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.