The Ten Commandments of Judeo-Christianity are not a guide to ethical conduct. They are laws for regulating an ancient Israelite society, set in the Bronze Age but probably finalised during the Iron Age.

When you read them in the context of the Bible stories from which they emanate, these are the underlying reasons and messages behind them:

1. Worship only the God who proved his power in Egypt

2. Do not engrave or worship images of anything

3. Do not blaspheme YHWH or you will be stoned to death

4. Rest on the Sabbath or you will be stoned to death

5. Honour your parents because you will live longer

6. Do not kill people unless God arbitrarily allows you to

7. Do not commit adultery because men own women

8. Do not steal things or people owned by your tribesmen

9. Do not lie to or about members of your own tribe

10. Do not desire things or women owned by your tribesmen

The surrounding stories matter because they show how these commandments were understood, who they protected, and how they were enforced.

These laws are not based on universal values of right and wrong, because they were never intended to apply to all people. They were designed to protect the stability and interests of one ancient tribal society, specifically because these people were set apart from all other people. 

The first four are arbitrary rules for how this tribe should worship its God. The next six regulate the tribe’s day-to-day conduct, mainly by protecting the position of its adult males, and also by treating members of the tribe differently than strangers. Several of these laws were enforced by the tribesmen stoning lawbreakers to death.

These laws demand unquestioning obedience, motivated by desire for extraordinary rewards and fear of horrific punishments imposed by this God. If you obey his laws, you will be his chosen people, and live in a land flowing with milk and honey (Lev 20:24), where a hundred of you will chase ten thousand enemies (Lev 26:3-9). 

But if you disobey his laws, he will bring upon you sudden terror and wasting diseases, send wild animals to kill your children, make you eat the flesh of your children, and make you so fearful that you will flee even when nobody is chasing you (Lev 26:14-39). He will punish not only you, but also your children, your grandchildren and your great-grandchildren (Ex 20:5).

Whether you believe this to be history, myth, or metaphor, it is no basis upon which to build an ethical moral code. This becomes even more evident when you look at the Biblical background to each of the commandments.

Let’s start with the first four, which regulate how the tribe should worship its God.

1. Worship only the God who proved his power in Egypt

The first commandment is “I am the Lord thy God, who brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods before me.”

Popular Christian summaries today generally omit the part about their God bringing them out of Egypt. But in the Bible story, this claim was essential to establish the credibility of this God with the tribe of Moses.

People of this era worshipped many gods, including the sun, the moon and other celestial bodies, and this claim let the Israelites know they were dealing with a very powerful God, who had already intervened in earthly affairs on their behalf.

The commandment does not say that no other gods exist. It orders the Israelites not to worship them.

This God had repeatedly sent terrible plagues on the Egyptians (Ex 8-10), and then killed the firstborn of the Egyptians including their firstborn animals (Ex 11-12), in order to convince Pharaoh to let the Israelites go. During the sequence, Pharaoh sometimes hardens his own heart, but God also repeatedly hardens it, so that Pharaoh will resist and God can impose more punishments (Ex 4-11).

To a primitive Bronze Age tribe, their God’s power was more persuasive than his morality. As a more direct incentive to worship him, they would be stoned to death if they worshipped the sun, the moon or any other gods (Deut 17:2-5).

2. Do not engrave or worship images of anything

The second commandment is “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water below. Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them.”

The first part of this rule is absurd. Read literally, it forbids nearly all visual art. Religious traditions generally narrow it to images made for worship. Oddly, after this God announced these laws, he instructed Moses to make two cherubim out of hammered gold for the ark of the covenant (Ex 25:18-20).

Roman Catholic and Lutheran traditions combine this prohibition with the first commandment rather than numbering it separately. Their abbreviated popular lists can therefore obscure it, while dividing the prohibition on coveting into two commandments.

But Roman Catholics regularly pray before images and statues of not only Jesus, but also Mary and numerous saints. They typically maintain that they venerate the persons represented, rather than worshipping the objects.

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3. Do not blaspheme YHWH or you will be stoned to death

The third commandment is “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.”

The Bible most often calls him YHWH, which Christians pronounce as Yahweh or Jehovah. The punishment for blaspheming his name was death by stoning (Lev 24:16).

When the Israelites brought a blasphemer before Moses, God instructed everyone who had heard the blasphemy to put their hands on the blasphemer’s head, after which the entire congregation must stone him to death (Lev 24:11-14).

Yet elsewhere in the Biblical narrative, Jacob invokes God while lying to his father, in order to obtain the blessing intended for his brother (Gen 27:20). Although the deception is discovered, the blessing is not withdrawn, and God later confirms Jacob’s privileged status.

Also, a prophet could curse other people in the name of this God, for even trivial reasons, with horrific results. When the prophet Elisha was going to Bethel, a group of children mocked him by saying ‘Go up, thou bald head!’ Elisha cursed the children in the name of the Lord, and two bears came out of the wood and mauled forty-two of the children (2 Kings 2:23-24).

Some Christians have argued that these children were actually young men, as if that would make it more proportionate to set wild animals on them for teasing a bald man. In reality, blasphemy laws are at best religious superstition, and at worst ways of suppressing free speech.

4. Rest on the Sabbath or you will be stoned to death

The fourth commandment is “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.”

This means that neither you, your children, your servants, your cattle or any of your visitors could work on the Sabbath. The punishment for breaking this rule was death (Ex 31:15). When the Israelites found a man gathering sticks on the Sabbath, they took him outside the camp and stoned him to death, as God had commanded Moses (Num 15:32-36).

A regular day of rest can be socially beneficial. Killing somebody for gathering sticks on that day is not.

In the next article of this series, I will examine commandments five to seven, which regulate the day-to-day conduct of the ancient Israelites.

I’ve argued in recent articles that Amnesty UK was wrong to label fifty gender-critical advocacy groups as ‘anti-rights’. Amnesty has since apologised for and withdrawn the report.

I’ve also argued that reasonable people can sincerely disagree on the balance of rights between gender-critical and transgender advocacy groups. We should engage with the content of ideas we disagree with, and balance competing rights fairly.

One of the more informed responses to my articles was a set of links to fifteen documents supporting the idea that there is organised cooperation between conservative Christian groups and gender-critical feminist groups.

Some of the documents make that case more convincingly than others, and some provide reasonable analyses of the wider issues involved.

Strongest evidence of cooperation in America

Several of the links include language that is provocative and unfair, and that prejudges contested questions as if they were already obviously settled. That weakens their analysis, but it does not invalidate their factual evidence. In several American-based cases, there is convincing evidence of cooperation.

A 2017 Southern Poverty Law Center article reported on a panel at the Family Research Council’s Values Voter Summit. The Christian Post also reported on this panel.

Meg Kilgannon, executive director of Concerned Parents and Educators of Fairfax County, advised conservative Christian campaigners to seek allies outside their own movement. She said secular arguments based on biology and reason have a broader appeal than religious ones. She cited Hands Across the Aisle, which brought conservative Christians and radical feminists together, as a useful model.

A 2019 Jezebel article reported that Alliance Defending Freedom gave the Women’s Liberation Front, or WoLF, a $15,000 grant. It said that WoLF cooperated with the Family Policy Alliance, the lobbying arm of Focus on the Family, and other Christian groups, to oppose trans-inclusive access to single-sex facilities. This included a joint amicus brief, public videos, and fundraising assistance.

A 2017 Religion Dispatches article examined the same issue in greater detail. It focused on WoLF and the Family Policy Alliance’s joint opposition to the Obama administration’s interpretation of Title IX in relation to transgender students. This was more than independent agreement. The groups actively worked together.

A 2019 Media Matters article reported that American conservative Christian groups and right-wing media were promoting feminist and lesbian speakers. This helped them to present opposition to transgender policies as more politically diverse.

Its strongest example was a Heritage Foundation event titled ‘The Inequality of the Equality Act: Concerns from the Left’, featuring Julia Beck and Kara Dansky. It also documented favourable coverage in conservative media of Meghan Murphy’s legal action against Twitter.

The wider conservative Christian infrastructure

A 2023 IWM/Open Democracy article described the wider transnational infrastructure within which some of this cooperation occurs.

It reported that American Christian-right organisations spent more than $98 million in Europe between 2007 and 2019. This supported campaigns concerning abortion, sex education, and women’s and LGBT rights.

It said the key groups involved were the Alliance Defending Freedom, the American Center for Law and Justice, the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, Family Watch International, Focus on the Family, Human Rights International, Human Life International, and the Leadership Institute.

This does not itself establish that British gender-critical feminist groups are part of that infrastructure. It does establish that some potential allies are linked to well-funded American groups with a wider programme against liberal reforms.

Sophia Siddiqui’s 2021 article argued that Europe is now seeing the ‘othering’ of anyone who does not subscribe to the tenets of the heteronormative nuclear family. She said we should not cede territory to far-right ideas on innate biological difference.

She concluded that the denial of solidarity between trans women and feminists detracts from issues that affect us all. These include rollbacks on reproductive rights, the epidemic of gender-based violence, and attacks on LGBT rights.

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Fairest analyses of the wider issues

Sally Hines’ 2025 report, which I have addressed in a previous article, is the fairest analysis of the fifteen links. She recognises that conservative Christian policies and feminist gender-critical policies begin from conflicting theories of gender. She says they nevertheless cooperate and exchange language.

She accepts that some gender-critical activists oppose both the mainstream right and the far-right. But she argues that cooperation and ideological overlap on transgender-related issues links parts of gender-critical feminism to a wider ‘anti-gender’ movement that also campaigns against those other rights.

Briar Dickey’s 2023 report compares posts mentioning transgender people on the US right-wing platform Parler with Twitter posts that have British gender-critical hashtags. The study shows shared rhetoric more than political cooperation.

It finds that the discussions can have different starting points (such as feminist support for women’s rights and sex-based protections, and religious opposition to abortion and sex education) but they can come to similar conclusions on single-sex spaces and freedom of speech.

Dickey concludes that the research is primarily descriptive, and does not seek to make claims about causal influence. However, the extent to which arguments are repeated between the two suggests a circulation of frames.

Ruth Pearce, Sonja Erikainen, and Ben Vincent introduced a series of articles for the Sociological Review in 2020. They examined, from a trans-feminist perspective, how British gender-critical politics has evolved.

They argued it represents a series of battles ‘within (rather than against) feminism’, while the language of ‘gender ideology’ originates in anti-feminist and anti-trans discourses among right-wing Christians.

They aimed to contribute to an unravelling of exclusionary discourses within both feminist and trans communities, so that we might instead unite around a shared interest in sex liberation and feminist freedom for all.

Serena Bassi and Greta LaFleur’s 2022 article argued that trans-exclusionary radical feminisms and gender-critical feminisms are indeed types of feminism, although problematic ones. They are different from the religious anti-gender movement, but they can share policy aims and work together.

They concluded that trans-exclusionary politics is a complex phenomenon. They said it has contributed to both the strength of right-wing movements and the strength of cultures of transphobia.

Conclusion

This is an interim conclusion, as it’s based on an initial overview of ten comprehensive documents. I’d have to read them each a few times more to get deeper into the nuance of their arguments, and I’m sure I’ve missed some important points.

I haven’t included overviews of the other five linked documents. On first reading, they make broader claims from more hostile premises, and I want to address the strongest arguments. I’ve also ignored unfairly hyperbolic language in some of the documents I refer to.

Based on these links, there is strong evidence of tactical cooperation in America between some conservative Christian groups and some feminist gender-critical groups. There is also direct evidence that some American Christian strategists have sought to use secular feminist and lesbian arguments to broaden support for their campaigns.

These documents do not establish Amnesty’s broader argument that its listed conservative Christian and gender-critical groups collectively form an integrated transnational ‘anti-rights’ movement. Indeed, Amnesty has apologised for that labelling, and withdrawn the reports that listed the gender-critical groups.

Nor do they show that conservative Christian and gender-critical groups share ideology on abortion, gay rights, religion, or the social role of women. Unlikely political allies can show that support for a particular policy crosses ideological boundaries. But we should still judge the policy on the merits of the argument itself.

For example, Atheist Ireland has worked with the Evangelical Alliance of Ireland and the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community of Ireland to promote secular schools in Ireland and to oppose religious persecution in Pakistan at the United Nations. This cooperation has not made us less atheist or them less religious.

The cooperation described in the documents above is real, though mostly based in America and much more limited than Amnesty implied in its withdrawn report. So what are its practical effects?

Regardless of motivation, decisions and actions have practical consequences. Does this cooperation strengthen either side’s wider programme? Does either side influence the other beyond the immediate campaign? Could a limited alliance gradually become a wider movement? I’ll return to that later.

I studied design in college in Dublin during the seventies punk and post-punk era. It affected my design style, because I liked punk. Glam rock gave early-teen me a sense of identity, and punk rock gave late-teen me a sense of energy.

Many adults, and some hippy or prog rock teens, disliked both styles precisely because they challenged their ideas of what pop music should look and sound like.

Throughout history, some writers, musicians, and visual artists challenge the conventions of their time. Some people like the results, and others don’t. Some new styles persist and become new conventions for new generations to challenge.

Beethoven, Monet, Picasso, and Kandinsky got hostile reactions that would not be out of place on today’s social media. When my parents were children, James Joyce relocated The Odyssey to early twentieth-century Dublin in Ulysses.

When I was a child, Marvel published a Spider-Man story about drug abuse without the US Comics Code’s approval. Today, I love Me First and the Gimme Gimme’s punk takes on gentler pop songs.

The current Odyssey controversy is the most topical example. Why are some people upset that Lupita Nyong’o plays Helen of Troy? The most charitable reason is that a black actress prevents their immersion in the story by disrupting its historical plausibility.

But this casting choice is just the latest example of artists challenging the conventions of their day. It’s part of the process through which art has always evolved.

Movie rebels

It’s fair to assume that Christopher Nolan is consciously challenging a particular convention: that ancient Greek characters should be played by actors who are European-enough looking to plausibly pass as Greek.

He’s not the first to challenge this particular convention. Orson Welles cast Eartha Kitt as Helen of Troy in Time Runs, an experimental 1950 stage show in Paris. But Nolan is the first to do so in a major Hollywood blockbuster.

Is he justified in challenging this convention? Yes, of course, because that is how art evolves. Will his artistic choice be rejected or vindicated or a mix of both? Audiences, and the public, will decide.

Broadly speaking, audiences accepted Mel Gibson as William Wallace, were less convinced by John Wayne as Genghis Khan, and were happy with the casting choices in Hamilton. Nobody was upset that most of the actors playing teens in Grease were actually in their twenties or thirties.

Nolan told the story of Memento backwards, to match the main character’s memory problems. Quentin Tarantino tells his stories in whatever order suits him, mixing sudden gory violence with main characters rambling on about trivia.

Music rebels

Beethoven challenged the classical music of his day, with longer and more complex symphonies and sonatas. He rejected being dependent on the aristocracy and churches as the gatekeepers of music, and led a trend towards freelance musicians.

Blues, Jazz, and Rock and Roll all challenged previous conventions. They each created their own evolving styles, adding to rather than replacing the previous ones. Successful challengers typically create new options for evolving audiences.

David Bowie was a musical chameleon. He started with folk and pop, reinvented himself during the glam rock era as Ziggy Stardust, moved into soul and electronic music, and impressed a new generation by mocking Andy Millman in Extras.

Punk rock is the most obvious challenge to music conventions for my generation. It started in New York with acts like the Ramones and Blondie, then erupted in England where the Sex Pistols and the Clash became the world’s biggest problem for a short while.

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Writing rebels

Shakespeare adapted existing writing structures, and invented new words and metaphors. He wrote flawed heroes who switched between comic and serious plots. Audiences loved his work but some establishment writers saw him as vulgar.

Virginia Woolf and James Joyce used a stream-of-consciousness style that some literary purists criticised. Joyce also transformed The Odyssey more than Christopher Nolan has, by relocating it from ancient Greece to early twentieth-century Dublin.

Stan Lee revolutionised comic books by replacing DC’s perfect Batman and Superman with Marvel’s more flawed Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, and Avengers. He defied the US Comics Code by publishing a Spider-Man story about drug abuse without its seal of approval.

Salman Rushdie mixed English with Hindi and Urdu, added magical characters to otherwise realistic stories, and challenged Islamist theology. This brought him the Booker Prize for Midnight’s Children and a Fatwa calling for his death for The Satanic Verses.

Art rebels

Three of my favourite artists, Claude Monet, Pablo Picasso, and Wassily Kandinsky, upended the painting conventions of their generations. Monet was a pioneer of Impressionism, Picasso of Cubism, and Kandisky of Abstract Art.

Art critic Louis Leroy said wallpaper in its embryonic state was more finished than an Monet’s Impression, Sunrise. Contemporary artist Henri Matisse called Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon hideous. Art critic Georg Wolf dismissed Kandinsky and his fellow Munich exhibitors as morphine or hashish addicts.

On a college trip to Paris, I marvelled at the then-new Pompidou Centre, with its futuristic inside-out design. It inspired me to continue with a career involving creativity. Almost half a century later, it’s now closed for renovation and will reopen in 2030.

This is how art evolves. Most artistic experiments are forgotten. But some of yesterday’s rebels become today’s classics. And some of today’s controversies become tomorrow’s conventions. Which will be which? We’ll have to wait and see.

I enjoyed watching The Odyssey with a general idea of the original poem, then read the poem later. My first impression is that the movie considerably changes the spirit of the poem, but I don’t share the concerns that are causing most controversy.

The Odyssey is mythology, not history. It’s a tale of a fictional king trying to return home, despite various gods interfering in his quest, a one-eyed monster eating some of his colleagues, and a witch turning others into pigs. You’ve got to give a movie-maker wide license as to how to portray that universe.

Reasonable people can disagree about actors playing characters unlike themselves. Elizabeth Taylor played Cleopatra, Colin Farrell Alexander the Great, and Ben Kingsley Mahatma Gandhi. The Royal Shakespeare Company has used actors of various ethnicities as Hamlet, King Lear, and Julius Caesar.

But The Odyssey characters are fictional, and live in a mythical universe. Why does the ethnicity matter of an actor playing Helen of Troy? Helen was said to have hatched from an egg after Zeus took the form of a swan. In one version, Zeus raped the goddess Nemesis in the form of a goose. So what exactly should Helen look like?

Who is Odysseus?

From my reading of the poem, the biggest difference with the movie is in the character of Odysseus. In the movie, he is essentially a man of integrity, who wants to do the right thing, but is forced by circumstances to behave badly and then feel guilty about it. In the poem, he is a vain trickster who manipulates hospitality, has sex with multiple partners, and is ruthlessly violent.

In terms of my own pop-culture, he combines the smooth talk of Hannibal Heyes with the gunplay of Kid Curry in Alias Smith and Jones. He adds the cunning of Columbo, the trickery of the Joker, and the swagger of Han Solo. He also brings the ruthless violence of Rambo to the final showdown.

But for me, Odysseus most resembles Tim Curry’s Frank-N-Furter in The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Both are charismatic rulers stranded far from their homeland, deceiving almost everyone while they mix sexual adventure with sudden violence. Odysseus provokes Poseidon through hubris, while Frank-N-Furter defies nature by creating a handsome man-monster to obsess over.

In my imagined Rocky Horror Odyssey, Calypso’s island becomes the Frankenstein Place castle, where Frank-N-Furter enjoys every earthly pleasure but still wants to go home. In my new ending, he anticipates Riff Raff and Magenta’s betrayal, pretends to die during the floor show, then resumes his long odyssey back to the planet Transsexual in the galaxy of Transylvania.

How the pair resemble each other

The most obvious resemblance is that both are charismatic leaders who want to get home, and who are betrayed by subordinates. Odysseus wants to return to his kingdom of Ithaca, and is betrayed or disobeyed by his crew, the goatherd Melanthius, and the unfaithful maids back at home. Frank-N-Furter wants to return to the galaxy of Transylvania, and is betrayed by his servants Riff Raff and Magenta.

Lying and tricking people

Odysseus tricks the Trojans with the wooden horse. He tells the giant cyclops his name is Nobody, so the other giants do not help when he says Nobody attacked him. He lies about his ship being wrecked. He invents various backstories about his role in Troy. He pretends to be a beggar to even his own friends and family.

Frank-N-Furter pretends to be an eccentric human scientist from planet Earth, who is friendly to everyone, and who is using his scientific knowledge to create the perfect man for love and companionship. In reality, he is an alien who manipulates whoever he chooses, psychologically, physically, and sexually.

Having sex with multiple partners

Odysseus has sex with the witch goddess Circe during his year on the island of Aeaea, with the nymph goddess Calypso while she holds him captive for seven years on the island of Ogygia, and of course with his wife Penelope.

Frank-N-Furter is more controlling. He has sex with Columbia, then pretends to be Brad to have sex with Janet and pretends to be Janet to have sex with Brad. He also treats Rocky as a sex object.

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Manipulating hospitality

Odysseus eats the giant cyclops’ store of cheese, then abuses the social expectation of hospitality. Back at Ithaca, he disguises himself as a beggar to test who will treat him with hospitality, then has the doors locked and kills the suitors.

Frank-N-Furter invites Brad and Janet into his castle on the pretext of allowing them to use his phone, then seduces and traps both of them for his floorshow. He also invites them and Dr Scott to a formal dinner, where they discover they are eating Eddie’s body.

Being extravagantly violent

Odysseus is most obviously violent during the Trojan war, and the subsequent attack on the city of Ismarus. He blinds the cyclops by driving a wooden stake into his eye. He tortures the goatherd Melanthius, and traps and slaughters all of the suitors.

Frank-N-Furter is most obviously violent in the crazed killing of Eddie, hacking him to death with a pickaxe. He also abuses his servants, including whipping them, and freezes Brad, Janet and Dr Scott into statues during the floor show.

Wanting to go home

Odysseus wants to return home despite many obstacles, even while having relationships with Circe and Calypso. He turns down Calypso’s offer of immortality and eternal youth to resume his journey.

Frank-N-Furter culminates the floorshow with an emotional song: he’s seen blue skies through the tears in his eyes, and he realises he’s going home. Of course, he’s not, because Riff Raff and Magenta kill him.

But in my imagined Rocky Horror Odyssey, Riff Raff’s laser blast is merely Frank-N-Furter’s latest deception. Once his betrayers depart, our hero rises from the apparently-dead and resumes his long odyssey back to the galaxy of Transylvania.

This is of course a fanciful analogy. Clearly, The Odyssey is not the same as The Rocky Horror Picture Show. But in the current context of people comparing the movie with the poem, The Rocky Horror Odyssey may illuminate more about Odysseus than debating what he and others look like.

Political lobbying can be more effective when people or groups with different worldviews support the same outcome on a particular issue, even when they actively oppose each other on other fundamental questions. Sometimes they campaign separately. Sometimes they work together on the shared aim. Sometimes they form an organised coalition.

For example, anti-war campaigns can include peace groups, different religions, socialists, liberals, conservatives, and libertarians. So can campaigns for marriage equality, abortion rights, assisted dying, drug law reform, and criminal justice reform. The Brexit campaign included economic libertarians, sovereign nationalists, social conservatives, and left-wing Euro-skeptics.

I’ve been involved in many such campaigns. I’ve worked with secular liberals and religious pluralists for contraception, divorce, marriage equality, abortion rights, assisted dying, and an end to blasphemy laws. I’ve worked with Atheist Ireland, the Evangelical Alliance of Ireland, and the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community of Ireland for secularism in Ireland and against religious persecution in Pakistan.

I worked with Nationalists and Unionists against Republican and Loyalist terrorism in Northern Ireland. While doing this, I joined Republicans and Loyalists to oppose ‘shoot-to-kill’ actions by the State and media censorship of Sinn Féin and the UDA. Similarly, I’ve chaired my local neighbourhood watch while campaigning against miscarriages of justice like the Tallaght Two and Nicky Kelly. Supporting effective policing does not require defending every police action.

In all of these campaigns, everyone understands that no one person or group endorses the wider worldviews of the others. Indeed, the breadth of support across opposing worldviews shows that the issue transcends those differences, and therefore does not rely on any one of them for its legitimacy.

If you want to oppose an outcome that different people want for different reasons, you have to show why the position itself is wrong, based on its own merits. It’s not sufficient to try to discredit some people or groups, by pointing to others who want the same outcome for different reasons. You can of course make points about strategy or impact, but you should primarily address the substantive issue.

Obviously, cooperation can affect political advocacy. Relevant questions include: How strong is the evidence for any given single-issue cooperation? Does it amount to different groups working separately on similar aims? Are there tactical alliances, advocacy coalitions, or a coherent movement? Whose wider worldviews do they strengthen? And when is it fair to describe them as a movement?

The Amnesty UK Report

Amnesty UK understands this principle perfectly in its own operations. It works with trade unions without endorsing every economic or political position they take. It endorses agreements with businesses while correctly criticising corporate violations of human rights. Similarly, during Pride events, mainstream LGBT organisations work with multinational corporations that they may disagree with on business issues.

Amnesty UK also has a faith network of affiliate groups which it says includes representatives from all major religions across the UK. These religions have contradictory theological worldviews, and often oppose Amnesty on issues like marriage equality and abortion rights. Yet Amnesty rightly treats their campaigning and fundraising as cooperation on human rights aims, not as evidence they and Amnesty form one movement.

Despite this, Amnesty UK recently labelled conservative Christian groups and gender-critical feminist groups collectively as ‘an anti-rights movement’. I’ve addressed this report and how it came to be written in these two articles.

• When human rights clash: Amnesty should protect, not undermine, equal rights for all

• How Amnesty got it wrong: How it wrote its withdrawn report on ‘anti-rights’ groups

The Sally Hines Report

Sally Hines makes a related argument in ‘Hands towards the right: UK gender-critical feminism and right-wing coalitions’. Thank you to AndOrNorLyn on Bluesky for linking me to this report.

It’s an interesting read. It discusses how the language of sex, gender, ‘gender ideology’, and related terms has evolved, and makes a distinction between rights and protections. It argues that Conservative politicians, the far right, and the media are fuelling a moral panic about transgender people as part of a wider attack on issues including marriage equality, abortion, and sexual liberalism.

It documents some instances in which gender-critical organisations have cooperated with conservative Christian groups. For example, in the US, the Hands Across the Aisle Coalition (HATAC) was founded in 2017 to bring together radical feminists and conservative Christian groups on the single issue of ‘gender identity ideology’. And various groups from both worldviews have co-signed UN submissions on transgender issues.

With regard to gender-critical groups in the UK, the report refers to Fair Play for Women, LGB Alliance, Object, Transgender Trend, and Women’s Human Rights Campaign. It also mentions some individual activists and politicians. It does not come anywhere close to replicating the list of fifty gender-critical groups that Amnesty UK labelled as part of an ‘anti-rights movement’.

Hines’ examples of cooperation concern opposition to gender self-identification, aspects of gender recognition reform, and gender-affirming healthcare. She does not suggest that they cooperate on such issues as abortion, marriage equality, contraception, or wider LGBT rights. Indeed, she accepts that some gender-critical activists oppose the right and far-right.

But she argues that cooperation and ideological overlap on transgender-related issues links gender-critical feminism to a wider ‘anti-gender’ movement that also campaigns against those other rights. She writes that gender-critical activists are reproducing ideas that appeal to, and are themselves reproduced by, right-wing forces. She therefore concludes that it is ‘impossible to divorce gender-critical thinking from gender and sexual conservatism’.

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What does single-issue cooperation show?

It is normal and practical for groups with opposing worldviews to cooperate together, in good faith, on single issues where they want the same outcome for different reasons. I have given many examples of this at the start of this article. Nobody reasonable would conclude that such groups share all of the other aims of the other groups, and indeed they often actively oppose them.

The next question is how strong the cooperation is. At the weakest level, two groups can separately support or oppose the same policy. At the next level, they can actively cooperate on a single-issue campaign. They can jointly sign letters, share platforms, and coordinate lobbying. At the next level, they can form an ongoing advocacy coalition. They can cooperate on related issues over many years.

Finally, they can form a social or political movement. Members would typically identify as being part of this movement, promote it together and individually, and cooperate across multiple campaigns. That’s the level of cooperation I would expect to see evidence of, if people argue that groups with opposing worldviews are part of a movement. I don’t see it in these reports.

I want to end with two related observations. It is unfair for Amnesty UK to label groups as ‘anti-rights’ where they are campaigning on issues where there are contested rights, or at least contested claims of what rights are affected. The gender-critical groups cited in both reports view themselves as promoting the rights of women, gay people, and children.

Finally, where there is cooperation, both reports seem to assume that the political impact of such cooperation would flow only one way: that the cooperation would add strength or legitimacy to the conservative Christian groups’ positions with regard to other issues such as marriage equality or abortion.

It is also possible that the cooperation would add strength or legitimacy to the feminist gender-critical groups’ positions on those issues. Or that both sets of groups might come closer to each other. Or that neither sets of groups’ positions on these other issues would be strengthened or weakened. That’s an area where we could benefit from further research.

Bart Ehrman and other scholars have shown me how the order of the Bible stories creates a false sense of continuity. This flow hides how stories about an apocalyptic human Jewish preacher developed into competing stories about a divine being who existed before creation.

Imagine you are reading the New Testament for the first time. The order of the events seems natural.

The four Gospels tell the story of Jesus, then the Book of Acts tells how the early church developed. Various letters by Paul and others explain the beliefs and practices of the new movement. Finally, the Book of Revelation tells how the world will end.

Reading them in this order, you see a continuous narrative, with each book seeming to build on the previous one to create a grand story.

You also form a false impression of how and why these books were written. And you miss the sequence in which different writers gradually recorded the various elements of the Jesus story during fifty or more years.

Now imagine reading these stories in the chronological order in which they written.

You would start with the apocalyptic apparitions of Paul, then move on to the eloquent quotations of Q and the raging ruler of Revelation. The Gospels would tell you about the misunderstood messiah of Mark, the Moses-like messiah of Matthew, the all-inclusive leader of Luke, and the Jehovah-like Jesus of John.

The writers of those contradictory stories did not foresee that their texts would become part of a book centuries later. Indeed, many of them believed that the present earthly age would end within their own lifetimes.

Here’s how they were written in a different sequence to the published version, written as standalone books, written among rival Christian stories, and show how the Jesus character we know today evolved.

Written in a Different Sequence

Firstly, these books were written in a very different sequence. Their precise dates are disputed, but the following approximate dates are widely accepted.

Paul wrote his letters first, about 48-62 CE, and he wrote almost nothing about the earthly life of Jesus. He believed Jesus’s resurrection was the key moment in his divine status. However, some passages suggest he may have believed Jesus existed in some form before becoming human.

Perhaps between the 40s and 60s CE, someone may have compiled sayings attributed to Jesus into a hypothetical source that scholars call Q. Matthew and Luke may have used it independently. Alternatively, Luke may have drawn directly on Matthew.

The Book of Revelation, with its violent avenging Jesus, is commonly dated to about 90–95 CE, although it may include earlier material and some scholars argue for a date around 68–70 CE.

We don’t know who wrote the Gospels, and the church assigned four names to them in the second century. The Gospel called Mark was written about 65-70 CE. It has no birth narrative and, in its earliest surviving form, ends without the risen Jesus appearing to anybody.

The Gospel stories about the birth of Jesus, and his appearance after death, first appear in Matthew and Luke. These were written about 80-85 CE, and the author of Luke wrote the Book of Acts around the same time.

The Gospel called John was written about 90-95 CE. This Gospel goes further than the earlier Gospels. It is the first Gospel to present Jesus as the divine Word who existed before creation and became human.

Written as Standalone Books

Secondly, these books were not written as part of a grand meta-story. They were never intended to be read as continuous chapters of the same book.

Their writers wrote them as standalone books, at different places and times, to convey different political and theological beliefs, for different audiences and reasons. This is one reason for the many differences and contradictions in the New Testament.

As one example of these contradictions, the physical resurrection of Jesus is the central tenet of Christianity.

In the earliest written Biblical reference, Paul says the risen Jesus appeared to more than five hundred people at one time. Yet in the earliest written Gospel, called Mark, the risen Jesus does not appear to anybody. A different writer later added the familiar longer ending to Mark, with the risen Jesus saying that people who believed in him could safely drink poison.

The Gospels called Matthew and Luke, written a decade or more later, were the first to include the risen Jesus physically appearing to people. But they disagree about who first encountered him, where and when, and what Jesus said and did. None includes Paul’s claim that Jesus appeared to more than five hundred people at once.

Also, in Matthew, not only did Jesus rise from the dead, but many dead holy people also rose from their tombs, entered Jerusalem and appeared to many people. None of the other Gospels mention this extraordinary incident. If it happened, it would hardly have gone unnoticed by anyone writing the story of Jesus.

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Written Amid Rival Christianities

Thirdly, these books were selected from a wider range of early Christian writings. As Christianity developed into the second century, rival movements promoted different understandings of Jesus.

Some Jewish-Christian groups, later labelled Ebionites, believed Jesus was fully human, but chosen by the Jewish God. They continued to observe Jewish law.

The Marcionites believed Jesus was fully divine, and had descended from heaven without an ordinary human birth. He came from a higher God, whom Marcion distinguished from the Jewish creator God.

Various groups now known as Gnostics believed Jesus brought special knowledge to save human souls from the material world.

The tradition that eventually became Christian orthodoxy argued that Jesus was both fully human and fully divine. This enabled the New Testament to include differing stories of Jesus.

How Jesus Evolved

To help understand the New Testament stories better, you should read them in the sequence in which they were written, instead of the sequence in which they appear in the Bible. Doing this may change your beliefs about not only the Jesus of history, but also the Jesus of theology.

You will see one broad pattern when you read the Gospels in their probable chronological order. In the earliest Gospel, Mark, Jesus’s special status is publicly declared at his baptism as an adult. In Matthew and Luke, it reaches back to his conception and birth. In John, it reaches back before creation itself. The human preacher has evolved into being part of God.

Paul, writing before all four Gospels, complicates this neat sequence. He believed Jesus’s resurrection was the key moment in his divine status. However, some passages suggest he may have believed Jesus existed in some form before becoming human.

The development of early Christian belief was therefore not a simple straight line. But the Gospel sequence shows Jesus’s divine identity being projected further and further back, from his baptism as an adult, to his conception, to before the creation of the universe.

For a comprehensive analysis of these and similar themes, read the work of Bart Ehrman and other academic textual critics of the New Testament.

This is one of my favourite examples of the conservative Catholic Ireland we have thankfully left behind.

In 1991, the Children’s Protection Society, an offshoot of the Christian Principles Party, published an expensive political lobbying booklet. It was titled 67 Reasons Why Condoms Spread AIDS: The Case Against Condom Anti-AIDS Campaigns, Compiled with Eminent Medical Assistance.

My late wife Anne then worked in the Dáil, and she remembered it being delivered to every TD and Senator.

For context, Mary Robinson was our new president, we were basking in the aftermath of the Italia ’90 World Cup, Roddy Doyle’s The Commitments reached the cinema, and the IFPA was fined for selling a condom in Dublin’s Virgin Megastore.

Here are some of the best arguments the Christian Principles Party made against condoms thirty-five years ago. I end with a response letter I wrote to the Irish Times, in which I looked forward to the sequel 67 Reasons Why Motor Cycle Helmets Spread Head Injuries.

1. Opposition to condom campaigns comes from diverse sources — atheist, and Jewish, for example

When Dr. Chazov, the USSR health minister, and Lord Jakobovits, the Chief Rabbi of the British Commonwealth, rejected condom anti-AIDS campaigns, they did not concede any public health price would have to be paid for their stance. They believed they were saving, not risking, lives.

5. The more condoms sold against AIDS, the more AIDS transmitted

Perhaps the most eminent condom advocate in the country in 1991 gave a condom failure rate for AIDS, taken as a proportion, as ten percent. Let us use this optimistic figure. It follows that the more condoms that are used against AIDS, the more AIDS transmission there will be. Contrast this to, for illustration, a country where everyone was chaste and faithful. There would be no need to use a condom against AIDS. Such usage would be zero, and AIDS transmitted also zero. Drug abuse would not be a problem in such a country.

21. There is no active role for women in condom sex

The decision to use a condom is always the man’s. If he thinks condoms stop AIDS, he can still refuse to use one. ‘But you promised to use a condom’ is always a woman’s complaint. One man, in revenge for becoming infected, is reported setting out to infect 20 women. In a society based on chastity they would not be vulnerable. By downgrading women, considered the more responsible of the sexes, AIDS is increased.

26. Leading to promiscuity — Dublin example

Announcing that they would break the law and sell their own brand of ‘luxury’ condom at gigs and concerts, the Power of Dreams rock group said ‘we thought it would be a good idea to give the church and others a kick in the —’. Young people found chemists embarrassing, but ‘at a gig when they have a few drinks on them they’d have no problem going up to the counter and asking for 20 cartons’. They hoped to sell ‘thousands’. — The Dublin Tribune SW 4 April 1991

27. Are supporters of condoms correct in attacking the Church?

Religious belief is historically the only successful basis for the rule of law, and this is a vital factor in preventing, notably, sexual assaults on children. It must be admitted that if the Church had been listened to, AIDS would never have arisen; once it has arisen, if even then the Church were heeded, AIDS would disappear.

35. Even the worst case scenario doesn’t work

The wife of an infected man is often cited as the unbeatable argument of those who favour condoms. Traditional morality would condemn her to death, it is alleged. Facts speak differently.

• The Traditional Morality: Man refuses to have sex with wife as he loves her and it would give her a fatal disease. Wife lives to 79.

• New Morality without Condoms: Man has a right to sexual fulfillment with wife. Wife dies of AIDS at 35.

• New Morality with Condoms: Man uses condoms with wife every time. Wife dies of AIDS at 41.

‘Furthermore, computer analysis indicates that the only effect of ‘safer sex’ in a long term relationship with an infected partner is to delay the time of infection.’ — A.M. Salzberg, PhD, MD, et al.: Journal of the American Medical Association, 18 December 1987, vol. 258, p. 3386.

43. Richard Branson

Mr. Branson, the head of the Virgin company, is it seems the first person since Independence to come over here and achieve a government commitment to make our laws like those of his own country. Who is this epoch-making man, whom even the Taoiseach and opposition leaders follow?

Context (not from the booklet): In 1988, the Irish Family Planning Association began openly selling condoms in Dublin’s Virgin Megastore in defiance of the law. Gardaí raided the Megastore in 1990, and the IFPA was convicted and fined. On appeal in 1991, the fine was increased to £500. Richard Branson gave evidence in court, arguing that condoms helped protect people from AIDS, and U2 paid the IFPA’s fine. Media coverage added to pressure for reform of Ireland’s contraception laws.

62. Look at the AIDS rate of Dr. O’Hanlon’s constituency

The Minister for Health represents Cavan-Monaghan. Precise data are not published, but depending on sources, the constituency either has Europe’s lowest AIDS rate, or the world’s lowest AIDS rate. How do they achieve this? It is a reasonably important question. Is it by value-free sex? Condoms? A country-wide survey by the Evening Press reported as ‘Traders say no to condoms’ stated ‘And, as if further to frustrate the Minister’s intentions, not even a single trader surveyed in his home town of Carrickmacross intends to sell the contraceptives’, meaning condoms. — The Evening Press, 24 April 1991.

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My response letter to the Irish Times

In response to this lobbying booklet, I wrote the following letter which the Irish Times published in July 1991.

Sir — Congratulations to Sean Clerkin of the anti-condom Christian Principles Party and Children’s Protection Society, on the publication of his excellent booklet, ‘Sixty Seven Reasons Why Condoms Spread Aids’ (report, July 12th). The woolly logic of the sex-obsessed liberal left is coldly demolished by this powerful, lucid (and expensively produced) intellectual blockbuster.

Particularly convincing are the following sample ‘Reasons’: Some atheists and Jews oppose condoms; no health benefit could come from a proposal supported by ‘every man who finds sex with children attractive’; it is easier to tell whether a person is 18 than whether they have reached an earlier age; there is no active role for women in condom sex; Cavan-Monaghan has either Europe’s or the World’s lowest AIDS rate and no trader in Carrickmacross will sell condoms; condoms will increase drug abuse and condoms are supported by the Power of Dreams rock group, the Irish Council for Civil Liberties and Richard Branson.

The indisputable clinchers, though, are the theologically inarguable Reason No 27: ‘If the Church were heeded, AIDS would disappear’ and the staggeringly conclusive Reason No 59: ‘In a debate, the condom lobby would lose’ (though, surprisingly, there is no elaboration as to how AIDS would be spread by the condom lobby losing this debate).

Well, I don’t know about the rest of you, but that’s me convinced anyway.

While ‘Sixty Seven Reasons’ (what a pity they couldn’t have found two more) certainly gives a useful insight into the psychologically fascinating phenomenon of the minds of the anti-condom lobby, it seems fair to suggest that logic may not be their strong point. Perhaps they should revert to their more usual theologically inspired moral diktats which, while not making their ‘Reasons’ any more sensible, would at least allow them to plead faith as an excuse.

In the meantime I look forward to such sequels as ‘Sixty Seven Reasons Why Motor Cycle Helmets Spread Head Injuries’, ‘Sixty Seven Reasons Why Hospitals Spread Illness’ and ‘Sixty Seven Reasons Why The Anti-Condom Lobby Spreads Nonsense’.

— Yours, etc.,

Michael Nugent

The Irish Times, July 1991

How did Amnesty UK end up publishing a report it quickly withdrew after a backlash from women’s rights groups and LGB rights groups, who said the report defamed them? It seems to have emerged by combining two previous publications; one criticising conservative Christian groups and one criticising gender critical groups.

First, in June 2025, Amnesty UK published an analysis called ‘The Anti-Rights Movement’. It listed what it described as a network of sixty-five ‘anti-rights’ groups operating across the UK. It referred overwhelmingly to conservative Christian groups who opposed abortion and LGBT rights. It did not refer to any groups based on other religions, or secular groups.

Second, in May 2026, Amnesty UK published a briefing called ‘Like a Snowball: the Growth and Impact of the Gender Critical Movement in the UK’. This referred back to the 2025 analysis, and said: ‘this briefing examines the nature and role of gender critical actors’. It said their starting point on gender is different from conservative Christian groups, but their objectives are similar.

Finally, in July 2026, Amnesty UK published a report called ‘A Growing Threat: the Anti-Rights Movement in the UK.’ This merged the Christian groups from the first document with fifty gender critical groups from the second, and described them all collectively as ‘an organised anti-rights movement targeting the rights of women and LGBT+ people.’

That seems to be the sequence of events that led to the withdrawn report being published: first an analysis describing conservative Christian groups as ‘an anti-rights movement’; then a briefing criticising gender critical groups while noting the difference in worldviews between them and Christian groups; then a merging of the two sets of groups together under the single label of ‘an anti-rights movement.’

I accept the authors sincerely believed they were doing good. They were mistaken. Amnesty UK says the final briefing was uploaded without going through its internal review processes, and its language does not reflect its position. But that does not explain how the underlying analysis developed through the two earlier publications. Here are the problems with that analysis.

Problems with Amnesty’s underlying analysis

It is simplistic for Amnesty UK to frame Christian anti-abortion groups simply as ‘anti-rights’. For context, I actively campaign for the right of any woman to have an abortion based on her own conscience. National and human rights law increasingly protects this right. And we as campaigners, including Amnesty, should criticise campaigns that would restrict women’s access to abortion.

But we should also be fair to those who sincerely disagree with us. Opposition to abortion is a protected religious or philosophical belief under human rights law. If Christians sincerely believe that abortion kills unborn children, and that the creator of the universe forbids it, many will feel morally obliged to campaign against it. Our job as secular liberal campaigners is to persuade legislators why women’s rights should prevail. And we are doing this successfully.

It is unreasonable for Amnesty UK to label women’s rights groups, LGB rights groups, and women-only rape crisis centres as not only ‘anti-rights’ but part of ‘an anti-rights movement’. And this report does this by simply listing them, without analysing their aims, showing that they share an ‘anti-rights’ strategy, or examining their positions on equal civil rights for transgender people.

Nor can Amnesty UK act as if human rights and equality law have already settled these questions in its favoured direction. In Goodwin v United Kingdom, the European Court found Member States must provide a system of gender recognition. It also recognised that States retain a margin of appreciation over how that system operates.

In the UK, Forstater v CGD Europe has held that gender-critical beliefs are protected under the Equality Act, and For Women Scotland v Scottish Ministers has held that the words ‘sex’, ‘woman’ and ‘man’ in the Act refer to biological sex. These judgments do not resolve every disagreement. But they show that Amnesty’s preferred interpretation is not the settled legal position.

Amnesty is a human rights organisation. It should protect equally the human rights of conservative religious and liberal secular people, including women, LGB people, transgender people, and children. And it should lobby governments to legally balance competing rights claims in a fair way, consistently with human rights principles.

It should not simply decide which competing rights it prefers, and label groups advancing other rights as ‘anti-rights.’

The June 2025 report on Christian groups

In June 2025, Amnesty UK published the findings of an analysis called ‘The Anti-Rights Movement’.

I can’t find the report itself online, but the Amnesty webpage announcing the report says that ‘a powerful anti-rights movement is growing in the UK, threatening to roll back our hard-won freedoms and rewrite the rules on whose rights, bodies and lives deserve protection.’

It also says there is a network of sixty-five anti-rights groups operating across the UK. This includes anti-abortion organisations, groups promoting so-called ‘conversion therapy’, UK branches of powerful US-based organisations, and ultra-conservative Christian groups. It does not address people of religions other than Christianity who promote conservative beliefs about social issues.

It says these groups collectively spent £106 million from 2019 to 2023. 25 anti-abortion organisations, including thirteen so-called ‘crisis pregnancy centres’, pretend to offer impartial advice, but actually actively discourage abortion. Twelve groups promote the harmful and abusive practice of so-called ‘conversion therapy’.

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The May 2026 report on gender critical groups

In May 2026, Amnesty UK published a briefing called ‘Like a Snowball: the Growth and Impact of the Gender Critical Movement in the UK’.

The introduction refers back to the June 2025 study, then says: ‘This briefing examines the nature and role of gender critical (GC) actors. Even though their starting point on issues of gender is different from those of actors such as ADF and other ultra conservative Christian groups, their objectives in relation to trans people are remarkably similar.’

It recognises the following differences in worldviews:

‘Ultra conservative Christian actors, such as the ADF, seek a society where women and men have different and rigid roles, based on what is ‘natural’ and ‘traditional’. In their view, the concept of ‘gender’, which means that women’s and men’s roles are socially constructed, and therefore can change, is a threat that must be rejected.

GC actors instead consider ‘gender identity’, the intimate sense someone has of their gender, that may be different from their sex assigned at birth, as reinforcing damaging stereotypes. In their view, so-called ‘gender ideology’ pushes gender non-conforming young people, in particular masculine lesbians, to think that they are men and should transition.’

The July 2026 report merging both sets of groups

In July 2026, Amnesty UK published a report ‘A Growing Threat: the Anti-Rights Movement in the UK’. This is the report that they have subsequently withdrawn.

This report seems to broadly merge the conservative Christian groups and gender critical groups from the two earlier documents. It now describes them collectively as ‘an organised anti-rights movement targeting the rights of women and LGBT+ people.’

It does not make the distinction, that the second report did, between the worldviews of Christian groups and secular gender critical groups. Instead it simply says:

‘Amnesty International UK defines anti-rights actors as formal and informal groups, individuals, private and state actors whose aim is to restrict human rights by undermining human rights protections in law and practice.’

It then lists various groups by name, and recommends that the Charity Commission should review the awarding of charitable status, the NHS should not signpost patients to crisis pregnancy centres, and institutional donors and grant-makers should strengthen due diligence to reduce the risk of funding them, and fund the ongoing monitoring of them.

What should we assume about reality without being able to know it with certainty? Why is it reasonable to believe that reality is broadly as it seems, and to say that we know things?

Here’s the overview. I cannot step outside my own thinking to test whether my thinking is reliable. So I cannot be certain about anything, even that anything exists. But beliefs can be rational without being certain. Here’s why.

Once I make the working assumption that anything exists, I must decide what else it is reasonable to believe about reality.

I should favour the assumptions that best fit the apparent evidence of my experience when I reason about it as carefully as I can.

The best-supported conclusion is that reality is broadly as it seems to be. I exist as a thinking being, other thinking beings exist, and a physical world exists independently of our thoughts.

The precise detail of reality may be different and even counterintuitive. I may be mistaken about any particular conclusion, but not every alternative conclusion is equally reasonable.

Given that absolute certainty is impossible, it cannot be the ordinary standard for knowledge. We can reasonably say that we know things while recognising that our conclusions remain fallible and open to revision.

If you are interested in my late-night, should-be-asleep-by-now, philosophical reasoning, here’s a step-by-step breakdown of how I arrived at these assumptions.

1. Speaking strictly philosophically, I cannot be certain of anything

2. There is a scale of at least five possible scenarios of reality

3. It is reasonable to assume that reality is broadly as it seems to be

4. Certainty is not the ordinary standard for knowledge

1. Speaking strictly philosophically, I cannot be certain of anything

The universe is all that exists, whether thoughts or things. I seem to interpret the universe, and make assumptions, using my thinking.

But I can never know for certain if any of my interpretations or assumptions are correct. Why? Because I can only interpret their correctness by using the very mechanism whose reliability I am trying to assess (i.e. ‘my thinking’).

I may be mistaken about this, but any argument intended to correct me would itself have to be assessed through the same thinking process whose reliability is in question.

2. There is a scale of at least five possible scenarios of reality

Scenario 1: Nothing may exist in the sense in which I ordinarily understand existence. Even the apparent occurrence of thoughts or experiences might be misleadingly described. This is the most cautious assumption of reality.

Scenario 2: Only what seem to be thoughts exist independently. If this is correct, then the illusion of ‘me’ is simply part of ‘the thoughts.’ This illusory ‘me’ cannot understand how this technically works, but this may be because ‘understanding how this works’ is not part of ‘the thoughts.’

Scenario 3: Only one thinking being and its thoughts exist. If this is correct, the sole thinking being might be me, you, or some other being. Everything else (including the apparent author and reader of this paragraph) would be generated within that being’s thoughts.

Scenario 4: Several thinking beings and their thoughts exist. You and I and others exist as ‘thinking beings’. We generate the illusion of sensory experiences, using our thinking, and our thoughts somehow interact in a universe with no physical entities.

Scenario 5: Thinking beings, thoughts, and a physical world exist broadly as they appear to. This includes atoms and rocks and trees and human bodies and bicycles and microwave ovens and space rockets and planets and galaxies.

Each new scenario seems closer to the evidence of my experience. Each new scenario assumes the existence of extra things that cannot be known to exist. Each new scenario seems increasingly functional as a working assumption of reality.

3. It is reasonable to assume that reality is broadly as it seems to be

These apparent patterns contain a key ‘on/off’ reason-switch. In terms of making a working assumption about the nature of reality, the biggest conflict is not whether physical objects or supernatural beings are assumed to exist.

It is whether anything is assumed to exist that cannot be known to exist, using reason alone. In other words, the switch is turned to ‘on’ once it is assumed that anything at all exists.

Turning on this switch does not mean that I should assume that every conceivable thing exists. It means that lack of certainty cannot, by itself, be a sufficient reason to reject something. I must instead compare possible accounts of reality using experience, reason, explanatory power and practical coherence.

This leads me to assume that reality is broadly as it seems to be. Why?

Once ‘I’ turn on this switch, ‘I’ have assumed in principle that ‘things-that-cannot-be-known-to-exist’ may exist. What then might I assume these things to be, based on experience, reason and functionality?

It is rational to assume they are those which seem to be (a) more consistent than other possibilities with the apparent evidence of my experience, and (b) better supported than the alternatives, based on applying reason to the apparent evidence of my experience.

This favours the final of my five scenarios: that reality includes me as a thinking being, you and other thinking beings, thoughts that are generated by me and you and other thinking beings, and real physical objects, whether animate or inanimate. 

Any working assumption is strengthened if it makes it easier for ‘me’ to function in what seems to be reality. This also leads towards the final scenario of my five theories of reality, where ‘I’ am assumed to exist and interact with other thinking beings and physical objects.

Note that I am assuming that reality is broadly as it seems to be, not that every detail of reality is actually as it seems to be. The details can be different from what we seem to experience, and indeed can be counterintuitive. The most reliable way to devise effective theories about our shared reality is to use the scientific method.

For example, what seems to be solid matter (based on the apparent evidence of our direct experience) turns out to be a combination of atoms, subatomic particles, fields and forces (based on applying reason and the scientific method to the same apparent evidence).

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4. Certainty is not the ordinary standard for knowledge

If these assumptions are reasonable, then absolute certainty cannot be the ordinary standard for knowledge. We can reasonably say we know things while recognising that our conclusions remain fallible and open to revision.

On this basis, in ordinary day-to-day language, it is reasonable to say that we know things with several unspoken conditions.

• Based on the assumption that we and the external world exist…

• Based on our experiences and the best available evidence…

• Based on reasoning as carefully and consistently as we can…

• Based on confidence proportionate to the evidence…

• Subject to the possibility that we are mistaken…

• And open to revision if better evidence emerges…

We should be prepared to revise our assumptions when new evidence, better reasoning or a more persuasive explanation warrants it. But bare unsupported possibilities are not enough.

Finally, we should apply these unspoken conditions consistently. We should not invoke radical skepticism selectively.

In any discussion, we can either insist that no claim is absolutely certain, or we can assess competing claims using evidence, reason and proportionate confidence.

What we cannot reasonably do is skip between these two standards during the same conversation: demanding impossible certainty from claims we dislike, while accepting ordinary evidence for claims we prefer.

An Amnesty UK report has grouped together, under the label of a single ‘anti-rights movement’, two very different types of organisation. One is those who promote conservative Christian beliefs about social issues. The other is those who promote the sex-based rights of women and LGB people. It called for reviews of their charitable status, services, funding, and activities.

After a predictable backlash, Amnesty has withdrawn the report pending an internal review. That’s useful, but Amnesty also must address the harmful impact of having published it in the first place. This has hurt the reputations of those it unjustly maligned, and Amnesty’s own credibility as a human rights group.

Something similar happened six years ago. Amnesty Ireland called on the media to ‘end giving airtime to’, and politicians to ‘no longer provide legitimate representation for’ people promoting the sex-based rights of women and LGB people. These attitudes are bad enough coming from individuals on social media, but much worse coming from a human rights body.

For some reason, the current Amnesty UK report does not address people of religions other than Christianity who promote conservative beliefs about social issues. Why is this? Some of these people not only promote their beliefs as public policy, but actively enforce them on women, LGBT people, and children within their communities.

The report also ignores that many people who support the sex-based rights of women and LGB people are liberal secularists, feminists and gay people, often more left-wing than right-wing. They typically also oppose conservative religious beliefs about social issues, and also support equal rights for transgender people.

But more importantly, the Amnesty report ignores that reasonable and ethical people can sincerely disagree on emotive issues. We should engage with the content of ideas we disagree with, not accuse the people who express them of malign motivations. And we should balance competing human rights in a way that is fair to everyone involved.

The rights to freedom of conscience and expression

Amnesty should support the equal right of everybody to freedom of thought, conscience, belief, opinion, expression, private life, and from discrimination. These rights extend to people with whom we strongly disagree.

As an example, when I campaigned against IRA and loyalist terrorism, I also opposed Section 31 of the Irish Broadcasting Act, that prevented Sinn Féin and the UDA from promoting their political aims democratically.

People have a right to express ideas that offend, shock, or disturb us. The State can only restrict that right by law, for a legitimate purpose, and with necessary and proportionate means. Defamation and incitement to crime are obvious examples. Disagreeing on how best to balance competing human rights is not.

I believe the authors of this report sincerely believe they are promoting good ideas. But they are mistaken. By treating lawful disagreement as hostility to human rights, they undermine the very rights Amnesty was founded to protect. If they want to say this, they should do so as individuals, not under the name of Amnesty.

Amnesty should publicly return to defending the equal right of everyone to hold and express different beliefs. It should oppose, not lead, attempts to silence such people. And it should lobby governments to legally balance competing rights claims, consistently with human rights principles.

Absolute and qualified rights

You have an absolute human right to the internal aspect of freedom of thought, conscience, religion, and belief. The test of whether a belief is protected is that it must attain a certain level of cogency, seriousness, cohesion and importance, and be worthy of respect in a democratic society.

As well as religion, atheism, agnosticism, and skepticism, this right protects believers in secularism (Lautsi v Italy), veganism (W v United Kingdom), pacifism (Arrowsmith v United Kingdom), and opposition to military service (Bayatyan v Armenia).

In the context of the Amnesty report, it protects opposition to abortion (Knudsen v Norway), the conviction that marriage is a lifelong union between a man and a woman (Eweida v United Kingdom), and the belief that sex is real, immutable and not to be conflated with gender identity (Forstater v CGD Europe under the UK Equality Act, interpreted consistently with the European Convention).

You also have a qualified right to manifest and express your beliefs subject to limited restrictions. You have related rights including respect for privacy and freedom from discrimination. Depending on the circumstances, the state can have both a negative obligation to refrain from interfering in these rights, and a positive obligation to secure them.

These rights are recognised in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Articles 18, 19, 12, 2, 7). They are legally protected by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (Articles 18, 19, 17, 2, 26), and the European Convention on Human Rights (Articles 9, 10, 8, 14).

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How to balance qualified rights

When human rights conflict, they have to be balanced. Courts must identify the actual rights on each side. They must distinguish between beliefs (almost always protected), expression (usually protected), and behaviour (can be regulated). People must be able to reasonably foresee what behaviour is regulated and why.

Any limitations on qualified rights must be prescribed by law and necessary in a democratic society in pursuit of a legitimate aim. These legitimate aims include public safety, the protection of public order, health and morals, or the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.

Rights have to be applied cohesively. Religious and secular people have the right to hold and express beliefs that others strongly disagree with. Women have the right to privacy, safety, and sex-based equality. LGB people have the right to same-sex attraction. Transgender people have the right to protection from discrimination, harassment and violence. Children have the right to protection from long-term impacts on their lives.

Amnesty should support all of these rights, and lobby governments to legally balance competing rights claims in a fair way, consistently with human rights principles. It should not simply assume that one side has rights that supersede those of others, or attribute malign motivations to people on any other side.

Otherwise it is undermining not only human rights, but also the credibility of a human rights organisation with a long history, that was founded in order to protect freedom of conscience and expression of disputed opinions.

Putting aside whether he was God, did the Biblical Jesus exist as a real person?

It’s likely that one or more Jewish preachers preached similar messages at the time, and the Bible stories were built around this. But if such a person also performed wondrous miracles, surely somebody at the time would have written about him outside the Bible? Apparently not.

There is no independent contemporaneous record of any of the following claims about Jesus: his bloodline, his virgin birth, his parent’s flight from Herod, his baptism by John the Baptist, his preaching to large multitudes, his miracles, the details of his trial or death, or his return to being alive again.

Instead, the first time Jesus is mentioned outside the Bible is in 93/94 CE, sixty years after he died. By then, Paul had already spread the story of a Jesus that he himself had never met, but who he believed appeared to him in a vision after he had died. Also, the Mark gospel, and probably Matthew and Luke, were already written.

After these sixty years of independent silence, historian Flavius Josephus wrote Antiquities of the Jews, a twenty-book history. Josephus was a thirty-year-old Jewish rebel during the revolt of 66 CE who miraculously survived a suicide pact among his troops, then switched sides and became a Roman citizen.

His Antiquities of the Jews, published in 93/94 CE, includes this passage

‘Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man; for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles. He was the Christ.

And when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him; for he appeared to them alive again the third day; as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him.

And the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day.’

Did Josephus write this?

But did Josephus write this, and is it true? Aside from not being contemporaneous, the passage sets off several alarm bells about its reliability. Here’s what I wrote about it back in 2008.

Josephus was a Jew, writing a Jewish history. He would never have called Jesus ‘the Christ’.

This remarkable claim, which would have been great propaganda for early church leaders, seems to have gone unnoticed for nearly a quarter of a millennium.

As late as 230 CE, Origen, one of the fathers of the church, was unaware of the claim. indeed, he denied that Josephus believed Jesus was the Christ.

It was 324 CE before Bishop Eusebius became the first person to quote this passage. Incidentally, this is the same Bishop who took another passage from Josephus, in which an owl appeared over King Herod’s head, and rewrote the owl as an angel.

Even the Catholic Encyclopaedia admits that ‘the passage seems to suffer from repeated interpolations.’ This is essentially a euphemism for adding in new material. It concludes simply of the controversies that:

‘The difficulty has not been definitively settled.’

That is hardly a ringing endorsement of the first independent historical record of Jesus.

What might Josephus have actually written?

Some skeptics believe Christians ‘interpolated’ all of this passage, as it seems to interrupt the flow of the narrative before and after it.

Others believe Josephus may have mentioned Jesus by quoting, more rationally, from other sources, and Christians later added the claims about Jesus being divine and returning from the dead.

In 1991, Catholic priest professor John P Meier wrote A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus. He argued Josephus may have written this:

‘At this time there appeared Jesus, a wise man. For he was a doer of startling deeds, a teacher of people who receive the truth with pleasure. And he gained a following both among many Jews and among many of Greek origin.

And when Pilate, because of an accusation made by the leading men among us, condemned him to the cross, those who had loved him previously did not cease to do so. And up until this very day the tribe of Christians, named after him, has not died out.’

On balance, whatever the precise wording, I believe something like this probably happened. This would be consistent with a later, shorter reference in the same book to James as being ‘the brother of Jesus the so-called Christ’, although even here it is unusual to see a person named by reference to his brother rather than his father.

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TC Schmidt’s 2025 book

The above is based on what I wrote back in 2008. Since then, scholars have continued to examine this passage. Last year Christian professor TC Schmidt wrote Josephus and Jesus: New Evidence for the One Called Christ.

He confirms that scholars have typically interpreted the passage as containing several assertions that are unlikely for a first-century Jew to have made.

He accepts that the early Christian theologian, Origen of Alexandria, specifically stated that Josephus did not believe in Jesus as the Christ, centuries before the earliest surviving Greek manuscripts of Antiquities.

But he says the doubt over the authenticity of the passage runs into several issues, and that scholars have been increasingly acknowledging this.

Schmidt argues that many ancient and medieval Christian readers who knew or used the passage did not treat it as an obvious Christian confession. They often treated it as neutral, ambiguous, mundane, or even slightly negative.

He also says the turns of phrase and stylisations in the passage are similar to Josephus and to other skeptical non-Christian reports about Jesus.

He concludes that the passage was composed by Josephus, and further argues that Josephus was directly familiar with people connected with the trials of Jesus’s apostles, and even with people connected with the trial of Jesus himself.

Responses to Schmidt’s arguments

Some scholars have re-examined the Antiquities passage in response to Schmidt. But he seems to sometimes jump too quickly from ‘this is possible’ to ‘this is probable’.

For example, he says Origin may have read the passage as ambiguous, but this seems unlikely as Origen explicitly says Josephus did not accept Jesus as Christ.

He says the language is similar to that of Josephus, but a skilled interpolator could mimic turns of phrase and stylisations in a short passage.

Even if Josephus did write the full passage, which remains disputed, it does not follow that it was based on reliable information or that its claims are true. He could have been summarising Christian claims or using sources shaped by Christian claims.

At its strongest, the disputed passage in Antiquities would give a non-Christian source for the claims that Jesus existed as a person, that there were stories about him performing miracles, that he was condemned under Pilate, and that his followers continued as a movement after he died.

It would give no evidence for Jesus being God, his bloodline from Abraham and David, his virgin birth, his parent’s flight from Herod, his baptism by John the Baptist, the truth of the stories about his miracles, the details of his trial or death, or his return to being alive again.

In other words, even the strongest version of Josephus is evidence that a man named Jesus existed and died, and Christianity began as a movement. This is not controversial. The passage is not evidence of how Christianity began, or that any of its claims are true.

Do you have a pet at home? Even a modicum of empathy should make you wince if you imagine someone capturing it and having dogs chase it. Hares may not be as smart as dolphins or apes, but they are sentient mammals who can feel pain, stress, fear, and probably comfort, security, and thriving.

The Dáil has just rejected a bill that would have outlawed hare coursing. Our wildlife law protects Irish hares as a species, but it also allows coursing clubs to capture them and release them into an enclosed ground where greyhounds chase them.

The bill, proposed by People Before Profit TD Paul Murphy, would have banned this cruel practice. But the three biggest parties (Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, and Sinn Féin) all voted to allow hare coursing to continue, despite two in three Irish people supporting a ban.

Hare coursing defenders argue the dogs are muzzled. But that doesn’t change the cruelty of terrifying, injuring, and sometimes killing innocent animals for entertainment, gambling, and making money.

Some TDs claimed an unpublished report says hare coursing brings €70 million annually to our economy, but we don’t justify other cruelty in this way. In any case, this figure seems overblown. There is no evidence of such economic harm after Britain banned hare coursing.

Others argued that regulation is better than banning. Ethically, that may be the case with some complex issues, but there is no ethical case for hare coursing. Practically, after being banned in Britain, hare coursing became a rural crime issue. That’s reason to enforce a ban, not to keep licensing cruelty.

Why I oppose hare coursing

Hare coursing is even worse than killing animals for food. The cruelty is not a side-effect of something people might mistakenly think they need to do to survive. Instead, it is central to the spectacle of hare coursing.

I subscribe to a variation of John Rawls’ social contract theory of morality. In short: how would a perfectly rational set of people design principles of justice for a society, if we don’t know in advance what position we would hold in that society?

That is, we don’t know if we will be rich or poor, male or female, healthy or sick. This veil of ignorance forces us to think beyond ourselves, and to develop universally just principles to apply to all people.

My personal addition to the theory is that we also should not know what species we would be. I believe one of the greatest injustices in our world is how we treat nonhuman animals. Every year we kill over 50 billion farmed animals, and up to a trillion fish. These sentient beings suffer unjustly for our convenience.

This variation on John Rawls’ social contract theory won’t tell us exactly what is right and wrong in any given circumstance. But it gives us a principled way to examine it. And if we apply it to hare coursing, it is hard to come to any conclusion other than it is unjustified.

What happens elsewhere in Europe?

Hare coursing is illegal in England and Wales under the Hunting Act 2004. You commit an offence if you take part in, attend, or facilitate a hare coursing event, or allow your land to be used. A 2022 Act added offences linked to trespassing to search for or pursue hares with dogs.

Hare coursing was banned in Scotland under the Protection of Wild Mammals (Scotland) Act 2002, recently replaced by the Hunting with Dogs (Scotland) Act 2023. It has been illegal in Northern Ireland since 2011, but you can still use dogs to hunt other animals such as foxes.

Hare coursing is legal in Spain, with different regulations in different regions, such as not being allowed to shoot at hares while dogs are chasing them. It is also legal in Portugal, but you can’t release more than two dogs to chase one hare.

As far as I can find, hare coursing is not legally permitted in the other 24 EU Member States. The legal mechanisms seem to vary. In some countries it is explicitly prohibited. In others, no authorised hunting method permits setting dogs on live hares for sport.

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The economic impact of the British bans

As I mentioned earlier, some TDs quoted an unpublished report that suggests hare coursing contributes about €70 million annually to the Irish economy.

Before the England and Wales Hunting Act 2004, the Burns Inquiry examined the likely impact on the rural economy. With regard to hunting with dogs generally, it concluded:

‘19. The short-term loss would be limited, and extend not much further than those employed by the hunt… In the long term, say seven to ten years, most (if not all) of the effects would be offset as resources were diverted to new activities and the rural economy adjusted to other economic forces.’

With regard to hare coursing specifically, it concluded:

‘40. Hare hunting and coursing are essentially carried out for recreational purposes and have a relatively small direct impact on hare numbers. A ban would therefore have little effect in practice on agriculture or other interests.’

After the ban, there was no evidence of major economic losses. Instead, the main problem became the impact of illegal coursing on rural communities and farms. This resulted in a new law being passed in 2022 to create new offences and stronger penalties for such crimes.

Before the Protection of Wild Mammals (Scotland) Act 2002, Dr Douglas Macmillan produced a report on banning fox hunting with dogs. He concluded a ban would have very little impact on either employment or expenditure in rural areas.

John Blair MLA has a similar bill making its way through the Northern Ireland Assembly. Last year he produced a consultation report that found no significant economic losses arising from the British bans.

Banning hare coursing is ethical and practical

Hare coursing is cruelty. A ban would end avoidable suffering to innocent animals, that takes place for entertainment and the making of money.

The economic arguments against a ban are exaggerated, and are not in any case a valid reason to cause avoidable suffering.

Paul Murphy TD was right to introduce this Bill. The Dáil was wrong to reject it. Ireland should eventually join the growing number of countries that have ended hare coursing.

The World Cup is finally fun again, after the messiness of Russia ’18 and Qatar ’22. Even Trump playing barrister-in-a-china-shop hasn’t distracted from Cape Verde’s fairytale, Dick Advocaat’s tears, France’s scintillating football, and Harry Kane being literally and metaphorically speechless after England’s Wonderwall celebrations.

With my body-clock firmly in late-night and early-morning telly mode, I’m writing this at ridiculous o’clock to evade the cold turkey of having no 1am or 2am game. So, instead of the wiser alternative of going to sleep, here are my top five football moments, human interest stories, and controversies of the World Cup so far.

My top five football moments so far

Cape Verde 2 Argentina 3 had everything. The tiny island of just 500,000 people had already made history by reaching the knockout stages of their first World Cup. But nobody expected them to test the world champions in the way they did. Cabral scored a world-class second equaliser, and they were minutes away from taking the game to penalties.

England 3 Mexico 2 was another all-time classic. The Three Lions had to contend with the heat and altitude of the Azteca stadium, which is iconic in my childhood memory as the site of the 1970 World Cup final. Jude Bellingham scored twice and Harry Kane added a third, before a late rearguard action that they eventually survived.

France 3 Sweden 0 was a comfortable win for the country I think will probably be champions. In 2018, Kylian Mbappé became the second teen after Pelé to score in a World Cup final. Now in his mid-twenties, he scored twice as France outclassed Sweden. I’ve had a soft spot for Les Bleus ever since my wife Anne and I watched them live in their winning Final in Paris in ’98.

Norway 2 Brazil 1 was a shock for me. I’m always unreasonably optimistic about Brazil, ever since watching Pelé on my childhood black-and-white telly. The score remained level with ten minutes to go. Then Erling Haaland switched from casually strolling around to sprinting and leaping to head Norway ahead, before doubling their lead as the game entered stoppage time.

Finally on the pitch, there is an exciting race for the Golden Boot. Lionel Messi heads the pack on eight goals so far, after scoring in Argentina’s win last night against Egypt. Kylian Mbappé and Erling Haaland are one behind him at seven goals each, while Harry Kane has scored six. And all four are still in the tournament, so there’s more to come.

My top five human interest stories so far

Of course I’m going to start with Cape Verde. It’s a tiny island with half a million people, about the same as County Cork. Forty-year-old keeper Vozinha has just left Portuguese second-tier side Chaves, and central defender Pico Lopes plays for Shamrock Rovers in the League of Ireland. The Cape Verde FA had sent Pico an online offer to play for them, which he ignored for a year as it was in Portuguese, until they contacted him again in English.

Curaçao’s veteran manager Dick Advocaat gave us another wonderful story. Born just after the Second World War, the Dutch defender has managed twenty clubs and eight countries. He got Curaçao, an island of just 150,000 people, to their first ever World Cup finals, but quit in February to look after his sick daughter. When her health improved, he returned to become the oldest ever World Cup manager at 78. He cried during the national anthem before their first game.

Although Ireland did not qualify, the Tartan Army competed for our traditional title of the world’s most joyful inebriated fans, including playing keepy-uppy with a local Boston cop. By contrast, the Japanese fans showed their civic responsibility, cleaning their section of the stadium after each match. And the Norwegian fans brought their synchronised rowing celebration to the streets, escalators, and Times Square as well as the stadiums.

Local communities around America welcomed visiting teams into their hearts. In Kansas, hundreds welcomed the Algerian squad on arrival, and thousands attended their first training session. Dick Advocaat’s Curaçao had a similar welcome in Florida, with five thousand locals watching them train. And Haiti, in their first World Cup in half a century, held a community day at Stockton University in New Jersey.

My final human interest moment so far is both hilarious and heartwarming. After their famous win against Mexico, the English players joined their fans in a rousing rendition of Wonderwall. Harry Kane then spoke to the fans back home in an emotional telly interview. Or at least, he tried to speak to them, but could only offer a comically hoarse squeak.

My top five World Cup controversies so far

Of course the World Cup has had its usual controversies. The worst so far is Balogun-gate. Donald Trump boasted he had phoned FIFA boss Gianni Infantino about the one-match ban on the US striker. The ban was then suspended. It was like Watergate in reverse: Tricky Dick tried to cover up what he was doing wrong, while Trump boasted about it.

Other controversies smell, to varying degrees, of money. There’s the expanded format: 48 countries, up from 32 since France ’98, 24 since Spain ’82, and typically 16 before that. But I’ve changed my mind about that. The wider cast has brought a festival of football outside of watching the usual suspects. Whatever the motivation, it worked football-wise.

Dynamic pricing, which many entertainment events now use, keep many ordinary fans out of the biggest games. Some official group-stage tickets were priced at up to $575, and tickets for the final soon went to more than $8,000. The people’s game is increasingly about money, but this price jump is a scandal.

Then there’s the new compulsory hydration breaks that disrupt the game’s rhythm. The heat is of course an issue in some, but not all, venues. But by coincidence, this also gives broadcasters convenient advertising slots to make more money. This is a massive culture shift. It’s football, but not as we know it.

My final controversy so far is, unsurprisingly, VAR and related technology. This was supposed to end pub arguments about obvious errors. It now delays or even reverses play to judge on minor calls. The most bizarre: did a sound sensor inside the ball suggest it brushed against a player’s hair? This is destroying the passion of football.

Time for bed

It has now gone 4am. Without my now-usual early-morning match on the telly, I have instead charted my top five football moments, human interest stories, and controversies of the World Cup so far. As Zebedee would say on The Magic Roundabout, it’s time for bed.

This year is the centenary of the wonderfully-named Committee on Evil Literature. It was the start of a bad Irish joke: two clergymen, two TDs, and a professor of English walked into a committee room. They pored over the dangers of such filth as Dainty Novels, Bits of Fun, Women’s Weekly, and the News of the World.

For wider context, the new State was already deciding what my grandparents could watch. Now it was turning to what they could read. Justice Minister Kevin O’Higgins established the new Committee to advise on censoring printed matter.

The first Irish film censor, James Montgomery, was already in his third year of office. He strongly opposed ‘monkey house morality’, and installed mirror arcs to his viewing equipment to ensure he didn’t miss any glimpses of semi-nudity. His first annual report slammed ‘indecent dancing’ and ‘the customs of the (international) divorcing classes’.

The report of the Committee on Evil Literature led to the Censorship of Publications Act 1929. That set up a Censorship Board that could ban ‘unwholesome literature’. The net was wide enough to include newspaper reports of court cases about divorces, which might contain details of people having sex outside of marriage.

Meanwhile James Montgomery was banning ten films in Ireland for every one banned in Britain. But his concerns spread further than Britain. He believed the real threat to Irish culture was not Anglicisation but Los Angelisation. His philosophy about his role: ‘I know nothing about films but I do know the ten Commandments.’

The Report of the Committee

UCD English professor Robert Donovan chaired the Committee on Evil Literature. He was joined by TDs William Thrift and Tomas O Connail, and clergymen James Dempsey and J Sinclair Stevenson. The secretary was JP Clare from the Department of Justice. You can read the full report here.

The Committee heard evidence from, among others, the Catholic Truth Society, the Irish Vigilance Association, the Christian Brothers, the Catholic Headmasters’ Association, the Irish National Teachers’ Organisation, the Catholic Writers’ Guild, the owner of Eason, and the Garda Deputy Commissioner.

They wanted to extend the current law because courts had narrowly applied the phrase ‘indecent or obscene’. It should encompass imported newspapers with reports on crime and divorces, pseudo-medical propaganda for contraceptives and female disorders, and fiction of a demoralising kind.

They accepted some news reports might not be indecent individually, but British weekly newspapers published so many of them, ‘under flaring headlines that emphasise their abnormal and immoral character’, that the newspaper itself is thoroughly demoralising. As it would be impractical to ban individual editions, the Minister should be able to ban the import of such titles completely.

They were particularly concerned about ‘propaganda advocating the prevention of conception’. Some of these publications deliberately target ‘the young and unmarried of both sexes’ in order to ‘open the way to sensual indulgence for those who desire to avoid the responsibilities of the married state.’ The great majority of the witnesses ‘expressed the strongest repugnance to the toleration of such publications.’

The classics caused a more awkward problem. There was a clash between one witness who preferred Bowdler’s edition of Shakespeare, and a clergyman ‘keenly interested in the suppression of evil literature’ who thought it would be ridiculous to ban Shakespeare. The committee felt parents, schools, and clergy should protect children from such books.

However, a group of citizens selected for their culture, good sense, and respect for morality, should be able to recognise books written with a corrupt intent, that appeal to sensual or corrupt instincts and passions. A censorship committee that would deal with undesirable newspapers should also be competent to restrain such obviously evil literature.

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The Recommendations of the Committee

1. To extend the legal meaning of ‘indecent or obscene’ to include ‘matter intended to excite sensual passion’.

2. To control reports of judicial proceedings and journalistic reports and writings.

3. To establish a Board to advise the Minister for Justice about books, newspapers, or magazines that are ‘demoralising and corrupting’, so the Minister can publish a list of banned publications.

4. To make illegal any publications that advocate the unnatural prevention of conception, except to authorised persons.

5. To allow the police to search premises if a superintendent believes it contains indecent articles for sale, without needing proof that such articles have been sold there.

6. To include as indecent any advertisement related to diseases affecting sexual organs, removing irregularities in menstruation, or procuring contraception or abortion.

7. To empower the Customs Authorities to seize prohibited material, and the Post Office Authorities to refuse to deliver it.

8. That the new definition of ‘indecent and obscene’ should apply to indecent prints, photographs, and postcards.

The Consequences of the Committee

The report of the Committee on Evil Literature led to the Censorship of Publications Act 1929. This defined the word ‘indecent’ to include ‘suggestive of, or inciting to sexual immorality or unnatural vice or likely in any other similar way to corrupt or deprave.’ It established the Censorship of Publications Board to report to the Minister who could make a prohibition order.

That set up the machinery for decades of brutally and comically restrictive censorship. Novels like Edna O’Brien’s The Country Girls and John McGahern’s The Dark were banned, and McGahern was sacked as a schoolteacher. I had to watch the banned-in-Ireland Monty Python’s Life of Brian on a college trip to Paris. And a booklet from the Irish Family Planning Association about contraception joined the list of publications wrapped in legal rubber.

I’ll examine how all of that developed in a future article.

I am a strong atheist, because I strongly believe there are no gods, based on applying reason to evidence. I am also an agnostic about absolute knowledge, because I do not claim to know this with certainty.

I am always happy to say about any of my beliefs, including whether there is a god, that I might be mistaken. But at the moment, I am as confident that the Christian god does not exist as Christians are that Thor does not exist.

For clarity, in this article, I’ll call the Christian god ‘God’ with a capital ‘G’.

‘Does God Exist?’ is not merely a technical claim about how the universe came to be. It is also a claim about having moral authority to tell people how to live their lives. That puts a strong responsibility, and a strong onus of proof, on those making the claim.

So how do we evaluate what is most likely to be true?

I suggest that faith and personal experience are the worst and least reliable ways of identifying what is true. They result in different people coming to different beliefs about the same reality.

Applying reason to evidence is the most reliable way, because it can more reliably result in different people coming to the same beliefs about the same reality. The best example of this is the scientific method.

Christians typically believe that their God is a pure mind without a body, perfect and changeless, a first cause beyond time and space, all knowing, all powerful, and all good. Here are twenty reasons why this idea is implausible.

Can a mind exist without a body?

1. A pure mind without a body is an invented convenience. We have no evidence that minds exist without bodies, brains, or energy, and we have a lot of evidence that minds are changed by changes to brains.

2. Even if we explore this invented convenience, a pure mind without a body might be aware of the existence of matter, but how could it interact with that matter? There is no known or coherent mechanism by which it could do so.

Can a changeless being create anything?

3. If this God is changeless, then it cannot create anything, because it would have to change in order to do so.

4. Even if you believe it simply willed matter into existence, which is another invented convenience, then that act of will would be a change, within that supposedly changeless mind.

5. But if this mind is perfect, then it could not change anyway, because it would either become more perfect, which is impossible, or less perfect, and thus no longer perfect.

6. Even if it could change, it would not want to change, because, being perfect, it would have no need or desire to do anything.

7. If you respond that it was changeless, but it changed when it created the universe, then it is simply false to say that it is changeless. Or could it change back to being changeless? How would that change happen?

Can a timeless being cause anything?

8. If this God is beyond time, then it cannot cause anything to happen, because cause and effect (if they exist) involve time. And calling this ‘atemporal causation’ just adds a contradictory name to a mystery.

9. If this God created, and interacts with, a universe that involves time and space, then the God is not beyond time and space.

10. If the God is no longer changeless, or beyond time and space, then it may have ceased to exist sometime in the last 14 billion years.

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Can a perfect God create suffering?

11. If this God is all perfect and all good, then it would have created a perfect universe. At a minimum, a perfect universe would not contain suffering or evil.

12. If you respond that even a perfect God can only do what is logically possible, then it is logically possible to have beings who freely do good, or at least to create a universe with far less apparently pointless suffering.

13. If you respond that the universe is actually perfect, but we just don’t understand how, then why would the God have to intervene in this perfect universe through miracles?

Can a God be the source of morality?

14. The Euthyphro dilemma remains: does the God command things to be good for arbitrary reasons, or does it identify things as being good because they correspond to independent standards of goodness?

15. If you respond that God’s nature is good, that does not solve the problem. The dilemma still remains: is the God’s nature good for arbitrary reasons, or is it good because it corresponds to independent standards of goodness?

16. Many arguments for an all-good God can just as easily support the idea of an all-evil God. This God allows free will so that we can voluntarily choose to be evil, instead of being forced to be evil.

Can an all-knowing God allow free will?

17. If this God is all knowing, then it knows the taste of strawberry yoghurt. But if the God has no body and therefore no senses, how can it know the taste of anything?

18. If you respond that the God only knows the truth of propositions, then the God is not all-knowing. It is less than all-knowing.

19. If this God is all-knowing, then before creating the universe it knew every evil thing every human will do. But if it knows that, then either we do not have free will, or else the God has consciously created free agents that it knows will do evil.

Can an all-powerful God not communicate effectively?

20. If this God cares about the lives of humans on planet Earth, then, at a minimum, it could have given us all the same information and the same moral messages. Instead, we see exactly what we would expect if humans invented the idea of gods: different messages, scriptures, rules, and claims of certainty.

Conclusion

Finally, all of this is exploring an invented convenience that has not been justified in the first place: that there can be such a thing as a pure mind without a body.

Before moving on to claims about that mind being perfect, changeless, timeless, all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-good, Christians first have to justify the original claim. And they have to justify it in the real world, not merely in the invented universe of theological discourse.

When we apply reason to evidence, reality and morality seem much as we would expect them to seem if there was no God. We also see a relentless pattern of natural explanations replacing supernatural explanations.

I’ve covered in this earlier article why morality requires compassion, not divine commandments. I’ll return to other arguments in future articles.

As Ireland starts its six-month presidency of the EU Council, Atheist Ireland has submitted a petition to the European Parliament. We’re asking it to examine a gap in Irish equality law.

Irish equality law explicitly protects people with religious beliefs. But it only addresses atheism, humanism, and secularism as the absence of religious beliefs. It does not give them equal status as positive beliefs in their own right.

By contrast, European law refers to freedom of ‘religion or belief’. And the ‘or belief’ part of that phrase refers to nonreligious philosophical convictions. These have the same legal status as religious beliefs.

The problem is not merely symbolic. It shapes how public bodies, schools, equality tribunals, legislators, and regulators understand and apply rights. It causes practical discrimination against atheists, humanists, secularists, and others.

Ironically, the Irish government does recognise the status of Atheist Ireland and the Humanist Association of Ireland as partners in the formal dialogue process with churches and philosophical bodies under Article 17 of the Lisbon Treaty.

But Irish citizens do not receive the equal legal protection that this recognition implies. The gap appears across equality law, religious oaths for public office, the education system, marriage solemnisation, charity law, taxation, political advocacy, and access to effective remedies.

What are the consequences of this discrimination?

The Irish Constitution requires religious declarations for several public offices. This means a conscientious atheist cannot become President, a judge, or a member of the Council of State (which includes the Taoiseach and Tánaiste) because they would have to swear an oath to a god they do not believe in.

The Irish State funds a school system in which most schools are controlled by religious patron bodies. There are no non-denominational schools registered with the Department of Education. Boards of management are required to uphold the characteristic spirit, or ethos, of the school as determined by the patron.

In addition, Irish equality law provides exemptions that allow religious bodies and schools to discriminate on the ground of religion in order to protect their religious ethos. These exemptions affect both employment of teachers, and access to education for non-religious families (Section 37 Employment Equality Act and Section 7 Equal Status Act)

The Irish State has no guidelines on how to give practical application to respecting the beliefs of all families equally in publicly funded schools. The only detailed guidelines in place are those issued by the Catholic Church. These assert that atheism and humanism are not ‘beliefs’, directly contradicting EU and international law.

In a case under the Equal Status Act, the WRC accepted the school’s argument that providing alternative classes for students who opted out of religion might cause chaos within the school. It also suggested that offering another subject to such a child could potentially discriminate against students who attended religious classes.

This illustrates the practical problem. Atheism and humanism are treated merely as an absence of religion. This means the burden falls on the non-religious child to fit around the religious ethos, rather than on the publicly funded school to respect all convictions equally.

The Civil Registration Amendment Act 2012 (Section 45A(1)) discriminates in favour of religious bodies over secular bodies in relation to the solemnisation of marriages. It also discriminates between secular bodies, as only secular bodies with humanist objects can solemnise marriages. The result is that religious bodies are trusted to define their own religious purposes, while secular bodies must fit a narrower statutory category.

Irish charity law and tax law also discriminate against citizens and bodies with non-religious philosophical convictions. The advancement of religion is recognised as a charitable purpose. The advancement of atheism, humanism, or secularism is not. Religious bodies can obtain charitable status and associated tax advantages for the advancement of religion. Secular philosophical bodies cannot.

Ireland should change its laws to reflect EU law on freedom of religion or belief.

I was in college back in the eighties. Browsing through Eason, I found the book that hooked me on putting words together. Gary Provost, a Boston-based columnist and instructor, wrote Make Every Word Count: A Guide to Writing That Works for Fiction and Nonfiction.

Born as World War Two wound down, young Gary grew up in a poor family headed by his mom. He wrote several unpublished novels in his twenties, then turned to nonfiction articles. These made his name for clear, persuasive prose.

Gary went on to publish twenty books. They spanned writing guides, true crime, business, biography, satire, novels, young adult fiction, and romance. This versatility earned him the nickname the Dustin Hoffman of writing. Sadly, he died of a heart attack aged fifty.

Four decades after I flicked through that paperback, its lessons have shaped my writing more than any other book, website, or seminar. They are simple, direct, and effective. I don’t always apply them. But I try, especially when editing my fuzzy first drafts.

In that time, I’ve written a bestselling book, a hit comedy musical, and decades of blog posts and advocacy documents. I’ve had many great mentors and influences. But the most pivotal was the spark Gary Provost lit in my college-age mind.

I’ll now attempt something Provost would have done better: compressing a book about precision into a few paragraphs, and discussing how I use it. For the full experience, including the exercises, you’ll have to buy the book.

Make your purpose clear

Provost said writing works when it does the job it is supposed to do. It might entertain, sadden, anger, persuade, or instruct. Make that purpose clear from the start. You don’t want readers giggling during a memorial.

That’s great advice, particularly for political advocacy documents. Start with what you are asking people in power to do, then support the need for that action with evidence. If it gets too long, start with a summary and table of contents.

Sometimes it is more complicated. In Dear John: the John Mackay Letters, I wrote with two purposes. The original letters to powerful people had to read as if they were sincere, while the same letters when published had to read as prank letters.

Make every word count

Provost said every word, sentence, and paragraph should have a job. If it doesn’t, drop it. Use simple, interesting words that most people understand, given context. Cut redundant words, wasted phrases, weak adverbs, clichés, and jargon. Use ‘he said’ for dialogue. Do all of this most of the time.

I don’t obsess over this in my first drafts, but most of good writing is rewriting. From my second draft on, I apply each of these rules. Weak adverbs are an easy target. I search for words ending in ‘-ly’ and change two-word actions (‘ran quickly’) into one stronger word (‘sprinted’).

Unless I need them for precision, I’ll drop modifying or filler words such as like, very, really, basically, absolutely, actual, that, then, started to, and felt. I’ll write ‘nostalgia’ and ‘hope’ instead of ‘nostalgia for the past’ and ‘hope for the future’.

Write about people

Provost said write about people, and bring them to life. Use active voice, be specific, and say things in a positive way. Show, don’t tell, and appeal to the senses: sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch. Apply these rules most of the time, not always.

I, Keano: the Musical satirised our generation’s Irish civil war, when Ireland soccer boss Mick McCarthy sent skipper Roy Keane home from World Cup preparations in Saipan. But we wrote directly about two proud professionals, both unable to back down.

This principle applies to nonfiction as well as fiction. In this article about writing, I’m mostly writing about what Gary Provost did and taught, and about how I found his work and try to apply it. Most of my articles here on Substack follow this pattern.

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The music of your words

Provost said read your work aloud and listen to its music. Vary the length and structure. Use longer sentences for reflection, rhythm, or pomposity. Use shorter sentences when tension rises. And milk tension-based dialogue. Don’t end it too early.

This works very well for comedy. The Dear John letters used pseudo-smart words and multi-layered sentences to create the impression of a pompous writer. And we rewrote parts of I, Keano after the first run, having heard the audience reaction to the flow of our dialogue.

I only fully understood this rule when we wrote I, Keano. It makes sense when writing for print, but it comes alive when writing for stage. When Keano first arrives, and everyone is terrified, a long tense silence is broken by him quietly saying ‘hello’.

Keep descriptions short

Provost said keep descriptions short. Use details that earn their place. Let dialogue reveal character, carry tension, and break up explanation. Plant ideas in readers’ minds, then pay them off. Don’t mention the gun on the wall unless it matters later.

When writing I, Keano, we couldn’t hide behind description. It was all dialogue and action. And sometimes just action. The writing was only part of the job, because the delivery completed the magic.

Be persistent

Provost’s final message was be persistent. If your writing matters to you, then it matters. If a reader finds value in it, it has value. Keep writing, reading, learning, submitting. Persistence works. Make every word count.

I first saw my words in print as a schoolboy, when Soccer Reporter printed a letter to the editor slamming my club Bohs as boring. I responded, and was buzzing when I saw my words in the paper. Fifty years later, I’m still writing. Because I love it. And because, like Gary Provost, I need to fix every fuzzy sentence.

The recent papal encyclical on Artificial Intelligence wisely warns about the impact of AI on society. It argues we should openly discuss ethical frameworks that shape human lives. It also says we should subject those ethical frameworks to shared standards of justice. I agree with the Holy See about this.

These are valid tests for concentrated moral and practical power. The Holy See could benefit from applying them to the Catholic Church itself. There are many analogous areas where the Catholic Church has moral influence over people around the world, and where the Holy See exercises disciplinary authority within the Church.

The Pope has supreme power in the Church. The hierarchy consults only some of the people it governs, often in secret, about who should govern them and about what they should believe and do. It can create the appearance of shared participation through multiple lay consultations. But at the end of those consultations, the hierarchy decides what will happen.

The papal encyclical also argues that the truth of facts has a rational dimension. It says it requires verification, cross-checking of sources, and responsible argumentation. But the Holy See does not apply these standards to its own claims about truth. Instead, it claims its doctrine is truth received through revelation. And it sees its role as guarding that truth from challenge.

In fairness, the Catholic Church does not claim to be democratic. And it is, of course, entitled to govern itself in whatever way it wishes, subject to civil law and civil rights. But it has chosen to wisely warn society of the dangers of concentrated power, the need for open discussion, and the veracity of facts.

Having done that, it should welcome the same scrutiny being applied to its own teaching and governance.

Power concentrated in the hands of a few

The papal encyclical argues:

“95. These entities effectively set the conditions for access, determine the rules of visibility and shape the very possibilities for participation. When such power is concentrated in the hands of a few, it tends to become opaque and evade public oversight, increasing the risk of distorted forms of development that give rise to new dependencies, exclusions, manipulations and inequalities.”

“105. In many cases, however, the internal processes leading to a result remain opaque, making it harder to assign responsibility and correct errors. This is where accountability becomes crucial: the possibility of identifying who must “account” for decisions, justify them, monitor them, and, when necessary, challenge them and remedy any harm caused.”

But the Catholic Church’s own governance is strongly hierarchical. Canon law says the Pope has supreme, full, immediate, and universal ordinary power, and no appeal is permitted against a papal sentence or decree.

331. By virtue of his office he possesses supreme, full, immediate, and universal ordinary power in the Church, which he is always able to exercise freely.

333 §1. By virtue of his office, the Roman Pontiff not only possesses power over the universal Church but also obtains the primacy of ordinary power over all particular churches and groups of them.

331 §3. No appeal or recourse is permitted against a sentence or decree of the Roman Pontiff.

The Holy See consults only some of the people it governs, and in secret, about who should govern them and about what they should believe and do. In the words of the papal encyclical, this is opaque and evasive of public oversight.

377 §1. The Supreme Pontiff freely appoints bishops or confirms those legitimately elected.

747 §2. It belongs to the Church always and everywhere to announce moral principles, even about the social order, and to render judgment concerning any human affairs.

794 §1. The duty and right of educating belongs in a special way to the Church, to which has been divinely entrusted the mission of assisting persons so that they are able to reach the fullness of the Christian life.

The Catholic Church is entitled to govern itself in whatever way it wishes, subject to civil law and civil rights. But sometimes its doctrines become part of public policy. This can affect school ethos, healthcare, employment, and other issues that have an impact on everybody in society.

Lack of open discussion and accountability

The papal encyclical argues:

“107. [We must insist on] openly discussing the ethical frameworks involved and subjecting them to shared standards of social justice. Otherwise, those who control AI will impose their own moral vision, which will become the invisible infrastructure of these systems. A more moral AI is not enough if that morality is determined by a few.”

The Catholic Church creates the appearance of shared decisions. It holds lay consultations about various issues. But these discussions are restricted by things that the participants are instructed to believe. And when they finish, the hierarchy decides what will happen next.

750 §1. A person must believe with divine and Catholic faith all those things contained in the word of God, written or handed on, that is, in the one deposit of faith entrusted to the Church, and at the same time proposed as divinely revealed.

751. Heresy is the obstinate denial or obstinate doubt after the reception of baptism of some truth which is to be believed by divine and Catholic faith; apostasy is the total repudiation of the Christian faith; schism is the refusal of submission to the Supreme Pontiff or of communion with the members of the Church subject to him.

754. All the Christian faithful are obliged to observe the constitutions and decrees which the legitimate authority of the Church issues in order to propose doctrine and to proscribe erroneous opinions, particularly those which the Roman Pontiff or the college of bishops puts forth.

The Church’s aversion to developing shared standards of justice is most evident in its teaching on sexual-related issues.

2358. The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. This inclination, which is objectively disordered, constitutes for most of them a trial.

2359. Homosexual persons are called to chastity… by prayer and sacramental grace, they can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection.

2271. Since the first century the Church has affirmed the moral evil of every procured abortion. This teaching has not changed and remains unchangeable.

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The veracity of facts in the search for truth

The papal encyclical argues:

“132. The quality of public communication depends directly on social trust and, in turn, shapes it. At the same time, truthful information does not arise from centralised or automated control. In public discourse, the truth of facts has a rational dimension, as it requires verification, cross-checking of sources and responsible argumentation… Only the shared pursuit of the veracity of facts, perceived as a common good, can provide a solid foundation for just communication.”

“133. Those who command powerful technological and economic resources, along with substantial human capital for intervention, possess significant capabilities for influencing cultural change. Ultimately, they can influence a significant number of people concerning the truth about humanity, the world, the meaning of existence, the family and even God. This is pure power detached from truth, which subtly or overtly imposes what it wishes others to accept as true.”

But the Holy See does not apply these standards to its own claims about truth. It claims that its doctrine is truth received through revelation. And it sees its role as guarding that truth from challenge, not cross-checking its veracity.

747 §2. It belongs to the Church always and everywhere to announce moral principles, even about the social order, and to render judgment concerning any human affairs.

752. A religious submission of the intellect and will must be given to a doctrine which the Supreme Pontiff or the college of bishops declares concerning faith or morals.

753. The Christian faithful are bound to adhere with religious submission of mind to the authentic magisterium of their bishops.

And, perhaps the most symbolic Canon of all:

1404. The First See is judged by no one.

Conclusion

The Pope is wise to warn society about the dangers of AI to society.

We should openly discuss ethical frameworks that shape human lives. We should subject those ethical frameworks to shared standards of justice.

And the truth of facts has a rational dimension. It requires verification, cross-checking of sources and responsible argumentation.

Having raised these valid concerns, the Holy See should welcome the same scrutiny being applied to its own teaching and governance.

My friend Janie Lazar, of the lobby group End of Life Ireland, spoke last week in Barcelona at the launch of My Last Right, a European campaign for voluntary assisted dying. It wants the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights to include the right to assisted dying. It is led by the pan-European citizens’ democracy group Eumans and the World Federation of Right to Die Societies.

This campaign is important to me because my late wife Anne Holliday died fifteen years ago. She had terminal lung cancer, and had made plans to be able to take her own life if she needed to. Knowing she had this option greatly increased her quality of life during her last months alive. The right to die is also about the right to live well.

Anne and I worked with Tom Curran to promote assisted dying in Ireland. His partner Marie Fleming took a landmark legal case when she was in the final stages of multiple sclerosis. She lost the case, but the Supreme Court ruled that the Oireachtas could legislate for assisted dying. Thirteen years later, it hasn’t.

Anne and Marie’s lives and deaths

Anne and I loved each other very much for a quarter of a century. Anne was smart, sexy, funny, and courageous. She was loving and loyal to her family and friends. And she campaigned to build a peaceful, liberal, secular, and caring Ireland.

Anne did not want to die, but nor did she fear death. She was grateful to have had enough notice of her death to be able to do many things that she wanted to do first. And she wanted to die peacefully and painlessly rather than have to suffer needlessly before dying.

She had decided that, if she had reached that stage, she would have ended her own life. I would have helped her to do this. Once she had made that decision, her quality of life soared and we were able to fully enjoy the time she had left.

Like most people who make this decision, Anne died naturally in the end. She was told she had six months to live, but she lived for a year and a half, and we made the most of that precious time together.

When Anne was dying, we met Tom, whose partner Marie did not want to live through the final stages of multiple sclerosis. Marie argued that suicide had been decriminalised in Ireland, but that she was discriminated against on the ground of her disability because she could not exercise that lawful choice without assistance.

Marie took her case as far as the Irish Supreme Court. The Court ruled that, despite suicide being lawful, there is no Constitutional right either to suicide or to arrange for the termination of one’s own life.

However, the Court did say that the Oireachtas could legislate to allow assisted dying, if it included safeguards to ensure that the law was not abused. Since then, the Oireachtas has failed to legislate for this right.

Soon after that, Marie died in the way she had wanted to. She did not have to undergo the unnecessary suffering that she wanted to avoid. But not everybody is as lucky. Not everybody has the psychological resources and support network that Marie and Anne had.

The My Last Right campaign

Across the EU, the law is uneven. Belgium, Netherlands, and Luxembourg allowed euthanasia early this century, and Spain followed five years ago. Austria, Germany, and Italy allow assisted suicide in more limited forms.

Estonia is developing laws following a court ruling that legalised assisted suicide. In Portugal, a new law is not yet fully operational. Other countries have debated reform, including Ireland, France, Cyprus, Malta, and Slovenia.

The My Last Right campaign, launched at the Barcelona conference, wants the European Union to take four steps:

• Add a right to voluntary assisted dying to the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights.

• Pass EU legislation protecting the individual’s right to decide the means and timing of death, where the person is capable of freely deciding and acting.

• Create cross-border recognition for living wills and advance directives, with an EU-linked database.

• Convene a European Citizens’ Assembly on the right to die.

You can add your name to an online petition if you support this.

The direct aims are politically ambitious. Changing the EU Charter is a treaty-level project, and the European Commission is reluctant to intervene at national level. But the campaign can also highlight the issue among MEPs, and ultimately bring closer the right to assisted dying for EU citizens.

The campaign is led by Eumans and the World Federation of Right to Die Societies.

Eumans is a pan-European movement for citizen-led initiatives, engaged in a grassroots political mobilisation. It promotes participatory democracy, social justice, and nonviolent action.

The World Federation Right to Die Societies is a global federation advocating for assisted dying. Its message: death is unavoidable, and people should be able to choose the timing and manner of their death with dignity and without suffering.

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Assisted Dying in Ireland

Since Anne and Marie died, two Dying with Dignity Bills have stalled in the Oireachtas: John Halligan’s in 2015, and Gino Kenny’s in 2020. The Justice Committee then recommended that a Special Oireachtas Committee be set up to progress legislation. That committee finally reported in 2024.

It recommended that the Government introduce legislation allowing for assisted dying, in certain restricted circumstances as set out in the recommendations in this report. Two years later, nothing has been done and voluntary assisted dying is not part of the current programme for government.

Janie Lazar leads End of Life Ireland, a lobby group that calls on the Irish government to legislate for this choice with a robust framework of safeguards.

Janie says dying people cannot wait. Criminalising voluntary assisted dying does not stop people from dying. It means some dying people travel overseas, some covertly take their own lives, and some suffer longer than they need to. It also means loved ones may fear imprisonment for helping someone travel or obtain the means to end their life.

End of Life Ireland wants people to understand what terminal, progressive, and incurable conditions can mean to an individual; how peace of mind can come from knowing that a legal option exists; and how simply knowing there is an option can improve the quality of life of a dying person, even if they never choose to use it.

The law must catch up with the people

Every year, many good people face an ethical dilemma between lawful suffering and unlawful compassion. And they face it at a time when they are at their most vulnerable and need the most support.

Ultimately, this is an issue where the law must catch up with reality. Lawmakers are not in control of what terminally ill people choose to do, because terminally ill people have their own ethical priorities and their own autonomy.

That was Anne’s experience. It is why this campaign matters to me.

I support the right to live well while dying. Terminally or seriously ill people who want to live as long as they can should get the best medical resources. And terminally or seriously ill people who want to die peacefully at a time of their choosing should be able to carry out their wish.

• Sign the My Last Right petition here

• Find out more about End of Life Ireland here

When the Dáil debated the 2012 law that introduced secular marriages, the Minister said everyone in Leinster House agreed we should not have Elvis impersonators solemnising marriages like they do in America. But the attempt to privilege vestments over Vegas has left Irish marriage habits all shook up.

One way of looking at the culture shift is by type of ceremony. Four in ten Irish marriages are now secular (either Civil Registry or Humanist), while only three in ten are Catholic. Almost beneath the radar, a quarter of Irish marriages are now some variation of Spiritualist or other alternative ceremonies. These are registered as religious marriages.

Another way of looking at the culture shift is by type of provider. There is now a roughly three-way split between Civil Registry marriages (conducted by the State), traditional religious marriages (provided by a church for its members), and bespoke ceremonies (mostly Spiritualist or Humanist) provided for any couples on a commercial basis.

This is not a standalone shift in Irish marriages. It reflects similar shifts to varying degrees in religious practice, preferred school choices, and identity generally. We are increasingly assembling our own personal identities and values, rather than inheriting them from traditional religious institutions.

It also reflects wider changes in society. We now live in many different kinds of families. More of us work freelance or from home. I can remember RTÉ and Fianna Fáil/Fine Gael combined having 80% market share. They’re now also one choice among many. But the State too often acts as if it is still regulating for the old world.

In the specific context of Irish marriage culture, let’s look at how this change has evolved since the turn of the century, and how a successful attempt to restrict secular bodies from legally solemnising marriages has led to an unintended unregulated new marriage industry.

Gradual decline in Catholic marriages, 2000-2013

In 2000, the basic pattern was what society expected in old Ireland: eight in ten couples got married in a Catholic Church, to the sound of church bells and hymns, and the smells of frankincense and myrrh. Only one in six couples had Civil Registry marriages. These fifteen-minute ceremonies took place in an office, with the registrar, the couple, and two required witnesses.

From 2004, Civil Registry marriages could take place in hotels or historic buildings. In 2010, the Spiritualist Union of Ireland performed its first legal marriage. It was registered with the State as a religious body. Then the Civil Registration Amendment Act 2012 allowed the Humanist Association of Ireland to provide secular ceremonies, under strict legal conditions that didn’t apply to religious bodies.

By 2013, the old default had weakened. Catholic marriages had fallen from 80% to 62.5%, while Civil Registry marriages had almost doubled to 29.5%. This cultural shift was mostly towards the State itself. Many couples were moving away from church marriages, but the main available alternative in practice was the Civil Registry, which was no longer restricted to holding ceremonies in an office.

The following year, the picture became more publicly diverse. The CSO began publishing figures separately for the Spiritualist Union and Humanist Association, which together accounted for 7.8% of marriages. This marked the start of a visible alternative-marriage culture that reflected the couples’ own beliefs and values.

First wave of alternative ceremonies, 2014-2022

Between 2014 and 2022, that pluralisation accelerated. Couples who wanted spiritual language and vibes without traditional Church structures could go to the Spiritualist Union. Couples who wanted a secular ceremony with personal meaning beyond a registry office could go to the Humanist Association.

Catholic marriages fell sharply again, from 59.3% to 40.5%. Civil Registry marriages dropped slightly from 28% to 26.2%. But the real growth came from the new alternatives. The Spiritualist Union and Humanist Association became major smaller players, together conducting one in five marriages by 2022.

This increase in alternative ceremonies also highlighted an anomaly in the law. Legally, you cannot solemnise marriages for profit or gain. In practice, traditional religions often charged for conducting marriages, but described the payment as a voluntary donation to the church. The State always turned a blind eye to this legal grey area.

Now the new alternative providers openly charged for their services on a commercial basis. Some argued they were only charging for the ceremony, not the solemnisation, but in reality they both came as a package. As it already did with church voluntary contributions, the State again turned a blind eye to the widening gap between the wording of the law and what was happening in practice.

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Second wave of alternative ceremonies, 2023-2025

The years from 2023 to 2025 show a second, and faster, culture shift. Civil Registry marriages have now overtaken Catholic marriages, by 33.4% to 29.8%. And secular marriages (Civil Registry plus Humanist) have risen to four in ten. That is a symbolic milestone.

Also, a second wave of alternative religious providers now conduct one in every five marriages. These include Entheos, One Spirit, The Earth, One World, Our Spiritual Earth, and FuturFaith. This second wave has collectively overtaken the two first wave alternatives of the Spiritualist Union and Humanist Association, which have dropped to a combined 13.2%.

Another legal anomaly has sped up this fragmentation. The 2012 law that allows the Humanist Association to solemnise marriages, places strict conditions on who can perform secular marriages. The body must exist for five years, have fifty members, be ethical and humanist, and cannot promote a political cause.

But those legal restrictions do not apply to religious bodies. All they must do is meet regularly for worship, and even that is not policed in practice. Some of the alternative bodies are genuinely religious, including Pagan and Celtic traditions. But others openly advertise themselves as offering a commercial ceremony service for any couples, and some explicitly say they are not religious.

So the law creates a perverse incentive for secular bodies that want to solemnise marriages for profit. They can try, and almost certainly fail, to register as a secular body. Or they can more easily register as a religious body, and work within that new effectively unregulated sector. Like so much else in society, traditional structures are fragmenting then further fragmenting.

Summary of the culture change

In the space of a generation, Irish marriage culture has moved from a traditional religious default to personal choice, complicated by legal regulations that don’t make sense and are mostly ignored. Catholic marriage has declined from overwhelming dominance to one option among many.

Civil Registry marriage has become the largest single category, and secular marriages (Civil Registry plus Humanist) are now more popular than either traditional religious (still mostly Catholic) or new religious alternatives (mostly some variation of Spiritualist).

This is not a standalone shift in Irish marriages. It reflects a wider fundamental shift in society. Traditional institutions are losing ground to stronger personal autonomy, but the State is acting as if it is still regulating for the old world. Everything is all shook up.