31st October 1517- Martin Luther posts the 95 Theses on the door of the Wittenberg Palace Church

Most people are aware that the Protestant reformation started when Martin Luther pinned a list of complaints to a church in Germany, and was then given some forward momentum by Henry VIII wanting to sire a male heir by banging as much European royalty as possible.  This in turn lead to England being caught up in a bloody struggle between Protestants and Catholics, and pinging backwards and forwards between the two faiths with enough rapidity to make everyone's head spin- which wasn't actually a massive problem considering how many people were being burnt alive at the time.  Eventually it all settled down and Britain became a mostly Protestant country, except Ireland.  Where it all kicked off again and continued to do so for centuries more.  All because a man nailed a note to a door and we once had a dicking machine on the throne.

But did you know that this all started on Halloween?  Because that's when Martin Luther got busy with his quill and hammer and hacked a major schism in one of the dominant religions on the planet.  And this leads to an important question which ought to be addressed.

What if he was trick or treating?



Try as he might, Luther couldn't remember where he'd put that sock


Now, admittedly, Luther was 34 at the time he nailed up the 95 Theses but that's not to say he didn't turn up at the church with his kids, who'd really made an effort dressing as a mummy and a witch, and get miffed when the Priest told them to bugger off.  It's just that he went a bit far with the 'trick' bit and instead of getting his kids to go back and throw toilet paper over the altar he instead sat down, wrote a list, attached it to the door and hoodwinked the church into forming one of the world's major Christian denominations instead. I bet he was mortified when it all took off but, you know how it is when you commit to a joke that everyone takes seriously.  You can't turn round after a bit and say "I was only having a laugh" because everyone then thinks they look stupid.  And the priest at the Wittenberg Palace Church sounds like a miserable sod; after all, he didn't give Luther's kids any sweets (admittedly, a lot of this is conjecture but that doesn't stop me from insisting that it all definitely happened).

And if you think all this sounds a bit far-fetched, it's worth noting that Luther also ended up marrying a nun after he smuggled her out of a convent hidden in a barrel of herrings.

To be fair, I don't want to belittle people of faith too much because there's enough of that out there already.  The march of science, and in particular Richard Dawkins- a man who could suck all the fun out of a jelly fight on a bouncy castle- has led to anyone with a semblance of religious belief being treated like a reactionary, backward simpleton who shouldn't be trusted with scissors, never mind opinions.  This often stems from the rational minds of scientists who insist that it's ridiculous for anyone to believe a man in the sky is in charge of things, but also that it's perfectly fine that if something they thought of themselves doesn't work or can't be found, they can just add the word 'dark' to it and say that it's invisible.

I'm currently reading a book on quantum physics, because I desperately want to believe I'm much smarter than I actually am, and it's about as easy to sit through as a Chinese algebra lesson.  I'm currently being told to think of an electron as having a probability of existing at some point of a wave, as defined by a clock.  Now, I understand each of these individual concepts but hammering them all together in one place makes no sense and is faintly terrifying. It's the intellectual equivalent of the feelings engendered by eating a deep-fried Mars Bar.  And yet I'm being asked to believe it all, based on nothing more than the writings of scholars (although one of them is that lovely Brian Cox who spends a lot of time on the telly in exotic locations gazing through his fringe at the stars like he's never seen them before.  Which is a bit of a concern for a physicist).

Compare this picture to the Luther one.  Which of these two men
looks more likely to try and tell you he knows where to find God?

Imagine if, instead of his Theses, Luther had pinned a guide to quantum physics onto his local church instead.  Henry VIII would have had a lot more trouble trying to talk his way into divorcing and executing all those wives by insisting that light is both a particle and a wave.  Henry's kids wouldn't have easily been able to tear England back and forth between different interpretations of the existence of gravity by burning at the stake anyone who tried colliding atoms together at light speed.  Cromwell would have struggled to justify subjugating the Irish by claiming that the act of observation affects the thing being observed so it's impossible to know where an electron is at any given time.  Actually, thinking about it, things really would have been a whole lot more peaceful if it wasn't for Martin Luther. 

That man killed millions.

Just by writing a letter.

Now that is scary.  Happy Halloween everyone.