Dawkins is the Devil – lying for jeebus…

Previously I mentioned about how Ruth Gledhill had monumentally missed the point with her TimesOnline blog post about the latest Humanist campaign to try and stop people labelling their children without given them a choice.

It seems Ruth is not the only person who has missed the point (for example Jacqui’s comment on my previous post) but, as is often the case, the commenters on her post really set a new standard. I have tried a few times to leave comments on the Times article, but they never seem to make it past moderation…which makes it even more bizarre that these comments have made it through.

The one which really made me laugh was from Iain Carstairs (posted 0725AM, 21 Nov 09). It begins:

Dawkins is a fanatic, true, but he is a more dangerous one than a religious zealot.

Wow. Call the Whitehouse and MOD. Get all the troops back from Afghanistan and prepare to invade Oxfordshire (or where ever Dawkins is living now). The War on Terror was obviously a mistake (“at last!” I hear you cry) and now we need to begin the War on Thinking. (OK, I agree, this has already been going on for centuries in some places).

Joking aside, this is nonsense. But it continues:

A suicide bomber can kill a small crowd, and hardline Christians have been known to shoot abortionists. The Israelis are steadily dehumanising the Palestinians, and are on their way to exterminating them: with the blessing of the US and the UK of course.

No, seriously? With this in mind (if we think of the WTC and Madrid as being a “small crowd”) then the whole furore about terrorism is nonsense. Sadly, I agree, but for different reasons.

But Dawkins is attempting to remove the spiritual dimension from life. It is as if he is attempting to prise the eyeballs out of a billion sockets, simply because there is no scientific proof of God.

ZOMG!! Oh Noes!11!!!1!1! Dawkins is making people THINK. Evil, pure evil. Torture in fact. Wont anybody think of the children. (and so on)

This is so crazy it almost defies belief (puns intended). This is a common misconception from people who are blinded by their belief – they ignore the true majesty of the universe and the beauty that life demonstrates. Look at the deep field pictures from Hubble for examples. They take this grand beauty of nature and spoil it by creating an invisible puppeteer who controls every action for some unknown, yet unarguably cruel, purpose. This is not allowing people to see the beauty of nature, but a cruel way of blinding them and controlling their actions. It is evil.

After some more of this drivel, Iain finishes with:

Without spirituality, we become Dawkins’ descendants: hoodies, yobs, sociopaths.. the greedy and addicted children of materialism, who make this world a living Hell.

Wow. Lets look at this again. The hoodies, yobs and sociopaths that Iain refers to are not “Dawkin’s descendants” they are growing up in the time of Dawkins. At best their children could be described as Dawkin’s descendants as its only in the last couple of years that Dawkins has been in the public domain.

The children who “terrorise” the communities inhabited by Mail readers (and presumably Times readers) are from families where, on the whole, belief still remains prominent. The vast majority of greedy and addicted materialists are religious.

Lying for Jesus is still lying.

Bad science of the day – minority report

There’s a new contender for the Holy Grail object: The Magic Machine that Can Tell Truth from Lies.

On the face of it, this one seems even more useless than the old-style polygraph. It can be beaten by the simple expedient of “answeringquicklywithouthesitation.”.

The Times reported that psychologist Aiden Gregg has developed:

A new lie detector test shows that it takes on average 30% longer to tell a fib than to be honest.

That sounds an impressive test for truth – objective quantifiable, replicable, easy to measure, and so on.

Gregg said he built the test because he suspected that criminals were finding increasing ways to hide their dishonesty. …..
… The psychologist warned that existing lie detectors such as polygraphs – which monitor physiological changes such as blood pressure and body temperature – implicate too many innocent people. (from the Times)

Government funding for security is so reliable in these cash-strapped times for universities. So, in one way, it’s a great idea, from an academic’s perspective.

But I can’t see anything in this report that backs up its claims as a Holy Grail Machine.

The experiments were done in an environment which was not pressured. Completely unlike a real-world instance, subjects would have no reasons to be anxious about telling either lies or truth. However, thinking up experimental “lies” would mean subjects had to take more time than the took to tell non-lies.

If you were an innocent suspect sitting in front of one of these machines, for real, you would be worried about your answers. You might hesitate before saying anything, as you pondered possible implications. On the other hand, if you were guilty but had practised a good story, you could just reel it out. Quickly.

This machine might work for finding out which of a group of scared twelve-year-olds had graffittied the bus stop. (Although, elementary normal investigation skills would surely achieve that more time-effectively and actually produce valid evidence.)

Practised liars are convincing. They can smile and wail and even sob convincingly, witness Karen Matthews’ performances. The time-delay counting machine would never have uncovered what was true or false in what she said. Any innocent mother, in the position that Karen Matthews pretended to be, would not answer normally. She would fail the test, while the sort of person who could lie about such an event to their closest family and friends would probably come across as being truthful.

Flawed as this whole lie-detector machine concept is, you can pretty well guarantee that politicians will NOT welcome it unless they are confident that they can beat it easily.

So, if it does get the government go-ahead after its trials, you can at least be confident that it doesn’t work at all.

Lies make the baby Jesus cry

Blurring the line between abortion and infanticide doesn’t seem to upset him, however. Or some serious infant weeping might break out over this story on the Pomegranate Apple blog:

Gianna Gessen: A Story About a Birth
“To everyone’s great shock and surprise, I didn’t arrive dead but alive on April the sixth 1977 in a Los Angelos county abortion clinic”
“What’s fantastic about this, about the perfect timing of my arrival, is that the abortionist was not on duty yet. So he wasn’t even given the opportunity to continue on for his plan for my life which was death.”
“So a nurse called an ambulance and had me transferred to a hospital which is absolutely miraculous. Generally the practice at the time….and up until 2002 was to end the life of an abortion survivor by strangulation, suffocation, leaving the baby to die, or throwing the baby away.”

There’s even a video to support these “extraordinary claims.”

Hmm. How unconvinced am I that a full-term or close-to-full-term baby was minutes away from abortion? Quite unconvinced, to put it mildly.

(I could put this more forcefully, of course, but any sane readers will be able to judge the validity of this tale for themselves.)

How unconvinced am I that it was standard practice to murder babies that somehow sprang fully-viable from a botched abortion? Yet again, I have to report that this information seems so unrelated to “truth” that it may be from a different species.

(I am also pretty dumbstruck by her characterising an abortion doctor as someone with a “plan for my life which was death.” )

I find myself almost weeping on behalf of an absent baby Jesus at the sheer dishonest effrontery of this tale.

Tory Leader spins tabloid appeal

Well, time for a departure from American politics and a look closer to home.

At the moment the Conservative party are spewing out vast tracts of nonsense, under the guise of a party conference. It does, however, give an insight into how willing to manipulate the voters they are, and how easily manipulated we actually are.

This is a headline news item which has been in papers and on radio bulletins quite a bit under the headline “Tories ‘to help have-a-go heroes’“:

Measures to help the public and police tackle criminals and end the “walk on by society” have been outlined by shadow home secretary Dominic Grieve.
He told the Conservative Party conference that too many people making “genuine attempts to prevent crime” had been arrested or prosecuted.

Erm, no. Not really true. It is, however, the poster child of the tabloid news papers. For decades we have been hearing urban myths about how a “have a go hero” stepped in to save someone and then got prosecuted. Most of the time, these are just that – urban myths. If you investigate the cited examples, the truth is often very different.

The law of the land is not biased against “have a go heroes” but, quite rightly, punishes vigilante gangs and disproportionate use of force.

Sadly, British journalists are shamefully bad at investigating. The BBC even have an example in their article:

Mr Grieve’s comments came after banker Frank McGarahan died following an attack in Norwich. The 45-year-old intervened when he saw two other people being assaulted in the early hours of Sunday morning, but was himself set upon, suffering fatal head injuries. Police have launched a murder inquiry.

Now, is that relevant? No. Mr McGarahan was not prosecuted by the police. The government did not kill him. Unless this is an example of the BBC showing why it is a bad idea to encourage untrained, unskilled people to pile in, there was no reason to bring it up.

If, however, the BBC are similar to the tabloids, the conflation of statements like this is often done to generate misdirection – the public hear the two, and decide that the government shouldn’t have prosecuted people like Mr McGarahan….

Madness. I am saying this a lot lately. We are a society of lunatics. Worryingly, when you think everyone else in the world is insane it normally means……..

Anyway, pushing that to one side. We get more ludicrous waffle from the tories:

Mr Grieve pledged to “take on the health and safety culture” and the legislation which “is holding officers back and making them more risk averse”.

This defies belief.

Health and safety measures are there to protect people. They are there to stop your employer forcing you to risk your life and limb for your job. They are there to make sure that you can function as a working member of society for as long as possible. It has nothing to do with stopping people from being “risk averse” (and here I suspect the Tories demonstrate a lack of understanding as to what “risk” means).

The Conservatives point to examples like the case of 10-year-old Jordan Lyon, who drowned in May 2007 saving his younger sister.
Two community support officers were at the scene but did not get into the water because they had not received the appropriate training.

What should they have done? Should they have died trying to save the 10-year old? (In which case the 10-year old would have died anyway). Do the tories plan to force everyone to risk their lives on a daily basis?

Note, the 10 year old was not risk averse. He took a risk and died. Should two other lives have been added to the tally? If you are family of Jordan Lyon, the likely answer is yes, but if you were a loved one of the community support officer would you have wanted them dead? Whose life is more important?

It gets funnier though:

The Conservatives want to amend Section 2 of the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 to ensure that protecting the public from risk is given priority over the risk to officers.

Interesting. Police officers will no longer be able to risk the life of the public to protect themselves… There go the tasers, armed police, batons, riot shields etc. When someone tries to jump off a balcony, will police have to throw themselves underneath to break the fall?

Still it is a sad day that the lives of our Police officers is now deemed to be less important the lives of our public. This is doubly sad in the case of the Police Community Support Officers(*) who have no powers, are paid appallingly bad wages but still have to sacrifice their lives.

Going back to the tragic Jordan Lyon case, the officers were untrained in how to save someone. If they had been compelled to dive in without knowing what to do, what are the chances they would have saved him? Why is lifesaving a taught skill that comes with a qualification if everyone can do it automatically?

The sad fact is, the manipulative tories have jumped on this bandwagon to stir up an apathetic public. They have made meaningless gestures but grabbed headlines. The tabloids love them and to uncritical thought it sounds great.

Dont you just hate politicians?

It isnt just the tories who are prone to such underhand statements:

But the government said its was already working on the issues the Conservatives had raised, including changes to the law, so people using “reasonable force” to protect themselves could have “greater confidence” they would not be prosecuted.

Political vapourware at its best. This basically says: they are not currently going to be prosecuted but the tabloids and tories make them think they are so we will change a meaningless part of the law so everyone feels better. Argh.

Given the lies of the tories, the emptiness of the Labour party and the pointlessness of the Liberal Democrats is it any wonder voters are apathetic?

(*) I detest the very concept of PCSOs. It strikes me as a nasty way of getting policing on the cheap, while allowing under-trained, under-educated thugs out on to the street with a false idea of their own authority. Spend more money on getting real police out. That would save 99% of the problems with PCSOs. IMHO of course…. 😀

Media induced fear

Sometimes I have to (albeit briefly) question the value of having a free press. It seems that the freedoms enjoyed by the press are far from beneficial for the public good. (However, I am aware of the alternatives so I suppose we have to live with it.)

Today, one of the headlines on the radio news was about impending strike action which may close down a fairly crucial power plant. Basically, workers at the Grangemouth refinery are planning a 2-day strike, the closure of the refinery has the knock on effect of cutting power to one of the main Scottish pipelines reducing the flow of oil into the UK by about 1/3. Yes. That is it. Flow will be reduced by 1/3 for two days.

There have been loads of statements from the Scottish executive and various government bodies explaining that there is at least 10 days worth of stock (10 days of no oil coming in) and as long as nobody panics, everything will be fine.

Did you spot the important bit. As long as nobody panics. Sadly, not panicking does not make good news.

Cut to the afternoon news bulletin on the radio. First off, this is not presented in a calm, matter of fact manner. It is read out by an excitable and breathless woman with a lot of emphasis on how prices are going to rise and people may face shortages (less emphasis on the may, than the shortages). One of the radio stations had people call in to “share their experiences of panic on the forecourts.” Nothing like a bit of pre-empting there…

Anyway, there were four callers talking about how it had “gone crazy” today and people were buying fuel much more than normal. Weirdly, one of the callers claimed to be at the same petrol station (gas station for colonials) as I was at, getting fuel for my car. The caller claimed the place was full and had been all day. I sat and listened to her, while I looked around and was the only car there. Hmm.

As I drive about a lot in my job, I have passed a lot of petrol stations today and for most of the day none have been busy. Cut to about 1900hrs onwards and things changed. Lots of people getting lots of fuel. Now the radio stations are exuberantly talking about how the “stay calm” advice has been ignored and “everyone is panic buying fuel” and how “stocks cant be expected to last long at this rate.”

Call me a cynic, but from my take on today the whole un-necessary panic (if it actually exists) is something generated by media reporting. Like all herd problems, once a few people start to run every one else does. In this case, when a few people start to “panic buy” fuel, everyone has to join in and it becomes a bit of an arms race because now stocks will really begin to struggle (especially on a local level). The oil companies must love this – the strikers are actually doing the wrong thing! – because now, as you would imagine crude oil prices are going up even more. The news stations love this because it gives them all the things they like to report on and it hits home to everyone. However, the general public have been somewhat shepherded into buying loads of fuel as the prices rise.

Is this all the fault of the media – no, not at all. That is most certainly not the point I am seeking to make. However, I do think that public “panics” (not just in this case, about everything from MMR to crime) are largely the result of irresponsible and sensationalist reporting.

The media has a unique power to influence the public to a greater extent than any other facet of our society. Is it using this power responsibly?

Rose-tinted rearview mirror

From the BBC’s new department of rose tinted glasses:

At 6.30pm, when in times gone by most kids would be sitting round the dinner table, it is not difficult to find a group of teenage drinkers gulping vodka in a quiet corner of Leeds.
At the side of an old cricket pavilion, I found seven young girls and two older boys sharing cigarettes and alcohol. It is hard to imagine stumbling across such a scene 40 years ago.

Well, no it isn’t hard to imagine it at all. In fact, anyone who has been alive for more than about ten years would probably recognise that as a pretty normal scene to stumble across at any time. Or even, to have partaken in.

“Times gone by” when “most kids would be sitting round the dinner table?”

The natural reaction to this sort of bilge is to mention a bit of history. I am trying to rein this in and not go back to the Viking berserkers. I’ll just say, hmm, 40 years ago? Wasn’t that the approximate time of massive “mods” and “rockers” battles every Bank Holiday? They would never have smoked or drank while they were setting about each other with hammers and axes and bike chains, then….

Are we a nation of amnesiacs?

I can’t claim to have read this – too scholarly for light reading and way too costly to buy, but this book that I spotted on Amazon could put the subject in perspective
Becoming Delinquent: British and European Youth, 1650-1950 (Advances in Criminology) Pamela Cox, Dartmouth.

Note that its time span RUNS OUT in 1950. The blurb says it shows

“.. how certain themes have dominated European discourses of delinquency across this period, not least panics about urban culture, poor parenting, dangerous pleasures, family breakdown, national fitness and future social stability.”

Where are we now? Oh yes, 2007. So when was this golden age when all young people were playing Cluedo with their chums, camping with the Scouts or Guides, going to bell-ringing practice and volunteering to visit the housebound elderly?

Oh, that must have been in an Enid Blyton book, sorry. So, maybe we should all move to live in 1950s children’s literature.

There are indeed some places in England where the lucky teenage offspring of the rural middle class live like this. But even they are likely to be smoking and drinking when they get together. It goes with the territory of being a teenager.

I am not denying there are some seriously dangerous kids. Three men have been killed in a matter of weeks, just for doing the sane adult thing of speaking up when kids are acting badly.
But that doesn’t mean that every kid with a bottle of cider and a ten-pack of Benson and Hedges is a murderous moron.

Most of them are just normal teenagers, who will learn wisdom partly through doing some moderately stupid things, as we all do. And then forget it all again, of course, when they airbrush their own life history to conform to the Enid Blyton world image that even the BBC feels it has to present to the next generation.