The View from Number 80 - Backwards Glances 2011 pt2

Extinction Event? - fitting in neatly with the attention drawn to religious affiliation in the UK 2011 census is a study from the American Physical Society which shows that in 9 countries surveyed "...religion there is set for extinction." The BBC informs us "The team took census data stretching back as far as a century from countries in which the census queried religious affiliation: Australia, Austria, Canada, the Czech Republic, Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Switzerland." They found a steady rise in those claiming no religious affiliation. The mathematical model used has previously been applied to a study of decline in usage of lesser-spoken world languages. The BBC page is good for an overview of the method used in obtaining the results and the actual study is posted here. Quite how the findings are reflected in the real world is an interesting question. Richard Wiener of the Research Corporation for Science Advancement, and the University of Arizona is working to update the model used for the study but said the results so far were "suggestive".

A headline from an American article on the findings asks, somewhat poignantly, "Study: Religion Going Extinct in Most Western Countries -- Why Does It Still Dominate Our Politics?". The article comes to the depressing conclusion that "We just have a political system that allows financial elites to enlist religious fundamentalists in their service. In other words, religion has tremendous utility in our country." It is religion, hand in glove with a self-destructive anti-science attitude espoused by many Republican lawmakers (not all though) and backed by big business that well may lose the US its pre-eminent position in the world today. These "...anti-scientists are undaunted by facts. More than half of the incoming Republican caucus denies the validity of climate change science. Some 74 percent of Republicans in the U.S. Senate now take that stance, as do 53 percent of GOP in the House." One would think that men who run China must be rubbing their hands together in glee at the prospect of the USA turning its back on science - but even they accept the evidence for man-made climate change. Update - China 'to overtake US on science' in two years according to the Royal Society in this BBC report. Update - while Congress tries to saddle NASA with a pork-barrel rocket the agency cannot afford and doesn't need Chinese space activities gather momentum.

Two-thirds Of Britons Not Religious, Suggests Survey - the BBC reports "Nearly two-thirds of people do not regard themselves as "religious", a new survey carried out to coincide with the 2011 Census suggests. The British Humanist Association (BHA), which commissioned the poll, said people often identified themselves as religious for cultural reasons. The online poll asked 1,900 adults in England and Wales a question which is on this month's census form." See the BHA web site for more on the Census Campaign.

Quote - "This poll is further evidence for a key message of the Census Campaign - that the data produced by the census, used by local and national government as if it indicates religious belief and belonging, is in fact highly misleading." Andrew Copson, chief executive of the BHA.

Secularist of the Year - The National Secular Society has awarded the 2011 Irwin Prize for Secularist of the Year to Dutch MEP Sophie in ’t Veld. Ms in ’t Veld won the prize for her work as chair of the European Parliamentary Platform for Secularism in Politics (EPPSP). She is an ardent advocate of the separation of religion from politics and campaigns on a number of issues where this is relevant. She has supported campaigns aimed at improving the rights of women and gay people and recently protested to the President of the European Parliament, Jercy Buzek, about his invitation for the Pope to address a plenary session of the parliament. Sophie argued that the parliament chamber was not the place for religious messages to be delivered, writing: “The plenary session in this assembly discusses and decides policies for all 500 million European citizens, regardless of their belief, faith or religion. It is wholly inappropriate for the plenary meetings to be used as a podium for religious messages.” Read more here. The NSS Secular Charter states "The Society promotes the separation of religion and state where law and the administration of justice are based on equality, respect for Human Rights and objective evidence without regard to religious doctrine or belief."

Equinonsense - the Telegraph tells us that the Mexican authorities are concerned that "Large numbers of tourists and Mexicans are expected to descend on historic sites such as Chichen-Itza and the Pyramid of the Sun in Teotihuacan this Sunday. Many people in Mexico believe that gathering at these locations during the equinox - when the sun is positioned directly over the equator - will provide them with a special "charge of energy". Only the word "quantum" rivals "energy" for misuse by pseudoscientific New Age nitwits in a risible attempt to drape themselves with the aegis of scientific authority. The Mexican National Anthropology and History Institute (INAH) has launched 'Operation Equinox' in an attempt to limit the damage done to ancient monuments by these lackwits clambering over them. The reporter of this piece, one Robin Yapp, seems to be more supportive of the loonies than INAH. He writes "The Institute said in a statement that visitors arrive "with the false idea of receiving a special energy, thereby putting the monuments in danger as the latter become unable to bear the uncommon load." The belief that the combination of the historic ruins and the equinox produces some kind of charge "has no scientific support," it added dismissively." Dismissively? That's the only reaction this kind of idiocy deserves - does Yapp think such unsubstantiated, irrational drivel is worthy of any other response?

Clueless - we learn "The Arab League chief said on Sunday that Arabs did not want military strikes by Western powers that hit civilians when the League called for a no-fly zone over Libya. "What is happening in Libya differs from the aim of imposing a no-fly zone, and what we want is the protection of civilians and not the bombardment of more civilians" he said. Perhaps this military genius would like to explain how one establishes a no-fly zone without taking out air defence systems such as radars, surface-to-air missile installations and command and control centers. Perhaps some Arab air forces would like to show how this is done.

Eye Of Faith - this story from the Mail about another sighting of Yahweh's one night stand has to be one of the most unconvincing yet. Two contractors, looking on Google Earth claimed to have spotted an image in a sandpit of the Virgin Mary holding the holy sprog in her arms. To quote one of the "discoverers" Carl Richards, "It is an amazing image of the Virgin Mary holding baby Jesus in her arms. It is so clear. We were looking at the layout of the area for some work we are doing and we were zooming in and it caught our eye." The Mail claims "Religious leaders have described the image as 'remarkable'" Not quite, as the two individuals quoted are hardly "religious leaders" and both sensibly distance themselves from the so-called image. The dean of Blackburn Cathedral said, "The pictures are remarkable in the shape that they suggest but are several years old now and the ground cover has grown significantly so I don't think we can attach any weight to this image at all." and the Rev Sue Williams said "It is an anomaly and with these type of things we usually see what we want to see and I won't be encouraging people to make pilgrimages to Brockholes. It is a lovely image but it is based on a religious and cultural context because people of other faiths may see something totally different." Both comments are more in the "move along, nothing to see here" vein than any kind of endorsement. The Mail even managed to ask the opinion of a psychologist, Dr Peter McCue, who quite rightly said "If someone is interested in or immersed in a belief when they see something that could resemble a religious symbol or figure they are much more likely to see it as such than someone else." So this unconvincing "apparition" is in fact yet another memorial commemorating the patron saint of wishful thinking, St Pareidolia. Looking back over other Marian sightings mentioned on Number 80 she has been seen in a fencepost, a tree stump, a stain in an underpass, a stain on a window and a scorched slice of toast, among other things. The old girl does hang out in some strange places. (See here a slideshow of various holy apparitions featuring Jesus and Mary. Just to show that Christians aren't the only ones to see what ain't there, here are some Muslim examples)

March 28th 2011

Blood Money - no one should suffer the way the population of Afghanistan has, caught in the conflict between NATO and government forces and the Taliban. That said, this report from the Guardian cries out for some balance. The headline states "Helmand civilians caught between the Taliban and a hard place. Local Afghan population weighs up the price of security in the face of injuries and deaths caused by Nato forces" before linking to another page which reveals the British Ministry of Defence has paid out £1.3 million ($2.07 million) in compensation for deaths, injuries and property damage caused by British troops in 2010. Obviously no amount of compensation will ever replace a loved one or a lost limb and it would be stupid to pretend that it does, but the other side of this appalling story is that, according to the New York Times, 2010 "...was the deadliest of more than nine years of war for Afghan civilians, the United Nations reported Wednesday, attributing 75 percent of the deaths to attacks by Taliban and other insurgents rather than coalition forces." 80 has been unable to ascertain if the Taliban has compensated anyone at all, ever.

With A Very Long Spoon - meanwhile the possibility of talks with the Taliban is being aired by various parties. 80 wonders quite how one talks with the kind of people who behead teachers for the heinous crime of educating girls? "Taliban militants beheaded a teacher in a central Afghan town while his wife and eight children watched,...describing the latest in a string of attacks targeting educators at schools where girls study." How does one sit across a negotiating table with someone who throws acid in schoolgirls' faces for the sin of attending school? "One morning two months ago, Shamsia Husseini and her sister were walking through the muddy streets to the local girls school when a man pulled alongside them on a motorcycle and posed what seemed like an ordinary question. “Are you going to school?” Then the man pulled Shamsia’s burqa from her head and sprayed her face with burning acid. Scars, jagged and discolored, now spread across Shamsia’s eyelids and most of her left cheek. These days, her vision goes blurry, making it hard for her to read." This is not even "collateral damage" but coldly premeditated viciousness and cruelty. These Islamist heroes are scared to death of educated and empowered women, for if they become widespread it could well herald the end for these fundamentalist fanatics. If talks do happen let us hope the little crook Kharzai and his pals do not leave women and girls to the mercies of these scum. His track record on women's rights does not instil confidence.

Godless in Tumorville - here is an interview with Christopher Hitchens from the Daily Telegraph. It is not bang up to date as Hitchens is currently undergoing radiation treatment for cancer of the oesophagus. His weekly column for Slate has been replaced with a recent CBS 60 Minutes video interview. During this hopefully short hiatus it is an interesting exercise to revisit the archive of his Fighting Words columns. Fierce, erudite, brave and at times cruel, one goes away from these pieces certainly better informed if not feeling exactly comfortable. Let's hope that his treatment is successful, although the prognosis is not good, for a world without his often acerbic commentary on politics, war, literature and religion would be a much poorer place. His, to some infamous, demolition of Mother Teresa's wholly undeserved saintly reputation, Hell's Angel, is available on You Tube in 3 parts and draws upon his book The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice. If you haven't yet read his God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything get a taste from these online excerpts. Finally, here Hitchens discusses the Quran and the beginnings of Islam. Update - Hitchens is back with his column in Slate on The Iraq Effect in which he argues that if Saddam Hussein was still in power the so-called Arab Spring uprisings would not have happened. 80 was never in favor of the Bush/Blair invasion and occupation of Iraq but Hitchens may just have a point.

March 31st 2011

Mouldy Miracle - we learn "A Scots Muslim mum has found the word "Allah" inside a potato she was peeling....She said: "This particular potato seemed a little bit mouldy so I cut a chunk off to see if the rest was OK. Then I noticed the brown writing in Arabic against the yellow of the potato. I couldn't believe it when I spelled out 'Allah'." The lady seems to find nothing worrying in that the name of her deity was the product of decay. On a similar note 80 once sneezed into a handkerchief and found the resulting mucus spelled out Cthulhu. The media, however, were strangely uninterested.

Seed Of The Devil? - The Mail is a scurrilous rag that dearly loves a scandal. So does 80, at least in the case of the Catholic priest Father Seed, a name which is more than a little ironic for someone who has taken a vow of celibacy. Seed is, or rather was, a bit of a highflyer. He used to celebrate Mass for the Blairs in 10 Downing Street and was instrumental in the conversion to his faith of various politicos and a (very) minor Royal. We are shown a picture of Seed anointing ex-Tory politician, bigot, homophobe and terpsichorean exhibitionist ~~Doris Karloff~~ Anne Widdecombe. Quite a catch for the bead-rattlers, that one. But Seed and his go-between called Sporn (you cannot make this up) had other less well-known activities including, the story claims, "...arranging papal knighthoods for wealthy businessmen for money." We are also gleefully told "Fr Seed is on indefinite leave from his order after claims that he marked the 25th anniversary of his ordination in January with a champagne party at a racy club, with entertainment provided by men dressed as nuns." Throw in an arms deal, a Chinese businesswoman who became a papal dame, and some other financial chicanery and you have an absolutely cracking scandal, of which this short précis is merely a taster. At least Seed does not appear to molest children, unlike so many of his fellow Roman clergy, although he had previously held a post as ecumenical adviser to Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, the old pedophile-shifter himself.

How To Make A Martyr - the Dutch legal system seems determined to press on with its absurd case against parliamentarian Geert Wilders. His "crime" is comparing Islam to fascism and likening the Quran to Mein Kampf. If you live in free society you have to learn to take the rough with the smooth and "insulting Muslims" should not be an actionable offence. It is a fact that Islam is not compatible with democracy and the Quran is full of exhortations to violence against unbelievers and Jews in particular. To keep pushing this case is absurd - the end result will only be more publicity for Wilders and his views on Islam. If the right-wing need a figurehead and a martyr to Islamization the Dutch judge, Marcel van Oosten, seems determined to give them one. See here Wilders' film Fitna which precipitated the hate speech accusations - you can still see it despite having to jump through a couple of hoops to get there. You Tube are obviously worried some viewers will be upset by it, the poor lambs. The film itself is actually unremarkable, juxtaposing images of Islamist terrorism with verses from the Quran. Having sat through it you may well wonder what all the fuss is about. Also see Wilders and Free Speech from January 2009. Update - according to this report Wilders seems to be going for broke in a magazine article he penned in which he says "The historical Mohammad was the savage leader of a gang of robbers from Medina. Without scruples they looted, raped and murdered." He described the founder of Islam as an "insane, paedophile, rapist murderer". One wonders if the academics he cites will be called as witnesses for his defence. They are unlikely to do so, however, as this would surely lead to death threats from devotees of the religion of peace.

No Masks - in the wake of the violence by a few anarchist nutjobs in the London protests "The Government is considering a crackdown on hooligans who cause trouble at public protests in the wake of the "mindless violence" which marred a huge union-organised demonstration." Home Secretary Theresa May said "I have asked the police whether they need further powers to prevent violence before it occurs. I am willing to consider powers which would ban known hooligans from rallies and marches and I will look into the powers the police already have to force the removal of face-coverings and balaclavas." Quite right too. There is absolutely no reason for anyone whatsoever to go about in public with their face concealed by a mask - unless perhaps attending a fancy-dress party as Batman.

Pathetic Poltergeist - here is a story from the Coventry Telegraph about a family that claims their house was haunted by a poltergeist. We are told "The petrified Manning family from Coventry started witnessing out-of-the-ordinary events two weeks after settling into the council-rented home last year." The evidence offered is a series of anecdotes involving a priest and anonymous mediums (should that be media?). The mother of the family said “The priest blessed the house but said himself that we shouldn’t live here, we definitely shouldn’t stay. He gave me a small crucifix. The problem is because we can’t see it, we don’t know where it’s going to be or what it’s going to do. This is a horror house. It’s like living in a scary movie. The worst thing about it is, even I can’t believe what’s happening myself.” Funnily enough that is 80's reaction to this story - disbelief.

We also learn "Acting on the advice of mediums, she scatters the house with salt, puts up crucifixes and wears crystals." Apparently “One medium came in and said our house is a portal, a kind of bus stop for spirits, which they use to pass into our world.” Obviously the medium has seen the movie called, naturally enough, Poltergeist. This could well be the scary movie the mother had in mind as well. If so, director Tobe Hooper has a lot to answer for. Sadly the family don't have Hooper's special effects budget as their own movie, purportedly showing the evil spirit at work, is deeply unconvincing. We see a small bedroom in which a closet door swings slowly open, followed by a lightweight chair sliding slowly across the room. In both cases no one is visible - but then neither is the top of the closet door or the bottom of the chair. In both cases the effect of spooky movement could have been achieved by a simple piece of string attached to both items being pulled, out of camera shot. This is not to say that is actually what happened, but merely serves to illustrate the pathetic nature of this piece of "evidence". In this case the Scottish legal phrase is apposite - not proven. 80's own verdict is - not even moderately convincing.

April 3rd 2011

The Blame Game - occasionally one reads something so utterly at variance with reality that one has to read it again just to make sure one's brain or eyes haven't malfunctioned. No one can have missed the recent horrific story from Afghanistan about the murderous Muslim mob, incited by preachers, that stormed a UN compound and murdered 12 of the occupants. Their crime? They just happened to be there, trying to help this hellhole of a country. The preachers, men of God, had been haranguing the congregation over the burning of a book, the Quran, by an American preacher, another self-proclaimed man of God. This ghastly series of events prompted the UN's chief envoy to Afghanistan, Staffan de Mistura to come out with this inanity, "I don't think we should be blaming any Afghan....We should be blaming the person who produced the news - the one who burned the Koran. Freedom of speech does not mean freedom from offending culture, religion, traditions." Like it or not that is exactly what freedom of speech means. What twisted chain of illogic led this dolt to arrive at such a stupendously idiotic conclusion?

Let's look at who is to "blame" for a moment. The American preacher, Terry Jones, let it be said, is a shit-stirring, publicity-seeking piece of human detritus, but he did not kill a human being, he burned a book. Not the only copy of a book, mind you, but one which exists in millions. He did it to draw attention to himself and his shitty little church and also to provoke Muslims, but, to repeat, he killed no one. (Note the use of the word provoke - many reports say incite, but that is not the same thing at all.) The president of Afghanistan, the corrupt, two-faced Karzai is far more culpable. Apparently "Both Afghan and international news media had initially played down or ignored the actions of Mr. Jones, the Florida pastor. On Thursday, however, President Karzai made a speech and issued statements condemning the Koran burning and calling for the arrest of Mr. Jones for his actions. On Friday, that theme was picked up in mosques throughout Afghanistan." From there three mullahs in Mazar-i-Sharif incited the congregation to action, who then spilled out of the mosque and onto the streets in a murderous frenzy. They stormed the UN compound and slaughtered 12 people. Since then there has been a wave of violence over the book-burning, which has spread across the country. Enter the clod from the UN, Staffan de Mistura who, rather than face reality, blamed Taliban "infiltrators" for the murders. A whole mob of infiltrators? Idiot.

So who is to blame? Actually that is the wrong question - it should be what is to blame? What lies behind the whole ghastly chain of violence? Islam, the religion of blame itself, the religion of rage. Even though it was blindingly obvious that the American Jones was purely out to provoke, the preachers and the mob obliged him and reacted like rabid puppets, aided and abetted by the despicable Karzai. His likely aim was to ingratiate himself with Afghanistan's innumerable religious fanatics and also draw attention away from his corrupt regime. But what underpins this homicidal rampage, what gives these murderers (at least in their own eyes) legitimacy, is a religion that promotes violence as the answer to any perceived affront, real or imagined.

In recent news we have learned of "Two US soldiers were shot dead by an Afghan border policeman as protests against the burning of a Koran by a fundamentalist pastor in Florida entered a fourth day." and "A government spokesman said one had been killed and 16 were injured in a new Koran burning protest in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar Sunday" and "Five people were killed during protests in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar on Saturday against the burning of a Koran in the US, officials said." and "Fresh protests erupted in the Afghan capital Kabul on Tuesday over the burning of a Koran by a US pastor, taking angry and violent demonstrations into a fifth day..." Ironically many of those who have been killed were themselves Muslims. Update - here is Christopher Hitchens with Cynicism by the Book.

Thought For The Day - and surely not original to 80. If you have a copy of the Quran on your computer as say, a PDF, plain text or Word document, and you delete it, are you committing blasphemy? The electrons involved are not destroyed, but only assume a different, configuration, so is this truly an act of destruction? This weighty question is no doubt being pondered by Islamic "scholars" the world over - after all it wouldn't do to murder someone if your theology ain't straight.

Koran Or Human Life: Which One Is More Important To Muslims? - is the question asked by Leo Igwe in a piece that is well worth a moment of your time, over on the Butterflies and Wheels site. "I have been asking myself this question for some time but I have now decided to ask it out loud following the chilling news coming out of Afghanistan. The news is not something new. It has become a recurrent feature in many Islamic countries. Yes, my question is this – which one is more valuable to our Muslim friends – is it the Koran, or human life? Is it Islamic piety or respect for this one life we have? Is it this real temporary life in this world or the imaginary eternal life in the hereafter?" Read on..

The Great Jesus Swindle - is Pat Condell's latest piece to camera on a Jesus for everyone. Instead of God creating man in his image it is very much the other way round.....

(Can't see the video? The click here)

Crucifixes and Diversity: The Odd Couple - is an opinion piece in the New York Times by Stanley Fish which deconstructs the "thinking" behind the recent decision by the European Court of Human Rights that crucifixes can be hung on classroom walls in state-funded European schools. Fish's examination of the legal, logical and linguistic hoops the judges had to jump through in order to reach their decision is fascinating as well as detailed, incredulous and, ultimately, scathing. It quite puts 80's brief comment (Pointless Display) on the same story to shame. Highly recommended.

April 6th 2011

The Templeton Shilling - The award of the Templeton Prize for blurring the distinction between evidence-free faith and evidence-based science has gone to Astronomer Royal Lord Rees, former head honcho of the Royal Society. Rees is now richer by £1 million although he is not a believer. 80 posted the following comment in the Guardian

Lord Rees seems quite comfortable with his church-going hypocrisy and now has the bonus of being handsomely rewarded for it. Science and religion are not compatible - the scientists who are believers would appear to have decided, consciously or unconsciously, not to apply the scientific method to the claims of their religion. Such mental compartmentalisation proves nothing other than the human capacity for self-delusion. Rees does not fit this category as he seems fully aware of the dichotomy. In view of this he could perhaps donate the money to a (secular) charity

It is obviously not possible to prove the non-existence of a god or gods but it is possible to find such supernatural beings unnecessary as an explanation for the cosmos. Those claiming to find a god-shaped hole in scientific descriptions of reality cannot prove that a god exists to fill that hole. In fact the hole is steadily shrinking as more and more of reality is explained by the scientific method. The god of such gaps is now shrinking like the Wicked Witch of the West. It will never disappear for, to echo a remark by Isaac Asimov, many of us cannot face the real world without a skirt to hold or a thumb to suck. If people need that personal comfort then good luck to them but when the religious seek a privileged position because of their beliefs they go too far. We live in a fascinating, beautiful and, let's face it, dangerous enough universe without complicating matters with gobbledegook.

A strange side effect of the story was visible in the comments section. Many correspondents took it as opportunity for some gratuitous attacks on Richard Dawkins - not for his books or public statements but personal attacks of a particularly bitter nature. As 80 said in a preface to the comment above, "It is obvious that the Dawkins bashers in these comments have never read any of his books or taken the time to listen to his actual views. They would rather savage a straw man of their own creation. Whether this is due to laziness or wilful ignorance it does them no credit." As Dawkins himself has said, if he spoke on say, politics, no one would find his straight-speaking remarkable. It is because he is daring to apply his straight-speaking to religion, the biggest sacred cow of all, that he is perceived as disrespectful, shrill or strident.

To describe the soft-spoken and highly articulate Dawkins as "shrill" proves the point - he is invading religion's hallowed space, the nasty man. Religion is, of course, merely another human-made ideology but to some sensitive souls it is beyond criticism. Many were still smarting over Dawkins calling Rees a "quisling" a year ago. They utterly fail to see that Rees's acceptance of the Templeton money actually confirms Dawkins' assessment in the most obvious way. (80 hereby suggests that the term for those who pander to religion in this way shall be called "Reeslings") Also read Jerry Coyne's Martin Rees and the Templeton travesty. For some light amusement read Mark Vernon, himself a recipient of Templeton money, who has achieved the impossible by writing a column that exceeds the rest of his dismal output in its fatuity. Update - Olivia Benson scrutinises Templeton's bullshit. Also from Number 80 see Begging The Question - which looks at a previous prize recipient.

Islam's Internecine Hatred - picking up the idea from the "Atheist Bus" campaign a Muslim group has paid for ads on busses saying "Muslims for loyalty, peace and freedom". This is apparently an attempt to "...educate people about Islam and remove misconceptions." Note the message just refers to Muslims in general without specifying any particular Islamic sect. This is somewhat ironic as the group behind the campaign, Ahmadiyya Muslim Association (AMA), have themselves been persecuted by other Muslims as an heretical sect calling them "...nothing but a gang of traitors, apostates and infidels". See Unwelcome Baggage for the story of this hatred within Islam. Never mind the threat to religion from so-called "militant atheists" the real hatred and vitriol is within religion itself. Mark Twain puts his finger on the problem, "Man is a Religious Animal. He is the only Religious Animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion - several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat if his theology isn't straight." Good luck to the AMA but before addressing any perceived "Islamophobia" in the general population they really should start with their fellow Muslims.

Contrast & Compare - the Guardian informs us "Anyone wondering whether modern day Poland is still a fervently Catholic country should head to the Tesco in Swiebodzin, near the German border. There, on the rocky hill opposite the supermarket, is the newest, most audacious religious icon in all of Europe, if not the world: a 33-metre high, rather crudely carved statue of Jesus, which volunteers from the town, along with prisoners on day release from the local jail, have been building for the last 10 years."

Meanwhile the National Secular Society cites "A report examining trends in church attendance in Poland (which) indicates a relentless decline in numbers going to Mass. While data collected in the last three months of 2009 showed a slight recovery in Mass attendance in 2009 compared to 2008 (from 40.8 percent to 41.5 percent of the population), compared to a decade previously there had been a “slow but steady fall” in attendance in all 44 Roman Catholic dioceses over the past decade, running as high as 9.2 percent in some parts of the country."

The Guardian in fact cites the same report, but reaches a somewhat different conclusion. Why? Because "...a group of trainee priests dismissed talk of the church's decline. "That's an invention of the media," said Marek Mierzwa, 24, who will become a deacon in May. "Polish people are generally pessimistic and the media are, too. They say that only old people in Poland want to go to church these days, but it's not true." Oh well, that settles it then... Update - also of interest is German Catholics leave church in droves.

Not Excitement But Indifference - the headline from the Guardian gushes Excitement grows as Vatican prepares to honour Poland's favourite son. This may or may not be the case in Wojtyla's Polish homeland but many people elsewhere couldn't give a toss. This piece from the National Secular Society entitled Vatican disappointed by lack of enthusiasm for beatification tells us "There is little interest among Catholics for the “beatification” ceremony. The Vatican has downsized the event from its original prediction of 2.5 million attendees to 300,000." But hold on, the Poles themselves aren't that excited either, "Even Polish tour operators are reporting problems finding customers interested in going to the Vatican, for what is regarded as a major step in the canonisation process of the Polish Pope. We still have many vacancies,” says Agata Mueck from Orlando Travel, quoted in the Metro daily, which offers a 6-day trip to Rome in an air-conditioned coach." Perhaps people are now realizing the rape of children by clergy and the subsequent cover-ups happened on Wojtyla's watch and the present incumbent Ratzinger was his right-hand man, the Pope's Rottweiler. Or could it be revulsion at the church's grisly, medieval-style relic-collecting? "First-degree reliquaries include vials of the pope's blood taken during medical tests and hair left over from visits by the Vatican barber, kept by the Polish nuns who looked after John Paul II throughout his papacy. These will all be objects of adoration after beatification, and will be even more so once he is elevated to sainthood." Quite disgusting.

April 18th 2011

Easter Treats - Easter is celebrated by the Landover Baptist Church in its own unique way and the church's website has several articles for you about this special time of year. One must-read is the shocking exposé on The War Against Easter - An Evil White Bunny vs. A Cloud-Dwelling Zombie? There is a tasty treat in store for those that follow the recipe for Easter Bunny Stew. On a more solemn note is a warning to parents about Easter eggs and their dangers in the featured book - Are Your Children Playing With Lucifer's Testicles? Mrs. Betty Bowers, America's Best Christian®, brings us her recipe for "The Brutal Death of Our Savior" Cookies and the perennial favorite The Passion Fruit of the Christ Easter Soufflé. Bless her and all at Landover for treating this celebration with the solemnity and respect it deserves. For a more grisly Easter story see the Daily Mail's Filipinos are CRUCIFIED in grizzly (sic) re-enactment of Jesus' death as Christians around the world mark Good Friday.

Happy £aster - it is a busy, and, for some, a profitable time on the religious calendar right now. Passover has begun, the festival where Jews remember the mass murder of the Egyptian first-born by their god. This disgusting episode is pretty much business as usual for this deity who has a mean streak a mile wide. As the Christians have appropriated the Jewish holy books they get to share in the celebration of this slaughterer. Because the writers of the gospel fables were mining what is now called the Old Testament for "prophecies" foretelling the life and works of the Jesus character they get to make his death a parallel of the sacrifice of the Passover lamb. Unlike the lambs, this Jesus was made to live again and so the Christian festival of Zombiemas was initiated. These days the approach of Easter time heralds a rash of Jesus stories and references usually by those in search of a buck or two. This first story from the BBC is representative - Prof. Colin Humphreys of Cambridge University finds fault with the Christian dating of the Last Supper of Jesus and his chums and places the event suitably enough on April 1st. As the gospel stories are not even remotely historical and written many years after the events they supposedly portray, quibbling over the date of this meal seems a futile exercise. But then Humphreys is not a biblical scholar but a metallurgist and materials scientist. Most crucially he has a book to sell, The Mystery Of The Last Supper, so the Easter timing is hardly coincidence.

Next we have the Jerusalem Post, which asks "Could two of the nails used to crucify Jesus have been discovered in a 2,000-year-old tomb in Jerusalem? And could they have mysteriously disappeared for 20 years, only to turn up by chance in a Tel Aviv laboratory?" The person behind this flagrant nonsense is "...veteran investigator Simcha Jacobovici". Investigator of what? The JP does not tell us, but a look at Wikipedia reveals Jacobovici is "...a Canadian film director, producer, free-lance journalist, and writer." He has also been involved in a documentary that placed Atlantis in Spain and theorized that the burials in the shaft graves at Mycenae, Greece were in fact were "...runaway Jews". His film about the so-called Lost Tomb of Jesus was described by one critic as a "...disgusting little exercise in money-making". You don't have to be a genius to figure out Jacobovici has a film out right now on this nails story, called fittingly enough "The Nails of the Cross". (For more holy nails see here)

Even the British Museum has an Easter plug for we are told "This week the British Museum announced that it is to display the Holy Facecloth of Christ in the summer as part of an exhibition of Christian relics. Jesus is said to have wiped his face with the towel, imprinting his likeness and giving it the power to cure leprosy." Alongside this pious fraud will be "...three spikes said to be from the Crown Of Thorns, fragments of the True Cross, the foot of St Blaise and the breast milk of the Virgin Mary." in an exhibition called Treasures Of Heaven. These items are of course no older than medieval when the production of such things was big business. A church or cathedral that hosted an important relic was able to attract pilgrims - and their money. Sadly they don't seem to have the Holy Foreskin in the show but as there were at one time at least 18 of them maybe one will turn up. Or, the museum could, in true medieval fashion, just manufacture one. It would be as authentic as the rest of this stuff. At £12 a pop the exhibition should be a nice little earner, although, unlike the other Easter opportunists, the British Museum actually deserves the money. (Before anyone gets too excited the actual exhibition is not until June)

Another barefaced Easter cash-in is from an enterprising New Zealand pizza company which "...has caused outrage in New Zealand with billboards advertising hot cross buns accompanied by the slogan: "For a limited time. A bit like Jesus." " Hell Pizza have produced their equivalent of the traditional hot cross bun bearing "... an inverted pentagram, a design symbolic of Satanism." and displayed them on billboards around Auckland. We are informed "Lloyd Ashton, a spokesman for New Zealand's Anglican Church, condemned the advertising campaign as disgraceful. "It's disrespectful to what a lot of people hold very dear."". Now 80 is no bible scholar but having scoured the pages of the New Testament there is no mention of small bread rolls adorned with a cross - unless these were the bread left over after the feeding of the five thousand (or was it the four thousand?) magically imprinted with a cross by the hand of Jesus. Anyway, the pizza company has a track record in offensive ads for we are told, "In 2008 the firm was forced to apologise to the family of the late Sir Edmund Hillary after a Hallowe'en advertisement featured the skeletal remains of the Everest conqueror, along with those of the Queen Mother and the actor Heath Ledger, dancing on gravestones." Stay classy, guys.

April 23rd 2011

Martin Rees - gets down to earning his million (see The Templeton Shilling). The Astronomer Royal and cosmologist "...has called on anti-religion campaigners to abandon their tactics and strive for "peaceful coexistence" with mainstream religious groups." He seems to be blaming a group he calls "Darwinists". By the context he obviously means evolutionary biologists. He seems to have fallen into the trap of using the sort of language used by creationists, who like to use that label to imply that the theory of evolution by means of natural selection is just another faith, called Darwinism. Rees repeated use of the term does his argument, such as it is, no favors. (It is similar to the quack's use of allopathy to refer to evidence-based medicine) Rees believes that "Campaigning against religion can be socially counterproductive. If teachers take the uncompromising line that God and Darwinism are irreconcilable, many young people raised in a faith-based culture will stick with their religion and be lost to science. Moreover, we need all the allies we can muster against fundamentalism - a palpable, perhaps growing concern."

In areas where religion makes real world claims that can be tested using the scientific method religion is always the loser but Rees would rather that information be somehow repressed in order to cosy up to moderate religionists. That this also involves the violation of scientists' principles does not appear to have occurred to him. Another point that has passed him by is that moderate religionists are one end of a continuum that stretches, unbroken, toward the fundamentalists. In a way the moderates are enabling their loonier brethren by according undeserved respect to faith. The belief in something for which there is no evidence is held up as admirable instead of deluded - the very opposite of the scientific method.

A third point that went whistling by Rees is that atheists tend not to attack individuals' religious beliefs but religious organizations such as, for example, the Roman Catholic Church that wants to be accorded unearned respect and allowed to influence legislation on birth control, women's reproductive rights, assisted suicide and homosexuality (such as here). Some things are inherently immiscible such as science and religion or Islam and democracy and no amount of doubtless well-intentioned waffle is going to change that. Templeton must surely rub his hands with glee upon reading Rees' final sentence "All must be guided by the knowledge that 21st-century science can offer - but inspired by an idealism, vision and commitment that science alone can't provide." This reminds 80 of Douglas Adams' remark "Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?"

Recycled Crap - is still crap. Over a year ago the Telegraph ran an uncritical puff-piece about a book that claimed there were myriad alignments of heterogeneous ancient monuments and that these were used as a sort of sat-nav by our ancestors. The book, modestly entitled Prehistoric Geometry in Britain: the Discoveries of Tom Brooks was nonsense then and is still nonsense now, yet the Telegraph is running much the same article about the same book. Two can play at that game, so find below 80's lazily recycled comments from September 2009. (Also see this piece on Brooks' hypothesis by Matt Parker) By the way 80 still has not read Brooks' book as life is just too short to waste.

Imposed Patterns - given enough random points the innate pattern-making ability of the human mind will see shapes, connections that are not actually there. Most of the constellations in the sky would seem to confirm this (see Apophenia). This was always the trouble with seeking celestial alignments for prehistoric sites - there are so many stars you can align them with almost anything. The same goes for ley lines. 80 rather suspects this may be the case with Tom Brooks, author of a new book Prehistoric Geometry in Britain: the Discoveries of Tom Brooks. That title should be the first clue that we are not in academia - trumpet-blowing and serious scholarship seldom make good bedfellows. It seems that Mr Brooks has, according to the Telegraph, "...analysed 1,500 sites stretching from Norfolk to north Wales. These included standing stones, hilltop forts, stone circles and hill camps." The only criterion apparently is that they are in "eyeshot" of each other. We are then told he "...found that they all lie on a vast geometric grid made up of isosceles 'triangles'. Each triangle has two sides of the same length and 'point' to the next settlement." No trivial exercise I am sure, but does superimposing triangles over disparate monuments from varying periods of prehistory actually tell us anything useful?

Mr Brooks says yes, and in so doing demonstrates a nice line in hyperbole, ''To create these triangles with such accuracy would have required a complex understanding of geometry. The sides of some of the triangles are over 100 miles across on each side and yet the distances are accurate to within 100 metres. You cannot do that by chance. So advanced, sophisticated and accurate is the geometrical surveying now discovered, that we must review fundamentally the perception of our Stone Age forebears as primitive, or conclude that they received some form of external guidance. Is sat-nav as recent as we believe; did they discover it first?'' Please let that question be rhetorical. There may well be a "complex understanding of geometry" involved but this is more likely to in Mr Brooks' brain and not those of our ancient ancestors. Oh, by the way, modern scholarship does not view our "Stone Age forbears" as primitive and hasn't done so for a long time. They were certainly as intelligent as Brooks. He then offers a false choice between his theory and the even more outrageous suggestion that the ancients "..received some form of external guidance." Does he mean ancient astronauts?

There is another choice though, and that is Brooks is simply wrong and his enthusiasm has got the better of him, leading him to see a triangular system he himself has superimposed on ancient sites - not all of which are settlements. It wouldn't be the first time that someone has published a book on a cherished idea somehow missed by conventional scholarship but which does not bear up under scrutiny. Think of cult archaeologist Graham Hancock who has a great following who buy his many books about an Atlantean ur-civilization but is considered a bit of a joke by historians and archaeologists. Mr Brooks invites suspicion by publishing a book rather than a paper that could then be professionally reviewed. He also does himself no end of harm by coming out with remarks such as "Created more than 2,000 years before the Greeks were supposed to have discovered such geometry, it remains one of the world's biggest civil engineering projects. It was a breathtaking and complex undertaking by a people of profound industry and vision. We must revise our thinking of what's gone before.'' 80 has not read Brooks' book as yet but these initial signs are less than promising.

May 1st 2011

Heir Head - Nick Cohen, in common with a lot of the British and international press at the moment, writes on matters royal, but a good deal less sycophantically. 80 chuckled out loud while reading the following paragraphs on that chump Charlie Windsor and his book, Harmony.

"Although Harmony was a publishing flop, I urge you to dig through the remainder bins and find a copy. You will then realise that royal intransigence may soon present us with a national embarrassment which will make us forget last week's undoubtedly perky events.

I already knew that the heir was a mark for every type of homeopathic quack and new age conman, but never realised that he was an open target for cultists as well. His book shows nothing but contempt for the scientific method, seeing it as our curse rather than our salvation. He wants us to return to a pre-Renaissance world and find the shared "sacred geometry" of the vagina in the designs of disparate ancient buildings.

We must then look heavenwards and see mystical significance in the mean orbit of Mercury, which sits "within the orbit of the earth in such a proportion that it fits exactly over the pentagon at the heart of the five-pointed star".

It is the tale of The Da Vinci Code told by an idiot."

Yeah, Right - the BBC tells us "Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood has set up a new party to contest up to half the seats in a parliamentary election scheduled for September. The head of the Freedom and Justice Party says it will be a civil, not a theocratic, group." ...and pigs will fly on hang gliders made of weasel silk.

Not Even Close - "It is not the case that in the expanding universe, at a late stage, in some tiny corner of the cosmos, there evolved randomly some species of living being capable of reasoning and of trying to find rationality within creation, or to bring rationality into it. If man were merely a random product of evolution in some place on the margins of the universe, then his life would make no sense or might even be a chance of nature." Pope Ratzinger in his Easter homily reveals his blinkered, wilful ignorance. If he thinks evolution is a matter of random chance no wonder he doesn't get it. It is an astounding, wonderful and awesome fact that the universe has woken up, rubbed its eyes and looked around at itself. Human beings, born of star-stuff, are a very real part of the physical world, the cosmos become conscious. There is no ghost in this machine. It is an insulting betrayal of the very intellect that we have evolved for Ratzinger to offer nonsensical, magical explanations for our being, and despicable of him to use such fairy tales as a means to dictate to others how to live and love and think. To quote Christopher Hitchens "That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence."

Waco Wacko? - see this from Think Atheist on what happened to Bill Nye, the science guy, when he attempted to explain that the Moon merely reflects the light of the Sun to the good folk of Waco, Texas. Texas is also home to NASA's Johnson Space Center where the Apollo astronauts trained to land on the Moon. Perhaps the dullards of Waco would like to put down their bibles and look at the pictures the astronauts brought back.

Shock Revelation - white Evangelical Christians are hypocrites. "The results from a recent poll published by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life reveal what social scientists have known for a long time: White Evangelical Christians are the group least likely to support politicians or policies that reflect the actual teachings of Jesus. It is perhaps one of the strangest, most dumb-founding ironies in contemporary American culture. Evangelical Christians, who most fiercely proclaim to have a personal relationship with Christ, who most confidently declare their belief that the Bible is the inerrant word of God, who go to church on a regular basis, pray daily, listen to Christian music, and place God and His Only Begotten Son at the center of their lives, are simultaneously the very people most likely to reject his teachings and despise his radical message." Is nothing sacred?

Hitch - find here, courtesy of Pharyngula, Christopher Hitchens' address to the American Atheists National Convention.

The Economic Argument

The above diagram is courtesy of xkcd

May 3rd 2011

What Price Safety? - evil "Big Pharma" has to jump through many regulatory hoops before a new medication is accepted for use. Suppliers of herbal medicines, up until now, had no such problems. No tests for efficacy or for side effects, especially relevant when the patient is simultaneously taking real, evidence-based, medicines. The purity of herbal ingredients have, until now, not been satisfactorily certified which means some quite nasty substances can slip through. Now the EU has produced rules to do something about this ridiculous and dangerous situation. "Under the directive, herbal medicines will now have to be registered. Products must meet safety, quality and manufacturing standards, and come with information outlining possible side-effects." This makes nothing but sense but the herbalists are whining. "Herbal practitioners and manufacturers say they fear the new rules could force them out of business." Oh dear, how sad - they are obviously more worried about the bottom line than patient safety. It seems they are just as much money-grubbing bastards as the big pharmaceutical companies. As this report from the Guardian relates "In fact, herbal remedies can have harmful side-effects. St John's Wort can stop the contraceptive pill working, while ginkgo and ginseng are known to interfere with the blood-thinning drug warfarin. And in February the MHRA issued a warning about the herbal weight loss product Herbal Flos Lonicerae (Herbal Xenicol) Natural Weight Loss Formula, after tests showed it contained more than twice the prescribed dose of a banned substance."

The herbal medicine aficionados' comments below the report show the outrage this entirely sensible measure has generated among a demented few. "It is an absolute disgrace that this fascist measure has been allowed to pass in the interests of the corrupt pharmaceutical industry, that will attempt to dictate what we can and cannot medicate ourselves with in future." Fascist? Nonsense. To borrow a phrase from one commenter (thanks Wolfbone) we not only have "Big Pharma" but also "Big Quacka". The production of herbal medicine is an industry, and not a small one. We learn "By 1998, the United States acknowledged that 60 million Americans – one third of the adult population – used exotic medicinal plants products at least once a year and that the total estimated market value for herbal medicines was over 3 billion dollars, with an annual growth of 30%" No doubt the figures for Europe is comparable.

The herbalists seem happy to coin it in but not so happy to pay for testing to make sure their customers are safer. Hypocrites all. There is only one type of medicine and that is the type that is evidence-based and actually works. All substances for human ingestion should be tested rigorously, whether they are produced by big pharmaceutical firms or herbalists. Many modern medicines are based upon naturally occurring chemicals, aspirin from willow bark being the classic case. To ingest willow bark may help with pain, but can also result in severe intestinal upsets. Far better to extract the active ingredient and just take that. The new legislation will also apply to so-called Ayurvedic medicine (AM) and Chinese Traditional medicine (CTM) - the products of which often contain dangerous contaminants. AM preparations have been found to contain toxic levels of heavy metals. Some of the non-herbal ingredients of CTM are obtained from killing endangered animals, or extracted from others, using great cruelty. The New Age types that use CMT's even purely herbal concoctions are, by doing so, bestowing legitimacy on animal abuse. They should be horrified.

The fact is "Big Quacka" is just as much a money-making operation as "Big Pharma". If the latter has to spend money on testing for safety so should the former. The herbalists and other so-called alternative medicine providers will now have to prove their products are safe. It is something they were unlikely to do voluntarily hence the legislation. So it will cost them. Tough. What price do they put upon the safety of patients? Also see What's The Harm. Don't miss the typically over-the-top idiotic report from the Daily Mail, Herbal drug crackdown: Millions face having to buy remedies on black market as Europe tightens the rules.

"There is no alternative medicine. There is only medicine that works and medicine that doesn't work." Richard Dawkins

Blood Ritual - if you need reminding quite how grisly and disgusting the rites of the Roman Catholic church can be the picture accompanying a piece in the Guardian on the beatification of Karol Wojtyla does the job. The caption reads "Pope Benedict XVI kisses the glass reliquary containing the blood of the late Pope John Paul II during his beatification mass in Saint Peter's Square in the Vatican City, Rome." The blood had been saved by nuns who had cared for the dying pontiff, no doubt with such a gruesome, magical ritual in mind. Many dignitaries attended the ceremony, including one expert on blood - or rather the shedding of it. The 87 year-old murderous dictator of Zimbabwe and staunch Roman Catholic Robert Mugabe had not been invited "...but as the head of a state with which the Vatican has relations he was entitled to attend." This was despite the fact that there is a travel ban on Mugabe in the EU over his human rights abuses. Handily the Vatican, when it suits its purposes, is a "...sovereign state and not in the EU." This of course does not stop Ratzinger's meddling in the EU, which he would like to see as a modern Christendom. The rushed beatification, a step on the way to full-blown sainthood, has been deemed unseemly by many Catholics and others as the widespread clerical rape of children happened during his papacy (and no doubt many papacies before that). Stupidest headline award on the beatification ceremony goes to the Guardian with "John Paul II takes first step towards sainthood in Rome". Pope John Paul ~~George Ringo~~ has been dead for six years - he is not taking steps anywhere.

With Friends Like These - well what do you know, the world's most hunted man, mass murderer Osama bin Laden, was holed up in a fortified house in Abbottabad, home of the Pakistan Military Academy, only 35 miles away from Islamabad, Pakistan's capital. This no doubt explains President Obama's remarks during his announcement of the so-called fugitive's death. It is noteworthy that even with Obama's sop to America's "ally" Pakistan in his speech the hit appears to have been an entirely American operation. It is likely that had Pakistani security been kept informed the raid would have found an empty house. It is impossible to believe that this weird fortress of a building built in 2005 had not attracted some interest. Pakistan's duplicity, always in the background, is now in the full light of day.(Also see Notes on the Death of Osama bin Laden by Steve Coll in the New Yorker)

May 8th 2011

Barking

On The Web - here are some items that have caught 80's rheumy eye over the last few days. First up is news from Iran where we learn "Close allies of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, have been accused of using supernatural powers to further his policies amid an increasingly bitter power struggle between him and the country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei." Can they be serious? President Poison Dwarf is certainly deranged, believing that he has a hotline to the Hidden Imam a messianic figure no doubt filched from Judaism, as is so much of Islam, so anything is possible. Perhaps the Dwarf and the Theocrat will square off in a battle of sorcery just like Boris Karloff and Vincent Price in Roger Corman's classic The Raven (You Tube).

Next is a site which asks Has science buried God? - the answer is no, according to a book by John C Lennox, Professor of Mathematics and Fellow in the Philosophy of Science at Oxford’s Green Templeton College. The name of the college is a bit of a giveaway, being funded by Martin Rees' recent benefactor. In the book, God’s Undertaker – Has Science Buried God? Lennox appears to bring nothing new to the table but meets with approval from Melanie Phillips. The approval of a loon like her is surely the kiss of death in the eyes of rational observers. Mel gets to take a pop at a favorite target, claiming Lennox's book is a “excoriating demolition of Dawkins’s overreach from biology into religion”. Yet Lennox overreaches far more impressively, for we are told "The brilliance of Lennox’s approach is that it does not just concentrate on one academic discipline, like biology. It spans all of the most relevant fields, including cosmology, physics, philosophy, theology and mathematics..." It sounds like a lot of effort just to restate the strong anthropic principle.

Far more interesting is an article by Keith Fitzpatrick-Matthews, Abusing the past. Keith's name should be familiar from the excellent Bad Archaeology web site, which, like The Hall of Maat and Doug's Archaeology Site, is a great resource for those combating the flood of pseudo-archaeology from the likes of Graham Hancock. "Abusing the past" is a useful overview of the main categories of nonsense which by dint of sheer repetition have found a place in modern culture such as ley lines, "Biblical" archaeology, OOPARTs (so-called out of place artifacts), ancient astronauts and the rest. 80 highly recommends forwarding this article to any friends or relatives that have bought into such travesties of history and archaeology. (Keith also has a Bad Archaeology blog.)

Some things keep floating back into view like an unflushable turd - in this case the teaching of the "controversy" over evolution. You would think this stuff had met its demise in the Kitzmiller v. Dover court case (see Lying By Design) where the Intelligent Design (ID) nitwits were revealed as the sneaky Creationists that they actually are, but no. Here we learn of submissions to the Texas Board of Education and in particular "International Databases, LLC. It's a one-man operation run by Stephen Sample, who says he has a degree in evolutionary biology and taught at the high school and junior college levels for 15 years." Among the modules submitted by this individual "...are two that deal with the origin of life. Those sections say the "null hypothesis" is that there had to be some intelligent agency behind the appearance of living things. It is up to the scientists proposing a naturalistic explanation to prove their case." What utter nonsense - all we can observe is the physical universe - if someone claims that there is something else, ie a supernatural creator, it is up to them to supply the evidence. Accused of "stealth creationism" Sample, in his defence "...says the intelligent agency might just as well be aliens." This is just the typical dissembling from IDiots when cornered and is not a serious proposition. Sample also comes up with the tired claptrap "...that unlike the physical sciences, there aren't any experiments you can do to demonstrate evolutionary theory." If he really believes that he badly needs to catch up with recent research.

Justice For Osama - Pat Condell is back and in excellent form commenting on the recent richly-deserved demise of the religious fanatic and self-confessed mass murderer and the aftermath.

(Can't see the video? Then click here)

(cartoon courtesy of xkcd)

Why Do Americans Still Dislike Atheists? - atheists reading this opinion piece from the Washington Post should be wary of getting a big head - but by all means give yourselves a modest pat on the back. According to the article instead of being vile godless monsters atheists are ethically way ahead of the pack. "On basic questions of morality and human decency — issues such as governmental use of torture, the death penalty, punitive hitting of children, racism, sexism, homophobia, anti-Semitism, environmental degradation or human rights — the irreligious tend to be more ethical than their religious peers, particularly compared with those who describe themselves as very religious."

May 11th 2011

Sowing The Wind - a neo-Nazi white supremacist has been shot dead, apparently by his own 10 year-old son. We learn "A reporter for the New York Times witnessed Hall preaching race hatred at a meeting in front of the boy, his eldest of five children, a day before the shooting. Hall told the newspaper he was teaching the boy how to use a gun as well as night-vision gear and had given him a belt bearing Nazi SS insignia." The National Socialist Movement (now where have we heard that name before?) "...has a track record of recruiting very young children into its activities that surpasses that of any other organisation in the US." Which makes the remarks by the NSM ~~führer~~ leader on his fallen comrade all the more ironic. He "... described the dead man... as a "dedicated father, his children were his life". On the contrary, it would appear that one of them was just the opposite. (Keeping an eye on neo-Nazis, hate groups, racists and other scum for the last 40 years is the Southern Poverty Law Center. The SPL is "...is a nonprofit civil rights organization dedicated to fighting hate and bigotry, and to seeking justice for the most vulnerable members of society." These folk are the real heroes, you can help them out by donating.)

Space Is Big - as the much-missed Douglas Adams wrote "Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space." 80 was reading an article on The Pros and Cons of METI (Messaging to Extraterrestrial Intelligence) on Paul Gilster's fine Centauri Dreams site when the writer Larry Klaes used an analogy to convey the size of our own galaxy, the Milky Way, which is pretty mind-boggling on its own. "To give the reader an idea just how vast the Milky Way is, if our entire galaxy were shrunk down in scale to where a person could hold the entire Sol system in the palm of their hand, the Milky Way would still be the size of the North American continent."

Start The Day With APOD - 80's first port of call after logging in each morning is NASA's Astronomy Picture Of The Day - it helps put things into some kind of perspective. This image, The Southern Cliff in the Lagoon, is particularly stunning, part astronomical image and part work of art. Why work of art? See True or False (Color): The Art of Extraterrestrial Photography.

Quote - "Bin Laden was an international figure and above all a ~~Muslim~~ mass murderer ... I took it as my religious duty to offer prayers for him." so said Maulvi Asmatullah, an independent Member of Pakistan's National Assembly, who led prayers on Tuesday for Bin Laden, hijacking proceedings in parliament to do so. 80 has slightly edited the quote for the purposes of accuracy.

How Islam allows women to assert their individuality

May 14th 2011

Stalin and the Aliens - in dismissing the long-debunked Roswell aliens/crashed saucer claptrap and replacing it with an equally idiotic conspiracy theory as Annie Jacobsen does with her book Area 51 accurate reporting is once again rejected in favor of silliness. Her explanation "... featuring two of the greatest villains of 20th century history: the Soviet dictator Josef Stalin and the infamous Nazi “Angel of Death” Dr Joseph Mengele." will no doubt earn her a few bucks - which is surely the point of the exercise. Her tale involves a dastardly hoax involving a Nazi flying-wing airplane, alien bodies manufactured by Mengele and a plot by Stalin, inspired by Orson Welles' infamous 1938 "War of the Worlds" radio broadcast, to spread panic in the USA. In other words it is a complete crock. Articles in the magazine Skeptical Inquirer (this one is by Joe Nickell) over several years have pieced together what really happened at Roswell - very little, apart from publicity-seeking bullshit from various characters who claim to be witnesses to strange events. A good overview of the crashed saucer/alien bodies story can be read here courtesy of the Skeptic's Dictionary. The original "story" has now entered the public consciousness via movies such as Independence Day and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and is likely never to go away.

Another conspiracy theory that won't go away is the "Prince Phillip did away with Diana, Princess of Wales" hogwash. In a new film, Unlawful Killing, director Keith Allen says Phillip is a 'Fred West-style psychopath' and the Queen is a 'gangster in a tiara'. These accusations all become much clearer when we are told the film was funded by Mohamed Fayed, whose son died with Diana. Fayed has long contended that the couple were hit by the Royals to stop Diana marrying a Muslim. Fayed was also in the news recently over the location of a 7ft 6inch Michael Jackson statue that he commissioned following the singer's death. He seems happy with its position at the football club he owns, Fulham - the soccer fans not so much.

You'll Turn To God - Pat Condell gives his take on this veiled threat. 80 however misunderstood and thought his apotheosis was nigh.

(Can't see the video? Then click here)

Sharia Law in Britain – A Threat to One Law for All and Equal Rights - "A new report by One Law for All has found Sharia Councils and Muslim Arbitration Tribunals to be in violation of UK law, public policy and human rights. The report is being launched to coincide with a 20 June 2010 rally on the issue of Sharia law." Based on an 8th March 2010 Seminar on Sharia Law, research, interviews, and One Law for All case files, a PDF of the report is available here. Also see Muslim Women Lose Human Rights. On a related note Libertyphile's fourth instalment of This Is Why continues the series showing why British people (and Europeans) have such poor opinions of Islam and Muslims.

The Washington Post’s Jihadist Op-Ed Contributor - "In the aftermath of Osama bin Laden’s death, the Washington Post ran a four-part series by men and women who had their “lives shattered and transformed by” the terror master. One of the contributors was especially curious: former Guantanamo detainee Moazzam Begg." Read the rest of Thomas Jocelyn's piece here about this deeply unpleasant and duplicitous individual and learn the true story of his time in Guantanamo. Recommended. (More on Begg, his accomplices and Amnesty)

May 16th 2011

Nailed - further down this page 80 mentioned one Simcha Jacobovici, conspiracy theorist, pseudo-archaeologist and film maker, and his claim in a documentary, Nails of the Cross, of having found two of the nails used in the crucifixion of the Christian Gospel character, Jesus. 80 dismissed this out of hand, basing this opinion on Jacobovici's previous form and the sheer unlikeliness of the story. Now an expert demolition job has been carried out by Robert Cargill, Adjunct Assistant Professor of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at UCLA. He says Jacobovici "...claims to have discovered the very nails used to crucify Jesus, and subtly implies that archaeologists excavating a tomb in Israel participated in a cover-up to suppress the fact that these “nails of the cross” had been discovered. Unfortunately for Simcha, this most recent eccentric contribution is perhaps the weakest argument he has ever made – a dubious achievement if one considers that Simcha’s previous sensational claims include the discovery of the route of the Exodus, the lost tomb of Jesus’ family, and Atlantis (in Spain), among others." Quite a track record, you will agree.

Cargill's final analysis is damning - "Simcha Jacobovici did not find the nails of the cross of Jesus. The show was produced and aired during Easter week to prey on the hopes and beliefs of the faithful in anticipation of making lots of money for Simcha Jacobovici and the History Channel. I like shows that entertain while they educate, but Secrets of Christianity: Nails of the Cross did neither. His claim is a disservice to archaeology and biblical studies, and gives a bad name to the science of archaeology." An added bonus on that page is a link to a previous piece by Cargill called Pseudo-Science and Sensationalist Archaeology: An Exposé of Jimmy Barfield and the Copper Scroll Project. Cargill was also behind the unmasking of sock puppet creator par excellence Raphael Golb, with whom 80 had some peripheral involvement - see The Man Who Wasn't There. Also on the subject is this article Experts question claims of crucifixion nails' discovery. (Thanks to the excellent Explorator for the heads-up)

You never see them together, do you?

Headline Of The Week - All-Female Sect Worships Vladimir Putin As Paul The Apostle. The Telegraph informs us "Vladimir Putin has become the object of veneration for a bizarre Russian all-female sect whose followers believe that the tough-talking prime minister is a reincarnation of the early Christian missionary Paul the Apostle." Now he is a religious as well as a gay icon. Who knew Dobby was so popular? Update - we now learn "Vladimir Putin has been turned into a martial arts superhero in a comic strip spreading on the Russian internet, with Dmitry Medvedev as his bearskin-wearing sidekick." Some of Russia's sceptical internet users have quickly branded the comic strip a public relations stunt setting Putin against dark zombie-like opposition forces. "Elections are near, and we'll be looking at a whole lot of different comics," said one comment posted on the Moscow Echo radio station's website.

May 18th 2011

Endless Ends - prepare to hear some back-pedalling and/or imaginative excuses on May 22nd from a group called Family Radio. They have joined the long list of loons who have predicted the end of the world, in their case on May 21st, that's next Saturday. Click here to read the "infallible proof" they offer in support of the expected rapture. Convincing it ain't, " God in His great mercy has given a marvelous proof that the year 2011 is the year of Judgment Day and the end of the world. Remember in 2 Peter 3:8, in the context of pointing us to the flood of Noah’s day as well as to the destruction of the world at the end of time, He declared: “one day with the Lord as a thousand years and a thousand years as one day.” Years ago we learned from the Bible that the flood occurred in the year 4990 B.C. More recently we learned that Judgment Day is to occur in the year 2011 A.D. 2011 A.D. is exactly 7,000 years after 4990 B.C." What is so merciful about a God which destroys the planet and condemns all but a chosen few to eternal torment? Family Radio, in the person of president Howard Camping has predicted Doomsday before, in 1994, but claimed there had been a miscalculation. That must have been a great comfort to those who had given away all their earthly possessions.

"Indeed, in the face of all of this incredible information, how can anyone dare to dispute with the Bible concerning the absolute truth that the beginning of the Day of Judgment together with the Rapture will occur on May 21, 2011." Howard Camping, sticking his neck out - not for the first time.

80 was already alerted to the "prophecy" by reading another holy text - only it has pictures too. It is called Doonesbury. In the current story the lifelong wastrel Zonk calls on a neighbor, Chester, to borrow a rake and is offered not only a rake but Chester's Mercedes. Zonk cannot believe his luck and asks why Chester is so generous. The answer comes "Because I'm being raptured on Saturday" For those that aren't going to be raptured here is a most informative page on Doomsday and Doomsday cults from the Skeptic's Dictionary. One group that still endures even after failed doomsday predictions is the Seventh-Day Adventists, whose first date for The End was originally 1843. When nothing happened they re-calculated the date and came up with 1844. These days they say "...the return of Christ may occur very soon, though nobody knows the exact date of that event" which hedges the bet nicely. The reference is to a verse in Matthew's gospel that has the Jesus character say "But of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only." It is a pretty good get-out clause but for a preceding verse in which he says "Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled." Not that verily, as there are, as far as 80 is aware, no 2000 year-old people around. It seems making excuses for the non-appearance of The End has been with Christianity almost from the beginning.

Should we survive this particular Christian doomsday there is another, courtesy of the Mayan calendar, or more accurately the misinterpretation of the calendar by New Age nitwits. No doubt they too will have their own excuses on the morning of December 22, 2012 when we are all still here. 80 recommended a site back in 2003 called It's The End Of The World As We Know It....Again. Luckily we, and it, are still here. If that isn't enough you can always check out We're All Gonna Die!

The Commonwealth Is A Bastion Of Homophobia - "Today is "Idaho" – the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia. In countries all over the world, there are events calling for the universal decriminalisation of homosexuality and equal human rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people. Idaho is supported by dozens of governments, including the UK, and by many international government institutions, from the United Nations to the European Union. But the Commonwealth is not lending its support, nor are most Commonwealth countries. They want nothing to do with LGBT rights." The Commonwealth is a bastion of global homophobia, often bucking the worldwide trend towards sexual orientation equality, with increased state-sanctioned threats and repression in Malawi, Uganda, Gambia, Malaysia, Cameroon and Nigeria." Read the rest of Peter Tatchell's article here. (By the way the acronym is crap)

God's representative on Earth

Slowpope - the BBC reports "Pope Benedict has told bishops around the world to promptly report all suspected cases of sexual abuse of minors by Catholic priests to local police in new guidelines he has issued. Set out in a letter, the guidelines are the latest effort to eradicate child sex abuse in the Roman Catholic Church." This vile little man is not exactly quick off the mark, is he? As the report notes "The new Vatican guidelines come 20 years after widespread reports of sexual abuse of minors by Catholic priests in many countries first came to the notice of Church authorities..." Obviously stopping the rape of children and punishing the perpetrators is not too high on his list of priorities. Also see Vatican stops short of handing over paedophile priests. Plus see Vatican guidelines a smokescreen by Terry Sanderson, president of the National Secular Society.

Pig Wrestling - you may have seen something of the story that Richard Dawkins stands accused of cowardice for refusing a debate with one William Lane Craig. Who? You may well ask. Craig recently attracted attention over his bizarre attempt, among other things, to justify the murder of children at the behest of the Old Testament God character. There seems very little reason for Dawkins to waste his time on this idiot. He can hardly be scared of Craig's moronic justifications for divinely-inspired violence and murder which are deeply repugnant. For example, "So the problem isn’t that God ended the Canaanites’ lives. The problem is that He commanded the Israeli (sic) soldiers to end them. Isn’t that like commanding someone to commit murder? No, it’s not. Rather, since our moral duties are determined by God’s commands, it is commanding someone to do something which, in the absence of a divine command, would have been murder. The act was morally obligatory for the Israeli soldiers in virtue of God’s command, even though, had they undertaken it on their on initiative, it would have been wrong. On divine command theory, then, God has the right to command an act, which, in the absence of a divine command, would have been sin, but which is now morally obligatory in virtue of that command." What? On this basis any action, no matter how vile or depraved, is fine if the perpetrator has been commanded by God. This is where you end up for claiming that God gave humans their morals. So God, judged by the very standards he has given humans, is amoral or even immoral. Is this Craig's much vaunted sophisticated theology? Sounds more like hogwash.

Here are a couple of interesting pieces on the Craig/Dawkins story that demonstrate Richard Dawkins is wise not to share a platform of any kind with this buffoon. Certainly in the UK Craig is little known and it would be a publicity coup for him to appear in a debate with Dawkins, as though they were somehow intellectual equals. Greta Christina's piece How Religion Contorts Morality: Respected Theologian Defends Genocide and Infanticide looks at the grotesque and ridiculous way Craig seeks to justify infanticide. Christina sums up Craig's position thus "...he said that as long as God gives the thumbs-up, it's okay to kill pretty much anybody. It's okay to kill bad people, because they're bad and they deserve it... and it's okay to kill good people, because they wind up in Heaven. As long as God gives the thumbs-up, it's okay to systematically wipe out entire races. As long as God gives the thumbs-up, it's okay to slaughter babies and children." That Craig has a reputation as a respected theologian and intellectual is, in 80's view, beyond comprehension.

On the subject of Dawkins' refusal to engage in a debate the Heresiarch offers a somewhat inconsistent piece which poses the question Should Dawkins be scared of William Lane Craig? Oddly, H says of Craig "There's no doubt that he is a highly intelligent man, and an intellectually sophisticated one." but then, in the same paragraph opines "Having read a few of his online essays, I find it hard not to conclude that Craig is much more of a Ted Haggard than a Rowan Williams." Let's face it one wouldn't call Haggard intellectually sophisticated, so why say it of Craig? The Heresiarch concludes, after looking at Craig's output, "I mean really, is this "the foremost apologist for Christian theism"? Bad news for Christian theism if it is." But then adds "Even worse news, though, for atheists if they are regularly defeated in debate by someone like that." Craig's supposed trouncing of atheists in debates seems, at least to 80, to be more a product of Craig's own publicity than anything else. It takes no more than a few minutes looking at his arguments to see he is, in fact, a clod. Dawkins need not waste his time.

"I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it." George Bernard Shaw

Libya, Lies, And NATO - at first sight it looked like a propaganda coup for Ghaddafi's beleaguered regime. NATO had bombed a guest house and killed nine imams. The Libyan regime geared up to make the most of this unfortunate occurrence but then things began to go askew. NATO insisted it had targeted an underground bunker that had been "...clearly identified as a command and control centre". Cue Dutch engineer Freek Landmeter who told Sky News "... he built the bunker for Col Gaddafi in Brega in 1988 and confirmed that its coordinates match those of the area Nato targeted on Friday." Landmeter also said he built the guest house on top of the secret bunker. Fast forward to the funeral of the imams - another publicity coup for Ghaddafi's gang you would think. But the New York Times informs us "According to officials, the nine coffins, with bodies wrapped in the green of Islam, were those of the dead Muslim clerics. But some mourners offered differing counts. Two men whispered that their uncles, among those being buried, were soldiers, and one of those said the man concerned had been dead for weeks. Another identified one of the dead as a driver." Oops.... (Guest houses are so passé - children's playgrounds are now the decoy of choice in Libya)

May 22nd 2011

Will This Wind? - Peter Cook and assorted acolytes including Rowan Atkinson, John Cleese, David Rappaport and Eleanor Bron await Doomsday.

(Can't see the video? Click here)

Quote - "I do not understand why... I do not understand why nothing has happened. I can't tell you what I feel right now. Obviously, I haven't understood it correctly because we're still here." Harold Camping, you'll be sure to think of something - it's not as though it's the first time you've screwed up. Perhaps twice-bitten will be enough for the sheep in your particular flock - although there is no telling with some folk. Also see How True Believers Dealt With the Failed Apocalypse and Failed Doomsday Has Real Deadly Consequences. Update - Now the silly old fool is announcing October 21st as Rapture day. What Camping doesn't realize is that on June 5th the 12th Imam will be having a "covert emergence" - according to Ahmadinejad and his fellow deviants - so all bets are off.

Doomsday Irony - Oh, those wacky Catholics. "Auckland Catholic Church spokeswoman Lyndsay Freer told NZPA church attendance had not increased at all since Camping's warnings. She described his prediction as "scaremongering nonsense", that had nothing to do with scripture. "We're not superstitious here."" Bollocks. Read the whole piece on the non-rapture story which, refreshingly, firsts asks the New Zealand Skeptics for their take on things before checking in on the loonies. The N Z Skeptics' own site is well worth a look.

No Sharia In Oz - "As our citizenship pledge makes clear, coming to Australia means obeying Australian laws and upholding Australian values. Australia's brand of multiculturalism promotes integration. If there is any inconsistency between cultural values and the rule of law then Australian law wins out. People who migrate to Australia do so because of the fact that we have a free, open and tolerant society where men and woman are equal before the law irrespective of race, religious or cultural background. Indeed all applicants for citizenship swear a collective allegiance to the people of Australia and undertake to respect our customs and abide by our laws. The values underpinning those principles will not be changing." Robert McClelland, Australian attorney-general ruling out the introduction of sharia-lite under the banner of "legal pluralism". Legal pluralism is a nonsense. Sharia, lite or not is a religious travesty of a legal system that disadvantages women and enshrines patriarchy. It is not fit for any civilized country. If some Muslims are so desperate for sharia they should seek out countries that implement it - and go there.

"Beyond the shadow of a doubt, May 21 will be the date of the Rapture and the day of judgment." Harold Camping, doomsday prophet and leader of Family Radio Worldwide. On the group's web page the countdown has reached zero. A couple of quotes in the Guardian. First physicist Brian Cox "I think we should all pretend the rapture is happening so that when Harold Camping gets left behind later today he'll be livid." And from Kieran Healey "I guess on Sunday when the Rapture people feel really upset, we can't console them by saying "Cheer up, it's not the end of the world".

Adnan Oktar The Master

Master Of Ignorance - New Humanist (NH) has a good track record on the antics of Harun Yahya aka Adnan Oktar, the Islamic creationist. We learn from NH that the great man's minions have been peddling their wilfully ignorant crap in France. Yahya, you will recall, produced a large, glossy Atlas of Creation full of lies, stupidity and misinformation. Copies were mailed to many academics, including Richard Dawkins who, understandably, trashed it. (The book also gained notoriety on the web for using an illustration of an insect which was actually a fishing lure that had been filched from a fishing web site. The big hook should have been a bit of a giveaway.) Instead of countering Dawkins with his own evidence Yahya had Dawkins' web site banned in his native Turkey. New Humanist featured a good piece by Halil Arda back in 2009 which took a close look at Yahya/Oktar, his past and present - see Sex, flies and videotape: the secret lives of Harun Yahya. NH has compared Oktar/Yahya's appearance to a Bond villain but 80 differs. He looks like the 1970s version of Dr Who's arch enemy, the Master. The really sad thing is the damage being done to students' minds by his unsubstantiated fairy tales. NH quotes a teacher addressing pupils after a creationist lecture "As a Muslim school, we're lucky to have people who give us tools for this debate. This is very important for you and for your pride." Also see Muslim creationists tour France denouncing Darwin.

Quote - “The real enemy of all religious people is secularism which breeds sectarianism and those who espouse it and propagate it are Christianity’s greatest foes.” Bishop Joseph Devine of Motherwell, Scotland speaking ex recto.

So What? - we learn "Humans are naturally inclined to believe in Gods and an afterlife, according to a major three-year study. The £1.9 million international project, led by Oxford University academics, sought to discover whether beliefs in Gods and an afterlife were learned or simply part of human nature." Sure, kids seem to believe in a supernatural agency - Gods and afterlife is going too far - but some of us grow up and, to coin a phrase, "put away childish things". Just because something is apparently innate does not automatically mean it is a good thing. Such findings, assuming they are replicable, do not imply the ideologies called religions are a good thing either. Mind you, these folks have thrown a lot of money at the study so they must be right, yeah? With funding so tight these days they must also have been very lucky - or were they? "The Cognition, Religion, and Theology project is funded by the John Templeton Foundation and aims to develop the cognitive science of religion field - a rapidly developing area of interdisciplinary research - by providing training, web resources, and research funding for scholars wanting to become involved in cognitive science of religion research." Another attempt by Templeton to meld religion and science. Religion depends on faith and argument from authority. Science relies on evidence obtained through experiment. Suppositions and hypotheses are rigorously tested - if they fail then they are rejected. Such winnowing is not the way religion works. A scientific experiment can be duplicated in say, Mecca, and give exactly the same results as in Edinburgh. Try doing that with religion. Science is universal - religion is not. (80 has just remembered a classic short story by H Beam Piper called Omnilingual on the universality of science. You can read or download it courtesy of Project Gutenberg in various formats. Some of these have the bonus of illustrations by the incomparable Frank Kelly Freas.)

(Courtesy of Jesus & Mo)

Quote - "We want a democratic constitution but it should be in line with sharia law. We won't accept a Christian or a woman as president. The liberals want a democratic constitution but some of it would be against sharia, especially on issues of personal morality." Sheikh Abdel-Moneim al-Shahat, a leading Egyptian Salafi. Islam and democracy are fundamentally incompatible - and he knows it. Poor bloody Egypt, going from dictatorship to theocracy with only a tantalizing glimpse of democracy en route.

What Is The Point of Deepak Chopra? - please note the question is rhetorical - the point is obviously self-promotion and wealth accumulation. To appreciate quite how vapid his spiritual musings are read P Z Myers on Chopra's response to Christopher Hitchens' recent letter to the American Atheists. Suffice it to say Chopra does not fare well. For more on this New Age quack see here.

Fail - "Newt Gingrich has just launched his campaign to win the Republican presidential nomination in 2012 – only for Gingrich's train to be derailed as soon as it left the station. So far Gingrich has been revealed to have owed hundreds of thousands of dollars to upmarket jeweler Tiffany, rashly attacked the Republican party's signature policy before making an abject apology, been humbled by a conservative icon and humiliated by an ordinary voter in the crucial state of Iowa." Dang! Does this mean we won't see a President ~~Axolotl~~ Newt in the White House?

May 25th 2011

Beneath Contempt - we learn from the Guardian "Taliban gunmen have killed the headteacher of a girls' school near the Afghan capital after he ignored warnings to stop teaching girls, government officials have said. Khan Mohammad, the head of the Porak girls' school in Logar province, was shot dead near his home on Tuesday, said Deen Mohammad Darwish, a spokesman for the Logar governor. "He was killed because he wanted to run the school," Darwish said. Mateen Jafar, the education director in Logar, about an hour's drive from the capital, Kabul, said Mohammad had received several death threats from the Taliban warning him not to teach girls." These are the people with which we want to negotiate? Once again it shows how frightened these bastards are of empowered women. The combination of Islam and tribal patriarchy is a potent one but they are still scared of women. It is the women and girls who are courageous not these cowardly murderers.

Sadly such throwbacks are not limited to Afghanistan - the UK has them as well, to its shame. The Mail reports "A gang of four Muslim men launched a horrific attack on an RE teacher because they did not approve of him teaching religious studies to Muslim girls, a court heard yesterday. Gary Smith, 28, was left with facial scarring, both long and short-term memory loss, and now has no sense of smell. He became depressed after his face was slashed and he suffered a brain haemorrhage, fractured skull and broken jaw following the attack." What a bunch of heroes - attacking a school teacher with an iron bar. It's fortunate that Smith wasn't killed. It is doubtful the courts will impose a sentence commensurate with the crime. The only achievement of these four Muslims is to reinforce the common perception of their religion as one that promotes violence and cruelty. Update - these violent religious fanatics were already terrorism suspects according to the Telegraph. The sentences handed down to them are far less than they deserve. At least two of them, however are likely to be deported to Germany where they were born. Lucky Germany. The teacher, Gary Smith, despite suffering depression, anxiety and horrific physical injuries has returned to his job. Compare his courage with the cowardice of his four assailants.

Dancing on the Graves of Gods: How Science Kills Faith. Talk by P Z Myers, Associate Professor of Biology at the University of Minnesota Morris and author of the world's most widely read science blog Pharyngula. "I think you can guess from the title what it will be about. I'll be discussing how science works, what we know, and the folly of trying to find compatibility between science and religion." Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square, London WC1R 4RL. Wedneday 8 June 2011, 7pm. Tickets £8 (or £10 on the door subject to availability). Tickets and information

May 30th 2011

Keep Faking The Tablets - recently there was a flurry of stories in the press about some small lead tablets that were claimed to be early Christian documents. The Daily Mail and the Telegraph in particular went way over the top in their reporting. Here is some breathless prose from the latter. "They are the British couple at the centre of the gripping revelation that has exhilarated Biblical scholars and historians alike: the discovery of 70 ancient lead and copper sealed books, bound with wire, whose pages could be contemporary accounts of the final years of Jesus' life. The books, credit card sized codices, are thought to be among the earliest existing Christian documents, possibly predating the writings of St Paul. David Elkington, 49, a religious author, and his wife Jennifer revealed that the codices had been found in a remote cave in eastern Jordan - a region to which it's believed early Christians fled after the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem." If anything, the Mail goes even further "The image is eerily familiar: a bearded young man with flowing curly hair. After lying for nearly 2,000 years hidden in a cave in the Holy Land, the fine detail is difficult to determine. But in a certain light it is not difficult to interpret the marks around the figure’s brow as a crown of thorns. The extraordinary picture of one of the recently discovered hoard of up to 70 lead codices – booklets – found in a cave in the hills overlooking the Sea of Galilee is one reason Bible historians are clamouring to get their hands on the ancient artefacts." Something here definitely did not smell right, triggering 80's bullshit detector. Not having access to the tablets let alone the expertise needed for a proper examination 80 merely suggested in Faith-Based News that all was not as the press hype claimed and supplied a link on previous work by the man who was plugging the tablets. This was a way of establishing Elkington's credentials and would perhaps help to judge the likelihood of his tablet tale.

The link was to a page featuring a book written by Elkington and a potted biography. This is from the latter "For 20 years David has been led on a revelatory trail through world mythology, linguistics and philology into geophysics, architecture, acoustics, music, neuro-physiology, theology and still further into the all-encompassing, resonant atmosphere of the planet. As his research continued, surprising results emerged. For several years, David has been working with Dr Keith Hearne, the 'father of lucid dream research', on a new area of psychology - Geolinguistics - which sees the development of language as a direct result of the Earth's physical environment." Now call 80 an old cynic but this alone was enough to set alarm bells ringing. It's a pity the Mail and Telegraph didn't do such a trivial investigation before publishing their silly stories. On the other hand maybe they did and the reporters were unable to see Elkington's book and the accompanying blurb as the New Age poppycock it is. Here is part of the description of his book, In the Name of the Gods.

"Everything that exists does so because of vibration. Matter comes into being because energy vibrates - any science book will tell you that. But understand the science of vibration, learn how to use it and you will have the key to... Well, everything. Knowledge like that would be worth a lot of money. How about £692 billion? That's how wealthy in today's terms, the Templars became after their search for knowledge in the Middle East. If we wish to know what knowledge they found, we only have to look at what happened next - Cathedrals, scores of them, erected across Europe. Why were these immense edifices built? Have you heard the acoustics in these places? Make the right sound and the effect is mind expanding, modern scientific research can prove it so. The Earth vibrates, bell-like and deeply, within itself and as a consequence of incoming cosmic rays. In the alpha state man's own mind is in harmony with the resonance of Mother Earth. Take the Ancient's knowledge, and the right vibration in the right place can link you to the secrets of the Earth and of the Cosmos too. This spiritual technology requires a sacred laboratory; an acoustically designed building, appropriate in shape and position - like the Great Pyramid for example."

The above twaddle did not bode well for the authenticity of the lead tablets and the overblown claims made by the press. It was enough for 80 to be more than a little suspicious of any claims by Mr Elkington. Now such suspicion is justified by an article called Artifacts and the Media: Lead Codices and the Public Portrayal of History in which the author, Thomas S. Verenna, looks at the mainstream media's (MSM) sensational and gullible coverage of the tablets story. He then contrasts that coverage with that of Bibliobloggers (who they?) who asked all the questions that the MSM failed to. It turns out the tablets, or something very similar had appeared before. Elkington had sent pictures of some tablets from the same corpus the previous year to Professor Peter Thonemann of Oxford. Here is a short quote from the findings he sent to Elkington.

"The text on your bronze tablet, therefore, makes no sense in its own right, but has been extracted unintelligently from another longer text (as if it were inscribed with the words: ’t to be that is the question wheth’). The longer text from which it derives is a perfectly ordinary tombstone from Madaba in Jordan which happens to have been on display in the Amman museum for the past fifty years or so. The text on your bronze tablet is repeated, in part, in three different places, meaningless in each case. The only possible explanation is that the text on the bronze tablet was copied directly from the inscription in the museum at Amman by someone who did not understand the meaning of the text of the inscription, but was simply looking for a plausible-looking sequence of Greek letters to copy. He copied that sequence three times, in each case mixing up the letters alpha and lambda." 80 can find no evidence that Elkington told anyone of this analysis when he "introduced" the tablets to the press this April.

Another investigator quoted, Robert Deutsch, found "...that one of the images—a chariot with a rider pulled by four horses—in the tablet Thonemann examined was taken directly from a modern fake tourist trinket. So identical was the image on the tablet with the trinket that there made little sense to say that it was anything but a direct copy, offering further evidence against its authenticity." This, along with other evidence cited in Verenna's article, is utterly damning. Not only are the tablets discredited but Elkington's role in the matter is highly suspect. The fact it was the Bibliobloggers rather than the press that got to the bottom of this story is perhaps the most interesting aspect of the affair. As Verrena concludes "After examining the almost immediate response to the codices by Biblioblogs, one is confronted with the value of a form of media, which is not peer reviewed or looked over by an editor, which can bring about correct historical information to a large audience quickly. Perhaps blogging isn’t enough; but it is something." So will the Mail and Telegraph be printing a retraction or an apology in the light of this information? Don't hold your breath. (Good sites on pseudo-archaeology and pseudo-history are Doug's Archaeology Site, Bad Archaeology and In The Hall Of Maat.) Thanks to the excellent Explorator for the heads-up.

Let's Blame The Jews - is Pat Condell's latest video on the recent rise of anti-Semitism, often fuelled by Muslims who are only too quick to whine about so-called Islamophobia, but think Jews are fair game - after all, their magic book tells them so. Not that many European countries need any help with anti-Semitism from the Muslim influx - it never really went away. For anyone in the USA who may be feeling smug about this, an FBI hate crime survey found 65.7 percent of them were committed against Jews. Against Muslims? 7.7 percent. Hell, there were more crimes against Christians. Rather bad news for the Islamophobia industry.

(Can't see the video? Then click here)

British Vets Call For Labelling Of Meat From Religious Slaughter - "the British Veterinary Association (BVA) has called for the labelling of meat from animals slaughtered without pre-stunning in response to the increase of ritually slaughtered meat 'unknowingly' entering the general market. Delegates at the BVA Welfare Foundation Discussion Forum were told that meat should be clearly labelled according to whether the animal was stunned before it was slaughtered or not, so that customers can make an informed choice.

Their call echoes calls from the NSS who have long argued that the absence of labelling of meat from religious slaughter without pre-stunning deprives consumers of important information that could affect their purchase and consequently serves to subsidise the religious slaughter industry. Current legislation states that all animals should be stunned prior to slaughter, but grants exemptions for ritually slaughtered meat destined for a specific religious community. The BVA have argued that meat from non-stunned animals being placed on the secular markets was possibly against current legislation." Read the rest here. The above is taken from the National Secular Society's (NSS) free weekly email newsletter, Newsline.

Quote - "We have consistently campaigned for an end to exemptions from welfare legislation that religious groups have been granted by the Government, against the independent advice from the Farm Animal Welfare Council. As long as such exemptions remain, it is important that consumers are given accurate information that informs them if the meat they are purchasing comes from animals slaughtered under such exemptions." Stephen Evans, Campaigns Manager at the NSS. Write to your MEP requesting that they support amendment 359 at the Second Reading on the Food Information Regulations in July to require labelling of meat from slaughter without stunning.

Spirit Of Gullibility - the Mail reports "A young woman who repeatedly stabbed her mother as she slept has walked free from court after a judge accepted she believed she was acting on the instructions of evil spirits. Psychiatrists said she was not mad and the jury agreed that she knew what she was doing." Spirits, evil or not, DO NOT EXIST. This young woman is obviously mentally ill or a convincing liar. There is no other explanation. She should undergo further psychiatric examination as she poses a danger to her mother and the public. "The court heard a psychiatrist who assessed Mbulawa said she was still a risk because she believed the spirits could possess her again and she has no control over them." It certainly wouldn't hurt if the gullible idiot of a judge, Mr Justice Keith, saw a psychiatrist as well. Spirits indeed - this is a 21st century not the bloody Middle Ages. 80 is now off for a day's shoplifting - under the influence of spirits naturally...