The View from Number 80

July 10th 2005

Moronic Comment - of the week from Jeb Bush as Hurricane Dennis hits Florida. “I think there is a legitimate feeling, ‘Why me? What did I do wrong?'” No Jeb, it is certainly an understandable and irrational reaction but not legitimate. Unless you really believe such meteorological phenomena are affected by individual human actions. Surely even you aren't that dumb - oh I forgot, of course you are.

Subhuman Slur - a short while back (see Legislative Lunacy) 80 wrote "Even in communities where differing religious doctrines are no longer the real cause for division the labels remain, as in Northern Ireland, in order to conveniently identify the others, the ones who are not us. This perception of different religious groups as other, as wrong, as deliberately erring, as outside your special revelation is, as so often in the past, the first step in dehumanizing those seen as different, and so becomes an excuse for their persecution." For an illustration of just such a tactic, and also a lesson in the overpowering arrogance of many religionists, take a look at the outpourings of John Vlazny, Archbishop of Portland and a deluded old bigot, which see the light of day in the Catholic Sentinel. Vlazny laments the fact that "Nowadays nearly one in every six Americans claims no particular religious affiliation. Here in Oregon more than half our fellow citizens identify themselves in a similar fashion." In 80's view this is a cause for hope but naturally the Archbishop takes it as a spur to encourage evangelization of these poor people - typical of his kind he assumes that those unencumbered by his weird superstitions are somehow lacking. In fact this churchman goes further than this, much further, with an outrageous and offensive statement in which he declares "...people of faith must demonstrate to unbelievers and those who are indifferent to God that the only way a person can be truly human is to be religious, to be in relationship with the divine. To be truly and fully human, one must eventually encounter Jesus Christ, the Divine Word, whose good news is meant to be shared with women and men of all cultures." So those who live their lives untrammeled by superstition or those who follow other faiths are less than human, are they? The word arrogance does not really begin to describe the Archbishop's unthinking assumption of superiority for those who share his particular supernatural world view. This is the beginning of a very slippery slope when someone of Vlazny's authority is content to label millions of folk worldwide as subhuman. It is widely believed that when the epithet Nazi is used in any debate that sensible discussion is at an end - and in most cases this is true, but reading Vlazny's piece 80 can't help thinking of the millions of people who were labelled as untermensch as the first step in their eventual extermination. No doubt Vlazny would be horrified and offended at the comparison - tough. If he starts hurling subhuman shit from his pulpit he should not be too surprised when some of it sticks to his chasuble.

July 13th 2005

"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction." -Blaise Pascal

The Elephant is Back - in fact it never went away. The elephant in the room that no one wants to acknowledge, referred to by Richard Dawkins in the wake of the 9/11 atrocity, is religion, or more specifically the religions of the book, the Abrahamic religions of Islam, Christianity and Judaism. This book, the Torah, and its mutated offspring the Bible and the Quran, is full of incitements to cruelty, hatred and violence. Religious intolerance to the point of murder is held up as righteous action rewarded by God, as can be seen, for example, in the story of Phineas (Numbers 25:7-8). That these books contain these things cannot be denied, but this uncomfortable fact is ignored, swept under the carpet by the so-called mainstream or moderate religionists who do not wish to confront the violent underpinnings of their faiths. For a fundamentalist everything in the holy book is true and cannot be ignored in this way - in fact the fundamentalists are far closer to the ancient writer's ideals than any modern moderate preacher, rabbi or mullah. The so-called mainstream have diluted the original message, but it is still there, ready to be utilized by people such as whoever transformed some young British men into the suicide squad that hit London on July 7th. Like young people everywhere they were outraged no doubt at the many injustices in the world and wanted to do something about it. This disaffection made them prime targets for others to warp their understandable feelings into a superstitious fanaticism, a wish to strike out violently, an action they were told would end with them taking their place in Paradise. Relatives and friends have described these young murderers as ordinary blokes - except these ordinary blokes carried bombs onto the Tube and a bus, fully aware of the bloody mayhem they were about to cause. They sat on the underground train surrounded by the very people they were about to murder, people of all faiths and colors. This is what religion can do. This violence that runs through the scriptures remains a wellspring to be drawn upon by fanatics to produce yet more zealots ready to die for their god. The question of why an all-powerful deity, creator of the everything, needs minions to carry out murder in his name does not arise. Logic and rationality are left far behind, buried by faith and conviction. The Christian abortion clinic bomber, the murderous Jewish "settler" and the Islamic jihadi are really brothers under the skin, brothers of the book, subject to a brainwashing technique many centuries old - that of religious indoctrination and promises of an afterlife. Whether the shadowy masters who train the cannon fodder, the footsoldiers, the ones who die or get caught, believe their own stories is immaterial, as long as they can use religion to make their dupes to do their bidding. These young Britons and their counterparts elsewhere are a cheap weapon, and to their trainers and handlers their lives are of no more consequence than those of the people they murder. In the short term the British government will crack down on firebrand preachers preaching holy war, labelling them extremists, but in the long term it is vital that the role of religion itself is examined. It is indeed bizarre at the church services in remembrance of those who have died at the hands of fanatical religion to hear comforting phrases read from the same holy books that provided justification for the murders in the first place. If anyone doubts the malign effect of religion, think - when did the news last feature an atheist suicide bomber, an agnostic white supremacist or a humanist queerbasher? (also see Baneful Biblical Basis? and also this piece by Jason Burke writing in The Observer called "The violence that lies in every ideology".

"Nothing in Islam can ever justify the evil actions of the bombers." says Sir Iqbal Sacranie, of the Muslim Council of Britain. He is wrong, it is a sad and deplorable fact that there is far too much that can be used this way. See here.

What Do They Want? - further down this page 80 wrote in the wake of the London bombing that one consequence is "..the quiet and grim determination that the scum that acted today will never succeed in achieving their aims." But what are those aims?  Amir Taheri, writing in The Times has summed them up, chillingly and succinctly. "..you are dealing with an enemy that does not want anything specific, and cannot be talked back into reason through anger management or round-table discussions. Or, rather, this enemy does want something specific: to take full control of your lives, dictate every single move you make round the clock and, if you dare resist, he will feel it his divine duty to kill you." Do read his article on the futility of attempting a dialogue with these people. Anyone who thinks it is possible to debate with them and reach any kind of conclusion that they would accept other than total victory is as deluded as they are. Also see Christopher Hitchens writing in the Daily Mirror on the impossibility of accommodation with these fanatics over their "grievances" - such as "The grievance of seeing unveiled women. The grievance of the existence, not of the State of Israel, but of the Jewish people. The grievance of the heresy of democracy, which impedes the imposition of sharia law. The grievance of a work of fiction written by an Indian living in London. The grievance of the existence of black African Muslim farmers, who won't abandon lands in Darfur. The grievance of the existence of homosexuals. The grievance of music, and of most representational art..." Connecting the atrocities with Britain's misguided participation in George Bush's foolish and disastrous invasion of Iraq is to miss the big picture - these people want nothing more than to destroy our way of life and drag us back to barbarism. Their indiscriminate tactics kill many fellow Muslims but their attitude matches that of George Bush "If you are not with us you are against us" - and that includes ordinary moderate Muslims as much as anyone else. A moderate Muslim is to them an apostate and hence worthy of death. (Here is an interesting piece by Ronald Bailey writing for Reason which asks the question "If the West (more specifically, the United States) withdraws its armed forces from Iraq and the rest of the Muslim world will the Muslim terrorists leave us alone?")

July 15th 2005

July 22nd 2005

Nothing is Certain - although some things are more certain than others. Absolute certainty is something humans crave but unless we subscribe to an irrational view of the world we will not find it. This irrationality may most often take the form of supernatural beliefs or a political ideology - and is in its most dangerous form when these two combine. In religion, for example, a monochromatic view is possible, but only by disregarding how the real world works. If you have a holy book that explains everything, at least to your satisfaction, then why listen to anyone else, why even consider their viewpoint? It is those that think they know all the answers, because their god told them so, with no room for doubt, who are the people who can step onto a crowded subway train with a backpack full of explosives. Where there is no room for doubt there is no room for compassion, there is no room for mercy, there is no room for intellectual growth. In the eyes of the fundamentalist fanatic there is no dividing line between personal beliefs and politics. The precepts of their faith are not for the individual but must be universally obeyed, their beliefs must be made into laws for all. That these beliefs and laws are hangovers from an earlier time, an earlier culture when the holy books were written and life was vastly different from today is of no concern. God and his lawgivers and prophets hold absolute authority.This can take the form of the kind of Christianity that has become so vocal and demanding in the US and which seeks to turn the country into a theocracy. It can also take the form of what some have called Islamofascism that is behind the bombings in Iraq. These jihadis are not freedom fighters, striving to drive out a foreign invader, though some will try to tell you that. No freedom fighter detonates a bomb in a crowd of children, no matter how hated are the occupiers of their land. The July 7th murderers in London were not advancing the cause of oppressed people anywhere - they were acting out, like so many robots, the certainties fed them by religious fanatics.

We can all be frightened by uncertainty but when the certainties of religious or political fanatics are imposed on those who do not share those views all manner of horrors become possible. In the wake of the 9/11 atrocities (see Baneful Biblical Basis) 80 quoted Jacob Bronowski, from the Ascent of Man. "It is said that science will dehumanise people and turn them into numbers. This is false, tragically false. Look for yourself. This is the concentration camp and crematorium at Auschwitz. This is where people were turned into numbers. Into this pond were flushed the ashes of some four million people. And that was not done by gas. It was done by arrogance. It was done by dogma. It was done by ignorance. When people believe they have absolute knowledge, with no test in reality, this is how they behave. This is what men do when they aspire to the knowledge of gods. Science is a very human form of knowledge. We are always at the brink of the known, we always feel forward for what is to be hoped. Every judgement in science stands on the edge of error, and is personal. Science is a tribute to what we can know although we are fallible." We must learn not to fear uncertainty but to embrace it and grow in our knowledge. The Nobel Prize winning physicist and bongo player Richard Feynman put it this way "I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it is much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers that might be wrong." Many folk accuse "science" of being unyielding and claiming absolute certainty - this is as true of those who embrace uproven medical therapies or new age nonsense as many religionists - but they could not be more wrong.

Science - or more accurately the scientific method - is a way of learning about the cosmos by successively more accurate approximations. The voyage of discovery that is the oldest of the sciences, astronomy, has moved from a flat earth to a geocentric system to our current understanding of a vast cosmos, billions of years old. If we had stayed with the holy books' account of the world as the literal truth we would still be wallowing in the primitive world view of our ancestors, a world view that is examined by Glenn Elert in The Scriptural Basis for a Geocentric Cosmology and also by Richard Carrier in Cosmology and the Koran. Yet many of us still sick to these same books for rules on how to conduct our lives. Many of these rules made little or no sense at the time they were formulated, and make even less sense now. This quotation from Isaac Asimov illustrates perfectly the man's impish sense of humor and may even sound uncaring, but unless we question many of the things our religions and ideologies hold to be certain we are doomed to repeat centuries of ignorance and violence. "Inspect every piece of pseudoscience and you will find a security blanket, a thumb to suck on, a skirt to hold. What have we to offer in exchange? Uncertainty! Insecurity!" Asimov was in this instance talking about pseudoscience but it also applies to religious and political dogma. So, nothing is certain - and a good thing too, otherwise we would never learn how to survive in a changing cosmos. As 80 says in the introduction to this page "We live in a fascinating, beautiful and, let's face it, dangerous enough universe without complicating matters with gobbledegook."

Carnival of the Godless #18 - now available over at St Nate's Blog

Don't Like it Here? - why not move on? Here is an interesting piece, The West's not anti-Islam — it just gives rights to women, by Mary Ann Sieghart writing in the Times of London on a poll conducted by YouGov (pdf) that was (part*) published in the Daily Telegraph. One of her first points is that a sizeable proportion of British Muslims, 32 per cent of them, thought that "Western society is decadent and immoral and that Muslims should seek to bring it to an end." The immediate thought is that if these people feel this way why are they living in Britain? Many of the things that are praiseworthy about Britain, including freedom of expression, religious choice and, most particularly, the equality of women would go straight out of the door if it became a Muslim state. It is the attitude to women that Sieghart looks at in more detail. She finds that the number of those that bear antipathy towards Britain, that is those that feel no loyalty to the country, is three times greater among men than women. She suggests "...that Muslim men resent the way in which their traditional feelings of superiority over women are challenged in the West. Here, they simply can’t get away with subjugating their womenfolk in the way that they can in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan or Somalia."

This seems to be yet another instance of culture being an inseparable part of religion, in this case the Abrahamic religions of Islam, Christianity and Judaism, the religions of the book. The book, the Torah, was composed by men in an Iron Age society where women were second class citizens and this cultural view is an integral part of the "scriptures" and their offspring. Therefore the argument whether unfair treatment of women is cultural or religious is a nonsense - it is purely cultural - as are the religions themselves. The religious texts enshrine the prejudices that obtained in the cultures where they were composed. (The idiotic notion that they were divinely inspired is not worthy of consideration) This would matter less if fundamentalist followers of these faiths did not insist their religious rules should be the rules for all societies. Such prejudice against women, while still extant to a degree, has much less of a chance in a secular state where religion is tolerated but kept out of politics and lawmaking. As for those men who think that women are somehow less than human and should be blamed in nearly every case for men's sexual transgressions and kept within the home, uneducated and subservient, they must be made aware that Britain (or anywhere else) is no place for such ignorant hateful misogynic prejudice. This view is put forcefully in Sieghart's piece by a woman who appreciates what an enlightened society has to offer, Bushra Nasir, the head teacher of Plashet School for girls in East London. Commenting on the YouGov poll she said, "If 32 per cent of British Muslims really do think that Western society is immoral and should be brought to an end, then I ask myself: if they hate it so much, why live here?" This is a perfectly valid question - and one which many people in Britain, of all faiths and none, will be asking. (*for more comment on the poll see this from UK Polling Report and, on religion in society, In the Name of God)

This Morning's Cloob - for a funny, scathing, detailed, accurate analysis of the totally crap performance of "one of the most sought-after psychics in the UK" read Tony Youens' Commentary. ITV, a commercial UK channel has been "testing" a psychic on a talk show called This Morning. 80 can only admire Tony's patience to sit through this unmitigated drivel (although it is a fair bet his blood pressure reached dangerous levels). Even more admirable is his dissection of the whole pathetic business, although this comes relatively easily to him as a skilled cold-reader himself. Not that his knowledge of psychic con tricks  needed too much employment here as the psychic involved, Mia Dolan, seems pretty inept, even given the help of the biased and gullible hosts of the show. To use Tony's own term, Mia Dolan's performance and claimed psychic powers are just the usual cloob. (also see his excellent article on Psychic Sophistry)

Back Door Man - George Bush, unable to push his nomination for UN ambassador through the usual channels, has used the recess appointment dodge to bypass the Senate and appoint the deeply unpleasant John Bolton, otherwise known as Scary Mustache Guy. Bolton has a reputation for an abrasive manner, the bullying of subordinates and antipathy for the UN itself which is all well documented. Just Dubya's kind of guy, even though he looks somewhat like a Village People wannabe. Perhaps it was Bolton's role in the 2000 presidential election debacle in Florida that won him the UN position - payback for a job well done. The fact that his attitude to the UN is well known and also that his back door appointment can only run for 17 months will do little to enhance his performance at that body. Many of the reforms that he was supposed to implement when his nomination was made 5 months ago have already been effected (reg rqd) - perhaps he can use the spare time to groom his upper lip.

Unscrupulous Fools - the perfectly understandable reaction of condemnation and disgust by most Muslims to suicide bombings, most of which, particularly in Iraq, kill their fellow religionists has been somewhat undermined recently. The International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU) on July 26th called on the United Nations to condemn killing in the name of religion. According to the IHEU this was blocked (scroll down for full text) by Islamic members of the Sub-Commission on Human Rights in Geneva. These members chose to interpret a prepared text which IHEU representative David Littman attempted to read on behalf of the Association for World Education, the Association of World Citizens, and IHEU as an attack on Islam. Attempted, for he was unable to continue because of repeated interruptions. (This immediately brings to mind the old saying "if the cap fits wear it". These Islamic states' representatives obviously decided this was their headgear.) The document, produced in response to the spate of recent suicide bombings around the world, called upon the UN Human Rights Commission "to condemn calls to kill, to terrorise or to use violence in the name of God or any religion". That the Muslim representatives objected to this puts them in a very bad light indeed and is inexcusable. It is time that these clowns ackowledged that their religion, or more accurately an extreme fundamentalist version, is being used as justification for indiscriminate mass murder. Did these creeps even think once about the crowd of Iraqi schoolkids who were blown apart by a jihadist? Can they not condemn all such actions by religious fanatics? It is not enough to condemn individual acts of terror - condemnation of the whole mindset that says religiously inspired murder is acceptable is what is needed. They are in 80's view beneath contempt for ducking the chance to abominate such barbarism. What signal do they think this sends to the rest of the world?

Quote - "If only Michael Jackson's trial had been held in Darfur. Last month, CNN, Fox News, NBC, MSNBC, ABC and CBS collectively ran 55 times as many stories about Michael Jackson as they ran about genocide in Darfur." Nicholas D Kristoff, New York Times (reg rqd)

So What? - read this fatuous drivel from Tony Blair in a BBC report. "Abolishing faith schools is not the way to create harmony between different communities in the wake of the London attacks, Tony Blair has said. The prime minister said axing Muslim schools would mean ending Catholic, Jewish and Protestant schools too. (So what?) "Realpolitik" would prevent such a move, said Mr Blair." What 80 sees here is not so much realpolitik as Blair's own prejudices and particularly his leanings towards Roman Catholicism. His own children attended Catholic schools. (see Viruses of the Mind by Richard Dawkins on the dangers of a religious education)

August 5th 2005

Intelligent Design - made a great leap the other day - no, not in the way of scientific evidence, that would be impossible, as ID is not science. What happened was that George W Bush, that intellectual giant, endorsed the idea of teaching this ill-disguised creationist claptrap in science class. So the USA takes another shambling step towards an anti-science dark age. In a world that desperately needs to use science and its application in technology more and more in order to survive the challenges ahead the leader of the currently most powerful nation on the planet backs introducing religion into the science curriculum. Bush even trotted out the mantra pushed by the ID crowd that he "... felt like both sides ought to be properly taught." This was "...so people can understand what the debate is about." There are not two sides - there is a scientific theory backed by the overwhelming weight of evidence and there is a silly idea that gaps in our current knowledge need a supernatural explanation. There is no connection between the two - one is science and the other is wishful thinking. There are no grounds for a "debate".

This slow stifling of science, if not vigorously opposed, will surely lead to the demise of the US as a world player - the neocons grandly refer to the New American Century - yet by their own actions they are already making this most unlikely. As this op-ed in the Boston Globe puts it "School boards are debating whether to mandate alternative creation sciences in at least 15 states. American high schoolers do badly enough on international science tests without the president casting doubt on the core theory of biology." Already the latest developments in stem cell research emanate from South Korea and the UK thanks to Bush's ignorant opposition to the research. The president actually has a scientist on the team, John H. Marburger, who is on record as saying "..intelligent design is not a scientific concept." As has been noted by many commentators why didn't the spineless press pack at Bush's announcement ask Bush why he is contradicting his own adviser? In a report from the New York Times (reg rqd) there is an explanation of just exactly who Bush listens to rather than Marburger. It seems "At the White House, intelligent design was the subject of a weekly Bible study class several years ago (by) Charles W. Colson. Mr. Colson has also written a book, "The Good Life," in which a chapter on intelligent design features Michael Gerson, an evangelical Christian who is an assistant to the president for policy and strategic planning." There is also a lovely correction in the NYT piece that shows a revealing slip on the writer's behalf - and one on which the ID pushing Discovery Institute was no doubt quick to pounce "An article yesterday about comments by President Bush on the teaching of evolution misstated a word in a quotation from Stephen Meyer of the Discover (sic) Institute in Seattle, who praised Mr. Bush's comments on the theory of intelligent design, which disputes the idea of natural selection in explaining the complexity of life. Mr. Meyer said, "We interpret this as the president using his bully pulpit to support freedom of inquiry and free speech about the issue of biological origins" - not "biblical origins." "

On a related note a Pastor Russell Johnson is in the news trashing - you guessed it, evolution. This know nothing clod has trotted out the "old Hitler was an evolutionist" line with the implication that this made him an atheist and therefore without morals. This drivel seems to go down well with Johnson's audiences in Ohio according to USA Today - sadly the article does nothing to refute this old lie. Hitler was in fact a Christian and magical thinker - his absurd ideas were utterly unscientific as even superficial research demonstrates. His regime had a cozy relationship with the Christian church as detailed in this fascinating page from the National Secular Society. To quote from the introduction "The Nazis are only explicable in terms of a religious mysticism which incorporated the nationalism and racism that was current in Central Europe at the time." Fascism and Christianity have often been bedfellows - a prime example being the relationship between the regime of Franco in Spain and the Catholic church. (Although it must be said many brave individual Christians have died opposing such regimes) Johnson is an example of the religious resurgence in the US that wishes to turn the country into a theocracy, as is another religionist quoted in USA Today, Pastor Rod Parsley, who proudly declares "I like to say I'm not a Republican or a Democrat, I'm a Christ-o-crat." Several more appropriate descriptions of Parsley spring to mind, sadly none of them printable. 80 has come across Parsley before and enjoyed a devastating review of his magnum opus Silent No More: Bringing Clarity to America... While Freedom Still Rings. (see Shredded Parsley)

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August 7th 2005

Cum Grano Salis - the ever-fascinating and informative Explorator newsletter has long had a section called Cum Grano Salis (or Don't Eat That Elmer) for the more questionable ancient history/archaeology items that the internet throws up - and throws up is often just the right term. In the latest Explorator there are three items that could qualify, but only one is where it belongs, that being a piece on that tireless (and tiresome) seeker of Atlantis, Robert Sarmast. Let us quickly state that in 80's view anyone who looks for a real, physical Atlantis using Plato for clues is wasting their time. That said there are still an awful lot of seekers out there and the best you can say for Sarmast is that at least he is persistent - pointlessly so - but persistent nonetheless. Looking for the remains of a city state that never existed outside of Plato's imagination cannot be anything but a misuse of time and resources but as both of these are Sarmast's it does little harm. 80 looked at Sarmast briefly in 2003 (Atlantis Found) and 2004 (What's In a Name?) Now he has announced plans to return to the seabed between Cyprus and Syria where he claims to have discerned manmade structures. Further investigation may indeed establish the existence of these structures, but Atlantis they ain't. (Also see At Last Atlantis, on rival theorists who believe the lost city was in the South China Sea (!) and hence naturally take a dim view of Sarmast's silly Mediterranean fantasies.) Explorator's other two Cum Grano Salis candidates have somehow escaped into the main body of the newsletter - this first one is so bizarre that a spoof is suspected. Judy Kay King has "spent the last four years decoding ancient Egyptian symbols and interpreting the results through biosemiotics, a biological science of signs and messages in living systems." and is now bringing out a book. (There is always a book) It is called The Isis Thesis. Now try saying that three times quickly. And what has she discovered? That mythological stories are metaphors for the molecular biology of bacteria and viruses. (Bet you didn't see that one coming) As she puts it "I got a hunch that what the pharaohs were talking about could be observed at the level of proteins and molecules. Their gods and goddesses are actually proteins." After reading that you may well be surprised to learn that she has a master's degree in English, although obviously her interests are far wider, for she says her idea is applicable to other scientific theories and both mythological and religious literature. According to this report she believes her unlikely findings match "...up with our best modern science, such as black hole theory, string theory and quantum loop theory." Quite. The other escapee item is an announcement of a meeting to discuss something even more tedious than Atlantis - the Turin Shroud. The Dallas International Shroud of Turin Conference is described as "..a scientific gathering for presenting research papers on what is thought to be the 2,000-year old burial cloth of the historic Jesus." The fact that the overwhelming weight of evidence points to the thing being a medieval fraud does not seem to trouble the attendees or indeed the writer of the article, who blithely refers to the piece of cloth as " Christendom’s most important historical artifact..." He even refers to the now discredited results of the investigations of late Raymond N. Rogers (see Clods Shroud Science). Like Atlantis, 80 fears that the Shroud has become a self-perpetuating industry and talking shop for those with nothing better or more useful to occupy their time.

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August 9th 2005

Theology Not Science - for an excellent summary of the fuss in the US over the teaching of evolution do take a look at The Faith That Dare Not Speak Its Name by Jerry Coyne, writing in The New Republic (registration is required but worth it for this article alone). Coyne, a professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolution at the University of Chicago, examines the claims of Intelligent Design (ID) proponents and reveals them to be merely old-style creationism dressed up in a nice white coat and cunningly divested of religious references, all the better to sneak into the science classroom. He looks at points raised by IDers and finds them untenable in the light of modern scientific research. One example is the lack of so-called "missing links" in the fossil record, but, as Coyne puts it, "When such fossils are found, as they often are, creationists must then punt and change their emphasis to other missing links, continually retreating before the advance of science." (God of the Gaps anyone?) Coyne also shows how even the most outwardly scientific of the ID crowd are motivated by a desire to promote a theological view of the world - here he quotes mathematician William Dembski, "The world is a mirror representing the divine life.... Intelligent design readily embraces the sacramental nature of physical reality. Indeed intelligent design is just the Logos theology of John's Gospel restated in the idiom of information theory." This kind of waffle clearly has no place in a science classroom. Coyne concisely summarizes the strategy employed "It is clear, then, that intelligent design did not arise because of some long-standing problems with evolutionary theory, or because new facts have called neoDarwinism into question. ID is here for only one reason--to act as a Trojan horse poised before the public schools: a seemingly secular vessel ready to inject its religious message into the science curriculum." If you have a friend, relative or acquaintance who is generally interested in the evolution/ID furor and would like to know more you could do a lot worse than get them to read Coyne's article - highly recommended.

"People sometimes try to score debating points by saying, "Evolution is only a theory." That is correct, but it's important to understand what that means. It is also only a theory that the world goes round the Sun -- it's just a theory for which there is an immense amount of evidence.There are many scientific theories that are in doubt. Even within evolution, there is some room for controversy. But that we are cousins of apes and jackals and starfish, let's say, that is a fact in the ordinary sense of the word."  Richard Dawkins

Great Ball of Fire - a so-called amateur psychic's misfortune provided the Times with a nice headline "Psychic's crystal ball burns down his flat in unforeseen blaze". According to firefighters sunlight was focused by the ball onto a pile of washing, igniting it. Herve Vandrot, the ball's owner, does not agree attributing the fire to an electrical fault. Even if this was the case it  doesn't let him off the hook - he still didn't see it coming.

And It's Free - many folk don't yet realize that you don't have to be in the UK to enjoy the BBC's radio output. The BBC Radio web page is the gateway to eleven stations where you can listen live or browse through the many archived items available. (Broadband is preferable and, for historical reasons, Realplayer is necessary. If, like 80, you find Realplayer intrusive and downright irritating, the answer is to install the cheekily named Realplayer Alternative) As an example of the fine material available, try this exercise - click over to Radio 4, then in the left sidebar click Science. This takes you to a load of archived material, some long term, some around only for a week until the next edition of a show is broadcast. One particular gem here is The Material World with Quentin Cooper, in which he and "..his live studio guests discuss the latest scientific investigations and research findings." This week's offerings are typically eclectic, firstly a fascinating discussion of ancient Greek "science fiction" and its links to the modern version, followed by an examination of left-handedness (are left-handers more creative?) to mark National Left-handers Day on August 13th. This item has the added bonus of input by Lewis Wolpert on other "...aspects of asymmetry in our brains, bodies and molecules." To quote Cooper, "..each week on The Material World we try to reflect the excitement, ideas, uncertainties, collisions and collaborations as science continues its never-ending voyage into the unknown". Highly recommended and a very good reason to check out the BBC's web output. And it's free...

Which Side Are You On? - read this powerful piece from the highly recommended Butterflies and Wheels. Follow it up with Darwin and Design: The Flawed Origins of a Critique which skewers some common misconceptions about scientists, atheism and morality, in this instance trotted out by Frederick Turner.  After those two samples you will then want to sign up for the updates delivered to your inbox every Monday. Subtitled "Fighting Fashionable Nonsense" B and W is a sane commentary on an insane world.

" Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars - mere globs of gas atoms. I too can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more? The vastness of the heavens stretches my imagination - stuck on this carousel my little eye can catch one - million - year - old light. A vast pattern - of which I am a part... What is the pattern, or the meaning, or the why? It does not do harm to the mystery to know a little about it. For far more marvelous is the truth than any artists of the past imagined it. Why do the poets of the present not speak of it? What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were a man, but if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent? "
The Feynman Lectures on Physics

Right on the Mark - It cannot have escaped regular readers' notice that 80 will, when goaded beyond endurance, indulge in what can only be called a rant. Take a moment now to read the latest column from Mark Morford at SFGate.com to see a master at work. "I cannot, for example, tolerate the dark and violent road down which this nation seems intent on careening like an Escalade on meth. I cannot tolerate brutal never-ending unnecessary wars and I cannot allow gay rights to be bashed and I truly loathe watching women's rights be slammed back to 1952. Or 1852.
I really have little patience for the gutting of our school system and the decimation of science and mysticism and the human mind for the sake of a handful of militant Christian zealots who truly believe the Second Coming will be arriving really soon but hopefully not before the next episode of HBO's "Cathouse: The Series," which they watch in secret with the lights off while clutching a Bible in one hand and a big tub of Country Crock margarine in the other." Great stuff - but you have to wonder, does he ever stop for breath? Is his keyboard fitted with a sprinkler system for when the prose gets too heated? Long may he rant.

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August 13th 2005

Ab Absurdo - Although considered underhand and improper as a formal debating tactic 80 has always found ridicule to be a powerful tool in confronting irrational ideas, especially in the realms of religion and pseudoscience, coincidentally two fields which overlap considerably, as evidenced by the Intelligent Design/creationist nonsense. The employment of ridicule is signalled by this site's logo, visible just below 80's attractive portrait, in the top left corner of this page. Ab Absurdo, according to the fascinating book Nil Desperandum, literally means "from the absurd" and is defined thus, "One who argues ab absurdo seeks to establish the validity of his position by pointing out the absurdity of his opponent's position." But as author Eugene Ehrlich cautions, "While an argument ab absurdo may have the effect of demolishing one's opponent's position in debate, it usually does not of itself prove the the validity of one's own position." In other words it is only useful as one of several methods of argument, but in some circumstances nothing else works quite as well. The British have long had a tradition of ridiculing figures of fear - including Hitler. 80 was reminded of this by a piece in the Daily Telegraph by Sam Leith with the eye-catching title The sanest reponse to teenage numpties who blow themselves up is simply to laugh at them. He is of course referring to the London Tube bombers and in the course of his article their inspiration, the so-called "radical" Islamic clerics. (About that word radical, which is getting a lot of airing on the news, invariably attached to the word cleric. It seems in this context to mean fundamentalist. If so, why not say fundamentalist? Perhaps it is merely an instance of syllabic parsimony. If so, daft has only one syllable - and none of the meaning is lost.)

Amid all the commentary in the press about fundamentalist Islam and terrorism, and the despicable attempts to justify terrorist atrocities, Leith comes as a breath of fresh air. Some may find his attitude frivolous but they would be wrong, he is actually making a serious point. When he says "What strikes me more and more about recent events is that we neglect the comical side of them at our peril. What these characters do is horrific. But there is something genuinely amusing about the motivations from which they do it. 72 virgins? Come off it. Restoring the Caliphate? Oh my giddy aunt. You lot really are dipsticks, aren't you?" he is bang on target by highlighting the sheer silliness of these superstitions and aspirations. Some people may warn that such mockery can only serve to enrage these nutters - but then surely they can't get any angrier than they are already, can they? And if the mockery  derails just one would-be mass murderer, that would surely be a good thing. As Leith says, "Nobody wants to blow themselves up on a train and look down from the afterlife to see that, rather than being crowned with the symbols of martyrdom and surrounded by the faces of the infidel filled with holy terror, your grave is surmounted by a dunce's cap."

In a similar vein is an earlier Telegraph opinion piece by Boris Johnson "Militant Islam has been shielded from proper discussion by cowardice, political correctness and a racist assumption that we should privilege the beliefs of a minority, even when they appear to be mediaeval. It is time the discussion was opened up not just to reason, but to reason's greatest ally, humour. Instead of banning the discussion of the 72 virgins of paradise, the alleged meed of the suicide bomber, would it not be much more efficient to make fun of this ludicrous claim?" Johnson, not normally viewed as an ally, endeared himself to 80 with this prediction, "Islam will only be truly acculturated to our way of life when you could expect a Bradford audience to roll in the aisles at Monty Python's Life of Mohammed." Sadly this is not something we can expect any time soon.

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August 18th 2005

Pope's Moral Example - The usual inordinate amount of coverage is being given to Pope Ratzinger's trip to Germany to participate in World Youth Day (which oddly lasts for a week) where the head of the Roman Catholic church will reach out to young people. Less attention is given to another news story from Texas involving Ratzinger and young folk - one he will be less happy to read. In Germany large numbers of the young faithful, no doubt boosted by the casually curious, have flocked to Cologne. It is estimated that an open-air mass given by Ratzinger on Sunday will attract up to a million people. Coverage has also been given to his visit to a Cologne synagogue, which was destroyed by the Nazis and rebuilt 20 years later. No coverage is being given to the questions that still remain about the Pope's military service and desertion towards the end of World War II. Many may consider these to be of little import 60 years later but when someone claims the moral high ground and dictates to others how they should live, nothing can be beyond scrutiny. This also goes for the other Pope story in the press - a lawsuit in Texas accuses Ratzinger of conspiring to conceal the molestation of three boys by a seminarian there, dating to the mid 90's, when Ratzinger was merely the pontiff's mastiff rather than the top dog himself. In those days he had a reputation as Pope Wojtyla's enforcer, or panzerkardinal as he was less-than-affectionately known. An attorney representing three boys, who have brought a civil suit accusing seminarian Juan Carlos Patino-Arango of molesting them, claims that the then Cardinal Ratzinger conspired to hide Patino-Arango's crimes and help him escape prosecution. 80 commented on this back in May - see Holy Omerta. An article in the Guardian says that Ratzinger was served with notice that he was named in the lawsuit in January of this year. The reaction to this has now been made known - Ratzinger's lawyers, acting for him under his nom du pape, Benedict XVI, have asked President Bush to declare the pontiff immune from liability because he is a head of state. In 80's, no doubt simplistic, view this is patently not the action of an innocent man wrongly accused of conspiracy to conceal a crime, but a guilty one seeking to avoid prosecution with a legal dodge. One wonders how many of the young folk thronging the streets of Cologne are destined to be groped by priests, something all the more likely while the Church is still in denial about the extent of the problem. What example is set for the minions in the Catholic hierarchy when the man at the very top, their moral leader, uses legal chicanery to avoid answering his accusers?

Just a Theory - If evolution is "just a theory" then so is gravity - hence the new alternative explanation for the phenomenon - Intelligent Falling. "Things fall not because they are acted upon by some gravitational force, but because a higher intelligence, 'God' if you will, is pushing them down," said Gabriel Burdett, who holds degrees in education, applied Scripture, and physics from Oral Roberts University. See The Onion for more. It also appears that those clever creation science guys have found out how Noah managed to collect his arkload of fauna - the answer is obvious - see Landover Baptist Church. Why, they even have a book for the kids, The Talking Snake Theory: Creation Science & History For Christian Children. But for those serious about religious belief - and who isn't - in 80's view the Flying Spaghetti Monster has more going for it than your regular, everday deities. Although if you feel strongly about the wearing of hedgehog underpants the New Anchorites could be your spiritual home. "New Anchorism only concerns itself with today and the future, events either real or imagined from hundreds of years ago cannot possibly be used to guide modern lives."

Both Sides Now - A sure sign that a news organization is presenting reasonably accurate coverage is if it is condemned by both sides in any given dispute upon which it reports. Al Jazeera has achieved this on occasion but the world champion is surely the BBC. In this latest instance its flagship documentary program, Panorama, has drawn the ire of the so-called Muslim Council of Britain (MCB). (Whether Britain's Muslims are homogenous enough to be represented by one organization is a moot point). It seems that the BBC team have been looking a little too closely into some of the connections of the MCB, described in this Observer piece as "..a loose structure of more than 400 affiliates." and found that some components of the council have links to extremist Islamic ideology. (The Panorama site trails the program as containing "strong, frank interviews with British Muslims on attitudes to integration, sectarianism, supremacy and suicide bombings in Britain and abroad.") The MCB, it seems, instead of addressing such allegations prefers to accuse the BBC of being pro-Israeli - a charge that can safely be described as idiotic, certainly by the authors of this site on The BBC’s war against Israel and also by the Israeli government's head of press, who accused the Beeb of 'demonising and vilifying' his country. All the MCB has achieved by its accusation is to focus attention on its own shortcomings, including its position on suicide bombings. The Observer quotes Abdul-Rehman Malik, of the Muslim magazine Q-News "You cannot be equivocal about innocent people. An innocent person in Tel Aviv is the same as an innocent person in Baghdad or London." 80 eagerly awaits the Panorama program (Sunday 21 August 2005 22:15 BST, BBC One) to see exactly what has got up the MCB's nose to the extent that it is driven to make such ridiculous accusations. For more about the MCB's affiliations and agenda take a look at MCB Watch, a blog "monitoring and commenting on the output of the Muslim Council of Britain."

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August 20th 2005

Riding the Royal Hobbyhorse - Charles Windsor has once again been making use of his unelected, privileged position to pronounce upon matters far beyond his area of competence - an area that, in 80's view, has yet to be detected let alone defined. Not satisfied with recently promoting a magical system of agriculture, he is back banging the drum for more so-called Complementary and Alternative Medicine (sCAM) to be made available via the UK's cash-strapped National Health Service. A few weeks back the clown prince was mentioned in the press for adopting "...some of the principles of biodynamics, a form of farming in which livestock are treated with homeopathic remedies rather than antibiotics, and astronomical calendars and signs of the zodiac play a role in determining when to sow and harvest crops." The prince's farm manager told the Times "Biodynamics has a lot going for it, we are beginning to use some of the principles to decide when we plant some vegetables. If the moon is waxing we plant some seed species and if the moon is waning, others. There is no doubt that if we plant certain seeds at the right phase of the moon they grow quicker and produce more vigorous plants." No doubt. Note that as is always the case with this kind of magical nonsense no numbers or studies are provided to back up the assertion. A look at this web page, from the Biodynamic Farming and Gardening Association, confirms that it is little more than the old concept of vitalism dressed up a bit for the 21st century. Hokum in a new suit is still hokum, but it does fit in nicely with Windsor's obsession with such nonsense. The daft ideas he promotes are nothing new at all but are given fresh currency by the press who seem to assume Windsor's social position means his mouthings merit serious attention - they do not.

Now another Times article informs us "Prince Charles has angered medical traditionalists by launching a campaign encouraging GPs to prescribe more “alternative” treatments to NHS patients." One assumes that by "medical traditionalists" the writer means those old fuddy-duddies who think that the practice of medicine should be evidence-based. Apparently offered as justification for Charles' promotion of his irrational hobbyhorse the article goes on to tell us "The royal family has a tradition of trying alternative treatments. The Queen is reported to be a devotee of homeopathic medicine and the Duke of Edinburgh to have worn a copper band to counter arthritis. The Princess Royal uses arnica, a yellow-flowering herb, to soothe bruises." What it actually shows is that the sort of in-breeding that produced this anachronistic bunch was aimed at preserving a bloodline, not improving intellectual capacity.

It is hard to to say which is the more irritating, Windsor's dangerous and irresponsible plugging of magical silliness or the British and foreign press for giving this deeply ignorant person a platform. The Times writer has at least provided the balancing remarks of Edzard Ernst, professor of complementary medicine at Exeter University, "This touch of royal support does complementary medicine no favours when we have a unique opportunity to place it on an evidence-based footing." Even this statement is off-kilter - none of the big alternative treatments such as homeopathy or acupuncture have, despite all the research carried out, come anywhere near being evidence-based. As has been pointed out, something that is actually proven to work is medicine, not alternative, not complementary, just medicine. Anything else is not. This simple idea seems quite beyond Simon Williams, policy director of the Patients Association, also quoted in the Times article, "We should be providing proven complementary treatments. People are now looking for alternatives to pills and they are more aware of the alternative out there." Two points to be made here - firstly there are no "proven complementary treatments". Secondly if there were, as stated above, they would not be complementary. The fact that people are more aware of sCAM says nothing whatsoever for its efficacy - medical treatments are not decided by a popularity contest - although if Windsor gets his way it could yet happen. (80 has looked at Windsor several times before, see Complementary Charlie, Killer Pouffes and Whacky Windsor's Wizard Wheezes. Finally, the thought occurs that given Windsor's espousal of outdated, non-proven medical treatments perhaps he would like to try an experiment and attempt to cure skin diseases by touch - see this Wikipedia article on scrofula aka the King's Evil.)

Settling Nothing - whether the Israeli withdrawal will herald a new life for the Palestinians in the Gaza strip or not there are still plenty of "settlers" on the West Bank with no sign of their imminent departure. It seems that a lot of the coverage has centered on the "anguish" of those Israelis turned out of their homes by their own armed forces. 80 would would have a deal more sympathy for these people but for for the fact that they, their government and the rest of the world, bar some right-wing religious fanatics, know that they should never have been there in the first place. UN Security Council Resolution No 446 makes this abundantly clear

"(The Council) Determines that the policy and practices of Israel in establishing settlements in the Palestinian and Arab territories occupied since 1967 have no legal validity and constitute a serious obstruction to achieving a comprehensive and lasting peace in the Middle East; Calls once more upon Israel, as the occupying power, to abide scrupulously by the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention, to rescind its previous measures and to desist from taking any action which would result in changing the legal status and geographical nature and materially affecting the demographic composition of the Arab territories occupied since 1967, including Jerusalem, and in particular, not to transfer parts of its own civilian population into the occupied Arab territories."

Anyone who claims that Israel has any right to those territories is appealing to Biblical legend and not modern international law. For these folk to claim land beyond Israel's legal borders makes as much sense as Britain laying claim to Brittany, on the grounds that it once was part of the realm of King Arthur. For more on such unsustainable claims see Missing, One Empire and Solomon, Arthur and Dubya.

(A web site that genuinely examines both sides of many of today's most contentious issues is ProCon.org. Under discussion there now are such questions as Should the words "under God" be in the U.S. Pledge of Allegiance? and Is sexual orientation determined at birth? and What are the solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? Recommended)

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August 23rd 2005

Childhood's End - An op-ed in the New York Times today by Verlyn Klinkenborg entitled "Grasping the Depth of Time as a First Step in Understanding Evolution" is a very welcome contribution to the current argument over evolution and so-called Intelligent Design (ID). Note that 80 says argument, not debate, for debate implies both sides are in some way comparable. Even a cursory investigation shows that ID is merely a political and religious mish-mash that fails to meet even the most elementary requirements for it to be considered science (see Wedge Cat). As Klinkenborg says "Intelligent design is not a theory at all, as scientists understand the word, but a well-financed political and religious campaign to muddy science. Its basic proposition - the intervention of a designer, aka God - cannot be tested. It has no evidence to offer, and its assumptions that humans were divinely created are the same as its conclusions. Its objections to evolution are based on syllogistic reasoning and a highly selective treatment of the physical evidence." 80 was pleased to notice that Klinkenborg also refers to feelings of awe in contemplating Deep Time and Deep Space, although he couches it differently and more eloquently, "The universe is perhaps 14 billion years old. Earth is some 4.5 billion years old. The oldest hominid fossils are between 6 million and 7 million years old. The oldest distinctly modern human fossils are about 160,000 years old. The truth of these numbers has the same effect on me as watching the night sky in the high desert. It fills me with a sense of nonspecific immensity. I don't think I'm alone in this." Damn' right he isn't, and those that think such feelings are reserved for believers in some capricious, murderous, imaginary sky fairy should wake up to the real and beautiful universe we inhabit and leave the old, primitive dreams of our intellectual childhood behind. In his last paragraph Klinkenborg also shows how dangerous such infantile dreams are for every living creature on Earth, humans included. "The essential, but often well-disguised, purpose of intelligent design, is to preserve the myth of a separate, divine creation for humans in the belief that only that can explain who we are. But there is a destructive hubris, a fearful arrogance, in that myth. It sets us apart from nature, except to dominate it. It misses both the grace and the moral depth of knowing that humans have only the same stake, the same right, in the Earth as every other creature that has ever lived here. There is a righteousness - a responsibility - in the deep, ancestral origins we share with all of life."

August 27th 2005

August 29th 2005