A post Rowan Williams country

I see that the ex-Arch-Bishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams has chipped into the recent debate about secularism in Britain and the whole are we a "Christian nation" or not (and what would that even mean anyway). He seems to be agreeing with the secular position, i.e. that Britain is *not really* a Christian nation any more (regardless of what outdated polls say) and that our culture has moved on. Unfortunately the current Arch-Bishop, Justin Welby decided to side with the Conservatives, an odd position given the disagreements he seems to have with them regarding things like austerity and gay marriage, for me this schism between the ex-Bishop and the incumbent one is illustrative of the problem, i.e. Welby can't bite the hand that feeds him!

I was pleased last week that Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg came out and said in a radio interview that he thought Britain should separate Church and state as have most other modern states. This is a view I share, unfortunately a lot of religious commentators including PM David Cameron himself were quick to dismiss this idea although none that I saw came up with any particular logic or reason for opposing it other than the usual "it's always been this way therefore we shouldn't rock the boat", which is never a good reason for anything in my opinion. I even saw someone attempting to argue that establishment ensured tolerance and freedom of religion, the exact same thing that a secular approach to religion pioneered by the founding fathers of the USA (i.e. Government favouring no single belief over any other) was invented to do.

If you look at the picture above, which shows the evolution of religion since pre-history, you have to accept that establishment is tantamount to claiming that one little bubble on this diagram should be inextricably bound to your system of government and given unfair advantage over all of the other bubbles (and no bubble at all!), regardless of any democratic process. I fail to understand how this can be part of a "free" society, if anything we should have regular (every 10 years) referendums on this just as much as we should about the EU, proportional representation or any other significant matter that involves who holds positions of power over us, elected or otherwise.

It's been quite interesting and refreshing to have these topics aired in the mainstream media for a change, the weakness of the pro-establishment argument has been quite conspicuous for me and there seems to be an overwhelming air of defensiveness in their demeanour. Many of the articles I've read have simply attempted to close the debate down with arguments from authority and have shown a complete lack of will to compromise in any way. I get the feeling that they sense this authority diminishing, which I believe is progress.

Fun run fun

My family badgered me into doing a 5K charity "fun-run" on Saturday; I had planned on having a lazy morning but they were all doing it and needed a lift so I was faced with an hour of standing around in a field (in the rain) waiting for them or getting my pallid English legs out, they shamed me into joining them. I'm really glad I did it was great fun, a cross-country run around Swinley Forest, up hill and down dale and in every gulley was a pool of glorious mud fuelled by constant downpours of heavy rain! Once we'd cleaned the mud off our trainers, dried off and warmed up a bit we spent the entire afternoon curled up on the sofa drinking hot cups of tea, watching Pixar movies and eating the last of the Easter eggs, hard to beat I reckon.

We're all deluded, some more than others.

I see that the spat over David Cameron's remarks about Britain being a Christian country continues to roll on today, two senior Conservative MPs have supported Cameron by saying that anyone who thinks Britain isn't a Christian country is deluded (I imagine they're all sniggering behind their hands on the back pew about the choice of words on that one - see above) The article invokes images in my mind of Monty Python sketches, those guys captured the true absurdity between the divisive, blood thirsty and primitive underpinnings of three desert dogmas and the meek, jam and scone munching church of England establishment, one cross each, first on the right and definitely no stone throwing until I blow this whistle!

The article in the Telegraph missed the point of the secular protest against Cameron's comments by a country mile in several places, not only is it factually incorrect it's also a big straw man, Dominic Grieve said,

"Atheists who claim that Britain is no longer a Christian nation are “deluding themselves” and must accept that faith has shaped this country’s laws and ethics."

And here is a quote from Richard Dawkins the author of the God delusion which as we know is the holy text of all "new atheists" (that's sarcasm for all you evangelical literalists out there)

"he would consider going into a church, and would miss ‘aesthetic elements’ such as church bells if they were gone. And he said he was “grateful” to Anglicanism which he claims has a “benign tolerance” - enabling people to enjoy its traditions without necessarily believing in them."

This sounds pretty much like "acceptance" that Britain has a Christian heritage if you ask me, I hope that in his day job Grieve takes more care to actually read legal case notes before passing judgement than this. He also claims that Atheism isn't making any progress in the UK, the data would suggest otherwise. There has been a well documented and dramatic decline in church attendance and general religiosity over the last 50 years in this country, if Mr Grieve is denying this then clearly his perspective begs the question, who is really deluded here?

Humanistan

By far our most poisonous hate-mail in office this weekend: mostly from Christians who want us to leave country & go back where we came from
— Andrew Copson (@andrewcopson) April 22, 2014

I love the way that many Christians seem to believe that saying all cultural and religious (or none) groups of people in our country should be treated equally under the law and that elevating one particular group over everyone else (for whatever reason) is divisive (by definition!) is somehow "militant" and warrants hate mail; where exactly do these Christians think British secularists should go?

I also love the way that moderate Christians seem to quite rightly disown such hate mongers when the poo is being flung around and they are in the public eye, but quietly accommodate them when it comes to matters concerning the census, is cherry-picking one of those "Christian values" that I hear so much about?

Reasonable question

Things just seem to work better when we keep religion out of politics...

Geo-stereotypes

Saw this, had a chuckle...

(Click the image for a bigger view)

Go Dave, go...

Looks like UK Atheists and secularists have a new mission, get rid of the current Tory government!

Cameron has been doing a blatant bit of  vote scrounging lately by sucking up to the (Christian) religious lobby and espousing the wonders and societal benefits of being a Christian, well, we've had 2000 years of that crap Dave and we still have paedophile priests, gender discrimination, religious cronyism, segregation, religious sectarianism, anti-science loons among many other negative things, and yet we still can't figure out how to feed, house and educate everyone properly, hardly a success. If you want to believe in  fairies then fine, but keep it to yourself and don't claim that there's anything special about Christians, it simply isn't true.

In an article for a religious publication he said the following,

"Crucially, the Christian values of responsibility, hard work, charity, compassion, humility, and love are shared by people of every faith and none - and we should be confident in standing up to defend them,"

Now I'm no politician but let's remove ONE word here and you tell me if it still makes sense?

"Crucially, the values of responsibility, hard work, charity, compassion, humility, and love are shared by people of every faith and none - and we should be confident in standing up to defend them,"

As usual Occam's razor dispenses with the unnecessary parts of this hypothesis.

It seems obvious to me which of these statements is more befitting the leader of a multi-cultural, multi-faith secular country where more than 40% of the people aren't religious. Cameron claims that Britain is still a Christian country, but in what way is Britain still a "Christian country"? Just because we used to be ruled (at the point of a sword) by supposedly Christian Kings and Queens does that mean we are permanently shackled to these ancient and outdated ethics? are we still a Pagan country? A Norman country?

I've been on this planet long enough now to realise how politics works, I understand the need for lobbying but unlike most truly theocratic states, here in the UK there is a mechanism by which we can remove politicians with whom the majority does not agree. It's about time the secular majority in this country, religious or otherwise, stand up for the principals it wishes it's Government to promote and enforce NOW AND IN THE FUTURE, without preference or deference being given to one particular segment simply because of historical facts or religious beliefs.

You've got the music in you..

Here's a rather alarming thing; the sign in the picture below was snapped at a school in Leicester! Is this conducive to the kind of tolerant, inclusive and thoughtful society it would be good to build, or is this a recipe to create little pockets of backward and discriminatory ignorant people who are nuclei for hate and intolerance? As the great Hitch once said "religion poisons everything".

Of course if we're talking about One Direction then fair enough, as you were...

Signs of intelligence

Here's Tuesdays religious loon for your delectation, a self appointed prophet called John Hagee claiming that God is controlling the Sun and the Moon to create the eclipse yesterday which was visible across the USA.

The fact that all we need are the laws of physics and a bit of mathematical skill to predict celestial movements seems to have passed him by, clearly his brain (and presumably those of his congregation) is fixated on first century mid-Eastern mythology and judging by the elaborate graphics in his videos and the weight of his suits it's a valuable disability to have in Texas. I love the way this prediction business can be enjoyed by everyone though, I'll even go out on a limb here and confidently predict that around 3 pm today God will make me fancy a cup of tea and a digestive biscuit. Later on this evening he'll make me sleepy and eventually he'll make the hands on my wrist watch both point upwards at the same time, so watch out all you sinners out there, pray for forgiveness and send money!

Interpreting the Bible

I thought I'd have a go at Bible interpretation since it seems to me like anyone can do it and people are obliged to "respect" the results no questions asked!

Leviticus 18:22 "You shall not lie with a male as with a woman. It is an abomination."

Clearly what this means is that if you're in bed with a fat woman who asks you if she's fat then you may lie and say "no". On the other hand if you're in bed with a fat man and he asks you if he's fat God commands you to tell him he's pie munching blob and to make fun of him for the rest of his life.

The worst of news

We had some really bad news this morning, one of our close friends was diagnosed with cancer, the man has it bad and the prognosis isn't good; he's been told to "get his affairs in order", which as we all know is a another way of saying its time to leave the party. What's worse is that he's only 40 and has two kids the exact same ages as ours. As with most people in his situation he now has one of those impossible choices to make between aggressive chemotherapy to live a little longer and letting nature take its course; feelings of numbness and sorrow are overwhelming in our house today.

fucking cancer.

Standards of proof

Here's something light hearted for a Friday that's intended to generate a grin (and a slight rolling of the eyes) I happened across this Christian publication the other day, it's called "Charisma News", this was the first thing that made me smile, this is a pretty optimistic title for most serious Christians I've ever met. However, the WEB site seems like a genuine attempt at relevant news, I wondered if perhaps the title was evidence of further wish-thinking contained within, I read on..

Inside the site, an article entitled "7 things that prove God is real" caught my eye; at last I thought, some tangible evidence that one of the persistent mythologies of the last couple of millennia might actually be true in some way, in the hope of enlightenment I persevered, just what are these "7 things" then?

1. Babies
2. Thunderstorms
3. Flowers
4. The Bible
5. The spread of Christianity
6. Jesus
7. My personal friendship with God

Whoa, wait, what, flowers? is this a spoof? clearly I need to take a closer look at these "proofs"..

1. Babies - Clearly the author gets that warm fuzzy feeling most of us do when he looks at a baby, particularly his own, but is this "proof" of God? It struck me that the author must come from one of those scientifically impoverished Southern US states and didn't study any Biology! If he had he would have a wonderfully complete picture of life on Earth; how we got here, how our cells and bodies actually work, how we reproduce, why we love our babies and more importantly what happens when the process goes wrong, tellingly something he doesn't cite as evidence for his God.

2. Thunderstorms - I'd agree thunder and lightening can be impressive, but "proof" of a Deity? Clearly his education is lacking again, the author is deficient in three important scholarly disciplines. Firstly, meteorology to understand the weather and why storms happen, then physics to understand electricity and lastly religious education, everyone knows it's Thor and not Yahweh who is the God of thunder, duh!!

3. Flowers - Wow is this guy impressed by flowers! The way they look and the way they smell, their subtle colours and hues, who knows, perhaps this is an indicator of suppressed gender orientation issues? You know what those repressed clergy can be like, or possibly an argument that God is a giant insect?

4. The Bible - You can get the gist of this one pretty quickly, my Bible is true, because it says so in my Bible, it says in the Lord of the Rings that when elves die they go to Valinor but can be re-born in middle Earth, just as a point of comparison.

5.The spread of Christianity - I guess he has a point here, considering the poor quality of the ideas it contains it seems like a miracle to me too! Then again, when you look at the facts we're over 2000 years into the invention of this particular religion and during the first 80% of it's life it was spread at the points of swords and red-hot pokers! Even with the threat of unspeakable horrors the "good news" still hasn't percolated to everyone on this tiny planet. If this omniscient God of his does exist I think it's fair to say he's a hopeless communicator.

6. Jesus - I guess they didn't have any lessons on logic in whatever Southern Baptist school the author attended either, the proof that god exists is the son of God. In other news, the proof that Jor-El is real is Superman, also he has a cloak and x-ray vision, which Jesus does not, so there.

7. My personal friendship with God -  Love this one, God is real, I know he's real because I believe in him, he created the universe just for me and will reward me for thinking this way, it's classic solipsism bordering on psychopathy. Whilst this is certainly a clear illustration of ego and self aggrandisement it has no bearing on the reality of the universe the rest of us inhabit. Christians often label themselves as humble, but this "proof" reminds me of a description I once heard of the "humble" Christian position, it went something like..

"Yahweh created a universe of a hundred billion galaxies each with a hundred billion stars like our own Sun, then he picked one particular planet circling one insignificant star, on that planet he chose one particular species from millions and one individual member of that species, again from millions; at that critical point he thought to himself I really must tell that guy not to gather sticks on the Sabbath"...

Emotion

As we all know there's a lot of media content being generated at the moment about missing flight MH370 the Malaysian airlines flight that seems to have completely disappeared somewhere in the Southern Indian Ocean. It must be incredibly frustrating for those involved that our satellites in orbit seem to be able to spot potential debris but so far none of the ships or planes have been able to verify or identify the data. The vast distances involved are clearly a huge impediment to the search. I wonder why someone doesn't try using some kind of seaplane with a support ship so that a verification capability can be situated closer to the area, thereby maximising the search time. I'm sure I read about this kind of thing happening in WWII where planes could land near their support ship and be winched back onto some kind of steam launcher, I guess we don't use such machines any longer or perhaps the weather is too variable?

Anyway, on this theme I spotted a familiar Human contradiction in a news report earlier, it said that the families of victims were passing their time praying and holding vigils whilst waiting for news and that several who were interviewed said that they were refusing to give up hope until presented with indisputable evidence that the plane has crashed (i.e. physical evidence of debris). It struck me how easy it is for human beings to hold dissonant views, i.e. praying to unseen entities in which they believe for which there is no physical evidence for just that, i.e. physical evidence, before believing. Hopefully they will get what they need sooner rather than later, my heart goes out to them, although like many things we experience in our lives we may never get a satisfactory answer, none of us finds that concept easy to deal with.

Can you have good without evil?

Here's an interesting idea, Oxford Philosopher Stephen Law has published a paper entitled "The Evil-God challenge" it's a study of the thought experiment which goes something like..

Religious people (main monotheisms) claim that their "God" is all good, loving, perfect, omniscient etc. and deal with the question "why then is there evil in the world" by citing the concept of "free will", i.e. God did not create us as "puppets" and we can make our own decisions including deciding to do evil. However, when you pose the question "why then could God not be intrinsically evil with free will permitting us to do good deeds" it's much more difficult (i.e. impossible) to provide an answer. This paper outlines the argument in the form of a challenge to religious thinkers to come up with an answer (that's logically coherent) - I doubt any will be forthcoming, most religious people I know don't regard logical fallacies as reasons to doubt their truth claims.

The closest thing to an (attempted) answer to this problem I've heard is a position promoted (among others) by religious philosopher William Lane-Craig who claims that anything God does or commands is "good" by definition even though we might see certain commandments (such as genocide, slavery, tsunamis etc.) as evil according to our "limited" view of the universe, IMO this is just a more fancy way of saying "God works in mysterious ways". Such an argument is logically flawed of course because its circular, i.e. it attempts to prove that God is the source of morality which is precisely what it assumes.

Deep for a Thursday morning! Too much coffee probably..

Sticks and stones

Wow, the BBC just showed a Jesus and Mo cartoon on Newsnight (un-redacted!), this is progress!

Unfortunately they have three Muslim guests who insist on shouting over each other and they're all getting quite excited. Entertainingly I sense them to be trapped in a delicious dichotomy. The dilemma is that they have to feign solidarity with a tolerant (Western) attitude (as they're on BBC2) but clearly feel obliged to defend the sensibilities of their religion's bizarre prohibitions (and presumably their more theocratic constituents) by claiming to be offended, it's rather like a game of cognitive dissonance top trumps. Perhaps when they get home tonight and tuck themselves into bed with a cup of cocoa they'll ponder how much the fabric of the (real) universe has changed as a result of the cartoon being show on TV then realise that free speech liberates even them, and blasphemy is a truly victimless crime.

Busy week

I see that the odious American fag-hating shaman Fred Phelps has finally kicked the bucket, good riddance is probably what most people who know about him are thinking at this moment although I fear the temptation to write about him (as I'm doing here!) will lead to his bumpkin family gaining some warped encouragement from it all. So, I'm going to stop there even though the urge to have a joke at his expense is great, I will leave any concluding thoughts to those who actually knew the man for example his estranged son Nathan who wrote a nice piece here.

There have been much more interesting things going on this week, for example the publishing of scientific work from the BICEP2 project in Antarctica that shows observed evidence of gravitational waves from the beginning of time itself, the big bang. If verified these results are as significant as the discovery of DNA or electromagnetism although judging from the reactions of many non-scientific observers you have to conclude that the interest levels in this kind of stuff isn't great, where's Prof. Brian Cox's floppy hair and cheeky accent when you need it.

Secularists and non-religious types have been complaining for a long time now that even though we have laws governing FGM in this country no one has ever been prosecuted, even though the reported cases continue to drip in. I was pleased to read today that the first case has been brought by the CPS against a Doctor in London; throw the book at him I say, "culture and religion" be damned, we shouldn't be allowing this kind of barbarity to remain hidden in plain sight within our country.

To cap it all J&M (above) today is funny and it's FRIDAY! let's hope the weather stays nice..

BackToFront 1986-2014

I went to the cinema last night to see the film "Back to Front" (see the trailer above). It's about a concert done by Peter Gabriel at the O2 (London) last year which celebrates his "So" album which was released back in 1986. In the concert he performs all the songs from the album with more or less the same band. The film cuts back and forth between the live concert and various clips of concerts he did back in the 80's of the same material, in fact the cuts are even lip synced with the modern performances. It causes you to reflect on watching two identical performances by the same people separated only by 30 years in time, you realise that the music and the meaning of it doesn't change but the people who created it do, it's a very powerful image. The other great thing about this movie is that it was filmed in 4K which is the new ultra-high definition format, the picture quality is just amazing and the sound was good too a great way to watch music if you can't make it to the original concert. If you are a Gabriel (or even an original Genesis) fan then I would recommend this film, or grab it when it comes out on DVD, although I suspect some of the atmosphere will be lost switching from the big to the small screen. If you fancy watching this at the cinema then you can check the dates here.

I must have a listen to some PG back-catalogue today, remind myself of his enviable creative talents.

Humanism and morality

Nice video from the British Humanist Association narrated by Stephen Fry, all perfectly rational, evidence soaked and common sense although as we know, some of us would prefer something much less tangible to be true. There's more on their WEB site expressing the Humanist perspective on other important topics such as death, truth and happiness, it's hard for me to understand why anyone would need anything more.

House for president

Tony Benn

Classy thinker who put principal above popularity, delightful economy in his words.

"If one meets a powerful person - Rupert Murdoch, perhaps, or Joe Stalin or Hitler -  one can ask five questions: what power do you have; where did you get it; in whose interests do you exercise it; to whom are you accountable; and, how can we get rid of you? Anyone who cannot answer the last of those questions does not live in a democratic system."

"A faith is something you die for, a doctrine is something you kill for. There is all the difference in the world."

 "When you think of the number of men in the world who hate each other, why, when two men love each other, does the church split?"

Craving peril

I was fortunate to escape the usual 9-5 routine for a couple of days last week and head off to the French Alps with a couple of mates to do some skiing sans family! There's nothing like a bit of fresh air, hard exercise and constant peril to take your mind off the daily grind; we were also lucky to get 3 days of perfect weather conditions (good snow, clear skies and sun) too!

We went to a little place called Megeve which is near Chamonix, France nestled in the shadow of Mont-Blanc (the tallest mountain in Western Europe). I haven't been there in over 25 years so it was interesting to see how things had changed and to experience the place through older, more experienced eyes. It's certainly a beautiful place, dramatic scenery, tree lined pistes which are immaculately groomed every night and a nice French feel to the place (i.e. not too commercialised), the food and wine was great too.

For the last couple of years I've been skiing with my family, now don't get me wrong, I love skiing with my family but it also felt good to be released from the responsibilities of child-care (perceived as well as actual) for a couple of days and just ski to my own beat. I reckon I racked up about 260 km skied over the course of 3 days which is probably more than all my previous family skiing holidays combined, although judging by the rate of progress of my two nippers it won't be too long before I'm trailing and not leading! To be honest though being lucky enough to visit such places and fit enough to ski well that's just fine with me.

The alchemy curriculum

Turns out that certain Jewish girls schools in Hackney, London have been doctoring their science exam papers to redact (hide) specific Biology questions. This vandalism is apparently because the people who run those particular "faith" schools don't like the idea that the facts of life, as confirmed by mountains of scientific evidence and indeed common sense, conflict with their religious dogmas. Predictably, it's evolution that's the subject at the core of this education scandal. Like most religions the fact that humans are evolved animals rather than magically created demi-gods doesn't fit with their mythologies and feels intuitively wrong to them. Our experience however shows that as we outgrow such myths and explore the universe honestly, we come to the realisation that reality does not conform to our parochial, tribal wishes or intuitions and also that ego's are notoriously bad drivers of real education.

I have a little thought experiment for the governors of such schools; how about if the secular society that provides the cultural and technological foundations for such establishments does a bit of redacting of it's own? How about we allow any old faith school to rip up carefully developed (factual) curricula and to insert any old supernatural nonsense instead? We allow this freedom under the condition that none of the graduates from such schools are permitted to hold positions involving science, technology or the evaluation of evidence, so forget careers in medicine, law, science, government, consultancy or technology because your kids simply aren't trained for it.

Putting some spirit into spiritual

I read a good article by Robin Ince on the subject of spirituality this morning; it's a subject that I find incredibly slippery and it would seem that Ince has the exact same problem with it. Like me he often hears people say things like "I'm not religious, but, I am spiritual", in the article he examines what this word really means.

It's clear from the infinite variety of documented "spiritual" experiences that the word means completely different things to different people, but I suspect Ince has nailed the real underlying meaning, he concludes that "spirituality" is a word people use to give the illusion of depth and understanding to some experience that they find impressive but do not fully understand. Like our primitive ancestors standing on the ridge observing the moonrise or at the graves-edge contemplating the life of a loved one, many experiences challenge our comprehension, they may be beautiful or terrifying and may have the potential to harm or benefit us but it's almost always a fallacy to assume there is a master plan that involves the observer.

Our brains have evolved to seek meaning and look for purpose in the world, it's how our species gained the upper hand over other species that are faster, stronger and more agile than us; it's how we made it through the Pleistocene to become the most dominant animal on the savannah. When we reach the limit of our ability to rationalise something some of us throw it in a bucket labelled "spiritual". I think this urge to label stems from an instinctive dislike of the unlabelled, Human beings would much rather have a bad explanation for something than no explanation at all, the hardest words for us to utter are "I don't know".

Since the invention of science the spiritual bucket has been emptying fast, science punctures holes in the fabric of this vessel like nothing else, providing practical and deep explanations for things seen and unseen. However, many people still cling to the old ways of thinking about the unknown, they maintain a vice like grip on the ever lightening spiritual bucket for fear that by releasing it they will lose something inspiring or wondrous in their lives. I believe this fear is an illusion; the feeling that is craved is just the feeling we all get when our comprehension is challenged; this experience is equally accessible via a rational approach to life as it is a spiritual one, in fact I would argue that even though harder, the former is by far the more fulfilling.

If "spiritual" is simply the word some people use to describe what it feels like when their neural pathways reach the edge and can go no further then Science is a proven way to extend those pathways. On the other hand, simply labelling the experience "spiritual" and quitting at that point seems to me to be much less satisfying.

Judgement

Don't you find it uncanny that the demands of "God" are invariably aligned to the petty parochial interests and prejudices of his followers, funny that.

I recently watched the film 12 years a slave which won a BAFTA last week (highly recommended). This excellent film is a very precise telling of a book written by a man called Solomon Northup who was a (free) black man living in New York, America in the 1850s its a first person account of a family man being kidnapped into slavery and forcefully transported to the cotton fields of Mississippi and Louisiana; it left me feeling numb. Even if you don't see the film you can download the book for free from here it's short and makes for an eye-opening read. Both the book and the film are replete with God fearing white men wielding perverse interpretations of their "holy" books to justify the suffering of slaves for the purposes of self-enrichment. Much like the current-day religious right, they drink heavily from the well of confirmation bias and were complicit in a world-wide trade which one could argue was the rule and not the exception at that time, there was clearly lots of blood on lots of hands.

It's a risky business to "judge" the actions of people from history, their moral landscape was different from ours, what counts as moral behaviour evolves as we learn more about the world we live in. I think the best we can do is educate ourselves and ensure that useful lessons learnt are not lost. In my travels I often find that religious apologists often prefer to defocus the role of religion in slavery by claiming that these people just didn't interpret scripture correctly or that the abolitionists were also Christians (interpreting the same texts!), however, regardless of your faith or otherwise it's indisputable that people of all strokes are capable of sustained evil of the highest order. Such people always gravitate toward unfalsifiable ideas and theologies in order to justify their actions, break this spell with accountability, reason and enlightenment and things invariably improve for all.

Things that boggle my mind

People (as we would recognise ourselves) have been around on this planet for quite a decent period of time, certainly in the order of a quarter of a million years or so; we invented agriculture around 10,000 years ago and started to develop organised societies with cities, systems of government, religions and writing some 5,000 years ago; the Romans rose up around 2100 years ago and disappeared a few hundred years later. 500 years ago printing was invented and as early as 300 years ago we were making maps of the night sky using early optical telescopes. We had the beginnings of what was necessary to truly understand our place in the universe and a mechanism to communicate it widely. It took another 200 years to grasp the true size and scale of our cosmic back-yard and throughout the Enlightenment as we discarded our primitive paranoia about magic deities in the sky who governed our thoughts, we've been improving our knowledge at an ever increasing rate.

This year we have a brand new European space craft in an L2 orbit 1.5 million km from the Earth called Gaia. The two tonne space-craft will remain in orbit for 5 years mapping around 1% of the 100 billion stars in our galaxy with an unprecedented degree of precision. The camera on board the ESA Gaia platform has around 1 billion pixels, that's a lot of pixels! It can resolve objects to 1/3600th of a degree, which is equivalent to resolving a mobile phone on the surface of the Moon and is several thousand times what the Hubble space telescope can do. Over the years Gaia will measure the change in positions of the stars as well as their apparent motion as the Earth moves around the Sun (parallax) it will also look at what the stars are made of via their electromagnetic spectra as well as their Doppler shift which tells us their precise motion through space. The data should enable us to understand our place in the universe much better than before and who knows, just like the early star charts, this data may be used by some future explorer as a navigation aid on some pioneering cosmic voyage, I wonder if I'll still be around to see it.

Snake oil salesmen

I came across this little story this morning, it's about one of those hell fire and brimstone preacher types in America who think it's a good idea to juggle rattlesnakes in the name of their so called "faith". This particular guy had a number of run-in's with the law and also a number of bites, one of which was so bad it caused one of his fingers to drop off. Eventually his luck ran out and he died of a snake bite last week for which he had refused medical treatment, what an idiot.

Anyway, I don't want to dwell on this person and his reptile fetishes what struck me more about the story was just how awesome snake venom is, a true marvel of the evolutionary process, a specialisation that allows animals with severely restricted mobility (i.e. snakes) to capture prey that can easily out run, out swim or out fly them. In evolutionary terms venom seems to be a highly modified kind of saliva and contains a complex mixture of proteins, enzymes and other chemicals some of which are adapted to particular biological functions within particular prey species. Generally venom knocks out the capability of the prey to escape or fight, usually this means by paralysing the victim or at least slowing it down enough to enable it to be tracked and followed by the snake. In some cases the venom also acts as a digesting agent, helping to convert the hapless prey into organic mush prior to being eaten by the predator.

It's these specific biological actions that makes some venoms useful to medical science. Pharmacologists have discovered that by isolating certain chemicals from the venom of certain species of snake it's possible to cherry pick desirable characteristics such as suppression of blood clotting that helps people with high blood pressure etc. In addition to this they have also discovered that it's possible to trigger an immune response to venom by extracting and diluting it and then injecting it into a person who then becomes able to resist the worse effects of the real thing. Many lives have been saved through this research in places like Australia and India where a staggering number of people are bitten (around 400,000 per year!)

It's amazing that this fascinating product of evolution can be exploited by humans for such diverse purposes, on the one hand we have a completely perverted and dishonest side-show, designed to convince people of imaginary powers and extract money from them. On the other hand we have truly useful and practical scientific research that has saved hundreds of thousands of lives regardless of race, creed or culture; the contrast between our past and our future could not be greater.

Cnutism

I notice that the Twitter-sphere is alight with angry voices after Tory grandee Nigel Lawson appeared with Brian Hoskins (PHD climatologist) on radio 4 this morning to talk about climate change. You can listen to the programme here, but the opinions expressed by Lawson were predictably like the sediment deposited in people's homes by the Thames this week, i.e. stubbornly immoveable and malodorous. On the whole I don't think people are upset that Lord Lawson holds such anti-science, anti-evidence views, he is after all entitled to hold whatever opinions he chooses and is (fortunately for us) not accountable to the general public any longer. The problem people seem to have is that he was presented by the BBC as a credible voice to counter the cautious, reasoned views of a life-long climate scientist and world renowned expert in the field. No mention was made that Lawson has precisely zero qualifications in this area and is funded to make noise by the industries that stand to lose the most from changes in government policy on green initiatives like wind and solar power generation. Regardless of the evidence for man-made climate change (and there is lots) and regardless of your political leanings surely it makes better strategic sense (from the point of view of sustainable economic growth and security) to be investing in new forms of power generation technology and to lead those fields rather than focus on shaving ever leaner fillets from the rotting carcass of big oil? Seeking sound information on climate from lobbyists like Lawson is rather like seeking recommendations for Christmas lunch from turkeys, you have to ask yourself, who stands to gain most from avoiding the issue?

Never a truer word...

A classic dark coloured cooking utensil situation... and there was me thinking this was a free country..

New Brew

I had a free hour on Saturday afternoon so I took a trip to Finchamstead to visit a new brewery that opened last year, its called "Siren Craft Brew" and is located in a little industrial unit on the outskirts of the village about 3-4 miles from my house. I'm a big fan of small scale brewing initiatives like this, especially local ones and was keen to try a few beers and see what they could offer, I'm glad to report that I wasn't disappointed.

The company has what they call a "core range" of 4 beers and also produce experimental and seasonal brews that you need to snap up when they become available. I tried all of the core beers which were called Soundwave, Undercurrent, Liquid Mistress and Broken Dream. I liked all of them but my favourite was Soundwave, an American style IPA which was fruity, bitter and hop filled. Broken Dream, their stout, was also nice and flavoured with coffee, a little gimmicky perhaps but very complex flavours and probably nice in small quantities with food since it was also quite strong (6%) I bought some bottles directly from the little shop there but the man also told me that they had started supplying Laithwaites and Majestic with mixed boxes, certainly not a cheap beer (£2.50 for 330ml) but definitely not run of the mill.

Knotty theological problems

In news yesterday we learn of a terrorist trainer in Iraq who thought it would be a good idea to have some "live ammo" practice with his students. He strapped himself into an explosive belt and proceeded to detonate himself and 21 other hopeful suicide bombers, I guess since he's now covering the class with his subject he won't be covering that subject in his class again? Delicious irony perhaps but I bet the residents of Baghdad will be overjoyed to learn that these extremists won't now be sharing their ideas and their vaporised brains with the general population. The more important theological question for the year below is, will they still get the virgins?

Double speak

Two things struck me today, #1 it was the first day in ages that I actually wanted to go outside, blue sky and winter sun, lovely walk around Frensham pond, and #2 where the heck has January gone?

Time seems to pass faster than ever these days! Yesterday I had a visit to my front door by a Jehovah's Witness dropping off his little leaflet exclaiming "the truth!" and crammed with Bible verses thereby proving it was true. I did point out that being a bit of a traditionalist I felt using a book to prove the validity of that same book seemed a little circular to me but the young lad doing the "witnessing" (who looked about 12 years old) clearly hadn't yet grappled with the broad sweep of Human relationships, reproduction and personal hygiene let alone the finer points of logic and reason. The conversation and the leaflet put me in mind of the above cartoon, with faulty logic like this people can't fail to feel safe and self righteous (unfortunately, only in their heads), but then again on a day like today (no rain!) the only resistance I could muster was a smile and shrug. It's sad that there seem to be a lot of people for whom the realities of life on beautiful day in a beautiful place aren't enough.

Proportionality

Jesus and Mo. on the money as usual.

Heartland fruitcake

If one thing is as certain as death and taxes it's that religion eventually inspires otherwise normal, intelligent people to do and say incredibly stupid things. Yesterday I read about a perfect example of this. Henley on Thames UKIP councillor David Silvester (a keen Baptist) thinks that the recent flooding in the UK is because of gay people and the latest UK equality legislation. I suppose that UKIP will now be lobbying for us to quit spending money on meteorology and climate research since their members are able to forecast the weather based on interpreting a bronze age book of Hebrew myths! How long before the Caprinae slaughter begins, we wonder.

Like many others before him Mr Silvester has a habit of allowing ancient religious dogma to cloud his reasoning abilities, he's previously on record as claiming that UK abortion laws are equivalent to the Nazi Holocaust and that homosexuality can be "cured" by prayer. Most reasonable people could easily come up with dozens of reasons why such claims are ludicrous but then if, like Mr Silvester, you don't respect reason then using an evidence based argument doesn't usually make any difference. I suppose in some ways Silvester is doing everyone a favour, i.e. by scratching the surface of organisations like UKIP (and Baptists) and allowing the rest of us to see the true colour of the metal underneath he is allowing voters to make more informed decisions, hopefully marginalising views like his to where they belong, i.e. the past.

Praise be unto He

Is this how religions get started?

Drink anyone?

January sales are here with a vengeance, the shear weight of SPAM in my inbox is simply amazing I reckon it's dropping in at a rate of around 3 messages per minute!

Most of the time I ruthlessly junk and shred (electronically) such messages simply from their subject lines however one did catch my eye today. It was from a wine merchant advertising their January sale, one of the wines on the list was reduced by a whopping £4,800 for a case of 12 bottles. Down from £96,000 to £91,200 what a bargain!

Admittedly this is a rather special wine, a rare Burgundy that has a very limited production which is normally snapped up by greedy bankers before anyone else can get a look in.

Can't help wondering what it tastes like though..

Confirmation bias...

Two kinds of "knowing"..

Listen to this American Christian "preacher" (John Hagee) He claims to "know" about a lot of things; things that are profound, deep and complex, things which I would not dare claim to "know" according to my own definition of the word "know". This man clearly has a definition of "know" which is not the same as mine, by my reckoning his is a far less scrupulous and less honest definition. What I think he really means is that he "believes" these things based on no evidence whatsoever, in his parlance he has "faith" and this faith is utterly shaped by his narrow interests, ethnicity, culture and upbringing rather than the reality of the wider world or the communities of people he claims to "know".

"Knowing" is certainly not the word I would use to describe the kinds of thing that this particular religious man is claiming to know, in fact the word I would use to describe his state of mind is "deluded". How can I be so sure that this is delusion? Well, let's take a look at his claims and see if there's any evidence that would show his faith based assertions to be false...

"Atheism does not paint masterpieces", but atheists have.
"Atheism does not heal the sick", but atheists do.
"Atheism has never dispelled fear", but atheists do.
"Atheism has never given anyone piece of mind", but atheists have.
"Atheism has never dried a tear", but atheists have.
"Atheism has never given an intellectual answer to the creation", but atheists have.

I have to question whether or not this preacher has ever even met an atheist? Not that I suspect this would ever stop Hagee from pretending to be an expert on us. Lying to people about subjects he knows next to nothing about seems to be pretty much what he and most other clergy do for a living.

Tradition

Only two of us left in the office now, me and one other colleague (who happens to be Chinese and therefore doesn't really "do" Christmas) hopefully I'll be shutting up shop around midday and heading out into the frenzy that is last minute shopping. The stillness of our normally bustling, noisy office offered me a moment to reflect, so what is Christmas supposed to be about anyway?

Well I think that depends on your perspective, like most cultural phenomenon there is no hard and fast definition and the whole thing seems to be a mash up of all the different elements and traditions that have sprung up and evolved alongside us as the Homo-British-sapiens species has moved through time. Personally I like most of the things in this diagram, vive la difference! would be my philosophy, just be wary of any particular community who claim to have sole ownership of the season, no one really does and that's probably why it persists.

Conspiracy theories

J&M sums up the secular conspiracy pretty well; just watch out all you religious folk, we're coming to GET YOU... not until after the Christmas break of course, no point in starting a revolution when Waitrose isn't even open!

Special treatment?

When is it OK to make exceptions?

In life we make exceptions all the time, we don't force family members or work colleagues to eat things they don't like even though no harm would come to them if they did; we are tolerant of different choices in entertainment, sport and all manner of interests and hobbies even when sometimes those activities impinge on others; even in the thorny area of politics we celebrate diversity and equate it with the health of our society. Organisations and societies make exceptions for people all the time, so why then would some people get upset about a Muslim shop worker refusing to serve someone with alcohol in M&S, isn't this just another justifiable reason for exception making?

There are of course two sides to this story, some of us look at it and think how trivial, what's all the fuss about, a classic "non-story", exceptions are made for things like this all the time. On the other hand some look at it and think, is this a slippery slope?, should a line in the sand be drawn? Personally I think this is an overreaction by some, there are clear precedents for dealing with certain goods such as alcohol, cigarettes and pornography in most shops. In most supermarkets there are already procedures in place for under 18's to sell products only intended for over 18's, i.e. a supervisor comes over and authorises the purchase, in a well run shop this needn't delay the customer at all. I don't understand why M&S couldn't employ a similar process if certain employees have "problems" with certain products.

I guess a slight delay in buying Christmas Champagne brings the clash of cultures into sharp relief for some middle class commentators, shame it took so long.

Reasons to be cheerful pt 3

Continuing on the "war on Christmas" theme I came across this article today. The right-wing news station Fox News (owned by Rupert Murdoch) ran a piece by the well known American Christian Theologian/Philosopher William Lane-Craig titled "A Christmas gift for Atheists - Five reasons why God exists". Now, WLC is supposed to be (according to many Christian commentators in the USA) the leading Christian light in terms of rational, philosophical debate, he is pitched as some kind of "Atheist's worst nightmare". You can imagine my excitement when I saw this headline, perhaps finally, the theistic side of the house will be presenting some decent arguments, something that isn't just the usual strung out, circular dribble of wish thinking, scientific ignorance and moral cherry picking, something we can all get our teeth into.

I've copied and commented on Craig's 5 points below, so let's have a look..

1.  God provides the best explanation of the origin of the universe.  Given the scientific evidence we have about our universe and its origins, and bolstered by arguments presented by philosophers for centuries, it is highly probable that the universe had an absolute beginning. Since the universe, like everything else, could not have merely popped into being without a cause, there must exist a transcendent reality beyond time and space that brought the universe into existence. This entity must therefore be enormously powerful. Only a transcendent, unembodied mind suitably fits that description.

Hold on a minute, these assertions are based on a flawed premise, this is just the old cosmological argument, the assertion that everything has a first cause is unjustified, it's an argument from intuition. You'll need a lot more than simple "intuition" to convince the theoretical physicists on subjects such as infinity and causality. Where's the Maths WLC? And why would an "unembodied mind" be the only possible explanation, why not an as yet undiscovered natural phenomenon, or the multi-verse, or quantum fluctuation?

2.  God provides the best explanation for the fine-tuning of the universe. Contemporary physics has established that the universe is fine-tuned for the existence of intelligent, interactive life.  That is to say, in order for intelligent, interactive life to exist, the fundamental constants and quantities of nature must fall into an incomprehensibly narrow life-permitting range.  There are three competing explanations of this remarkable fine-tuning: physical necessity, chance, or design. The first two are highly implausible, given the independence of the fundamental constants and quantities from nature's laws and the desperate manoeuvres needed to save the hypothesis of chance. That leaves design as the best explanation.

But, the universe isn't "fine-tuned" for intelligent life (like Human beings)? It may have escaped WLC's attention but 99.99999999 (and so on) % of what we currently know as our "universe" is totally uninhabitable for our kind of life, in fact most of planet Earth is the same, too cold, too hot, too dry, too wet or simply devoid of the essentials for life. In addition to this fundamental point, I have to ask, with what is Craig comparing our universe, how many universes were sampled to come up with this assertion?

3.  God provides the best explanation of objective moral values and duties. Even atheists recognize that some things, for example, the Holocaust, are objectively evil. But if atheism is true, what basis is there for the objectivity of the moral values we affirm? Evolution? Social conditioning? These factors may at best produce in us the subjective feeling that there are objective moral values and duties, but they do nothing to provide a basis for them. If human evolution had taken a different path, a very different set of moral feelings might have evolved. By contrast, God Himself serves as the paradigm of goodness, and His commandments constitute our moral duties. Thus, theism provides a better explanation of objective moral values and duties.

But we do have an objective moral source, it's us, homo sapiens sapiens! We would not have thrived so long as a social species unless we developed our own moral values and cultural frameworks (of which Christianity is but one example). Atheists can be demonstrably good without God, Christians can be demonstrably bad with him and our moral standards change over time, so a much more likely explanation is that Atheism is the correct position and simply that people will be people, the good the bad and the psychopathic.

4.  God provides the best explanation of the historical facts concerning Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection.  Historians have reached something of consensus that the historical Jesus thought that in himself God’s Kingdom had broken into human history, and he carried out a ministry of miracle-working and exorcisms as evidence of that fact.  Moreover, most historical scholars agree that after his crucifixion Jesus’ tomb was discovered empty by a group of female disciples, that various individuals and groups saw appearances of Jesus alive after his death, and that the original disciples suddenly and sincerely came to believe in Jesus’ resurrection despite their every predisposition to the contrary. I can think of no better explanation of these facts than the one the original disciples gave: God raised Jesus from the dead.

So WLC can't think of a better explanation for the disappearance of a body from a tomb than divine intervention? really? (Roman medical experiments?) Assuming Jesus even existed (and that's a stretch) all the work still remains ahead of Craig in terms of proving that this person was in fact a God and that his legend was not simply created after the fact, like Craig must think all other religious myths were, there is nothing remarkable or exceptional about the Christian one. Does Craig's God explain how Mohammed flew to heaven on a winged horse or how Krishna was the eighth incarnation of Vishnu?

5.  God can be personally known and experienced.  The proof of the pudding is in the tasting. Down through history Christians have found through Jesus a personal acquaintance with God that has transformed their lives.

And so says every other religious person throughout history! Atheists do not claim that religious people don't experience subjective psychological phenomena that can affect how they see the world, this is well known. Our brains are predisposed to such phenomena through a myriad of chemical interactions and environmental effects. The essential ingredient missing from Craig's analysis is some critique of the nature of the experience, simply stating that "I had a dream" or "I felt warm and fuzzy whilst singing hymns" is simply not enough to prove anything beyond normal (natural) human experience.

How disappointing, I guess I'll stay an Atheist then, merry Christmas WLC..

War on Christmas?

Is the Anglican Church starting a war on Christmas?

I read today that Wiltshire Canon, Simon Tatton-Brown spilt the beans to a group of primary school pupils attending his "festive address", causing a furore of angry parents and leaving a sobbing crowd of upset youngsters. Apparently the good Canon told his audience that Father Christmas was based on the legend of St. Nicholas and not a cherubic fat man dressed in a red suit that lives at the North Pole surrounded by elves and reindeer! I can't help but sup deeply from the cup of irony here, I sympathise with the chap since it's an easy slip to make, but, having spent a life-time in the Church he of all people he should have been well versed in perpetuating mythology and going with the flow because it makes people feel warm and fuzzy inside.

I would suggest a more honest course of action in situations like this, simply tell children what we know and what we don't know, teach them to take the risk of thinking for themselves; much more happiness, truth, beauty and wisdom will come to them that way.

I wanna be like you ou ou.

You see a lot in the press these days on the subject of "rights", interest groups up and down the land put forward their claims to various "rights"; from Christians wearing crosses to work through to Islamists demanding that alcohol be removed from sale in our high streets, people demanding the right to equal treatment and people demanding the right to be free to deny equal treatment. Sometimes these rights are supposedly handed down from supernatural forces on high through middle-men and sometimes they are just common sense measures to protect a minority from a majority, one thing is for sure and that is Human beings are the purveyors of what we call "rights", we invent, package, barter, sell and donate them to each other and have done for centuries.

So far so good, but what about the "rights" of other species of animals, how about our closest relatives the great apes? Back in 1772 in England there was a famous legal case that established the right of habeas corpus in our legal system; this means that someone being held captive may seek relief by having a judge force his captors to explain why he is being held. In the 1772 case the person being held was an escaped American slave and the ruling concluded that the slave was not a piece of property but a person and as such could not be held captive for no reason. However, this basic "right", one that we've all taken for granted in this country over the 250 odd years since this ruling is not extended to animal species other than humans, we still treat our closest cousins in the animal kingdom like plantation slaves, worse in fact. So do apes have a right not to be imprisoned? Some people think they do and campaign on behalf of chimpanzees and other apes for basic "human" rights, for example habeas corpus; as with all questions on rights, its up to us.

Personally I think we should be guided by science on this, as we know, species boundaries are not fixed over time and since we've been aware of genetics it has become obvious that the differences between species are much smaller than previously imagined, as the photo above shows even our most primitive reactions (to things like cold stethoscopes) are identical.

It's not rocket science..

Some people, particularly American Christians, seem to get hot and bothered about what gets said and what gets celebrated at this time of year. For me it's a battle that was lost a long time ago, Christmas is one of those generic holidays where people these days do whatever the hell they want to do, shop till they drop, drink, eat, pray, sing, work, celebrate, moan about the TV or whatever. Who cares, it's a couple of days off, the least we can do as human beings is be civil with one another (as if we need a special holiday to do that!). As usual Jesus, Saturn and/or (insert your Deity of choice) is irrelevant for most of the rest of us on the planet however the period provides some much appreciated family time and relaxation for a lucky minority, let's just leave it at that.

Old ideas

This little cartoon made me chuckle today; excellent work as usual from the farleftside.com doing the important work of illustrating the reality upon which our perceptions rest.

Door to door daftness

I had some Jehovah's Witnesses knock on my door the other day, now, usually I don't mind being polite and taking five minutes for a little theological debate with my superstitious brothers and sisters but on this occasion I had somewhere to go so I cut them off at the pass quickly. Surprisingly they seemed relieved, thanking me for my honesty, perhaps it was all a ploy to make me feel sorry for them or perhaps they'd just reached their quota for the day and wanted to get back to the hive for a cuppa. Anyway, I saw this cartoon today, it made me think of them, you have to wonder what goes through the minds of people who would take their half-baked philosophy and childish (anti-science) pamphlets door to door. I can only admire (in a sociology experiment kind of way) the thickness of their skins and the strength of their toecaps as doors all over the globe slam shut on them, I guess it makes them feel special.

Gossips r us

Been really busy at work lately so I haven't been reading the news much; however I did take a look for 5 minutes this morning and what struck me was the shear quantity of banal content about Tom Daily and what he prefers to do with his genitals (I don't give a flying half-pike!) and a little side story about the fact that for the first time, the UK does not make the top 20 in any subject, in international tests taken by 15 year olds in maths, reading and science.

I have reached the conclusion that I'm not compatible with mainstream media, my interests are far to adult in nature.