A Killer Question Asked At Oxford.

After alighting from the train at Oxford Station and exiting onto the street outside, had someone approached to ask me whether I arrived onboard an interstellar spaceship, I would have considered this to be quite a valid question. Because indeed, from the moment of arrival, I sensed this historic, academic-centred city was on a different planet from the one I lived on. For the first time in my life, I was about to enter the Sutro Room, located upstairs in the heart of Trinity College, one of many institutions of the University of Oxford.

This is a result of an advert posted on Facebook by the Oxford Forum for an hour-long debate between a Christian and an Atheist on the question of whether morality without religion is bankrupt. The Christian representative taking part was Professor Keith Ward, someone who looks to be around my age or older. Ward would be discussing his views with the Atheist Alexander O'Connor, a minor celebrity under the username of Cosmic Skeptic, whose 125 YouTube videos have attracted 25,299,347 views by February 7th, 2020, along with 308,000 subscribers, after just seven years of self-broadcasting on the Internet.

O'Connor's typical YouTube video prompt.

After giving a positive response to the advert, I felt a surge of excitement over the prospect of seeing O'Connor in the flesh, after watching so many of his videos. I suppose this is a hint of celebrity-worship, despite that not ever appearing on television (as far as I'm aware) or on film, I rate him as a minor celebrity. But to be known by almost 25,300,000 people around the world is indeed something. But furthermore, what I really wanted was to speak to him personally, to testify to him that this Jesus of Nazareth is the risen Christ.

I arrived at Oxford early, purposely to allow for any train delay hampering the journey. Therefore, about forty minutes before the debate was due to begin, I approached the superintendent's office just inside the college gate for confirmation of the meeting. After some searching, his computer revealed that there is a meeting at the Sutro Room right at this moment. Commencing at 3.00pm and due to finish at 6.00pm, the superintendent was rather nonplussed. He had the keys to the venue right there with him and therefore cannot be anyone present in that chamber. Therefore, under his suggestion, I took a stroll down Broad Street and looked around the magnificent public library which was nearby.

Perhaps I was asking too much. I had no idea what this Sutro Room looked like. I imagined it to be a theatre-like auditorium seating hundreds of people. I imagined the debate being watched by all of us from a distance before the two debaters vanish backstage, their celebrity-status snobbery keeping them from talking to us as "ordinary" individuals. 

Trinity College, where our beloved Englishman, Etonian and ardent Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg resided as a student, was about to become familiar. As I returned to the entrance from the library, some students were lingering just inside. The superintendent, remembering me, suggested to one of the students to lead me to the venue. We chatted happily until we arrived at the far side of the building from the entrance and led me through a door and up a flight of stairs. I was surprised by the small size of the panelled room, no bigger than a school classroom. About 25 chairs were already arranged, theatre-style, and my emotions were overwhelmed in being in the very heart of Oxford University yet at the same time, also with the small size of the room, giving a far closer intimacy with the debaters.

I was the first guest to arrive, about fifteen minutes before the start. Only two or three other people were already there, setting everything up, including O'Connor himself and one who will be monitoring the debate. I had the privilege to introduce myself and expressed my commitment to Christ.

By seeing him in the flesh, I was taken back by his youthful good looks and his slim, athletic build for a man in his early twenties, as well as his high intelligence, knowledge and intellectual abilities. But what surprised me most was his height. He was taller than me by several centimetres, something not so noticeable in his videos. I also found him to be very likeable.

The room was filled almost entirely with male students, with a few females. The small room was packed with, I would estimate, to be between fifty to sixty people, with some spilling out through the open door. Undergrads, postgrads, all casually dressed, including the two debaters. It was almost difficult to believe that if 41.1% of Trinity College students come from state schools (grammar schools, I assume) then the remaining 58.9% are from public schools such as Eton, Harrow and Winchester. Yet as I looked around the crowd, most of them sitting and standing behind me, it was impossible to tell whether this audience is representative of the overall statistic.

Prof Keith Ward opened the debate. His reasoning that morality without religion is bankrupt. He then went on about Theism is the setting for moral values such as love and compassion and knowledge of the love of such a Being would stimulate love and respect for others. He then quoted Emmanuel Kant, who said that morality was impossible without belief in God. He also discussed that opponents of gays and their lifestyles were not necessarily religious. Many secularists also oppose homosexuality. Prof Ward then goes on to say that humanism is anti-religious, and atheism lacks the resource to make morality workable.

The debate, with Keith Ward, left, and Alex O'Connor, right.

O'Connor's side of the argument is in question form: Is morality without religion bankrupt? His answer is No, morality can still exist and work well without the need for religion (as advocated by the likes of both Richard Dawkins and the late Christopher Hitchens). He then takes aim for the Bible being insulting to modern morality, especially in the Old Testament. If there is a God, then he must be looking in horror at deeds done under religion. The religious attitude towards gays is one striking example, the put-down of such people by the religious, making them feel rejected, isolated, subject to violence and suicidal. O'Connor also insists that it's quite possible to believe in Evolution and practice religion too, although how the two can exist harmoniously side-by-side, he even admits, remains a mystery. In all, if God is the source of all good, then good must also exist outside of God. To which Prof Keith Ward explained that God is eternal, and if so, good is also eternal.

As the debate progressed, I feel like bursting! My heartbeat felt rapid as emotions rose. Throughout the entire debate not once was the name of Jesus Christ mentioned. I wanted to shout about the crucifixion, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ and that no man can be justified by God through his own morality, but I also knew that if I had disturbed the gentle flow of the debate, there would be no uproar as in Paul the apostle's time. Oh no, of course not! This is not the 1st Century Middle East. This is modern England, and furthermore, Oxford, the home of English gentry. Had I caused a disturbance, one or two students would be asked by the coordinator to quietly escort me out. 

It was after the conference was over, and the chance to partake in the ten-minute question time was denied from me by the monitor. It was after declaring the meeting closed that I had that moment alone with Alex O'Connor, and after posing for photos, I then proceeded what was in my mind:

Alex, I said, It's a real privilege to talk to you like this. I have watched many of your videos and I'm impressed. I'm aware that you believe in Evolution, and therefore, I'm aware that if death preceded Adam and Eve, if they ever existed at all, then Jesus could never have atoned for us and my faith would be in vain, for the crucifixion was precisely for Adam's fall. Then again, I'm aware you are studying all this.

Well then -

Do you believe that Charles Darwin's cousin, Francis Galton, by using Darwin's theory, used the theory of Natural Selection to coin up eugenics, and this was taken by the German Nazis to use for the Holocaust, the slaying of six million Jews? In other words, by denying all religion, Hitler was amoral?

It was difficult to hear O'Connor's answer due to the surrounding babble, but I did hear of his denial that the holocaust had anything to do with Hitler's sense of morality. Rather, he might have hinted at having a religious conviction. I then shook his hand and departed, to head back to the station. Indeed, I was by no means the first to leave, much of the room was already empty by the time I left.

Any historian would be aware that Adolf Hitler was born a Roman Catholic and his mother was a practising catholic. But from adolescence onwards, he not only renounced his religion but hated it. Later, when he came into power, Adolf Hitler began to assemble heads of the Nazi Party into his Cabinet. These included Dr Josef Mengele - Darwin's "Angel of Death", Martin Bormann, Heinrich Himmler - Darwinist and mass murderer, Dr Joseph Goebbles who was the Darwinist father of the Holocaust, Hermann Goring, Reinhard Heydrich - a fervent anti-Christian Holocaust mastermind, Dr Alfred Rosenberg - "the scribe of the new gospel" of Darwinism, and Julius Streicher - an anti-Catholic Darwinist and Hitler's mentor.*

These men were all former Roman Catholics who renounced their religious faith mainly during their university years. There all agreed as one man, that Natural Selection needs a helping hand on the social side, just as Charles Darwin's book is properly titled:

On the Origin Of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life (emphasis mine).

Going by his title, Darwin hinted at one race of humans being in favour over other races. It was his cousin, Francis Galton, who seized the opportunity to apply this to eugenics, or social evolution, in the name of Science. It wasn't long before the German Nazis had gotten round to using Galton's thesis in the Holocaust to eradicate all "weaker, inferior Jewish and Slavonic races, along with cretins, homosexuals and the physically deformed" in order for the "strong, superior German Ayran race" to breed and thrive. This ethic was diametrically opposed to Christianity and both Galton and the Nazis knew it. Darwin himself also knew that his theories strongly opposes the Christian faith, hence a delay in the publication of his book for a number of years.

Alex O'Connor aka CosmicSkeptic is a likeable student of theology at the University of Oxford. He has shown great intelligence and knowledgeable intellect for a man of his age. But I'm sad to say that he is catastrophically wrong in insisting that morality isn't bankrupt without religion, especially the Christian faith. History has proved otherwise.

So far, his videos have more than 25 million views and have attracted 308,000 subscribers! That's one size of an audience which calls for a blog such as this. He is also a public speaker, delivering talks to audiences filling large lecture rooms alongside any other established professor or lecturer.

How I long to spend some private time with Alex O'Connor, especially over coffee at a Starbucks or Costa Coffee. To tell him that God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, not counting people's sins against them (2 Corinthians 5:19.) the wonderful truth of Imputed Righteousness for every believer, that is, for God the Father to see you in the same way as he sees his Son. A biblical doctrine which the Catholic Church has failed to teach for sixteen long centuries and a doctrine anathematised at the Council of Trent between 1545 and 1563. Thus salvation by works of Pennance had replaced salvation by grace through faith alone and portrays a false, truculent God who looks at every sin committed instead of each believer being a citizen of Heaven.

No wonder O'Connor hates God, just as I once hated him myself when I was a teenage Catholic. As did Hitler and all his motley Nazi crew. But now, I have a heart for the Catholic Church, as I have a heart for O'Connor and his ilk. Longing for all to be reconciled to God through faith in the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

If Alex O'Connor was to agree for me to meet with him at Oxford, I'll be more than happy to board a train to arrive at a pre-arranged venue. It would be a privilege.

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*Jerry Bergman, Hitler and the Nazi Darwinian Worldview, 2012, Joshua Press.

Oh Heck!

The waters thundered as it cascaded over a hidden curved cliff of Horseshoe Falls. The very shaking of the ground emphasised the intensity of the force generated as the waters of Lake Erie falls into the Niagara River, leading to Lake Ontario, which is 51 metres lower in elevation. So after standing at the edge for a considerable time, this young and slim 24-year-old backpacker made his way downstream to the start of Rainbow Bridge which spans the Niagara River, which flows to the lake. Sectioned off from the main, traffic-bearing international highway by a steel barrier, is a footpath, from which one can look back towards Horseshoe Falls on the Canadian side, and the less impressive Bridal Veil Falls and the American Falls, both near the city of Buffalo, New York State.

Halfway across the bridge there was a double line painted across the path. By sitting astraddle on the lines with one foot in Canada and the other in the USA, for a moment I felt truly international. When I got back up on my feet, I was able to proceed along the footway towards the passport control on the American side. And because I had the passport on me, which back in 1977 carried a valid US visa, I could have passed through into the USA proper there and then. But I didn't, because I knew that the very next day I'll be on the Greyhound Bus on an overnight journey from Toronto to Chicago, crossing the border at Detroit in time for a breakfast stop before switching busses for Chicago, if I can remember, arriving at "the windy city" on the shores of Lake Michigan somewhere between twelve to fourteen hours after boarding the bus at Toronto Greyhound terminal.

Nevertheless, on the southeast end of Rainbow Bridge, I was as much in New York State as anyone in the city of the same name. Sitting on the painted line was something big for me. It represented a spirit of internationalism, something I have always fervently believed in. And in this case it was between Canada and the US, each with its own Head of State - Canada with its Governor, a Commonwealth representative of Her Majesty the Queen, and the other, a President, Head of a Republic (in 1977 it was President Jimmy Carter occupying the White House.) Two very different nations yet sharing the same English language. At least I could be understood easily in either.

It was even easier for the apostles of the risen Christ to travel from one country to another, as far as I know, there was no such thing as passport controls. I guess that at any port around the Mediterranean, one can disembark from a ship, straight onto the street as easily as one stepping off a bus at a High Street bus stop. Even recently in the seventies, all railway stations in Italy were open stations. There were no ticket barriers, and I recall backpacking Italy between 1973 and 1975 and stepping onto the platform from the station concourse without passing through any gates, turnstiles, or barriers. A very different system to that in the UK, where the presence of barriers manned by scowling ticket inspectors made me feel that I couldn't be trusted to board a train without first paying the fare. 

It is a universal culture of inclusiveness. And among the Diaspora, the Jews living in foreign lands of former exiles did not feel any different from those living in and around Jerusalem. And on special occasions they all showed unity despite speaking multiple languages. On one Pentecost festival, Jews from up to fourteen different nations identified themselves (Acts 2:7-12) yet they were all united in worship and purpose. But far more important than this is how the Crucifixion, death, burial, and the Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth was the beginning of a unity of all God's people - Jews and non-Jews - into one body of Christ.

Poor Peter! He was already given by Jesus "the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven" of Matthew 16:13-20. He preached the very first sermon after the Resurrection, and three thousand Jews were converted. So it can be said that the apostle used his keys to open heaven to the Jewish people en masse for the first time in church history. But a later incident took far more effort on God's side. Peter had to be shaken by a series of visions before he felt comfortable enough to use his keys at the house of a Roman centurion, with the apostle somewhat reluctantly witnessing the first Gentile conversion since the Resurrection (Acts 10). Some time later, Peter could be seen sitting, or more likely, reclining very tentatively at a table in Gentile company at a house in Antioch. But even then he had some fellow Jews with him, including Barnabas and Paul, among others. Although Peter was not alone in an ethnically diverse company, he was feeling ill-at-ease. Then, when a house servant announced that men sent by James had just arrived, Peter and Barnabas suddenly arose and separated themselves in fear of the new arrivals (Galatians 2:11-14).

The sternest rebuke Paul could deliver to his fellow apostle demonstrates the removal of the ethnic barrier which before separated the Jew from the non-Jew. Peter's fear probably arose from a couple of incidents when just before Jesus healed the daughter of a Canaanite woman, to whom Jesus himself called a dog, and then told her that he came to the lost sheep of Israel (Matthew 15:21-28). Also Jesus, in sending out the Twelve, specifically instructed them to avoid the Gentiles and the Samaritans alike, and minister to the house of Israel only (Matthew 10:5-6). Therefore I can imagine how cautious Peter must have felt being in Gentile company, without fully realising the effect of the Cross in removing the ethnic barrier. It was after the Cross and after his Resurrection when Jesus instructed his followers to "Go out and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit..." (Matthew 28:18-20, also Matthew 10:8). No doubt in my mind, Peter thought that his Lord meant to go out and make disciples of all the Jews living in the furthest corners of the Earth. And his retention of such a belief restricted him to minister to the Diaspora, even if as far away as Babylon in modern day Iraq (1 Peter 5:13).

But Paul's rebuke to Peter has shown that the Cross has removed all ethnic barriers, even to the extent that he later wrote,

There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

Galatians 3:28.

Therefore, when a poster appeared on Facebook earlier in the week, I thought, Oh heck!

The poster was a lobby to have Toby Young fired from his post as University Regulator. What was quoted was a real shocker for a responsible person who suppose to represent a country with a Christian constitution. For this is what the poster read:

Toby Young - Theresa May's new university regulator - thinks state school undergraduates are "stains", wheelchair ramps are an example of "ghastly, politically correct inclusiveness" and children with learning difficulties are illiterate troglodytes.

Toby Young, University Regulator.

Oh heck! It took me a while to recover from the shock. During that moment I actually signed the lobby to have him kicked out by the Government. But it was afterwards, when I realised "I'll shoot first, then ask questions" - that I decided to investigate further into such accusations. Although the right-wing national newspaper The Daily Mail had shoved such statements under the carpet and defended his right to keep his job, I had to turn to The Guardian newspaper to try to dig into the facts. On his views of of state school undergraduates being "stains", he was referring to students from state schools entering prestigious universities such as Oxford and Cambridge without achieving the "proper" qualifications for admission. As I see it, if all state school students can be so generalised, then that gives the impression that only privately educated students are clever enough to study at Oxford and only they should be admitted. If this attitude does not have a connection with eugenics, then what does?

But most hurtful was his perception that wheelchair ramps are ghastly, and children with learning difficulties are illiterate troglodytes. The meaning of the word troglodyte is that of a caveman, a Neanderthal Stone Age entity totally deprived of any civil and academic attributes. This is the basis for the science of eugenics which was the groundwork for the slaughter of the Jews during Adolf Hitler's holocaust. And here is Toby Young, a staunch English Tory, a self-confessed snob, and of course, a devout Brexit supporter and voter. It is my desire that Toby Young will never set his eyes on my beloved wife, who is confined to a wheelchair whilst out of doors.

Eugenics and its Dire History.

Lately I have been reading in a journal* about the history of eugenics. In the light of the above revelation, it is an interesting study. 

I have always been aware of the Roman Catholic Church's hostility towards the Jews since the fourth Century. During the eleventh and twelfth Centuries, Catholic Crusaders have a history of persecuting Jews, even to the point of locking them inside their own synagogue and setting the building alight. Rome offered a choice of two options: Convert or die. Not surprisingly, the Jews preferred death in order to keep their race and their faith alive. Even after the Reformation, Martin Luther took a hostile attitude towards the Jews for killing Jesus instead of submitting to him, and called their meeting rooms "Synagogues of Satan." As a result, the Church's hostility towards the Jews became the initial bedrock for the rise of predominately German eugenic scientists and academics during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

The first of note was Englishman Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin. He advocated Social Evolution, the advancement of human intelligence for the betterment of society with the consequential elimination of people with lower intelligence and hereditary physical impairments. This is the basis of eugenics, and such a concept drew in a number of brilliant followers, especially from Germany. These included Professor Ernst Haeckel of Jena University, who specialised in zoology, and was a devoted follower of Charles Darwin. In the 1860's he wrote a book, Die Weltratsel (The Riddle of the Universe). In it, he advocated the killing of those with bodily defects, cretins, the crippled, the retarded, along with others who don't match the ideal model of the human race. 

Nineteenth Century Count Joseph Arthur de Gobineau used Darwin's theory to discourage the interbreeding of different races while advocating the superiority of Northern European peoples. His works resonated with anthropologist Alfred Ploetz, who was the founder of the German eugenics movement. Ploetz wrote The Fitness of our Race, a book which had heavy influence on future Nazi leaders and intellectuals, along with his 1904 work, The Journal of  Social and Racial Biology. Other disciples of Charles Darwin, Francis Galton, J. A. de Gobineau, and Alfred Ploetz included Fritz Lenz, Ernest Rudin, Karl Pearson, Charles Davonport, August Forel, and psychiatrist Wilhelm Schallmayor. #

All these were German and English intellectuals who laid the groundwork for the rise of Nazism, and gave Adolf Hitler the sceptre to "solve the Jewish problem" for the advancement of his own Germanic Aryan Race. Along with the elimination of the Jews, those on the death roll also included the Slavs, along with the imbecile, slow learners, the cripple, the hereditary deformed, the homosexual, the negro, and anyone else who did not fit the ideal model of perfect human society. And whether you may agree with me or not, I cannot help see a connection or continuation of the spirit behind these past academics and that in the likes of Toby Young. 

Darwinism, to my mind, must be thoroughly unchristian because we can see the fruits of it above. Indeed, Toby Young is no Christian, yet he is highly respected by both Government and intellectuals, and many among the middle classes would honour him with a curtsy, I guess, including those who attend church - if they are unaware of his creeds. By such reading and research into his ideas, I can't help but come to the conclusion that Darwin, Galton and Young are out and out against the teachings of Jesus Christ in reference to caring for the poor, the lame, and the needy. Paul's nine fruits of the Spirit is dynamically opposed to Young's philosophy, along with Hitler's. These fruits of the Spirit are Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Faithfulness, and Self control. And these are all apt between every race, every nationality and between every physical state of health and looks.

The Yad Vashem, for the Jews killed in Hitler's Holocaust.

And furthermore, Darwinism is a direct denial of Jesus Christ and his atonement made on the Cross. Evolution denies the historicity of Adam and Eve, their Fall and the beginning of death for all mankind. If death was in existence before Adam and Eve, then the death Jesus suffered has no relevance at all. Instead, if he had ever existed, then he died in vain. 

Jesus instructed his followers to heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons. Freely you have received, freely give (Matthew 10:5-8). Something Toby Young can certainly learn.

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*Journal of Creation, Vol. 31 (3) 2017, page 103.

# Ibid, page 107.

Correction of error: Chicago is on the shores of Lake Michigan, and not on Lake Superior, as I have originally stated on paragraph #2. This has now been corrected, and I apologise for the original mistake.