Sceptical Rants

Daily Mail Attempts to Vaccinate Against Insanity: Fails

2008-08-15T14:32:00.002+01:00

Given the Daily Mail's track record on the vaccines/autism scare - and on logic in general -I admit to being more than a little surprised to see The anti-MMR mothers who are putting us all in danger (11/8/08). In fact, that is an understatement. For an instant, my understanding of the Universe was turned upside-down. If the Daily Mail, last bastion of conservative nonsense, can publish an actually sensible story on vaccines, perhaps I need to start questioning some of my other assumptions?

After a short break in which I confirmed that, yes, gravity still goes down, fire is still hot and that alcohol still makes you drunk - in that order, it's far too dangerous to do it the other way around - and a slightly longer break in which I confirmed that sleep still stops you being tired and coffee helps wake you up I literally sprang into action. Well, I literally sprang - meaning walked - to work, did some work and sprang back, tested the sleep thing again... After only two more confirmations of my sleep/rest theory - watch the stands for imminent publication! - I arrive at where you find me today. Which is apparently on board the derailed train-of-thought express.

Basically, I was shocked. I may need therapy.

The thrust of the article, as you might imagine, is that not vaccinating your children means they might get diseases and that this is bad. There is also an apology, nebulously on behalf of "the media" for blowing the Andrew Wakefield "research" out of all proportion.

The author, Jonathan Myerson, highlights the tendency of mothers of autistic children "to invent paper tigers that are slavering for a bite of [their] precious child."

"The arrogance is stunning, the stupidity is off the scale. But give the mother of a newborn something to fight against and logic is history."

Obviously this isn't true of all mothers, or probably even most, but there is a tendency creeping across from the US to give too much credence to the so-called Fallacy from Motherhood. It is certainly true that when it comes to spotting abnormalities in the behaviour of a child mother probably does, in fact, know best. However, mother probably doesn't have the medical expertise required to establish the cause of the abnormality, be it a fever, weight loss or autism.

Given the number of highly trained doctors and scientists around the world studying the complex neurological condition that is autism, would it not be best to defer to the experts, the medical community when looking to establish a cause?

Goodness me, I thought to myself, that was an oddly refreshing dose of scepticism. Maybe I'll just read a few of the comments to see how the readership of the Mail responded to it. I'll quote a few examples below but I warn you:

Here Be Stupid.

(but not spelling)

"yea well if they came out and admited it was the mercury in the mmr not the vaccine itself that caused autism.. then the rates of immunisation will rise.. but to keep on stonewalling because they dont want to compensate autistic children then the rates will fall... better safe than sorry is the parents feelings on this i have no doubt my autistic daughter was poisoned by mercury"

Which, of course, perfectly tallies with evidence from the US where mercury preservatives were removes form vaccines and autism diagnoses continue to rise...
It also ignores that there is no evidence that ethyl-mercury (as found in vaccines) causes mercury toxicity and that there is no good evidence to even link autism to heavy metal poisoning of any kind.

"Doesn't the author realise that most of the parents who refuse the MMR do know more than him and that is why they steadfastly refuse the triple vaccine. Just because one person's child is ok receiving the jab, that is no guarantee that another child will be unharmed."

Parents refuse the MMR vaccine because they've been frightened into doing so by the media (ie. the Daily Mail) without looking at the evidence.
The fact is that the rate of serious side-effects from most vaccines is in the 1 in a million range, whilst the rate of serious side-effects from the diseases vaccinated against is far higher.

If you want to play spot the logical fallacy I think the two quotes above provide rich pickings.

Also, if I hear one more person on the internet saying "but why do we bother vaccinating against TB when nobody gets it any more?" I might just have to go totally crazy and start believing in nonsense.

For an antidote to this sudden onslaught of stupid, head over to Science Based Medicine where Mark Crislip goes through most of the common diseases we vaccinate against and what the risks are.

Dictionary to Aisle Six Please

2008-08-01T15:57:00.002+01:00

Somebody doesn't seem to know the difference between the words "atheism" and "secularism." In addition, Soumaya Gannoushi has also borrowed the current pet-phrase of America's Most Stupid: "militant secularism."
Just what exactly is this militant secularism and even if it existed, would it be something to fear? I imagine that a confrontation with a militant secularist would sound something like:

"You there, with the religion on!"
"Who, me?"
"Yeah you. Just you make sure you practice your religion, or lack thereof, freely without interfering with the human rights of other people, or I'll blow your head off, OK?"
"Pardon?"
"You heard. And if I, or the state, tries to interfere with those rights of yours you'd better tell me so I can blow them up with some C4 or something."

It doesn't make any sense. People are always going on about how we should fight oppression and the erosion of human rights as if it's a good thing to do. It certainly sounds like a good thing to do. Of course, it's being bigoted and militant if the oppressor happens to be a religious organisation or individual.

Once again, religion responds as the classic school-yard bully. It's happy to interfere with the freedoms of others but cries foul and goes running to teacher if anyone fights back.

It seems to me that some religionists are making a concerted effort to conflate atheism, which they are free to dislike privately if they wish, with secularism, which they should support if they have even two brain cells to rub together on a cold day. By making secularism the enemy they fight the one movement that aims to protect true freedom of religion. Of course, religions seem to love being painted as the persecuted underdog. Just look at how the Catholics respond any time they are even remotely challenged on something. In this case, the willful destruction of a small piece of bread.

Oldsflash: Cardinal not sharpest knife in drawer

2008-07-18T15:41:00.002+01:00

Cardinals saying stupid things? that almost never fails to happen...
See here for Cardinal Wilfrid Fox Napier's take on AIDS prevention.

I quote:

"You expect that because people are hearing from bishops, `You must use a condom', that they will do what the bishops say?

"We have already been preaching all our lives, don't have sex outside of marriage."

If people don't listen to what bishops say, why bother preaching in the first place?
Especially when what you're basically saying is "condoms don't work." The statistics he uses are understood in the context of the AIDS epidemic. Try here for non-Catholicised information.

One of the reasons there are less people living with AIDS in Uganda now is that many of them died. But then I guess he believes they're all living happily in some fictitious paradise now so what does it matter if he spouts this kind of drivel?

Is this as totally stupid as it sounds?

2008-07-16T15:45:00.002+01:00

I only skim-read the following from the Huffington Post for fear of my eyes melting. Does anyone feel brave enough to give it a look and tell me if it really is as bat-shit dumbass crazy as it looks?

What it looks like, is that somewhere in the USA, a government department (or state, or whatever, as I said: skim reading) wants to let idiots define the contraceptive pill as an abortion. In a very real and law-abiding sense. I think I've ranted about similar morons before, but I never thought there was any danger of it coming true.

Totally Overlapping Magisteria

2008-07-16T12:33:00.002+01:00

Things have been a little quiet(er) around here for the last few months. This probably has to do with me not posting anything since sometime around the end of the pleistocene. My hopes were briefly piqued when I came across headlines declaring that Margaret Thatcher was to get a state funeral. I had hoped that such headlines could be reserved until she was, you know, dead.
So, instead of a cheerful upbeat blog entry it'll be back to ranting as usual.

Comment is Free, goldmine of nonsensical articles that it is, has not disappointed. Today, we are treated to an article by Mark Vernon grandly entitled The Frontiers of Faith and Knowledge with the equally nonsensical subtitle "So why can't boffins and bishops agree?" Surprisingly we get three words in before the name Templeton is mentioned, although that is only because the first two words are Sir and John.

Let's start with the title shall we?
Faith has frontiers? I think this must be another example of my not understanding the complex and subtle theological concept of faith (something I have been told by actual theologians) because I'm pretty sure faith doesn't have ears, on the front back or sides. For something to have a frontier there surely must be something further on that hasn't been affronted yet. I'm not really sure how this tallys with the "faith"-based approach of simply saying that god did it and that there's a plan and don't think about that because you might discover it's nonsense. (or, much more plausibly, that Satan will make you one of his little wizards...)

It's not really the same as a scientific frontier, where you first see something you don't understand, then form a hypothesis, then test it, then develop your theory. That seems much more eary to me, and possibly more frontal as well.

Leaving the title, and horribly overstretched puns, behind let us move on the "content" of the article. Unusually for a piece in this genre, we get a whole sentence into paragraph 2 before the mandatory Dawkins-bashing occurs. It is mercifully short, however, and is followed by the meat (or fish on if it's a Friday? I forget) of the article in which the author considers the thoughts of past Templeton Prize winners. Apparently "they are, perhaps, illuminating."

So, let us skate onto the icy pond on faulty reasoning and see if we fall in. You never know, that ice might be many metres thick and riddled with polar bears and fur seals. It might.

Prize winner number 1 is Freeman Dyson, famous physicist and advocate of space exploration and colonisation.

"Dyson draws an analogy with one of the central ideas in modern physics, that of complementarity. The best-known example of complementarity is that of the dual nature of light. Depending on how you look at it, you see either particles or waves. Light itself is richer than any one picture we might use to describe it."

This is the usual argument that science cannot yet (or possibly ever) explain the full range of human experience, so religion is required to explain the rest. It handily forgets, however, that religion has not, does not and simply cannot actually explain anything about the Universe at all. Religion exists purely to explain itself, which is not only narcissistic but ultimately self-defeating. That perpetual and frustrating little habit of science to explain things previously blamed on god is, as usual, dealt with by saying the two spheres never overlap.

The conclusion seems to be that religion and science are just two ways of looking at the same thing. The problem is that like many situations where there are two ways to look at something, one of them is right and the other is clearly wrong. I would be a little concerned if a physicist told me that, yes, he believed all the equations about how photons behave but that he also knew them to be banana shaped and to taste like ice-cream.

Anyway, onto winner number two in the Templeton Victory Parade (TM). It's none-other than everyone's favourite priest-scientist John Polkinghorne! Polkinghorne believes that "science only gives a thin notion of God."
You know I think he might be right there. Science also only provides very thin notions of unicorns, fairies and the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Can you guess why? I think you know why...

They're all made up!

Science has notions about all sorts of other exciting things that are pretty-well thick enough thank you very much. Our notions do not need thickening. You know what happens when you mix a little water with a lot of cornflour? That's how not-thin many of our notions are. Would you like a steak-knife with those scientific notions? Some of them can be rather meaty.
On the other hand, I think those people over on the religion table would like some straws with their notions.

Do not despair, dear reader, because our author, the cunning devil, has left the best 'til last. Charles Taylor ("arguably the most important philosopher-recipient of the prize?") apparently wrote a book suggesting that in the past we experienced "religious time", which was focused around festivals and such whereas now we run on linear "scientific time."

I'm not really sure what Mr. Taylor is getting at here. On the face of it, he's stating the blindingly obvious. In the past, peasants had really boring lives apart from at Christmas when they could have a goose for dinner and get drunk as a skunk. As a result, they focused their energies into these few occasions. These days we (presumably in the west) have the instant-gratification celebrity culture and so we have no need to focus on specific days.

However, I am at a loss as to how this translates into any meaningful statement about time. Did religious time run at a different speed? Does having a clock actually change the Universe in some meaningful way? I get the impression that something like this is being hinted at but that it is being kept carefully hidden in order to conceal the crazy within.

Taylor also "describes the disturbing affects of every day bumping into people who see the world in radically different ways to your own." He's got a point there. Doctors in psychiatric institutions regularly bump into such people. In there it's called psychosis. Outside the asylum, they call that shit religion.

Common Sense on Have Your Say?

2008-05-13T17:14:00.004+01:00

After my recent rant about the anti-vaccination morons on the BBC News Have Your Say site, I thought I'd maintain balance by linking to a discussion that left me feeling quite optimistic.
It's about embryonic stem cell research and there's more common sense there than I woulod ordinarily expect to find on HYS. There are some loonies, but overall I think reason is winning the day.

I still seem to be living in a stupid country

2008-05-11T23:47:00.004+01:00

The latest BBC news Have Your Say is about a proposed scheme for mandatory vaccination of young children. Far too many of the most recommended comments demonstrate the complete ignorance that has been spread in this country by the tabloid media. Knowledge about vaccines, and even basic critical thinking, seems to be almost totally absent from this cross-section of the population. For example:

"...parents who refuse to have the MMR/AUTISM jab..."

Autism jab? So somebody else reads the daily Male, or whatever other filth tabloids were spreading these lies about the MMR vaccine and autism. Studies show that there is no link between the two. This doesn't stop the flourishing movement that aims to spread this misinformation. If, as a result, some of the weaker members of society (young children who may be allergic, for example) catch measles and die I know who I'd blame.

"Vaccines should never become compulsory. I almost died after a diptheria vaccine..."

This is, of course, why the plural of anecdote is not data. We seem to have managed to put vast portions of people through education without giving them any critical faculties whatsoever for examining evidence and thinking rationally. Just because one person might win the lottery every week doesn't mean I have good odds if I buy a ticket.

"No parent should be forced to jab a kiddie. With bad hygiene you could be infecting millions with HIV!"

Yes... Someone has clearly been smoking something a little stronger than their usual crack. Welcome to the land of straw men. Imagine! If all cars were designed to explode, loads of people would die. We should ban cars! Down with the witch-craft of car manufacturing! Off with it's head!

"In the past few decades, as the number of mandatory vaccines has skyrocketed, there has been a corresponding skyrocketing of childhood cancers, including leukemia and brain tumors. Various neurological diseases, autism and immunilogical illnesses have likewise skyrocketed since the proliferation of vaccines. Coincidence?"

Probably, yes.
This is prime vintage nonsense. I had a little look and I couldn't find any credible evidence for the cancer angle. As for the autism/neurological conditions slant, it is a known fact that reporting of such conditions has increased with improved screening and wider ranges of diagnosis. In fact, all of the vaccine/autism "evidence" disappears if you take proper account of increasing diagnoses. So, not only a coincidence, but really a lie as well.

"There is no absolutely proof that vaccinations work. Ever."

This one is a classic. If vaccines don't work, where the hell did smallpox go? Is it behind the fridge? Maybe it's on holiday in the Bahamas? Oh wait, I think I have it. It's living with Hitler in his secret 4th Reich Moonbase on the dark side of the moon isn't it? Makes about as much sense as this.

The suggestion being debated is the introduction of mandatory vaccination linked to child benefits. So the bulk of the objections take the form of "It's 1984 all over again!" The problem is, it's already illegal to kill someone either on purpose or by your own negligence. By not vaccinating your child you still get to rely on the herd immunity from all the other vaccinated children and your kid will probably not catch measles. However, if rates drop low enough (as they have done in some areas) it becomes possible for these diseases to take a hold in the population and spread through the unvaccinated. At this point, all unvaccinated children are at risk.
In addition, those weaker members of sicuety who do not have immunity for one reason or another are also put at increased risk. By not vaccinating, parents risk not only the health of their children but that of others as well. To me, this seems very selfish.
All treatments have side-effects, and in rare cases these will be seriously harmful. However, it seems ot me that this is the much lesser risk. Especially as the vast majority of the purported negative effects of vaccines are entirely fictional.

Pro-Lifers Show Their True Colours

2008-05-09T16:25:00.002+01:00

You remember the pro-life crowd, right? The ones who claim that abortion is murder and should be banned at all costs (whilst also killing the occasional living doctor) and protest about it vociferously. Well, one of their groups in the USA has finally demonstrated that what they want is not in fact to do with killing babies, it is entirely to do with taking away women's reproductive choice. We always knew they didn't care about reality, but this?

Apparently using the pill is, in fact, as bad as abortion. Their claim that the contraceptive pill is the same as a chemically induced abortion is totally ridiculous. I always suspected (alright, I always downright assumed) that the main aim of the pro-life lobby was to take away the right for women to have autonomy over their own bodies. At least when i say it now, people won't think I'm a conspiracy theorist.

They also trot out all of the usual overly-emotive arguments, generally talking about "tiny babies" when what they mean is ova. These people even seem to equate unfertilised eggs directly with children, which is kind of scary. How slim is their grasp of reality that a single cell has the same rights as a human being?

Also, I know I haven't posted for ages. I've been busy banging my head against the brick wall of science. It is ever so rewarding sometimes...

They should have seen this coming

2008-04-18T13:42:00.003+01:00

The rather useless "Fraudulent Mediums Act" of 1951 is set to be replaced with new legislation being discussed in Parliament soon. The old act pretty much failed, probably because it tried to distinguish a fraudulent medium from a genuine one. It must have been tough, separating out the people who knew it was crap from the true-believers, in fact very few prosecutions were even brought and the vast majority failed.

The new laws will bring all forms of paid-for psychic and mystical services under the Consumer Protection Act. In other words, mediums will have to provide some form of proof that they are contacting dead people and can be held liable for harm resulting from their nonsense. Oddly, the psychics are a little miffed about this. Even more oddly, they waited until after the legislation was announced to submit their petition to 10 Downing Street. I'd have thought the most convinding time would have been, you know, before. They're meant to be psychic after all.

I can see why their pissed off though. If I'd made a career out of defrauding people with my carefully honed cold-reading skills, I'd be pissed off that my cushy little job was going to be "regulated."

Ono, Here we Go

2008-04-17T10:33:00.003+01:00

OK, I'm gonna talk about Expelled again. I'll get the warning in early so you don't feel disappointed.
You see, I wasn't surprised when the producers of Expelled pissed of Richard Dawkins and PZ Myers. I wasn't particularly surprised when their film was so bad that even Fox News slated it. I wasn't even surprised at the monumentally bad way they have handled their PR - although perhaps I should have been with a film that has plainly spent orders of magnitude more on PR than on making a good film. I was, however, pleasantly surprised when I discovered the latest thing they've done.

They've only gone and pissed off Yoko Ono. Some would speculate that this isn't particularly hard to do, and might go on to remind us that she broke up the Beatles. Or allegedly broke up the Beatles, or in fact they broke themselves up. Even amongst secular music lovers her involvement with John Lennon towards the end of the Band's career seems to be regarded as an unholy act, a deadly sin, truly unforgivable.
Now, I would speculate that this is all just a bit melodramatic and a waste of time, but it doesn't matter any more. Because, atheist music lovers, she has a chance to redeem herself of any sin you think she may have committed.

She could sue the arses off Expelled for a start. You see, over the course of the film they play Imagine, by John Lennon. You might think this would be in some kind of ironic capacity, but from what I've heard, you'd be wrong. It seems that they play the song beside images of wars purportedly caused by "Darwinisn" (which in their minds = Atheism) presumably in order to claim that this is the result of "no religion."

Of course, being the smart business-people they are, the producers of Expelled got permission to use the song. Right?

Her lawyers are apparently "exploring all options," which I hope is lawyer speak for "putting together a cast iron case and demanding all their money off them." I'm always a little wary of the litigation culture, but if it applies to one it applies to all. If the lone file-sharer or school play that uses material without permission gets sued, then so does the film company.

This will, of course, be in addition to the other impending law suits pertaining to the other stuff they nicked from other people's work. I'm starting to wonder if they made any of the film themselves. Of course, all the bits with Ben Stein in are probably theirs and we can't sue them for that.

Pity.

OK, let's all be aware

2008-04-11T09:41:00.003+01:00

Today is the second day of World Homeopathy Awareness Week, which starts on a Thursday for no Earthly reason I can understand. So, since they want us all to be so "aware" of their pseudo-medical, fraudulent, dangerous nonsense I thought I'd help out. After all, it'd be rude not to.

So, I thought I'd start with the British Homeopathic Association since they're, well, in Britain and so am I. They're website contains a helpful FAQ on homeopathy , which will save me a lot of time thinking about what to write. Being the lazy sod that I am, I shall simply run down their questions and answer them as best I can. Kind of like an open-book exam where the open book has all the wrong answers in it.

1. What is Homeopathy?
They say:

"Your homeopath builds up a complete picture of you and prescribes treatment for you as an individual, not simply for your complaint."

Doesn't that sound lovely? They'll make a treatment up just for you. One that takes into account that you're 5'10", slightly overweight, work in sales and support Arsenal. I think I'd rather have the treatment for the complaint please. Of course, what this really means is that they take more time to talk to you than our often-overworked GPs. Placebo effects have been shown to be stronger if you take longer to reassure the patient and make friends with them. Of course, throwing in a few jibes about "Big Pharma" trying to kill you with it's poisons probably won't go astray either.

2. How Does it Work?
I have to tell you, I was really looking forward to this one. In my minds eye there was a detailed description of the mechanism by which water "remembers" a molecule it once saw briefly or how shaking it up makes it remember it even more. After that there would, of course, be a description of the biological effects as tested in vitro and in clinical trials.
They say:

"When you have symptoms of illness, your homeopath will give you a remedy which would produce similar symptoms if taken when you were healthy. Sometimes referred to as treating like with like. But this remedy is given in minute quantities so that it triggers your body's self-healing response without any other ill effect."

So, if I have an inflammation that causes pain and swelling, they will give me a very tiny amount (ie. NONE) of something that would normally cause me pain and swelling. Apparently the body will recognize this pain and swelling agent and respond to it, thus reducing my actual symptoms. Now that all sounds very reasonable doesn't it? yes, yes it does, if you are a yoghurt!
Seriously! I have symptoms that are being caused by something. That something is presumably in my body somewhere causing the initial symptoms. How exactly is adding a little bit to those symptoms meant to help me? (assuming of course that nothing in water can cause symptoms at all) I also get somewhat vexed by people who harp on about the body's "natural healing response" as if it's some mysterious entity when in fact it's an inter-related system of very complex mechanisms all acting on specific threats to the survival of the host.
Also, if I am suffering from cyanide poisoning what do they give me? Oh yes, tiny amounts of cyanide! This would be actively malevolent if it weren't for the fact that what I'd actually get is imaginary amounts of cyanide. No, then it'd just be negligent.

3. Why should I try Homeopathy?
You shouldn't. Let's just get that clear now. Don't waste your money and don't buy into the crap about conventional medicine either.
They say:

" Homeopathic remedies are mainly made from natural materials and have almost no side-effects. They are particularly appealing to people who prefer natural products to conventional drugs, those with chronic conditions, and to parents and others responsible for the care of children."

Where to start? Right, "natural" remedies then. Let us say that there is a tree bark that contains an active ingredient that fights, ooh maybe malaria? Right now we can chew on that bark a lot, or preferably mix it into our cocktails if we're feeling refined. So we may very well avoid malaria because of the quinine we got from the bark. However, if we take the bark, we can extract the pure quinine and then run a trial to see how much is safe and how much we actually need to stop the jungle fever. What we then have are two alternatives.
On the one hand we can chew some bark and probably get some quinine out, along with a bunch of other stuff like beetles, animal droppings, moss, earth and any other drugs that are also in the bark. On the other hand we can have our 100mg of purified quinine, administered in the most efficient manner. Which would you choose?
You see, "natural" just means dirty and uncontrolled. People who prefer natural remedies are just fooling themselves that they're not taking drugs when they are. Dirty drugs. Taking properly controlled and tested medications is not the same as eating too much over-processed homogenised food or too much refined sugar no matter how un-New-Age it might seem.
And as for those responsible for children: Take them to a GP. Seriously, they know quite a bit about what might be wrong. And they can tell you about how things actually work in the actual human body. Do not trust made-up medicine, especially when it comes to your children!

4. What can Homeopathy Treat?
Well, it's done wonders for my insanity recently... And as for my lycanthropy, I'm alright noooow? No, alright, don't give up the day-job. Apparently magic water can treat everything:

"from asthma, rheumatism, arthritis, eczema to more simple cases of cuts and bruises."

Well, let's start with this one. DO NOT ATTEMPT TO TREAT YOUR ASTHMA WITH HOMEOPATHY. Really, modern medicine has had quite a while to develop drugs that alleviate the chronic and acute symptoms of asthma. They're not perfect, but then things so rarely are. Expensive little bottles of water are not going to make your asthma go away!
Homeopathy, like all placebos, can treat some symptoms. It can alleviate pain and a nice long conversation with the "doctor" will do wonders for stress. Any symptoms that can be exacerbated by stress may well decrease as a result. The underlying cause, however, will remain.
I am also intrigued as to how it treats cuts and bruises. Although I can't find anything specific on that. All I will say is that the first thing I think of when I cut myself is not taking drugs of any kind (even pretend ones!). Put a sticking plaster on it and some antiseptic cream!

OK, there's more in the FAQ but it does get rather tiresome so I'll just skip on to:

"A fascinating but as yet unexplained characteristic of homeopathic remedies is that the more dilute a remedy, the more effective it is. For example, a remedy diluted 30 times by a factor of 100 (strength 30C) is much more potent than a 6C remedy, even though it contains less of the original substance."

This is about the most wrong statement homeopaths make. The implication is that less of something does more to me than more of something. So I should be able to get homeopathically drunk for a few pence. Hell, we've got ethanol in the lab here, I'll just dilute that a billion times and down a glass! [Disclaimer, do not drink laboratory chemicals...]
I'd love to see them try to back this bollocks up with any kind of logic. Even some common sense would do. There's a reason chemicals have LD50 numbers on them. (Lethal dosage in 50% of people, rats etc.) Less doesn't kill more, it kills less! It's one of those things we've known about for quite a while. By their standard I should either die or be cured of all ills every time I drink tap water which is probably a 30C dilution of almost every known chemical.

Welcome to the Highlands: Home of... creationism?

2008-04-04T12:08:00.003+01:00

Well, I'm a little surprised. Here was me thinking that most of the really dumb religious people were located here in the South. The Press and Journal, however, has proved me wrong with an article proving that, actually, most of the loonies are up north.
It turns out there are cretinists in Inverness, gateway to the Highlands (or whatever the PR material says these days). I always knew that a certain minority of fruit-loops gravitated north, get-away-from-it-allers are a common enough sight in Orkney (where, for the two of you that may not know, I went to school) and we even have our own reasonably crazy monks, but I'd really hoped that the cretinists hadn't made it that far up. The article ends with this little gem:

"Derick Gillies, of the Free Church of Scotland, said there was an unbalanced debate between those believing in creationism and those believing in evolution."

He's right you know. The fact that the cretins get any air-time at all means the debate is already far too unbalanced, away from reality!
Ah well, it's good that they managed to secure a speaker like Dawkins though. You often get the impression that, for the high profile speakers, Edinburgh is as far north as Scotland goes.

Cardinal Keith: Liar, Lunatic or Lord?

2008-04-03T13:44:00.004+01:00

Well, it's definitely not option 3 folks. In case you were wondering. The good Cardinal continues to tout the same old arguments about animal/human hybrid embryos undermining the dignity of human life and all that religious stuff, only this time with a twist. This time it's really obvious that he doesn't know what he's talking about.

"You might think I'd object to animal-human hybrid embryos on moral grounds. I do, but it's their bad science I really take exception to"

Can you guess, dear reader, exactly how many examples there are of "bad science" in his article to reassure you that he knoweth of what he speaks? Zero. Not one. He is at pains to explain that he is a science graduate - BSc Science Edinburgh University - yet he fails to present any of the promised scientific arguments.

It seems he is also most vexed by the fact that embryo research "may" or "might" produce results. This is odd behaviour for one so scientifically literate as any scientist knows that the outcome of their research is not a foregone conclusion. One can never say "my research will do the following," that would be bad science.

Apparently a survey has also shown that 67% of the British population oppose the creation of animal/human hybrids. I can't find any evidence for this opinion poll anywhere. What I did find, however, was a Guardian piece from 2007, describing the consultation process for the HFEB as follows:

"The consultation, a £150,000, three-month mix of opinion polls, public meetings and debates, found participants were initially cautious of merging animal and human material, but became more positive. "When further factual information was provided and further discussion took place, the majority of participants became more at ease with the idea," the HFEA's report says."

So perhaps the Cardinal's opinion poll is taken from the Journal of Knee-Jerk Religious Reactions in the Face of Incomplete Knowledge. Ah, that most respected of totally made up science journals.

It seems to me that religious leaders have been aware of this Bill, and the consultation surrounding it, for some time. It seems that they waited until now because they were hopeful that the Lords might deal with it quietly. Since the Lords haven't capitulated, they have decided to try and drum up the most vocal minority they can.

Thousands upon thousands of people marched in opposition to the war in Iraq. If the government is to maintain consistency it most certainly should avoid changing its mind over a few thousand postcards from poorly informed parishioners and the dishonest ravings of a few Cardinals.

Do you have a burning need to be really pissed off?

2008-04-02T16:17:00.002+01:00

I seem to. It's somewhat akin to a hobby for me. I also find it great stress relief to get really pissed off about things. I also find the smell of people being Wrong on the Internet irresistible.
I also find that a frustration shared is a frustration-made-much-more-fun-in-a-nefarious-kind-of-way. That certainly doesn't have any kind of ring to it. I'm quite busy with this whole science thing right now so I'll admit that this post is kind of a filler. So here goes:

Anyone heard of Vox Day? I don't remember if I mentioned him before but he is a sort of ultra-religious, ultra-right-wing and ultra-bigoted blogger who styles himself a "forensic atheologist" whatever the hell that's supposed to be. You can find his blog here if you really must. What follows is a simply a list of quotes intended to give you a little taster of why his blog might piss me off:

"As with the universities, the influx of women into science is having the observable result of degrading its quality." - Blog 31/3/08

"I note that I am a global warming skeptic myself. Greenland is still colder now than it was when Norse settlers were raising crops there in the eleventh century. So I don’t see why a return to those temperatures should present a problem." - The Irrational Atheist p. 46

"...it occurs to me that since atheists are disproporationately prone to social autism, it's not hard to understand why so many of them have such a difficult time understanding why they are disliked so intensely by such a wide variety of people." -Blog 30/3/08

"The curse of women is their eternal desire for control, coupled with a total aversion to responsibility." - Blog 21/2/08

"I'm not particularly into biology, but I've never bought into the "science" that oil is nothing but squished dinosaurs and sufficiently fermented ferns." - Blog 2/2/08

"And before the gay apologists bring up the ubiquitous and demonstrably false claim that pederasty has no connection with homosexuality..." - Blog 12/10/07

"Homosexuality is not immoral. Okay. So, how about theft, is theft all right now? Or drinking blood, I'm particularly interested to know if blood-drinking is no longer to be considered immoral. I assume rape is fine, of course." - Blog 16/3/07
(Discussing Hilary Clinton's statement that homosexuality was not immoral.)

In addition to this, the European Union is the "Fourth Reich", and his links to Sam Harris' blog and the Richard Dawkins Foundation are labeled "My Bitch" and "My Other Bitch" respectively. Oh yes, and Barak Obama is "the Magic Negro."
OK, my brain has now melted, but I thought I'd just get this in so that yours could melt too. Vox Day has to be amongst the most objectionable people I have come across on the internet.

Normal service (if such a thing exists) may, one day, be resumed.

Expelled Exposed

2008-03-27T11:39:00.002Z

Just a quick one. Everyone else out there in the real skeptical blogosphere (as opposed to this quiet backwater) is posting links to this website:

Expelled Exposed

It is a site devoted to collecting material relevant to what is actually going on with the IDiots and the cretinists. I'll post something longer later on, I'm just wading through some stuff on pseudo-medicine at the moment. Oh, and some actual science work too!

BBC News: Have Your Say about the HFEB

2008-03-23T00:50:00.003Z

In general, I am quite impressed looking through the most recomended comments on the BBC News HYS page about the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill. Most of the top comments are along the lines of:

"How dare he comment on issues that are obviously above his intellectual capabilities. Leave the science to the scientists." - Tariq, London

and:

"If people wish to engage in debate on this issue, they should at least try to construct a rational argument. Empty rhetoric along the lines of 'it's sick', or references to religious beliefs offer nothing to the debate." - Bella, Glasgow

I find this quite pleasing to be honest. Unfortunately I'm fairly sure MPs don't bother reading HYS so I guess we still have to write to them ot let them know we're not all religious lunatics. sadly, you will also still run across things like:

"I agree with the Cardinal, this is a step too far. An embryo contains blood cells, kidney cells, and nerve cells, if it has nerve cells, doesn't that mean that it can feel pain?"

which pretty much sums up the lack of knowledge on the part of the opposition. Fourteen day old embryos do not have any differentiation of cells. That is kind of the point. The cells are more useful before they have differentiated.

The prize for most random highly recommended comment has to go, however, to this gem:

"And do we really want to allow Science to change the course of Human evolution? Imagine if they switched on a Gene in every new born baby that made them super intelligent. Then imagine if they made a mistake and turned on the Serial Killer gene instead."

Yes, my considered argument against this piece of legislation is that something else that I have just made up on the spot is really really bad, therefore the legislation must also be bad. And we should also ban chocolate because being run over really hurts.

I thought I'd just leave the names off the stupid comments. After all, there's no need to rub it in.

Oh yes, and something fairly hilarious has happened involving Richard Dawkins, PZ Myers and Ben Stein's ridiculous (and apparently also really badly put together) Expelled documentary. It's covered in detail over at Pharyngula (Just scroll odwn til you see the word Exand at the RDF so I won't bother going into any detail now.

Newsflash: Catholics still incredibly hypocritical

2008-03-21T13:27:00.003Z

Oh look, Cardinal Keith O'Brien, another Catholic Church leader has found out about the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill. Apparently the experiments proposed in the bill will be of "Frankenstein proportions" which just goes to show that he probably hasn't read the thing either. I know being uneducated and scientifically illiterate is still considered a virtue in the Catholic Church, but seriously.
And I quote:

"This Bill represents a monstrous attack on human rights, human dignity and human life."

What really really makes me angry is that this is the same "human dignity" that the Catholics are promoting when they spread lies about HIV and contraceptives in Africa, when they cover up abuse of children by their clergy and when they oppose legalising abortion when statistics show that it is a major factor in determining the rights and quality of life of women in a given country.

"I can say that the government has no mandate for these changes: they were not in any election manifesto, nor do they enjoy widespread public support."

What a stupid thing to say. If every little thing the government intended to do had to be put in a manifesto ahead of time I think we'd be wasting a lot more time writing manifestos and not actually getting things done. Also, he cannot know whether they enjoy public support or not. Certainly the only evidence he has that there is public opposition is from a few thousand credulous idiots in the Passion for Life movement. None of whom have read the bill either!

I'm fairly hopeful that Gordon Brown isn't going to listen to this stupid little man. However, a small part of me is concerned that the P4Lers and their ilk are getting more and more publicity. Oddly, none of them advocate actually reading the bill, or even the summary documents. They'd much rather just rain self-righteous ignorance and religous protestations down form on high with no thought for the actual benefits of the Bill and only dogma to guide them.

Of course, we all know that the stuff about genetics isn't what really bothers the Catholics. It all just coem sback to the fact that it clarifies in law the rights of homsexual couples to seek fertility treatment. After all, nothing bothers them more than what those gays are up to.

Sins Ain't What They Used to Be

2008-03-10T17:36:00.002Z

Those pesky Catholics! You turn your back for a second and they're messing about with things again... After a normal, every-day, run-of-the-mill training week aimed at encouraging more people to confess regularly - because everybody loves telling an old (alleged) paedophile their darkest secrets - an archbishop (Gianfranco Girotti if you must know) announces an updated list of deadly sins. It seems there are still seven of them - why break with tradition after all? - but they are rather different form their predecessors.
Well, I'm sure you're all waiting with baited breath so without further ado, here are the winners:

Environmental Pollution
Genetic Manipulation
Accumulating Excessive Wealth
Inflicting Poverty
Drug Trafficking and Consumption
Morally Debatable Experiments
Violation of Fundamental Rights of Human Nature

So there you have it. Much of the bad stuff I'd be concerned about would be covered by no. 7 there. Although what rights of human nature are I have no idea. Human nature is always blamed for bad stuff as well as praised for good. So who is doing the violating? I'm sure there'll be lots of complicated theological explanatory notes that nobody can understand...

I also like that they've covered science in there twice, under "genetic experiments" and again under "morally debatable experiments". Debatable? So any experiment that is in a grey area is right out? Because if you're being strict that might include a hell of a lot of science. You know, all that stuff that ethics committees spend their time thinking about. Clinical trials for example. For those life-saving drugs. And, of course, both of these would cover embryonic stem-cell research so the HFEB is doubly slapped by that one.

I wonder if genetic manipulation of animals is allowed but not of humans? I'll have to wait for those handy notes before I decide whether or not to eat those GM foods - because this would be another reason for me to take it up in a big way, what with me being contrary like that.

And also, the Catholic Church says "Don't do Drugs" or you're going to hell, first class and no refunds. You hear? What about drugs that are allowed in some countries but not others? what about Christ's Blood? Or is that OK because it has transubstantiated (is that a verb?) before you drink it? They'd best be careful.

The environmental pollution one is heartening, although everyone pollutes to some extent so there might need to be a lot of confessing. Since that was the point of the training week, however, I can see how they decided to include it. "Hmmm, let's include even more stuff people do on a daily basis, that way they're sinning 24/7!"

And then there's the ones about wealth. I guess a specific definition of wealth would be required. And then a short trip to the Vatican's accounts department for an investigation into "unnecessary wealth".

Anywho, I may blog again about this if I find more on it. You have been warned.

You Can Say What You Like About Jesus!

2008-03-07T14:52:00.002Z

No really. Be my guest. As of a couple of days ago there is no blasphemy law in the UK! The house of Lords has decided that it's a bit of a silly idea in a country where people now so many different kinds of rubbish they'd all have to be blaspheming against someone. Anyway, it gave special status to the Church of England, that most inoffensive of institutions - more tea vicar? And perhaps another choir boy?

Now, I know they never really enforced it anyway because that would be kind of dumb, and probably in contravention of all sorts of other European and British laws, but it's nice to have that ridiculous law removed from the books anyway. Symbolic gestures can be important too. Not only does this give us atheists the right to say what we like about Jesus, but all those delusional people can say what they like too.

Maybe he was a paedophile? Maybe he was a murderer, or a rapist? Maybe he was just a really bad man trying to con a bunch of people? Or... gasp... maybe he didn't sodding exist in the first place? The very existence of such a law was laughable anyway, as if insulting a made-up dead guy could do anyone any harm. For that matter, insulting real dead guys doesn't really do anybody any harm.

Ah well, when this law is officially removed - apparently some monarch or other has to officially 'approve' it - we can all take to the streets and blaspheme to our hearts' content. Savour it. If anyone tries to stop you, remind them that it's not as if there's a law against it.

Why do We Still Have Theologians?

2008-02-29T15:41:00.003Z

Whilst dredging through the numerous - and very repetitive - stream of books published in response to The God Delusion (by Richard Dawkins, in case anybody has managed not to hear about it by now) I come across one particular argument quite frequently. It basically runs thus:

"Dawkins only ever deals with the easily refutable arguments. No theologian worth his salt uses those arguments any more."

The complaint is that Dawkins only deals with outdated or simplistic arguments for the existence of god(s), such as the ontological argument, the argument from design and Pascal's Wager. The theologians cry foul, claiming that they have newer, better arguments and that Dawkins is shooting at straw men. A couple of issues arise from this complaint that, certainly to me at least, reveal problems with the whole concept of theology.

1. The disconnect between what theologians believe and what normal people believe
My experience is that most "theists on the street" - warning, anecdotal evidence alert! - who have stopped to think about the existence of god(s) at all will convince themselves with one of the aforementioned easily refutable arguments, or with something equally simplistic.
Theologians, however, have much more complicated looking arguments that talk about god(s) in much more abstract terms. Often these arguments resemble the cosmological "first cause" argument. Even if the first cause argument weren't crap (which it is), the only thing it claims to prove is the existence of a being of indeterminate origin, nature and power who flicked a switch at the start of the Universe.
Many of the theologians' other arguments run along similar lines. What they "prove" bears very little resemblance to what the person on the street believes. The theologian will then, with dubious logic, show how this nebulous "first causer" (or whatever) is in fact the Christian god (or Muslim, Jewish, Hindu etc.).

2. Theology is totally self-justifying
The only arguments in favour of theology as a discipline are theological in nature. Theology exists to investigate a phenomenon the theologians tell us only they can correctly define. Over the centuries they have created and perpetuated their own little reality within which they perform their "investigations", which generally amount to nothing more than empty philosophical ravings. They talk about concepts like god(s) and the afterlife for which we have no proof. In fact, one of the chief jobs of the theologian is to ensure that the definitions of these concepts remain conveniently outside the sphere of scientific enquiry.
If theologians examined the societal effects of god-belief they would more properly be called anthropologists or historians. If they examined its effect on individuals they might be psychologists or neuro-scientists. There is no rational element of religion that cannot be explored within genuine academic disciplines. This leaves the irrational stuff; the province of the theologian.

It seems to me that theology exists only to perpetuate itself. Why not just let the philosophers, anthropologists, archaeologists, historians, psychologists and neuro-scientists get on with exploring why we believe and how? In fact, science and philosophy are much better equipped (ie. with open minds) to answer the questions posed by theology in a rational fashion.

For reference, books I have ploughed through include God's Undertaker - Has Science Buried God? by John Lennox, The Dawkins Delusion and Dawkins' God by Alistair McGrath, The Irrational Atheist by Vox Day and Darwin's Angel by John Cornwell.

Peer Review Evil says Torygraph

2008-02-22T11:05:00.002Z

The Torygraph newspaper, last bastion of conservative common sense - or whatever they're calling it these days - had an article the other day entitled "Peer review: the myth of the noble scientist" in which the Vice Chancellor of the University of Buckingham*, Terence Kealey, puts forward the myth that scientists are noble creatures - we're not - and suggests that the peer-review process is fatally flawed.

He begins with this little snippet of wisdom:

"One day coffee is bad for us, then it's good, then it's bad again. The generous explanation for these see-saws is that science is always developing our understanding. But there is a more sinister concern: fraud."

What? The reason that the public gets the impression that coffee or red wine or sweeteners are bad for us one week and geed the next is because the media insists on combing recent science papers for any slight suggestion of the above and publishing stories with headlines like "Shock News: Coffee Cures Alzheimers!" or similar. This idea that the scientific community is see-sawing back and forth is false. Published papers may conflict, but the truly scientific approach is to weigh all of the evidence and come to a conclusion, not wave your hands in the air and scream "fraud!"

It is true that fraud exists in the scientific community, as it does pretty much anywhere you find humans. One of the jobs of the peer-review process is to minimise the impact of fraudulent claims, even if it cannot directly test for them. Also, outside of peer-review, the scientific community is very good at picking up fraudulent claims. However, these processes take time - just as with everything else in the gradualist methodology of science - as Jan Hendrik Schön proved by getting more than 25 papers out and winning several awards before being picked up for manufacturing data on a monumental scale.

"The myth is that science is the noble search for truth. The reality is that scientists are selfish. In the old days, scientists often published secretly to safeguard - and profit from - their discoveries."

Science is the search for truth. It's nobility is surely dependent on the participants who are, as we are well aware, only human. Of course there are selfish scientists, fraudulent scientists, incompetent scientists and so on. They are ordinary people. However, their job requires them to be able to defend their work against critics and the community in which they work is strongly meritocratic, requiring a certain selfishness in order to survive. This said, there are many scientists who are perfectly capable of working in large groups and sharing information and I have benefitted from several willing to give up their time and energy to provide assistance that does not benefit their own research.

Kealey goes on to explain that peer-review creates a "closed club" that can block extraordinary or unexpected findings and allows "unscrupulous" reviewers to steal the ideas they read in review papers. I know this is only anecdotal but nobody in my office can remember an incident of a peer-reviewer stealing ideas from review papers. It would probably require a conspiracy of reviewers in order for that to occur.

Science may be somewhat of a closed club, but I see that as a requirement for it to maintain its credibility. Kealey says we should open up science publishing and allow everyone to publish their own papers but I think this would be horribly damaging to the edifice of science. Suddenly any old creationist nutjob could publish their papers about how God did it and the public (and the media) would have no way of telling how reliable the research was. We'd just be giving undue credibility to pseudoscientific nonsense.

The peer-review process may have flaws (it is slow and it may occasionally disallow "ground-breaking" papers) but it is about the best system we could have. It allows for some measure of fraud detection. It ensures that the wildest claims must be backed up with evidence. It may often swing towards the status quo but then extraordinary claims do require extraordinary evidence. Leakey should consider what science would be like if we removed peer-review: unrealiable and often meaningless.

*As I understand it, the University of Buckingham is a private university founded in the 1970s as an arts college. I cannot find an entry for it on the Times league tables available to me. It has the dubious honour of being "the only private University in the United Kingdom".

Just a Block of Wood? Er, yes it is.

2008-02-21T15:16:00.003Z

I just happened to be dabbling in the fascinating stream of news being generated daily by Christian Today - your one stop source for the information you really need, so long as that information is to do with cardinals or ministers having podcasts - when I saw the words "embryology bill" in the Top Stories section. Well me being me, never one to risk missing something I can rant about, I had a little read.

It turns out the Lawyers Christian Fellowship - who believe in "witnessing to the legal profession by speaking the good news of Christ" - has released a new "viral" marketing scheme intended to make people oppose the HFE Bill. You can watch it here on YouTube if you like. I wouldn't really bother though as I'm about to describe it to you anyway.

The video consists of a man chainsawing a block of wood into the shape of a foetus and ends with the words "just a block of wood?" and a link to the Passion for Life campaign website. Am I supposed to watch this and have the revelation that the block of wood is, in fact, not a block of wood? Am I meant to come to the striking revelation that just by making something foetus shaped you can in fact make it into an actual human person? Would it then be wrong of me to 'kill' this block of wood? I don't get it. In fact, just today at lunch I made my mashed potato into the shape of a foetus and then devoured it, thus presumably making me guilty of murder.

Of course I don't believe that abortion is murder so I guess I'm not really guilty of anything, but I am in their eyes. Honestly! Not just a block of wood? No, it's just a block of wood that bears a striking resemblance to a foetus. So what? This viral marketing lark doesn't often make sense to me. Sometimes the videos are funny or clever but most of the time it's like this one. It won't have any effect on an already rational person because it is just a sodding block of wood no matter how much you write "it's a baby" on it!

In addition to this, they're lawyers! I know that's not a very logical argument - all right, not at all a logical argument - but their job is to defend or prosecute a case regardless of the actual guilt or innocence of those involved. They are often paid to defend the indefensible. Maybe Christian lawyers always only defend the innocent and prosecute the guilty, I just don't think it's likely.

In other news, the Atheist Society have set up a Facebook group in opposition to the Passion for Life group. We currently lag behind by about 1,000 members but we're new so give us time. I urge anyone who uses Facebook to look up "Passion for Reason: Supporting the HFE Bill" and join. Also, if you read the information on the bill and agree with it, write to your MP (in the UK, obviously) saying so. The Passion for Lifers are doing this and it'd be a shame for any MPs to get the wrong idea.
Finally, there's a petition on 10 Downing Street's e-petition scheme about it too. I know they always ignore these petitions but do it anyway. It can't do any harm after all.

I leave you with this quote from Christian Today:

"We want people to remember that the life of a human being, made in the image of God, is incredibly precious and that this reality must inform what legislation should and what it should not permit."

I'm glad their views only apply to those people made in the image of God. Us godless heathens can presumably get on with our lives safe in a society who's laws are unmolested by religious nonsense...

Cartooning: The New High Risk Job

2008-02-15T13:43:00.002Z

Remember those Danish cartoons from a while back? The ones of Muhammad? The ones that weren't really all that good? In fact some of them were rubbish. Not, however, rubbish enough to warrant violent protests and attacks on Danish embassies. But then, some scamp from one of the more extremist groups had added a few images of his own to really get the critical juices flowing.

So it's all understandable really. Someone publishes a non-flattering image of a man who allegedly lived hundreds of years ago and claimed to be inspired by God and of course the first thing you think of is "I must go and burn down an embassy, or at least a flag." (Although I have nothing against flag burning per se, if it makes you feel better go for it!)

Now, I'd have completely misunderstood what was going on if it wasn't for the moderates, who weighed in to explain things. Apparently, the poor muslims were complaining that they were being depicted as violent and extremist. It was a complete coincidence, then, that their complaint took the form of a violent and extreme protest and anyway we shouldn't have provoked them in the first place should we? I mean, we crazy liberals in the west should know better than to have a free press and a passable record on freedom of speech. Silly us.

And now it turns out that there was an (alleged) plot to murder one of the cartoonists involved. As I said, the pictures weren't all that good, but they weren't that bad. After all, if publishing crap was a good enough reason to have someone killed, we'd have got rid of Jeffrey Archer years ago.

The Danish media response has been to reprint the cartoons again. Which I think is fun for two reasons.

We can see if the original cartoons provoke the same response without the later additions. It appears that so far the response has been somewhere between muted and non-existent.
If they keep on poking the wasps' nest with sticks maybe they'll provoke another reaction that'll be even more fun for muslim PR to deal with. Or, he said a little too optimistically, they'll get used to criticism and stop reacting so badly.

A spokesman for the London Mosque and Islamic Cultural Centre said the following:

"They are humiliating and racist. Muslims love the Prophet more than anyone - even their own families - and have a very strong belief that he is the messenger of God."

I don't see how the cartoons are racist. For one, they are targeting a religion. Also, nobody seems to have stood up and suggested that the only reason they find the cartoons humiliating and offensive is that their religion tells them that they should. I am also more than a little concerned when anyone says something like "we love X imaginary religious figure more than our own families." In which case I feel sorry for those families. It seems to me that the cartoons make a point about the disconnect between the moderates preaching peace and the extremists practicing violence.

People should have the right to believe whatever nonsense they want in private. However, people should also have the right to criticise those beliefs just as they can a political or philosophical belief. There should be no special protection for religious beliefs. There should certainly be no excuse for a violent response. It seems to me that in order for religions to get rid of their extremists, the moderates have to refuse to defend their indefensible actions. And with Islam, there just isn't enough of that happening.

Divine IVF

2008-02-10T23:53:00.000Z

I was perusing the websites of some of the pro-life Christian type groups who are opposing the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill (HFEB) and I became increasingly aware of two things. The first, slightly more serious thing, is that they are very good at casually misrepresenting the facts in order to foment a sense of panic amongst the general public. They know, after all, that most people aren't going to go and read a 150 page piece of potential future legislation, so they are free to say things that, whilst not always technically incorrect, are easy to misunderstand. The human-animal hybrid thing is one good example.

The second, less serious thing, is that many of these Christian groups are also opposed to IVF because it does not follow "God's law" or because it creates surplus embryos that are not implanted. However, it strikes me that the foundation of the Christian faith is an act of alleged celestial fertility treatment.
God, too impatient to wait or to arrange a more practical scenario, has a fling with an engaged woman, magicking a foetus out of just one set of DNA, - perhaps an example of early cloning in action - and then high-tails it back to heaven, leaving his angels to take the role of Jeremy Kyle and make all parties take a 'lie detector' test before... Oh wait, no, he leaves them to patiently explain to Mary and Joseph that he - God - couldn't wait any longer and just had to get his cosmic rocks off with the first woman who rode past on a donkey, and that it's absolutely fine if they get married because they didn't actually 'do it' they just, you know, had a bit of a fondle behind the ox-sheds and she's still a virgin, honest.
I mean, he's supposed to be omnipotent! Surely you set the happy couple up in a palatial abode with hot and cold running slaves (they like those in the bible, especially stoned) and then sit them down and patiently explain things to them, in order to be sure that the parenting needs of the future messiah are properly met. Otherwise, you're clearly not considering the "need for a father" and anyway, God isn't human so isn't Jesus also a kind of human hybrid himself? Although perhaps a celestial-human hybrid rather than an animal one. Given that the Bible has no information about this we should probably turn to a more reliable reference. I believe that the Dungeons and Dragons role-playing game covers the topic in much greater detail and probably with a similar level of historicity...

Muslims for the Ethical Treatment of MRSA

2008-02-08T16:18:00.001Z

Now, I'm not normally one to quote the Torygraph, but it seems that there has been a slight culture clash between the cultures of Islam and medical hygiene. It seems that a few muslim medical students have been refusing to roll up their sleeves and scrub up properly in line with hygiene regulations designed to reduce the spread of infections. You know, like MRSA. That most friendly fluffy antibiotic resistant bacterium that just loves to kill people in hospitals.

The Islamic Medical Association had this to say:

"No practising Muslim woman - doctor, medical student, nurse or patient - should be forced to bare her arms below the elbow"

You know what? They're right, because any doctor who refuses to do this on such preposterous grounds should be sacked. Simple as that. Apparently they have the right to modesty. Well I suspect the patient has the right to live. How did that little quote go anyway?

First, do no harm.

So, when the potential students roll up, just give them a questionnaire:

Will you follow the hygiene laws, put in place to stop patients dying?
Will you treat people, even when they have diseases your religion says are sinful?
Will you, in fact, apply science based medicine to all of your cases?

If you answered 'no' to any of the above questions, please sod off. I hear there are many fine places in made up subjects like theology that might suit you better.

An Archbishop Says What?

2008-02-08T10:58:00.000Z

What?
Although I have to say I wasn't entirely surprised to read the latest piece of drivel to dribble out of our friendly local primate - Are CofE types primates like the Catholics? Ah who cares, he is a primate either way. Apparently we need to adopt some aspects of sharia law in the UK in order to make our muslim friends feel at home.

You know what? No we oughtn't. In fact, we shouldn't just oughtn't, we should damn well complain, although probably in a very polite British sort of a way. After all, he is only an archbishop, and nobody really listens to him any more. Except maybe those dratted Christians, and there's quite a few of them...

Obviously, he is careful to make sure that he doesn't want any of the "extreme" elements like stonings and reductions in women's rights. What he wants is, apparently, all the good fluffy bits of sharia law that don't hurt anyone's civil liberties. Although which bits of sharia law those might be, I'm not too sure. To be honest, it's not even the extremity (or lack thereof) of the laws that matters here, it's the fact that having parallel systems of laws for different religions is a really stupid idea.

We shouldn't change our laws "to make other people feel at home here." Either they were born here or they emigrated here, and they can abide by the laws of this country - and enjoy the right to have them changed by the due democratic process. If the latter, I would suspect that some of them are escaping the brutality of sharia law as practiced in some countries. How much more at home do we make those people feel by introducing it?

Also, is it not odd to imagine a system whereby one is asked one's religious preference before going to court? It seems to me that as an atheist I might benefit from being able to unscrupulously choose whichever system is most beneficial to me at the time. They wouldn't be allowed to deny me the right after all. This country is effectively - and should be officially - a secular state. The law should not recognise religion as an excuse to be treated differently just as it should not be discriminate against people for their religion.

Finally, would it not cost the state a whole bunch more money to have multiple systems of law functioning side by side? That's not really relevant I guess as the main thing we need to do here is make sure we don't end up back in the sodding dark ages trying people on the basis of their religious beliefs.

A Week Without Posting? Dear oh Dear.

2008-02-06T13:58:00.000Z

It appears that I have been neglecting my (self-appointed) duties, but I was out of town - as I believe they say in that quaint rural colony across the Atlantic - doing science. They don't have the internet in forn parts so I was also away from the blogosphere. Ignore those people who try to tell you it's a blogodisc that is actually flat, because it's not. It might, in fact, be banana or maybe donut shaped but it sure as hell ain't flat.

So, on to business. There are a couple of things in my head that are itching to be blogged about right now, but I need to give them some more thought. One is the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill (HFEB) or, more specifically, the pro-life opposition to it. Sadly, some of the stupidest opposition is on Facebook so I'm not going to link to it here. Suffice to say, one of their chief concerns is the creation of

"Animal-Human Hybrids..." (Cue pipe organ solo. Take it away Tarquin!)

complete with sinister capital letters as if to suggest that scientists will be creating a half duck, half man tomorrow.

Most of the opposition comes from the anti-abortion lobby because the bill also outlines the ethical and sensible use of embryonic stem-cells by science. You know, that science with the potential to help those with crippling and debilitating medical conditions?

Some of the opposition also comes form the anti-gay-marriage crowd as the Bill also proposes altering birth certificates to allow for same-sex couples, or as they put it

"Removing the Need for a Father..." (The organ solo should still be going.)

Yes, that's right, we're going to exterminate all men! Mwahahaha! Oh wait, we're not. We're just liberalising laws about parenthood in an increasingly secular society.

Others are working on more reasoned type arguments based on closer reading of the literature on this. I'm going to stick to ranting as it's easier, and I have my own "literature" to read. Once I've sponged my melted brains off the floor I hope to provide a rant-based review of The Irrational Atheist by Vox Day. The pseudonym pretty much sums up the author being both arrogant (The voice of God? Pull the other one, it's got little flying pigs dangling on it) and using a pun at the same time. Now that's multitasking!

Why Use YouTube When You Can Use GodTube?

2008-01-30T15:04:00.000Z

Well, because YouTube has all of the same crap that GodTube has, along with some videos that are actually good. Just by typing the word "creation" into the search function (I know, why would any sane person do that?) I found the following little "educational" piece by a cretinist named Charley.
The scariest thing about the video is that this Charley fellow says that he lectures high school kids. Those poor bastards. What did they ever do to deserve that?

Anywho, the video serves as reasonable evidence that, whatever religious leaders say, there are plenty of people out there believing this nonsense. So, because I'm twiddling my thumbs waiting for the free online publication of the latest anti-atheism book, I'm going to summarise his arguments below:

Charley has four problems with evolution. The best thing about them is that they are even more simplistic than the normal, more "sophisticated" cretinist arguments.

1. The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics says that things don't get more complex so life can't have evolved.
If this was an episode of QI there'd be alarms going off very loudly right about now. This is about the least sophisticated cretinist argument, and any high-school level physics student can refute it. The claim is that the 2nd law states that life could not increase in complexity (a reduction of entropy) over time as entropy can only increase or stay the same.
The 2nd law of thermodynamics, ladies and gentlemen:

In an isolated system, a process can only occur if it increases the total entropy of the system.

Many have pointed this out before me, including Dave Gorman, but Charley's version is particularly fun because of the example he gives.

"A battery goes from charged to discharged. It does not recharge itself."

And quite right too. But let's say we connect the battery to a large external power source, say a fusion reactor for example. What happens then? Oh yeah, it recharges at the expense of the increasing entropy in the fusion reactor.
Now let's imagine for a second that the Earth has its own enormous fusion reactor, just hanging there in space and showering us with vast amounts of energy for free. What an unusual world that would be. Imagine looking up one morning and seeing a huge, fiery ball of energy just hanging there in the sky. There would surely be chaos! Panic in the streets! Headlines reading "Humanity Flees in Face of Fiery Hell-Sphere!"
Anyway...

2. There are gaps in the fossil record.
That's pretty much it. As with the other cretinists he requires that we are able to dig up a fossil of every single animal that ever lived on this planet. Only then would they stop harping on about the fact that there are no intermediate fossils between this and that already discovered intermediate fossil.

3. There is no known mechanism for Evolution to occur.
Oh yeah, he said it. Apparently DNA is just there for show. Also:

"Mutations are damaging the information not increasing it."

"Dogs do not change into cats, because the information for the cat is not in the dog."

Do I need to even say anything after these quotes? Except that much of the genome of dogs and cats is shared. Oh, and I was sure I read about single genes being able to activate the expression of features in animals that normally don't have those features...

4. The mounting evidence that the Earth is not four and a half billion years old.
He's right here. I think the current estimate is more like 4.54 billion. Although I can't help the niggling doubt that he wants to move the estimate in the other direction...

I know, it's like shooting fish in a barrel. Really big fish in a really small barrel. I just couldn't resist. I'll try not to do the easy ones too much more. I'll probably fail though.

Cretinism Coming to the UK

2008-01-29T11:40:00.000Z

Ken Ham, president of lucrative US Young Earth Cretinism propaganda machine Answers in Genesis, is coming to the UK on another speaking tour. It turns out he's been here before and I just didn't notice. It would be quite easy not to notice as they don't make much of a song and dance about these tours in the mainstream media.

For those people who may not have heard of Ken Ham, he is from Australia - a country that seems to produce more than its fair share of cretinists - and he used to be part of the Institute for Creation Research, the same organisation that gave us Duane The-Fossils-Still-Say-No! Gish. He is obviously a very "good" Christian and describes his wife as "very submissive" as though this is a good thing. Who the hell wants a submissive wife? Where's the fun in that? Unless of course you - and she - are into that sort of thing... Nudge nudge, wink wink, a nod's as good as a wink to a blind bat, say no more etc.

Answers in Genesis is, of course, the illustrious institution that brought lucky old Kentucky the $27-million Creation Museum: 60,000 square feet of animatronic dinosaurs making nice with humans with a medievally themed gift shop at the end. I can only assume the theme is intended to be a nostalgia trip for those cretinists who miss a good burning at the stake.

Obviously Ham's view are controversial, although not with actual scientists. That controversy ended a long time ago. The cretinists lost, they continue to lose and yet they refuse to admit it. No, Ham's views are, of course, controversial with the old earth cretinists who don't understand how he can ignore so much data about the age of the Earth, whilst they quietly sweep evidence for evolution under the nearest unfeasibly large rug.

So, Ken the cretinist is coming to Leicester on April the 3rd 2008, presumably to peddle the same old crap as usual about magic and how the entire edifice of science is deluded and wrong. I'd also like to note that there seems to be a cretinism conference in Wales from the 28th to the 30th of January 2008, although they seem to want £130 just for attending. This is a price I'm fairly sure I'm not willing to pay just for inevitably being thrown out at some point for setting off the brain scanner.

On a side note, I'm becoming increasingly aware that there might be more cretinists in the UK thn I had first hoped. They seem to pop up everywhere and I've even met a few, although they were in the University's christian union, an organisation I might feel the urge to blog about later on.

Cosmic Conflation: Evolution, Abiogenesis and the Big Bang

2008-01-28T10:39:00.000Z

I have now now watched more creationist propaganda - and responses thereto - on the internet than is medically recommended. Doctors now recommend that you aren't exposed to more than 300 mC (milicretins) of creationism per day. Some even consider this level too high as experiments with monkeys have shown that an acute dosage of as little as 600 mC can be fatal to other monkeys in the vicinity. Breaks of at least 24 hours are recommended between repeated doses, although these can be reduced with sufficient exposure to the sceptical literature. Some recent studies even suggest a link between exposure to creationism and autism rates in the US, however they have yet to demonstrate a mechanism to explain their simplistic correlation equals causation arguments.

Anyway, pointlessly length introductions aside, todays story is about one of the most infuriating aspects of the creationism/ID crowd: The conflation of evolution, abiogenesis and the big bang into one big mega-theory against which they then argue. Oddly enough, it's quite easy to shoot down a theory that tries to account for both the early inflation of the Universe following the Big Bang and the development of the bacterial flagellar motor.
I will now attempt to summarise each of these three areas below, relying on little more than a physics degree, an inquiring mind, my undergraduate dissertation and some stuff that I read. If you'd like to try this at home, you can substitute some sticky-backed-plastic and a Styrofoam cup for the physics degree and any issue of New Scientist for the dissertation.
[Disclaimer A: The following huge sections of text can be avoided by anyone who knows this stuff already. Alternatively, those people can read it and point out my fundamental mistakes.]

Evolution
The body of theories that make up evolutionary science is vast, varied and complex, somewhat like the phenomena it attempts do describe. However, the basic Darwinian model is relatively easy to explain and serves well enough as a demonstration.
[Disclaimer B: There really is a lot more to it than this. Science has had nearly 150 years to modify its theories since On the Origin of Species was published in 1859.]

Given infinite resources, populations of organisms tend grow exponentially
There are only finite resources on the planet

Under these circumstances, organisms have no choice but to compete for the limited resources available.

Organisms reproduce by duplicating their genes in future generations
Mutations can be introduced by errors in gene replication or by radiation

The combination of reproduction and mutation leads to variation. Even very infrequent mutations will lead to some degree of variation within a species. We can therefore say that:

There is competition amongst organisms for limited resources
Variation will occur in a population simply by mutation

Variation plus Competition equals Natural Selection.

Organisms with mutations that are detrimental to their survival are less likely to live long enough to reproduce, whilst those with beneficial mutations will be able to do so, and might even be able to do so more than their counterparts. Thus, beneficial genes will tend to be duplicated more than detrimental ones.

All you need now is time. This process does not need to proceed quickly. It is not in any great hurry. Life has had at least 3.4 billion years (3,400,000,000) in which to develop to its current state.

Importantly, evolutionary theory does not currently make any claims about the initial emergence of life. It only describes its subsequent development. The ultimate origin of life is known as:

Abiogenesis
Abiogenesis is literally the formation of life from non-life. Theories of this kind describe possible ways for simple common molecules - such as water, methane etc. - to develop into the more complex molecules required for life, and subsequently into life itself.

To begin with, there is no single accepted theory for abiogenesis. Since we have virtually no evidence about what chemical processes were going on in the distant past, we can only speculate as to how life might have started to live. However, we can make models and develop likely ways in which this could have occurred, and we can perform limited experiments in the lab. The problem is that we do know that life had a whole planet and a very very long time in which to develop. These parameters do not lend themselves to lab experiments.
What we do know:

Water was liquid on the surface of the earth around 4.4 billion years ago
Evidence for biological processes exists as far back as 3.4 billion years
Eukaryotes (the lineage from which we descend) existed up to 2.7 billion years ago

This rough estimation gives life a billion years in which to first develop. By anyone's estimation this is a really long time.

Creationists always claim that the chances of life occurring spontaneously are extremely remote. They arbitrarily set the probability at something like 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (that's 27 zeros) to one, so let's run with that as our base probability for the cosmic lottery shall we?
Let's assume that for the first step of abiogenesis to occur, we need a cubic metre of water and a year. This is probably overly generous. Given the the billion years and the 1.37 billion cubic kilometres of water that we have to play with, that means we get to buy 1,370,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 cosmic lottery tickets. Now, this doesn't prove anything but it does serve to illustrate the sheer quantity of time and resources involved. It also demonstrates that any trained monkey can make up stupid probabilities. (ook)

However, whilst probability doesn't stop abiogenesis form occurring in the first place it does make it very difficult to test experimentally. You could make a chamber in which to replicate the conditions of the early Earth and die before you saw anything like abiogenesis. So how do we test the many theories that exist to explain the emergence of life on Earth?

We may not need to. In order to crush the creationist arument, the theory only needs to be plausible enough. In fact, the current body of theory is certainly plausible enough that a little trimming with Ockham's Razor will be all that is required.

For those interested in a more robust test of the theories I think the answer lies in computer simulations. Computer modeling of the world around us is improving every year and computers themselves are getting more powerful every year. I don't think we're at that point yet, but it seems plausible that it will eventually be financially viable to run a simulation of the basic chemical processes involved and just keep tweaking the parameters a little until something exciting happens. We can then check those parameters against what we believe the early Earth was like. If we're really lucky, we might even get a prediction to test by going and looking at some really old rocks.
The formation of life, however, has fairly little do do with the formation of the Universe as explained by:

The Big Bang
I'm not going to go into this at length except to say that the Big Bang model says nothing about the formation of life on Earth. It's like comparing the Milky Way galaxy to a badger. Whilst one couldn't form without the existence of the other, they have very little to say to each other.

Proceeding from some basic assumptions, the Big Bang attempts to explain how the Universe has developed over its 13.7 billion year lifespan. It states that the Universe began as a singularity and that is has been expanding ever since. It describes the timeline over which quarks and gluons formed protons and neutrons, the emergence of electrons and how these various particles subsequently combined to form Hydrogen. The hydrogen collapses to form stars, which turn Hydrogen into heavier elements and then explode, scattering these elements across the Universe. From these building blocks new stars and planets can form.

So, what the Big Bang model can tell us is how the Universe progressed from being very dense and very hot, to being much more tenuous and cool. Within this framework, better understood theories like gravitation do the work of forming the stars and so on. The Big Bang model is just that: a model. A model well supported by observation, but relying more heavily on mathematics nonetheless. The proof or disproof of Big Bang theory bears no relevance to the theories of evolutionary science. If we suddenly discover tomorrow that the Big Bang model is all wrong, evolution will keep plodding along regardless and abiogenesis will still have had to happen for evolution to be there in the first place.

So that's basically it. Three different theories, proceeding from different sets of assumptions. However, the creationists will tend to call all of these evolution. You see, for them "evolution" just means "anything that disagrees with my assumption that god did it."
I do seem to have rambled on a lot and I'm sure many of you (say maybe three out of all four of you) already know all this stuff anyway. That's OK, I think I disclaimered it sufficiently in compliance with blog safety rules.

And Now For Something Completely Different

2008-01-24T15:16:00.000Z

Ghost photography.
I'm not quite sure where i came across it, but the Daily Mail (purveyor of meaningless gibberish to the masses since 1896) has a short article on its website about a ghostly face appearing in somebody's photo. Surely this confirms, once and for all, that respectable journalism is not listed amongst the Mail's strengths. Surely they have fact-checking to make sure that there are, you know, facts in their articles? Well never fear, dear reader, for they have the answers!

The Ghost Research Society has been collecting so-called “hauntings” since 1977 and you can view hundreds of ghoulish photos on their website www.ghostresearch.org

I was impressed to see the words "so-called" in there. That at least suggests a bare minimum of scepticism. However, I was not pleased that I now found myself compelled to visit the website. It was almost as if psychic forces beyond my control compelled me to do it...

And suddenly I was searching ghost photography archives across the internet. I don't know how it happened your honour. All I do know is that there are too many people not sufficiently able to operate their cameras that they interpret any reflected, over-exposed or out-of-focus parts of their pictures as "ghostly". Such people often comment that they didn't notice anything odd while taking the photo but that once they got it developed or opened it on the computer they saw these anomalies. You know what? There was something odd happening while you took the photo. You gave your camera to a monkey! And if that wasn't the case, would you mind putting your brain back in when you "interpret" your images? Thank you so much.

Now, I believe that I am basically proficient with a camera. I can fiddle with the settings and I won't run away if you use words like ISO and aperture. If I point the camera thing (In my case a Nikon D50) at another thing and press the little button, and I remember to remove the little opaque circley thing form the front first, I tend to get an image that I would describe as "adequate." However, sometimes bits of the image are overexposed, or blurry, or perhaps the animal moved during the exposure. Maybe there's some flare from a particularly bright light, or maybe the photographer had a higher than normal blood alcohol level and the camera wasn't exactly on a firm footing. Whatever the anomaly is, I can usually guess what caused it in the final image.

These ghost hunter types, however, can't. The site linked to by the Daily Mail (I've reached my quota, if I say it again I have to hand my eternal soul to Satan and all his little wizards) is actually about the most sceptical one I've visited. Most of the rest are full of galleries of images taken by the terminally incredulous, or in some cases by people who were, presumably, undergoing a seizure of some kind at the time. The word ghost is applied willy-nilly (I have still to discover how exactly one performs an action in the style of willy-nilly) to all sorts of lens flares and shadows with all the credulous fervour of a Westboro Baptist watching an episode of Will and Grace.

[Which reminds me, somewhat parenthetically, of this post over on Pharyngula about Heath Ledger. Aaaargh!]

You Can't Have Our Organs! Over Our Dead Bodies!

2008-01-17T00:35:00.000Z

It seems that the government of this fine (translation: not as bad as a lot of other countries) country (the UK, in case I have any readers I haven't met) is considering a bill that could revolutionise the organ donation system. There's a thing about it here on good old Comment is Free.
To me, mandatory donation of healthy organs and tissue upon death makes a hell of a lot of sense, with the usual namby-pamby opt-out clause available for the religiously squeamish of course. What really surprised me (I'm more naive than I thought, it seems) was the vocal reaction of those shouting stupid things like: "it's another stealth tax!", "it's the nanny state gone mad!", "It's like 1984 all over again!"
Are these people fundamentally mental? Are they, in fact, several coco-pops short of turning the milk chocolaty? What precisely do they intend to be doing with their organs once they're gone? I summarise the beliefs and practices that might lead to such objections below:

1. I'm vaguely religious and uncomfortable about the whole thing.
A lot of people seem to be objecting on the grounds of some wishy-washy variant of Christianity or another. Their bodies are God's and don't belong to the state or somesuch garbage. The odd thing is, one of their central beliefs - dualism - would suggest that they need their bodies less than we godless heathens. You see, they believe in the soul (or they're supposed to at any rate) which is separate from the body, so no matter how much you mash and mangle the corpse, Mr. Soul (see, there's a little James Brown in everyone. He was a busy man) swishes his way off to heaven or hell unperturbed by gore and mayhem. So, surely they have a very good reason to donate their gooey bits to the cause? Especially the Catholics, who can surely get some time-off-purgatory-for-posthumous-good-behaviour out of it.

2. My religion specifically says you can't chop me up for some reason
Some religions have proscriptions about non-manglement of corpses post-mortem. Apparently the soul or the spirit can get confused if its earthly vessel is eviscerated before it's entered the right post-code into its heavenly sat-nav. So I guess this would mean those religions bar anyone from the afterlife if they are, say, eaten by a wild animal or severely mashed in an horrendous yet amusing farming mishap. If your god is going to bar you from eternal bliss just because you happened to get eaten by a tiger, surely he's not a very nice chap anyway? These people should reconsider their relationship with that part of their brains they call "god".

3. I'm coming back as a zombie so I need all my bits intact
I admit this one might be a rare point of view in these enlightened, post-pharaoh times but let's cover it anyway. You might be fully intending to rise from the dead and at that point, you assume, you're going to need all your various parts present and connected in roughly the right way. Or, if you happened to be 5,000 years old and Egyptian you might dread the disappointment of waking up and not being able to play the amusing canopic jar mystery hunt the organ game. However, let's focus on the real issue here. If you come back from the dead as a zombie, what are you going to do with a full set of kidneys? You're not going to be enjoying quite the active social life you did back when denial was just a river in Egypt anyway. Rotting flesh is a real turn off in modern social circles.

4. My partner or spouse is a necrophiliac and it'd be rude to disappoint him
(Clarification: I'm assuming most necrophiliacs are male as, not wanting to think about it too deeply, I don't see a woman getting quite the same level of gratification from a corpse. Although I'd be the first to admit that my knowledge of rigour-mortis is scant at best, so maybe there's something in it. Answers on a non-illustrated postcard.)
This is the most plausible of my reasons as it involves an actually alive person. See how far I had to stretch to find a reason that wasn't entirely mumbo-jumbo based? See where I had to go to come up with an even vaguely plausible argument? Those people who fall into category 4 can feel free to fill in the opt-out forms. They might want to invest in a very large refrigerator as well.

5. I read the Daily Mail
This is a sure sign that brain function has ceased entirely. The ambulance will arrive shortly to take your organs to the nearest hospital. Please be patient.

So, I think my point can be summarised thus:

Dead Things Don't Need Organs!

I think that sums it up. Why can't we all just get to the sensible conclusion that bodies are just dead things? We don't need them for anything and neither does God, Allah, Shiva, Thor, Xenu, Osiris, Zeus or any of the other made up godly types. Why not ease the pain of another human being after you've gone? Sure, you won't be around to bask in the warm fuzzy glow of having saved someone's life, but if you like you can have a little preemptive bask now on the basis that you may do one day. Go on, nobody will think the worse of you.

No Intelligence Allowed (And it shows)

2008-01-15T13:58:00.000Z

I've been wondering whether or not to do an entry about the "documentary" Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed for some time now. Mainly, I've been ignoring it as doing research into it would probably cause me irreversible neurological trauma - multiple rapid collisions between head and desk can do that to a brain. So, for those of you who do not wish to suffer such side-effects I shall once again brave the white-water rapids of abject stupidity, being careful to avoid the piranhas of downright lying and the deadly whirlpool of conspiracy theory.

The Trailer
The film isn't out until spring 2008, but there is a trailer that you can watch here. I would hope that most sane people will spot the tone of the trailer and run for the hills in fear of their sanities. Unfortunately, the film is being released in the US, home of creationism and at least a million (figure estimated from cursory observations) other kinds of nonsense. I present below some highlights from the trailer.

The movie opens with our "hero" standing in a lecture theatre - oddly labeled "Biology 101"; it doesn't strike me as normal for a university to devote a whole lecture room to one class a year but there you go - writing "I must not question Darwinism, I must not question Authority" many times on a large blackboard. This immediately struck me as odd, since the whole point of Intelligent Design is that you do not question the Authority (God).
Stein then goes on to assure us that he is qualified to talk about a complex scientific issue. Or at least he's not but he did write speeches for President Nixon (and do a lot of apologising on his behalf) and he hosted an award-winning game show as well as being alawyer and lecturing on social issues and human rights. Whether this qualifies him to debunk one of the best supported areas of modern science I shall leave up to you, dear reader, to decide.

He then briefly pontificates about the "big" questions before hitting us with his first logical fallacy. Apparently we have a choice: either there is purpose and meaning to life, or we got here by "pure dumb fate and chance." It's clear that the "purpose" referred to is going to turn out to be divine so he is presenting a simple false dichotomy, the fallacy of bifurcation. I also feel the need to leap to the defence of poor old fate again. He gets a bad rap, always being portrayed as dumb or completely random, and always being used to describe the non-random process of evolution by natural selection. What's so bad about chance? So we might not have ended here at all? All that makes us is lucky, not special. If anything, we should be more thankful that we got here by natural processes than if we were made by some capricious deity.

He goes on to describe evolutionists as thinking of humanity as nothing more than "mud animated by lightning." Once again I fail to see the bad here. Isn't being animated mud quite amazing? But no, he prefers his "divine spark" and further spiritual mumbo-jumbo.
He then steamrolls right on to fallacy number two, the argument from personal incredulity. Apparantly the fact that this "mud" learned how to grow, reproduce, swim, crawl and think is so hard to believe - with incredulity growing exponentially with every added biological mechanism you list - that it just can't have happened naturally.

But it's OK, he doesn't mind if some people believe in evolution because he likes freedom of speech. Also, I need to make sure and flag up the Nazi Germany reference here. Those crazy IDers always manage to get it in somewhere!

It is then that we are introduced to "mild mannered scientist" Richard Sternberg. I'm not sure that his manner, mild or otherwise, is relevant to the discussion but there you go. Basically, Sternberg was editor of the journal Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington and allowed an article advocating Intelligent Design to be published. There was some controversy about his editorial methods (it was his last month as editor after resigning) and the publishers pulled the article on the basis that it didn't meet their scientific standards. But by then, Sternberg has ensured the the ID crowd won a major victory by being published in an actual, real-life science journal. After that there were some fairly inconsequential court disputes which basically came to nothing.

Stein suggests that Sternberg was editor of the journal "until" he published the article, which appears to be misleading as it suggests that he was fired because of his actions when he actually resigned. Apparently there was then a "massive campaign" to smear his reputation and destroy his career. Having looked around, all I see is the response you'd expect from the scientific community when someone publishes a clearly unscientific paper to further their own ends. If he hadn't been resigning anyway, they should definitely have sacked him. Freedom of speech is one thing, being employed to uphold editorial standards is another thing entirely.

It's OK though, because Stein can't find anything wrong with the article so it's obviously OK. Let me reiterate here that Stein has none of the credentials one would require of a journal editor or peer-reviewer in the sciences. I'm sure this fallacy has a name but I'm just going to call it the "I'm always right and I know everything anyway" fallacy.
Apparently there are signs of ID in nature, which is news to me and the rest of the scientific community. Also news to me is that DNA is a "digital code" (pictured as zeros and ones forming a double-helix). Ask your nearest biologist how many base-pairs there are in DNA and they should tell you that it's four. Now ask your nearest computer engineer how many states there are in a digital system (they'll say two).

It is at this point that Stein makes his first historical mistake. It seems that there would have been no problem publishing this paper in the time of Galileo (really? The same period where the church arrested him for questioning doctrine? How odd) or Einstein (only 50-odd years ago). Apparently we now live in the era of Darwin and in this period no such papers would be allowed. Darwin died in 1882. Einstein was born 1879. It seems to me that the era of Einstien comes after the alleged Darwinian era began. But then, religious people have always been good at creative history.

He then makes a plea on behalf of the "many" scientists who have lost their jobs or tenure or had their papers refused (papers can be refused for a lot of reasons) "all for questioning Darwin". I guess it won't matter to say that evolutionary biology has moved on a huge distance since Darwin, or that the number of such scientists is quite small, although overpublicised by the ID proponents.
He then paints a picture in which there is a global conspiracy to stifle the academic freedom of these scientists. This is odd, because scientists can get away with an awful lot, that's kind of the point. They have the freedom to say what they want. However, if they're interviewing for a job in a university biology department and they answer that the whole edifice of evolution is wrong and the reason is that the bible told them so, that department is quite right not to employ them. What the department wants is the best scientist, the most rigorous investigator, not someone who cries "no fair!" and hides behind unsubstantiated doctrine. They are free to be religious and believe any old nonsense they want, but if they run their research on the basis of that nonsense they are not a good investment.

Next it's on to the old idea that Darwinism is dangerous (cut to images of concentration camp ovens and so on) and a selection of clips of famous science types (Dawkins, Dennet and so forth) saying that ID is rubbish. And it is here that Stein commits his most grievous misrepresentation. He shows a clip of Richard Dawkins saying "as a scientist, I am pretty hostile to a rival doctrine..." The clip cuts away there so we never get to see him finish his sentence. Now I've seen the worst kinds of quote mining but this is brazen beyond belief! You can't cut a video clip mid-sentence and expect us to take it as it is!. Though I guess the creationists will lap it up.

Next it's time to compare Intelligent Design to the civil rights movement (gratuitous use of Martin Luther King here) by saying that we have freedom of speech everywhere else, why not in science? What? You can't maintain scientific standards if you allow anyone to publish anything. That's how it works! So what the ID people want is a science where we can say what we want and that magical fairies did it so long as we are free. I wonder how advanced our life saving medical technologies or our computers would be if we took that approach?

So, in conclusion, science is a huge conspiracy to defraud the public about the true divine origin of the universe and our very special fluffy little place in it, and ID is gawd's own troof about how we got where we are. All those complex theories and equations are just made up. Nobody understands them after all, apart from those evil scientists!
Or, alternatively the above paragraph is utter crap and Ben Stein is a credulous idiot, seduced by the usual dead-end arguments from the creationists. I shall allow you, dear reader, to decide for yourself.

[Apologies for the enormous rant, but I couldn't help myself. This kind of thing just angers me more than it really should.]

Dear Lord, please stop those naughty choir boys from tempting me...

2008-01-10T11:40:00.000Z

Well, it looks like I came to this - and to the new year it seems - rather late. I bet there were literally millions (plus or minus 6 orders of magnitude, probably minus) of people hanging on the fate of this plucky little blog (I'm not the plucky blogger, I'm the plucky blogger's son?). Or, as is more likely in fact, not.

Either way, I can always rely on one church or another to provide me with a laugh every now and then. And this time it's the Catholics. You'd think they'd need a license for all that dogma, but I digress. Apparently, they have a small problem with priests fiddling with the choir boys. I know, I know, it comes as a shock to you too dear reader, but strengthen your resolve and press on. Somehow we'll make it through these trying times.

So, here's the bottom line: (no pun intended, although people only say that when there is) The good old Catholic Church has found a new way of dealing with this perennial problem (I think that's in the thesaurus next to "institutionalised abuse" if you look carefully) and it involves that always-successful, never-fails, better-than-science, you-can't-prove-it-but-you-know-it's-there, the master of mediocrity, purveyor of promises that don't deliver, ladies and gentlemen please put your hands together for...

Prayer?

Apparently if a bunch of old men, some of whom allegedly (and some of whom actually) fondle young children for fun, gets down on its knees and prays to the Lawd Gawd Jeserhaus H. Christ, those of them that enjoy the fondling will stop doing it. But that's probablt not what they're being told to pray for is it? If I know anything about rich organisations made up of morally and actually corrupt (allegedly, just in case...) old people it's that they know how to bend the law to suit them. What they're actually praying for is probably for those despicable satan-sent little children to stop being so gosh-darn tempting. Perhaps even that new rules be enacted requiring young boys to cover themselves from head to toe in order to reduce temptation? Although they might not do that, and not because it'd be a bad idea, but only really because they'd look a bit like they were copying Islam. And nobody likes a copy-cat.

Call me cynical if you like, but I'd have thought actually trying to do something about the problem would be more effective. Rather than just getting down on your knees and praying to an imaginary misogynistic old bastard, why don't the actual misogynistic old bastards (allegedly) do something concrete about it?

Oh, and todays word of the day is Jeserhaus. I've decided that it's german (or perhaps some form of scandinavian) for a church, as in "hey Klaus, let's go to the jeserhaus and pray a little."

A Veritable Barbecue of Christians

2007-12-13T12:59:00.000Z

If you saw an event entitle "Grill a Christian", would you go? Well, it turns out I would, even if I was only attracted by the slim outside chance that this might be some kind of penance for all those stake nights back in the middle ages. So, along I went, accompanied by a couple of friends from the Atheist Society.

It turned out that the event actually consisted of a panel of five christians from the Christian Union and an audience made up of we three (meeting again as we do, witch-like, on a regular basis) and maybe half a dozen other christians. At least we were told afterwards that they were probably christians. There was certainly plenty of meekness in evidence, so I assume there's a title deed for the planet heading their direction one day (lucky them). To put it another way, I don't think they brought any metaphorical barbecue sauce with them. So, it was up to us to "be blunt" as we were instructed and ask anything that popped into our heads.

Now, I'm not a very good note-taker at the best of times, and being in turns bored to death and driven to distraction doesn't aid my perspicacity one little bit. So I'm going to try and reconstruct some form of account of events from several scruffy sheets of A4, which appear to be the doodle-ridden ravings of a madman. Much of it looks like: "MORALS?", "WHY?", "PROOF!" and "PRAYER!?" interspersed with several questions that were left unasked or unanswered. There were a few interesting answers, which I shall now summarise as best I can. (it was yesterday after all!)

FORGIVENESS

It turns out - and always seems to in the end - that we can all do pretty much what we like. We have all been pre-forgiven in advance thanks to a bloody human torture and sacrifice, which is apparently OK because Jesus was both human and not human at the same time. At this point there is much fallacious pontificating about how we simply haven't grasped the "obviously logical" nature of the holy trinity and that even though God is omnipotent and created Jesus, it's still a sacrifice to let us borrow him for a bit and then take him back.

But, ladies and gentlemen (I'm generously assuming I have an audience larger than 3 here...) I digress. Because, as I said at the start, we can do whatever we want to whomever we desire! Apparently, no proper Christian would ever want to murder, rape or steal (although so so many do) but, when it comes down to it, if you really say sorry afterwards you can still be forgiven. Excellent. This Christmas I would like the Junior Vlad Impaling Kit and the Flagelator 3,000 cat o' nine tails please.

When pressed, I was informed that I could indeed do anything I wanted and still be forgiven by Jesus (who loves me even if I think he's all made up) if I asked nicely.

PRAYER

OK, here goes, and hold on tight because this makes about as much sense as a tofu bicycle. God answers your prayers and you are special, except if you do statistical studies on it, you find zero effect of prayer. Now this is because he at the same time answers enough prayers to still be God but not enough for them to appear above the noise in any experiment. So don't get your hopes up. He also does heal people, but only of things that are conveniently open to occasional spontaneous remission or that have no serious external symptoms. Those poor amputees out there are just not praying properly or hard enough for new legs and arms.

To further enable my rapid conversion from atheism to complete nonsense we were given the following example: "My friend in the pew next to me had a crick in his neck one day, so I prayed for him and a minute later it was gone."

Well go get the holy water folks I think I need an emergency baptism after that compelling chestnut! I had a crick in my neck once and a minute later it went away by itself! How moronic to you have to be to accept this as evidence? Seriously.

EVIDENCE

OK, all they have here is the Bible, but the way they talk about it you'd think that this ragtag collection of books by many authors at many different times was the most reliable source ever. They unquestioningly accept the work of historians, many of whom - rather conveniently - have the first name "Father" or "Reverand". They completely ignore any of the controversy or discussion surrounding the texts and accept the most favourable aspects from a whole range of accounts, many of which disagree with each other. When it comes down to it, their evidence is the same old "God wrote the Bible and it says he exists so he does" circular argument, given a veneer of historical credibility by the sheer weight of religious research into the matter.

When it comes to scientific evidence we cannot, they say, expect God to show himself to us now. Not now that we have reliable ways to test and document such things. That just wouldn't be cricket! It has to be hard to believe in him because he loves us. Or something. None of it makes the remotest bit of sense!

There's a reason the defence of faith is called "apologetics". That's all it is. The making of excuses and apologies on behalf of religion. There is no reason here. There is no logic or observation or discernible method. Only a massive engine of self-reassurance designed to stop people from asking the truly difficult and interesting questions. When it comes down to it, all of the arguments we got that day can be summarised like this:

"It's like that because that's the way we want it to be!"

It's been a long time since that kind of argument was acceptable in any other sphere of investigation. Let's all hope for the day when religion is routinely subjected to the same standards of evidence as science.

I Don't Believe in Evolution

2007-12-10T12:22:00.000Z

There, I said it. I don't believe in evolution. At least, in the way that religious types, including creationists and their hideous bastard offspring "Intelligent" Designers, use the word I don't.

And, if you started reading this having linked to it randomly from afar, hoping to read a like-minded rant about how evolution is "only a theory" and how the human eye is too complex to have possibly evolved, then I'm not sorry to disappoint. In fact, keep reading. Only this time, don't take what the person telling you things says at face value, blindly following their every instruction no matter how absurd.

Because nobody has to believe in or have faith in evolution. All you need are eyes, ears and a brain - plus all the necessary interconnections of course. If you can find these then you have all the tools required to understand how every living organism on this planet came to be. If you have these, there is no reason for you ever to believe things just because louder people tell you to.

Evolution is a hugely mind-expanding concept. The fact that a very simple phenomenon repeated billions of times can lead to such a huge wealth of complexity and beauty is quite humbling. It's almost akin to learning the letters of the alphabet or the numbers 0 to 9 and subsequently discovering the huge variety and joy in language or the emergent beauty in mathematics. Only more so.

The problem is, there are so many lies and half-truths spread about evolution by its opponents, that many people are taken in by them. Here are just a few of the stupidest things:

1. It's "only" a theory.

I'm not sure I even need to respond to this one except to say that all of science is based upon theories and that the word means a damn sight more than the crazies like to think. A scientific theory isn't just something I think up one day whilst tying my shoelaces. That's called an "idea". Scientific theories have to be tested and observations repeated, correlations confirmed and so forth. Then it has to pass through the bear-pit of peer-review and survive accepted and unscathed, or at least only slightly scathed; a bit of scathing can be good for a theory after all.

"Intelligent" Design is an idea. It can never pass beyond this fairy-tale realm because it can never be proved, can never be falsified or confirmed.

If evolution must be thrown out as merely a "theory" the faith-heads have to start living as though gravitation does not happen, as though light does not travel at constant velocity, as though every device of technology built upon scientific research and theories does not, in fact, work.

Sounds fun, doesn't it?

2. Evolution has never been "seen in the lab"

This is a good one, because you only have to read a little bit to find out how stupid this statement is. Every day, bacteria develop resistances to drugs or other agents in the lab. We can change the genes of animals and make weird things happen, weird predictable things.

Outside of the lab, we can observe the effects of evolution, both within and between species, everywhere. There are well documented examples of groups of species with geographical distributions and breeding patterns that would be confounding without the concept of evolution to explain their situation.

Finally, science has predicted the existence of intermediate species - the transitional forms that link one species to the next - and then gone out and dug them up. This is a theory that is being tested every day and that hasn't yet fallen down.

3. The human eye/spleen/testicle/immune system/incredulity mechanism is far too complex to have evolved naturally. It must have been designed.

This one is fun as it is a prime example of the argument from personal incredulity: "I'm too stupid to understand how this could have happened so god must have done it." Well, guess what, you don't have to be the brainiest biologist on the block and actually understand how your ability to be incredulous evolved. All you need is the fundamentals and to be able to grasp what they mean. The really smart guys in the labs - of which I am not one, I am occasionally found in a lab but really smart I am not - can get on with working out the evolutionary pathways and I'll be happy to read their more intelligible articles.

For a start, most of the things the creationists bring up have already been explained, and the others require years of training to fully understand. The human eye is quite a simple thing as evolution goes, and the fact is, if we don't understand a particular mechanism yet we soon will. Science will probably figure it out, it's good like that.

4. Evolution is "random"

People often misrepresent evolution this way and it comes from a fundamental misunderstanding. When a mutation occurs it occurs randomly, it's subsequent selection and proliferation through breeding does not. This is a naturally guided process. Beneficial mutations lead to more successful breeding, damaging ones do not. Evolution cannot help but occur in the presence of environmental pressures. All you need to make the human species is a simple repetitive process and lots and lots of time.

One of the things that angers me most about these misrepresentations is that the people who spread them understand exactly what they are doing. They rely on the general public to absorb and parrot these lies without thinking about them. This needs to stop. It took more than 3 billion years for life to evolve to the point that it can understand these things and it saddens me to see people abandoning their amazing natural gifts in favour of dumb incredulity.

The "Evils" of Moral Relativism

2007-12-06T11:03:00.000Z

This is a topic which came up last night at an Atheist Society event. Somebody in the audience asked that old favourite question, which I shall paraphrase here:

"If you don't believe in god(s), then where do your morals come from? Why don't you just go around killing and raping each other?"

My initial reaction to this question is usually one of incredulity, rapidly followed by hope that the questioner really doesn't mean what they are suggesting. It keeps coming up though; people keep asking it and then waiting with that smug expression on their faces for the inevitable admission that all atheists are entirely devoid or morals, or that like Prometheus we 'borrowed' what we needed from the gods without acknowledging them. Or even sending a thank-you card. Godless heathens that we are!

What the question itself seems to suggest is that before religion came along, we did just go around murdering and raping each other. That, as Moses trudged down from Sinai, commandments fresh of the presses, everyone was busy coveting their neighbour's ass and killing and thieving and raping their little hearts out.

So Moses stands up and, after clearing his throat really loudly to distract them from their rampant sinning, reads out his ten simple rules. And after that, everyone is all about peace, love and understanding.

Given that we evolved as a social species, it seems far more likely that morals evolved along with us. That in order for us to exist in a tribe we had to follow certain rules of engagement. We didn't kill our fellow tribe-members and we didn't steal from them, because doing so would destroy the harmony of the group. Observation of other primates shows this kind of behaviour, whilst it has also been shown that they understand the concept of 'fairness' on an instinctive level.

Even disregarding other species and considering modern humans as we are now, one can derive a perfectly functional set of morals from the simple idea of doing unto others as you would have done to yourself. You don't kill because you wouldn't want to be killed, and likewise with theft, rape and so forth. It benefits the species if we help our fellow people, rather than fighting them.

In addition to this, deriving your morals from personal experience and not from a list of absolutes allows you to be more flexible in determining the morality of a given act. It is not always wrong to lie, most of us tell small lies all the time in order to avoid offending people, or to avoid recrimination. It is not always wrong to kill, although it nearly always is. There are scenarios in which killing one person is the more moral option, however distasteful this may seem. This does not lead to the collapse of society, however much the faithful say it will.

And finally, onto the big one, the best response I think you can give to that stupid question:

"Are you saying, then, that without a god or gods to watch you and punish you when you transgressed, you would be raping and murdering and stealing? Is it that these things are so fundamentally enjoyable that divine retribution is the only thing that will stop you?"

By placing the responsibility for morals on a higher authority, they abdicate all responsibility for thinking or caring about other people. They pass the buck. And by living by absolutes they miss out on a huge range of human moral experience.

Why?

2007-12-03T12:03:00.000Z

Today's post is brought to you by the question "why?"

Feel free to use this useful little question to find out about the motives of the other humans around you. Feel free to use it about anything you can see.

However, don't stretch poor little Why beyond it's limits. A better question when asking the universe questions is usually "how?" How does that work? How did the universe form? This kind of thing. Because, you see, little old Why has his limits. People seem to get awfully confused about the universe when you use Why, and they start to invoke all sorts of silly reasons.

"Why did the Universe start to exist?" seems to lead billions of people, inexorably, to god. As if the universe must have a reason for existing, a purpose. Poor old Universe doesn't have a purpose that we can properly discern, it only exists and, quite frankly, it does a rather good job of it. So, three cheers for the universe. But let's try to stick to how it came to exist and leave the why to the police and private detectives who deal with motives.

After all, as far as we know, motives have only existed as long as we have, which is really no time at all as far as the universe is concerned. Before we came along, it almost certainly had no motives. 4.5 billion years of hard, unconscious work it took before the universe had motives. Not bad going at all when all you get to start with is a quantum singularity.

So, as a species, let's try to remember that it is we who are the motives of the universe, and we are a comparatively new invention.

Jehovas Witless

2007-11-30T14:09:00.000Z

I apologise for double posting but...

Another one bites the dust.

Only this time a 14 year old has been indoctrinated to the point of killing himself. And a whole range of adults were complicit in it too. Particularly the friendly relative who convinced him of this bullshit, and to a lesser extent the judge who granted him the right to decide to die from something he had a good chance of surviving.

You want to know why?

"...No soul of you shall eat blood... whosoever eateth it shall be cut off"

-Leviticus 17: 12-14

Yeah, becuase the current method of transfusing blood is to give it you in a pint glass and say "bottom's up!"

Homeopathy is a Bunch of Crap

2007-11-30T11:28:00.000Z

It had to come at some point. The anger has been simmering away (in a purely metaphorical way) for some time now. And the straw that broke the simmering camel's back? Well, it was the Guardian, last bastion of esoteric spelling in a world of computers that it is.

First we had Jeanette Winterson prattling on about how homeopathy works, which is utter rubbish, and then we had a spirited defence of it from a Denis MacEoin. This is starting to get tiring and I'm increasingly annoyed with the media rushing to present an illusion of balance where there is none. In order to maintain this balance they did publish a rebuttal from Ben Goldacre so it's not all bad.

Homeopathy is a load of rubbish. There, I said it. It's water you morons! It doesn't remember what you put in it and subsequently diluted out of it. It is H2O, billions of molecules constantly moving about with no way in which to store a "memory" or "form" of its solutes, former or current.

The evidence is clear on this one. Properly run, objectively analysed, peer-reviewed studies have shown that the effect of homeopathy is no more than that of a placebo. In addition, trained homeopaths cannot tell the difference between water and one of their remedies without reading the label! Please can we just tell the crystal-wavers, the psychics, the creationists and the homeopaths where to go? It's all nonsense. Convincingly peddled nonsense but nonsense nonetheless.

In fact, homeopathy can kill. When substituted for genuine, proven medical procedures it can result in horrific tragedies. As a complementary treatments it takes credit for the effect of drugs and used in place of medical treatment it can lead to deaths. This all leads me to wonder why the NHS funds 5 homeopathic hospitals. That's right, taxpayers money in the UK is spent on quacks who are at best misguided and at worst dangerous charlatans.

Because, when it comes down to it, if you're a homeopath I have one simple question for you:

Which kind are you? The liar or the idiot?

There is no middle ground. Either you genuinely believe what you're peddling, in which case go learn about science and stop pushing things you clearly don't understand (nobody can understand it what with its being made up!) or you know it's a load of rubbish and you seek to profit from others' gullibility. It may sound unfair but it's not. I, unlike the media at present, do not intend to peddle a false debate where there is none.

Best Argument for God's Existence Ever!

2007-11-27T10:19:00.001Z

Time and again I find that the funniest things on the internet are published by the pro-religion crowd on the Guardian's Comment is Free page. Apparently this time, the reason to believe in God is as a kind of untouchable hobby, something nobody can stop you doing if you want some relaxing time alone.

I'm quite in favour of the general idea that we could manage to slow down the pace of the modern workplace a little without losing a huge amount. We could do with a little extra holiday time or more flexible hours, especially in the more stressful jobs. (As a point of order I'm not including advertising executive, middle-manglement or other pretend jobs here.)

So, pack away all of your rational arguments for the non-existence of God, ladies and gentlemen! We should join the ranks of the faithful and get a little more 'me' time. Apart from that time spent in church listening to the pious man drone on about 2,000 year old fairy stories on the only reliable day off you get in a week of course.

The First Post and Guess What? It's a Rant.

2007-11-26T14:43:00.000Z

I'm not much for introductions, so I'm just going to dive right in.

So, there I was quietly going about my business of reading the news websites, gradually coming closer to the over-optimistic conclusion that perhaps nothing really stupid would be reported today. Perhaps I could spend a day not worked up into a near-maniacal frenzy, ready to chew the arms off my chair in frustration? Just one free day? Because I can't not go and look. It's a moth-flame scenario. My only way out is for the whole world to conspire to be rational for a day.

So, I found this on the BBC News website. And I read it, and I can't have been paying attention because I got to the end and did a very realistic Scooby Doo double-take. I'd like to say I said "Zoinks!" but I lack the self control for such self-censorship. So, basically, a woman is likely to be sent to prison or whipped bloody because she allowed her school-pupils to name a teddy bear Muhammad in Sudan (As in the teddy is in Sudan, it's not a surname, that'd just be silly). Let's take a moment and remember that Muhammad is about the most common name in any Muslim society. It's OK for mummy's ungrateful delinquent snot of a child to be named after the prophet but when it's a stuffed animal it's time to bring the law in and apply brutal corporal punishment.

Great. And there are quite a few countries with similar systems of Islamic law with whom western governments deal on a regular basis, apparently not batting an eyelid at torture, excused only by the flimsiest of excuses. Not that there are many convincing excuses for torture.

I'm the first to admit that the UK doesn't have an untarnished record so far as human rights are concerned, but seriously. Even looking down from the lofty heights of mediocrity, this whole thing is inexcusably, primitively, barbarically stupid.