No through road

This is an interesting take on graffiti on road signs.  I've posted some Parisian road sign graffiti before, but this is a new one on me.  No through road for mythical characters here!

No through road for mythical saviours

Its interesting though.  When I see people wearing a cross around their necks I usually find myself wanting to ask what the T stands for.

Now I know!

Action needed on FGM

Today, BBC Radio 4's 'Today' programme briefly mentioned the problem of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM).  It interspersed this serious issue of child abuse in the name of Islam with trivial tales of someone high-wire walking across the Grand Canyon (or as it turned out, just across a tributary canyon).

That is shameful behaviour isn't it?

70 women go to the NHS every month for help relating to the medical problems caused by FGM, and this data only comes from the 6 of 15 specialist clinics that actually provided any data.  That might mean that the real figure is closer to 200 per month.

• Is this 'religious practice' illegal in UK?  Yes of course!  It is barbarism dressed up as religion.
• Are the authorities committing to its abolishment?  I suppose so.  They passed a law about it but that's as far as they went.
• Have they prosecuted anyone in the 18 years since the law was last clarified?  Not a single one (in spite of the 70 crimes per month).
• Is this the real face of Islamophobia?  I have no empirical evidence for the case, but it seems rather likely that people are afraid of being branded with this accusation.  Since they do have the data, why are they not acting to prosecute?
• What does this say about how big brother is watching us?  He doesn't have equality foremost in his mind!

Here we begin to see the problem with labels.  Islam, the religion of perpetual offence, has a special power over us and brands us as Islamophobes very easily.  Civil and criminal law is diverted in UK.  It is not that all muslims are in agreement over these matters.  However, the extremists shelter behind the nice people and all of them are fellow muslims first and only after that do they split into their various warring sects.

I say that the law is the law and although I would be reluctant to support lawyers, they must be able to do their work within the framework of clear secular law.

Religious 'law' (whichever religion) must be outlawed!  It is only truly outlawed after legal proceedings have succeeded.



Related links (although I don't seem to find one related to Today's feature):
Female genital mutilation victim was 'aged just seven'
MPs urge more action on female genital mutilation

Born of a woman

One small phrase from the bible has been the source of rumblings among scholars for nearly two milliennia.  Galatians 4:4, which refers to the birth of Jesus, is the problem.

"... born of woman, born under the Law"

Which phrase bothers you most?  Being born under the law doesn't have an immediately obvious meaning.  Apparently it means that Jesus was a Jew, but theologians get into all sorts of tangles about that.  Who can tell what the implications might be - and few of us would care anyway.  Theologians make their living by arguing about these things.

For me the first phrase was the interesting one.  Why would anyone bother to tell us how someone was born?  The involvement of his mother (when her virginity is not the point of interest) could hardly be a subject that anyone would ever wonder about. 

Or could it?

Perhaps this is a sign that some others believed that he had not been born in the usual way.  You might doubt this, but there is a potential culprit available in the person of Marcion.  (See Who was the Marcion that Hitch referred to so often)  Marcion taught that Jesus did not get born like the rest of us but that he was sent down from heaven.  Jesus still became human flesh, but he had nothing to do with the God of the Old Testament.  Given the unbelievability of the rest of the Jesus story I find that a perfectly consistent point of view, for what that is worth.

Marcionite thinking sheds a lot of light on the text of the bible (see Christianity's Albatross), as early Christians had to spend a lot of effort and time suppressing that particular heresy (along with all the others). 

The world would be very different if they had failed.

Government-sponsored cruelty to animals

Here is another example of the spinelessness of the UK's barely elected government, and its indifference to animal rights along with human equality rights. 

The government has decided not to take the correct moral decision in this allegedly Christian country.  Instead they pander to the profits of religious minorities . . . for it is profit and commerce that counts for Cameron and his cronies . . . isn't it?  And halal and kosher butchers obviously need to make their profits.

Why is this decision stupid and wrong?  There are many reasons, but the following are obviously candidate reasons.

• Animal rights
• Surely we should avoid cruelty wherever possible
• Lies about these animals not suffering are to be doubted
• Religious rights
• Christians have to follow the law
• Secularists and atheists have to follow the law
• Muslims are exempt and can use their cruel slaughter techniques
• Jews are also exempt and can use their same-but-totally-different, cruel, slaughter techniques
• Human rights
• Why do secular abattoirs have to go to the extra expense of humane slaughter when religious abattoirs are permitted to avoid them?
• Since halal and kosher meat is over-produced and distributed on the open market, why should I have to eat it and not have a right to know what I'm eating?
• Since this meat is not labelled, what Quality Assurance is imposed?  Or are they exempt from QA too?  It wouldn't be a surprise . . . would it?
• Are religious people to be trusted in a secular world anyway?  When did you ever hear of anyone 'lying for secularism'?

I think the government is just frightened of the likely response from religious minorities if it took a fair and just stance. In doing this, it discriminates against the majority.

But then again, if this was an effective democracy they would not be in government anyway.

The person of the Holy Spirit

One of the great mysteries that makes Christianity seem hard to believe is the doctrine of the Trinity.  Somehow God exists as three persons and yet is only one God. 

This mysterious and strange set of affairs is perhaps most clearly set out in the 'Athanasian Creed' - the one that you have probably never heard of.  Most Western Christians accept this 'third' creed as an accurate statement of their beliefs, even if they do not use it regularly in worship, preferring the Apostle's Creed and the Nicene Creed.  If you go to the Wikipedia page and read it you will probably understand why.  In its repetitive and multiply-redundant phraseology it tells us about the three persons of God - and if we have been brought up in a Christian culture it is very likely that we won't give much thought to the following question.

Who is 'the person' of the Holy Spirit?

Obviously we can understand the concept of Jesus as a person, even if we happen to have a view that he might have been a mythical person.  God, the father, is a little harder to envisage as the second person, in that he has no earthly form, except in a few Old Testament stories.

But the person of the Holy Spirit is something that is so familiar that we never question it - and yet so alien that we can't imagine it either.

Do you find that as paradoxical as me?

How to 'age' a fossil the fundie way!

I happened across this advice, thanks to a friend's Facebook page.  We wouldn't want to be led astray by science would we?

How to determine the Geological Age of a fossil - not like this!

Strangely, some of the advice seems almost sensible, but I don't think I can agree with the whole of any of the five points except number 4.

But why do they specify that it is the 'Geological Age', not just 'the age', and why put "Age" in quotes like that?  If point 5 is true, then the age is well defined, but let's face it, it isn't true and we all know it, even though the fundies exhort us to believe all that nonsense about 'the flood'.

Another Islamic attack?

Today there was an incident in Woolwich, London.  Some say that it was an islamic attack on a British soldier who was off-duty.  Maybe it was and maybe it wasn't.  Some say that it is what is happening in Syria every day, and they probably have a point. 

After all, the media can't even decide whether it was a machete attack or a knife attack, or whether the murderers were wielding a knife or a gun, or both.

But they looked a bit foreign and a bit Islamic!

The one thing that seems odd to me is that the Muslim Council of Britain apparently said in a statement: "This is a truly barbaric act that has no basis in Islam and we condemn this unreservedly.  Our thoughts are with the victim and his family."

Nice words, coming from a self appointed bunch of islamic clerics who have no right to claim to speak on behalf of anyone at all.  It must mean that they are feeling guilty about something.  One of the problems with Islam is that it has no hierarchy and no authorities who can speak for it.

Will we ever know the truth behind this incident or will BBC/government propaganda be the only thing we find out?

Incidentally . . . how many other murders happened in London today?  Why are they not newsworthy?

Plagiarising Douglas Adams

If you saw this book . . .

Douglas Adams plagiarised by David Wilkinson (or his publishers)

 . . . might you be tempted to think that it had been written by Douglas Adams? 

It has the same title as one of Adams' own works, it has a cover reminiscent of The Hitch-hikers Guide to the Galaxy, and there is a reference to the number 42 in the notes on the front and back cover.

42 meditations??? 

It is such an obvious attempt to steal the intellectual property of the Douglas Adams estate that I'm surprised to find that it is still on the market.

On Amazon there is only one review (rating it at 4 stars) which amuses me.  The small notes are mine.

"David Wilkinson's book is an excellent series of short meditations. [I assure you - it isn't!]  Its one drawback is that to be fully understood, the reader needs to have a close acquaintance with popular culture [of the 80s!]. Some of the references to films and TV programmes were lost on this reader!" [Whereas . . . I would say that it needs a grounding in modern neuro-science to be fully understood!]

In the circumstances, being so detached from the whole point of the plagiarism, I can't see why that reader found it inspiring at all.  Personally I found the extracts that I read to be puerile and pathetic shams compared with the original works of Adams.

Sharia still active in UK

Note that I didn't mention sharia 'law' because it is not law in UK.  And yet our barely-elected government is doing little to safeguard the rights of Muslims who find themselves subject to the rulings of these unelected 'councils'.

Leyton's pseudo-court - or 'sharia council'

Read more at the site of the National Secular Society.  If you are outside UK you will have to adopt some subterfuge to watch the BBC programme that is linked by the NSS.

Dinner with believers

Inviting a group of 'believers' for dinner is always interesting.  This evening there were three visitors - all nice folks - invited by Mrs PE who is firmly on their side of the fence.

In these situations, it is only a matter of time before something triggers me into refuting a comment that they make to comfort each other.  This evening the first one related to the doubt that a non-believer could ever truly forgive.  The clinching comment was that the word 'forgiveness' has been misappropriated by the secular community.  This seemed to be an ideal opportunity to strike.

Armed with a good catalogue of stories about altruism among the great apes, and challenging my guest about the use of the term 'misappropriation', I gently but assertively suggested that it might be the other way round.  He did at least have the decency to admit that he didn't actually have any evidence for his original claim, and kept retreating into the refuge of semantics.  Fortunately his wife - sensible lady - then pounced on him too. 

A later discussion about the meaning of the term 'secularism' demonstrated that they regard it as a threat to Christianity too.  When will they learn that secularists are not attacking Christians but only defending the right of everyone not to be bullied by any particular religion?

Outnumbered four to one, I felt that I defended my position adequately, although not expertly.  It would be nice to imagine that something I said might sow the seeds of questioning and doubt, but I know it won't.

I'm sure they will come to dinner again.

Peter Boghossian links

One of the most interesting up-and-coming philosophers in the field of professional atheism is Peter Boghossian.  He speaks in a direct but generally non-confrontational way but there is no doubt what his views are on the subject of religion.  He says "I'm unwilling to apologise for how I interact with religious people."  And why should he need to apologise?  Generally he is polite to them and he is as entitled to express his views as they are to express theirs.  I've collected a few snippets from his talks and some links for you to follow when you have some time spare to learn.

I might be paraphrasing a little, as I took these notes a while ago.

• Arguments, hate, strife, war, crime, discrimination and bigotry revolve around belief in a deity.  It is amazing that we are still debating whether God exists, and that the creation vs evolution debate continues.
• The concept of hell is a psychological black hole.
• Religion is a slave to contradictions, inaccuracies, inconsistencies, horrible science, poor maths, moral comments, erroneous geography, false prophecies, false heroes and human sacrifice.
• Christians cannot understand what it is like not to believe in god.
• We should replace belief with reason.  Beliefs are based on circumstances and things that have happened to us in the past.  We cannot use the word outside the supernatural or spiritual.
• The idea of God existing goes against every fibre of my being.  We can't unlearn anything we have learnt about science.  How can it be good for anyone to believe in something that insists on enslaving the mind, that convicts people of thought-crimes, rapes our senses and regulates everything we do.

Here are links to some of his talks:

Faith is a Cognitive Sickness Nov 2011

"A lot of people are sick and tired of being held hostage to the delusions of others.  I'm one of those people."


Practical Strategies to Combat Faith a NEPA Freethought Society Podcast

You should always be open to the possibility that others know something that you don't know.  By being open to learning from them you are modelling a behaviour that you would like them to try too.  That is a fantastic strategy in small discussions.

The Good Atheist Podcast: Episode 169  About the need to redefine “Faith”.

Interview on the Malcontent's Gambit podcast

Another Youtube video

Interviewed on Freethought Radio episode 12th November 2012, starting at 21 minutes 25 seconds.  Listen, or download the episode.

And finally a previous post on Something Surprising.

Enjoy!

Noah, Abraham and morality

An anonymous but interesting friend left a comment yesterday on my post "Things Christians Say, Part 5: Just go out and kill!".

They said:

It is also funny to note that both Noah and Abraham were mentioned as righteous before "god" revealed himself to them...so this righteousness preceded god visiting them and making himself known...that destroys the argument that knowing right and wrong are impossible without god, also god himself did not want Adam and Eve to know what right and wrong were, so he is clearly anti morality..

I like that way of thinking (even if not the punctuation). 

God doesn't seem entirely consistent in his approach.

I expect that there will be religious apologists who disagree.

More fun from Jesus and Mo

This made me laugh today - not bad for a Friday.

From Jesus and Mo

Creationist science . . . or is it?

Over lunch last week I found myself in an interesting debate with a gentle and progressive Muslim friend and a gentle and polite Christian friend.  I'm hoping both of them will continue to debate in such an open way, and that our full and frank debate did not offend them.

I must write about part of the discussion.

It was about the battle between supporters of Intelligent Design (ID) and the supporters of the Theory of Evolution.  My Christian friend put the point that both sides accuse each other of 'not being scientific' and that they should drop this argument and move to the evidence.  When I complained that this was a reasonable point of view from the point of view of evolution he asked me how I would define science.

In my own amateur way I said that science was the process whereby someone develops an idea into a hypothesis which can then be compared with the evidence from the world around us, and as confidence was developed that there was a good level of agreement the hypothesis might develop into the status of a Theory.  Ultimately when the evidence is overwhelming then the Theory might reach the coveted state of becoming a Law.  (I should have added the question of falsifiability.)

He agreed.

I added that ID specifically doesn't do this.  It looks for evidence and then tries to fit a hypothesis to it retrospectively.  He disagreed.

So I asked him where the hypothesis for ID might be, and I was amazed to hear that his answer was that the bible is the hypothesis.

I pointed out that the bible is not exactly self-consistent and offered the evidence of the two versions of the creation story in Genesis and was told that they were not very different in the grand scheme of things.   I disagree about that.  See for yourself that the whole thing is in a different order in the second version. The first is Genesis 1:1-2:3, and the second is Genesis 2:4-25.)

So which of us is correct?

• Can the bible be offered rationally as an hypothesis for Intelligent Design?
• Does ID truly follow the scientific method or does it just try to use convenient parts of scientific methods to pick selective holes in evolution without offering a complete counter-proposal?

Thinking about the topic further since our discussion I would also ask:

• Is ID falsifiable?  If the bible is its hypothesis then I would suggest that it is self-falsifying.
• Which point of view indulges in more ad hominem attacks?  Evolutionists rarely call their opponents names (although sometimes the word creotards has come up in discussion) whereas the ID lobby never fails to use terms like 'Darwinist' (which they consider pejorative), 'neo-Darwinist' (which is clearly more so) and worse?

I maintain that ID is not science in the real sense of the word.

Converted by C.S. Lewis . . . and a waterfall

Francis Collins (of Human Genome Project fame) wasn't always a committed Christian, but in his later years he was converted. What could have caused such an event?

First he had read C.S. Lewis.  Personally I never liked the material that Lewis wrote specifically for children, but the stuff that he wrote for 'adults' is quite astounding.  I have quoted him sometimes before, e.g. here and here, and found some of his writing entirely risible and facile.

The particular passage that precipitated the conversion of chemist Francis Collins appears to have been this one:

"I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: “I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.” That is one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—- on a level with the man who says He is a poached egg—- or else He would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to."

I do agree with Lewis in one way.  I also believe that he was not a great human teacher . . . but for the reason that I doubt that he ever lived as described in the New Testament.

However, what was the context where this had such an effect?  It was the sight of a frozen waterfall.

"Lewis was right. I had to make a choice. A full year had passed since I decided to believe in some sort of God, and now I was being called to account. On a beautiful fall day, as I was hiking in the Cascade Mountains during my first trip west of the Mississippi, the majesty and beauty of God’s creation overwhelmed my resistance. As I rounded a corner and saw a beautiful and unexpected frozen waterfall, hundreds of feet high, I knew the search was over. The next morning, I knelt in the dewy grass as the sun rose and surrendered to Jesus Christ. "

How surprising that a a rational scientist turned his view of life over for a reason such as this!  Why did a waterfall lead him to this specific God when there were so many others to choose from?

Pat Condell - he has a point!

Pat Condell upsets even some of my non-religious friends.  One of them referred to him as 'foaming at the mouth'.  But I don't think that would be a fair description of his recent work, at least.

His latest video "I'm offended by Islam" seems to me to hit the spot.  I have a few Muslim friends who are nice people, but it has to be said that Muslims will never call other more radical Muslims to order in a very public and obvious way.

I played this to my 15 year-old son, who is not very chatty or humorous with his father at the moment.  I expect it is just his age, and I did have him captive for a short car journey so perhaps it was unfair to subject him to this, but I asked his opinion.  With a little smile he said "Well . . . he has a point . . . "

So listen for yourself.  Tell me how this is not a perfectly reasoned and intelligent view about Islam.  I don't think you can.

I hope my Islamic friends will defend their religion, but I'm almost sure that they can't either.

Things Christians say, part 48: How can there be goodness without a measure?

A (more-or-less) weekly series (although there was a pause for a while) of responses to the things Christians say to atheists, based on the video reproduced here on 30th January 2012.  The aim is to tackle one every weekend, to give both a moderate, polite response to each question ('Piano'), followed by a more forceful rebuttal of the same question ('Forte'). 

How can there be goodness without a measure to judge it by?

Piano

The human mind is good at finding meaning in patterns of the world around us.  Sometimes we find meanings that are real and measurable.  Sometimes our meaning detector misfires and we get a false sense of what is true.

We see faces in the clouds or the trees.  Does that mean that someone has put those patterns there for us to see, or does it just imply that our imaginations are exceptionally active?

By the same token, just because Christians think that there must be a fixed objective morality defined by their God it doesn't mean that it is true.

Even if we accepted that some individual god had set things up this way, it has to be said that it is not overwhelmingly probably that the Christian God was the one.  After all he has plenty of competition from other extant deities, let alone the extinct ones.

In fact, on the evidence of the bible alone God manages to be inconsiderate, immoral, unreasonable, violent and cruel.  Do you really suggest that  we measure 'good' and 'evil' by such a yardstick?

Christians - when you say things like this you might not realise that it opens up a much bigger topic than you expected!

***

Forte

Doesn't the bible (Matthew 7:1) implore us not to judge?  If so, how would it help to have a measure?

And as French philosopher Michel Onfray says

" . . . good has no need of God, of heaven, or of any intelligible anchorage. It is sufficient unto itself and arises from an immanent necessity - proposing a set of rules, a code of conduct among men."  - - Atheist Manifesto page 56


Last episode: Atheists have no reason to live
Next:  You don't want God to cramp your lifestyle

Turn the other cheek

Another of the paradoxical teachings of Jesus today . . .

"Turn the other cheek" Christians are implored.  Whatever you do, don't fight back when you are assaulted by a fellow human.  Forgive them and move on - whether you're still standing or not, of course!

But the same doesn't apply to trees.  If a tree doesn't bear fruit, cut it down and burn it.

Is this as inconsistent as it seems?  It is hard to say, but perhaps the implication is that the tree is diseased and it should be treated in this way in order to prevent the disease spreading.

Or is there another explanation?

I long since stopped expecting the bible to be self-consistent though.

Mark Twain on an inconsistent god

Mark Twain on the properties of a god!

Unlinking the world's woes from atheism

I have been reading Michel Onfray's Atheist Manifesto, published 2005.  He has been described as "The French Richard Dawkins" but I think that description does justice to neither of the men.  Dawkins may be intolerant of religion, but Onfray attacks it head-on with the rhetoric of a priest giving a sermon. 

I came across this short passage (page 42) which addresses a topic that I covered recently in my series Things Christians Say.  It was a post called Atheists are responsible for all the world's ills,where I argued from the point of view that we atheists don't have time for such a daunting task.

"If the existence of God, independently of its Jewish, Christian, or Muslim form, had given us at least a little forewarning against hatred, lies, murder, rape, pillage, immorality, embezzlement, perjury, violence, contempt, swindling, false witness, depravity, pedophilia, infanticide, drunkenness, and perversion, we might not have seen atheists (since they are intrinsically creatures of vice) but rabbis, priests, imams, and with them their faithful, all their faithful (which amounts to a great many) doing good, excelling in virtue, setting an example, and proving to the godless and perverse that morality is on their side. Let their flocks scrupulously respect the Commandments and obey the dictates of the relevant suras, and thus neither lie nor pillage, neither rob nor rape, neither bear false witness nor murder—and still less plot terrorist attacks in Manhattan, launch punitive raids into the Gaza strip, or cover up the deeds of their pedophile priests. Then we would see the faithful converting their neighbours right, left, and centre through the example of their shining conduct. But instead . . .

"So let's have an end to this linkage of the world's woes to atheism."

Well said Michel Onfray!