Harvest festival fun

One of the joys of living in a rural area of southern England is that a few of the festivals of the local church have an almost secular air.  One such event is Harvest Festival which appears to be more to be an excuse for a village party rather than an opportunity to thank god for his goodness, although if I remember correctly, that is not what the farmers were doing this spring when it was unusually dry!

You might not expect that I would go to such an event, being a confirmed non-christian as I now am.  But it was great value for money and a great chance to catch up with some of the lovely local characters who don't see me in church any more.

Perhaps a greater surprise though, is that two of the three ordained clergy who were present were on the same table, and that I (possibly the only 'out' atheist in the room) found myself sitting between the two of them.  That is not to say that there were not other atheists there.  They just keep quite and enjoy being 'social members' of the club of christians.

The current vicar has been in the parish for a couple of years and I have found him to be very interesting to talk to whenever I have met him.  (Apparently his sermons are not entirely scintillating, but then again I only ever heard one or two that were.)  His newly arrived colleague was less easy to talk to and we stuck to 'safe' topics of where he had lived before and tales about children who are at university age.

I found myself muttering darkly only once (having survived the opening prayer and saying of grace unscathed).  There was a quiz and one of the questions was about the origins of the concept of Harvest Festival.  Apparently it is a pagan festival, and it was only adopted by the Church of England in the 1800s, originally in Cornwall. Some were surprised.  My only surprise was this had been adopted so recently.  I nearly completely managed not to say anything when the answer "it was originally a pagan festival" was revealed - even though I wanted to shout out "just like Christmas and Easter!".

After the main course had been enjoyed, the vicar wanted to ask a physics question - as several people already had asked before the meal started.  Yes, you guessed it!  'The neutrinos question' - do they really break the laws of physics?  I might return to that tomorrow but the answers are everywhere on the internet and it was a great opportunity to make it clear to the non-scientists that physicists like nothing better than a really good mystery.

And then the discussion gradually moved around to a more religious topic and I was very surprised to feel that I was at the very least able to hold my own in a discussion with a 'man of god' on his own subject.  Having discussed the cosmological argument, the teleological argument, the theory of evolution etc, agreeing on each of them in turn, we came eventually to the question of the reality of god.  He seemed generally surprising that someone might not have a concept of the reality of god - since I am sure he has noticed before that I am not a practising christian.  He said that he was genuinely pleased that someone had asked him what evidence he had for the existence of god.  I had already acknowledged that some people feel that they have 'encountered the living Jesus' and that although this might be evidence for them, it is not evidence for me.

Ultimately of course we came to one of the old favorite questions, and he asked what would count as evidence for me.  An interesting question!  Richard Dawkins' comments came to the rescue as the answer that (for me, at the moment) is the most winning.

If studies of the efficacy of prayer discovered that, say, Catholic prayer worked better than Protestant or Muslim prayer then that would be a thing that is worth investigating scientifically.  That might ultimately count as evidence.  At the moment, the best studies show that prayer can actually be bad for you, especially if you know that you are being prayed for.

I look forward to the next encounter with the vicar.  I actually suspect that he does too.