Didn’t really have time for proper blog entries today, but suffice to say the Guardian Letters page has provided some ammunition.For now, check out this article on Respectful Insolence: Your Friday Dose of Woo. Badscience needs to take notes 🙂

Technorati Tags: Bad Science, Woo, Nonsense, Humour, Crackpot, Snake Oil

I am trying to reduce the number of posts I make which ridicule religious nutcases, but sometimes things are provided which actually prove to be too funny to let pass.

Idly going through Technorati’s tags I came across another MySpace wonder. I am sure MySpace has a special arrangement with mental health institutions to allow the patients to blog as part of a therapy program. It is the only thing which seems to rationalise some of the blogs under the category “Religion and Philosophy.”

The current howler is a post titled “Kinda funny…” which is apparently about Atheism. It starts off with an almost stereotypical build up:

Atheism
An atheist professor of philosophy speaks to his class on the problem
science has with God, the Almighty.

He asks one of his new students to stand and…..

From here it follows a routine where the professor asks the student to stand and interrogates him on things which Theists think Atheists uses to disprove the existence of God (eg: “Prof: My brother died of cancer even though he prayed to God to heal him. Most of us would attempt to help others who are ill. But God didn’t. How is this God good then? Hmm?(Student is silent.)”)

Towards the end, the type changes to bold and the student becomes bold enough to ask the Professor questions challenging his belief in Physics, Evolution and the existence of the brain. The student challenges the Professor about humans being descended from primates (NOTE to creationists – this is NOT what evolution states. Humans and Primates share a common ancestor. You really need to learn this difference if you want to critique the theory), but because the Professor has never seen it with his own eyes it becomes an article of faith (So much for the scientific method).

When the professor is unable to answer the students questions (and should therefore be removed from his position in the university – they are not hard questions), the student delivers the coup de grace as follows:

Student: Is there anyone in the class who has ever seen the Professor’s brain?
(The class breaks out into laughter.)
Student: Is there anyone here who has ever heard the Professor’s brain, felt it, touched or smelled it?….. No one appears to have done so. So, according to the established rules of empirical, stable, demonstrable protocol, science says that you have no brain, sir. With
all due respect, sir, how do we then trust your lectures, sir?
(The room is silent. The professor stares at the student.)
Prof: I guess you’ll have to take them on faith, son.
Student: That is it, sir.. The link between man & God is FAITH. That is all that keeps things moving & alive.

As this point the poster of the blog takes over the narrative with the leading “Guess who that young man was ?” After a few carriage returns like you get in all those crap emails your “friends” send you (about “you’ve just killed Mozart” or similar nonsense) to hide the punch line, you get:

ALBERT EINSTEIN……

WHAT? What madness is this? Is the person who made this blog post trying to imply this was a dialogue from Einstein’s days in University? Blimey.

Albert Einstein was born in 1879 a mere twenty years after “On the Origin of Species” was published (1859) and while there is debate about his university education (attending polytechnics in 1896 etc) he received his doctorate in 1905. As the above debate is certainly between a professor and AT BEST undergraduate students, it places it no later than 1899 and probably before 1897.

Now for the aforementioned blog post to be “true” it requires someone to have had enough foresight to record Albert’s discussions many, many years before he became famous in minute detail. This is a stretch of faith to say the least (pun intended).

More importantly, it means the university Einstein went to was horrendously advanced and was teaching subjects which didn’t come even close to being taught anywhere else for nearly thirty years. A professor debating with a student over the evolutionary support for a common ancestor with primates less than forty years after the text was published (and while it was still far from accepted) is amazing. This was not an age where every one had internet access to arXiv.org and the like. As recently as the 1930’s natural selection was still not an accepted scientific theory and as such, is unlikely to be debated by a professor (who obviously is not a biologist) and a physics undergraduate.

The thought that Einstein would have gone through this dialogue and it not be apparent in any of his writings or any of the online quote repositories requires much more faith than I can muster for a MySpace blog. I can only assume the original author got this little gem as an email, it rang true with his own beliefs (such as the myths about “you’ve just killed Mozart”) so he felt no need to check out the facts.

This is the problem when faith blinds you to reality.

As an aside, why is it so many people commit the false authority fallacy with regards to Einstein? He was a great theoretical physicist. Why does this make his opinion on the existence, or otherwise, of a deity more valid than anyone else’s?

Technorati tags: Albert Einstein, Religion, Nutcase, Madness, Insane, Crackpot, Society, Philosophy, Intelligent Design, Creationism, Creationist

Playing Devil’s Advocate here (:-)) I decided to take up the question of whether Buddhism is religion or philosophy, as discussed a few posts ago.

I think any belief system can have a philosophical or religious side. Buddhism gets away with a lot because people who aren’t brought up in its traditions tend to be introduced to the philosophy, which has some wonderful insights into the human condition and the nature of life. In which case, you might think it doesn’t matter if it also involves certain observances.  Have you ever heard of Nicheren Shoshu “Buddhism”? It involves chanting certain mantras, to get rewards in the material world – wealth, promotions, a wife or husband, a new kitchen, etc. It seems to require that believers hand over fair amounts of cash but they can always get this back through their dedication to chanting. Chanting for things you need  is a sign of devoutness. If you need a new washing machine, surely it shows a lack of faith if you don’t take the opportunity to chant  so the universe will magically provide it for you.

By this standard, even extreme fundamentalist Islam or Christianity seem almost innocent. However, having said that, there is little evidence that the self-indulgent celeb-heavy philosophies like Nicheren Shoshu or Kabbala leads people to take part in crusades or jihads, so I suppose we should be grateful for them.

Technorati Tags: Religion, Philosophy, Society, Buddhism