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expert i have been used on many occasions and found helpful barrister answer yes or no please the idea of the expert being wrong has been put in the jury s head with the expert seeming reluctant to admit it politics candidate 1 as winston churchill so rightly said candidate 2 i don t think you are in the same league as winston churchill it doesn t matter what the quote is the idea of the candidate comparing themselves as an equal to a great and respected orator has been put in the audience s head so i have a problem with arguing with the anonymity but not the substance it feels a bit like a gnat has been strained and a camel swallowed on the other hand we have to trust mouse when he says i m not standing for election and making important decisions without evidence apart from ten years plus of his relatively consistent views there s the rub a one off anonymous tweet is hard to assess axes are probably being ground but a long running obviously informed anonymous commentator seeking clarity i get that if you want to ignore everything mouse says because you think he s a coward or hypocrite that is your prerogative but i don t think it s wise it is hard not to engage with press interest in a leaked document even if you think it shouldn t have been leaked mouse is not a whistle blower although he has singled out an individual from a position of anonymity i ve chosen not to because the individual is a friend albeit one i have often disagreed with there is a long and glorious history of anonymous writing in this country long may it continue posted by steve tilley at 4 58 pm no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels anon church saturday august 31 2024 faith after doubt faith after doubt brian mclaren a longer book review on the way this book has been really important for me it may be equally helpful for others on similar journeys i came to faith through the ministry of a church youth group in suburban birmingham in the early 1970s i didn t know anything about the range of style within the church of england at first soon i understood that it was a conservative evangelical church that youth group was run by a talented and tireless curate called don on the divisive issues of the day he was not extremely conservative he was a huge supporter of women s ministry and ordination and forgiving on divorce and remarriage that said i regularly heard sermons that promoted creationism over evolution fast forward a few years and i m married have a son and am pursuing the possibility of ordination that journey came as a surprise to me and is another story i headed off to st john s college in nottingham and a degree in theology i wasn t a great student but i was fascinated getting to grips with theological reading for the first time in my life i was also angry why had i been a member of churches for ten years and no one had so much as hinted at this sort of thing the very idea that the bible contained a range of material not all of it history started to help me make sense of things others who had the same experience struggled with their faith but a reasonable summary of my years since then has been a desire to make sure people were not as uneducated as i but how to do that as mclaren himself says the better the job that colleges do in actually training their student to be responsible theologians the more out of sync those future pastors will be with churches that hire them to maintain the status quo it has not been a matter of asserting things that would start a fight it has been a matter of patiently and gently suggesting things such as genesis 1 11 is not history in the gospels some words are put on jesus lips by the writers some biblical teaching is limited by the culture of its day substitutionary atonement is a model not the model for the last 25 years brian mclaren has been a companion on this journey although we have never met his trilogy of books about the sorts of things i have listed above and his journey in conservative churches were helpful 1 since then along the way he has been true to his original aim of helping us to discover how a new kind of christian leads to a new way of being church which brings us to this faith after doubt it s sub titled why your beliefs stopped working and what to do about it there have been many fine attempts over the years to categorise stages of faith fowlers six are the best known all seem to suggest that the arrival at sage like dotage just before your death bed is the ideal here are mclaren s stages 1 simplicity epitomised by a desire to divide the world into yes or no good or bad in or out likes to belong to a church with clear black and white rules about ethics and doctrine all that is required of a member is unquestioning loyalty me 1971 76 2 complexity here the question is how can i be successful things are no longer known and knowable but learned and doable moving away from authority figures as soon as you discover they have flaws maybe start looking for a church community more like you exchange the joy of being right for the joy of being effective many members of the faith community never get beyond this stage me 1976 1996 3 perplexity those who do not want to settle down in stages 1 or 2 often leave for those who don t come join a community of people who don t know what they believe any more but want to talk about it is not an easy recruit plus the leaders have no answers or certainties many ministry students experience this in their first term of theological education and having built something wonderful as we moved from stage 1 to stage 2 we find ourselves knocking it down again members of this group often have humility i don t know the answer and courage let s journey into the unknown together and see where it leads not moral relativism but challenging incomplete morality i got here quickly hold the humility and spent 1981 96 crossing over i since have been here for about thirty years the reason faith after doubt is so good is that it encouraged me to go on with the journey me 1981 2023 4 harmony many members of the society of friends quakers laugh at the slowness with which western christians get to this point it is the stage at which one sees love as the driving force steering us through 1 3 it is the point at which we accept rather than reject all the disparate bits and pieces of messy life which have got us here the new music is of appreciation empathy and wonder mclaren adds love no wonder being present in stage four can feel like being lost for words or maybe lost in wonder love and praise as the hymn puts it 2 i once got in a big dispute by arguing that all change comes from dissatisfaction i stand by that although the discussion was passionate i don t think i can persuade you to change your mind until you are dissatisfied with the status quo and conversely i must value the doubt i developed about my stages 1 3 faith for without the doubt i wouldn t have reached here reached where well reached the start of the journey a journey most people never discover and few have the privilege of joining me now if you re ready read this book 1 a new kind of christian 2001 the story we find ourselves in 2003 the last word and the word after that 2005 2 love divine all loves excelling posted by steve tilley at 3 10 pm 2 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels biography book review faith thursday july 11 2024 smart stuff we have a google home hub you activate it by saying hey google walking into the kitchen first thing if you say hey google good morning it says good morning tells you the time the weather and then a joke a terrible joke followed by the latest bbc news a coupe of years ago we relocated google still opened with the weather in bristol is i responded with what s the weather in evesham today then google told me i carried on for a few days wondering how long it would be before google learned to change its ways it didn t so i asked the hub to reset its home to evesham but got i m sorry that can t be done on this device here s a joke etc i persevered with this request for a few days then gave up my lover purchased it and set it up so i can t access the account here s the thing smart devices learn right so now we have this dialogue every morning me hey google good morning home hub good morning the weather in bristol is cloudy with a high of 19 degrees i m sorry that can t be done on this device here s a joke to start your day so i ve learned not to ask but google has learned to tell me the answer anyway i ve started telling google to do things which certainly can t be done on that device this has been going on for over a year maybe i ll ask the other smart devices for help siri alexa and hello id yes i can talk to my car but can t set the weather dial for evesham i need your help if all else fails i ll check in with the dishwasher she s out at the moment posted by steve tilley at 11 20 am no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels funny tech tuesday july 09 2024 things got better writing in the i last monday isabel hardman reflected this time next week keir starmer agenda under way and the first cabinet meeting looming one of the advantages of saving newspapers to read later is the ability to test their columnist s ability at short term prophecy so by monday lunchtime yesterday the cabinet had been appointed friday the first cabinet meeting had taken place early saturday and having done an encouraging thank you video to the civil service keir was back from a tour of the home nations and had posed with the new labour intake for a formal picture before heading off to washington for a nato summit and a bilateral with biden the defence secretary had been to ukraine the foreign secretary was in poland i think he moves fast planning regulation for onshore wind had been eased and the chancellor of the exchequer was setting out her housing plan her direct and simple answer to a provocative question was refreshing reporter so you are relying on the private sector to build all these new homes chancellor of course the government doesn t build houses in 1997 blair s new labour had a big trick up their sleeve which they had not leaked after five yearsof interest rates being used as a political football they gave the power to set them over to the bank of england it was a huge symbolic move and remains one of their great achievements if you haven t got any big reveals an alternative is to demonstrate speed command and control starmer seems a different man when in charge it s probably why he s been put in charge of things all his life he has begun with the enthusiasm of someone who has hated opposition and wants to get as far away from it as possible i m a realist the new government might eventually disappoint me do things with which i disagree and maybe fail to deal with a crisis as well as they should but it s been an impressive start posted by steve tilley at 9 56 am no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels politics friday july 05 2024 things can only get 44 it is nice to see how many people come round to the idea of a better voting system once the old one delivers a massive result they do not like one of the preconditions of the conservative liberal coalition in 2010 was a referendum on a better voting system we got it and one david cameron led the campaign not to change first past the post fptp he argued gave strong government i think he forgot we were in a coalition at the time but he won anyway nowadays it seems like the people have become savvy and vote tactically since it is not currently possible to express a preference in a single transferable vote stv system the voters tend to vote for whoever will defeat their least favourite option so last night the conservatives were trounced labour gained because they were usually best placed to beat them in my own constituency of redditch labour won by 600 because reform took 8000 and many greens and libs voted tactically i guess i imagine greens and lib dems if allowed would transfer their votes to each other and then labour would the conservatives have taken most of the reform second picks probably not all of them enough we don t know say the reform votes split 75 25 to the tories new result under stv becomes conservative 20 408 labour 21 202 i haven t reallocated the 765 votes won by the workers party of britain but basically redditch is close under all systems quick rough calculation on back of envelope proportional representation would give a national result of labour 250 conservative 175 reform 100 lib dem 75 green 50 a labour lib dem green coalition would be the likely government with a majority of 50 100 remember there are independents and nationalist parties too these have been my election musings today i am happy and hopeful thanks for reading posted by steve tilley at 8 00 pm no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels general election 2024 politics thursday july 04 2024 things can only get 43 remember even if you are currently popping the champagne that the new government will disappoint you no government ever does all the things one person wants in the eponymous film bruce almighty bruce standing in for god was so bothered by all the prayers he had to deal with that he had them converted to emails and answered yes to all consequently the following week s lottery first prize was shared between thousands of people who all won a few cents a good government does the utilitarian thing of the greatest good for the greatest number of people this means that some will be disappointed and the mugging victims won t believe it if the crime figures are down if as seems likely we have a labour government tomorrow we need to give them a moment or two before being disappointed posted by steve tilley at 10 35 pm no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels general election 2024 politics wednesday july 03 2024 things can only get 42 crazy left field idea warning people are easily influenced in a crowd if you ask a question of 20 people such as what is 9 x 7 and rig the room so 19 of the 20 say the answer is 57 the 20th person will usually bow to the pressure and also give the wrong answer so if you hold a referendum on a big issue some big hitters such as the russians become hugely influential but what if people don t get to talk to each other the wisdom of crowds theory says that if you ask a question and people have not consulted with each other or been influenced then an average of all the responses will be close to the truth how might this work well suppose it be put in the gift of a prime minister after three year s in office to hold a blind referendum three questions can be put to the voting public in an advisory referendum to test feeling the voting public would not see the questions unti...