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

Well, a quick on following up on my previous post. Thanks to a link in the defending Dawkins blog post I read a rant titled “America, Not Keith Ellison, decides what book a congressman takes his oath on,” which is basically a right wing hate message about a Muslim supposedly intending to take his oath of office on the Quran rather than the Bible.

If the blog entry wasn’t so angry it would be funny. Apparently Dennis Prager has taken it upon himself to be the “Voice of America” and says things like: (snips as there is a whole page of this diatribe)

“First, it is an act of hubris that perfectly exemplifies multiculturalist activism — my culture trumps America’s culture.”

“Insofar as a member of Congress taking an oath to serve America and uphold its values is concerned, America is interested in only one book, the Bible. If you are incapable of taking an oath on that book, don’t serve in Congress.”

“And whoever decides these matters, not to mention virtually every editorial page in America, is not going to offend a Muslim.”

“In fact, the opposite is more likely: Ellison’s doing so will embolden Islamic extremists and make new ones, as Islamists, rightly or wrongly, see the first sign of the realization of their greatest goal — the Islamicization of America.”

Amazing isnt it? I love the apparent lack of irony when he accuses Ellison of hubris, yet the whole blog post is written as if Prager speaks for “America.” I have to ask what value is there in getting a religious person to take a religous oath on a book which effectively means nothing to them? Surely, the idea behind the oath on a Bible is that Christians will feel it binding. If they are not Christians, you could really use a copy of the latest Tom Clancy novel for all the effect it has. This is without discussing the apparent separation of church and state in American government (which is a myth as far as I am concerned).

Interestingly, it is all nonsense anyway. Members of the US congress do not take an oath with their hand on a book and this was just Prager getting all “Righteous” over an imagined slight which he took as implication that Islam was taking over the US.

Now that does make it funny.

Added to all this the furore was based on a nonsense idea (everyone has to swear on the bible), previous Presidents have sworn an oath on books other than the bible or taken office with an affirmation rather than an oath – citing religous beliefs as the reason. It seems that as long as the religous beliefs being tolerated are acceptable it is OK…

Technorati tags: Keith Ellison, Dennis Prager, Religion, Right Wing, Nutcase, Insane, Congress, Islam

I have been bashing religion quite a bit over the last few days and while I personally think it is a reasonable pastime, I am aware that not everyone will agree.

As a result I tried to spend some time today looking for reasonable examples of the good and balanced aspects to the various religions. Strangely I was not massively successful but I did come across some things which made me think (a first) – and I still don’t have an answer.

Basically, is Buddhism a religion or not? I found a blog which asked if it was possible to be an atheist and a Buddhist at the same time and personally I think the short answer is yes, which in turn implies that Buddhism is not a “religion” in the normal term. The blog post debates it in much better terms than I can or will do here, and brings in the addition of Confucianism to the question (based on a sentence in the God Delusion). In a similar vein, I found another Buddhist’s blog “defending Dawkins” which largely leaves me thinking, in line with Dawkins, that Buddhism should not be described as a “religion” in the normal sense. Both these blog articles are well written and interesting, so any attempts by me to cut parts here would be doomed to failure. I strongly suggest you visit those two sites and have a look.

However, this is not something which seems to sit well with me at the moment as my instincts cry out it is a “religion.” This is a viewpoint I have been brought up to hold and while I struggle to rationalise this view now, I can’t easily dismiss it. Other points of view, more than welcomed.

Technorati tags: Richard Dawkins, religion, buddhist, Atheist, confucius

The CompuSkills Web Design Blog now has it’s FAQs online. If there are any questions you would like to ask, or add to please do so.

Well, thanks to the scienceblogs.com blogs I have come across another batch of crackpot interpretations of science. Yay.

Today it is the turn of the Respectful Insolence blog to provide entertaining links. Recently there was a news item about how doing 16 – 17 hours of housework a week reduced the chances of breast cancer. In itself this is fairly innocuous and was picked up by pretty much all the UK news media. As with most “popular science” type news items the detail of the study was heavily glossed over and the conclusions were given a few PR-spins but nothing drastic.

Thankfully, Respectful Insolence gives an excellent roundup of the mis-understanding this has caused, nearly every one being the result of people not reading as far as the published abstract but picking and choosing the bits they wanted to champion their cause, no matter how crackpot (it is reassuring to see this lunatic describes himself as a “Christian Libertarian”). Read the Respectful Insolence article, it really is funny – and to balance it with a more thoughtful outlook read the blog post on palliative care.
Also, shame on the BBC. Near the bottom of their article it states:

The international authors said their results suggested that moderate forms of physical activity, such as housework, may be more important than less frequent but more intense recreational physical activity in reducing breast cancer risk.

And it is from that the BBC extracted it’s headline “Housework cuts breast cancer risk” rather than the more accurate “Moderate physical activity cuts breast cancer risk” – but where would be the news in that?

Technorati Tags: Bad Science, Nutcase, Breast Cancer, Science, Health Care

Yes, I know. Sorry for another Dawkins’ blog post. Anyway, today Richard Dawkins made quite an interesting post regarding Saddam Hussein’s execution on the Guardian commentisfreee blog. I suspect this is an aspect of the execution very few people have given any thought to so far.

Technorati Tags: Saddam Hussein, Richard Dawkins, Philosophy, Morals.

Well, it seems my last aside on this was much too hasty. Much, much too hasty. (In fact, I think I need lots of iterations of much so just accept the fact I should have waited).

I thought the End of the World in 2007 and 2000 – 2700lb leg press claims were funny enough to deserve their own little comment. I should have had a more indepth look and found the real level of insanity this covered. This man is insane. There is no other term to use, and the worrying thing is that so many people follow his word as if he does actually have a hot line to God.

This is the news item which sparked the recent round of web commentary on him, and for me to go into details about his blatant insanity would take more server space than this blog will ever be allocated.

Following up quite reasonable requests that if Mr Robertson is aware of impending terrorist attacks, “shouldn’t he inform the government like all good citizens are required” (or be prosecuted as an accomplice) and “why are an omnipotent, omniscient divine being’s messages always so vague and garbled?” there is a good blog post where Mr Roberson comes clean and admits God forced him to make the statements. At least that post is meant to be funny. The evangelical lunatics are trying to be serious!

What a scary world.

I found this interesting quote on the Pagan Prattle Online web thingy (http://www.prattle.net/) – about Pat Robertson (Evangelical American): “A detailed timetable, 3.5 year Great Tribulation: Apr, 2004 – Sep, 2007, indicates that we are already in the midst of experiencing God’s wrath, which started with three comets hitting the earth last summer (must’ve missed that somehow) and that the Christians will be raptured by the autumn. Marilyn Agee agrees and, in her book Exit: 2007: The Secret of Secrets Revealed, places the Rapture on September 13th 2007.”

Fantastic eh? Bet you can’t wait. Before you get your hopes up, this is the person who claims his energy shakes mean he can do 2000lb leg presses and that 2700lb is “not nearly as hard” as some people make out….

It is almost enough to make me wonder about the state of psychiatric health care in the US….

First off, I am sorry. I had hoped that I would be able to avoid blogging on either Dawkins or religious nutcases again today. I have failed.

By chance, I found a link saying Richard Dawkins was BBC Man of the Year 2006, which I found very odd as I hadn’t noticed it anywhere else (and a general search of Google or the BBC does not provide this either). This seems to be an American Buddhist related website which found a link to a blog written by William Crawley, who works with BBC Northern Ireland and had put together his own list of “Person of the Year.” The Integral Options website seems somewhat scathing of Dawkins but nothing off the rails or anything and about 50% of the population don’t like him anyway. 🙂

Continue reading →

Today I discovered a “small” problem with my digital camera, which is an otherwise fantastic Kodak EasyShare Z650. In some ways this is good as it will stop me blogging on ID and Religion…..

Today was a fairly overcast winters day but a lot of the colours were fantastic and it was as bright and sunny as could be expected. Now, walking through Stourhead gardens (see map) would normally be a wonderful chance to get photographs of scenery, plants and the like.

Another great advantage of going to Stourhead today (with the weather etc) is that the normal busy site should be sparsely populated (and it was).

All of this would, in normal circumstances, combine to make the day ideal for some wintery photography. I am not saying the vibrant summer colours would be possible, but I was hoping that I could take some pictures which would show the weather off to best effect.

Oddly this wasn’t really always the case.

For “reference” on the right is a picture taken at Stourhead in Jul 06 with a Vivatar V3935 Digital Camera (low end at best). You can see some of the wonderful colour and the vibrant scenery which go together to make Stourhead a wonderful place to visit.

I wasn’t for one moment expecting to get the same results today!

Now, as I said, it was overcast and light levels were not brilliant. The Z650 is a good little camera with a variety of settings and a great zoom function (10x optical) – which is the main reason I bought it. Like most “affordable” digital cameras, it has a built in flash which is housed in a little unit at the top of the camera’s main body. This flash is good for general use and fill flash functions but has a tendency to cause red eye pretty much everytime you take an indoors photo of a face.

The third picture was taken in Nov, with the same Kodak Z650 as I had today and shows off some of the colours around the lake area.

Today however the camera was certainly “underperforming.”

A continuing problem I have with it is trying to get it to focus on anything with a lot of red in the picture. It just refuses to do this. My initial suspicions put this down to the camera using a green light to determine focus, and when it is a red-dominant subject it causes problems – but I am far from sure. Given the time of year, Holly berries make wonderful images but to take one, I have to find something about the same distance away, focus on that and then move the camera to the berry. This is very odd to say the least and was certainly noticable today (although there were a lot less “red” things around.

The main hurdle today was the camera’s difficulty getting the correct exposure. Because of the overcast natural light, the camera wanted to use flash where ever possible (even on long distance landscape shots) and seems to have adjusted itself, expecting the flash. On the distance shots, everything came out underexposed (see picture on the left for example) or when manual exposure was used the only things which got results ended up with shutter speeds which could have been measured in days rather than hundredths of a second. This in turn, meant the slightest movement on either my behalf or the subject, meant full motion blur as if it was a formula 1 track (see picture on right for example). Trying to find the “happy medium” was far from easy and (IMHO of course) seemed to defeat the purpose of having a point and shoot camera.

The problem was much harder with moving targets – the following are some examples of swans and were the result of a lot of experimentation with the settings:

Anyway – I still like the camera, this is just a new limitation I need to be aware of. There were lots of good photographs taken!

Sorry to make multiple posts from a single site but I came across something which has really made me giggle. Previously I mentioned the angelqueen.org web forum and after the ID post (which, to be fair, became a little more balanced towards the end) I found some more posts which must be pure humour. Under the post title “No Religion and an end to war…” the site members are complaining about a new paper article which has admittedly rehashed the old chestnut of getting a bunch of scientists together and asking them to predict the future. The answers the scientists give are pretty much always the same, year after year. Blame newspapers not science!

Anyway, reading down the comments you see an number of obvious ones but then this one: (as you can imagine poor old Richard comes under a bit of bashing on various religious sites – but I am sure he expects it)

What do you think Richard Dawkins would do if you took him into a full-on exorcism and he heard demonic voices speaking through the possessed person, levitation of objects, etc?

How would he rationalise that? I’m interested to understand the workings of his mind/soul if he was presented with overwhelming proof of the supernatural.

Great isn’t it? “Proof of the supernatural” really tickled me. Strangely I suspect any one reading this will fall into one of two camps. You will either read it and laugh at the prospect of “proving” the supernatural or you will shake your head at me for not believing in the supernatural. Strange how the world can be black and white sometimes…

Also (and nearly worthy of it’s own aside), remembering about how Christianity teaches compassion and kindness (forgiveness etc), this comment by some one under the name ZAROVE made me giggle: (pasted verbatim from forum)

Dawkins wudl retend the exocrsism didnt eixst, ro at leats elements didnt. IE, the voices wher ejust the poduct of mental illness, and no objects levitated.

I have friends hwo rewerite Hisotry all the itme, so it fits into what they’d prefer to beleive.

By the way, for the Americans who don’t know any better, the Guardisn is liberal trash…

Great isn’t it?

Technorati Tags: Catholicism, Religion, Richard Dawkins, Insanity, Madness, Philosophy

Under the Disability Discrimination Act (1999 & 2004 amendment) I can be prosecuted (alright, I admit it is unlikely) if my web sites can’t be accessed by people with impairments. (For example, a webpage must be OK for software that reads out the content for the blind. It can’t base navigation on colours that colourblind people can’t distinguish.)

I happen to regard the sites that I’ve got some input into as pretty useful. Sadly, I can’t really flatter myself that they are a matter of life or death to anyone.

So how is it that I could be prosecuted if a blind person can’t read the web site, when I can’t find a single item of dispensed or over-the-counter medicine (MEDICINE, that was, not sweets or makeup or fabric softener) where the crucial instructions are written in more than 7 point text?

7 point text might as well be invisible ink as far as I am concerned. I genuinely cannot see the text, unless I shine stage lighting on it and squint. And I don’t even wear glasses.

Does the DDA not apply to anything where it might matter? I can’t think of any circumstances where misreading our websites might injure someone – unless they read them backwards and act on perceived Judas priest-style secret messages. On the other hand, I am sure everyone could think of several ways in which failing to read crucial information on food or medicine could lead to serious injury or death.

Technorati Tags: Disability Discrimination Act, DDA, Disability, Discrimination, Law, legislation, Society

While, generally speaking, the Catholic church does not really favour ID, as a result of a quick google (which incidentally may not be better than Technorati – more on this another time) I came across this forum of insanity (Angelqueen.org – pagan-esque name notwithstanding it’s tag line is “For Purity and Tradition in Catholicism”). Basically it is a long winded diatribe titled “DETHRONING THE MONKEY GOD: Catholics, Intelligent Design & Darwin’s Theory.” With a title like that, need I say any more?

Technorati Tags: Intelligent Design, Catholicism, Religion, Evolution

As previously mentioned (albeit obliquely) Technorati is still acting strange. For example, the tag Castles apparently has no blog posts stored in Technorati but there has been at least 2 posts a day for the last thirty days. Does this make sense to anyone? If you don’t believe me (or things are working now) there is a screenshot available. Also, I know it isn’t a fair comparison but Google found over 100,000 hits (it wasn’t a search for “tags” though).

Technorati Tags: castles, Technology