The Beaker Code

Our understanding of the Church has been questioned by one of the leaders of a fenland religious instititution.  

In response we would have to point out the undisputable fact that the Early Church were in fact Beaker People.  

The legend of the Holy Grail is clearly a cryptic memory of the Beakers that the Church used for their ritual washing (later sublimated into baptism).  These beakers also underlay the Celtic myths of the use of cauldrons of healing.  The church inherited the use of "months" to compute the passing of time from their Jewish forbears - whose use of the New Moon to determine when to hold their own celebrations is an indicator that the Patriarchs themselves were Beaker Folk.  Do we even have to mention the ritual washing beakers at the Wedding at Cana, the beakers of water that Elijah poured out on his sacrifice,  the beaker of oil which sustained the widow of Zarephath?  One can understand how people have missed these hints over the years.  After all, we keep our treasures in beakers of clay.

That the role of female archdruids and the use of beakers has been so carefully edited from the records of the early Church is of course no surprise.  Females in leadership, and the use of common workaday objects such as clay beakers rather than silver and gold vessels would always have been offensive to an upper-class Roman society.  I'm just glad we have been able to set the record straight.

Beaker Folk and Anglicans

People have been commenting that there seems to be a similarity between we Beaker Folk and Anglicanism.  Nothing could be further from the truth, and I would like to point out the differences to clarify this matter:

• The leader of the Beaker Folk is someone of great holiness who makes profound but incomprehensible statements. Her followers generally listen to her with great respect, and then totally ignore whatever it was she was trying to say. 
  
• We are a democratic organisation, whose unelected leaders draw their authority from a group of former leaders in the remote past.
  
• Although sharing a common set of beliefs, every sect within Beakerism is entitled to believe whatever they like.  The leaders try not to be too dogmatic, for fear of offending somebody.  Especially the Moon Gibbon people - they can get really nasty.
  
• We have a Moot, not a PCC.  The Moot never spends hours discussing what wattage of light-bulb should be used to replace the one in the church lavatory.  Instead we spend hours discussing whether the tea-lights should be paraffin- or wax-based.
  
• If a Beaker Person disagrees with a new innovation, they never refer to the fact that it was tried during the time of the previous incumbent and didn't work then.  Instead they refer to it having been tried in the time of Archduid Zinglewix (2045-2022 BC) and it didn't work then.
  
• Although we are in favour of all-member ministry, the leader of the Beaker People must be a woman.  There's no theological  principle behind this - it's because she owns the house.
• Beaker People are not frightened of the concept of "Mission".  We just need to work out how to do it, without offending people of other faiths, cultural sensitivities and attitudes to the Moon Gibbon, and without making ourselves look like fanatics or idiots... and then we'll get right on with it.
  

I hope this has set matters to rights at last.

Moon watch

Once again another New Moon is upon us. I'd like to wish the Moon Watch Squad well, as they cower in the dark and damp of the Watching Booth.
I'd love to be there with you, but as you know being an Archdruid brings many concerns of a pastoral nature - binding up the wounded, listening to the whinging and self-indulgent, patronising the obsessive... sorry, lost the thread there for a moment... comforting the weak, healing the sick, raising the dead.... sorry, went beyond my remit there. The temptations of ministry include being both dismissive of one's charges, and over-confident of one's own abilities. Or is that just me?

Look, to cut to the chase, it's cold and wet and I'm feeling a bit sniffly. So good luck to you, and let us all know when you see the Moon. I'm going to stay in here with the Glenlivet.

Inter-faith issues

Once again we seem to have inadvertently fouled up on the inter-faith front.  Last time was the unfortunate occasion when the living gods of the Guinea Pig Folk of Stewartby formed part of the barbecue.  At least this time no deities died.

This was all due to the New Moon All-Age Festival.  We chose quite a modern children's song, "A time for everything", on the grounds that it effectively has no identifiable theology and we therefore thought it was safe from offending other groups that were visiting our "Celebration of Faith" weekend.  But no.

The Aslan Worshippers of Ampthill took great exception to the chorus.  They seemed to think we were singing "Na Na Na Narnia" and therefore disrespecting their sacred land.  In the event, as seems inevitable in any event where we try to encourage mutual respect and understanding, an almighty fight broke out.  It would appear no real harm was done, but a number of marsh-wiggles ended up in the Casualty unit at MK General.  

Oh - and if anyone should meet a talking mouse, can you be careful?  He'll have someone's eye out with that sword. 

Young Keith Gets Political

I think Young Keith may have been slightly misguided (or else quite ingenious) in thinking he was making a political point by spending all day in the  pub in Olney.  His argument that by giving the Two Brewers all his money, he was showing solidarity with those suffering from the woes of the former SPCK bookshops just doesn't hold water somehow.

Burton's Great Adventure

As comments to our previous news may have hinted, sending Burton out on the Agnostibike in the middle of last night's really rather foul weather may not have been unwise.
OK, in point of fact he didn't actually fly over Milton Keynes, but he tells us that is roughly the feeling he had as he was swept sideways by a gust of wind as he went past McDonald's in Kingston. Also when he had to climb out of a ditch after taking evasive action in the back lanes between Wavendon and Woburn Sands.
But the good news is, he seems to have done more praying lately than he has in a while. So all in all, a success.

Agnostibike

Sadly we don't have the resources available to other groups, but we've managed to put Burton on a bike, pulling a go-kart with an A-board on it.  And we've sent him off to pedal round the Marston Vale and Milton Keynes areas.

I think the slogan catches the Beaker philosophy really well.  Let's hope it helps people think. 

"There may well be a God.  But we can't believe there's really a Hell.  Try not to worry about it too much..."

Radio Husborne Crawley

Yet another great idea from Drayton to reach the "youth" with our message.  Radio Husborne Crawley is going to really fly, I can tell.  His aim is to make the relevance, hip-ness and urban street-ness of the  Beaker message really clear to the youth of Husborne Crawley.  So if anyone can help out in the area of decently new groovy music we'll be really pleased.  Currently we've got Norman Greenbaum's "Spirit in the Sky" and the Airplane's "White Rabbit".  If we could only find a new needle for the record player, we'd be hitting the airwaves with some rocking grooves.  But in the meantime, we're restricted to Drayton's "Thought for the Day" and "I'm Sorry I haven't a tea-light".

Do you believe in Beaker Folk?

Thanks to all for your kind enquiries about Husborne.  He's still being given a certain amount of pain relief, but no real harm done.

That's the trouble with accountants - they're so literal about everything.  He took the special application of the Sherine principle (that anything that is old must be untrue) just too far.  Yes, Newton did live a long time ago, but gravity still works.

On the bright side, at least falling from the roof of the Moot House stopped him going any further with his other scheme.  It was a bad idea to combine the general application of the Sherine principle (that the truthfulness of an idea is proportional to the number of people who believe in it) with his trip to the panto yesterday.

Please can I ask you all to stop believing in fairies again?  The things are all over the place.  And their droppings are really unpleasant.

There may.... or may not be.... a God

Having read about the Agnostibus, I felt that it was my duty, as a loyal Beaker Person and an accountant, to bring some precision to the proposal that "there probably isn't a God".

Let us set some parameters and define our terms.

Let us call the probabilty of there being a God p(G).

We cannot say with certainty that there is no God. Scientists are very clear on the difficulty of proving a negative.

Can we say that there is definitely a God? Probably not. Even if everyone in the entire world had a direct experience of God, there would be a slight chance of a mass hallucination.

So we can say with some confidence that p(G) is greater than 0, but less than 100.

So where could I get more precision? In the event I found it from Ariane Sherine - who inspired the whole campaign. On Radio 5 the other night she described the idea of Hell as "outdated". So from this I was able to derive what I will call the Sherine Principle - that the truth of an idea depends upon the number of people who believe in it. OK, according to this the world was flat until somebody actually sailed round it, but never mind... at least we have a working assumption.

So if the truth of a proposition depends upon the number of people who believe in it, clearly the possibility of God existing depends upon the number of people who believe in him/her/it. A reference to http://www.adherents.com/ gives us the number of people who are members of each religion - a total of 92% of all people on earth. So, even reducing the figure slightly to allow for the Church of England, there is a 90% chance that God exists. In which case the bus's view is an underestimation. God probably does exist. We'll hedge around the fact that, according to the Sherine Principle, there's a 60% chance of God existing in England, a 100% chance in Saudi Arabia, and a 5% chance in Islington. After all, I don't make the rules up, do I?

But even if the probability of God existing were less than 50% - ie if God probably doesn't exist - what is the conclusion? You see, if you decide God "probably" doesn't exist, but that probably is only a 40% chance - you're giving up an eternity of potential bliss for a lifetime of slight (if that) happiness improvement. If I told you to open a box, and you had an 80% chance that it contained a million pounds but a 20% chance that it contained a poisonous gas - would you open it?

So...

If you believe God doesn't exist and you behave as if that were the case, let us call your change in happiness for your lifetime compared to believing that God did exist dH. For the purposes of the argument, dH may be positive or negative - after all, you might "stop worrying" if you thought God didn't exist, or you might be really happy and fulfilled if you though (s)he did.

Now let us consider the risk/reward situation here. If you believe God exists and (s)he doesn't - versus if you believe God doesn't and it turns out to the contrary. And let us apply some statistics.

So in order for not believing in God to be (on a risk/reward basis) worthwhile:

dH * L * (1-p(G)) must be greater than H(h) * E * p(G)

• where dH is the difference in happiness if you don't believe in God
• L = the average human lifespan
• p(G) = the probability of God existing
• H(h) = the happiness of heaven compared to those in a state of hell/oblivion (again, taking into account the Church of England)
• E = the length of Eternity.

And the problem is in E. E is the length of Eternity. And the length of Eternity is infinite. Which is really big.

So the only circumstance where the risk/reward is on the side of not believing in God, is where p(G) = 0 and dH > 0. And not only does the Sherine principle state that p(G) = 90% (give or take Anglicans), but the only situation where the benefits side of not believing in God outweighs the downside, is where p(G) = 0. Absolutely zero. Because anything more than that blows the equation across to the right hand side. And we know from the side of the bus that not even Richard Dawkins believes that p(G) = 0. If there is the slightest chance - no matter how small - of God existing, then the benefits of living as if God does exist outweigh those of living as if God doesn't. Even if (and it's unproven) people who don't believe in God are happier than those who do during their earthly life-times.

I asked the Archdruid what she thought of my equation. She told me to light a tea-light and try not to worry about it. It sounded like a good plan.

Twelfth Night

I know it's traditional to burn the festive greenery on Twelfth Night, but please can you all be careful? That holly seems pretty dry, and the flames were shooting out earlier. And I don't want to see anyone else trying to get the tree on the fire. It's just too big. And if it did catch - well, it's a new Moot House. Let's keep it for a bit longer this time.

Also, can you note that it's only the everygreens that are supposed to be burnt - mistletoe, holly, pine boughs etc. There were bits of glass all over the place after Algai threw the fairy lights on. It was even worse that she left them plugged in.