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AB ABSURDO |
The View from Number 80 |
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Given the dynamic nature of the web it is possible that some of the sites that were live when last visited have gone the way of the dodo and the passenger pigeon. This is sadly beyond 80's control and your forbearance is requested. (Tip - a search for cached versions of missing sites is often productive using either Google or The Internet Archive Way Back Machine.)
Jesus Aliens Robosnakes
Dec 99 more to
follow - eventually
Backwards Glances 2002
Backwards Glances 2003 part 3 Backwards Glances 2004 part 1 January 7th to March 31st Backwards Glances 2004 part 2 April 3rd to May 30th Backwards Glances 2004 part 3 June 1st to July 31st Backwards Glances 2004 part 4 Aug 2nd to Sept 30th Backwards Glances 2004 part 5 Oct 1st to Dec 30th Backwards Glances 2005 part 1 Jan Ist to Feb 14th Backwards Glances 2005 part 2 Feb 15th to March 31st Backwards Glances 2005 part 3 April 1st to July 30th Backwards Glances 2005 part 4 July 1st to Sept 30th Backwards Glances 2005 part 5 Oct 1st to Dec 31st Backwards Glances 2006 part 1 Jan 7th to Mar 14th Backwards Glances 2006 part 2 Mar16th to May 15th Backwards Glances 2006 part 3 June 19th to Dec 24th Backward Glances 2007 part 1 Jan 6th to May 16th Backwards Glances 2007 part 2 May 19th to Aug 20th Backwards Glances 2007 part 3 Sept 5th to Dec 21st Backwards Glances 2008 part 1 Jan 6th.... A word of warning - owing to the Glance's attempted topicality some of the links below may be even more ephemeral than usual. (Tip - a search for cached versions of missing sites is often productive using either Google or The Internet Archive Way Back Machine.) These are large pages and may be a little slow to load depending on your internet connection. BAD ARCHAEOLOGY COMMITTEE FOR SKEPTICAL INQUIRY (formerly CSICOP) SWIFT - JAMES RANDI'S WEEKLY COMMENTARY (Pat Condell's site. Here is his You Tube page) the user manual for your brain, in comic-form Space News Historical Jesus or Jesus Myth: The Jesus Puzzle
The European Human Rights Centre (EHRC)
represents over 100 non-governmental and other not-for-profit
organisations interested in the promotion of Human Rights throughout
Europe and beyond
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The View from Number 80 was originally an occasional newsletter or ezine. Its subject matter was the huge number of sites on the web. Whilst the only consistent criterion for inclusion was whether a site caught 80's somewhat fickle attention there was a definite emphasis on sites that tread, and often stray over, the border into pseudoscience, flim-flam or irrational claims. Number 80 tried to give them critical attention and, in many cases, a certain amount of ridicule. It is 80's contention that "we live in a fascinating, beautiful and, let's face it, dangerous enough universe without complicating matters with gobbledegook." The site, and Number 80, have evolved (what else?) in an attempt to respond to items of current news as well as web sites. Old issues of the newsletter, Past Views, are archived in the sidebar and run from December 1999 to May 2005. Below you will find the current content which is also archived in the sidebar under, unsurprisingly, Number 80 Archive. You may also want to see Faith-Based News, a collection of news items reflecting the influence of superstitions of all kinds around the planet. The email link at the bottom of the page is for feedback and comment if you think it may help. If you place a link to Number 80 on your own website could you please link to this homepage - thanks. You can now search this site using PicoSearch - click here or scroll down this page, where you will also find the Freethunk! du jour, de la semaine, whatever.
Faith-Based News - check out Faith-Based News, a collection of links to news and comment reflecting the influence of religion/superstition/pseudoscience/irrational beliefs (this now includes so-called "alternative medicine") around the globe. A Little Bang - the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN will enable us to effectively roll back time to observe the conditions that obtained just after the Big Bang. Hopefully it will help to explain where mass comes from and also give clues as to the nature of Dark Matter - which makes up at least 90% of the Universe. What it will not do is cause the end of the world by creating mini-blackholes, strangelets and any of the other things conjured up by the doomsayers. The collision of protons which will occur in the detectors at the LHC is nothing new - the LHC Safety Assessment Group states "Nature has already conducted the equivalent of about a hundred thousand LHC experimental programmes on Earth - and the planet still exists." Because the particles involved are so mind-bogglingly tiny although they collide at almost the speed of light "Each collision of a pair of protons in the LHC will release an amount of energy comparable to that of two colliding mosquitoes, so any black hole produced would be much smaller than those known to astrophysicists." Such reassurances have had no effect upon the ignorant who have bombarded CERN with emails (and even some death threats) pleading for the experiments to be shelved. Perhaps all these frightened and misinformed folk will turn up at CERN on Wednesday brandishing pitchforks and flaming torches, and chanting "There are some things man is not meant to know". The Boston Globe, as part of its online The Big Picture series, has posted an excellent photo essay on the LHC with some quite amazing images that really give an impression of the sheer scale and complexity of the project. This may be a slow download but is well worth the wait. If you still have time on your hands take a look at this site from Citizens Against The Large Hadron Collider but don't snigger, it's rude. For more about the man behind this site, Walter L Wagner, see this from The Register. For a list of the 5 best and worse things to come out the LHC see this Short Sharp Science item from New Scientist. Seeing is Believing? - here is a nice article from the Telegraph on doctored photos from Mao-era air-brushing to Edwardian cut-outs to today's photoshopped confections. For more camera tricks see this exhibition from The American Museum of Photography called Science versus Seance featuring "spirit" photos of various kind. Even better the museum has some pages dedicated to the brilliant, witty and often downright weird photos of William H Martin, entitled "Did You Ever Have A Dream Like This?" By Their Words Shall Ye Know Them - here is an interesting analysis from the New York Times (reg rqd) of the frequency of use of different words at the Democratic and Republican Conventions. They are scored by the number times the words were used per 25,000 words spoken. It comes as little surprise that the top scoring word for Obama's campaign was Change (89) whilst equally predictably McCain's was God (43). The word Bush scored 46 in Denver whereas at the Republican convention it notched up only 7 - a very obvious sign of the distancing by the McCain campaign from the current White House incumbent. Given his record who could blame them? It also explains why the word Cheney rated a 6 in the Dem's speeches and zero, zip, nada from the Republicans. They scored equal 8 on terrorism/terrorists. A Heartbeat Away - just how much research (reg rqd) did the McCain campaign undertake when vetting Sarah Palin as his vice presidential running mate? Not enough, would seem to be a widely held opinion. Considering McCain's health and age Palin could quite possibly end up in charge of the USA despite her inexperience. She would appear, like Bush's failed nominee for the Supreme Court, Harriet Meiers, to have been promoted way above her competence. See Top Ten Most Disturbing Facts and Impressions of Sarah Palin and its follow-up 8 More Shocking Revelations About Sarah Palin both from Alternet. Anyone concerned about science in America would do well to take note of her position on teaching creationism in schools and stem cell research. (In 80's view the revelation about her daughter's pregnancy has nothing to do with her suitability as a vice presidential candidate - there are plenty of real concerns about Palin without that*.) Read this piece by Hadley Freeman, one voter who is far from happy that Palin could one day be a heartbeat away from the chair in the Oval Office. You can read here of the influence Palin's religious beliefs have on her worldview, on abortion, and on America's God-given destiny. She apparently knows what God is thinking, never a good thing in a politician. * "We still don’t know a lot about Palin except that she’s better at delivering a speech than McCain and that she defends her own pregnant daughter’s right to privacy even as she would have the government intrude to police the reproductive choices of all other women." Frank Rich in the New York Times (reg rqd) proving 80 wrong. Palin Speaks for God - "Pray for our military men and women who are striving to do what is right. Also, for this country, that our leaders, our national leaders, are sending [U.S. soldiers] out on a task that is from God. That's what we have to make sure that we're praying for, that there is a plan and that that plan is God's plan." Sarah Palin, who knows not only what the deity has in mind for the armed forces but also for a gas pipeline project. "I think God's will has to be done in unifying people and companies to get that gas line built, so pray for that." Anyone who doesn't find such statements chilling has not been paying attention. (See here a clip from what is rapidly becoming America's most trusted news source, The Daily Show, in which host Jon Stewart skewers the hypocrisy over Palin's selection demonstrated by Karl Rove and Bill "Falafel" O'Reilly among others) Putin's Russia, Stalin's Russia - should anyone still be in doubt as to which direction Puppetmaster Putin is taking his country you need only read about a new school history manual that appears to whitewash mass murderer Josef Stalin. Despite the fact that the dictator was responsible for the deaths of 20 million people the textbook says this "He acted entirely rationally - as the guardian of a system, as a consistent support of reshaping the country into an industrialised state." No one should be surprised that, according to the Telegraph, "Alexander Kamensky, of the Russia State University for the Humanities, said the manual was a sign that teaching history in schools has become "an ideological instrument."" (Also see Putin Wants a New Russian Empire) Is God a dangerous meme? – lecture by Dr Susan Blackmore. Goldsmith College, University of London, 7 October, 7.30pm. Free. Full details. The Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain presents its first international conference: "Political Islam, Sharia Law, and Civil Society." Conway Hall, Red Lion Square, London WC1 on 10 October 2008. Details and booking. Voices of Faith
- This artwork "...wounds the religious sentiments
of so many people who see in the cross the symbol of God's love".
Comment in a letter from the Vatican on the row over a "blasphemous
artwork". Catholics want a piece of art removed from display because it
offends them. 80 finds that the crucifixion images on the outside of
Catholic churches wounds his aesthetic sentiments - will they be removed?
For the background to this nonsense see Kermit of
Nazareth Barking Virgin
- the Telegraph confirms that some of us are still
living in the middle ages with
this item about yet another apparition of Yahweh's one night stand. An
optically-challenged individual from Canada claims that not only is there
an image of the Virgin Mary in the bark of a tree in his neighbor's garden
but that this "miracle" apparently "...may have helped the health of
his mother-in-law, who recently recovered from cancer." Why the Queen
of Heaven chose to appear next door and not in the mother-in-law's garden
must be down to God, or at least his squeeze, moving in mysterious ways
again. Scarborough resident Christopher Moreau who spotted/hallucinated
the apparition said "She's not there just for me. She's there to
share." Looking at the utterly unconvincing picture she probably is
there just for him. (Mary has also masqueraded as the
Chocolate Madonna and has appeared on
chapatis,
tortillas,
toasted
cheese sandwiches and
fenceposts.) "As was common in the Middle Ages several abbeys, churches and cathedrals all claimed to possess this somewhat bizarre relic. Now either they were plugging what are known as pious frauds or maybe they all had a piece of the prepuce which leads one to wonder just how big this thing was supposed to be....Someone else who thought the prepuce was of considerable size was 17th century Catholic theologian Leo Allatius who "..speculated that the Holy Foreskin may have ascended into Heaven at the same time as Jesus himself and might have become the rings of Saturn, then only recently observed by telescope." Sadly the images taken by Pioneer, Cassini and Voyager missions have failed to reveal a huge foreskin orbiting the gas giant." Conspiracy theorists will be interested in this article in Slate, Fore Shame, which asks "Did the Vatican Steal Jesus' Foreskin So People Would Shut Up About the Savior's Penis?" . 80 regrets being unable to vouch for the authenticity of another fabled relic, the Sacred Stool of Galilee. Update - these relic peddlers were nothing if not creative - other bits that JC apparently "left behind" included hair, blood, fingernails, milk teeth, and his umbilical cord, all of which were available for veneration. Praise be! Ten Reasons Why Bigfoot's a Bust - see this slideshow courtesy of the Discovery Channel. Meanwhile the two latest bigfoot hoaxers (see here) are still laying low. Also see Department of the Bleeding Obvious below. Luring Dawkins - The creationist nitwit, Harun Yahya, (aka Adnan Oktar - see here for his background) wants to have a debate with Richard Dawkins, claiming that Darwin's theory of evolution has "..has lately suffered a global collapse". In his dreams. Yahya, you may remember, sent out unsolicited copies of his magnum opus, the Atlas of Creation, to scientists around the globe, including Dawkins. It was not long before the quality of his scholarship became blindingly obvious as the book featured illustrations of insects which turned out to be fishing lures copied without permission. It is hardly necessary to read the text. (See Creationists, Catholics and Crackers) In fact such a meeting will never take place - Dawkins has better thing things to do than listen to the fantasies of an ignorant buffoon such as Yahya. Besides Dawkins has already written about the Atlas and Yahya's inability to tell sea snakes from eels. Yahya has certainly proved one thing however, and that is that Islamic creationists are fully as dumb as their Christian counterparts. Cock Fighting
- The latest round of violence in Kashmir has erupted
over a Hindu shrine in a cave called Amarnath. The shrine is hard to reach
at 4000 meters above sea level and so the government decided more
temporary shelters were required for the pilgrims. The Muslims in the area
claimed this was merely an attempt to start Hindu settlements in a Muslim
region. The government reversed its decision only to
fall foul of hardline
Hindus, who saw this as a climbdown. Since then things, as so often in this
area, deteriorated into protests and violence. This
article from Time
supplies some of the background to the shrine dispute, telling us that
shrine is "...a natural cave called Amarnath, where stalagmites form
during the summer months. Devout Hindus believe this cave to be one of the
holiest sites of their religion, and that the largest of the ice
formations is a Shiva Lingam, the symbol of Lord Shiva. Hindu mythology
has it that Shiva — the destroyer in the Hindu Trinity that includes
Brahma the creator and Vishnu the preserver — imparted the secrets of
creation to his consort, Parvati, in Amarnath." The Time article skirts
around the subject but the stalagmite called the Shiva Lingam is
considered to be phallic. So, let's get this straight, people are
fighting and dying over a geological formation that looks like
a penis. Of course there
are many reasons for the unrest in Kashmir, and this latest incident is
one of many but, as happens depressingly often, it is religion that provides a
flashpoint, a focus for the violence. There is little doubt this disgusting attitude is enabled by the status of women in
Islam - it is disingenuous to say such behavior is cultural - Islam
thoroughly pervades the culture. As for supposedly post-Taliban Afghanistan, in which coalition
troops are fighting the kind of scum that kill teachers for the crime of educating
girls we
are told that
"Two-thirds of the women in Lashkar Gah's
medieval-looking jail have been convicted of illegal sexual relations, but
most are simply rape victims – mirroring the situation nationwide. The
system does not distinguish between those who have been attacked and those
who have chosen to run off with a man." Misogyny is alive and well in
Mexico too, where a priest
commenting on miniskirts in an online
publication wrote "When we show our body without prudence, without
modesty, we are prostituting ourselves." Never mind the
all-inclusive "we" it is only women he is on about. At least in Mexico his remarks
caused outrage leading the archdiocese to say his words were taken out of
context - in the words of that great American philosopher bart Simpson,
"Yeah, right". Meanwhile, Sasquatch's possible cousin, the yeti or Abominable Snowman is fast becoming history in its old range of Bhutan, a remote Himalayan kingdom. While the older generation tell of this mysterious creature a newer one has no time for such things, as this young road-builder put it "What is there to say? There's nothing out there in the forest. Any educated person today knows this." Not all of them - Japanese decorator Yoshiteru Takahashi, 65 is about to set off on his fifth expedition to look for the yeti in Nepal. Takahashi, who is taking high tech equipment, claims to have seen a group of three yetis on his last visit to Nepal in 2003 but says bad light precluded photographing them. He reckons "The ones that I saw were small, around 85 cm tall, but it was getting dark and it was difficult to see them properly. I don't know what they are, but they appear to be some sort of hybrid of chimp or orangutang without a tail." Despite the fact that orangutans do not have tails this is at least slightly more believable than claims that a breeding population of Sasquatch are living in the USA alongside human beings and yet not once have any hairs or droppings proved their existence. (If you would like to track down Bigfoot read this Skeptical Inquirer review of The Field Guide to Bigfoot, Yeti, and Other Mystery Primates Worldwide) Heard It Before? - this article tells us of the conclusions reported by British statistician Kenneth Mitchell, namely that "..athletes born in certain months were more likely to thrive in particular events." He has dubbed this the Pisces Effect, not because it sounds fishy (although it does) but because he found "... that athletes born under the sign received around 30 percent more medals than any other star sign in events like swimming and water polo." (Fish, water! Geddit?) Although surprised by his results, which incidentally match successful fencers to Scorpio, (Sting, stab! Geddit?) Mitchell claims they are conclusive. 80 is not one to doubt Mitchell's ability as a statistician but it is reasonable to doubt his conclusions. Correlation does not imply causation. What would be the mechanism? It is instructive to read about French psychologist Michel Gauquelin who claimed to have found a "Mars Effect" which meant that ".. when Mars is in certain sectors of the sky great athletes are born in numbers indicative of a non-chance correlation." Gauquelin's results do not hold up under scrutiny. Not that this necessarily means Mitchell is barking up the wrong tree but his methodology could do with some independent checking. (See here for A Brief Chronology of the "Mars Effect" Controversy) The Tyranny of Scripture - is the latest offering from Pat Condell and highly recommended. Sick of clods who think quoting scripture is the equivalent of rational argumentation? So is Pat. All 44 of his videos can be found here on You Tube and over 30 of them are available on DVD from RichardDawkins.net “Pat Condell is unique. Nobody can match his extraordinary blend of suavity and savagery. With his articulate intelligence he runs rings around the religious wingnuts that are the targets of his merciless humour. Thank goodness he is on our side.” - Richard Dawkins Sports News
- in keeping with the sporting atmosphere of the
Olympics here are a couple of items, one old and one new. The new one is
a
report in The Age that Jesus apparently played cricket (although the
accompanying picture of the Christian godman looks more like a pacemaker
ad.) We are informed that Dr Abraham Terian, recently a visiting professor
at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem as Fulbright Distinguished Chair in
the Humanities has found this information in a very late gospel, the Armenian Gospel of the
Infancy. This would appear to be one of the genre that fills in the
"missing" years of Jesus' childhood, the bit between infancy and
preaching. The only reference in the canonical gospels to this period is
in Luke and so others have stepped in to fill the gap. Note that the
canonical gospels have no more authenticity than any of the others - they
were all
written long after the supposed period they describe and seem, in the
main, to be
constructed from biblical "prophecies". Many of these prophecies are in
fact re-interpretations of verses, parts of verses and amalgamations of
unrelated phrases from what we know as
the Old Testament, making them prophetic when in fact they described
contemporary events. (See here for a
list of gospels
- the number may well surprise you.) This site which 80 has looked at before should appeal to those Christians of a sporting inclination. Catholic Shopper offers little statues of the Naz playing various sports with young children, including " Baseball, Football, Soccer...." As this is an American site they can be forgiven for omitting cricket. Among these bizarre little figurines is a ballet dancing one, which to 80's jaundiced eye looks more than a little creepy, featuring the white-robed celibate preacher cavorting with young girls in tutus, and one where JC is hands-on with some young female gymnasts. This again looks somewhat disturbing, especially taking into account the known proclivities of a number of priests. On which note do read Mark Morford on guidelines for priests on what behavior is appropriate with young children and what is now verboten, including "..bear hugs, lap-sitting and piggyback rides" Oh, and look out for God's Little Cherub. A Sock Puppet Speaks - In a piece in Indyweek.com on the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibition at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences 80 was interested to read Brian Howe's account of the finding of the scrolls and the speculations over their origin(s). Regular readers will know 80 has covered the scandal of the partisan exhibition of these fascinating documents mounted by the San Diego Natural History Museum and the efforts of Charles Gadda in drawing attention to many worrying features of that display. Howe's piece refers to that controversy which now affects the North Carolina exhibition, "..modern viewers have the opportunity to consider their meaning and provenance for themselves, albeit through the lens of the controversy that surrounds their interpretation." He goes on to say "Regardless of the controversy surrounding the exhibit, which we'll address shortly, the presentation is quite impressive." As promised he then mentions "Other scholars have criticized de Vaux's popular interpretation for being scientifically tenuous and biased toward a Christian interpretation, maintaining that Qumran was not an ascetic Essene settlement, but a military base, pottery factory or country estate." The de Vaux referred to
is Father Roland de Vaux, a French Dominican priest and director of the
Ecole Biblique, a theological school. His team undertook the first excavation of Khirbet Qumran,
a site which he and others have linked to the scrolls and a sect called
the Essenes. De Vaux went so far as to suggest the scrolls were produced
at Qumran in some kind of proto-monastic settlement. Such an interpretation
has more to do with de Vaux's faith and imagination rather than concrete
evidence. Then something strange happens to Howe's article - several lines
have been struck out, although they remain readable and a link within the
lines still functions. This section is followed in parentheses by the
words (please see Editor's Note below). The note informs us "In the course
of attempting to provide more resources about the ongoing scholarly
uncertainty about the origins of the Dead Sea Scrolls, we inadvertently
stepped into an obscure controversy that we are ill-equipped to
adjudicate. As a result, the writer and editors of this story have decided
to strike through the controversial link that accompanied the original
version of this story". That latter part of that sentence is, in 80's view innaccurate, for any sufficiently interested observer can read about the different interpretations and learn enough to form an opinion. It is interesting that something that is described as "esoteric research" can arise so much ire in some quarters. Take a look at the comments posted below Howe's article to find a similar, if not the same, pack of angry correspondents that infected the discussion of this subject on the Internet Infidels web site and comments on pieces by Charles Gadda on the NowPublic site. Once again appears the strange accusation that those who question the "traditional" interpretation are all facets of some master mind - the term "sock puppet" is used, a term that has been aimed at 80 before by these Scrolls partisans. These somewhat paranoid accusations certainly achieve one thing - they demonstrate the poverty of the arguments of these "traditional" supporters. To launch into ad hominem attacks on Gadda and Dworkin is surely a sign of intellectual inadequacy verging on infantilism. Some of the insults and accusations would not be out of place in a school playground. Such petulant behavior and name-calling has no place in a serious discussion and betrays an emotional rather than intellectual involvement. (For more background on this strange affair see Why don't you take your anti-Christian junk someplace else? and Scrolls of Dishonor, Scrolling Along, Faith-Based Reality and Objective Obfuscate With reference to criticisms of the North Carolina exhibition see Dead Sea Scrolls in Raleigh) Update - read here a piece by Charles Gadda on a scrolls exhibition in New York that will present a more balanced picture of current theories. The Genius of Charles Darwin - for those folk who are unable to watch the UK Channel 4 TV station which has been airing Richard Dawkins' excellent The Genius of Charles Darwin there is good news. Parts one and two are available from the Richard Dawkins.net website in the form of You Tube links and downloadable Quicktime videos, each of around 145 MB. If you, like 80, will not have Apple's Quicktime player on your computer there are two good alternatives. One is rather obviously named Quicktime Alternative and the other is the VLC player. The latter so far has played every video format 80 has thrown at it. McCain Revelation
- don't noise this about but 80 has it on good
authority that John McCain is the Antichrist. The good authority,
according to reporter Robert Dreyfuss,
is the True Bible
Society of Colorado Springs. (What's the betting their "True Bible" is the
Authorized King James Version? For such types it
usually is) True to form this bunch
believes the "end times" are near (aren't they always?) and by scrabbling
around in the hallucinatory ravings known to the faithful as the Book of
Revelation they have proved, at least to their own satisfaction, that
McCain is the bad guy to end all bad guys. It all hinges around the city
of Babylon
which many understand, at least in the Book of Revelation, to stand for
imperial Rome. But to these scholars sometimes Babylon actually means
Babylon - as, in the phrase attributed to that crackpot Freud, sometimes a
cigar is just a cigar. And the connection? According to one David Jenkins, described as a
"biblical scholar", because McCain "...has declared his intention to
maintain US forces in Iraq for a hundred years that means that McCain
wants to control Babylon for at least a century.” Got that? There's more,
do try and keep up. In common with many end times Women "Equal" in Sharia? - the headline in the Telegraph says it all - "New Sharia law marriage contract gives Muslim women rights". So what? Under the law of this country they have equal rights anyway, so just what is the big deal? The law in the UK is not sharia and protects men and women equally - just because some archaic form of religious law has managed to be partially dragged into the present day it is hardly a cause for celebration. It is the height of condescension to belatedly bestow rights on Muslim women, rights that already existed under UK law. Sharia, in any form, is unnecessary, you live in the UK you abide by the same laws that govern everyone else. Also worth remembering is that as Islam has no central authority there is no guarantee that such "revolutionary" rights will be accepted by the bearded old men that administer sharia anyway. Eco-nonsense - once again the secularists are being badmouthed, and as usual, the accusation levelled at them entirely lacks supporting evidence. In a rather odd piece in the Guardian, Nick Reeves, of the Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management, writes about the role religious groups can play in addressing climate change. Reeves approvingly quotes an Archbishop Bartholomew on where the responsibility lies "We are all culpable. Each one of us has a smaller or greater contribution to the deliberate degradation of nature." If this is the case you have to wonder why in a subsequent paragraph Reeves paraphrases the archbishop, saying "... cohorts of secularists continue to pursue greedy and harmful lifestyles believing that techno-fix solutions alone will be our salvation." What a load of codswallop. A secularist is someone who believes that religion should play no part in government and should receive no special privileges from the state, in other words secularists believe there should be a wall between "church and state". Secularists themselves can have religious faith or none, so why does Reeves (and the archbishop) seem to portray them as otherwise? Is it just ignorance? Are secularists really more likely to damage the environment? Of course not. If, as Archbishop Bartholomew says, "we are all culpable" surely that means secularists and everybody else. The major threats such as global climate change, pollution, epidemics, habitat devastation and resource depletion, the "degradation of nature", have the same root cause, human overpopulation. All the while faith groups (including Bartholomew's) oppose birth control to talk of them making any meaningful contribution to combatting climate change is just wishful thinking. "Be fruitful and multiply" and "Marry and procreate" may have been acceptable commandments in the 1st century and the early middle ages but they have become a recipe for disaster in the 21st century. Religions, with immutable, god-given rules rooted in humanity's infancy, are poorly equipped to deal with the future and the novel challenges with which we are all faced. (Also see the Optimum Population Trust and Population and the Environment: The Global Challenge) 'Tis the Voice of the Bigot - in a depressing act of appeasement the South Wales Echo has withdrawn an article by Dan O'Neill which, quite reasonably in 80's view, asked the question "If God considers gays an abomination, why did he create them?". The group that complained to the paper so successfully will be familiar to readers of these pages, Christian Voice, run by the ultra-bigoted Stephen Green. O'Neill's article was not only withdrawn but the paper has actually apologized. For information on Green and his gang of fundamentalist nitwits see ...And Now The Happy News. Fortunately O'Neill's piece has been republished here, courtesy of the Humanist Society Scotland. You will see that it is not a great piece of journalism but hardly one that should be buried because it offended Green and chums - what in the modern world doesn't upset these throwbacks? Once again Green has demonstrated what a dismayingly ignorant little man he is. You would think his time would be taken up raising money to pay the legal costs of his last ignominious defeat, not spent harrassing a local paper. Should you wish to register your disgust there is a petition available here set up by The Freethinker, signing it will only take a minute and it may help the South Wales Echo realize that self-censorship in the face of complaints from such a group as Christian Voice undermines freedom of speech. Perhaps the editor of the paper should take a look at the Christian Voice web site and the vile rants of Green then decide which is more offensive, O'Neill's piece or Green's disgusting and cruel comments on the New Orleans Katrina disaster. (See Cynical Dragon and The Freethinker for more details on the South Wales Echo's shameful cave-in) Kermit of Nazareth? - not necessarily. The tranquility of Pope Ratzinger's summer break in Northern Italy is being zealously guarded by his flock, which has taken action against a nearby museum. According to this item in the Times "Local Catholics have complained to the police that the work by the German artist Martin Kippenberger, on show at the Bolzano Museum of Modern Art, is a "public obscenity". It depicts a bright green frog with its tongue hanging out, nailed to a cross, with a beer mug in one outstretched hand and an egg in the other." Quite why these clods associate the crucified frog with their likely mythical godman is not revealed to us. Many thousands of real, flesh and blood people have suffered this appalling punishment. True, their god was certainly weird enough to dream up a plan for executing his own son but it is not thought he actually invented crucifixion, which had been in use for hundreds of years before and after the supposed time of Jesus. This whole story is an illustration of the ignorance of Ratzinger's flock, which automatically assumes any representation of crucifixion is a comment on the Passion fable. The museum authorities have now moved the frog to a less prominent position, but so far have refused to withdraw it from display. They have said "...the work was not an attack on Christianity but rather a reflection of the artist's “state of profound crisis” at the time." No doubt Kippenberger had just seen the movie Spartacus and was deeply moved... Catawa and Muttawa - Saudi Arabia's religious police force, the Muttawa, are in the news again. Stories about these bastards seem to veer from the horrific to the ridiculous. In 2002 these "lawmen" caused the death of at least 14 schoolgirls in a blaze at a school. They obstructed rescue efforts on the grounds the girls were not dressed in accordance with Saudi dress codes (ie wearing black tents). Civil Defense officers later reported, "Whenever the girls got out through the main gate, these people forced them to return via another. Instead of extending a helping hand for the rescue work, they were using their hands to beat us." Scum like these religious cops are beneath contempt - but they are also prime targets for ridicule. 80 wrote about their bizarre campaign against Barbie dolls back in 2003 (see Barbie in Bondage) suggesting that any dolls confiscated were, far from being destroyed, added to their own illicit collection. Now these pillars of Islamic righteousness have a new target, dogs and cats on the grounds that men are "...using them as a means of making passes at women..". You can just see the Saudi would-be Romeos sidling up to a cat-owning, black-draped temptress and uttering the immortal pick-up line, "My, that's a nice pussy you have there." Volte Face - sometimes one reads something in the middle or end of a piece that, at a stroke, renders previous statements void, or at least forces them to be seen in a very different light. This happened today while reading an article in the Guardian about lithium, an element vital for the production of advanced batteries, particularly for automobile use. Several experts are quoted giving varying estimates of how much of this vital element there is on the Earth and how much can be economically extracted. Of those quoted by far the most pessimistic is a man called William Tahil who predicted "...two years ago that demand for lithium in cars would outpace supply." 80 has no real knowledge of the subject but by the end of the article felt sure that Tahil's statements were hogwash. Why? Because in an ensuing paragraph Tahil is also described as "...claiming that the World Trade Center was felled by underground nuclear explosions". Whether he is right or not about the lithium 80 cannot tell, but any credibility Tahil may have appeared to possess just flew straight out of the window. All that remains is puzzlement at why the writer of the piece bothered to include Tahil's contribution in the first place, except possibly in pursuit of journalism's current (and often misguided) obsession with "balance". A Star Is Not Born - nor will it be. A short while back 80 mentioned the excellent Universe Today web site and newsletter (helmed by Fraser Cain) and in particular an article by Ian O'Neill debunking the 2012 Mayan Prophecy hokum. Now O'Neill looks at something that had slipped under 80's radar completely. It seems that some folk are worried that the plutonium-powered Cassini spacecraft, currently surveying the beringed gas giant Saturn and its attendant moons, will cause a cataclysm at the end of its mission. O'Neill takes up the story "NASA (in association with secret organizations, such as the Illuminati or the Freemasons) wants to use this plutonium for a "higher purpose", dropping Cassini deep into Saturn at the end of its mission where atmospheric pressures will be so large that it will compress the probe, detonating like a nuclear bomb. What's more, this will trigger a chain reaction, kick-starting nuclear fusion, turning Saturn into a fireball. This is what has become known as The Lucifer Project." The aim of which is to enable the founding of new civilization on a now habitable Titan orbiting a newly stellar Saturn. To 80 this sounds like someone has been dropping acid whilst reading Arthur C Clarke's 2010, in which the mysterious monolith does a similar trick and ignites Jupiter. So Project Lucifer is, apart from anything else, is far from original. Read O'Neill's meticulous dissection of the whole farrago of nonsense, it's good stuff - and this is only part one of the article. For the latest Space News and articles and lively discussions of the topics raised sign up to receive the free Universe Today newsletter or click the link in the sidebar of this page. Update - the second part of O'Neill's article on Project Lucifer is now available here) Dias' Diagnostic Drivel - a Roman Catholic cardinal, one Ivan Dias, has made some observations on the Anglican Communion's difficulties over gays and women currently being aired at the Lambeth conference. He is reported in the Times as having "...suggested that the Anglican Church may be “suffering from spiritual Alzheimer’s”" He went to add "...that perhaps the Anglican Communion had “ecclesiastical Parkinson’s”. Apart from these cod diagnoses the cardinal, boss of the Vatican’s Congregation for Evangelisation and a pal of Ratzinger himself, has also offered some loony observations on secularism, which he views as "in combat" with the church. Here he reveals the dark world that he and his kind inhabit, a world quite as nutty as that of the most fanatical conspiracy theorist, "This combat rages fiercely even today, aided and abetted by secret sects, satanic groups and New Age movements, to mention but a few, and reveals many ugly heads of the hideous antiGod monster: among them are notoriously secularism, which seeks to build a godless society; spiritual indifference, which is insensitive to transcendental values; and relativism, which is contrary to the permanent tenets of the gospel." My, what a load of paranoid nonsense, however it does help with the diagnosis of Dias' own problem, which is surely that he suffers from verbal dysentery. Desperate Measures - the Times today illustrates how desperate the church is to fill pews - instead of trying to get the dupes/faithful to come to church why not take the church to the flock? "Sunbathers wishing to attend a Sunday service without the bother of getting dressed were offered an alternative form of religious experience yesterday: an inflatable church on the beach." This has not been met with approval by traditionalists and perhaps not even with god, for we are told "Yesterday the structure had to be deflated hastily because of a strong mistral that threatened to lift it into the sky". You can just imagine the UFO report that would generate. At least if the blow-up church springs a leak there will no shortage of hot air from the pulpit to inflate the thing. Alternative Medicine
- is neither. There is only medicine that works
- the rest is either delusory or an outright con. Richard Dawkins defines
so-called Alternative/Complementary Medicine (sCAM) as a "...set of
practices which cannot be tested, refuse to be tested, or consistently
fail tests. If a healing technique is demonstrated to have curative
properties in properly controlled double-blind trials, it ceases to be
alternative. It simply...becomes medicine." This was brought home to
80 in recent correspondence with a believer in homeopathy who wrote
"Since homoeopathy works on an individual basis rahter (sic) than a
morbocentric one it is not amenable to double blind trials". Which is
effectively saying that the treatment works - except when you subject it
to the kind of testing all pharmaceuticals have to undergo. (By the way,
80's correspondent defines morbocentric as "..a system of medicine that
is disease centred rather tha (sic) health centred". It sounds like
one of those words such as "allopathy"
which only seems to be used by quacks. Quackery is the subject of a piece
in the Guardian by Rose Shapiro
drawing parallels between the recently captured Radovan Karadzic, his
time spent as an "alternative healer" and the general world of quackery.
While 80 views all sCAM with a jaundiced eye this goes perhaps too far.
One could say that Hitler was a vegetarian therefore all vegetarians are
megalomaniacs. This point is well made by the
Respectful Insolence blog. This is not to say the rest of Shapiro's
article on sCAM is not worth reading - it very definitely is. A Miracle You Can Get your Teeth Into - although the meat served in a northern Nigerian restaurant looks pretty unpalatable it does have another use - as spiritual nourishment. According to this piece (thanks Deborah) from BBC News "Diners have been flocking to a restaurant in northern Nigeria to see pieces of meat which the owner says are inscribed with the name of Allah." It seems some of the beef served there has, to the eye of faith, the word Allah spelt out in gristle. Gristle - not really the first medium that springs to mind when thinking about messages from a deity. The restaurant owner, Kabiru Haliru, said "When the writings were discovered there were some Islamic scholars who come and eat here and they all commented that it was a sign to show that Islam is the only true religion for mankind." (or that the restaurant needs to find a better meat supply). This is only the latest instance of deities communicating via foodstuffs, see the Holy Tomato and The Miracle of Saint Rorschach) Dark Bishop of the Sith - Nice shot here for Christians and Star Wars fans from the Register. Something For The Weekend
- as an antidote to the tedious and pathetic
bickering within the Anglican Communion as it tries to cope with gays and
women and that old ghoul Ratzinger in Australia apologizing once again for
the child rapes perpetrated by his priests let's look at some good (and
free) stuff instead. First up is Pat Condell, whose
You Tube page
now boasts 42 videos - and everyone a winner, including his latest
offering A secular
world is a sane world. Update - That Pat's a
prolific bugger. Here is his latest,
Islam is not a victim. For those who would like some sense and humor
on their iPod Pat's stuff is also now available in MP3 format
here. Fridays herald the
arrival of two items that are well worth a moment of your time, James
Randi's Swift
newsletter and the weekly Newsline from the
National Secular Society
(NSS). Randi should be classified as an international treasure and in
this week's Swift he is on fine form, taking aim at faith healers,
psychics and other fantasists, liars and con-artists. A link to the latest
Swift is always to be found in the sidebar of this page. Still Annoying - the "don't annoy the catholics" law has been overturned by a federal court in Australia on free speech grounds, which is a step in the right direction. Only a step though, as this news item confirms "...judges dismissed other parts of the challenge mounted by the NoToPope Coalition, ruling that a clause banning the sale of items such as provocative T-shirts did not infringe upon the right to free political communication." Meanwhile the provocative T-shirt competition continues... Update - one industry in the area is rubbing its metaphorical hands together in the hope of a business boost from all those "pilgrims" - the sex industry. "The Eros Association, Australia's adult industry group, said sex shops and brothels across Sydney are expecting "huge turnover" during World Youth Day. "We know the kind of people who visit prostitutes and adult shops, many of them do it because of their own personal repression," Eros spokesman Robbie Swan told AFP. "And often it's because of religion."" A Singularly Unimpressive Ghost - the Telegraph reports that "The spirit of a dead soldier from the Battle of Naseby has supposedly been captured on film by a group of paranormal enthusiasts." It seems The Northampton Paranormal Group were visiting the English Civil War battlefield on the 363rd anniversary of the conflict when "..they heard clunking noises as well as sounds like cannonball fire." It was only later when looking through pictures they had taken "...they spotted what appeared to be mysterious figure walking out of the dark carrying something in its hands." The picture published in the Telegraph shows no such thing - the area helpfully highlighted shows nothing out of the ordinary. It would have been better if the paper published the photo un-highlighted and then asked readers if they could see anything unusual. Even the leader of the paranormal group seems unsure of the actual detail of the claimed apparition - "We’re saying that it’s a soldier. Some people can see it sitting on a horse and some people just see it as a walking soldier." So, it is either someone sitting astride a large quadruped or just someone walking. Oh yeah, very impressive - more pareidolia. Another comment is from Adrian Perkin, a self-styled 'ghost detective', who says "If this is genuine it’s a very, very, good example. It’s the best I have seen for many years." All one can say is if this crap picture is the best he has seen in years he must have abysmally low standards. As has, at least in this instance, the Telegraph. (For more on the real, earthbound Battle of Naseby see here) Lourdes Lucre
- the moneymakers of Lourdes who peddle tawdry trash
to gullible pilgrims are worried that their takings will be diminished by
the news that Fr Raymond Zambelli, the priest in charge of the shrine, is
accused of being on the fiddle - to the tune of £360,000 ($716000).
Zambelli
claims the money in his personal account"...was a donation
from an ageing worshipper." (This is reminiscent of
Father Ted
and the money that was "resting" in his account. Does Craggy Island beckon
for Zambelli?) This is not the only source of trouble for Lourdes, for in
the light of modern medicine the cure rate for the holy place is mediocre.
The Skeptic's Dictionary
informs us that since the founding of the shrine "..the Church has
validated 67 miracles at Lourdes (of the thousands that have been
reported).." It is estimated that in recent years about 5 million pilgrims
a year visit the shrine at Lourdes. Over the past 150 years, some 200
million people have made the pilgrimage. For those who care, that's a
success rate of .0000335% or 1 out of every 3 million." The church, in
a ploy known as "moving the goalposts" wants to alter the rules and in
this lovely turn of phrase from a Guardian
report, "...is considering a new category of religious experience:
"miracle lite"." It is obvious that Lourdes' reputation rests on very
little in the way of cures and certainly never anything truly impressive
like regenerating the limbs of amputees. Santas' Schism - it would seem that it is not only the Anglican Communion that is tearing itself apart in internecine war. This bunch seem far from jolly. You really cannot make this stuff up. Creationists, Catholics
and Crackers - creationists are not just a
Christian phenomenon there are Hindu and Islamic nitwits out there as
well. One of the latter is Harun Yahya aka
Adnan
Oktar who has produced the
Atlas of Creation, a "..a huge and lavishly illustrated book"
full of creationist drivel. This he has sent out to thousands of academics
so that they may be convinced of his main thesis, that evolution is false.
The reaction to this unsolicited book and Yahya's ideas has been
interesting in that it has produced the unlikely spectacle of Richard
Dawkins and Inayat Bunglawala (of the Muslim Council of Britain) singing
from the same hymn sheet. Bunglawala has been
conducting a dialogue with Yahya in the Guardian defending evolution,
although creationism is such palpable nonsense he doesn't have to try too
hard. Meanwhile Dawkins, one of the recipients of Yahya's unsolicited tome
has
taken it to pieces on his web site. The pictures in the Atlas of
Creation have attracted particular attention, for biology professor P Z
Myers has
noted that, hilariously, some of the photos of insects are actually of
fishing lures. Dawkins obligingly gives us a picture of one, complete with
hook. Other commentators have had a field day tracking down the
publications from which Yahya stole his images. The owner of
this site might like to talk to Yahya about copyright. (Do take a look
at this article on
The
myth of Science in the Quran by Adrian Reddy) A Catholic priest, Miguel Gonzalez
compared Cook's "crime" to kidnapping, thus, "It is hurtful. Imagine if
they kidnapped somebody and you make a plea for that individual to please
return that loved one to the family." GET A GRIP, IT IS A CRACKER, NOT
A PERSON. It seems in the face of such hysteria and threats Cook has now
returned the cracker but the loonies of the Catholic League now have a new
bogeyman - P Z Myers. In his report of the whole ridiculous affair Myers
flippantly wrote "Can anyone out there score me some consecrated
communion wafers? There's no way I can personally get them — my local
churches have stakes prepared for me, I'm sure — but if any of you would
be willing to do what it takes to get me some, or even one, and mail it to
me, I'll show you sacrilege, gladly, and with much fanfare." |
