others. It's a comfort for us not being rich and famous to see how screwed up the lives of celebs are. But on this occasion the Norwegian deaths complicate the freude because the dead were not rich and famous, they were nobodies like us - and that brings it closer to home. This weekend, the Schadenfreude is less pleasure and more relief. We're not rich and famous but at least we're not Norwegian. It's not a laudable response but it's a human one just as much as the emotions and reactions we're more proud to own.

However, our success in telling ourselves that it couldn't happen here can come back to bite us when it does, especially when the perpetrators are home-grown. Freud might have called it the return of the repressed. The Norwegians had successfully insulated themselves; according to the BBC, 'Norway has had problems with neo-Nazi groups in the past but the assumption was that such groups had been largely eliminated and did not pose a significant threat'. We're all human, we're all fragile but this time it wasn't us and couldn't have been us - until it is.

The desire to read these stories or watch the news coverage may seem callous, something we shouldn't do, something tabloid and nasty for the better-educated to tut about - but it is part of the survival mechanism, the distancing process, insulating ourselves from death. Even the more rational media play into this, for example by listing other musicians who died young of overdoses or suicide - Hendrix, Cobain, Joplin etc, mentioning the 27 Club - some 38 musicians who died age 27.

The media aren't really doing anything that we don't all do, even if on an unconscious level. We may not like all of our instincts, and some we should probably not give in to, but covering them up or identifying them as something other people do, people we look down on, is not realistic. Doing that is also another human response though. Human beings are complicated buggers.

Always Let Your Conscience Be Your Guide? Part 3

Should students be accepted for medical school if they have no intention of treating certain people or conditions?

A survey shows that a significant number of medical students think doctors should be able to refuse any procedure that contradicts their beliefs. The procedure that causes the most contention is, as always, abortion.

Not all of the respondents were religious; non-religious students thought opt-outs should be a right too - 35% thought there was a place for conscientious objection. The survey also found a prevelance among the religious to object to certain procedures and patients.

In general, support for a doctor's right to refuse any procedure that troubles their beliefs was highest among Muslim medical students at 76.2% while 54.5% of Jewish students thought the same, as did 51.2% of Protestants and 46.3% of Catholics.

More than double the number of Muslim students than non-believers would refuse an abortion when contraception failed. A higher percentage of Muslim students than others would object to prescribing contraception. Nearly eight percent of them also stated they would object to ‘intimately examining a person of the opposite sex’. The survey didn't ask how students would feel about examining LGBT people which, along with not exploring the reasons for objections in the non-religious, is a limitation.

Doctors opting out of treating certain patients is only part of the problem. Some students are refusing even to learn certain areas of medicine in the first place.

It was reported in the Sunday Times four years ago that some Muslim medical students were refusing to attend lectures or answer exam questions on alcohol-related or sexually transmitted diseases because they claimed it offended their religious beliefs. This was corroborated by both the BMA and the GMC. Professor Peter Rubin, chairman of the GMC’s education committee, said: “prejudicing treatment on the grounds of patients’ gender or their responsibility for their condition would run counter to the most basic principles of ethical medical practice”.

GMC guidelines recognise the right of freedom of expression for medical students but state that this 'cannot compromise the fundamental purpose of the medical course: to train doctors who have the core knowledge, skills, attitudes and behaviour that are necessary at graduation'.

The GMC also specifically states that a foundation level doctor cannot practise while refusing to examine patients on grounds of gender or those patients whose illness can be attributed to their lifestyle. Guidance drawn up by the GMC advises doctors to refer a patient to a colleague if they object to a certain procedure or treatment. They must also give patients enough information so they can seek treatment elsewhere within the NHS. In some situations, doctors' consciences can (and should) be accommodated but the foundation level doctor is often the first one to see acute patients and any delay in treatment could have serious implications.

The research paper on the survey concluded that ‘Once qualified as doctors, if all these respondents acted on their conscience and refused to perform certain procedures, it may become impossible for conscientious objectors to be accommodated in medicine’. It also states that ‘The views of large numbers of Muslim students are contrary to GMC guidelines, and thus the medical profession needs to think about how it will deal with the conflict’.

Although Muslim students are clearly a growing problem, Muslims are not the only ones to object to certain procedures. The Christian Medical Fellowship, which has 4000 members, is also strongly anti-abortion, for example. Almost a third of the students surveyed wouldn’t perform an abortion for a congenitally malformed foetus after 24 weeks, a quarter wouldn’t for failed contraception before 24 weeks and a fifth wouldn’t even perform an abortion on a minor who had been raped.

Some of the reporting of this survey has gone straight to worse-case scenario and ignored the finding that a lower percentage of students would refuse to carry out a procedure than actually objected to it. However, the percentages are still significant and the situation needs to be addressed while respondents are still students. If the number of medical students prepared to carry out a termination when they qualify is shrinking, then women will find it hard to access abortion safely and quickly in the future.The UK may be drifting towards the situation in Italy where nearly 70% of gynaecologists refuse to perform abortions and 50% of anaesthetists refuse to assist on moral grounds even though abortion is legal.

While the GMC is holding out against students' right to pick and choose what they learn, the question remains - why do people want to become doctors if they are only going to treat certain patients or conditions, and where do they think they will practice this limited form of medicine? It's not just women's needs that are taking second place to beliefs; the provision of universal healthcare is being challenged too. Perhaps medical students need to be triaged when they apply to colleges and clearer limits set on the conscience to make sure that patients' needs always come first.

I wrote a response to the GMC consultation on conscience opt-outs for the National Secular Society some time ago.

In Part 1 I looked at the affect on women of pharmacists being able to opt out of selling emergency contraception if it's against their beliefs. I also wrote a consultation response for the NSS on this subject. It's not just in the UK where conscience is becoming a problem. In Part 2 I looked at the debate in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe on doctors' opt-outs.

Update 3 August 2011
In related news, a Christian midwife is refusing to wear trousers because Deuteronomy 22:5 says that it's wrong to wear the clothes of the opposite sex. Trousers are part of the uniform for hygiene purposes and the hospital is so far sticking to its guns saying that wearing them is 'proportionate'. Let's hope she never wears clothes of mixed fibres and doesn't have pierced ears.

Barking Up The Wrong Tree

I was taught at school always to read the question before answering an exam. Basic, really.

In 2009, the Broadcast Committee of Advertising Practice (BCAP) ran a consultation on changing the rules for advertising Post Conception Advice Services (PCAS). I wrote a response for the National Secular Society, sent it off and waited to see what happened.

The new rules would allow more PCAS to advertise and would also ensure that adverts were not misleading about the services they offered - principally whether they would refer a woman for abortion or not (some can't if they're run by nurses and some won't if they're Pro-Life). There were certain restrictions about when adverts could be run - not close to children's programmes, for example.

BCAP were well aware that adverts might cause offence to some people who have a moral or religious objection to abortion but considered there were strong public health grounds to justify showing them and that the 'specific consumer interest in question is that of pregnant women'. It took into account the fact that 'these are legally available services offering a range of advice and that providers should be permitted an appropriate level of freedom of expression to advertise'. it also stated that 'offence taken by some members of the audience is not in itself sufficient reason to prohibit a particular category of advertising'.

I wondered why there had been no results of the consultation published.

This week, we got an email from BCAP saying they were running the consultation again.

The new consultation notes explain that the 2009 consultation resulted in 27,000 responses from people stating they were offended by the proposals, mostly on religious or moral grounds. However, 'most respondents appeared to have misunderstood what was being proposed' and 'few respondents commented on the specific question of whether it is appropriate to allow a broader range of PCAS (including commercial services) to advertise and whether it is sensible to require services that do not refer for termination to say so'.

27,000 is an awful lot of 'offended' people. So offended that they didn't bother to read the questions properly. Or maybe they did and just wanted to have a rant anyway.

Some of these responses were:

* BCAP's proposal will encourage promiscuity among young people and divorce sex from mature relationships.

* BCAP's proposal will promote abortion as a means of birth control.

* BCAP's proposals are in conflict with the Audio Visual Media Services principle that audiovisual commercial communications shall not cause moral detriment to minors.

* Abortion providers mislead women into thinking that abortion is a quick-fix solution to a problem pregnancy with no harmful consequences.

The consultation notes also say - 'you need only write a second time should you feel that your understanding of the proposal has changed'.

This is a polite way of saying - rant as much as you like, we'll still ignore you. Maybe it will make a difference, maybe they will get another 27,000 misguided rants. The NSS response does not need to be submitted again.

If you believe abortion is wrong for moral or religious reasons, that's your prerogative, as is saying so publicly. Replying to a consultation that exists only in your head is neither persuasive nor productive. All you achieve by barking up the wrong tree is frightening the squirrels. Don't be surprised if they throw nuts at you.

If you want to respond to this public consultation, it's here.

I'll be attending the Pro-Choice rally next Saturday.

Blessed are the cake bakers

The Solace tent at the Isle of Wight festival offers free cake. It's run by volunteers from churches who also offer to wash feet and say prayers.

“It’s a feast of hope and a model for other churches to follow,” said Roy Crowne, head of the nationwide initiative HOPE, which encourages churches to work together on projects like this one. “We’ll be following the Solace team and their adventures, because we want to learn from their example.”

Er, no.

It's FREE CAKE. I would let pretty much anyone wash my feet and pray over me for a slice of good homemade cake. Especially at a festival if I'd been chemically interfered with. Even if I was in such a state I couldn't remember my own name, my cake radar would still be fully functional.

The only example this is setting is that people like cake. It's not a feast of hope, it's a feast of cake.

According to the Solace Facebook page, they were praying for good weather this weekend. They should have spent more time praying and less time baking. I hope the cake didn't get wet.

There will also be a Solace stall at Bestival.

Chastity is joyous - the Vatican AIDS Conference

At a two-day international conference on HIV/AIDS in Rome last weekend the Vatican reiterated its stance on condom use – never, in any circumstances.

The Catholic Church’s strategy is a combination of caring for infected people and so-called education of consciences, claiming to put human dignity at the centre of its AIDS policies. It is one of the largest providers of HIV/AIDS care in the world but its unmoving doctrine on condom use is often accused of causing millions of needless deaths and the related suffering they entail. They won't help you avoid getting infected but they will look after you when you are. Which is nice.

The conference was organised by the Pontifical Council for Health Care Workers. One of its aims was to address the confusion over the Pope’s statement last year that condom use might be justified in some circumstances to prevent disease transmission. It was made more than clear that’s not what he meant. Absolutely not. Ever. As if they hadn't already covered that one.

Just before the conference, Vatican moral theologian Father Perez-Soba provided a trailer when he published an article saying that condoms make the AIDS epidemic worse because they encourage immoral behaviour. According to him, using a condom shows a lack of respect for the other person.

His advice for married partners where one of them is infected is simple – stop having sex. Ever again. He also wrote that ‘a sexual act carried out with a condom cannot be considered a fully conjugal act.’

Monsignor Suaudeau of the Pontifical Academy for Life backed him up by saying ‘Chastity is joyous’. The Academy's remit is: 'to pay honor to pure science, wherever it is found, and to assure its freedom and to promote its research, which constitute the indispensable basis for progress in science'. Scientists of the world, look away.

The position of the joint United Nations programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) is that the correct and consistent use of condoms is an integral and essential part of HIV prevention, along with education, limiting sexual partners and marital fidelity.

Not everyone has those options. Much effort has gone into educating sex workers – both male and female - around the world into using condoms. Elizabeth Pisano's excellent book The Wisdom of Whores looks at initiatives with sex workers. It also shows just how unrealistic Vatican diktats about sex are in pretty much every way.

It’s hard to see how human dignity can be respected by preaching celibacy (something the Catholic Church itself has proven to be rather weak on) while ignoring human nature and the realities of life. The Vatican’s unchanging position is both unrealistic and inhumane. But to expect anything else from them is also unrealistic. The only real question is why they bothered having the conference.