Getting there first?

According to the Turkish prime minister, Tayyip Erdogan, the Muslim faith was widespread in America BEFORE the arrival of Columbus. Yes really! And this fascinating revelation is based on nothing more than a rather tenuous interpretation of one of Columbus' diary entries that mentions a "mosque" being seen in on a hill in Cuba. Historians interpret this same material in a different way, that Columbus was simply talking about mountain that looked a bit like a minaret. I know which I think is more likely.

In other news, the European Space Agency (ESA) have released the latest images from the Rosetta satellite showing stunning views of comet P67 which is currently 380 million miles from Earth (see above). The picture clearly needs more digital processing, but I'm sure there's something about it that looks familiar?

Bouncy comets

I've been following the exploits of the Rosetta satellite and it's little probe Philae very keenly in the news over the last day or so. The tension last night was wonderfully palpable as scientists were unsure about the fate of Philae as it descended to the surface of the comet and apparently "bounced" when it's harpoon mechanisms and it's thruster rockets both failed to secure it to it's landing site. All of this hi-drama and science was enthralling; for a moment I was transported back to 1970 huddled around a small TV waiting for Apollo 13 to emerge through the clouds (accompanied by most of the other kids in our street).

I'm happy to see that things seemed to have stabilised this morning; the probe does appear to have settled onto the surface of the comet after "bouncing" a few times, and is communicating with it's Mother-craft and scientists back on Earth. The next phase should be equally exciting, the big question everyone is dying to know the answer to of course is, is it made of Camembert or Cheddar? It's amazing what we can achieve when we try.

A question of ownership..

In typically "never a truer word" fashion the satirical magazine, the Onion, ran this story recently, unfortunately many people in our country still believe it's actually true. 

Talking about the weather

Great cartoon from Stephen Collins in the Guardian; a typically English computer.. (Click on the image to see it at full size)

Biggest Killers

Eye-opening! I would have put the human figure much higher. The moral of this story seems to be to stop worrying about wolves, lions and sharks and swat more mosquito's!

Pots and kettles

On the money, as usual.

The most dangerous idea in the world

I didn't think it would take long and I was right. The man in the picture is Archbishop Lewis Zeigler a Catholic clergyman in Monrovia (Liberia, Africa) He's on record as saying,

"one of the major transgressions against God for which he may be punishing Liberia [with Ebola] is the act of homosexuality,",

..and so it starts.

Since this pronouncement (and other religious twaddle like it), life for gay people in that country has become more difficult; people are already reporting violence against them and community leaders in some quarters are asking for the death penalty for homosexuals.

So, is "God" the most dangerous idea in the world? I don't think so. God is just a side-effect of conciousness, he is our earliest attempt at explaining the world before we discovered science. The idea I'm talking about is a much more unfalsifiable one, it's the idea that it's possible for certain "special" members of the tribe to know the mind of this unknowable universe mechanic; the idea that certain evolved apes are privy to revealed information that the rest of us are not. Spookily this "data" is almost always supportive of the confirmation biases of the in-group to whom the "special" people belong, it's invariably parochial and has it's foundation in ignorance, it's almost like they're just making it all up!

We only need read the daily torrent of stories like this from around the world to realise that it's time to relegate superstition and religion to history. So long, adieu and thanks for all the Gothic architecture; the long suffering minorities of the world deserve better. There are plenty of more tangible reasons to hate each other and there are also better ways we can motivate charitable behaviour and good morals, in fact, when you think about it, threats of extreme violence and psychological torture (in this world or the next) are rarely a good way of inspiring anything.

Fun for all the family

It's that time of the year again, no, not good old fashioned secular Christmas where the worst that can happen is that you get acid reflux from eating too many mince pies or a bruised shin from the Granny trying to grab the last turkey from the supermarket freezer. Across the Shi'ite Muslim world they are celebrating the day of Ashura (4th Nov) through the ritual cutting, whipping and thrashing of themselves (and their children) in order to drench themselves in blood and wander zombie-like through the streets to remember some bloke who died in a battle 1300 years ago (see picture above).

What a bizarre species of Primate we are, why would people expose themselves and their offspring to extreme pain and the risk of serious harm through infection in this way? This bodily-abuse tradition isn't unique to Muslims of course it seems to be a popular feature of all three Abrahamic religions (among others) from the Flagellants in the Catholic church to Jewish obsessions with re-modelling the penises of small boys. Whenever I read stories about these kinds of things I'm always left with the question, what's the point of it? Is there possibly some kind of evolutionary origin of such seemingly stupid behaviour, I think there probably is.

If you think about it the overriding evolutionary advantage of Humans (apart from our big brains) has been that we work in teams, hunting, building, farming etc. are all team sports. One of the most important facets of any team is that there is cohesion and a sense of common purpose, the interests of the team have to override (albeit sometimes temporarily) the interests of the individual; without these attributes the power of the team is reduced and the survival benefit is lost. Natural selection therefore will have probably selected for populations of animals that do team-work better, i.e. animals who find ways to abandon self interest in favour of group-think. I think it's this ancient instinct at work here, one of those primal urges to feel part of the in-group and the dopamine reward in our brains that this feeling delivers, as is evidenced here, this urge often overrides common sense. It's clear from rituals such as Ashura that we still possess this biological urge even though reason should tell us that it's completely unnecessary from an individual survival point of view these days. You can see the same thing at work all over the place, from rugby teams to political parties to religions to cultures, we crave the in-group, you could say that we possibly even need it.

Unfortunately for us such in-group instincts are ultimately harmful at the macro level, the problem with teams is that they naturally (by definition) compete, and when disparately evolved groups are smashed together in modern cities or multicultural mash-ups tensions arise. Whilst we all crave the the chemical hit we get from kinship, like all junkies we also feel compelled to protect our supply. In-groups depend on the concept of an out-group; naturally this leads to divisive behaviour and ultimately to conflict even though the focus of the conflict can simply be an idea (as opposed to real physical resources) that fosters group cohesion.

In order to survive in harmony I think we need to better understand and moderate these in-group/out-group differences wherever they arise, the solution as always is comparative education and inclusiveness; in the end we are genetically all the same species our similarities are much more numerous than our differences, everything else is the product of our own imaginations.

USA,wuz up?

So now that the Republicans are back in charge in the USA does it mean we'll all get more awesome wars, God, climate change denial, corrupt bankers, strident corporations and automatic weapons?

The rest of the world can't wait...

Christian country?

HuffPost UK questioned 2,004 people in October about the role of religion in the UK today and got a bunch of answers that I would say are pretty obvious for ordinary people who live in our actual society, but probably quite confusing and/or inconvenient for those (like David Cameron and others in the establishment elite) who don't. They still believe we live in a "Christian country".

For example,

• Atheism is the fastest growing segment up by 6.4 million people since 2001
• 45% of Christians and 70% of Jews thought that religion does more harm than good.
• 69% of Jews and 60% of Christians believe that Atheists are just as likely to be moral as religious people.
• 50% of Jews said they were not religious at all, only 7% of Muslims said the same.
• Older people dismissed the idea that atheists are less moral people, only 3% of over 65 believe that (clearly wisdom does come with age - I live in hope at least!)
• 12% of young people (18-24) believe that atheists are less moral people
• 43% of Women vs. 36% of men describe themselves as very or somewhat religious.

About the only things that surprised me were the % of young people that clearly don't have a clue about morality and where it actually comes from (probably befuddled by a combination of Church of England RE schooling and the X-Factor) and the possibility that more Women than men are very religious, this seems at odds with how most religions treat Women, i.e. unequally.

iGay

The media seems to be buzzing with the news today that Tim Cook (above) CEO of Apple has announced that he is gay. Good on him I say, it's a stone in the shoe of all those bigots who cling to Bronze Age attitudes towards gay people, i.e. he's living proof that being gay has nothing to do with what kind of person you are nor how successful or talented you can be; it's a simple fact of Biology and in the end Biology will always trump ancient mythology and ignorant prejudice.

The thing that surprises me more is that this is news at all, most people I know have known Tim Cook is gay for years now, it's about as interesting as knowing his lens prescription.

Memorable...

Cinema goers in Hong-Kong filmed watching a public information video; a neat way of making an important message memorable.

Pope speak

Pope Francis made a speech recently at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, in it he declared that the big bang and evolution are true and that pseudo-science like "intelligent design" and creationism are false. I agree and he should have left it there but unfortunately he went on to spoil an otherwise sensible statement by saying that these scientific theories do not contradict the idea of a creator but "require it".

We only need unpack that last sentence a tiny wee bit to see that intelligent design is exactly what is being suggested here, albeit in a fuzzy, weasel-worded way. What Pope Francis is hinting at is "purpose" in evolution, some notion that although evolution happens it was directed by God. His view seems to be that God created the first protozoa and the rules of the game such that some master plan lead inevitably to Human Beings, souls, sin and redemption, i.e. all the unfalsifiable and specific cultural junk his organisation relies upon. Why would any creator rely on such a torturous route spanning 4.5 billion years and trillions upon trillions of random mutations and extinctions to arrive at something that he can apparently conceive of (in its entirety) right at the beginning anyway?

He gives the game away by claiming that "God created Human Beings", if this is true then evolution must have had a purpose and must therefore be guided by something, this is precisely what the intelligent design brigade say. The evidence that we see all around us confirms that this is not true, evolution is an unguided process, it has to be since it rests upon the random initiator of genetic mutation and populations are then sculpted by the non-random process of natural selection. It is extreme anthropomorphism (hyper-ego in other words) to think that our particular species of primate (Homo Sapiens) is the focus, indeed the purpose of the entire universe. Based on what we now know about the character and scale of the universe through the laws of physics it's is hard to think of a more ridiculous and conceited idea than this.

The argument from ignorance

This is so true, and the certainty with which it is usually asserted is a dead give-away that ignorance is the driving force. As the philosopher Bertrand Russell wisely said, "The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt."

Cultural relics

This is not a politically correct statement but one I firmly believe is true.

Some cultures and religious dogmas are long past their sell-by date and need to be re-imagined and reformed; most urgently by their constituents.

See the story behind the picture here..

I'm not a gamer but...

I realise the title of this post sounds a lot like the usual opening salvo you get from religious apologists who say things like "I'm not religious but...(insert oxymoron here)" I'm not a gamer (any more) but, there seems to be a lot of unnecessary angst being expressed at the moment about sexism in video games it even has a name... gamergate. Many prominent feminists are getting very upset about it and the topic is starting to creep into the mainstream media.

I'm with this lady (see video above) who rightly points out that games (like books, films, plays, operas and pantomimes) are supposed to contain ideas that allow us to escape from reality, they're supposed to allow us to imagine situations and acts that we would never do in our real lives, it's kind of the point of them. It's not like every game contains characters that run around raping women characters (key word here is "characters") - a tiny minority of games do; but they are certificate 18, i.e. adults only. In terms of content that may cause harm or offence, I don't see any real distinction between grand-theft-auto and say the film reservoir dogs; you would expect that the vast majority of people would see both as fiction. Of course, I wouldn't for a moment suggest that the gaming community doesn't have a standard bell curve in terms of psychopaths and socio-paths but those guys just need to be caught and locked up like they would if they were part of any other interest group, for example, doctors, engineers or cannibalistic psychiatrists.

Use it or lose it..

It's a shame many people still don't agree with this and remain in favour of religious privilege or as is often the case protect bad ideas because they believe all ideas are equal.

Should have seen it coming ..

Psychic Sally Morgan is in trouble again; members of her family have been threatening sceptic Mark Tilbrook with violence and targeting him with homophobic insults. All of this thuggish behaviour was captured on film by Tilbrook who was peacefully handing out leaflets (see above) outside a theatre hosting one of Morgans' psychic shows. The threats were particularly sinister, at one point Morgans' husband (the main protagonist) says that Tilbrook will be “lifted” and “disappear”; the entire confrontation can be seen on YouTube here. Since these unsavoury revelations were made public Morgan has supposedly "sacked" her husband (who I assume worked for her), although unfortunately she has not yet apologised or offered recompense to Tilbrook who, as can be seen from content of the leaflet he was handing out, has done nothing but suggest that emotionally vulnerable people think for themselves.

I'd be surprised if the police didn't have something to chat with the Morgan family about after this episode (although I doubt anything substantive will happen) and you'd think that such controversy would put people off paying hard earned cash to someone who employs such thuggery to protect her business interests. In my view it's about time such exploitative "entertainment" was at least more closely investigated/regulated and ideally banned; until then sceptics will have to continue to highlight the issue and present the evidence based side of this argument.

Perfect books

Jesus and Mo nails it again...

Now I see how it works..

Te he he...

Human Universe

Unusually for me I carved out an hour last night to watch TV. Science poster boy Prof. Brian Cox started a new series called "Human Universe", the show is about our species and the first instalment discussed possible environmental reasons for the evolution of primates with big brains in the Great Rift Valley of Eastern Africa as well as the development of civilisations, writing and subsequently science and space travel.  It was a nicely made programme although as usual with these kinds of series I felt I could have done with more detail on the science especially the bits about evolution (i.e. more exposure of the evidence). Anyway, the points were made clearly and the photography wonderful; I even noticed a Metallica track being used in one of the sequences, not a band you hear on mainstream TV much.

No doubt further detail will follow in the "Christmas book" :)

Persistent memes

It's amazing what people believe just because they've been told it's true by a credible source (like a parent, a teacher or a priest). Click on the above image to see a bigger view, I must confess to actually believing some of these things; for example I did think dogs couldn't sweat (they can through their feet!) and that an Iron Maiden was in fact a medieval torture instrument (it's a 19th century fake) as well as a brilliant 80's metal band of course.

Not all Muslims..

Batman actor Ben Affleck sparked a much heated and tweeted debate on the Bill Maher show last week; things got edgy when Affleck accused Maher and guest Sam Harris of being racist for criticising Islam. Affleck seemed to be suffering from the exact same cognitive dissonance regarding the rational criticism of "ideas" (like religions) that Harris and Maher were trying to describe. He seemed comfortable saying that as Liberals we should attack bad ideas but threw a hissy fit when the subject of attack was religion and specifically Islam.

I must say I thought Affleck embarrassed himself, he reacted like someone who's been living under a rock for the last 15 years and someone who had never read or digested any of the arguments against his position. He also didn't listen to the points being made and relied heavily on emotion and hurling insults at straw-men.

The debate (so far as it was) followed very familiar lines, any Atheist who has debated religious apologists will be totally familiar with the fatuous defences that Affleck so dramatically unleashed. The first fallacy he used was that you can't hold an opinion on something unless you are an expert on it. Unfortunately for Affleck, Sam Harris, is by any everyday definition an expert on religion and philosophy; he has a Philosophy degree from Stanford and has studied world religions and neuroscience among other things; not to mention having authored many books on the subject. In any case this is a totally bogus idea; I don't need to be a climate scientist to understand that if my house is 3 meters underwater it's absolutely not a good thing for me. Next we had a variation of the "all or nothing" fallacy, or as is more common these days the "not all Muslims" fallacy.

When someone says religious doctrine or practise X is bad or stupid or evil the apologist immediately responds with "not all Christians/Muslims/Jews believe in X" as if somehow this removes the objection. When X is only believed by a tiny, insignificant fringe then this is a valid point however when it's widely practised by millions of followers or enshrined into law by theocratic states then this argument (although factual) is at best irrelevant and at worst a blatant attempt to distract attention from reality. Do all Muslims want to kill apostates? No, of course they don't but do we really have disagreement that when 64% of Muslims in Egypt (pew 2013) say death for apostasy is justified then we have a sufficiently large number of Muslims (54 million) to warrant a strong opinion if not outright alarm. This is not a small number of "bad apples" it's more like the entire population of the UK believing it's reasonable to burn witches.

The next fallacy was the classic "straw-man", when Harris says "Islam is the mother-lode of bad ideas" and Affleck responds by saying it's "gross and racist" to claim that "all Muslims are bad" this is a blatant twisting of what was actually said. Harris is attacking an IDEA, i.e. Islam and Affleck is attacking a straw man that he invented i.e. "all Muslims", only a fool would say that all Muslims are bad, these two things are simply NOT the same.

On balance I think that high profile spats like this are useful. People who otherwise don't follow politics or have any opinion on the "war of ideas" that is causing so much strife in the Middle East at the moment are suddenly engaged because their favourite movie star is involved. Some of those people may go on to do their own research and formulate their own views on such topics, this can only be a good thing, an enlightening thing. I do think Affleck is genuine though and until this programme I had thought he was one of the more enlightened actors on political/religious issues. I thought his film Argo was a brave and interesting movie which touched on some of these topics; however in this exchange he simply reinforced an impression of a stereotypical Hollywood pretty boy. Hopefully we will see this thread continue to stimulate conversation and debate, if Affleck has the guts to clarify, defend or even recant some of the things he said then even better.

Pig gets drunk, fights cow.

Saw this story in the news this morning, it made me laugh out loud. Apparently a wild pig in Australia stole cans of beer from careless campers, necked it down and then got into an altercation with a cow... we've all been there..

BBC Scotland has a bad day

Hilarious!

A change may do you good.

What happens when the senior minister of one of the largest churches in Canada stops believing in God? It happened to this guy and he wrote a book about it. For most long standing Atheists that would be a pretty short book, i.e. "there's absolutely no evidence for God, the end." but apparently it took Bob Ripley 9 years to make his mind up, good for him, a change is as good as a rest as they say.

Something fishy about theocracy.

If you ever wondered what it was like living in the dark-ages when religion and politics were inextricably intertwined? Speculate no more, just tune yourself into the bonkers news stories that emanate from the theocratic regime of Iran. Just this week we learn about a man being executed (by hanging) for suggesting that the story of Jonah and the whale might be symbolic. The problem for this persecuted citizen of course is that facts are of no consequence when dealing with people who do not value evidence and use superstitious nonsense (which is unquestionable) to justify their petty political grievances. This is what happens when religion is protected and endorsed by a state. 

In the secular west these days we tend to see Religion as a diminishing political force in society, relegated to the private domain (mostly), tolerated, tamed and civilised by 300 years of enlightenment thinking and scientific progress. However, we must never forget how it behaved when it was strong.

No true Scotsman

Actually overheard in a London pub last week..

First man: "gutted that we lost the independence vote"
Second man: "aye, no true Scotsman would have voted no"

This logical fallacy is a very common form of rhetoric that people use to justify a behaviour (or lack of) by appealing to an unfalsifiable and abstract property of something. When it comes to a uniform way of thinking, "True Scotsmen" don't exist of course, the distribution of opinion on most topics in any sufficiently large group of kilted men will vary according to much more mundane factors. It's the intellectual equivalent of putting your fingers in your ears and shouting "la la la", a childish way of closing down unwanted debate.

I've heard many other forms of this fallacy, here are some topical examples just from last week.

First Indian: "How can India spend millions on a mission to Mars when so many Indians still live below the poverty line"
Second Indian: "No true Indian would question this great achievement"

First Muslim: "I see ISIS have committed another atrocity on YouTube"
Second Muslim: "yes I saw that too; no true Muslim would do such things"

First woman: "Shocking about those poor babies in Cork"
Second woman: "I know, no true Christian could treat children that way"

Sad Sunday

The weather was beautiful yesterday (unseasonally so) but we weren't a very cheerful family, one of our pet guinea pigs succumbed to a long standing medical condition and had to be taken to the vet to be "PTS" which is vet code around kids for "put to sleep". Events like this always make me reflect on the nature of life, it's easy for us first world 21st century humans to forget that the distance between existence and non-existence is alarmingly short for the vast majority of creatures on our planet; when it comes to realising a potential life span, the balance of probability is not on their side.

A last meal of dandelion leaves in the warmth of a lingering Autumn sun, a 12:30 appointment and all's done.

Understanding the nature of intelligence

I love this cartoon from xkcd, it pretty much sums up my entire career which (simplified) consists of explaining to non computer-literate people (customers, sales people, journalists, friends etc.) why some things are hard for computers to do but easy for human beings to do. The main culprit in this misunderstanding is the fact that, when comparing the difficulty of problems to do with reasoning, people often don't allow for the following fact...

Human "understanding" stands on the shoulders of 4.5 billion years of Biological evolution, 10,000 years of cultural evolution and dozens of years of life experience. Computers, on the other hand, are just boxes of electronic components that can add numbers really, really quickly. To expect similar results from brain processes and computer programs (as they are done today) is simply unrealistic.

Mumbo-Jumbo?

I came across this little snippet today; it's the current Arch Bishop of Canterbury talking about his moments of "doubt" with respect to the existence of God (presumably the Christian one!). I've heard other Christians (particularly Catholics for some reason) talk about doubt and many who seem to suggest that "doubt" is the default position of many religious people and their faith is something that ebbs and flows, some even wear it like some kind of badge of honour intimating that the more unlikely and irrational a belief is the more pious they are for believing it! The whole thing felt oddly schizophrenic to me, on the one hand I can see his point, it's a very rational one, i.e. there is no evidence at all for the existence of his God and Christians cannot explain evil in the world; then in one giant leap he arrives at an utterly irrational conclusion.

To someone with a naturalistic perspective on life (like me), his justification for "God" seems to be like adding 2 and 2 and coming up with 18, not only that but then standing on the desk and proclaiming to the rest of the class that this is in fact the correct answer. No matter how you look at it there are far better (more likely) natural explanations for such emotions, especially since people of different (and contradictory) faiths describe the exact same feelings. Welby himself discloses the true nature of his belief in the comments he makes, i.e. that God is simply not evident to him, "why doesn't God do something" he asks and quickly moves on to say that "God is faithful", without evidence, how would he know? He justifies his doubt and presumably Christianity by claiming that Christians "know about Jesus", of course this in itself is somewhat tenuous point; evidence for the Historicity of Jesus is very weak indeed. To me all of this feels a bit like saying I believe in magic but I have no evidence for it and see nothing that suggests it exists, however, I know about Harry Potter, so....

Its all about perspective

Saw this little cartoon today, it made me smile. Many Christians I know find it incomprehensible that from the "outside" their own beliefs and traditions looks suspiciously similar to the countless "other" world religions that they would take an atheistic view of (i.e. they wouldn't believe), in fact you could say that when it comes to disbelief we atheists simply go one God further.

Calling a spade a spade

I've been watching a lot of stuff on YouTube lately from Islamic apologists trying to convince us that our problems in Syria, Israel and Iraq have nothing to do with Islam, people like Maajid Nawaz and Mehdi Hasan. Today I stumbled upon the most perfect summation of what I think about that assertion, here it is.

"It's easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled." ~Mark Twain

Supporting science teachers

Interesting approach to supporting embattled Biology teachers in the religious backwaters of the USA and a musical way of celebrating Darwin day, nice!

Love your enemies?

I was listening with dismay this morning to a news broadcast that featured a couple of Christian liberals banging on about how ISIS was so terrible, so brutal, so cruel and how they must be persuaded to stop being so nasty to people, but what they are doing has NOTHING to do with Islam. So let's get this straight, an organisation that's killing people and acquiring territory in order to establish an Islamic caliphate has *nothing* to do with Islam - are ISIS aware of this bombshell? In the next breath these same liberals will tell us that regardless of whether or not someone actually goes to church or believes any of the pillars of the Christian story (or is even aware of them) then they should be counted as "Christian" so long as they tick that box on the census form.

This is how religious people play tennis without the net!

Fights between groups of evolved primates are seldom over one single thing. The vast majority of them ultimately boil down to the acquisition of power, property, vengeance, wealth or influence or combinations of those things. However, I think everyone would agree “normal” people don't like the idea of death by predator drone or hacking the living head from another human being. Normal people would not countenance such things without a very powerful motive. Unfortunately there always seems to be some prophet or other around the corner to provide one, and the clever psychopaths who invariably lead the charge in these matters use things like tradition, authority, empty promises and violent threats to subvert or destroy the innate morality and survival instincts of their (ideally) sheepish followers. For Stalin it was communism, for Hitler it was racial purity, for Pope Urban it was Gods' will, all essential ingredients to their stories, all key enablers in a rich tapestry of misdirection. Of course, some fights are engaged in by those seeking to prevent, halt or punish pirates and opportunists, such conflicts are often well intentioned and moral however sometimes even those interventions are fraudulent and the real motive is to acquire something by force or by proxy, the problem with human brains is that they are the ultimate in (devious) survival hardware.

So what has Islam got to do with ISIS? Firstly I think it's important to realise that there is nothing special or unique about Islam, it's a religion like almost every other, it makes the same kinds of unjustified (but contradictory) claims as other religions and is clearly based on an unconvincing plagiarising of prior art for the purposes of acquiring Earthly power. This is nothing new, humans have used the promise of heavenly perks and the threats of imaginary hell-fire to control people since the beginning of history and this text-book example is no different. This simple behavioural constant is why Islam is key to this fight; it's an enabler, it facilitates the motivation of the credulous, especially poor, illiterate and (indoctrinated) literalistic populace of that region, it provides "special" sanction to perform immoral acts and a reason to be afraid of not doing so. If Islam had the same status and following as Greek mythology then ISIS would not be using it to motivate their forces. We can argue that they may have come up with something else (like National Socialism) but this obvious fact seems incontrovertible.

People may argue that ISIS is especially brutal or barbaric, but from a practical point of view there seems little difference between decapitating innocents by blade or by high explosive, the end result is the same, any moral distinction seems pedantic. Don’t get me wrong, I am all for taking the fight to ISIS, but we should be clear about their motives and ours. It seems disingenuous to root our objection to ISIS on the basis of their preferred methods of executing their enemies. As a comparison, in the 21 months that ISIS held reporter James Foley captive, Saudi Arabia beheaded 113 people. President Obama visited Riyadh this year to underscore the importance of a bilateral relationship between the two countries.

It should be easy for us to find (substantial) objections to ISIS worthy of motivating some kind of fight with them. First and foremost they promote a totalitarian theocratic system, based on fundamentalist Islamic principles that, like it says in their holy book, should not rest until the entire world is under their heal. Secondly they commit atrocities outlawed by international law, for example, religious persecution, genocide and summary execution of prisoners and civilians. Having stolen billions of dollars as they rampaged through Syria and Iraq they easily have the ability to attack places like London, Paris and New York using terrorist tactics along 9/11 lines. In aggregate these seem sufficient motivation for people to wish for the destruction of this movement, how, who and when of course are very different questions.

Smart or dumb?

Like most people (in the UK) I have been following the Ashya King story as it's been unravelling in the media these last few days, and like many people, I suspect something more than a lack of a favoured treatment is playing out here. The decision today to reunite the parents with their sick child is almost certainly a pragmatic one based on current circumstances but since these circumstances were created by the parents themselves against the advice of medical professionals I can't decide whether these people are incredibly stupid or really clever. On the one hand they are Jehovah's Witnesses and whilst this fact says nothing about how much they love their child it does say something about how gullible and prone to believing nonsense they are, particularly when it comes to shunning life saving medical treatment. On the other hand I would imagine that, as a parent, when you're at wits end and desperate to find something that might help your dying child, then causing a huge media storm and publicising your plight to hundreds of millions of potentially sympathetic parents around the world is a pretty clever social media strategy for helping to get what you want.

I'm sure parents the world over wonder to what lengths they would go if faced with this dilemma, I certainly do! Anyway, regardless of any misguided motives and political fall-out, I wish this little boy well and hope he gets whatever sensible treatment he needs, there but for the grace of Nick Clegg etc..

Real awesome..

I had a holiday in the USA last month and spent some time in Yosemite national park and while there did some rock climbing with my kids (nothing too dramatic); for us even small achievements felt thrilling. However, whilst out one day we spotted some "proper" climbers on "El Capitan" (see above image) which is a famous climb in the park. Photographs can't do it justice but I snapped a couple of shots in an attempt to show the true scale of the feat being accomplished.

There are three pictures at different levels of zoom showing a climber about two thirds of the way up the 3000 foot face. It takes around 3-4 days to complete the entire climb meaning this person probably has at least a day and a night left to do and will sleep (anchored by ropes) whilst clinging to the vertical granite face. The physical exertion required to do this is off the charts, not only is the climbing very physically challenging a climber has to drag up all of the equipment, food and water required for the entire duration of the climb (that's about 80kg of water alone!); having struggled (pathetically) up a few hundred feet of a much simpler face I'm left with a deep respect for the people that attempt this and a feeling of real awe at the majesty of nature.

Want ice with that?

I'm sure science geeks everywhere have been captivated by the recent ESA achievement of placing a spacecraft (Rosetta) in orbit around comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko at a distance of over 350 million kilometres from Earth. The early photographs of the object against the black featureless backdrop of space make it look small but in reality this object is massive, roughly 2 miles across and weighing approximately 10,000,000,000,000 Kg it would make a pretty impressive splash if it ever hit our planet.

For a better sense of scale someone has created the above picture showing what this comet would look like against the backdrop of the city of Los Angeles, now that's a big lump of ice!

Angry of Mayfair here...

I was disgusted to watch a sickly performance on the news last night by Dr Kent Brantly the US Christian missionary doctor who, thanks to a vastly expensive experimental drug and the advanced medical/logistical resources of the USA, survived an infection of the Ebola virus. The thing that upset me was the sheer arrogance of the little speech he gave, the crass solipsism that spewed from his mouth denigrated both his profession (and the scientific bedrock it sits on) and the 2000+ African victims of this terrible outbreak. At the same time as religious people of all stripes are getting agitated and vocal in large numbers over Richard Dawkins' harmless ethical masturbations on Twitter we have some Christian nerd preaching on prime time TV that the reason he was cured of Ebola was because people prayed for him and *his* God answers prayers, in fact he went so far as to say "God saved my life" and deserved "glory and thanks". To use an American expression, what a complete douchbag.

Where was his malicious "God" when in terror and ignorance those poor African parents prayed for their kids, where was he as they haemorrhaged and writhed in agony as their vital organs shut down, and why the fuck did he create such a virus in the first place? What a vile and immoral view of the world these "Christians" have. Did those African victims not pray hard enough, did they receive the wrong theology?

No of course not, this smug Christian WASP survived because he is rich and American, they died and continue to die because they are African and poor, no mystery, no puppet master in the sky, just evolution, chemistry, biology, society, technology and money, that's what determines the outcomes here.

Now where are those blood pressure tablets..

Google mysteries

Someone pointed this out to me today (click the image for a bigger version), I thought it was just a joke but then when I actually searched for Greggs on Google it's real!

It's either very clever or very dumb marketing or nothing to do with the company at all, bearing in mind they're based in Newcastle, I can't quite decide which.

*Update @16:00* It seems to have disappeared now ;)

Sour as grapes

It was a bit of a slow weekend so to liven things up a bit I visited a cheese & craft beer shop in Reading (The Grumpy Goat) and picked up an interesting cheese and a couple of beers to try. In the picture above we have a flavour sensation from one of my favourite London breweries (The Kernel) called "London Sour", and wow, they're not kidding! Made in a unique style the flavour profile is more like a young Chenin Blanc wine than a beer, citrus, sour and acidic with the faintest hoppy undercurrent. This is definitely not for everyone but at 2.5% ABV it's something you could drink quite a lot of if you fancied a session on it. The closest thing I've tried that's anything like this is a Belgian Lambic beer, but that was much sweeter. If you're looking to truly experiment with the flavour of your ale then look no further!

land of make believers

So I read this morning that Baroness Warsi, the Minister of State for Faith and Communities has resigned because she's unhappy with the Government policy on Gaza. It's nice that she is finally showing some backbone however Warsi is a politician I have strongly disagreed with in the past. She always struck me as anti-secular and anti-atheist, an apologist for religious vested interest, a token Muslim in an invented (and unnecessary) position. I could never understand why a secular country needs a minister for "faith", to me it's like having a cricket coach in a football team, admirably inclusive but ultimately academic.

Hopefully the Government will not replace her. From my perspective we need fewer two-faced, unelected, superstitiously inspired lawyers in the corridors of power, not more; maybe she should consider a job as a Middle Eastern peace envoy, surely there are some vacancies coming up soon?

Unequal equivalence

A couple of stories and the associated ripples in the chatter-sphere caused me to pause and think about the concept and utility of equivalence last week. Firstly we have the entrenched and on-going conflict in Gaza and Israel. The conflict isn't new of course, but I've seen some interesting twists and turns as media heat has increased, many people on both right and left of the political landscape seem to be lobbing ever more extreme emotional labels around in order to articulate their views on this war. Secondly, there was an altogether less important but related micro-storm on twitter as Richard Dawkins made a comment about equivalence in crime which many people got upset about, I suspect for similarly entrenched reasons rather than purely rational ones.

Israel are trying to destroy Hamas who are in turn are trying to destroy Israel, both sides are killing people in order to achieve their goals, this shouldn't be a surprise, that's what we do in war. Israel has overwhelming fire-power and consequentially Hamas will not win the battle, however, Israel will not win the war (by inspiring a whole new generation of enemies) a depressingly desolate landscape. The more pressing question for both sides is whether world opinion will constrain Israel somehow before they are able to achieve their tactical goals against Hamas.

Dawkins, on the other hand, only caused a flood of ire; with a tweet that said "date rape is bad but stranger rape at knife-point is worse". He claims that he was trying to illustrate a logical point, i.e. that comparing two things doesn't imply endorsement of either and also that for practical purposes (i.e. legally) it is often necessary to compare things that we would rather not compare because the subject is too emotionally loaded rather than being logically and ethically impossible to do so (of course our legal system already does these comparisons all the time). Dawkins could have chosen a better forum to make his point, but on the other hand I'm not sure why people feel that any topic (within the law) should be out of bounds on a system where you must "follow" someone to see what they've written, people do seem to go out of their way to be offended.

The parallel I'm trying to draw here is that when discussing Israel and Palestine it should be quite reasonable and rational to discuss the behaviour of both sides and to debate their relative morality without necessarily endorsing either, we need to take this approach or disappear in a pointless froth of absolutism and emotion. Perhaps because of the perfect storm of taboo subjects like religion, the holocaust and anti-Semitism very few commentators seem able to get past hopelessly simplistic sectarian and historical polarisation, something new is needed but unfortunately I don't see any light on the horizon.

When a BBC interviewer asks an Israeli spokesperson, "why are you killing children?" it seems to me that the same fallacy of equivalence is being used to make a rather cheap dramatic point. Bombs are ambivalent when it comes to the bombed, a child seeking missile has yet to be invented, a more useful line of debate would be to ask why certain places can't be reserved for "innocents" to shelter and those places should not be targeted or used by either side. Of course, a question like this is NOT an endorsement of what Israel is doing generally, that's the point. When some right wing blow hard like Sean Hannity prevents a Palestinian spokesperson from speaking during an interview by shouting the same pointless questions (when everyone knows the answer) we see the same problem, pointing out Israeli injustices against Palestinians is not an endorsement of Hamas terror.

Here are the kinds of questions and thought experiments I would like to be debated more widely,

We can (and should) debate the morality of using overwhelming force in self-defence or to achieve political goals, but how can we single out Israel for doing it when we are perfectly happy to do it ourselves. It's exactly what we did in Iraq (with UN sanction), Afghanistan, the Falklands and everywhere else we've fought, in fact wherever our Government thinks we cannot achieve overwhelming advantage (militarily) we simply do not fight, no matter how disagreeable the regime or need to prevent injustice (for example Syria, Ukraine, North Korea, Iran etc.)

Is it morally right to wish for the destruction of a state and a people, is it possible to negotiate with an enemy who is sworn to commit genocide against you as opposed to simply making you surrender.

What is the role of fundamental Judaism in this conflict, would Israel be better served by NOT being a "Jewish state" but merely a secular democracy, is it moral to invoke a subjective entity (like a deity) in order to make a "claim" on physical resources, like land?

What would happen to Jews if Hamas had all the weapons? Is Israel morally superior to Hamas in that it treats human shields as a deterrence (albeit an imperfect one) whereas Hamas actually aim to kill as many Israeli people as possible; imagine the ridiculousness of Israelis holding up their children as shields.

Since Hamas spent their time building tunnels rather than bomb shelters (as the Israelis did) then isn't it unavoidable that the casualties will be disproportionate, is this the fault of Israel?

Should Israel be blamed for developing a an effective rocket defence system, does this diminish the moral case for self-defence?

Where are the 000s deep protests by the left in Western countries about ISIS in Iraq who are crucifying people at the side of the road, do they care about Muslim on Muslim violence?

What is the role of powerful Christian Zionists in the USA in funding and supporting (beyond reason) Israel in a deluded belief that stoking the fires of violence in the "holy land" will accelerate the second coming of Christ?

and so on...

It's written in the stars

Member of Parliament David Tredinnick is fast becoming a target for ridicule since he "came out" at the recent Glastonbury festival and announced that he thinks Astrology would be a good complement to real medicine and if used widely would reduce the burden on the NHS, a view that he confirmed in a BBC interview. Tredinnick is well known for his views on pseudo-science, being a fan of Homoeopathy and herbalism, in the immortal words of Tim Minchin we already have a term for "alternative medicine" that has been proven to actually work it's called "medicine". If you're looking for a succinct and humorous response to this silly man then look no further than the good Beaker folk over in Husborne Crawley.

Astrology is of course complete poppycock (to use a scientific term); anthropomorphic nonsense invented at a time when our species didn't even know that the Earth revolved around the Sun. In fact, in 3000 BC, when Astrology was invented (approx.) we didn't even know what stars and planets were let alone how they influence our chances of meeting tall dark strangers or developing irritable bowels. It's quaint how ancient peoples used their imaginations make up stories to explain things that were, in their era, otherwise inexplicable. Coincidently I've been away on holiday with my family for the last couple of weeks and one of the places we visited was Yosemite national park in California, USA (highly recommended!). One night we attended a talk on the stars. We joined a group of other tourists and all went out into an empty meadow, lay on our backs and looked up at the night sky.

The night sky in Yosemite is staggering (see picture below), the light pollution is practically zero and the sky was clear enough to see the milky way (something really hard to see in the populated SE of England).

The talk was fairly simplistic (from a science point of view) and slightly "new-age" in that the presenter focused on many of the myths and legends about the constellations from the Greeks to the Romans through to more modern interpretations from native Americans, all very poetic and quaint but in terms of utility complete poppycock (Ursa Major is a grizzly bear with a saddle - really?). Like Astrology, which rests upon such ancient stories, they are of no use whatsoever in predicting the future or assisting in healthcare, if they were we'd all be mega-rich and living to 200 by now. 

The coolest thing about the talk (apart from the view itself) was that our presenter used a powerful green laser to point out various objects in the sky, I'd never seen this done before and it was really impressive. What became clear to any reasonable person listening was that the universe is vast beyond our everyday comprehension and Science, specifically Cosmology, has allowed us to understand an unprecedented amount about what it's all made of and how it works, a truly awe inspiring feat bearing in mind that pretty much everything we see is beyond our ability to study directly because it's too far away. The real poetry and power of our appreciation of the stars is in our ability to reason about what we observe and figure out what is really going on and not simply fantasize about them. The fact that we are all made from atoms forged in the nuclear furnaces of stars like the ones we see in the night sky means that we are all inextricably and directly linked to the universe and unlike our general fascination with dot-to-dot puzzles this is, in some sense, a truly "spiritual" fact about us. I'd call it a "spiritual fact" not because it's in any way supernatural but because it transcends our individual, petty, parochial needs and disagreements and gives us all a kinship that if we took more care to understand might make our brief existence more fulfilling and relegate our reliance on the various "imagined" crutches of destiny, Gods and spirits in the sky to the past. Of course there's plenty that we don't understand yet about our Universe, dark energy for instance, but for some of us that's a positive thing, a challenge, something to aim for, real purpose. So, rather than filling these voids with childish imaginings of giant animals in the sky we should relish our opportunity to discover reality, and put aside childish things.

Friday factoid

If this illustration makes you feel slightly uneasy then you are exceptionally rational; most of your fellow Sapiens believe that the whole universe was crafted especially for them...

It's not just me that thinks that..

Writing a blog is quite an interesting experience, you never quite know whether what you've written makes sense to other people or if you're so far off wandering the fertile valleys of your own version of "la la land" that even the trolls and nutters are narrowing their eyes in bafflement. I read a story today about a complaint against the BBC being upheld over an interview they did on the today program that pitted the intellectual viewpoints on climate change between a leading climate scientist and Nigel Lawson. The complaint was that this paring promoted a "false balance" between an actual expert and someone being paid by vested interests to take a contrary view. I am pleased to discover that I noted exactly the same problem when I first saw the program back in February and blogged about it at the time. Such insignificant actions in pointing out anti-science, anti-evidence lobbying may not solve the problem of man-made climate change but at least I can conclude that senility has not quite set in just yet.

Different similarities

The problem with complex evolved human brains is that two people can look at the same scene and interpret it in two entirely different ways depending on the particular wiring of their respective neural networks; as determined by genetics, upbringing and education etc. Brains are "plastic" like this, they develop in an infinite number of subtle ways and even the exact same input stimuli (sights, sounds, smells etc.) prompt entirely different responses, no two brains are the same. More often than not this variation is something to be celebrated and enjoyed, after all, it's the basis of creativity and learning to which our greatest achievements as a species can be attributed.

However, when it comes to deciding important policy that affect other people's lives in significant ways it's clearly desirable (from the perspective of the people the decisions affect) for decision makers to approach the evaluation of the options from an objective perspective rather than a subjective one. Unfortunately, that's a hard thing for evolved brains to do and requires significant effort and training; shedding our biases even for a short while is difficult. Sometimes deeply held views can seem so concrete, so immovable and so compelling that not only would people rather die than abandon them, they would also rather die than simply examine them critically. Even people who claim to be "rational" often fail to grasp this basic human trait, they don't (and are often unable to) see themselves as others see them. Facts and ideas become blurred and interchangeable, in-groups become intellectual echo chambers that simply reinforce established dogmas, and nothing from the outside can penetrate and influence.

Take a look at the picture above, two people who are genetically related and almost certainly share more traits and behaviours than they are probably even aware of. Both love their mum and dad, feel pain, digest food, appreciate beauty, fancy Justin Bieber, bleed red when cut and both would claim that their positions are rational and "true". Yet for the rest of us in theological no man's land these two intellectual positions remain diametrically opposed; two people who may even think that they would rather kill or die than abandon their deeply held beliefs.

Then imagine being an alien crossing the vast expanse of space for a million years to land on Earth with no pre-knowledge about any of the historical, cultural or theocratic underpinnings of these two world-views.

Could they tell the difference?

Summer listening

I'm thoroughly enjoying the new Linkin Park album at the moment, a welcome return for them to the distinct sound of their early ground breaking work (like Hybrid Theory) IMO. A fusion of throat grabbing guitar riffs, punk-like energy, an electronic backdrop overlayed with rap, thrash as well as more conventional lyrical delivery; featuring Chester Bennington banging out some ultra-high-emotion vocals (how that guy doesn't burst his vocal chords I don't know) It all sounds chaotic but works surprisingly well if you run with it. Some familiar themes covered, war, death, morality and rebellion, all good, solid rock and roll fayre. Particular favourites would include "Guilty all the same", "Wastelands" and "A line in the sand", no real lemons.

Don't bother with Coldplay get this instead; if you want more moshing (and interest) in your summer soundtrack that is.

Friday smirk

Who says that all miracles ceased when we invented cameras...

Chalk meets cheese

One of the topics that regularly interests me sufficiently to create a blog post or two is the divisiveness of religion. The fact that, as a species, we seem hell bent on dividing ourselves up into ever more balkanised groups by creating and following intellectual positions based on nothing more than stories is fascinating and scary at the same time; a majority of people on our planet seem to need to identify with a particular sect or tradition and there may well be sound evolutionary reasons for doing it (particularly when you look at the benefits for the in-groups). We can observe this process going on all around us, all the time, ever more splintered and pedantic shards of ideas popping up and becoming recombined in different assortments wherever people gather together and tell their children stories. Sadly, it's one of the top reasons for suffering and conflict in the world, you need only look as far as Protestant v. Catholic, Jew v. Muslim, Sunni v. Shia, Sinhalese Buddhist v. Hindu Tamil ad infinitum to see that people love to be tribal.

Religion isn't the only cause of tribalism of course, I was reminded of this last week whilst watching the Glastonbury festival on TV. The headline act on Saturday night this year was a little band called Metallica, a heavy metal group that have been hammering out head-banging riffs since the early 80's and have risen to the top (30th overall in terms of record sales) of the heap to become a global brand. Glastonbury is supposedly an all inclusive event, the organisers take every opportunity to make this point, i.e. that every shade and flavour of musical taste is represented. The small flaw in this inclusive vision has been that over the 40 odd years the festival has been running the list has never included a heavy metal band, until now. Like women voting and eating prawns on a Friday apparently the inclusion of this band in the line up was "controversial" to some festival fans; a clear contradiction that eerily mirrors the contradiction in religions like Christianity and Islam that preach inclusive things like "God loves everyone", and then discriminate against gay people or people of the "wrong" gender, the evidence is that tribes tend not to encourage inclusiveness.

Metallica are huge and certainly don't need Glastonbury, in fact you could argue that in reality it was the opposite, i.e. Glastonbury needed Metallica. The interest and publicity generated from the billing must certainly have done the festival PR efforts no harm at all. In the end the band were superb; regardless of whether people like the genre or not, it would be hard to deny the professionalism, musicianship and showmanship they delivered; long standing fans were not surprised. The more interesting facet of the event for me were the responses afterwards. The next day I read a number of reviews and monitored the twitter feed, the comments could be divided into three distinct camps, the fans (I include myself in that group) loved it; that group used words like loud, indulgent and unapologetic (in a positive way). Then there were the people who hated it, they said things like loud, indulgent and unapologetic (in a negative way); then there were the people who had their minds changed, they said things like "not as bad as I was expecting", "pleasantly surprised", "might even buy one of their albums now" and so on. In general the positive outweighed the negative by a healthy margin. Some people will never be fans, that's clear, but a lot more people had their eyes opened to new potential; all of which is great for the band, great for the genre and also great for the festival, a win-win-win you could say.

I'm sure there are valuable lessons in inclusiveness, tolerance and open-mindedness for all of us here; I only wish that instead of kidnapping and killing each others children in the name of ancient stories and mythical promises, people in some parts of the world would just stop for a minute, extract their heads from their arses and listen to the beat and rhythm of the other side for a while, who knows where that might lead.

Bootstrapped morality

Theists often use the argument that without some kind of super-being (invariably their own particular Deity) there could not be Human morality and we'd all be running around raping and murdering each other; after all, if there's no God then where do we get our sense of right and wrong from?

For atheists this question seems to have a simple and frankly obvious answer, i.e. we get it from ourselves, the thinking goes something like this.

Evolution equipped us (over time) with a basic set of "rules of thumb" that enabled the successful survival of tribes of social primates, if we hadn't thrived then we simply wouldn't now be discussing it. Over time and in recent history our development of "cultures" has sculpted all of the various refinements, deletions and additions to this basic set, particularly the religious dimension of culture. So, we would contend that although religion has certainly refined and influenced our morality over the years, it did not originate it. The reason I conclude this is simply an examination of the evidence, i.e. look around, the world is exactly as you would expect if this hypothesis were true and exactly NOT how your would expect if there were a single Deity dictating objective morality from on-high. There are some simple, self-evident facts that support this idea, for example over time our view of morality changes, we no longer think it's OK to keep slaves whereas years ago we did. Different cultures develop subtly different ideas of what is moral, usually conforming to parochial power struggles and practical geographical needs. Human beings develop very similar ideas about morality even when they are isolated from each other, many indigenous peoples in remote parts of the world have very similar ideas to Christians, Jews and Muslims about things like stealing; despite knowing nothing of the existence of those religions.

This is not a new argument or a new viewpoint of course, many philosophers and theologians have debated the ins and outs of where morality comes from for millennia, but for a lot of people the concept of subjective morality seems to be an intellectual road-block, they just can't grasp it without the idea of a celestial dictatorship entering into the frame somehow. I came across the following photograph the other day which made me think about how the concept might be explained to such people, I think it fits the atheist viewpoint (and our experience of reality) particularly well.