This was great news on so many levels. First and foremost, with most polls I saw having Deform UK slightly ahead, there is the huge relief in seeing them comfortably pushed back into second place in the end.
The poll also supports the growing evidence that the Conservative Party is a ‘dead man walking’; well, just about staggering. As far as Wales is concerned, it may finally collapse into its final resting place in next year’s Senedd elections. Fingers crossed!
Leanne Wood established Plaid Cymru as a left of centre eco-socialist leaning party, but one that still harboured some right-wing nationalists. It has taken a long time for it to gain credibility as a genuine, trustworthy, left of centre party. When Leanne stepped away it lost momentum for a while. But now, as Welsh Labour’s treachery and role in undermining the Corbyn project, that had the overwhelming support of socialists across Wales, and their consequent support for the disgusting knight of the realm, Starmer, who actively purged true socialists from the Labour Party, it is now clear that the Welsh public have had enough.
And Labour look destined to receive a mighty, long-overdue comeuppance next year too. This is a hugely emblematic result that signifies, I believe, that the people of Wales now have the courage to re-assert themselves as pioneers of progressive change. Remember that the Chartist movement took root in South Wales; that the Merthyr Rising was a key staging post in the establishment of Trade Unions; and, that the NHS was born in Wales. This is why the Labour Party was for such a long time the party of Wales. And it is why ever since Welshman Neil Kinnock scrapped Clause 4 and laid the groundwork for the shift right that became entrenched by Blair (and now re-inforced by Blair v.2.0 Starmer) it has slowly drifted away from serving the interests of the Welsh people.
Thus, this by-election was always a two horse race between Plaid Cymru and Reform UK. The full Senedd elections next year look set to be the same, although Labour will not go down without a fight, and that may well let Reform UK in, in quite a few places at least.
Reform UK are a problem that is not going away any time soon. They are riding the wave of right-wing populism that has swept vast parts of the globe by offering the tried and tested formula of simplistic scape-goating of vulnerable minorities allied with MAGA (Make Anywhere Great Again) mentalities of bringing back the ‘good old days’, without pointing out just who benefitted most in those ‘good old days’ before free health care for all, before ‘women’s liberation’, before strong trade unions, before environmental protection measures.
The turn out in this by-election was encouraging, although scraping 50% is hardly impressive. But is double that of many by-elections. And it brought out enough thinking people to repel Reform. Farage said that they had a target of getting 12,000 votes, believing that would be enough to win. They did indeed get 12,000 votes but the higher than anticipated turnout saw PC surge from a projected 11,000 votes to a resounding 16,000 votes in the end. Fear of the prospect of Reform winning would seem the likely prompt that 5,000 people needed.
Seeing some to the BBC interviews with Caerphilly residents today (the day after the election) who didn’t vote offers a bit more cause for optimism. All the ones I saw were pleased that Reform didn’t win. One was a guy his 60s who had always voted Labour, had given up on them, but couldn’t bring himself to vote for anybody else. Another was a 16 year old school lad who said he didn’t feel able to vote because he didn’t know enough. He said most of his mates were the same, and that he felt the voting age should still be 18, but did also say that those he knew that had voted had voted for Plaid Cymru. This anecdotal evidence suggests to me that PC do have scope to focus on these key demographics to generate more support next year. I hope they are taking note.
Finally, let me say how pleased I was for Lindsay Whittle, the winning candidate. The 72-year-old candidate, has been involved in electoral politics in Caerphilly for decades. He has stood in council elections 18 times, for Westminster 10 times, and for every Senedd election in the last 26 years. He previously sat as a regional MS from 2011 to 2016. He may not exactly be the future of Welsh politics, but he is living proof that commitment and dedication can pay off. I am sure that Caerphilly have themselves a wonderful advocate for the town who will repay their faith in him.
I had the pleasure of attending a talk by Brian Klaas at the Humanist UK Convention in Cardiff in 2024, so when his new book, Fluke: chance, chaos, and why everything we do matters, came out a few months ago, I got a copy and have just started reading it. Within a few pages I am inspired to write this blog.
He opens with a story I first came across when I visited Japan in 2003. The story starts in October 1926 (a month before my father was born) when Mr H.L. Stimson, a lawyer from New York, took his wife on a romantic vacation to Japan, where they fell in love with Kyoto’s pristine gardens, magnificent historic temples, and rich heritage, just as I did.
Fast forward nnnnnineteen [sic] years and Stimson, a lifelong Republican, had become Secretary of War under Franklin D. Roosevelt, and then under Harry S. Truman when FDR died in April 1945.
Four weeks after FDR died saw the Nazis surrender and the end of the war in Europe. The focus now shifted to the Pacific and the pressure was on to bring the war of attrition there to an end. An opportunity was glimpsed to bring the Japanese to their knees by deploying ‘The Gadget’ that scientists and the military had been working on in a remote outpost in the deserts of New Mexico.
Despite no successful testing having taken placed, it was concluded that they might as well determine which of the two prototypes is most effective by dropping one of each Japan. The Target Committee therefore needed to come up with the two target cities. Kyoto came out as by far the militarists’ number one target as it was the home of Japan’s most modern warplane factories, was an intellectual centre at the forefront of pioneering technology and a cultural centre and former capital city. The second target was to be Kokura, housing the country’s largest military arsenal. The reserve targets were Yokohama and Hiroshima.
This list of four targets was passed from the Target Committee to Truman’s cabinet for ratification, at which point War Secretary Stimson vetoed the bombing of Kyoto altogether. After much toing and froing, it was agreed that Hiroshima would replace Kyoto as target number 1, while Kokura remained target number 2, with Nagasaki creeping onto the reserve list alongside Yokohama.
And so, on August 6, 1945, Little Boy fell from the Enola Gay, not on Kyoto, but on Hiroshima, killing 140,000 people, mostly civilians going about their daily lives. Meanwhile the civilians of Kyoto escaped this fate because Stimson had had a lovely time there 19 years previous.
Three days later, on August 9, Bockscar dropped Fat Man, not on Kokura, but on Nagasaki because of unexpected cloud cover in the area that did not quite extend as far as Nagasaki. Such small details determined which 80,000 ordinary Japanese folk died that day. Those clouds saved Kokura’s residents and condemned those of Nagasaki to death. To this day, the Japanese refer to “Kokura’s luck” whenever someone unknowingly escapes a disaster.
Of course, although minor details and chance events influenced which city’s populations would be annihilated, the decision to use these weapons of mass destruction at all was the culmination of a near-infinite array of arbitrary factors that lead to the rise of Emperor Hirohito, the education of Einstein, the creation of uranium by geological processes millions of years ago, etcetera, etcetera.
Whenever we explore anybody’s personal and family histories, we are likely to find numerous examples of Kokura’s luck. We all owe an inordinate amount to luck in ever being born at all, let alone to all the good (and bad fortune) in our lives.
Klaas puts it like this:
“When we consider the what-if moments, it’s obvious that arbitrary, tiny changes and seemingly random, happenstance events can divert our career paths, re-arrange our relationships, and transform how we see the world. To explain how we came to be who we are, we recognise pivot points that were often out of our control. But what we ignore are the invisible pivots, the moments that we will never realise were consequential, the near misses and near hits that are unknown to us because we have never seen, and will never see, our alternative possible lives.”
Klaas goes on to make the following logical and pretty darn obvious point, that really got me sitting up and taking notice:
“There’s a strange disconnect in how we think about the past compared to our present. When we imagine being able to travel back in time, the warning is the same: make sure you don’t touch anything. A microscopic change to the past could fundamentally alter the world. You could even accidentally delete yourself from the future. But when it comes to the present, we never think like that…. Few panic about an irrevocably changed future after missing the bus. Instead, we imagine the little stuff doesn’t matter much because everything just gets washed out in the end. But if every detail of the past created our present, then every moment of our present is creating our future too.”
That’s a pretty sobering thought, isn’t it? I don’t think Klaas is suggesting we should get paranoid about the implications of every moment of the day (that way madness surely lies) but it does mean that much smaller things than we can imagine can have significant consequences and following this line of thinking through it means that the deliberate actions we take almost certainly will have knock-on consequences way beyond what we imagine they do. That is a very encouraging thought, isn’t it? Especially for activists that hope to change the world but struggle to see the impacts they are making in perhaps a wider perspective or longer term than we look for.
“I am backing myself to be of a rare generation that suffers no major calamity in my lifetime. I hope to avoid direct involvement in war; to avoid being forcibly relocated; to avoid having to source my own food and collect my own water; and to avoid witnessing the breakdown of society around me. I have a sporting chance, I reckon.”
The odds have lengthened considerably in the intervening years. In this time, we have seen multiple genocides, such as in Myanmar, Sudan, Syria, Central Africa and, of course, Palestine. We have seen negligible progress in averting climate catastrophe. We have seen war in Europe. We have seen a groundswell of right-wing populism around the world with fascism raising its ugly head again in Europe and other continents, including in the USA. And Putin has his hand hovering over the big red button. Sadly, technology has moved on such that the frequent cloud over South Wales cannot save us this time.
I am writing to demand immediate action is taken to ensure that Aston Villa’s match with Maccabi Tel Aviv on 6 November does not go ahead. The FA and UEFA must work to cancel the match and expel Israel from membership from international footballing bodies. If this does not happen, Aston Villa FC must refuse to host and play the match.
Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in Gaza has killed many tens, if not hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, including many hundreds of Palestinian footballers. It has annihilated Gaza’s footballing infrastructure such as stadiums, training facilities and pitches.
In the occupied West Bank, Israel has systematically targeted Palestinian sports infrastructure, while its military invasions of towns and refugee camps have killed scores of Palestinian footballers. Last year, Israeli forces deliberately destroyed Jenin Municipal Football Stadium during their military offensive on the city.
Allowing Israeli football teams to compete in international competitions sanitises this horrific violence and allows Israel to cynically present itself as a normal country, obscuring the truth that it is carrying out a genocide in Gaza, and imposing a regime of settler-colonialism, military occupation and apartheid against Palestinians.
The Israel Football Association directly participates in Israel’s crimes against Palestinians. It contains at least six football clubs based in illegal Israeli settlements on stolen Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank. These football teams are part of the infrastructure of Israel’s military occupation, ruled illegal by the International Court of Justice.
Maccabi Tel Aviv has itself been directly involved in Israel’s atrocities. The club has sent “care packages” to Israeli soldiers committing genocide in Gaza and organised videos of club employees serving as Israeli soldiers as motivation ahead of matches.
Moreover, the club’s fans have a long history of anti-Palestinian racism and violence. This was exemplified in Amsterdam last year, when its fans marauded through the streets, attacking residents while chanting genocidal slogans. If the match goes ahead these fans will descend on Birmingham, putting local residents at risk of racist violence.
I am sending this letter to the FA, UEFA and Aston Villa FC to ask that each takes action respectively to ensure that the match does not go ahead. The FA and UEFA must work to cancel the match and ensure Israel is expelled from international footballing bodies. While Aston Villa FC must refuse to host and play the match.8 Min-y-Coed Brackla Brackla
Claims that it’s getting harder for scientists not to believe in God are right-wing Christian propaganda. Discuss.
As part of the research that I am undertaking into human spiritual beliefs, I have been undertaking a series of interviews with people from a range of backgrounds and perspectives.
The most recent interview I did was with a devout Christian physics teacher. These are always fascinating discussions; I have spoken to other religious scientists in the past. I’ll save the full details of these discussions for the book I hope to publish but save to say there was one particular assertion I encountered in this discussion last week that chimed with a few other things that I had heard and read recently.
This physics teacher asserted that the more he grew to learn about physics and its order, laws and patterns, the surer he was that there is a creator god behind it all.
It is essentially an advertorial by its author, Michel-Yves Bolloré, for his new book, ‘God, The Science, The Evidence’ co-authored with Olivier Bonnassies, which I have ordered. I have ordered it because I am intrigued to see if there is actually any substance behind the assertions made in the article that I will shortly dissect for you.
But first some due diligence. I regularly point out to people the importance of checking out sources and looking for hidden agenda. It is also critical to be able to evaluate evidence presented for its rigour and authenticity. And remember, as the great Carl Sagan asserts, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
First of all, The Spectator as a source. First published in 1828, it has legitimate claims to be the oldest surviving magazine in the world. It is politically conservative, avowedly Tory even, given that editorship of the magazine has often been a step on the ladder to high office in the Conservative Party in the United Kingdom; its past editors include Boris Johnson (1999–2005) and other former cabinet members Ian Gilmour (1954–1959), Iain Macleod (1963–1965), and Nigel Lawson (1966–1970). The former Conservative MP Michael Gove took over from Fraser Nelson as editor on 4 October 2024.
Right-wing populists like Gove, Johnson and Farage have all seen the value of cosying up to Christian churches, aping Trump and his MAGA followers in the USA, as it is another lever to pull in divisive identity politics and scapegoating that is the bedrock of their approaches to building support. It is also why they like to undermine scientific expertise and consensus that undermines their objectives. Climate change scepticism, anti-vaccination propaganda, abortion and fertility rights are all examples that come to mind. Let us not forget that Michael Gove famously said, “I think the people of this country have had enough of experts”.
So, let us now consider the author of this article and book that Gove has platformed in The Spectator. Who is this man asserting it’s getting harder for scientists not to believe in God, Michel-Yves Bolloré?
Michel-Yves Bolloré is a French engineer, entrepreneur, and author known for his work in both industrial innovation and education. He has a strong academic background, holding degrees in computer science, applied mathematics, and business management. Michel-Yves Bolloré is part of the prominent Bolloré family, known for their significant wealth and influence in France. The family’s fortune primarily stems from the Bolloré Group, a conglomerate involved in logistics, media, and telecommunications. The family’s net worth is estimated at $8 billion. Michel-Yves Bolloré’s wealth is intertwined with the family’s business ventures and his own entrepreneurial efforts, contributing to their status as one of France’s wealthiest families. He is a lifelong Catholic. He has lived in London since 2011. He sponsored several Catholic academy schools in London during Gove’s tenure as Education Secretary.
Having presented the factual background to those responsible for this article, I will leave it to you to judge the credentials of the author and publisher, and whether they may have agenda being served by it.
Time to turn to the article itself. I’ll copy a paragraph at a time, in bold italics, then give my evaluation of it.
Many Baby Boomers are sceptical about God. They think that believing in a higher power is probably incompatible with rationality. Over the last few centuries, religious belief has appeared to be in rapid decline, and materialism (the idea that the physical world is all there is to reality) has been on the rise, as the natural outcome of modern science and reason.
Baby Boomers are generally regarded as people born between about 1945 and 1965, so aged about 60 to 80 at the time of writing. Bolloré was born in 1945 and I was born in 1962. We are both Baby Boomers. What does the last census of 2021 reveal about generational differences in having “No religion” (the census wording that would cover people sceptical about God)?
On this population pyramid, Baby Boomers would be aged 56-76 for the coloured bars and 46-66 for the 2011 outline. It is patently clear that currently the generation with the greatest religious scepticism is the 20-40 age group in 2021, whereas the Baby Boomers and their elders are the least likely to report having ‘no religion’ with this being even more strongly so now than ten years previously. The ONS reports that in 2021 18.6% of the population was over aged 65, but only 8.8% of those claiming ‘no religion’ were over aged 65. Overall, 37.2% of respondents claimed ‘no religion’ (a rise 12 % points in 10 years). Meanwhile Christianity fell below 50% for the first time ever, to 46.2% (a fall of 13.1% points in 10 years).
So, it is unclear why Bolloré chooses to pick out Baby Boomers scepticism about God. The majority of younger people are sceptical, whereas the majority of Boomers and older are apparently not!
Perhaps it is something to do with so many eminent and well-known sceptics coming from our approximate generation – Sagan, Dawkins, Dennett, Hitchens, Harris et al. Certainly, I wouldn’t contest the assertion that religious belief has appeared to be in decline, most assuredly in Europe at least, over the last few centuries. That is why we called it The Age of Enlightenment,after all!
As for ‘materialism’, I’m not sure that Bolloré properly understands the term. He says it is the idea that the physical world is all there is to reality. In actual fact, it maintains that all things, including mental states and consciousness, are results of material interactions. According to philosophical materialism, mind and consciousness are caused by physical processes, such as the neurochemistry of the human brain and nervous system, without which they cannot exist.
In other words, matter is the fundamental substance of nature. It holds that the so-called spiritual realm should be knowable and understandable if it exists. It does not preclude science eventually being able to understand it. Not so long ago, quantum physics was the stuff of supernatural fantasy and fiction. Bolloré has a twisted take on such scientific breakthroughs though, as we shall see shortly.
It is not entirely clear from the article (but maybe clearer in his book) just how science informs his worldview alongside his Catholicism, but it is likely be some type of monistic idealism; a philosophical system that emphasises the primacy of a single, unified reality, often identified as the Absolute or Nature, rather than a multitude of separate entities. It asserts that all existence is fundamentally mental or spiritual in nature. In other words, it usually asserts that consciousness is the fundamental substance of nature, with God being the supreme conscious entity that controls the universe.
I’ll allow you to evaluate this dichotomy, while reminding you of Occam’s Razor; a philosophical principle that suggests when faced with competing explanations for the same phenomenon, the simplest one—requiring the fewest assumptions—should be preferred.
But if this scepticism is common among my older generation, times are changing. As we come to the end of the first quarter of the 21st century, the tables are turning – with scientific discoveries making people question the very things they took for granted and thought rational. Perhaps surprisingly, Gen Z are leading the way, purporting that the belief in God’s existence might not be just a trend on the rise – it’s a rationally sound conviction, in line with their attitude towards science and religion.
I think we have established that Bolloré is mistaken in his assertion that scepticism is rife among Baby Boomers and the older generations. So, what about his perceptions of Gen Z? Gen Z covers people born from about 1995 to about 2010, i.e., currently about 15-30 years old. They are the generation considered the first to grow up with the internet and digital technology as a significant part of their daily lives. Contrary to Bolloré’s assertion, the census data above shows this generation to be amongst the most likely to have ‘no religion’. This is a bit simplistic though.
Various studies, including from Humanists UK, reveal that Gen Z have distanced themselves from traditional religious affiliations, but that there is a growing interest in spirituality and the belief in some form of god. This apparent open-mindedness leads them to be open to a much wider range of ideas and influences than us Baby Boomers. This is, of course, not always a good thing as it makes them vulnerable to all manner of conspiracy theories and bad advice. This is why critical thinking skills need teaching from an early age and should be as central to the curriculum as the 3’R’s.
While the findings of Copernicus, Galileo, and Darwin created the impression that the workings of the universe could be explained without a creator God, the last century has seen what I call ‘The Great Reversal of Science’. With a number of break-through scientific discoveries – including thermodynamics, the theory of relativity, and quantum mechanics, plus the Big Bang and theories of expansion, heat death, and fine-tuning of the universe – the pendulum of science has swung back in the opposite direction.
Copernicus’s work that proposed the heliocentric model, placing the Sun at the centre of the universe rather than the Earth, was published shortly before his death in 1543, meaning he escaped retribution from the R.C. Church, but his great work ‘De Revolutionibus’ was placed on the Church’s ‘Index of Forbidden Books’.
Ninety years later, Galileo publicly advocated for the Copernican theory and this led to him being tried by the Roman Inquisition in 1633, and found “vehemently suspect of heresy”. Initially imprisoned, this was commuted to house arrest, under which he remained until his death in 1642.
As for Darwin, there has always been obvious resistance to evolutionary theory from Bible funda(mentalists) that take Bible accounts literally despite the glaringly obvious flaws. The Catholic Church has generally accepted the theory of evolution as a valid scientific explanation for the development of life and sees no intrinsic conflict between faith and science. In essence, God has always remained the fall-back position to explain what science cannot explain. Thus, we saw the emergence in the 19th century of the “God of the Gaps” concept. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_of_the_gaps This is a theological concept that emerged in the 19th century and revolves around the idea that gaps in scientific understanding are regarded as indications of the existence of God. This perspective has its origins in the observation that some individuals, often with religious inclinations, point to areas where science falls short in explaining natural phenomena as opportunities to insert the presence of a divine creator.
Every big scientific breakthrough, some listed by Bolloré, does not see any sort of ‘reversal of science’, but simply a re-assertion that God is still a relevant and an available answer to questions still out of reach of science. The phrase “reversal of science” implies a misunderstanding of scientific progress, as scientific theories evolve based on evidence rather than simply reversing previous conclusions. A non sequitur occurs when a conclusion does not logically follow from the premises, which can happen if one assumes that scientific change is merely a reversal rather than a complex process of discovery, validation and re-evaluation.
More and more convincingly, and perhaps in spite of itself, science today is pointing to the fact that, to be explained, our universe needs a creator. In the words of Robert Wilson, Nobel Prize winner for the discovery of the echo of the Big Bang in 1978, and an agnostic: ‘If all this is true [the Big Bang theory] we cannot avoid the question of creation.’
Sure, science cannot avoid the question of what created the Big Bang, but there is an enormous leap from this to any sort of conclusion that there was a creator that in any way resembles most people’s idea of God.
Bolloré is being disingenuous to suggest that science is struggling for ideas about what came before the Big Bang. Some theories propose that the universe existed in a different state prior to the Big Bang, possibly involving a cold, dark universe or a phase of cosmic inflation that preceded the hot Big Bang event. This BBC Sky at Night Magazine article presents a few more ideas currently being explored.
But I struggle to find many reputable scientists that seriously propose a creator God as the explanation. Why is that? Science does not inherently reject the idea of a creator God; rather, it focuses on explaining the natural world through empirical evidence and does not address supernatural claims. ‘Supernatural’ simply means ‘I believe this despite the lack of any verifiable evidence’. If these phenomena exist, they are natural and should be able to be evidenced eventually. The work of microbes was deemed supernatural until we could see them. ‘Alternative medicine’ that works is simply medicine.
Many scientists and religious individuals find ways to reconcile their beliefs with scientific understanding, suggesting that science and faith can coexist. Science is simply a methodology to interrogate evidence and come to reliable conclusions. Faith is simply an attitude of mind towards things that cannot be evidenced (yet). They are clearly not mutually exclusive.
It is true that the existence of God cannot be proved incontrovertibly. While absolute proofs only exist in the theoretical domains of mathematics and logic, relative proofs are what we normally deal with, and what is generally considered ‘evidence’ in everyday life. If, like Richard Dawkins, we take a rational and scientific approach to the existence or non-existence of God, then we should only be persuaded by multiple, independent, and converging pieces of evidence.
Not much to argue with here other than some semantics. I would dispute that it is true that the existence of God cannot be proved incontrovertibly. Why can’t it? But it is true that there has been no verifiable evidence of God’s existence to date.
Yet again, Bolloré misappropriates words. What is considered ‘evidence’ in everyday life simply is not the same thing as what is regarded as valid evidence in scientific enquiry. In everyday life, and indeed even in courtrooms, casual and/or distant recollections, hearsay, gossip and circumstantial guesswork may all be deemed evidence. Most would agree that such things are weak evidence, but they are relied upon in the absence of better evidence, or the ability to understand better evidence, especially when there is a motive to come to a certain judgement.
There is, of course, such a thing as bad science too, undertaken without due attention to the scientific method, often with motives to manipulate findings. Good scientists will not jump to conclusions about multiple, independent and converging pieces of evidence. They will use this evidence to construct testable hypotheses and then seek to replicate and augment the evidence that supports the hypothesis with a high (but never absolute) degree of confidence. If God exists, then it is down to the proponents of the God hypothesis to produce the evidence. That evidence can then be interrogated and either corroborated or rejected accordingly. It is an impossible, illogical task for anyone to prove that something that doesn’t exist indeed doesn’t exist, as explained eloquently by Bertrand Russell with his Cosmic Teapot analogy.
Scientists across many fields of inquiry are now coming round to the idea that the thermal death of the universe and the Big Bang are strong evidence that our cosmos had an absolute beginning, while the fine-tuning of the universe and the transition from inert matter to life imply (separately) some more extraordinary fine tuning, showing the intervention of a creator external to our world.
Scientists across which fields of enquiry? Relevant fields of enquiry? ‘Fine tuning’ is the personification of physics processes that we are only just beginning to grapple with. None of this ‘shows’ the intervention of a creator at all. The key word that undermines this assertion is “imply”. Implications, at best, suggest things. They never “show’ anything conclusive.
With sets of converging evidence from different scientific disciplines – cosmology to physics, biology to chemistry – it is increasingly difficult for materialists to hold their position. Indeed, if they deny a creator, then they must accept and uphold that the universe had no beginning, that some of the greatest laws of physics (the principle of conservation of mass-energy, for example) have been violated, and that the laws of nature have no particular reason to favour the emergence of life.
“Converging evidence” of what exactly? Maybe I need to read the book to find out what this vague assertion is getting at. Upholding that the universe had no beginning is a possibility that has not been discounted. Anything infinite is difficult for ephemeral lifeforms (all life) to grasp I guess. And let us suppose for a moment that there was a creator God; does it necessarily still exist? Who or what created that God? What was it doing for the eternity before it came up with this universe? Why did it create a single species ‘in his likeness’ on one insignificant pale blue dot in the vastness of the cosmos? It raises way more questions than it answers, and I think Occam’s Razor should come into play again.
Weighing up the evidence on each side of the scale is a matter of intellectual rigour, and the question ‘Is there a creator God?’ is one we should all be asking ourselves, with serious implication for every one of us. What’s intriguing is that it’s actually the youth, who you’d think would be more preoccupied with more mundane and practical concerns, that are leading the way. Last August, a YouGov survey revealed that belief in God has doubled among young people (aged 18-24) in the last four years, with atheism falling in the same age group from 49 per cent in August 2021 to 32 per cent. Interpreting the data, Rev Marcus Walker, rector of St Bartholomew the Great in the City of London, mentioned that young people ‘seem really interested in the intellectual and spiritual side of religion’.
Seems a bit rich for Bolloré to invoke intellectual rigour, given what we have established so far! Weighing up the evidence available on the question ‘Is there a creator God?’, however, is not that challenging. It took a while to come, but there is the typical threat of judgement by a vindictive Catholic God in the words “with serious implication for every one of us” if we dare deny his existence (it’s always a ‘him’ in the Catholic imagination). A lack of evidence becomes a call to faith; a faith in that all-powerful, omnipotent, loving creator of all things bright and beautiful (as well as childhood cancer, humans imagining thousands of different deities, and Satan), who refuses to show himself but needs his ego massaging regularly lest he condemn us to everlasting hell.
I’m not going to disagree with Rev Walker though. It is indeed my experience that many young people are interested in the intellectual and spiritual side of religion, as I am! It is fascinating stuff. But I hope he doesn’t think that this will translate into a reversal of the decline in Christianity in the UK.
Another report from the think tank Theos revealed that Gen Z have a more balanced perspective towards the relationship between science and religion. Over one in two young people think religion has a place in the modern world, and the majority (68 per cent) of Gen Z respondents believe that you could be religious and be a good scientist.
Hmm.. Theos! Founded in 2006 with the support of the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, and Archbishop of Westminster, Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, it is avowedly ecumenical but committed to traditional Christian creeds. It has strong associations with conservative Christian organisations and has been criticised for a lack of transparency in its funding. Wikipedia states that Theos is a project of, and core funded by, the British and Foreign Bible Society. This charity somehow funds translation, production and distribution of free bibles around the world, as part of the United Bible Societies network. The funding of all of this is very opaque!
And just for clarity (not offered by Bolloré), the report mentioned in this paragraph is not exactly ‘another report’, but a report on the findings of the YouGov survey mentioned in the previous paragraph, which was commissioned by none other than the British and Foreign Bible Society.
That about half of young people think religion has a place in the modern world is a classic example of question framing. You only have to watch the daily news, currently dominated by two Abrahamic religions (i.e., worshipping the same God) wanting to annihilate each other in Palestine to see that religion very much occupies a place in the world today. As in this example, it is not a pretty place much of the time. Had the question been framed as ‘should the major world religions of today have a place in the world of tomorrow?’ we might well have seen a very different response.
That 68% of Gen Z think you can be religious and a good scientist at the same time is disappointingly low if anything. I think we established earlier that these two intellectual positions are not mutually exclusive. We have all surely received great medical care from great medics that have migrated here from all corners of the world, with many patently adhering to many different creeds, superficially at least. I remember being under the orthopaedic care of Dr JPR Williams (iconic Wales rugby full-back of the 1970s) in Bridgend, and he always had a Bible handy. The only time I saw him use it though was when he used it to whack and disperse a ganglion on my ankle!
Far from painting a picture in which the number of people believing in God is dwindling (which has been the usual narrative in the last century), this research suggests we are at the dawn of a revolution – one in which belief in God is not simply supported by science, but embraced by younger generations, too.
Given what we know of Bolloré’s background and beliefs, I am led to believe that he is deluding himself into believing that young British people will flock back to the Catholic church. There has been evidence of higher attendances in Catholic Churches, with the increase being in young adults, but these have been primarily from east European migrant workers of strictly Catholic upbringings. It saw the rise of Polskie Sklepy (Polish shops) in every town too. They have largely disappeared quicker than they arrived thanks to Brexit. The claim that ‘belief in God is [now] supported by science’ is the sort of ridiculous claim we hear on a daily basis from President Trump. I’ll say no more than that.
In general, Gen Z seems to have positive and hopeful view of science’s impact on the world. According to recent figures, 49 per cent of Gen Z trust scientists and academics the most to lead global change, far ahead of politicians (8 per cent) and world leaders (6 per cent) (WaterAid, 2025). And yet, they are still spiritually curious: their trust in science doesn’t preclude them from wanting to explore spirituality and contemplating something bigger than our universe.
Hallelujah! Nothing contentious here (other than relying on data from WaterAid on such matters, not that I have anything against WaterAid). It appears that 0% thought religious leaders should lead global change. Strange that Bolloré failed to notice that.
Could they be the ones showing older generations a new way forward, one in which religion and science can coexist? And, more to the point, we now have the scientific evidence that would support a big shift in perspective. In the words of 91-year-old Carlo Rubbia, Professor of Physics at Harvard and Nobel laureate: ‘We come to God by the path of reason, others follow the irrational path.’
There is nothing new in religion and science coexisting. They have been doing it for centuries; most certainly throughout the entire lives of us Baby Boomers. The evidence that Gen Z is more curious about spirituality and matters currently beyond the scope of science is neither surprising (in this age of ready access to information) as Gen Z have the tools and the wherewithal to explore anything they are curious about in ways that were impossible to imagine (fanciful notions, erring towards being supernatural) when Bolloré and I were their age.
Thankfully, I can find no evidence that young people are flocking to the Roman Catholic Church that I left behind at 14 (after a couple of years of learning about science). I would concede that there is greater chance of such evidence being forthcoming than there is of verifiable evidence of a creator god.
As for Carlo Rubbia, he, like Michel-Yves Bolloré, is a lifelong Catholic; eleven years older than Bolloré. Culturally it would have been very difficult for Rubbia to not be a Catholic growing up in Italy, just as it was for my father growing up in Poland. I am therefore not at all surprised that this brilliant physicist still clings to his religion and cannot help falling for the ‘God of the Gaps’ fall-back. Indeed, this quote from him (in response to a magazine asking him “Do you believe in God?”) is nigh on identical to what I got from the physics teacher I interviewed recently:
“The more you observe nature, the more you perceive that there is tremendous organization in all things. It is an intelligence so great that just by observing natural phenomena I come to the conclusion that a Creator exists.”
Sounds like a hunch from an observation to me. He has no better explanation. I find the title of his book intriguing: “The Temptation to Believe” (published by Rizzoli but appears to be out of print). He has patently succumbed to the temptation.
To return to my subtitle at the top of this piece, and my assertion that the claims that scientists are finding it harder to not believe in God are little more than right-wing conservative Christian propaganda, I think we can all see evidence for this in the way the media presents debates on issues such as climate change (there is no debate on it scientific circles), abortion and reproductive rights (morality derived from the Old Testament) and ‘traditional family values’ (that seem to embrace misogyny and homophobia). This is rife in the US, but present in the UK too.
The conservative right are not people whose morality I respect. They certainly do not get it from the Jesus dude in the Bible. For example, many of Jesus’s teachings resonate with socialism: in one story —told in three variants in three books of the Bible — a rich man asks Jesus what he needs to do to be perfect. Jesus says, ‘sell all your possessions and give the money to the poor’. We can imagine the reaction of people like Trump and Rubio, Boris Johnson and Gove and other economic elites (billionaires like Bolloré) to being confronted with a message like that!
When Donald Trump was campaigning for president, he claimed he loved the Bible but then was unable to elaborate when asked about his favourite verses. His supposed love for the Bible helped him fool the masses and get him elected. Similarly, U.S. Senator Marco Rubio garners support from conservative Christians by sending out periodic Bible tweets, very cutely selected.
India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi also regularly presents himself as a religious devotee, despite his clear economic conservatism and disdain for the poor. His image and messaging is way more prevalent all over India than any religious messaging. It was on every major throughfare and most public buildings I saw in India first hand.
Despite growing scientific evidence about consciousness and related spiritual concepts and the ongoing political relevance of religion, many intellectuals or people affiliated with progressive movements still shun concern with human spirituality. The irony of this dismissal is that it is a losing political strategy. It allows people like Trump and Modi to exploit human spirituality and manipulate people’s spiritual sensibility, gaining support from the very constituency they will inevitably go on to eviscerate. They use it to ‘persuade turkeys to vote for Xmas’, in other words.
I contest that it is not actually any harder for scientists to not believe in God, but I also contest that it is certainly getting harder for political progressives to ignore questions of human spirituality and the role that religion plays in people’s lives, for better or worse.
Bridgend's Green Leftie 