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.