Doctor Jesus - Government Approved

Two linked stories about religion and health this time.


Dr Richard Scott has been disciplined by the General Medical Council (GMC) for bringing Jesus into the surgery after the mother of a patient complained that Scott preached at her son during a consultation. Scott believes that where Western medicine ends, Jesus can step in. He claims he has seen Jesus curing people and that 'there is a place for Jesus in the surgery'. He also believes that homeopathy works - there is about the same amount of evidence for both of these practices. None.

He describes the 'faith approach' as 'an optional extra' but it's one patients have to actively opt out of.

The Bethesda Medical Centre in Margate where he practices is run by six Christian GPs. The website states: The 6 Partners are all practising Christians from a variety of Churches and their faith guides the way in which they view their work and responsibilities to the patients and employees. The Partners feel that the offer of talking to you on spiritual matters is of great benefit. If you do not wish this, that is your right and will not affect your medical care. Please tell the doctor (or drop a note to the Practice Manager) if you do not wish to speak on matters of faith.

NHS patients should not have to opt out of being preached at. Many people go to the doctor in a vulnerable state and may not feel confident enough to challenge him or her as the balance of power is very much with the doctor in that situation. There is a very big difference between practising medicine and practising Christianity.

Not only did he prescribe a dose of Jesus, he tried to convert the patient whose mother complained, telling him that 'he might find Christianity offers more than his current faith', suggesting the patient went to Scott's church or its Alpha courses. Presumably he's done a randomised, placebo-controlled, peer-reviewed experiment to prove this. He is supposed to be a scientist, after all.

The GMC is very clear that doctors 'must not impose their beliefs on patients, or cause distress by the inappropriate or insensitive expression of religious, political or other beliefs or views.' If the patient wants to lead a conversation about faith then that's a different matter but even then, the doctor should keep his or her views in the background. Even the UK College of Healthcare Chaplaincy, an entirely religious body, describes proselytising as 'spiritual abuse' in its 2005 guidelines.

Scott is not deterred. He believes that the GMC's ruling is further evidence of 'Christians being hammered at work' and is appealing the decision, backed by the Christian Legal Centre who are always quick to jump on any case where they think that Christianity should take precedence over all other rights. You can see a clip of him talking here.

Scott also spoke about referring women to a local Christian abortion counselling centre. It's not surprising that he and an increasing number of others think it is their right to force their beliefs onto people in the workplace and in therapeutic settings. There is an increasingly foetid climate of religion demanding exemption from laws and guidelines. The Government is fuelling this state of affairs by welcoming hard-core believers into health care services with open arms - despite the fact that over 70% of people in the UK (Including reasonable, rational believers) support abortion and contraception.

The new sexual health forum set up to replace the Independent Advisory Group on Sexual Health and HIV will include the Life organisation - but not the British Pregnancy Advisory Service. Life is also a member of the new Sex and Relationships Council recently launched in parliament and endorsed by education secretary Michael Gove - all nine members of this group are either pro-abstinence, anti-abortion or both, including the Silver Ring Thing.

Life said that all members of the forum want to reduce the number of abortions and their motives are secondary. This is disingenuous at best. Life's mission, according to its website 'is to uphold the utmost respect for human life from fertilisation (conception) until natural death' and that it fulfills this mission by 'Offering non-directive counselling and information on pregnancy, pregnancy loss and abortion.' It's hard to see how it can be both pro-life and non-directive.

One of its aims is 'challenging governments and policy makers to adopt policies which reflect and uphold the utmost respect for human life from fertilisation until natural death'. They are opposed to abortion even after rape. The apparent reason for having them on the forum is to bring 'balance' but presumably this means balancing scientific evidence with a position that is neither scientific nor evidence-based.

As if this weren't enough, MP Nadine Dorries thinks that teaching abstinence - but just to girls - will solve everything, including child abuse. And in Richmond, the Catholic Children's Society has been given a contract to advise schoolchildren on contraception and pregnancy.

The abortion rate for under 18s has fallen so this is no time to revisit the Dark Ages of ignorance, judgement and prudery. Virginity is not a precious gift from God. Some of us are getting very weary indeed of saying that abstinence has been proven over and over not to work. These hard-core religious groups claim to be pro-life but it's not the life of women and young people they care about.


More of the Doctor Jesus series here, here, here and here.

Sex and Secularism

A new report called Sex and Secularism is, inevitably, being promoted as 'Atheists have better sex!' but, also inevitably, it's a bit more complicated than that.

The report, by Darrel Ray and Amanda Brown, is based on a survey of 9500 completed questionnaires by people over 18 who had 'lost' their religion and become secular/atheists. Most of the respondents were American but the survey covered 94 countries. Nearly one in five respondents were ex-Catholics but 20 religions and denominations were represented.

The report counters the possible objection that respondents were not really properly religious in the first place and details the struggles many had before losing their religion. Getting accurate, honest information about sex is harder than running a survey on which supermarket people use and there are ethical issues around this kind of research too. The findings are based on self-reporting by a self-selected group but significantly, they are consistent with data from a wide range of other research.

One quibble though is that the authors confuse/conflate atheism with secularism.

The central finding of the research was that religious people do pretty much everything the non-religious do but they feel much guiltier about it. People who grew up in the most religious homes reported feeling guilt nearly 80% of the time compared with 26% of non-religious. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. But they kept doing what they were doing anyway. Biology trumps doctrine every time.

Many religions see human nature as something bestial to be tamed, risen above or battered into submission. Sex is a necessary evil to keep the human race going but it would really be an awful lot better if we could do without it. It's not just Catholics who have a hard time squaring nature and faith according to the survey: Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, Pentecostalists and Baptists have it worse while Unitarians and some Jews have a better time. One interesting little note is that people leaving New Age religions also report better sex after so tree hugging and tantric crystals aren't necessarily the path to good sex.

Despite many religions preaching the evils of masturbation, the message doesn't seem to be getting through. The Bible has the cautionary tale of Onan, damned because he shed his seed upon the ground. It doesn't have anything to say about women masturbating, perhaps because we're not wasting any eggs or perhaps because the writers of the Bible were all male and couldn't conceive of a woman having pleasure without a man. Assuming we're allowed to enjoy our bodies in the first place. Which we're not.

The survey found that 87% of the non-religious were masturbating by age 15 and 93% by age 18 (I'm rounding the percentages). Of the most religious, the figures are 83% and 90% - very little difference even though a fifth of them had been 'shamed or ridiculed' by their parents about it.

48% of the least religious had started petting by 15 and 84% by 18. For the most religious, it was 44% and 81%. (Petting is kissing, rubbing and touching - you may be old enough to remember when swimming pools had signs saying 'No running, no bombing, no petting').

Then the survey asked about oral sex - for some people a substitute for the 'real thing' to avoid pregnancy although still a potential source of STIs. For the non-religious in the same age brackets, it was 20% and 63%, for the religious 19% and 55%. What the survey doesn't say is whether boys are giving as well as receiving.

The religious start using porn a little later but their use was almost the same as the non-religious by age 25. The report found that the most religious US states and those with the most restrictive sexual legislation have the highest porn use.

The religious also fantasise nearly three times more than the non-religious and are nearly eight times more likely to feel they are doing something wrong. It's probably no surprise to many people that all these things are going on but the rates of incidence are more than might be expected. Which must make for some interesting sessions in the confession box and an awful lot of penance.

Finally, 18% and 62% of the non-religious had intercourse and 16% and 53% of the most religious. By age 21, it's 88% non-religious, 84% religious. So although they may be starting a little later, the religious are soon making up for lost time. The report also states that 95% of Americans have sex before marriage and it seems unlikely that the remaining 5% are all Baptist ministers. This of course raises the issue of hypocrisy, making very many allegedly upright religious people nothing but whited sepulchres.

One concern raised by this data is that the more secular got far better sex education than the religious. Instead of getting fact-based information, young religious people are getting far more knowledge from personal experience, porn and the internet. Sex education isn't all it could be but religion doesn't make it any easier for young people to get the facts or to explore and enjoy their sexuality safely.

The findings also reinforce existing data that abstinence teaching doesn't work; it delays first intercourse by a few months at best and increases the incidence of unprotected sex.

As a side bar: The Guttmacher Institute's survey of American women found that contraceptive use by Catholics and Evangelicals, is the widespread norm, not the exception, and only 3% of married Catholic women use natural family planning (the rhythm method) to avoid pregnancy.

So instead of teaching/forcing people to avoid any sexual activity, all that the strictest forms of religion do is breed ignorance, guilt and hypocrisy. You'd think they'd call in some marketing experts; any other corporate body that found its product was failing to reach its target market would rebrand and repackage, and find a new USP. The trouble is that sex has a much deeper market penetration than any religious message.

Back to the survey: the good news is that, after leaving their religion, guilty feelings about all things sexual decline very quickly and 60% of the formerly most religious felt every aspect of their sex lives had improved while 28% changed their sexuality. The assumption that a highly religious anti-sex upbringing will scar you for life doesn't appear to be true.

All of this is probably no consolation if you're a non-believer (or a secularist) with a lousy or non-existent sex life but at least the possibility of having much better sex is some consolation for burning in hell for all eternity.

Good Girls Don't

Nadine Dorries MP has introduced a Bill proposing that girls between 13 and 16 get extra sex education. Specifically, that they are taught to practice abstinence. Chris Bryant MP adeptly took her argument apart but she won the vote by 67 to 61.

She started the debate by blaming the 60s, which is a sure guide that someone doesn't know what they're talking about. She then said that her Bill is about 'empowering girls'.

How does she propose to do this? Firstly, by misusing statistics as evidence that sex education isn't working. She says quite rightly that Britain has the highest teenage pregnancy rate in Europe. She doesn't say that this has begun to fall. The latest data from the Office for National Statistics show teenage pregnancies are at their lowest rate since the early 1980s with the rate among under 18 year olds falling by 13.3% since 1999.

Then she switches to the tabloid-style tactic of seven year olds being taught to put condoms on bananas. Most seven years olds I know would eat the banana before the teacher had even got the condoms out. If that was actually happening, of course.

As the Sex Education Forum say: 'For children aged 3-6 years teaching is centred around issues like, ‘where do babies come from’ ‘why are girls’ and boys’ bodies different’ and ‘which parts of my body are private’. Learning about friendships, families, and changing bodies are also central to primary SRE'.

Dorries, like her friends in the tabloid press, conveniently ignores the 'and relationships' part of Sex and Relationships Education (SRE)

Instead, her Bright Idea is to teach teenage girls about the joys of abstinence - despite the fact that all the evidence shows abstinence teaching doesn't work and in some cases makes things worse as it leaves teenagers unprepared when they do inevitably have sex - as I've written about before.

Dorries has close ties with the group Christian Concern for Our Nation and her politics are highly influenced by her hard-line Christian beliefs. I looked at the latest round of religious propaganda about SRE here. Not surprisingly, organisations like the Christian Legal Centre and Christian Concern support her Bill.

Her Bright Idea applies only to young women. Not only are they the 'victims' of a sexualised society, they must now be the gatekeepers of teenage boys' sexual appetites. Just because this Bill was introduced by a woman doesn't mean that it isn't sexist.

Of course plenty of Christians are not misogynistic but the hardliners' idea of empowering women is to make sure that they walk up the aisle a pure virgin and even then only have sex to make more good little Christians.

It's not only sexist, the implication is that boys are little animals who can't control themselves and shouldn't even be expected to try. This is not a million miles away from the thinking that makes women cover their entire bodies so that men aren't distracted by lust.The more resourceful boys will just come up with a list of things to do with girls that 'don't count'.

It also denies young women the opportunity to explore and enjoy their sexuality fully equipped with the information they need to make safe choices. Because nice girls shouldn't even be thinking about sex. Sex is demonized as a dark and dangerous thing, trying to scare young women away from it. Dorries ignores the fact that some girls might be lesbians or bi. How will abstinence teaching work when they can't be scared off with the Big Bogey Man of pregnancy?

Today's news that 59% of parents don't want young children taught about sex isn't surprising given the amount of misinformation in the media and people like Dorries. When parents were asked at what age it was appropriate to teach sex education to children in schools, by far the largest number of parents (48%) said 13 or older.

The Sex Education Forum points out that 'there is strong evidence that young people who have sex education that starts early and covers a broad range of topics are less likely to have sex at a young age, have fewer partners and are more likely to use contraception or condoms'. Holland, France and Germany have much lower rates of teenage pregnancy. They also start sex education earlier than we do. Education is not the only factor in reducing pregnancy rates but this fact does seriously undermine Dorries' argument.

It's true that sex education in the UK is patchy. The law currently requires only that young people are taught the biological basics, schools are allowed to teach according to their (religious) 'ethos' and parents can opt their children out. There's a long way to go but hopefully when Dorries' Bill gets its next reading, more MPs will bother to turn out to vote it down. It is, as Chris Bryant said, 'the daftest piece of legislation that I have seen'. You can see which 67 MPs thought this Bill would be a good idea here.

Easter - The Remix

Hallelujah! He is risen! But who has?

Gods who die and come back again are standard issue in the ancient world. The symbolize the way the earth 'dies' in the winter and is 'reborn' in the spring, or the way 'dead' seeds go into the earth to be regenerated as next year's crops. There was also an element of sacrificial magic with the sacred king's blood fertilizing the earth, prefiguring the Christian's obsession with sacrificial blood. For early agrarian societies, this cycle was the focus of their lives.

The Christian myth is a cut and paste of far more ancient myths, or a 're-imagining' as Hollywood likes to say.

To look at just a couple, Herakles/Hercules died and rose again, then ascended to Heaven to be with his father. There was darkness when he died (an eclipse) and his followers used the phrase 'he is risen', which reappears in the Bible at Mark 16:6 without so much as a credit. Herakles died at the spring equinox too. I looked at the very many similarities between Herakles and Jesus here.

Osiris was another jack-in-the-box god who died and regenerated. He was also known as The Resurrection and the Life and The Good Shepherd. His followers took communion, eating his flesh in the form of wheat cakes.

Even a woman got in on the act: Persephone went into the underworld and returned each spring.

Nothing unique about the resurrection, then. Other Easter symbols are stolen too (or perhaps they're an 'homage').

The cross was a pre-Christian symbol representing the Tree of Life or the World Tree. It also appears in ancient Egyptian symbolism, among others. The Celtic cross combines the cross and a circle, an ancient yoni (female) symbol.

In Norse mythology, Odin hung on Yggdrassil, the World Tree, as a sacrifice. Hanging 'between heaven and earth' was all part of the day job for a god in the ancient world. Scarecrows are a relic of this hanging man. From divine symbol to bird-scarer and horror-movie staple is a bit of a come-down.

Early Christians had no cross and some even considered it a relic of pagan times. Its adoption came in handy for the Mediaeval Church who, never slow to miss a business opportunity, made a fortune selling splinters from it. It must have been a damn big cross given the number of splinters (and nails) it produced.

The Easter festival was named for the Saxon fertility goddess Eostre, a form of Astarte who dates back to Neolithic times in the Middle East. Her sacred month was Eastre-monath (the moon of Eostre). Incidentally, her name became the root of the word oestrogen. This is now disputed by some but the jury is still out. The Easter bunny was originally the moon-hare, sacred to the goddess in both eastern and western traditions. Hares were long associated with pagan beliefs, witchcraft and shape-shifting so the hare was softened into the much fluffier bunny.

UPDATE
As a good skeptic, I have to say that I have now learnt that the Eostre belief is a misconception based on no good evidence as we learn here and here:

'The idea that Eostre was the goddess of spring or fertility or dawn or whatever it might be is all later speculation, largely originating in nineteenth-century scholarship; the suggestion that she was associated with symbols such as eggs, hares or rabbits is similarly very recent. The Anglo-Saxons may well have had some kind of spring festival which gave its name to Easter, but we know nothing about what customs or practices that might have involved. People who say otherwise are speculating, with a greater or lesser degree of plausibility.'

'So where do the tales come from? The answer is found in the recent history of modern self-identified paganism'.

It's not comfortable to be wrong but that's how we learn. Anyway, to continue:

Zoroastrians celebrated their solar new year at the spring equinox and gave each other coloured eggs, usually red. Christian co-opted the redness as the blood of Christ. In some traditions, the hare laid the eggs.

In recent times, the job of dying and being resurrected has been taken over by Doctor Who. Even though Easter is the foundation stone of the Christian Church and England is still allegedly a Christian country, when David Tennant died and was resurrected as Matt Smith in 2010, eight million people watched. According to the latest figures from the Church of England, fewer than 1.5 million went to church at Easter.

But without Easter there would be no carb-based joy. Hot cross buns, Easter eggs and my personal favourite, Easter biscuits - although they've become hard to find. In 1210, under the interdict of Pope Innocent III, King John's candidate for Archbishop of Canterbury, John De Gray, decreed that during Lent hot cross buns were classified as fish, and could therefore be eaten during fasting and abstinence. And we get two Bank Holidays which the more secular French do not. So, if nothing else, thank you gentle Jesus for giving us (another) reason for feeling superior to the French.

Sex Education For Scouts

The Scouting Movement is going to teach its members about sexual health to try and combat the high rates of teenage pregnancy and STIs in the UK. The guidelines for leaders set out what's appropriate for them to teach and when they should get professionals in, as well as providing resources to help them.

The Scouts still insist that new members make a Promise to do their duty to God/Allah/My dharma and so on with no non-religious alternative. But the guidelines lay down that any teaching about sex and sexuality must be strictly factual and secular, whatever the beliefs of the Scout leaders.

The guidelines state that ‘As adults in Scouting, it is important that, regardless of our own faith and values, we offer appropriate guidance to young people. All young people are entitled to information and advice to allow them to make informed choices’ and ‘Whilst some Scout Groups are sponsored by religious bodies this should not be a barrier to providing appropriate advice, information and guidance to young people in line with Scout Association Policies’.

The Scouting Movement is sensitive to the beliefs of young people (and their parents) but its website pragmatically comments ‘Throughout history religion has provided society with a great deal of information about sexuality. Many of these societies subsequently used this information to create laws regulating sex. However, it is important that these laws are seen in their historical context’.

In other words, times change and the Scout Movement is taking responsibility for seeing that its members are not kept in the Dark Ages. It recognises the role of faith but it values and promotes the role of facts. It’s promising to see that their motto ‘Be Prepared’ now applies to preparing young people for this aspect of adult life along with the more traditional scouting activities. It's not indicated if they will get badge for it, though.

The factsheets can be downloaded here.

Vatican Causes Cancer? Part 2: The Verdict

The Vatican has been ordered by Italy's Supreme Court to pay compensation to the town of Cesano near Rome after a long court battle over whether or not Vatican Radio's 60 masts have caused cancer in local children.

The court has found the evidence 'coherent and significant' that children in the area are six times more likely to develop leukemia.

I covered this story last year and all is not what it appears to be.

To sum up what I wrote before:

1. The Italian Navy also has masts in the area

2. The data submitted to the court is highly flawed.

3. There is no good evidence that masts cause cancer or of how cells are damaged by radio waves (see my original article for links to Quackwatch).

4. Italy has one of the highest rates of childhood cancer (leukemia and lymphoma) in the world.

5. There is insufficient data on the Cesano region to compare with Italy as a whole to tell if the rates really are higher.

The consumer association backing the residents' claim has said that 'Finally justice is done'. Vatican Radio has said that it is 'disappointed' by the ruling.

Parents with sick children can't be blamed for looking for someone or something to blame, some way of making sense of what has happened to them to restore a sense of order in the world. Compensation may make them feel they have more control over the situation and are not so much victims. But blaming the wrong cause means that the real cause goes unexplored.

While there may be a certain irony in the Vatican being called to account for something it didn't do while (so far) getting away with something it did do (sanction the abuse of thousands of children), irony's gain is science's loss.

Fear and Loathing in Sex Education: 2

The Christian Institute is trying to whip up publicity and alarm parents again with more lies about sex education in their latest report, Too Much, Too Young.

Their widely quoted press release says that 'Explicit sex education materials are being pushed by public bodies for use in schools with children as young as five. One of the controversial resources encourages children aged five and over to learn about anal intercourse, oral sex and prostitution'.

However, their report is not about what is happening but about what may happen if sex education (SRE) is made compulsory and if some of the currently recommended materials are used more widely.

Enter the world of fear-mongering fantasy.

The report includes extracts from some of these resources. Some of the worst offenders are the BBC and the award-winning book by Babette Cole, Mummy Laid An Egg. It also names local authorities currently recommending them.

Particular culprits campaigning for mandatory sex education are the Sex Education Forum, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence and the Labour Party (even though Ed Balls seriously watered down the Children, Schools and Families Bill, as I wrote about at the time.)

Far from promoting hot sex for five year olds, the Sex Education Forum's website has a fact-based approach to sex education in which primary school children learn about relationships with family and friends, body changes, feelings, emotions, keeping safe, life cycles, gender and other entirely age-appropriate information.

One of the CI's main fears is that control of sex education will be taken away from schools and handed to Government. This would particularly affect faith schools who can currently teach sex ed 'according to their ethos' which can mean anything from excellent fact-based information to morally biased, factually inaccurate religious propaganda. A unified approach to sex ed would seem like a good thing to most people, ensuring that all children are taught to the same standard, adequately prepared for adult life and that all teachers are well-trained and resourced. But the CI would rather treat children like mushrooms ; keep them in the dark and throw bullshit at them.

Not surprisingly, some of the offending extracts from current resources featured in the report talk about homosexuality in a morally neutral way and the CI will be having none of that.

The report also has action tips for parents about how to find out what is being taught in their child's school and how to complain if they need to. And the implication is that they will need to because 'It is important for parents to recognise that today's sex education is quite unlike anything they may have seen during their own school days'.

For most of us, this would be a good thing. But not for the CI. Take up arms: your child too could have this forced on them. No child is safe!

Mike Judge, head of communications at the CI said that: 'the current approach to sex education has comprehensively failed to reduce teenage pregnancy and abortion rates'. Checking statistics is apparently not his strong point; the rates are still some of the highest in Europe but the under-18 conception rate fell in 2009 to its lowest since the early 80s.

Jumping on the bandwagon is the Campaign For Real Education. That's 'real' as in archaic and fundamentalist. Nick Seaton of CRE commented that 'Some of this stuff could destroy someone's childhood if it upset them too much'. The website has such gems as 'SRE is little more than education in birth control' and 'Politicians required teachers to promote National Socialism in pre-war Nazi Germany and International Socialism in the former Soviet Union. Would a true democrat use schools for similar purposes here? Surely, if we were living in a genuine democracy, the law would allow parents the right to withdraw their child from all areas of PSHE/C, not just SRE'.

Firstly, citing the Nazis loses you any argument and secondly, parents can legally withdraw children as even the CI report notes. Maybe the CRE didn't get the memo. According to Ofsted figures, only 0.04% of parents currently do take their children out of sex ed lessons.(Ofsted 2002, Sex and Relationships HMI 433). This is not nearly enough as the CRE would prefer all parents to use the withdrawal method.

Not far behind the CRE is the Family Education Trust. I've already written about their lovely booklet, What is Love?. (In a nutshell, love is just saying no to the ugly sex until you are safely up the aisle. Or terrible, terrible things will fall upon you). I've also covered their report Too Much, Too Soon, which has such pearls of wisdom as 'there are some sexual practices that it may be better not to know anything about at all, at any age'. Sharp-eyed readers may notice the similarity in the title of this report and the current Christian Institute one. Copycats.

This time, the FET's Norman Wells said: 'Introducing sex education at an early age runs the risk of breaking down children's natural sense of reserve.

'Far from being a hindrance, children's natural inhibitions provide a necessary safeguard against sexual abuse and casual attitudes towards sexual intimacy later on'.

This seems to mean that if children are taught the facts, they are more likely to be abused. Both the logic and moral implications of this statement are loathsome.

These organisations do not represent the majority of parents, or even the majority of religious parents but they are loud, relentless and unashamed of using emotive, manipulative, evidence-free methods.

Finally, five year olds are not now and never will be encouraged to learn about anal sex.