Everyone talks about the Dark Ages. By that we usually mean the period from the fall of the Western Roman Empire (say 450AD) to the High Middle Ages (1066 if you are English). But professional historians never use this term and haven't done so for years. To them, the Dark Ages are called the Early Middle Ages precisely because they were not very dark.

The term 'dark' originates from the comparative lack of the written sources in the period. Actually, it depends where you are and what sort of stuff you are interested in. In France we have Geoffrey of Tours' History of the Franks and in England there is my own History of the English Church. A good deal of the Dark Ages is much better documented than the second and third centuries AD about which we know absolutely bugger all. Nowadays laypeople tend to see the Dark Ages as dark in the sense of benighted and superstituous, for which we usually blame the church. I've dealt with that particular libel often enough but have been reading Lynn White's Medeival Technology and Social Change and found that the early Middle Ages, especially from 700AD onwards, were actually a period of rapid change.

In war, the stirrup revolutionised the horse in battle and the need for these mounted knights ushered in the feudal system. Meanwhile agriculture became at least twice as productive as it had been under the Romans as the heavy plough, horse collar, horse shoe and three field rotation each improved yield. The result was a population explosion and the bringing in of most European wilderness under the plough. To process all this extra grain technology again came in to play with a rapid spread of the watermill, tidal mill and finally windmill. In terms of development, Europe in 1000AD was streets ahead of ancient Rome. If William the Conqueror had found himself fighting a Roman legion instead of Saxon housecarls, the result would have been no different.

One of the most common distortions you get in popular histories of religion is in the use of the term 'Roman Catholic Church'. We all think we know that this means. Coupled with the term 'Vatican' it means an ancient and all powerful organistation responsible for the corruption of Christianity, usually hand in hand with the Emperor Constantine.

It is true that the Nicene Creed refers to the 'Holy, catholic and apostolic church' but given both Protestants and Greek orthodox say the same words, we can be sure this does not mean the Roman Catholic Church. German Lutherans seem to be the one exception. I once attended evening song with a German at King's College Chapel in Cambridge where the Church of England service was according to Archbishop Cramner's words. The German was a Lutheran and rather surprised me by saying that at home, her church used the words 'Holy, Christian and Apostolic Church'. I don't know if it is true, but I do know that if it is, Luther will be rolling in his grave as he was quite certain that he was a true catholic even after the break from Rome.

So, 'Catholic' does not necessarily mean the Roman Catholic Church. By the later, we must mean the organisation of which the pope is the leader and which is based where the pope makes his court (usually in Rome but it has moved to Avignon in France). If you were reading the Da Vinci Code or many other popular books, you could be forgiven for thinking that the Roman Catholic Church enjoyed its power in the third and fourth centuries when Rome first converted to Christianity. Indeed, the Church itself likes us to believe this (I'm a Catholic too, but know better). In fact, the Popes have never had any authority over the Eastern Church and even though they declared themselves first among equals over the other patriarchs, this was a dead letter. But when the barbarians invaded the Western Roman Empire after 400AD, the Emperor, in Constantinople, found his writ no longer ran in the old western provinces and the Pope was left with a free hand. It was only in 496AD, when Clovis converted to Rome with his Franks, that the Pope's flock began to be significant.

All that stuff you hear about Constantine being in cahoots with the Roman Catholics and how the Council of Nicea was a Vatican plot are a load of rubbish. The Roman Catholics didn't even exist as a recognised group. 'Catholic' meant everybody who was an orthodox Christian, very few of whom looked to Rome. So, if you hear someone talking about the power of the Roman Catholics, the Pope or the Vatican before the late fifth century, you can be pretty sure they don't know what they are talking about.

A new page is up in Bede's Library containing several book reviews by Chris Price (and one by me) on the Jesus Myth. The highlight is Chris's review of Earl Doherty's The Jesus Puzzle. It is an odd fact that very few critical reviews of this book exist so a new one is always a good idea. One book we will not be reviewing, on a ccount of it being just too loopy to bother with, is Acharya S's The Christ Conspiracy. Luckily though, Dr Robert Price, late of Duke University and the closest you will find to a Jesus Myther with a relevant PhD, has written an entertaining article on this book. It was published a few years back and Dr Price has now kindly put it on his own website.

Speaking of Dr Robert Price, he has been in correspondence with our own Chris Price (no relation) over one of Chris's blog entries. It was entertaining a few weeks ago when the Internet Infidels found that their hero (that's Dr Price rather than Chris Price) voted Republican. It would appear that as far as the Infidels are concerned, supporting George Bush is even more insane than believing in God.

I agree with the commentators to my last post about the 'multiple universes' hypothesis. While many atheists try to simply deny that fine tuning exists, those who know their stuff, like Martin Rees, have to think up another explanation. The 'multiple universes' hypothesis does seem to be appallingly ad hoc however. Surely it is more rational to believe in one God with whom we feel we have a personal relationship than to believe in an infinite array of universes for which we have no evidence at all and furthermore, for which such evidence will almost certainly never be forthcoming. It was also useful that Gardner differentiated between the quantum mechanical 'many worlds' hypothesis as this is frequently confused with the 'multiple universes' postulated to explain fine tuning.

Elliott who comments here from time to time has suggested this link to an article by famous sceptic Martin Gardiner. It is a review of some of the sillier ideas to come out of physics and one gets the impression that Gardiner thinks that theism is a rather more sensible explanation for the universe. Nice to see Gardiner is a sceptic to all sides.

I have been very busy on school work so haven't had too much time to post here. However, I do have plenty of things lined up for as soon as I have a moment, so watch this space.

I come back from a few days away for New Year and find that, as usual, the blog has been well trolled by Mr Carr. Oh well, at least he has yet to say anything worth replying to and continues to make atheism look bad. The point about my alleged lack of compassion may or may not have come from Carr and is a typical example of nasty point scoring. I would only reply that I am indeed not the sort of person who never puts his heart on his sleeve. On the other hand, my final paragraph urged giving money as well as prayer and I stand by that.

Moebelwagon is way ahead of me as I was unaware that there were any other planets known to support [b]intelligent life[/b] (without which the concept of evil is meaningless). If we do find them, I'll bet my bottom dollar that they will have molten cores that produce a magnetic field to deflect cosmic rays as well. Moebelwagon also appears to believe the fact that the laws of physics are fine tuned to produce intelligent life is just chance. This may be the case but the odds seem to me to be astronomically against and I just don't have the kind of faith necessary to cling to the random-chance hypothesis.

The terrible earthquake and resulting tsunami in Asia has led to a fair amount of soul searching by religious people. It has, less creditable led to some gloating by atheists as well as rather more measured reactions questioning God (such as this from Martin Kettle in the Guardian).

The Problem of Evil is the name usually given to the question as to why an all-good, all-powerful and all-knowing God (the so-called omnimax conditions) allows bad things to happen to good people. The problem first came to a head in the eighteenth century when Hume and Voltaire, the later inspired by another earthquake, asked how God lets evil happen. Oddly, it is rarely those who are actually suffering who doubt God, but rather those who witness the suffering of others from the comfort of their armchairs. For instance, the burning of heretics is a standard example of God being implicated in evil deeds, but the heretics themselves would not dream of using such an argument against his existence. There may be a few atheists in foxholes, but not many.

Evil done by man to other men is explained by the freewill defence. This states that God allowing us to do evil is the price we pay for freewill which is a greater good overall. Not everyone finds this satisfactory but I am willing to accept it as an explanation for moral wrong. It doesn't help at all for earthquakes.

Another explanation is to deprive God of his omnimax status. This is appealing for a number of reasons. First, the Bible gives very little support for the idea that God is infinitely powerful. Rather he is powerful beyond our comprehension which still allows a limit long before we get to infinite. Another limitation, accepted by nearly all theologians, is that God is limited by logic. He cannot make a stone so heavy he can't lift it. He cannot make a square circular or two plus two equal five. Nor, of course, can he make us free and unable to sin. Theologians also claim that God cannot defy his own nature - that he cannot sin or force us to sin. It is entirely possible that logic dictates the kind of universe that he can create as well. Clearly he requires that the universe has integrity and that it runs itself according to the laws he has laid down. Contra Newton, God does not need to step in every once in a while and realign all the planets that have gone astray. It may well be that a universe capable of producing life has to contain certain factors whose trade-offs include natural disasters. God can either step in and prevent the disasters or he can decide that the universe's integrity is more important and that it must be allowed to develop unimpeded.

Where do these possibilities leave us with earthquakes? Why are they necessary? Can we think of a world that works as well as ours but where they do not happen? Frankly, no. Earthquakes are a result of plate tectonics. As the plates on the Earth's surface move around, occasion jolts are inevitable. But why have plate tectonics? For the answer to that we need to look at the Earth's sister planet Venus which has a single solid crust. This sounds great until we realise that the entire surface of the planet is made up of rocks the same age. Every few hundred million years, Venus overheats and the entire crust turns to an enormous field of magna and then reforms once the excess heat has been ejected. So if Earth didn't have tectonic plates and earthquakes there would be no life here at all. Why have a hot core to the planet? Because its flow generates the Earth's magnetic field that protects us from getting nuked by the solar wind generated by the sun.... And so it goes on. There is a reason for everything and some things that are absolutely necessary have side effects that we regret.

None of this helps the victims in Asia. For them, we should dig deep into our pockets. But they should be in our prayers too as God welcomes those who have died and offers his comfort to those who survive. And how much worse it would be if death really is the end? Above all, our trust in God gives us hope even when nature has done her worst.

Wishing a very Happy Christmas to all readers!

We may not know the date on which Jesus was born but it still makes sense to warm up the cold of winter with a celebration of the Incarnation - the day when God opened his eyes in the world of men. I mus say that seeing all the snowmen and reindeer in the shop windows in South Africa during the heat of summer just didn't feel right!

I'll be back in the New Year.

There has been a good deal in the news recently about how Google is going to scan millions of books and put them on-line for free. This is certainly a very good thing and will make matters much easier even for those of us who hold more library cards than credit cards. However, the books that will be on-line will all necessarily be out of copyright and so will not include anything that is really up to date. This does have some disadvantages of which we have already had a taster when debating with sceptics. Because old books are going to be much more easily available, we can expect internet scribblers to use them as authorities even when they are completely superceded and inaccurate. This has already happened with the Internet Infidels library that contains various 19th century anti-Christian rants mascarading as history. These are constantly pointed to by sceptics when they are asked to justify their assertions about scientists being burnt at the stake or the Church saying the earth is flat. So it is likely that Google will end up privileging out of date material over current scholarship simply by making the out of date stuff more easily available to armchair researchers.

Of course, Google's initiative is an overwealmingly good thing but I fear we will all have to get used to pointing out that it does not mean there is now a substitute for actually trudging around the library stacks looking for the latest scholarship.

I'm back from a delightful honeymoon in Cape Town. It is a real shock to be returning to the northern hemisphere winter. On Thursday, we went to an outdoor carol concert in the shadow of Table Mountain under the stars. Needless to say, outdoor carol concerts are something of a rarity in England...

I notice a few people have been adding comments to some older posts. This is welcome (although not all the comments were exactly sensible!) but it is better to stick to recent posts as older ones tend to get lost and comments on them go unnoticed. I hope I've now replied to all the emails that I received while I was away, but if you are waiting for a reply then let me know. Also, I've finished Steven Pinker's The Blank Slate and Roger Steer's Letter to an Influential Atheist so will write up reviews soon.

Some news on a personal front.

On Sunday I am getting married to a beautiful and intelligent woman called Vanessa and we are then setting off for Cape Town for our honeymoon. This means I will be effectively off-line for two weeks and I am also unlikely to be able to reply to any emails that arrive in this period. After that it is the Christmas season which is also rather busy so don't expect a regular service to resume before early January!