One of the things that has always bothered me about religion, at least those that rely on holy books, is that the teachings are set in stone. They are written many hundreds, if not thousands, of years ago and just left. Having read some of the things I’d written earlier in my life, I can’t believe that God, if he existed, wouldn’t want to make any changes. Let’s take the Bible as an example. We know for a fact that some of the Bible is just plain wrong. The age of the earth for example, or any number of unpleasant Bible quotes.
So we know that the Bible isn’t perfect, and I’m sure God, being a decent fictional entity, would happily admit that he got things wrong in the past and want to correct them. But how would he do it? After all, you can’t just whisper sweet nothings in a human’s ear if your invisible, we have a name for that, so what would you do?
Perhaps, you would manipulate the world to show your displeasure at certain actions you’re Children are taking. Like the Wildfires in California occuring around the same time they banned gay marriage, possibly? The problem is that those that follow a religious book are closed to any suggestion that the book may be wrong. So are they missing the signs, or choosing to ignore them? Or, as Occam’s Razor might suggest, the book has always been incorrect.
Tags: Holy Books, The Bible
This just astounds me. It really does. One of the people in the running to be vice president of the United States of America believes that the earth is only 6,000 years old and dinosaurs and man co-existed. I’m sorry, but this is the person who is only “one 70 year old man’s heartbeat” from getting her hands on the nuclear codes and the reigns of the worlds most important, and already faltering, economy. I can’t quite put into words how scary this is.
Thankfully this is being covered by some prominent news outlets like the Huffington Post, but really this needs to get out into the mainstream media. People need to know. Unfortunately, this won’t happen because of the fear within the mainstream media outlets of alienating some viewers. In the words of Matt Damon (yes, that Matt Damon):
“Do the actuary tables and there’s a one out of three chance, if not more, that McCain doesn’t survive his first term and it’ll be President Palin… It’s like a really bad Disney movie. The hockey mom, you know, ‘oh, I’m just a hockey mom’… and she’s facing down President Putin… It’s totally absurd… it’s a really terrifying possibility… I need to know if she really think that dinosaurs were here 4,000 years ago. I want to know that, I really do. Because she’s gonna have the nuclear codes.” From HP. Video here.
The source of this story is a teacher who spoke to Palin just after she was elected Mayor of Wasilla in 1998. The really worrying part of the discussion Palin had with Philip Munger, the teacher in question, was this:
“…she had seen pictures of human footprints inside the tracks…”
This was in response to Munger pushing her in the clear empirical evidence available, specifically prehistoric fossils and tracks that can be dated back far further than 6,000 years.
The question we need to ask is this. Is Palin dellusional, an idiot or both? And that really shouldn’t be a question you’re asking about anyone in politics, let alone someone vying for one of the most powerful positions in the world.
Tags: Creationism, politics
This is a truly remarkable story, and really puts into context the absolute fire-breathing idiots, the misinformed imbeciles that we have to put up with. Quote from the BBC:
The most senior judge in Saudi Arabia has said it is permissible to kill the owners of satellite TV channels which broadcast immoral programmes.
Yes, you read that right. The MOST SENIOR JUDGE in Saudi Arabia has given permission, endorsement if you will, for the killing of broadcasters for broadcasting what he deems to be immoral programmes. Let’s break this down.
Firstly, people will now attempt to kill the station owners, and no doubt their employees, because of this statement made by an absolute bigoted idiot. People may very well die. Secondly, what on earth is immoral? Who judges? Him? The prospective murderers? Their holy book? Let’s be honest, every holy book is unspecific when it comes to morality, there are grey areas. Language is ambiguous. So even of you do believe in a holy book, can you really truly understand it’s intentions? Quite frankly, if I was a Muslim and I saw this statement being made, I’d really start to reconsider the company I keep. Do I really want to be part of a movement where one of it’s more senior and influential members believes that murder is a less serious crime than broadcasting provocative television shows? Does that make sense to ANYONE?
This is what we’re up against. Biggotry, fear and idiocy.
Tags: Islam, Law
When I was growing up, the biggest debate around relating to video games was whether Ms Pac-Man was attractive or not (yes she is). Turns out, video games have moved on some way since then and are now causing the sort of theological debate once reserved for books, films and rap songs.
The hot button topic at the moment is a game called Spore. Essentially it allows you to create an organism and guide it from single cell to galaxy conquering race. It’s been a controversial title on both sides of the evolution / intelligent design debate, with evolutionists deriding the intelligent design aspects and id-ers deriding the evolutionary aspects. Stomping into this debate like the proverbial chimpanzee into an intelligent debate is the AntiSpore website. As pointed out by gaming blog Kotaku, this is one of those sites that’s so badly written, researched and conceived that it’s initially difficult to know whether it’s a parody or not.
Our first thought was “Ha! A clever satire on religious censorship and the intelligent design debate!” quickly followed by, “hang on, it’s quite deadpan for satire, isn’t it?”
Kotaku
The problem here is two fold. Firstly, the game isn’t really about evolution. In fact, it very much falls into the “Intelligent Design” side of things. Otherwise, it would be quite boring. You put into place the basic elements of your species, you design them. Secondly, the website is just like the 100s of other creationist/ID websites out there. It’s badly written, misinformed, and sets out the deceive and mislead. The current newest post is claiming that you have to present ID to see sex in the cinema, but not in Spore! Well, for starters the game is rated for people 10 years and over. Secondly, you can watch a documentary about animals having sex at pretty much any time of the day on Discovery. That, if anything, is what the copulation in Spore should be compared to. This isn’t pornography, and only someone with a truly distorted view of sex and sexuality would believe it is (my previous comments about Ms Pac-Man not withstanding!).
Update: Thankfully, the site has been revealed as a hoax. Although it does raise the very serious point that we all know, and have met, people with views this extreme. The site, while extreme, was not so extreme as to be unbelieveable. Which is scary when you think about it.
Tags: Evolution, Intelligent Design, media
photo credit: Max Choong
I know that there are many readers of this blog who are “of faith”. Some, I respect for their willingness to enter into open discussion about their religion, and I accept that for some people, religion is a necessary part of their lives. There are other people, however, who can’t see past blind faith. And these people really need educating. So let’s take a look at the most recent example, a group of people, based in Washington D.C believe that fuel prices have fallen because they hold regular prayer sessions at gas stations.
So let’s teach these people a basic rule of the universe. Causation does not equal correlation. It’s quite simple, and best illustrated by the Simpsons. The crux is that if I do a rain dance, rain falling does not prove that my rain dance has worked. It’s a classic mistake made for those looking for proof of religion. If they pray for something to happen, and then it does, religious people will assume causation. That their prayers caused the change to happen. The problem with this is that, if you believe your prayers have been answered and there is causation there, you also have to accept that every time you pray and it isn’t answered, it’s one mark in the column that’s headed “There is no God”. And there’s no way I’ll accept any response to this that says “God moves in mysterious ways”, contains the words “grand plan/scheme” or makes any reference to free will. Because if there was a God, these would surely be the most inane, selfish, prayers to answer.
This is something I’ve been pondering for a while after I saw a comment on another website implying that Christians were better than non Christians because of charity work, such as operation shoe box, that Christians participate in and run. I’ll concentrate on Christians in this post because it was a comment from a Christian that sparked off my train of thought, but the same principals can be applied to any religion.
After reading that comment, I started thinking about the motivations of Christians to participate in such activities, and I came to two conclusions, both of which are worryingly self-serving. So let’s take a look at them.
Conversion
You’ll notice that any charitable organisation that is affiliated with a religion makes it very obvious that such a link exists. Take the Christian Missionaries for example, they promised technology, food and social advancement to the people indiginous to the areas they visited. In return, the people would have to become Christian. It was a simple premise that exploited the most vulnerable people in the world under the guise of charity. What they were really doing was exploitation. We’ll give you X if you convert to our religion. I’ve spoken about the need for the church to maintain its numbers in the past, so sending workers out to relatively unknown areas of the world in order to “plant” churches seems like a sensible, if not moral, way to do this.
While modern Christian charitable organisations aren’t so overt, they still have alterior motives. Christian Aid, for example, makes sure that everyone they help knows that they have been helped by a Christian organisation. In fact, I was asked for a donation by a friend who was collecting for Christian Aid. I pointed out that while I do donate to charity, I am very careful not to donate to any charity with a strong religious affiliate, because of the reasons detailed above.
Prizes
I think we all know what the prize on offer is, an eternity in the best (but most boring) place not-on-earth, heaven. What people seem to forget is that all Christians have been incentivised to follow other Christians. And if they believe in God, they also believe in heaven (and hell), so the incentive, as far as they’re concerned, is a good one.
So when a Christian does a good act, you have to remember that it is never selfless. At the end of the day, each and every Christian is thinking to themselves “one more point I can make to get into heaven”. If they can help someone and get them to convert to Christianity, well just imagine how many points that would be!
Conclusion
So based on the two points above, it’s very difficult to accept that a Christian would do a good deed for the sake of doing a good deed. And whilst I’m sure many Christians will argue the fact that they have been incentivised, they can’t argue about its existence (in their mind). And once an incentive exists, it’s very difficult to ignore.
On the face of it, it would appear that Atheists acting on bahalf of charities are in a far better position to help. Otherwise, it’s like letting a car salesman fix your alternator. You know you’re going to get sold to, and you know he’s looking to get some reward in the end.
What are your thoughts? Can there be a truly good Christian?
Tags: Christianity, Morality
Professor Richard Lynn, Emeritus Professor of Psychology at Ulster University has claimed that many of those in the intellectual elite consider themselves Atheists. Or to be more precise, the proportion of atheists in this group is higher than average. He has also claimed that the increase in Atheism is directly linked to the average level of intelligence also increasing. This is something I’ve claimed previously.
I have really mixed feeling about this claim. While I think he’s right, I wish it was someone other than Richard Lynn making the claim. After all, Richard Lynn is known for making outrageous claims. I’m torn as to whether the person making the statement is enough to invalidate, or call into question, the claim itself.
Quite frankly, in this case, the claim is so strong, and backed up by so much circumstantial evidence. If you need any evidence of the lack of intelligence evident in “believers” (beyond the obvious), just look for any attempted use of logic, and you will no doubt find it.
When I first read this article, my initial response was “Yeah, and French people speak French”. It just seems so obvious that to believe in something that clearly isn’t true, to be subjected to years of brainwashing and lies and to not even begin to question it, you must be lacking something intellectually. After all, those who consider themselves to be intellectual question everything.
Tags: Theories
I always find it amusing when misguided people try and use logic to prove the existence of that which does not exist. The latest attempt comes from Canada Free Press (!). Shall we gloss over the obvious failings of this article (there are many, like assuming that all reproduction is reliant on two genders, certain organs, which just isn’t true)? I could pick apart every argument he clumsily puts forward, but quite frankly we’ve all been down this path before, and it’s not a challenge, nor is it entertaining. I encourage you to take up the opportunity in the comments though.
Let’s look at the crux of the article’s argument.
No one in their right mind would claim that 10,000 hundred story buildings built themselves from randomness, even over time. Yet those who doubt the existence of a Creator believe that an entire universe, containing all of the billions of elements necessary for life to form, may have come about without a builder. As such, they give credence to billions of times more coincidences to having come about.
Now clearly, I am an Atheist. And I know many other Atheists. Yet I’ve never heard any of them claim that buildings can build themselves. Likewise, we don’t claim that humans have built themselves. The above quote really belies the author’s complete lack of understanding of evolution. It would appear that the author’s intention is to argue that the sheer complexity of the universe means that it cannot have happened randomly. Something must have sparked this surge of life. And that something must be “The Creator”. What isn’t clear is how a being so complex that they can create a universe of this complexity was created themselves. And how the being that created that being was created? if you assume that anything of any complexity must have been created, there really is no beginning. It’s one of the most flawed, illogical, self-defeating arguments I’ve ever had the misfortune of stumbling across (thank you Richard Dawkins!).
And by the way, if the Author doesn’t realize that the opening line alone means that he’s floated into the land of Personal Incredulity, he should read some real books. Not the hokum pokum the exploitative Anthony Flew churned out.
So what do we have on the other side of the argument? I was fascinated to read in New Scientist about experiments that have shown bacteria making massive evolutionary hurdles in just 44,000 generations. To be clear, these bacterium have evolved to a point where they have lost one of the limitations that effectively defined them as a species. It would appear that the seeds were sown as early as the 20,000th generation, which is a truly remarkable find. What makes this even more remarkable is the fact that this has been reproduced. It’s evolution “on-tap”.
Both pieces of news came across my inbox the same day, and really serve as a microcosm of the two sides of the argument. On the one side we have the religious, regurgitating the same old flawed, defeated, arguments in new and badly written diatribes. On the other side we have science. Tests, experiements, results and reproducable scenarios. The absurdity of the fact that such a so-called argument even exists is clearly evident.
Tags: Debates, Logic, Personal Incredulity
The Bible Quote, “Out of the mouths of babes…”, is meant to represent the idea that children, in their innocence sometimes speak more sense than adults. The uninformed teach the informed. So what happens when an author, and President of the Family Research Council gets schooled by a comedian and talkshow host?
Stephen Colbert asks.
“I think it would really be better for the anti-gay-marriage side if they obeyed everything in the Bible, not just the anti-gay-marriage part. Don’t you?”
“When did Jesus talk about gay people? Because I keep on looking for that so I could win some arguments.”
If you watch the video embedded in the page linked to above, you will no doubt recognise the squirm most Christians experience when they are challenged on the actual content of the Bible. I think it’s always interesting to ask a Christian why they choose to believe certain parts of the bible (God, creation, miracles) but not others (slavery, adult circumcision, oppression, violence, abuse etc.). I’m yet to get a satisfactory answer.
Tags: Atheism, Atheist, Christianity, Humor, Multimedia, Quotes, The Bible
During a recent flying visit to London I was lucky enough to catch a Derren Brown (official site / Wikipedia page) show. If you haven’t heard of Derren, I would thoroughly recommend finding a DVD and giving it a watch. He’s essentially a psychological illusionist who uses a combination of psychology, distraction and illusion to create a unique and entertaining show. He’s a self professed sceptic when it comes to all aspects of the paranormal, including genuine psychic abilities, and does an excellent job of incorporating his scepticism into his shows.
An example he used in the show I attended was that of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The famous author and creator of Sherlock Holmes began believing in paranormal phenomena towards the end of his life. This included fairies, of which he wrote a book. Derren gave a demonstration of the techniques used to convince people like Arthur Conan Doyle of the existence of paranormal activities. I won’t go into the specific example in case you intend on going along to the show, but suffice to say it was impressive and could be convincing.
The whole experience really got me thinking. Derren gave a very specific demonstration that was framed, even with his introduction which clearly stated he didn’t believe in paranormal activity and that the following was an illusion, in such a way as to make it plausible. If you wanted to believe it to be true, there wouldn’t be much to stop you. Now this is entertainment, and as Derren points out, he is always honest in being dishonest. He tells you something is a lie before going on to demonstrate it as if it was true.
Now I’m a very perceptive, logical, person. While watching the show I came up with various ways in which the some of the acts could have been successfully performed. And there were clearly nods throughout the act to those of us in the audience who had this critical hat on. Veiled hints at how things are done. The important thing to remember here though is that I went in as a critic and sceptic. I knew (because Derren himself admits it) that these are tricks and I wanted to know how they were done. If I hadn’t have gone into the performance with this attitude, it would have been very easy to believe everything he did. To buy into the performance.
This is the point really. One of the key differences between Atheists and Non-Atheists is that Atheists almost always have a critical sceptic hat on. They want to know the how’s and the whys of everything and tend not to take things at face value. If you’re a Christian, and you read the Bible, you are predisposed to believe everything in there as fact. You won’t have that critical eye that others have.
So where am I going with this? It became obvious that throughout the show there are certain actions, scenarios and set ups Derren uses to paint a convincing picture. It’s all very carefully designed and acted out to create an illusion. So I found myself wondering how religion uses these same techniques. What are the illusions religion creates in order to maintain it’s grip over people, and grab new followers?
Over the next few weeks I’ll be posting my thoughts on this area. How certain religions use illusion to trick people, be it subtle or overt. I’ll be starting off with Christian churches, and how they are designed, architecturally, to be magical places that connect followers to “God”.
Tags: Atheism, Atheist, Derren Brown, Illusion of Religion, Mentalism, Pshycological Illusion
