Should evolution be taught in schools?

For a rationalist, or indeed anyone that values scientific knowledge (as opposed to uninformed opinion) and how we acquire it, this question seems utterly preposterous, why even have such a question? Evolution has been an established fact for over 200 years so why on earth would we still be debating if we should even talk about it.

Take a look at this little clip of miss USA delegates being asked this very same question, it's fascinating, is this really a cross section of mainstream American opinion?. Now then, I'm keen to resist the urge to make wise cracks about the kinds of women that compete in beauty parades, that would be too easy, in actual fact none of the responses are too horrible from a general coherence point of view at all. However, many thought that evolution shouldn't be taught at all and out of those that thought it should, none thought it should for what I would consider to be the "right" reason.



So, regardless of what we believe religion-wise, why should evolution, or indeed any science be taught at all, here are some of the suggestions from the "girls".

- It should be taught because children should be given every possible opinion and then they can decide what they want to believe.

- It should be taught as a theory only, not as a fact.

- It shouldn't be taught because I am a Christian and I don't believe it at all

- It should be taught but we should miss out Human evolution, because that's controversial

- It should be taught because it's part of the belief system of the West

- It shouldn't be taught but it should be mentioned, since it might not be compatible with the morals of the child's parents.

- It shouldn't be taught because so many different cultures have their own beliefs

- It should be taught as long as its given equal time with creation

Looking down this list it's not difficult to see why there is so much confusion regarding this question, some of the answers even sound reasonable. However, it's clear that many people were simply parroting the propaganda of their religious sects or indeed woolly concepts of post-modernism and yet showed no signs of actually arriving at those views by any rational means. It's also clear that science education, critical thinking and reasoning skills among this group is somewhat weak, I found it ironic that so many of them offered the "teach both sides" defence when they hadn't got a grasp of the "other side" of that argument. It's not only the facts of science that are lacking but the rationale behind science and why it is the basis of our modern lives, why it's so successful and why so many other means of acquiring knowledge are not.

Of course, the correct answer to this question is...

"Evolution should be taught in science class because it has an overwhelming mountain of physical evidence that supports it and because of that it forms one of the core pillars of Biology, without evolution nothing in Biology is understandable. It should be taught because it is as certain as any other major scientific theory, for example the theory of gravity, the germ theory of disease, quantum theory, thermodynamic theory etc.

Evolution should be taught as science because science is not about personal beliefs or opinions, science deals with the study of evidence and reason in order to formulate explanations of reality that can be tested. Religion and personal belief systems on the other hand belong in philosophy, religious education and history classes, not science classes, religious instruction belongs at home and in church."

Hopefully this answer explains why all the previous suggestions are flawed, although Miss California and Miss Vermont get my vote, actually Miss California eventually won - although that's probably got more to do with what she looks like in a bikini than her being a science geek... they never had science geeks like that in my day!

Praise be to dog...

In an amazing show of daftness a Rabbinical court in Israel recently sentenced a dog to be stoned to death. Why would such an act of anti-canine violence be justified you might well ask, did this dog bite some religious bigwig in the bum? Nope, in an all too familiar attack on secular criticism the stray dog wondered into the court and wouldn't leave, so therefore the proper conclusion is that the poor animal had become possessed by the spirit of a secular lawyer who challenged the court 20 years before, i.e. someone who attacked the sect. Such "interpretation" of the real world to support the narrow (vested) interests of a deluded few is commonplace in religion. More alarming in this case was that the judges from the court wanted the children of the district to perform the stoning, children stoning animals to death, just how cynical can you get in the name of religion before your constituents should start picking up rocks and looking at you through narrowed eyes..?

Anyway, the possession of the dog is certain to be untrue, everyone knows lawyers never infect loyal creatures like dogs, it's always rats or cockroaches, surely?

Update: Looks like this story may be a prank, lots of furious denials going on today..

"one with everything"

Here's a question for theologians everywhere, can you be religious and retain a sense of humour about your faith?

Take a look at the following video and watch an attempted joke by an Aussi TV anchor man fall horribly flat as the Dalai Lama just didn't get his Buddhism joke...



Actually being more charitable some of the meaning of the gag may have been lost in the translation, never the less a funny moment. Not mentioning any names, I could imagine other religious leaders who would equally struggle or be "offended" at such an interaction...

Jesus messes with your genes..

I love this, it shows beautifully how ignorant people grab at scientific concepts and butcher them embarrassingly in order to acquire a scintilla of credibility for their ranty woo woo. The crowd in this case is clearly equally as ignorant and so everything works out fine and they all get a warm fuzzy feeling inside. I suppose that's what this kind of thing is for, but me, I just see the perpetuation of ignorance.

Free education vs. freedom to educate

I couldn't let the recent hoo-ha regarding AC Grayling's efforts to launch a new private university concept in London pass without some kind of comment.

It's not that I particularly care what a bunch of semi-retired professors do with their spare time, how they fund it or how much they think its worth, ultimately commercial value is whatever someone is prepared to pay. We live in a society (UK) that is organised around freedom to pursue personal financial and developmental goals within the law, if we allow this for some then we should allow it for all, and let's face it paying for education is hardly a precedent past, present or future.

What interests me in this is the content and nature of the criticism levelled against this initiative, there seems to be two sides to it, firstly we have a bunch of students who are focusing on the money and secondly we have the religious apologists who seem to be fixated on some cocktail of anti-atheism, loathing of science and general scaremongering against sliding toward an "American system".

Students recently heckled and smoke bombed a launch talk that Grayling held in Foyles bookshop in London, leading to people having to be evacuated from the building. From the commentary about the event and a related heckling of Richard Dawkins at an event hosted by the British Humanist Association, it seems that the students are against people wanting to charge for education services or perhaps the concept of private education generally. Whilst I can agree that a universally free system may be an ideal worth fighting for as a safety net for everyone, it can never be the only solution, one size fits all doesn't work and ultimately (within the law) who should dictate what people spend their own money on? It seems somewhat hypocritical of a bunch of higher education recipients complaining about professors wanting to make money when getting a better job and making more money is generally the whole point of getting a higher education for most people in the first place. It seems to me that it would be far better and more fruitful if the students focused their attention on our Government; IMO the primary source of cock-eyed and short sighted educational resource decision making.

Then we have the apologists, there are a bunch of theological commentators out there who appear to want to attack the so called "new atheists" at every turn, regardless of the subject. I suppose I can understand this, after all we are diametrically opposed to most of their views, chalk and cheese, oil and water, cats and dogs, natural adversaries you might say. In a piece in the Guardian Terry Eagleton bitterly criticised the initiative, calling it "odious". Eagleton is a well known literary critic and religious apologist, raised a Catholic he exhibits may of the a priori laden intellectual positions in his writings that are characteristic of that organisation. I came across him in connection with his critique of Dawkins book "The God Delusion", which I can summarise for you simply by saying "how dare a mere scientist criticize theology?". I found the whole premise of his book that a scientist can't comment on theology totally vacuous, especially when that's not what Dawkins actually comments on; Dawkins focuses on reality and science, something Eagleton demonstrates scant regard for and hopeless ignorance of and yet feels amply qualified to comment on it ad nausea, such is the mind of the theologian. We don't need to study the arcana of drawing up horoscopes to know that astrology is bunk in the same way that we do not need to spend years poring over the scribblings of Aquinas to see that his God is a phantasm, Eagleton's argument is a grand exercise in avoidance.

Putting Eagleton's Christian indoctrination laden rantings to one side I feel there is an idea much more central to this debate; that of the two cultures war thesis first popularised by British scientist and novelist C.P. Snow. In a lecture back in the 50s Snow put forward the idea that there exists a widening divide between the humanities and science in our society, a rift that may be harmful if allowed to continue unchecked. I am somewhat sympathetic to this idea, I certainly see and read some strange perceptions of science among non-scientists and even in trivial ways many people think it's cool to be ignorant of our understanding of reality, preferring illusion or magic, the reality TV effect perhaps. Snow sums it up well in the following quote,

I remember G. H. Hardy once remarking to me in mild puzzlement, some time in the 1930s, Have you noticed how the word "intellectual" is used nowadays? There seems to be a new definition which certainly doesn't include Rutherford or Eddington or Dirac or Adrian or me? It does seem rather odd, don't y'know.

A good many times I have been present at gatherings of people who, by the standards of the traditional culture, are thought highly educated and who have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity at the illiteracy of scientists. Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked the company how many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The response was cold: it was also negative. Yet I was asking something which is the scientific equivalent of: Have you read a work of Shakespeare's?

I now believe that if I had asked an even simpler question — such as, What do you mean by mass, or acceleration, which is the scientific equivalent of saying, Can you read? — not more than one in ten of the highly educated would have felt that I was speaking the same language. So the great edifice of modern physics goes up, and the majority of the cleverest people in the western world have about as much insight into it as their neolithic ancestors would have had.

So is this really an argument about money and privilege or are there deeper divisions being played out here,  can we honestly say that selecting rich liberal students by charging a big fee is any more elitist than selecting students by which church they attend? Does the ideal of providing free higher education trump giving adults the freedom to educate themselves however they wish, I for one hope the experiment will succeed and become more accessible over time, it will certainly be interesting to see how it plays out.

Science proves atheists wrong... apparently...

There's a ton of these idiotic refutations out there, many making their way into the myriad leaflets and propaganda scripts spouted by fundie Muslims, Christians and Jews running around the place;  a sad reflection on science education and an indictment of religious indoctrination.

It's hardly worth pointing out the fallacies in this document, but just in case you're wondering what a simple falsification would be try drinking a couple of pints of water wait a few hours and see if that liquid disappears from the universe for ever, if by some remote chance it does then you shouldn't take this argument any more seriously rather you should urgently seek medical assistance.

I can see your house from up here!

Wonderful picture of the ISS with the space shuttle docked onto it; a rare shot as it's taken from a soyuz capsule leaving the station, normally that doesn't happen whilst the shuttle is docked.

An iconic image of a now (hard to believe) "legacy" technology.

The ages of man

Spot on as usual from xkcd (click on the image to see a bigger version)

Expelled

Back in 2008 an American creationist organisation funded and produced a nasty little propaganda film called "Expelled". Its main presenter a fifth rate American actor called Ben Stein presented a toxic caricature of science, a straw man designed to appeal to the denialists and conspiracy theorists that seem to swell creationist ranks the world over. Stein claimed that "big science" (whatever that is?) was suppressing the truth, pushing an agenda of evolution at the expense of "heroic" creationists who supposedly had killer evidence that evolution was false (although we never saw what this evidence actually was?)

The problem for Stein and creationists everywhere is that there is no conspiracy, no cover up, there is just a mountain of solid evidence for evolution, accumulated over decades from all the major scientific disciplines, geology, palaeontology, biology, chemistry, physics, cosmology etc. and each thread of evidence supports the other, if you're claiming that Genesis is literally true then by definition you are also claiming that everything we know about physics is WRONG - a bold claim.

On the other hand there is no evidence whatsoever for creation, no matter now hard they try and no matter how many millions of dollars harvested from gullible believers they pump into this they cannot come up with a single sliver of a single shred of a minuscule shard of evidence that their stories and delusions are real, so instead they resort to monstrous distortions of the truth like "Expelled", they lie for Jesus.

In a rare example of cosmic justice, the company that produced this appalling little film just went into receivership, and the whole pathetic artefact is going under the hammer. I wonder who would buy such a thing? perhaps some university could use it to underpin a module of a psychology course, I can see it now, "Herd mentality, using Godwin's law to support mass delusion 101"..

Psst.. wanna see some hot pictures..

Now here's a cool picture; you may recognise the fiery disc of our sun but any idea what the little black dot is in the middle? Well it's the international space station and what's even more remarkable is that the space station has the penultimate NASA space shuttle Endeavour docked onto the side of it.

Here is the same photo but cropped so that you can see some detail,

I visited the science museum at the weekend and marvelled at how far aircraft and rocket science and technology has come in such a relatively short period of time, it was only 34 years ago that the pioneer German rocketeer Wernher von Braun who started it all (among others) died, and we're now at the point where the leading US launch platform is about to be retired. Let's hope the shuttle's replacement is just as inspiring to a new generation of geeks, and can we have it soon please, I'm not getting any younger you know!

Pesky evolution again..

This story is filling our news channels at the moment, it's about the new strain of E. Coli bacteria that has infected more than 1,500 people of which 18 have died: 17 in Germany and one in Sweden. Note the word "new", this literally means that a strain of the old E. Coli bacteria has EVOLVED to become a new strain with a different, slightly modified genetic code which no longer replicates to produce the old strain. If this new animal is successful (unfortunately that may mean it infects millions of people) then it will replicate itself to become perhaps a dominant population from which new animals will also evolve.

Amazingly there are still people who deny that evolution occurs even though this kind of thing is happening around them all the time, how they intellectualise outbreaks like this we can only speculate on but suffice to say what they think is unlikely to be rational or true. Unfortunately for our society such people seem overly keen to inflict their ignorant, head in the sand views on the rest of us, particularly children. Clearly such proselytising has the aim of indoctrinating whoever will listen into the same deluded and brain washed state of religiously inspired denial as themselves. Even now, in enlightened Europe in the 21st century we have people who wish to spread such lies and ignorance to our very own school kids.

Think I'm exaggerating? take a look at the picture above it shows a wooden boat made by a Dutch creationist Johan Huibers and is supposed to be a replica of the ark from the Bible story of Noah. Mr Huibers is seeking permission to have his monument to stupidity moored on the Thames during the London 2012 Olympics. In a statement about his plans he says that "It will be nice for British schoolchildren to visit." This "attraction" is obviously a work of great commitment and skill and no doubt it will be full of fluffy, furry animals designed expressly to appeal to young children but beware, be skeptical, stealing from another ancient myth this wooden vessel is also a Trojan horse, one full of toxic ideas that are designed to ensnare and which need to be opposed at every turn.

As you would expect Huibers has a strange, warped kind of logic, when asked about his monument he is quoted as saying,

"This will speak very much to children, because it will give them something tangible to see that Noah's Ark really existed"

So, (using Huibers logic) just by building a model of something from a story in a book it means that it really existed, I wonder if Huibers has seen the  huge elaborate models of Ganesha the elephant God, does this mean our kids should accept that Hindu deities also existed too? Just for a laugh, I'd love to hear him explain how millions of different species of animals would fit into his boat (including dinosaurs) Given the puny dimensions of the ark you couldn't even liquidise that many animals and still fit them in!

Can you watch?

Loom from Polynoid on Vimeo.

Here's an incredible movie, it graphically shows one example of the life and death struggle going on in every nook and cranny of every dusty shed, every acre of wood and every spindly hedgerow. It's difficult to watch this and not feel sorry for the moth but our feelings count for nothing of course; this is reality, nature red in tooth and claw, all we should do is count our luck that spiders didn't evolve to the size of dogs (even though my wife claims there is one that lives in our bathroom that size..) I challenge anyone not to wince even slightly as the spider sinks his fangs into it's prey and starts injecting the enzymes that will slowly dissolve its internal organs to be consumed by this furry little predator, its no wonder so many people have arachnophobia.

So much for teleology, if there is a loving deity he must really hate moths...

Godless sex

In my humble opinion there's nothing more disconcerting or concentration killing than suspecting that you're being secretly spied on for punitive purposes. I guess that's the feeling a lot of religious believers have which underpins the results of this survey done in the USA which concludes that Atheists have much better sex lives that their religious brothers and sisters. Different religions were even scored for the "guilt level" of practitioners during sex, the results were interesting and unsurprisingly exactly what you'd expect if this were purely the product of impressionable human minds; the more fringe the beliefs the more the guilt. 

Here's a sampling of their findings,

"Strict religions such as Mormons ranked highest on the scale of sexual guilt. Their average score was 8.19 out of 10. They were followed closely behind by Jehovah's Witness, Pentecostal, Seventh Day Adventist, and Baptist.

"Catholics rated their levels of sexual guilt at 6.34 while Lutherans came slightly lower at 5.88.

"In contrast, atheists and agnostics ranked at 4.71 and 4.81 respectively."

Of course unlike religious people tending toward creationism, rationalists understand that sexual desire is a natural urge we get from our evolutionary heritage, it's a good thing without which we wouldn't exit, ergo, it's a human universal even though it manifests itself in many different ways. Understanding reality clearly has benefits which extend beyond mere understanding, once people realise that consensual pleasure between adults will not be punished by an omnipotent busy-body in the sky then guess what, they enjoy themselves more, probably have less stress and live happier, longer lives.

Obviously I can't prove that last comment, but could this be yet another sound reason to be an atheist?

You don't need to be a psychic...

Here's a bijou little story it's about the witches of Salem (USA), well psychics to be more precise who are up in arms because apparently it's far to easy for interlopers to muscle in on "their turf". According to some resident hucksters practitioners, since local legislation changed to relax psychic licensing laws any old fraud can set up shop and practice their version of voodoo in Salem. This increased competition is making many uncomfortable, perish the thought that "untrained" psychics could be let loose on the public, gullible unsuspecting people could get fleeced hurt!

I visited Salem many years ago whilst touring New England, it's a quaint little place and we did the various tours and re-enactments of the witch trials that occurred there 300 years ago. I find it astonishing that anyone would think that the story does anything but illustrate what happens when superstition egged on by religious clap-trap is allowed to escalate out of control. The fact that people still think the place is bewitched and seek out spiritual vapour-ware there is plain bonkers to me, but then again on reflection I guess it's no different than what millions of people seek in mosques and churches up and down the land on Fridays and Sundays all over the world.

Apparently things have turned nasty in Salem though recently, with dead animals being deposited outside certain premises, how awful!, it's strange though, you'd have thought they should have seen it coming?

Heavy man...

Its been an interesting week for records, this story from CERN describes how the most dense material ever seen has been created in the worlds largest particle accelerator. Smash lead ions together at suitably high energies and you get a super-hot quark-gluon plasma that's so dense a sugar cube sized sample of it would weigh more than 40 billion tons; just goes to show how much empty space we contain, in fact we're mostly empty space, particularly fundamentalist Christians who predict raptures who seem especially empty in the reasoning centres of the brain and yet exceptionally dense at the same time?

Not wanting  to be outdone by the boson bashers, the astronomers took this snap shot of an exploding star, not too special except when you realise that it's 13.14 billion light years away, i.e. it actually exploded 13.14 billion years ago and it's taken the light that long to reach the tiny sensor in NASA's Swift telescope.

At the opposite end of the size/mass spectrum another team of physics buffs working at Imperial (London)  have used some fiendishly precise lasers to make the most accurate measurement yet of the shape of an electron, and ta da... they're spherical! This is interesting because the standard model, our current best framework for how everything works, suggests that they should be more egg shaped, if this is correct then these results could mean that theory is scrambled!

The real thing!

Here's to 21st October 2011! (the new rapture date) clearly, some people don't know when to quit..

This lady's not for 3 point turning

Here's an interesting theological dilemma, where in the Koran does it say that woman aren't allowed to drive cars?

Of course it doesn't, and that's the problem with pegging so much of your law, culture and life to books that were written in the dark ages, they don't make much sense in the 21st century. Its one thing to derive useful insights into human nature from such materials but literalistic readings will just end up making you look foolish. As Rev. Camping re-learned yesterday morning, the law of all demonstrable things (particularly software) states, never prefix any action with the words "it's absolutely reliable, now watch this.." it's just in the nature of things.



However, some enlightened Saudi women are taking matters into their own hands, as this youtube upload shows some are openly defying the ban although since this was made the woman in the video has been arrested. Could we see an Arabic "Emmeline Pankhurst" soon? I hope not, such a senseless waste of human potential, but never forget, we are all just monkeys with shoes; sometimes it seems that different peoples need to learn the lessons of enlightenment first hand before reason kicks in.

Now that's chatty..

I couldn't resist this little story on the BBC and elsewhere today, it's about how much data scientists in Germany have been able to squirt down an optical fibre at once, the answer (so far) is a staggering 26 terabits per second! That's a lot of data, something like 525 DVD's worth of data every second or roughly 35,000 simultaneous streams of 1080p hi-definition video. Of course it will be a while before this kind of band-width is commercially available and the team doing this work have already figured out on paper how they can get to 100 terabits per second.

As we know the internet of the future will (unfortunately) probably be mostly used like the internet of today, i.e. it will keep a lot of onanists very happy indeed.

Geek heaven..

Since religion is such a plastic concept and yet another "rapture" date has come and gone, I thought it would be a good time to redefine what "heaven" means. Apparently this is how "sophisticated" religions differentiate themselves from the primitive evangelistic ones like Harold Camping's, i.e. avoid anything that is actually falsifiable, if anyone questions anything too closely then fall back on your own personal subjective definitions, use the phrase "that's not *my* idea of God/heaven/morality/faith/charity you're describing" etc..

The following diagram shows what "geek heaven" would look like...

(ruthlessly plagiarised from xkcd.com)

Good morning Britain...

Still here!, no great surprise among rationalists, Harold Camping can't be reached and there are a few extra baffled Christians running around the USA wanting their money back, just like any other day really. Planet Earth's natural laws remain un-subverted as they have done for the last 4 billion years.

It's a shame that not all of us can simply laugh at this idiocy, some families are waking up to some very difficult times as significant chunks of their resources and money have been squandered on this ignorance. Supporters of the supernatural may have to wind their necks back in ever so slightly and people may be more wary of such scams for a while but until indoctrination is outlawed and cultures stop revering the concept of "faith" there will always be a next time.

A Sign?

I don't want to alarm anyone but I just read about a celestial sign of the impending rapture. It happened in a rural village called Soltmany in Poland, reports are just coming in; apparently just after 6:00 a.m. local time, Mrs. Alfreda (an early riser) noticed a whistling sound followed by a large crash, she rushed outside to see roof debris spread over her front lawn surrounding a shattered cobble sized rock still warm to the touch. What could possibly be happening? She picked up the stone, running through it, like the letters in a stick of seaside rock, was a word, indistinct at first but upon closer examination spelled out a name...... DAWKINS.... could this be true, are angels hurling ancient rocks at God's atheist enemies on Earth?

Actually I made that last bit up (this prophetic mythology stuff is so easy!), anyway, a cobble-sized rock weighing about a kilogram really did fall down nearly vertically and smashed right through a roof of a farm house in Poland last month. This kind of event is very rare, not that meteorites are rare but if you consider the surface area of Earth and the tiny fraction occupied by human buildings the probability of something being hit is very small. A bit of Googling reveals that these chunks of 4 billion year old rock are travelling around up there at around 40km per second, that's a lot of energy, luckily for us our atmosphere slows them down to a paltry 200mph, still, if you're wondering what kind of damage that does the following photo shows the roof after impact..

Clearly the thing I wrote about God is just a bit of fun, any omniscient being would know that Dawkins lives in Oxford duh!

Man imitates box of frogs...

Harold Camping is a Christian radio broadcaster and president of Family Radio. He is the man behind a recent nationwide billboard campaign in the USA  (which cost millions of dollars) that warns commuters "The Jesus" will return to Earth on May 21, 2011, the world will end and the most gullible faithful Christians of some flavour will be raptured up to heaven to spend an eternity doing something or other as yet unspecified. Yes folks May 21st!, that's this Saturday in case you were wondering. Apparently when someone interviewed Mr Camping on the phone yesterday they could hear a hoover running in the background, now I was curious about this and checked with my wife regarding the hoovering protocol for the end of the world, apparently it would be quite near the bottom of her "to-do" list, I'm too scared to ask what would be top.

Just how bonkers do you need to be in the USA before some nice, humane government employee arrives in a van and a white coat to lead you off to a place with no sharp things?

Problems with words

Occasionally I catch an episode of the "The Big Questions" a quasi-religious program on the BBC, it's usually fairly sterile but now and then they invite someone on who stirs things up a bit. Last week Richard Dawkins was on the programme and the subject being discussed was "is the Bible still relevant", I had thought it might be interesting but alas I was disappointed, the opposition (to the token atheist perspective) were so weak and wishy washy that it was either bickering school kids arguing over semantics or happy clappies "praising the lord", nothing substantive.

It's on Youtube (4 parts) now if you're interested,



There were a couple of smallish points that stood out, for example it was pretty evident how much Christians disagree with each other on major points of principal and indeed what the Bible actually is or means; nothing new in that of course but it always amazes me how people can invest so much in something so obviously plastic. The other cringe-worthy moment was when Dawkins asked why anyone would heed a 2500 year old book written by people who were as ignorant as the myriad scribes who contributed to that document must have been. It was the word "ignorant" that nearly caused a fight, ruffled cassocks or what! In a peak of relativist indignation one of the apologists on the panel blurted out that the ancients "had just as much knowledge as we do, but different knowledge", what a crock, these were people who sacrificed goats to treat infectious diseases, they were unaware of most of the nature of reality around them. This doesn't mean they were all bad people or that they couldn't make valid observations on human nature it just means they didn't know much stuff and the stuff they thought they knew was mostly wrong!

In some future age (if the armies of the faithful don't nuke us back to the stone age before then) our descendants will look back on us and call us "ignorant", maybe in specific ways, maybe generally, who knows, but this has no bearing on us, just what we don't know. In modern secular societies each generation generally stands on the shoulders of previous ones via work done in science and developments in society, law and the arts etc. Of course, if you are unlucky enough to live in a theocracy or a totalitarian state then the chances of stagnation, corruption or even a reversal of  knowledge are much higher than if you don't; none of this is radical or new of course its just a statement of fact, clearly a corrosive fact if (like some on this panel) you happen to be invested in the past and not the future.

Cool pic.

Wouldn't it be cool to see a space shuttle launch from along side; this lucky person did, shooting an amazing photograph from the window of a commercial airliner.

Creationism round up..

Creationism, that eternal weeble  of lies, misinformation and stupid ideas has cropped up in a number of places this last few weeks, for example Harun Yahya that crazy Turkish Bond villain lookalike (see photo above) is taking a band of "Muslim creationists" on tour around France visiting "faith schools" preaching lies and ignorance. One interesting tactic in this story is that he's clearly trying to align himself with the equivalent loons on the Christian side, pointing out the Genesis myth and how "6 days" really means "6 long periods of time". Of course, using much the same epistemological slight of hand us Atheists understand that "6 creationists" really means "6 idiots". He even claims that Jesus will return to the Earth soon as a Muslim and convert everyone to that faith, I'm wondering what Christians would want to say about that? Although unfortunately for them they have as much evidence that this won't happen as he has that it will.

Closer to home we have a controversy brewing over the increasing influence of creationism in UK schools, the NSS reported on a case in St. Peter's state secondary school, Exeter, where a creationist was introduced to kids as a "scientist" and allowed to indoctrinate speak on the subject for a hour and a half, presenting creationism on equal terms with evolutionary science. For readers concerned about this the people behind the complaint against this stupidity have started an on-line petition aimed at Michael Grove the Secretary of State for Education.

Back in March we had death threats issued against a London Imam Usama Hasan because he advised Muslims to "grow up and accept evolution", once again police are having to monitor the situation in case some followers of the religion of peace reach the conclusion that violence against Mr Hasan's family is the best way to settle intellectual disputes in the 21st century.

From top to bottom it seems that religion abhors evolution, even those religious leaders that claim they support it occasionally let the guard slip to reveal an abiding dislike for evolutionary biology and genetics in particular, here is Rowan Williams, the Arch Bishop of Canterbury on the subject in a recent book review,

"The gene has been presented as the irreducible monadic agent for biological science, but this begs important questions. We need to remember that the gene itself is part of the evolutionary story, not its sole motor (I was reminded of a passage in C. S. Lewis’s letters where he describes with relish hearing of a passionately enlightened schoolteacher who insisted to her students that all life forms descended from apes). If the only model for evolutionary logic we possess is the mythology of the selfish gene, we leave unanswered and unanswerable the question of the gene’s own history; quite apart from the problems in speaking of “selfishness” as the sole generator of development."

It's not clear which evolutionists in particular don't recognise that the origin of genetic information, and how it interacts with proteins, is an intriguing but unsolved puzzle? But how does this denigrate evolution, which begins only after the first replicator has evolved? Of course all biologists recognise C.S. Lewis as a reliable arbiter of such scientific matters.

Clearly the Pope wouldn't want to be left out of this select group of science manglers, as previously reported he seems to drift in and out of acceptance for the idea of evolution, not quite denying it but not quite accepting it either, depending on who is listening I expect.

Creationism is the intellectual equivalent of athlete's foot, usually not a serious handicap (unless you happen to be a London Imam!) and easy to defeat in open debate but ever present, lurking just beneath the surface ready to reappear on those that neglect their basic reasoning hygiene. Once infected it causes a nasty itch and has the ability to spread rapidly among the ignorant. All us scientists can advise is that, like most parasitic diseases and bad meme's, prevention is usually better than cure.

All hail Zeus...

Like a lot of people I'm sure, I checked my credit card balance this morning to see if any money for London 2012 tickets had been extracted from my account. The gods of Olympus were obviously indifferent towards me as my previous balance remained intact. I'm not sure what that means now, perhaps I didn't get any, perhaps the payment will be processed later, who knows, all I can say at this point is that it's not a particularly transparent process.

Of course if I don't get any allocation then I shall be giving my disappointed children Lord Coe's photo-fit picture and they can track him down and pester him directly, although thinking about it, even if they did find him, they probably couldn't catch him!

The magic of reality

Dawkins has a new book coming out soon, this time it's aimed at children and seems to cover all kinds of important stuff from how science works to comparisons of things like creation myths through to specific facts like what a rainbow is made of (nod to Keats), from the PDF that you can download on the RD site the illustrations look wonderful, I hope it does well.

No doubt this will ruffle some religious sensibilities again (oh well, not difficult) I can imagine the apologists and fleas flocking in readiness even now, "how dare he call our beautiful creation stories "myths" who is he to thrust so called scientific facts in our face, science doesn't know everything, atheism is just another religion, Hitler was an atheist, my (insert God of choice) is love bla, bla" and such like; all of which will miss the point by a country mile as usual. Any bets on what follow up books will emerge? "The magic of faith" perhaps, "The reality of God" no doubt, lot's of illustrations of lambs, clouds and sunbeams, I should snap up some appropriate domain names, just in case :)

Quiet but not silenced

I see today in various places that Christopher Hitchens has lost his voice and has written a heart-rending piece about it in Vanity Fair; it's a nice essay and provides clear evidence to any reader that the author's brain remains unaffected by his illness, the last sentence is lapel grabbing,

"What do I hope for? If not a cure, then a remission. And what do I want back? In the most beautiful apposition of two of the simplest words in our language: the freedom of speech."

Cancer's a bitch..

Witty come-backs... (I can never remember)

I spied this little photo caption today on Pharyngula, it's not bad but there's an even better retort to this well trodden atheist put-down hidden away in the post comments, a military guy replied by saying that whenever he hears a theist spouting this kind of thing he always replies...

"There are certainly no Chaplains in foxholes"...

That would do it..

Teach them to fish or give them a fish finger..?

Here's a cool little device, it's a computer that could easily fit in a fish finger (note the 20p piece at the bottom of the shot) but more impressive than the size is the price; the developers (the Raspberry Pi Foundation) reckon it weighs in at a meagre £15 a pop! (or about the price of a kilo of salmon, just to keep the fishy thing going... )

Each one of these devices has a processor, 128Mb of memory, HDMI (to connect to your TV), USB, SD card slot and a bunch of open-source software to make it all work, that's quite an achievement in the form factor shown above. The main objective of the foundation in making such a device is to facilitate the teaching of real computer science to children. This is a noble aim in my opinion, kids that don't know their way around a computer are as disadvantaged as those that could not read or write in days gone by. Clearly, this doesn't mean that everyone will or even desire to become a Shakespeare or J.K. Rowling but at least they will stand a chance of exploiting the possibilities indirectly. Many people these days stand isolated from the actual task of making computers do things for them, they rely on others to provide tools and content, often that means expense; and a great deal of creativity is potentially stultified simply because of the ease by which someone else's ideas can be cut and paste.

This is a subject close to my own heart and is a source of some frustration even in my own limited experience. The few teachers I do know seem to perceive science subjects like this as "optional", ICT as a subject seems to have morphed into something that would be more accurately called "Learning Microsoft Office" and no one seems interested in encouraging kids how to "create" their own stuff any more. I do wonder why this is, perhaps it has something to do with the fact that most teachers at the foundational levels are arts/literature graduates, maybe it's because of their own limitations and non-scientific backgrounds, perhaps that's over simplifying? It would be nice to have a landscape where computers as learning tools are used in every class to facilitate the different educational and problem solving challenges in each subject, in the same way that reading and writing are used ubiquitously to the same end, after all that's what real working life is like.

When I started this blog back in 2006 the topic of computer science was one of the first things I posted about, not much has changed since, hopefully developments like this can help.

The terrorist threat

The English are feeling the pinch in relation to recent terrorist threats and have therefore raised their security level from "Miffed" to "Peeved." Soon, though, security levels may be raised yet again to "Irritated" or even "A Bit Cross."

The English have not been "A Bit Cross" since the blitz in 1940 when tea supplies nearly ran out. Terrorists have been re-categorized from "Tiresome" to "A Bloody Nuisance." The last time the British issued a "Bloody Nuisance" warning level was in 1588, when threatened by the Spanish Armada.

The Scots have raised their threat level from "Pissed Off" to "Let's get the Bastards." They don't have any other levels. This is the reason they have been used on the front line of the British army for the last 300 years.

The French government announced yesterday that it has raised its terror alert level from "Run" to "Hide." The only two higher levels in France are "Collaborate" and "Surrender." The rise was precipitated by a recent fire that destroyed France 's white flag factory, effectively paralyzing the country's military capability.

Italy has increased the alert level from "Shout Loudly and Excitedly" to "Elaborate Military Posturing." Two more levels remain: "Ineffective Combat Operations" and "Change Sides."

The Germans have increased their alert state from "Disdainful Arrogance" to "Dress in Uniform and Sing Marching Songs." They also have two higher levels: "Invade a Neighbor" and "Lose."

Belgians, on the other hand, are all on holiday as usual; the only threat they are worried about is NATO pulling out of Brussels.

The Spanish are all excited to see their new submarines ready to deploy. These beautifully designed subs have glass bottoms so the new Spanish navy can get a really good look at the old Spanish navy.

Australia , meanwhile, has raised its security level from "No worries" to "She'll be right, Mate." Two more escalation levels remain: "Crikey! I think we'll need to cancel the barbie this weekend," and "The barbie is cancelled." So far no situation has ever warranted use of the final escalation level.

Where's my smoking jacket...

I'm sitting here writing this little post and all I can smell is wood smoke, it's quite a disconcerting sensation!

Apparently some moronic waste of skin and organs arsonist started a deliberate fire in an area of Swinley forest between Bracknell and Crowthorne which is about 2-3 miles from where I live and only a mile from where my kids go to school. It's been very dry and windy over the last few days which I'm sure isn't helping although luckily for us there are over 100 fire fighters dealing with the blaze and keeping it under control by creating fire breaks and preventing the flames from reaching buildings, subsequently all but a few local roads are closed and no one has been hurt so far. The smoke from the fire is gradually working its way over the whole area, yesterday there are a kind of yellow haze in the air, we even made the BBC news, hopefully we'll get some rain soon!

Here's someone's video of the unfolding event, although the date should read 3rd May..

Is there nothing a dead Pope can't do?

It seems as though (dead) Pope John Paul II has been up to his usual beyond the grave tricks again, no sooner than he was beatified by the Vatican than he guided an elite squad of US Navy Seals to an obscure compound in Pakistan in order to "take out" an (unarmed) 53 year old with a limp and kidney problems, obviously a Papal miracle! Clearly these two events separated merely by a few hours and a couple of thousand miles must be causally linked, how could they not be?

No I haven't finally lost my marbles, this pronouncement was made by the current Peruvian president Alan Garcia, a Catholic, who is clearly still missing most of his pearls a cat's eye and a few turtles.

I find it amazing how epically dumb things can be said by serious world leaders without anyone batting an eyelid as long as they invoke religion. If this president had claimed he'd been abducted by alien squirrels and anally probed with a pine cone, we'd all be laughing at him, but mention a dead Pope and hey presto, nothing is off limits. I wonder how many credulous Catholics there are out there right now who are reading the story and nodding sagely thinking they actually have an explanation for something?

oy vey..

Justice?

I've been watching the news saturation around the death of Osama bin Laden, and whilst I'm glad the world contains one less terrorist intent on destroying my way of life, I can't resist a little bit of a definitional quibble over the celebrations in the USA and all this talk about "justice"; I always thought justice involved a trial of some kind?Anyway, clearly I'm not qualified or informed enough to comment on what practical options the US Navy seals had in the middle of the night with regards to capturing or killing Bin Laden but on the question of justice or retribution I offer the two pictures above, both show celebrations of people who think that they've attained justice, one taken outside the Whitehouse yesterday and the other back in September 2001 in Palestine, I wonder how these feelings will eventually pan out given a bit of history in between.

For now its all eyes on Pakistan, did they know or didn't they, everyone loves a good murder mystery.

Tim Minchin rocks the Albert Hall

I spent a very pleasant evening in the company of Tim Minchin at the Albert hall last night, my wife and I went up to town early, had a meal at the venue and watched TM perform a bunch of new material (and some old stuff) with the 55 piece Heritage orchestra, the effect was wonderful, I'd forgotten how good a real live orchestra sounds. He's on again tonight although I suspect they'll be a lot more tipsy people around than there was last night, should be fun!

He's one of the more serious numbers he performed..

Oh those atheists...

A classic from DarkMatter2525; funny because I've heard various flavours of Christians and religious apologists make all these claims, confidently and sincerely, whilst completely failing to sense the cognitive dissonance and irony that the rest of us do.

Ultimate faith healer

I was just thinking about the faith healing scam exposed by Derren Brown in my previous post and the question I posed about the lack of criticism of faith healers from mainstream religions because moderate Christians might actually believe it's true (or not?) Well here's a little story that may well answer my question..

Apparently the blood of dead Pope John Paul II will go on display at his beatification in the Vatican on Sunday, just that fact is weird enough, but the reason this only just tepid Pope is being fast-tracked to sainthood is that he has already performed the ultimate faith healing miracle, curing a French nun of Parkinsons disease WHILE DEAD!

So, of course they believe it's true!, wow, maybe the sight of his blood could even cure an amputee..... no?

Faith healing or healing faith?

I got around to watching Sunday's Derren Brown program last night, interesting but not surprising. In it he recruited a guy off the street who learnt how to become a faith healer, he was then whisked off to Texas USA to perform in a real "healing revival" in front of an audience of unsuspecting Christians via a number of dummy runs with friendly audiences and people on the street. Suffice to say the stooge was a complete success, performing a full range of stage scams; convincing the gullible punters that they were cured of some illness or other and that God was communicating to them via the phoney pastor.

What I found interesting about the program was the way in which the final reveal was handled, rather than plainly explaining the deception to the audience (something which was done with the people in the street) the team chose to deliver a speech which went to great lengths to avoid criticising Christianity itself, but rather tamely advised the audience to be cautious when giving money to faith healers and giving up conventional medicine, they also covered some of the techniques used by the scammers, like adrenalin based pain relief. I suppose this approach avoided upsetting the Christians watching but in my mind completely missed the humongous elephant in the room RELIGION and from the look of some of the faces in audience while the speech was being delivered some of those people looked to me like they were actually disappointed, bordering on confused or even mildly hostile.

Brown is an atheist, but the guy he chose to be the fake pastor was supposedly a Christian although he had a pretty fertile potty mouth, anyway, at the end I thought it was a bit of a cop out. In my mind there are two main reasons people were sitting in that room, or any "healing revival", either they are mentally ill or they've been indoctrinated from birth to believe that "faith" is a virtue, indeed the "logic" being pumped out by these snake oil salesmen is that the only reason the healing doesn't actually work is that the recipients don't have enough faith.

Like the self harming junkie kid, who is the immoral party here, the junkie, the supplier or the dealer?

I can't find many (or any?) mainstream Christian commentators that attack this stuff regularly, I guess either they think it's OK or that they'll leave atheists like Brown and Randi to do that job for them. I can't believe that the moderate Christians out there actually think it might be true... can they?

This doesn't mean there's a lack of Christian commentary on this subject however most of it is by puffed up and vacuous apologists who actually attack secularists/atheists for simply pointing this stuff out or what used to be called "calling a spade a spade". Accusing us of being aggressive, strident or theological simpletons, unqualified to comment; I see a lot of that kind of duplicity from Christians. Take this recent commentary from Chris Patten (a Catholic and future head of the BBC) when talking about atheist attacks on the recent Pope's visit within the context of the world-wide Catholic child abuse scandal...

"Some of the arguments put forward by secularists against the Pope's visit were lacking in intellectualism and were extraordinarily mean-spirited," said Lord Patten, who oversaw the Government's preparations for the papal trip. I'm surprised the atheists didn't have better arguments."

So apparently you shouldn't speak out against the rape of children by priests and the subsequent cover up by the hierarchy of the organisation that facilitated it; according to Patten such criticism shows a lack of intellect and mean spiritedness, well, up yours Patten at least we have arguments, there's a good reason why your faith healing overlords call your lot a "flock" you know.

Pope almost right about something...

Here's an interesting article, Pope Benedict marks the holiest night in the Christian calendar with some comments about evolution that conclude "Humanity isn't the random product of evolution"

Such a statement is clearly ludicrous in the light of what we know about evolution, but for me makes a lot more sense than the normal Catholic line that evolution is compatible with Christianity. I've never had anyone give a satisfactory account of exactly how evolution is compatible with Christianity, which of course doesn't mean it isn't, just that I haven't heard the logic; maybe there isn't any logic, maybe its one of those "it is, because I say so" kind of things that the theological mind specialises in. For me the inescapable problem with evolution and Christianity is that if evolution is true then Adam, Eve and Eve's original sin is untrue, if those entities didn't exist then there was no fall and no paper trail that leads to vicarious redemption.

Here's what the Pope actually said,

"If man were merely a random product of evolution in some place on the margins of the universe, then his life would make no sense or might even be a chance of nature," he said. "But no, reason is there at the beginning: creative, divine reason."

So close ratty, so close, you almost landed on the most likely truth to this conundrum, but then had to spoil it by inserting your God of the gaps at the end, oh well, back to the chocolate.

Get ouda my face..

I feel it's about time I had a rant about technology and my son's recent "sleep-over" with one of his mates provided a perfect vehicle for it.

Picture the scene, two excited 10 year old boys hyped up on wagon wheels and fresh air and a slightly stressed dad, late home from work, trying to settle them down to watch a James Bond movie on said son's PC, the process flow went something like this:

- Switch on PC, log on as junior.. nope, parental controls kick in you're not allowed to use this PC after 7pm
- Log off, log back on as administrator to fix the parental controls, nope, a new version of parental controls is needed before you can turn it off.
- Downloading new version of parental controls, that progress bar seem awfully slow, the package includes a ton of other crap like Messenger and Video editing software that I just don't want or need, bugger can't stop it now..
- Half way through the download, the Adobe downloader kicks in, apparently I need a new version of Adobe reader, oh no I don't...
- Kill the Adobe downloader and the regular Windows update kicks in and starts downloading a dozen fixes from Microsoft, arghh!
- Threaten to kill son if he doesn't stop using his bed as a trampoline, guest kid is looking decidedly nervous...
- Now it's Apples turn, apparently now is the perfect time for me to get a new version of iTunes and Quicktime, the lights start to dim as the wireless router starts to glow with excess heat..
- 15 minutes on and finally all the downloads finish, the install process starts, 10 minutes later, I can actually reset the parental controls to allow the film to be watched.
- Log off, log on as junior, put film in, sit through the previews (which I'm not allowed to skip... grrr) film starts, hurrah, retire downstairs..

- Two minutes later, son shouts down the stairs, "Dad, it's stopped working", the parental controls have kicked us out... technology, just love it..

Tickling your fancy on Friday..

I couldn't resist some of these unintentionally sexually loaded church signs; why are they're funny? I'm not sure, maybe something to do with schadenfreude who knows, anyway as Ben Elton used to say you can't go wrong with a good knob gag.

Mustn't forget those devilish bodily urges..

And what is it with this him inside me inside you stuff, it all sounds very unhygienic?

Not forgetting something for the laydees....

And something I'm sure we can all get behind, ooer missus..

More on "blanket" rules..

Following in the vein of the anti-Burqa thread yesterday here is an article which I think gets underneath the skin of this issue, it's not about what people can or cannot wear it's about what's in this Washington Post article. Paula Kirby's criticism is not restricted to Islam, and so it shouldn't be, in Christianity for example there are explicit warrants in the Bible itself for this kind of attitude, for example in Ephesians 5 there is this little edict cosily sandwiched among rules about children obeying their parents and instructions for slave owners,

“Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.”

Of course moderate Christians don't pay much attention to this kind of stuff from a morality point of view in the same way they don't continue to hold slaves, however when you have religious systems that fossilise bronze age social constructs and catapult them into the 21st century without any possibility for adaptation then you are asking for trouble. This kind of misogyny isn't restricted to the wackier fringes of Leviticus either as Paula points out, in the Gospel of John in the New Testament have you ever stopped to wonder what became of the male lover of the woman taken in adultery, why wasn’t he threatened with execution by stoning and hauled before Jesus?

Regardless of the specifics of the control mechanism, burqa or leg irons, regardless of the particular religious tradition it stems from, either you believe in the equality of the sexes or you don't, if the majority of people in France feel that they do believe in this then their law on Burqa's seems reasonable (albeit arbitrary), if a country doesn't have such a law then the politicians need to seriously address the questions in this article and not continue to hide behind the veil of pretending its about freedom of expression.

Finally I reproduce Paula's final paragraph, it's not so much about this particular issue but struck a chord with me because it talks to what I see as the obfuscating "word games" that seem to plague so much of the dialogue between believers and apologists and everyone else.

"Religion is one lie after another: the lie of original sin, the lie of eternal life, the lie of hell, the lie of answered prayer, the lie that life can have no meaning without religion, the lie that religion is the source of morality, the lie of creationism, the lie of a spy-in-the-sky who hears your every word and reads your every thought. And to this list we must add the lie that it views men and women as equal. It has got away for so long with the kind of lunatic word-games that allow death-by-torture to be presented as an act of love, and eternal torment in the flames of hell to be seen as a necessary act of justice, that we should perhaps not be surprised that it has also managed to dupe its followers into seeing the systematic suppression and silencing of women as an act of liberation and equality. Nevertheless, it is a lie, like all the others: a cynical and wicked lie. It is time women everywhere woke up to it."

Who is that masked woman?

Good old Sam Harris popped up unexpectedly on my Newsnight screen the other night being aggressively grilled by Jeremy Paxman, I thought he did well. Certainly a calm considered voice of reason over the other two guests, who were, Mona Eltahawy an Egyptian journalist and Muslim who was pro-banning and Tariq Ramadan a Swiss born Islamic intellectual and philosopher who was anti-ban. Harris was probably over here (UK) pushing his new book "The Moral Landscape", which reminded me that I must read it!

Harris was pro-ban but made the point much clearer than the others that the ban was supportable if put in the context of an objection to particular philosophies like Wahhabi Islam that treats Woman unequally in many walks of life compared to men, rather than anything particular to do with the clothes themselves or Islam generally. It's a shame the French government (and our own for that matter) has less compunction about supporting the Saudi regime and flogging them weapons. Ramadan was doing the typical apologist thing of trying to play down the blatant discrimination much like a Catholic Bishop attempting to play down child abuse or a Baptist minister playing down his detestation of homosexuality, it was equally unconvincing. The interview ended with Ramadan ranting at Eltahawy to shut-up somewhat ironic I thought; a Muslim male telling a Muslim female to be silent.

Self replicating chemistry

Here's a story that interested me, Biologists at Cambridge University have created a (substantially) self replicating molecule of RNA. The molecule was derived from a process not unlike natural selection whereby the team doing the work made a vast library of thousands of different versions of the molecule until they happened upon one that worked better than any other; it replicated itself without the need for any other molecules helping. RNA is like DNA and can store genetic information like DNA. Some viruses contain RNA instead of DNA and it performs a similar job, however until now a simple molecule which behaves like this has proved elusive.

One possible starting point for all life on our planet is a simple self-replicating molecule like this. We already know that our universe is crammed full of the building blocks of such molecules and so a good understanding of the chemistry involved in instantiating such a molecule and then how that might become more complex over time (with the help of some form of selection pressure) eventually lead to something sufficiently complex that we would deem it "alive", is a tantalising possibility.

Tim Minchin rocks

Tim Minchin's wonderful poem "storm", now animated, well worth a look if you want to understand why rationalists get a bit tetchy when wishy washy apologists for woo woo bang on about crystal healing and spirituality and berate science and critical thinking from a position of ignorance, all the while personally benefiting hugely from the hard won results of it's efforts.

Can't wait to seem him again at the Albert Hall in a month or two..

Well done Peter Robinson!

I read a little story on the BBC web site today that made me feel more hopeful that the troubles in Northern Ireland might actually be over. Peter Robinson who is the first minister has said that he will attend the funeral of recently murdered (Catholic) policeman Ronan Kerr. This is significant because since the 1560s (approx) the Catholic mass has been verboten for Protestants and even modern day political figures of that persuasion have not attended Catholic funerals, no matter how much they felt sympathy for the bereaved.

For a Atheist like me the fact that a medieval spat regarding which magic spells are mumbled at a church service can override human solidarity in the face of violent intolerance is simply baffling, I'm so glad I have no such constraints.