Yet another victim of our fireworks

I am deeply saddened by the news about the death of another person as the fireworks factory he worked in blew up. Unfortunately, I am not surprised. Four out of forty fireworks factories blew up since the beginning of the year. To me such statistics are shocking, but every time this happens, after a couple of weeks of letters and speeches and memorial services, everything goes back to "business as usual". Nothing changes. No new rules, no new safety procedures, making it just a matter of time before the next factory explodes.

Other countries have fireworks factories but I seriously doubt that they get 10% of their fireworks factories blowing up in a year and do nothing about it. What are we doing wrong? We've had four fireworks fatalities (in 40 factories) compared to 10 road fatalities (for 300,000 cars - up to end of June). That does not include non-fatal accidents like 13 year old boy hit in the eye though he was behind the "safety barrier", or the burning of the golf club at Marsa, and several accidents that go unreported.

Where fireworks are concerned, I wouldn't even know which end goes up, but I'm sure that something can be done to prevent this kind of accident from being almost a regular event.

"Verbal harassment" lawsuit could backfire

In The Times today there is a report about "the first local case of verbal sexual harassment at the workplace" - a company had to pay €2000 after a male employee made a joke/comment with sexual connotations to a female colleague.

I don't know enough about this specific case to comment about the incident - for all I know this may have been the latest in a long series of verbal abuse always directed at the same person, or the woman in question had made her feelings clear about such kinds of joke and been ignored. The manner in which such a comment was made is also relevant - jokes can be made with malice or could be just a light hearted attempt at humour.

My main concern is about the many people who are considering this as a precedent which should apply to all cases where male workers make any kind of sexual joke or comment to female workers. If this is the case, I think the situation could backfire.

If someone is selecting people for a job, will they now weigh the added risk of lawsuits against the company when they're looking at a female applicant's CV? Because let's face it - the likelihood of a similar lawsuit being instituted by a man is much smaller.

Equality is all well and good, but the last thing that is needed for women in the workplace is to put out the message that employing women is an added liability to the company. Harassment is wrong, and employers should indeed put a stop to any that is going on - not because of lawsuits but because it is harming some members of their staff. On the other hand, we should avoid going to the other extreme where any kind of joke made to, or in the presence of, a woman is a risky business. That could easily turn into a situation where employers avoid having women on the team, or where the team feels safer excluding female colleagues from conversations - or even that the very presence of women has caused a damper on workplace relations.

Creating methods with named parameters and default values in Java

Have you ever had a situation where one of your methods had many different arguments, and it became difficult to keep track of them, or to provide multiple versions of the same method with different parameters, trying to cover all commoon combinations?

In such cases you might have envied languages like perl or python which allow you to specify default values for your parameters, and let the caller specify parameters by name, thus providing parameters in any order.

Now, technically Java can't do that kind of stuff, but with some imagination, the varargs parameter type, and the new import static, we can come very close.

Goal

Our goal is to create a single method that accepts all the following calls.

go();
go(min(0));
go(min(0), max(100));
go(max(100), min(0));
go(prompt("Enter a value"), min(0), max(100));

All the bits below fit within one class. The actual names of the enum, methods etc. are up to you.

Step 1

Create an enum for all the parameters that your method will accept. Give the enum an instance variable for the (optional) default value, and set it in the constructor.

static enum OptionName {
  min (0),
  max,
  prompt;

  private final Object dflt;
  private OptionName(Object dflt) {
    this.dflt = dflt;
  }
  private OptionName() {
    this.dflt = null;
  }
}

Step 2

Create a simple class that contains one enum and one object. Give it a constructor to set these two values.

public static class Option {
  private final OptionName name;
  private final Object value;
  private Option(OptionName name, Object value){
    this.name = name;
    this.value = value;
  }
}

Step 3

Create a set of static functions, one for each OptionName, each returning an instance of Option.

  public static Option min(int value) {
    return new Option(OptionName.min, value);
  }
  public static Option max(int value) {
    return new Option(OptionName.max, value);
  }
  public static Option prompt(String value) {
    return new Option(OptionName.prompt, value);
  }

Step 4

Create the method. The parameters should be a varargs array of Options. Immediately place the parameters into a Map. The following example first sets all the default values, then overwrites them with the passed-in values. Once that's done, you'll have a map keyed by the OptionName enum, which you can query for the values you'll actually use in your method.

public static void myMethod(Option... opts) {
  EnumMap om = new EnumMap(OptionName.class);
  // first set the defaults
  for ( OptionName on : OptionName.values() ) {
    om.put(on, on.dflt);
  }
  // then overwrite them with the values passed in.
  for ( Option op : opts ) {
    om.put(op.name, op.value);
  }
        
  Integer min=(Integer)om.get(OptionName.min);
  Integer max=(Integer)om.get(OptionName.max);
  String prompt = (String)om.get(OptionName.prompt);       
  // do something with min, max and prompt; remember 
  // to check for nulls.
}

Using it

In the calling class, use the "import static" syntax to import all the static methods we defined in this class.

You can then call myMethod using a comma-separated list of method class to those static methods that will serve as parameters.

The Identity Question

In a letter to The Times, Ray Azzopardi argues that "Our true identity as Maltese has to be linked to our Christian roots". Nothing could be further from the truth.

Whenever one refers to "roots", one is implying a beginning, and it's obvious even from the Bible's account of Paul's arrival here that Malta and the Maltese had their own distinct identity well before the Christian faith even reached our shores. Throughout our history, we have retained our identity even during times when this faith practically disappeared from these islands.

If I had to choose a characteristic that identifies us as Maltese, I'd have to choose the Maltese language. Nothing distinguishes us more from any other nation. Even expatriates maintain the language alive in their adopted countries because of this very reason. In centuries of foreign rule by the Knights, the French and the British, we retained our language - often using it to distinguish ourselves from "the outsiders". Within Malta, people who can't speak Maltese are considered to be foreign residents, irrespective of what their passport or ID card says.

Throughout our history there have always been people who are not Catholics, or even Christian, yet are entirely Maltese. There is evidence of a Jewish community in Malta since before Paul's arrival, making it probably the oldest surviving religion in Malta, though it has not done so continuously. Today there are many Maltese who are Muslim, Hindu, or have no religion at all.

The national anthem is quite irrelevant in determining our identity. It was written by a priest, so it's hardly surprising that it contains references to God. It also refers to "min jaħkimha" - a reference to the British governor of the time. Hardly meaningful today.

I'm surprised that Mr. Azzopardi attributes "our generous and altruistic nature" to Paul's Christianity when the Bible points out that Paul himself was surprised by the natives' "uncommon kindness". It seems that our friendly nature is part of our pre-Christian identity, and has survived 2000 years later. Nor were they "our Christian values" that kept us struggling for independence, since most of our foreign rulers shared that faith.

Mr. Azzopardi asks a loaded question when he asks why we are passing on "a secular and narrow vision of our society" to the next generation. Actually, we are passing on a secular and more open vision of our society. A secular society is one in which each individual has the right to his own faith - or none at all, but the govern remains separate, thus not discriminating against - or in favour of - anyone based on their religion. A nation when one can apply for a teaching post in a government school without being asked to confirm whether they are Catholic first. A nation where the church and the state are separate.

What would our life be like if we did not have this separation between church and state? You can look at Iran or Saudi Arabia as an example of what happens when religion and government are in the same bed. Condoms - and indeed any other form of contraception - would be illegal. Going to mass on Sunday would be compulsory. Unwed mothers would be in prison. Marriage between Catholic and non-Catholic would be prohibited by law, and unmarried couples living together would be harshly punished. Do not make the mistake of thinking that these things only happen in Muslim countries. Not only does our history show otherwise, but even now, fundamentalists in the USA and other nations constantly seek to use the laws to make such impositions on the whole population.

Thankfully, we are already partly secular, but more needs to be done. Religion should be a personal matter even if 99.9% of the country adhered to one faith. Certainly it should not be something for the government to be involved in, nor for our laws to control. A secular society is the foundation for a better future.

Carmelo Cutajar's letter "Ample Proof of God" (The Times, 6th Feb) reminded me of an anecdote by that inimitable author, Douglas Adams. He compared this idea to some water that wakes up one day and finds itself as a puddle on the ground. As it examines the hole it finds itself in, it is
amazed - the hole fits the water staggeringly well! So well in fact that it seems designed to fit the water. It must have been created by an intelligent designer explicitly for that water to be in.

Similarly, we look at the world around us and it seems amazingly perfect for us - the right temperature, the right atmosphere to breathe, the right duration of day and night, the right plants to eat. It seems so perfect that we might get the feeling that it was made for
us.

It's actually the other way round. Just as it was the water that conformed to the hole in the ground, we find our planet so perfect because life has been evolving for billions of years to survive within the conditions provided by the earth. If earth's gravity had been more, or less, then we would have evolved to live and move around in it. If the entire earth had been hotter we might have evolved better cooling systems and a resistance to skin cancer, whereas if the earth
were colder we might even today still be sporting a thick shaggy fur coat.

We have only just begun to detect the presence of planets outside our solar system, so we have as yet no way of knowing how common or rare our type of planet is. For all we know, earth-like planets might be quite common indeed. Even if only one in a million planets would suit
human life, that still means billions of such planets. Also, since the only type of life we know about is that found on earth, we have no idea what planetary conditions would allow the development of life in its broadest sense. We've already had to alter our perception of
"life-sustaining conditions" since we've found life that can exist at extremely high temperatures, a toxic environment and bone-crushing pressure near underwater volcano vents, and below freezing in the Antarctic. Other forms of life might exist in conditions far beyond
what we consider suitable.

Sorry to disappoint, but this is not proof of any deity.

One ought to ask oneself - if there is a God who is so anxious for people to believe in him, and given the doubts that exist (including other religions claiming that theirs is the one true god), wouldn't it be much easier for that god to simply settle the matter once and for
all and give final, undeniable proof of who is right? Surely an omnipotent being can do that.

The Dawn of Christianity

Like any other story, what you believe of the story below is up to you. If it were a film it would probably be described as "based on a true story". Enjoy.

Once upon a time there was a young man named Saul. Saul lived in Tarsus, in the Greek part of the Roman Empire, in modern day Turkey. It was a harbour city which saw a variety of beliefs and religions arriving with its ships and sailors. Mixing with the beliefs of his native homeland he saw Mithraism from Persia, Judaism from Palestine, the official and unofficial Roman gods and many others. Saul however chose the beliefs of the Jews, converting to Judaism as a young adult. He was a very ambitious and single-minded person and once in, he devoted himself to learning all he could.

The Jewish community in Tarsus was small however, and concerned itself more with daily life than religious scholarship. Saul soon absorbed all that he could learn from this small group of Jews, and decided to take the next step – go to Jerusalem, the centre of the world as far as Judaism is concerned.

Saul arrived in Jerusalem having already become the most knowledgeable person in religious matters in his hometown, and fully expecting to be welcomed as a scholar in Jerusalem. His disappointment must have been traumatic. He soon discovered that being the top scholar among a small community of not-particularly-religious Jews did not quite match up to people who had dedicated their entire lives to the topic in Jerusalem. Far from being a top scholar, he found himself at the bottom of the ladder of religious scholarship. The children were more advanced than he was.

Not only that, but he discovered that in Jerusalem, Judaism was divided. There were the Pharisees, who opposed Roman rule and believed in a coming messiah who would defeat them, take the throne and bring Judea back under Jewish rule. There were the Sadducees, fewer in number than the Pharisees but who had aligned themselves with Rome and supported their presence. In return, the Romans had given them the high priesthood and other positions of authority. There were other sects, like the Essenes, but the power struggle in Jerusalem was between the Sadducees and the Pharisees.

Saul found himself in Jerusalem, and not only was he not welcomed as a scholar, he found he did not even qualify to join in either of the two main schools of Judaism – those of Hillel and Shammai, both Pharisee. Saul turned from them to the other side. The Sadducees had control of the high priesthood and the Temple. They walked hand in hand with the Roman authorities. And they needed men for their army. One of the tasks of the high priest was to assist the Romans in apprehending troublemakers, and in Roman eyes, anybody trying to oust them and establish a monarchy in their stead was clearly a troublemaker. The Sadducees, who rejected the concept of a messiah and supported Roman governorship, agreed – especially since the Romans were the source of all their power. The high priest therefore maintained a small force of soldiers to round up any such troublemakers, arrest them and bring them before him. If he was satisfied that these people were indeed troublemakers, he’d send them off to the Romans for sentencing. This was not the Grand Sanhedrin, in which the Pharisees outnumbered the Sadducees, which met in the temple and which had the power to execute people it found guilty. This was a sanhedrin (court) composed only of Sadducees, which met in the high priest’s private quarters and could only hand over suspects to the Romans.

It was this small army that Saul joined. It was the only entity with religious connotations he was accepted in. He probably told himself that the people he was acting against were religious heretics, not political dissidents. Still, it was the best he could do, and it was linked to the high priest. They acted as his personal army, bodyguards and occasional assassins where the need arose.

It was probably while working within this army that he came into contact with the Nazirites. This was one of many messianic movements, each with their own ideas and their own messiah. Being Pharisees at least by viewpoint, they believed in the resurrection of the dead – another thing the Sadducees denied – and that the messiah would have to be a Nazirite, having performed the Nazirite vow.

The Nazirites, or Nazarenes, looked to a Biblical figure as the model for their messiah. They followed a story about a woman who did not believe she could be pregnant, who was visited by an angel who told her that she was pregnant and would bear a son, who would be consecrated to God from before birth, who would become a leader of the people and who would be their saviour. The angel later appeared to her husband to confirm this story. This saviour was indeed born and became a leader, before he was betrayed by one whom he loved, yet with his death he saved his people.

The man’s name was Samson. The new Nazarene movement was expecting a similar miracle of some kind. They firmly believed in a messiah, and some years back one particular member seemed to be the one. Many of them still believed he was the one, despite the fact that he had been captured and executed by the Romans. After all hadn’t Samson saved his people with his own death? That, together with the Pharisee belief in resurrection, meant they would not yet lose hope that Jesus might have been the promised saviour.

Saul would some familiarise himself with their beliefs as he tried to uncover their identities and bring them to the high priest’s court. Yet here were a few things that struck a chord. This man was the son of God. This was a title derived from Psalms 2, in which David metaphorically becomes God’s son, and God becomes to him as a father. The title “son of God” had been used in reference to kings of David’s lineage ever since. But Saul was familiar with another kind of son of god. The kind that was produced when the old Greek deities mated with human girls and women. Real, physical sons of the gods like Hercules.

In secret, Saul started learning more about this group – from the members themselves. He saw in them a devotion and fanaticism that isn’t found in your regular churchgoer. They had new ideas, fantastic ideas and were open to new ones. In such a group, he could get the kind of acceptance that the proud and snobbish scholars would never give him. Little by little, Saul realised that this group was the kind of group he wanted to join.

There was one problem. They were the enemy, and he was a member of a group aligned to the Roman empire. One does not hand one’s resignation to Rome and join the enemy ranks. There was one hope – leave Rome.

There was one advantage to being where he was – Damascus was at the time not under Roman rule, and indeed many political enemies of Rome had taken the road to Damascus rather than face Roman justice.

His Nazarene contacts would have been cautious about admitting a member of their arch-enemy’s thugs among their ranks, but he seemed genuine, so arrangements were made. They would not give him names or addresses, but if he could get himself outside the gates of Damascus, there he would be met by people who would explain the rest of the plan.

The idea was well thought out. Saul told his superiors that he was had found out about some anti-Roman agitators in Damascus and he wanted to carry out an assassination. They agreed – they couldn’t just march in with their soldiers but if one Jew assassinates another Jew, their hands would be clean.

Saul rode to Damascus with one or two companions, and there – as agreed – he met his guides. They advised him to change his name and adopt a disguise, and gave him his address. Thus, it was Saul, soldier of the high priest and servant of Rome, who arrived before the gates of Damascus, but it was Paul, a blind beggar, who knocked on the door of his host.

Paul’s host, Ananias, let his house be used as an interim headquarters for the group. Members who were on the run from the high priest or the Romans could stay there for a few days until they found accommodation, and the group could have meetings there. This was to be Paul’s undoing. His work in the high priest’s army was what had sent some of them into exile in the first place, and it was only a matter of time before one of them recognised him and Paul’s sojourn in Damascus was over. Making a hasty exit, he headed back to Jerusalem under cover of darkness and hid with the Nazarenes while they debated what to do with him. He could not stay in Damascus and in Jerusalem he’d be arrested as a deserter. Frankly, Paul was more of a liability than an asset to their cause. It was Paul himself who came up with a solution. He could take their message to the Jews living outside Judea as well as gentiles who were sympathetic to them. They could thus gather more support, collect more money and Paul would be too far away to embarrass them if caught – or so they thought. They happily agreed to this, and Paul set off on his personal mission – he had achieved his ambition to become an important personality within his chosen faith. He was, as he described himself, an apostle to the gentiles.

And so off he went. His knowledge of many different belief systems stood him in good stead. He could speak a language that they understood – of gods who mate with humans and produce offspring, of gods who die to bring salvation and rebirth, of sacrifices of blood. He knew that some topics were unpopular – very few adult men would look fondly on the idea of circumcision, so that went out the window. Pork and other foods forbidden to Jews were very popular, so Paul started to take decisions about these and other matters. The rules, he decided, had been changed. No longer were people bound by these rules in the new movement. Jesus had put an end to that – his death had brought about a new covenant.

It would have taken time for this news to reach the group in Jerusalem. On the one hand, communication was slow. Even for an emperor it took weeks to get a message to the far flung corners of the empire. Other people would have to wait for someone who was travelling in the right direction, ensure that it is someone that you can trust with potentially compromising letters, and who were prepared to take the risk of being found carrying them, and then they would take a week or more to get there. The reply would take a similarly difficult route back. The other reason was simple: the messianic movements were concerned primarily with the political rule of Judea, and Jerusalem in particular. The Greek and Roman regions simply did not concern them much, except maybe for fund-raising. It was only when they started receiving letters of complaint that they realised that Paul was running amok in their name. Twice they recalled him to Jerusalem. The first time, Paul managed to convince them that he was only preaching to gentiles that they did not have to be circumcised or give up their favourite foods. Following some debate, they allowed this to continue, unaware that Paul was not too careful about distinguishing Jews and non-Jews when preaching. The second time round things were more serious. Paul was on his way back to Jerusalem and must have felt that things were not so good this time. In his hand was a bag of money collected from the various synagogues and communities as contributions to the Nazarenes. This was a good time to purchase an insurance policy, in the form of a Roman citizenship. In those days, a Roman citizenship provided many practical advantages, and the Romans knew a good business opportunity when they saw it – so they created a system whereby the richest people in their empire could buy those advantages, thus making a good income while protecting the most valuable people within their empire.

Paul arrived in Jerusalem and there faced the council of the Nazarenes. They knew now that he was teaching Jews and non-Jews alike, that the laws of the Jewish scriptures no longer applied. The Torah was obsolete, replaced by Paul’s own teachings. Paul had written that he himself was no longer bound by the laws. This went completely contrary to the Nazarenes’ views – they were Jews through and through, and considered the laws as still binding. Nobody – not the messiah nor the priests nor anyone else could declare them void.

They decided that Paul would be made to go to the temple. There, in full view of the public, he had to participate in a particular ritual that would show all the witnesses that he was an observing Jew as well as supporting the Nazirite vows, as he accompanied members who were completing their own vows. If he had been teaching against this, this would embarrass him and show contriteness. If he hadn’t, it might serve to set at rest the minds of those who were angered by what they saw as the Nazarenes’ representative undermining Judaism.

Paul set off with his companions towards the Temple. Luckily, enough years had passed that he did not have to worry about the high priest. He was followed by those whom he had angered with his teachings, eager to see him humiliated. As the crowd gathered and started to get rowdy, the local Roman guards turned up to keep the situation under control. Recognising an opportunity and possible fearing for his safety, Paul finally took out his secret weapon.

Paul was a Roman citizen! The Nazarenes would have been horrified. They were an organisation dedicated to bringing down the Roman empire – or at least expelling it from their homeland – and they had among them an actual Roman citizen! It was like a modern-day synagogue discovering that their cantor was a secret Nazi. The breach was now beyond irreparable.

Paul took advantage of his Roman citizenship to make his getaway. He didn’t want to hang about in Jerusalem until someone remembered Saul the soldier. Besides, his frequent travels and letter writing had built up a large if widespread community who now looked to him as their teacher and leader. He didn’t need the Nazarenes any more. He was the top dog now.

Paul would continue his travels, establishing the new beliefs and gathering more followers. The Nazarenes continued to ignore everything that was happening outside Judea. The followers of Paul – even after Paul’s own death – started gathering the stories that surrounded Jesus’ life, compiling them into chronological accounts and frequently filling in the blanks, especially wherever they found what they considered to be a messianic prophecy. Not only that but any hint that Jesus was against Rome was expunged. For the new faith to spread within the Roman empire, the Romans had to be the good guys. The Jews on the other hand had already dismissed Jesus as a candidate for messiah and were positively appalled at the idea that he was God himself. So, let them take the blame. Thus Jesus was transformed from a devoted Jew who saw himself as the means for Judea to gain its independence from Rome, to a Greco-Roman style god whose death would save the world, and in whose death the Romans were only unwitting patsies. In time, Jerusalem would face numerous revolts, organised by other would-be messiahs, ending in the destruction of Jerusalem. The Nazarenes themselves fled into Egypt and disappeared. Paul’s new movement, now known as Christianity, kept its head low and flourished, until finally the emperor Constantine declared it the official religion of Rome, and his successor Theodosius made it mandatory. Why wouldn’t they? It preached to slaves that they should obey their masters, and wives to be submissive to their husbands. That suited the Romans just fine.

Of course, you can’t just order someone to believe in a new god and they all happily obey. They can’t openly refuse – not if they want to retain all their anatomy anyway. So, if they were worshipping a goddess, they simply said she was Mary, mother of god. If they were participating in the joyful festivities of Saturnalia in December, they change that to Christ-mas instead, retaining everything but the name. And if they were participating in the blood-and-flesh celebrations of Mithras, they switched that to a Christian setting. Over generations, the lines became blurred even for the participants even as the assimilation of traditions continued over centuries and millennia. The god of love became Saint Valentine. The winter spirits that rewarded and punished were merged into one Santa Claus, who gives presents or turns them into coal. The evil deities found in Zoroastrianism and many other religions were linked with the angel Satan, who had an unpleasant task in Judaism but still was acting for God. Now he was his arch-nemesis.

Years after the Nazarenes disappeared into Egypt, a group reappeared saying they were their descendants and accusing Paul of manipulation and corrupting the message of Jesus. By this time however the Christians reigned supreme, and did not take kindly at all to similar accusations. The dominant group of Christianity had already suppressed all the others they had branded as heretics, and the newly emerged Nazarenes, or Ebionites as they were derisively called, were wiped out, leaving only Saul’s Christians, who lived happily ever after.

Losing religion or gaining psychological freedom?

The letter below was sent to The Times but was edited prior to publishing. Here is the unedited version:

---

Oh dear, I feel a bit guilty writing this letter - a bit like telling a child that Father Christmas is not real. Still, Jacqueline Calleja's letter in The Times of 25 July merits some corrections.

The most glaring and often-repeated falsehood is that Europe owes its roots and identity to Christianity. Europe has existed since long before Christianity started, and owes its identity mainly to the presence of the Mediterranean separating it from North Africa, which affected the spread of the Greek and Roman influences, and formed a barrier to a greater mixing of cultural influences. Although Christianity has been a major influence in Europe for over 1500 years, that influence has not been too positive. Consider that, 200 years before the birth of Jesus, in Greece, Erastothenes had accurately calculated the diameter of the earth, the angle of tilt of its axis, and invented the leap day after calculating the exact length of a year. By comparison in 1600 the Catholic church burned Giordano Bruno at the stake for saying there were other worlds besides our own, and in 1633 sentenced Galileo Galilei to house arrest for life, for the heresy of claiming that the earth orbits the sun. It was only in 1992 that the church finally conceded that Galileo had been right all along. From the achievements of the Greek and Roman worlds, Europe was dragged into the dark ages. We went through the crusades and the inquisitions thanks to the church. Did you know that the Holy Inquisition remained until 1908? After that it had its name changed - it is now called the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith. It was headed by a certain Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger until he got a big promotion.

Many might object that these acts are all in the past, and the church of today is totally different. Then again, when one hears a Cardinal of the church telling people in Africa not to use condoms, when 1 in 5 people of the region are HIV positive, one has to wonder - has it really changed? He told them that condoms have small holes through which the AIDS virus can pass. How many lives were lost thanks to Cardinal Trujillo's words? Some priests in Africa were even telling their congregations that condoms are laced with the AIDS virus. Throughout all this the Vatican remained silent.

I am not at all surprised at Ms. Calleja's statement that "the Church is witnessing a wondrous growth" in Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa. In both of these regions there is severe poverty, and a lack of educational facilities, medical facilities and so on. The inhabitants are faced with a terrible choice - adopt Christianity and get education for their kids and food and medical care for the whole family, or stay with your own religion and starve. The objective of missionaries is to use material items like food as the carrot with which to bring in converts. Of course, in their eyes the latter is the greater benefit, but it's good to keep in mind the reason why Christianity is growing so much in these regions. I'm not saying that the missionaries there actually refuse to provide material needs to non-Christians, but if you place your kids in a school run by Christians every day, getting a mix of academic tuition and religious indoctrination, they will be converted. Of course there are also some cases when they do refuse, such as in the tsunami-struck village of Samanthapettai, where a group of nuns insisted that the starving locals convert to Christianity before getting food and water - and when these devout Hindus refused to convert, packed up and left. Obviously this was an unusual and extreme case, but I wonder how many Christians are aware of how their contributions are used when they give generously to such causes.

It is not surprising that Christianity is in decline in the better-educated regions of the world. There was a time when gods were used as an explanation for phenomena that we could not otherwise explain. We had gods of thunder and lightning, of storms, volcanoes, of the sun and so on. We are a curious species, always seeking to understand everything around us - a trait that fuelled our intellectual progress. As science grew and started bringing us better and more accurate answers, these ancient deities were discarded, their carcases littering the road to knowledge. Eventually, deities started needing more explanations than they provide. We don't need them to provide answers, we don't need them to provide food or resources, the moral leadership of their self-appointed ministers has been questionable at best. So what's left to justify belief? A fear of retribution perhaps? It appears that even that story is not convincing many any more.