Synogenes.com

Whenever there is a natural disaster, the media always turns to some religious representative to wallow in the suffering, to explain that God is with us, that there is some underlying fundamental reason for suffering, and that people shouldn't see the tragedy as any reason to doubt their faith.

And the media always accepts that position with only the mildest of criticisms. Even the formidable John Humphrys of Radio 4's Today programme today gave the Bishop of York, John Sentamu, an easy ride as he sat quiet during the bishop's hopelessly incoherent diatribe. The worthy bishop was wrestling with a question that Humphrys put to him: how can a merciful god be responsible for such devastating disasters? For a bishop you'd think the question would be easy.

Of course it's a fair question and one which cannot be answered by the religious. The worthy bishop wriggled all over the place talking about the goodness of Christ, and the munificence of nature, and the power and beauty of the world, and all that stuff. But what he couldn't do was explain the actions of a supposed all-powerful deity causing disaster. You have to be a deluded theologian to wriggle out of that.

Haiti lies on the edge of the Carribbean tectonic plate and one of the fault lines which has been stable for the last three centuries or so, gave way to the pressure of plate movement. It was around 10km down in the ground that the quake occurred. That has nothing whatsoever to do with ideas about mythical super-beings, omniscient gods, or anything of the kind. This is a geological process which is well-understood but difficult to predict.

Whenever there is a disaster of some kind, it is natural that the media will focus on the human aspects of the story, the suffering, the relief effort, the economic and social consequences, and will try to convey the sense of human loss.

But to have a religious representative pontificating about the goodness of his mystical deity and coming over all pious about his sympathy towards the suffering people of Haiti, is not just irrelevant, but somewhat insulting. Attempting to gain publicity for religion at a time of such enormous suffering is opportunist and cynical at best.

And far from being a reason for deepening faith in religion, such disasters ought to help people realise that there is a material world, subject to physical laws and it operates quite independently from any mystical super-beings.

Such disasters show very clearly how utterly irrelevant religion is to the real practical interests of living people. If the religious bodies want an all-powerful god in charge of everything that happens in the universe, let's see them step up to the plate and claim responsibility on his behalf, instead of wriggling incoherently to evade it.

ITEC is a body which validates qualifications and it is represented in many countries around the world. It is registered with the National Qualifications Framework in the UK and therefore attracts funding from the Learning and Skills Council. It offers courses in Beauty, Sport and Business, but also offers validation of courses in a category called Complementary.

This includes a QCF Level 3 Diploma in Reiki. Now Reiki is about the manipulation and transfer of non-detectable energy to unblock the bodies natural healing potential. It is utterly unevidenced, and is based purely on the beliefs of Reiki practitioners. It's as rational as the belief in unicorns and has the same level of evidentiary support.

So how is such a course taught and how can it possibly be assessed? Since there is no detectable energy present, nor any demonstrable way of showing any manipulation, practical assessment has to be based on observing students following ritual moves and saying ritual phrases. And that forms the continuous assessment part. But at the end, there's a 30 minute multiple choice examination. Out of 25 questions, just 7 refer to Reiki, and the pass mark is 60%. Get 15 questions right and you pass.

Most of the course is concerned with the mechanics of running a business, health and safety, hygeine, that sort of thing. But one component is actually of real scientific value: students are expected to complete a course in basic anatomy and physiology. And here's the irony. In all of the syllabus for anatomy and physiology, there is no mention of healing energy, Qi, chakras, channels, meridians, nor any of the other mystical concepts. If the student understands the principles of anatomy and physiology, they cannot at the same time accept the Reiki nonsense.

And yet students doing these courses are expecting to set up their own businesses performing Reiki on their customers. If they understand the science, they realise how dishonest that is. And if they were genuinely interested in care and healing, they could build on the anatomy and physiology and get a Diploma in Anatomy, Physiology and Pathology. Alas, the business opportunities based on real science are not as lucrative as peddling mystical nonsense to credulous customers.

So they go through the mill of quackademia, picking up nonsense qualifications whose only purpose is to reinforce delusional belief in the practitioners and their customers. It is shameful that bodies like ITEC should endorse qualifications in nonsense subjects, that they should drop their standards so far in order to attract the cash.

And it's dishonest pretending that these qualifications endorse real skills, real knowledge. They pretend that students understand what is meant by "energy integrity (protection, clearing, recharging, checking and energy interactions)" when the rational world knows it is nothing but twaddle. But that doesn't seem to matter to ITEC as long as they get the cash for rubber stamping these so-called diplomas.