In World’s Strongest Man final (5th January, 2007)  the winner thanked God, as is becoming well nigh obligatory  in televised acceptance speeches. This still seems sacreligious to me. Surely God has better things to do than fix the result of a sporting contest? If we assume that He hasn’t, a few issues need to be explained.

1. Shouldn’t God be concerning himself with sick people’s suffering, starving babies, torture victims or at least the fall of single sparrows?
2. Does he have enough spare time to make sure that person x wins competition y? Maybe he should be encouraged to get some rest so he can  really concentrate on the day job. 
3. For instance, couldn’t he provide a bit more help with GCSE results then?
4. Would the score of a US vs Saudi Arabia baseball match prove that the Judeao-Christian god was more powerful than Allah? Or vice versa, depending on the result?
5.  What about India vs Pakistan cricket matches? Surely access to the huge  Hindu Pantheon gives a massively unfair advantage to India. Maybe the rules of the sport should be rewritten to level the playing field. (Lame pun clearly intended.) A montheistic team could bring in a thousand-strong praying section to compensate for every polytheist prayer.
6. Over the past ten to twenty years, the World’s Strongest Man title has passed from people all called things like Cnut Cnuttsson through Marius (Polish, so he may be Catholic but his first name suggests he may have secret access to the full set of Roman deities) to people called things like Jethro. Does this finally prove that the Norse gods have been defeated?
7. God might not draw the line at intervening in the Olympics – given its global signficance - but World’s Strongest Man?  Is there no sporting event too insignificant for his attentions? Pro-celebrity golf? Schoolboy football? Pub darts? Infant’s school Parents’ Day sack races? (In which case, I have along-standing grudge with His failure to act in one particular long-past Roscoe Juniors race, in which the writer of this post- who erroneously considered herself quite a good sprinter – was utterly trounced by some unlikely looking mums and dads.)
8. You notice that I suggested mainly amateur events in point 6.  Sorry, I wasn’t thinking straight. There is a big cash prize in WSM. Maybe God prefers to save his interventions for sports with decent prizes? In which case, he must spend so much time acting as an unacknowledged pools panel for the Premier League that he obviously has no time left for trying to bring about peace on earth.
9. Does this mean God had heard the prayers of the losing contenders and found them wanting in some way? Could Marius not rustle up enough Hail Marys? And those contenders who never even got through the heats must have been pretty lacklustre in their faith.
10. Is there a slight suggestion here that God may be engaging in a sporting version of  insider trading?  He had a side bet with the Archangel Gabriel and just tipped the odds so that his man won.  
11. He doesn’t play dice. Einstein said it (and obviously knew everything because he could do hard sums) It makes sense, who would play dice against someone who could make the dice land on a point in an alternate universe if he chose.  So, he’s obliged to get his sporting pleasures through secretly fixing other sports and games.
12. Ask nicely enough and make enough Eminem-style silly hand gestures when you win (as in WSM winner Pfiser) and God will treat your opponents’ prayers with the contempt they deserve?
13. And why did Don Pope only come third then? 

Technorati tags: World’s Strongest Man 2007, religion, hindu, Atheist, sport, Einstein, television

I have to take issue with the argument that it’s mistaken to believe that it is a matter of chance wherther you get cancer. Granted, this means that you have to interpret “fate” as chance. So I admit that it’s my assumption people who use the word “fate” mean “chance”.   If the belief rests on some predetermined “Kismet” or “destiny” view, then it is indeed blatantly silly. But I take my devil’s advocate role pretty seriously.

My point is that – even cancers caused by heavy irradiation are due to chance, although the chance may approach 100% with regard to certain substances. With most cancers, you can only consider the impact of lifestyle choices statistically. (And having some acquaintance with epidemiology, I can say this is a pretty arcane art).   If 1 in 5 people in continuous long-term contact with substance x get cancer, there is a one in 5 chance that each will contract cancer.  i.e. It’s a matter of luck (chance, fate, or whatever you call mathematically random phenomena).

Following my last post (about British ideas on Cancer), it seems that Cancer is a profitable Technorati Tag for hunting the weird and wonderful. A quick search came up with “Cancer Alert: Does Your Toothpase contain Flouride?” Amazing. I am not going to comment on the blog post, as the author noticeably makes no judgemental commentary on the text pasted so it is not clear if this is a post identifying a nonsense myth or something the author believes. Take a look and decide for yourself.

Technorati Tags: Bad Science, Woo, Nonsense, Crackpot, Society, Cancer, Science, Medicine

Shamefully, I have obviously been spending longer looking through Crackpot American websites for my black humour fix. It appears I have totally overlooked an potentially rich strain of madness and bad science in the green and pleasant land.

The “leader” I had to this was found in an article titled “CANCER IS DUE TO ‘FATE,’ BRITONS BELIEVE” which was produced by AFP, although I found it on an American website. It is not as bad as the alarmist headline tries to make out, however it is a sign that education in the UK really is a thing of the past. The first few paragraphs read as follows:

LONDON (AFP)—More than a quarter of people believe that fate alone will determine whether they get cancer, not their lifestyle choices, according to a survey conducted by charity Cancer Research UK.

The poll of more than 4,000 adults across the country asked people if they thought they could reduce their risk of getting cancer or whether it was out of their hands.

A total of 27 percent of people said cancer was down to fate, with more women than men believing cancer was a matter of destiny than prevention through measures such as quitting smoking or eating healthily.

Among those from the most deprived areas, the figure rose to 43 percent but fell to 14 percent in the most privileged areas.

The survey also found that smokers were 50 percent more likely than non-smokers to believe that getting cancer was the luck of the draw.

It is a strange world we live in.

Is this bad science? Bad education? Both? Neither? To me it is a case of people not realising how their choices affect things, although I also suspect there is a bit of “out of proportion” going on here. I am worried about what the source of this “fate” is? Is it simply a total lack of understanding as to chance and probability? Do people think God sends them cancer as a reward/punishment/test? Who knows.
I think I will have to spend some time looking for UK crackpot websites now – surely we have them?