In combat: no atheists in the foxholes?

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A quiet tent at a forward operating base, late evening. Distant artillery mutters like thunder far off. Nigel, a civilian embedded briefly with a military chaplaincy unit, is seated opposite Father Thomas, a Roman Catholic military chaplain in his late fifties. A metal mug of tea steams gently between them.

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Nigel:
You’ve heard the phrase, “There are no atheists in the foxholes”. I’ve always thought it was glib, but recently I’ve been wondering if there’s a deeper, psychological truth buried in it. Not about metaphysics, necessarily, but about fear. Existential fear. What happens when a man is reduced to bare consciousness under fire.

Fr. Thomas:
Yes. That line gets tossed around far too lightly. As if terror makes a man reason his way to God. But terror unravels reason. In the foxhole, no one’s doing apologetics. They're just trying not to disappear.

Nigel:
Precisely. In that moment, belief isn’t about propositions. It’s about relief. It’s the only conceptual structure available that says: You are not annihilated. You continue. Somehow. Even if your body is torn apart.

Fr. Thomas:
That’s the soul crying out for permanence, for identity beyond ruin. I’ve sat with soldiers before dawn attacks. You can feel the nausea in them, the animal panic. Some grip rosaries. Some mutter nonsense. Some are numb. But they’re all trying, somehow, to keep from dissolving.

Nigel:
And the fear isn’t just personal, is it? It’s contagious. It spreads. Like the mind of the platoon begins to fray if someone cracks.

Fr. Thomas:
Exactly. One man bolts, and others follow. Which is why armies, historically, have always stationed figures behind the line - officers, NCOs, commissars - with instructions to shoot deserters. It’s crude. But effective. The greater fear behind to block the fear ahead.

Nigel:
A horrible equilibrium of terrors. What interests me, though, is what keeps a man on the line without needing a gun at his back. What’s the internal mechanism?

Fr. Thomas:
A few things. Training, for one. Not just physical, but behavioural conditioning. If you drill long enough, some actions become automatic, even under fire. That buys you a few seconds of function before fear floods in.
And then: loyalty. To comrades, to your unit. Men often don't die for flags or causes. They die for each other. That’s real.

Nigel:
So it’s love, in a way. Not romantic, not abstract, but visceral loyalty. My friend is here; I will not abandon him. Even if I’m petrified.

Fr. Thomas:
Yes. But that only gets you so far. Because there comes a moment - a shell burst too close, a cry too terrible - when all that’s left is the self. And then the self asks: Will I vanish? And that’s where belief steps in. Or tries to.

Nigel:
It’s the psychological trapdoor. Not the impossible escape from the battle, but from the finality of it.

Fr. Thomas:
And even a flicker of belief can help. The thought: If I die, I will still be. It doesn’t have to be orthodox. It doesn’t even have to be clear. Just the sense that death isn’t the cliff-edge of selfhood. That there's continuity.

Nigel:
And so religious belief functions here not as epistemology but as survival scaffolding. A structure the soldier can hang from when everything else is falling away.

Fr. Thomas:
Yes. And I don’t scorn that. I see it as grace. The grace of endurance. In the catechism, we speak of the theological virtues: faith, hope, and charity. But on the battlefield, hope is sometimes the most visible. Hope in its rawest form: that this pain, this loss, this death is not the final word.

Nigel:
It must make your role strange. You’re not there to argue doctrine, but to offer presence. Stability. A reminder that not everything has collapsed.

Fr. Thomas:
Exactly. I walk among the tents. I listen. I pray if they ask. Often I just sit. I’ve found that silence can be sacred when words are too small.

Nigel:
Do they ever ask you whether God is watching?

Fr. Thomas:
Yes. Or worse: why He allows the shells to fall at all. Why men suffer. I don’t answer with apologetics. I can’t. I just tell them what I believe: that Christ is in the trench with them. Not observing, but bleeding. That God, in Christ, knows fear, pain, dereliction. That the cross was a foxhole too.

Nigel:
So you don’t promise safety.

Fr. Thomas:
No. Never that. Only solidarity. That they are not abandoned. And - if they can accept it - that death is not the end.

Nigel:
And that is enough?

Fr. Thomas:
Sometimes. Not always. But even a little belief, in extremis, can ease the tightening in the chest. It gives the terrified mind a thread to hold. And sometimes, that thread holds the man.

Nigel:
Which is, perhaps, what the aphorism meant all along. Not that fear makes men into believers. But that belief is what lets men stay human in the face of the utmost terror.

Fr. Thomas:
Yes. Not a conversion of intellect. A conversion of anguish into courage. Through the hope that the soul - their essential being - endures.

Nigel:
A strange alchemy, isn’t it? Death closes in, and out of that darkness emerges not theology, but a murmur of persistence.

Fr. Thomas:
And in that murmur - maybe, just maybe - is God: in that place, in that time...

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Christian Beginnings according to Geza Vermes (ChatGPT review)

 

Amazon

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Geza Vermes' Christian Beginnings: A Historical Summary

In Christian Beginnings, Geza Vermes strips away two thousand years of doctrinal varnish to reveal a story not of timeless divine certainties, but of historical contingency, improvisation, and ideological evolution under pressure — a story as messy and human as history always is when honestly recounted.

The arc begins with Jesus of Nazareth, not as the "Word made Flesh" of later creeds, but as a gritty, charismatic Jewish prophet. Initially a follower of John the Baptist, he became an itinerant healer, exorcist, teacher, and eschatological herald in his own right, proclaiming the imminent arrival of God’s kingdom. His message was urgent, moral, and thoroughly Jewish. He gestured toward God, not toward himself. Divinity was not in his claims but in the power he channelled.

After his death — a humiliating Roman execution — his followers, buoyed by their conviction of his resurrection and interpreting it through the lens of Hebrew scripture, regrouped. But they did not yet preach the God-man of later orthodoxy; they proclaimed a vindicated, exalted man of God.

From this sprang the early Jewish Christian Church, centred in Jerusalem under James, Peter, and John — a rigorously Jewish sect, practising Temple worship, observing Torah, and awaiting the consummation of Israel’s destiny. The Didache — that earthy instruction manual for early Christian communities — captures this spirit: low Christology, high ethical seriousness, no Platonic metaphysical gyrations at all.

But a new dynamic was already abroad: Pauline Christianity. Paul, an outsider even in his own time, tore Christianity away from its Jewish rootstock. To Paul, Jesus' death and resurrection were not mere eschatological signs but cosmic events, redeeming all humanity. The traditional Law was no longer necessary. Faith in Christ, not fidelity to Torah, was the gateway to salvation. Paul’s Jesus hovers in a strange intermediate state: human enough to die, exalted enough to save the universe.

Meanwhile, in another key, the Johannine tradition emerged. Where Paul stretches Jewish categories, John snaps them. Jesus becomes the Logos — the pre-existent divine Word. Here is the full Hellenisation of the Christian message: Christ as cosmic principle, enfleshed and moving among men. In John’s Gospel, the carpenter of Nazareth fades into the eternal light of Platonic abstraction.

Yet all this might have remained theological squabbling in obscure communities, had not history itself swept in like a desert storm.

The First Jewish War (AD 66–73) ended with the destruction of the Temple in AD 70. Judaism without the Temple was a shipwreck. Rabbinic Judaism emerged from the wreckage: Pharisaic, textual, diasporic, resilient. But the Jewish Christian sects, marginal and suspiciously heretical, were cut adrift from this evolution.

Meanwhile, Gentile Christianity, with no stake in the Temple, expanded freely into the open spaces of the Greco-Roman world.

The Second Jewish War (Bar Kokhba Revolt, AD 132–135) delivered the coup de grâce. When Rabbi Akiva proclaimed Bar Kokhba the Messiah, Jewish Christians could not follow. They were anathematised, expelled from the synagogue, cut off decisively from Judaism. Simultaneously, the crushing Roman victory obliterated any remaining Jewish political autonomy.

Jerusalem became Aelia Capitolina, a Roman city forbidden to Jews.

Thus, by the second century, three distinct religions stood in uneasy relation:

• Rabbinic Judaism: resilient but battered.
• Jewish Christianity: fading into obscurity, fragmentation and extinction.
• Gentile Christianity: increasingly Hellenised, ambitious, as broad as the Empire.

Meanwhile, Gentile Christianity flourished. It absorbed Greek metaphysics, adopted Roman administrative structures, and reimagined itself not as a Jewish sect but as a universal, spiritual empire. The Gnostics, Marcionites, Montanists, and others offered competing visions, but through the many disputes the mainstream Church hammered out a tentative orthodoxy: increasingly high Christology — increasingly hostile to its Jewish roots and to the Jewish people.

Finally, under the looming shadow of the Roman state, the decisive moment arrived. In AD 312, Constantine’s imperial embrace transformed Christianity from persecuted sect into favoured religion. At the Council of Nicaea (AD 325), Jesus was declared homoousios — of the same substance as the Father. The human prophet of Nazareth was replaced by the cosmic Christ, eternal, begotten not made.

Christianity, in Vermes’ telling, was thus not the smooth flowering of an unbroken truth but the battered, hybridised survivor of historical maelstroms. It was a faith hammered into shape by catastrophe — the destruction of the Temple, the obliteration of Judaea, the Hellenisation of thought, and the demands of imperial unification.

The Underlying Thesis

Vermes’ unspoken but unmistakable message is that orthodoxy was not inevitable. It was the fossil record of historical survival, not the pure transmission of Jesus' original message. The victorious Christianity of Nicaea was a product of necessity, political compromise, and philosophical drift — not a simple unfolding of divine plan.

In that sense, Vermes’ Christianity is deeply tragic: the vivid, dangerous, radically-Jewish eschatological movement of Jesus transmuted into a temporal imperial metaphysics, a faith which, in conquering the world, progressively redacted its origins.

Your personality chooses your religion (humour)

The "New Atheists" (Dawkins et al) have a down on religion because -- it isn't true.

Duh! of course no religion can survive the laws of physics .. which explain everything. But religion does more for us than that.

• It provides a moral framework for our lives as social beings
• It provides some reassurance in the face of our own mortality
• Adherence advertises to ourselves and others a commitment to moral behaviour.

These are all things worth having. Yet it's hard to commit to the difficult path of self-discipline and self-denial except under supernatural duress. A candidate religion would be preferable to the extent it was at least somewhat believable.

And then there is the style of the religion. Can one approach it in an intellectually austere way - as an introvert? Or does one have to sway, dance, sing and play the guitar?

Finally  there's not much chance of impressing others with your own commitment to virtue if you advertise your adherence to a faith that no-one has ever heard of, or which is a laughing stock. Church of Scientology, anyone?

So faced with these constraints, I turned to AI and cranked up my Prolog theorem-prover again (last used in car selection).

/* Choosing your religion by the four psychological temperaments (SP, SJ, NF, NT)

Classify religions (faiths) on the following dimensions:
- intensity [ascetic, calm, emotional, shrill]
- plausibility [low, medium]
- recognition amongst the UK public [low, medium]

candidates: evangelical, anglican, wahhabism, sufism, hinduism, buddhism, philosophical_taoism, sjw.
*/

religion(R) :- member(R, [evangelical, anglican, wahhabism, sufism, hinduism, buddhism, philosophical_taoism, sjw]).

intensity(evangelical, emotional).
intensity(anglican, calm).
intensity(wahhabism, emotional).
intensity(sufism, ascetic).
intensity(hinduism, emotional).
intensity(buddhism, calm).
intensity(philosophical_taoism, ascetic).
intensity(sjw, shrill).

plausibility(R, low) :- member(R, [evangelical, anglican, wahhabism, sufism, hinduism]).
plausibility(R, medium) :- member(R, [buddhism, philosophical_taoism, sjw]).

recognition(R, low)     :- member(R, [buddhism, philosophical_taoism, wahhabism, sufism]).
recognition(R, medium)  :- member(R, [evangelical, anglican,  hinduism, sjw]).

choose(Religion, sp) :- intensity(Religion, emotional).
choose(Religion, sj) :- intensity(Religion, calm), recognition(Religion, medium).
choose(Religion, nf) :- intensity(Religion, X), X \= ascetic.
choose(Religion, nt) :- intensity(Religion, ascetic), plausibility(Religion, medium).

?- choose(Religion, sp).

Religion = evangelical ;
Religion = wahhabism ;
Religion = hinduism.

?- choose(Religion, sj).

Religion = anglican ;

?- choose(Religion, nf).

Religion = evangelical ;
Religion = anglican ;
Religion = wahhabism ;
Religion = hinduism ;
Religion = buddhism ;
Religion = sjw.

?- choose(Religion, nt).

Religion = philosophical_taoism ;

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Notice that I've used the Myers-Briggs/Keirsey temperament classifications: SP-Artisan, SJ-Guardian, NF-Idealist, NT-Rational.

I speak to you as an NT, a Rational. I must say that Taoism is no surprise, but despite my admiration for Lao Tzu and Ursula le Guin, I won't be following the Way any time soon. Too passive, too airy-fairy and how can you take seriously people who call themselves 'cultivators'???

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Disclaimer: this post is satirical and lays no claim to empirical verisimilitude. It is based on no research and no conclusions should be drawn. If anyone's feelings are hurt, I can only plead for forgiveness. That shouldn't be too difficult.

On Current Affairs

(On Mr Cameron's Amsterdam speech): If you really think that the EU is over-regulated, uncompetitive, in hock to vested interests, overspending on welfare, and bloated in its state expenditure .. and therefore will inevitably decline against China and other nascent Asian powers, then why would you believe it can self-reform? And if it can't, shouldn't we leave so we can get our own house in order?

Just a question.

(On Matthew Parris in Cuba): He writes of meeting a middle-aged Cuban in Havana who understands the dysfunction and imminent demise of Cuba's 'communist' project, but nonetheless regrets the loss of that egalitarian vision.

I notice that convinced Catholics (and no doubt Buddhists and other religions) share, by virtue of their faith, a life-project which they believe to be ethically progressive and which gives their lives meaning. (Only in that sense is secular Marxism 'like a religion').

Parris bemoans that Conservativism, the politics of getting capitalism to work properly, is devoid of any vision which speaks to the heart. As we used to observe on the revolutionary left, 'No-one ever died for IBM.'

The anomie and alienation of capitalism is a known bug, or feature. At best, this most dynamic mode of production merely provides a playing field or a theatre for those human causes, ideals and projects which do come from the heart - anything from stamp-collecting to science to environmentalism to religion to jihad.

For good or ill.

Memento mori

We  were driving to Frome this morning - pre-Christmas shopping at M&S - and I was thinking about the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams. A smart guy, by most people's reckoning, but I would have a couple of hard questions for him: genuine ones of course.

1. Why is one's spiritual life only semi-infinite? As I understand it, I have an immortal soul which will have an existence at all future time. But for all dates prior to 1951 I literally don't exist. Wouldn't it be more symmetric to have my soul exist at all time points, somehow joining my body when I was conceived, or born? It only has to do it the once, we don't need reincarnation if we don't want it.

2. The church claims to accept evolution. In which case we can do the Dawkins thought experiment where I imagine I am holding my mother's hand and she her mother's hand and so on, back through the ages to the early primates, the mammals, the reptiles ... and the dawn of life on this planet. You see where this is going. I ask the line to disengage hands and raise their arms (or forelegs) if they have a soul. Where's the transition - the first one of my maternal ancestors not permitted to raise her arm?

Are these stupid questions? I don't see why. But I don't see how they could have anything but stupid answers. For myself, the symmetry that works is my obvious non personal-existence prior to 1951 and my non personal-existence subsequent to 20xx where the final two digits are currently not known.

But the central mystery which keeps the air balloon of religion aloft is: just how does the thoroughly materialist, proximate pattern of atoms writing this get to feel like me?