Why Dont You Blog?

I was toying with the Blind Commenter as a title, but decided it would be too obvious . I have been reading some of the opinion blogs on the Times today, which is always enjoyable. The main three have been two by Ruth Gledhill (On Dawkins and on Scientology), and thanks to Nullifidian’s blog, I read one by William Rees-Mog, again on Dawkins. As is often the case the columns, being written by sensible journalists, are well presented (with the exception of Rees-Mog but he is different kettle of fish) and the arguments are structured.

Fortunately, for me, the same most certainly can not be said about the people who leave comments. Yes, some are sane and balanced, but others range from mildly confused to massively off the deep end. In this post, I will look at some of the more pertinent comments and explain why I think they are at least a little, ahem, confused.

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Popularity: 44% [?]

Two online blogs have attracted my attention, and while there is only a tenuous link between them they are both based on articles of faith. One is slightly better than the other, but that is to be expected.

As mentioned previously, The BBC has a programme targeting Scientology and this has resulted in considerable online debates. One of the sites mentioning it (ReligionNewsBlog) seems more like an aggregator than a blog but it does have this transcript:

JOHN SWEENEY: So, would you say it’s a cult?

TOMMY DAVIS: …no right to whatsoever to say what and what isn’t a religion. The Constitution of the United States of America guarantees one’s right to practice and believe freely in this country. And the definition of religion is very clear, and it’s not defined by John Sweeney. And for you to repeatedly refer to my faith in those terms is so derogatory, so offensive and so bigoted. And the reason you keep repeating it is because you wanted to get a reaction like you’re getting right now. Well buddy, you got it. Right here, right now, I’m angry, real angry.

If you watch the video of this Tommy Davis comes across as a worrying person. If that is him “real angry” then he is a sociopath. There is no overt sign of aggression. No change to his tone of voice. He sounds like a nutcase who would kill you over a packet of crisps… I would be interested to learn what this “clear” definition of religion he talks about is. The blog also has some more, entertaining articles:

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Popularity: 34% [?]

Following on from the previous post, where it seemed the Archbishop of York was a strong contender for Idiot of the Year award, I have stumbled upon a post by Dinesh D’Souza (via Nullifidian’s blog once more) and Oh My Thor, if we don’t have an even stronger contender. Two wingnuts in one weekend. Loki must be having a field day!

In a post titled “Unbelief as a Form of Payback” Dinesh D’Souza rants on about Atheism (as he has done a few times previously, see Nullifidians blog for more links) and how it basically has nothing to offer the bereaved after an incident like the Virginia Tech shooting. He writes:

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It seems we have a strong contender for the Department of the Stupid’s annual award for gross stupidity. (Thanks to Nullifidian for the heads up on this)

It seems the esteemed John Sentamu, Archbishop of York, has some completely off the rails ideas about what makes a “believer.” This is excerpt of interest:

Twenty-seven years ago I was chaplain to a young offenders remand centre, Latchmere House. Every inmate was asked to declare his religious affiliation, and four young men were registered as having no religion. One Sunday, all the inmates were offered the chance to go to worship. The four young men with no religion declined the offer, while their fellow inmates on the A wing took up the offer. The prison officer, not wanting the four men to remain locked up in their cells, asked them to clean the toilets on the wing. The following Sunday, our four non-religious young men took up the offer to go to worship. The prison officer was puzzled why they had opted in this week. “Why are you going to chapel?” he asked. The four replied, “Sir, we didn’t like the ‘No Religion’ place of worship”. Crudely as they put it, those four young men were saying in their naivety that we are all essentially religious. The question is not whether we worship, but rather one of who or what do we worship.

Blimey. What in Toutatis’ name was going through his mind when he first made this “conclusion” let alone repeated it? I am almost lost for words at the crass idiocy it demonstrates.

“Crudely as they put it” the four young men were saying that we humans all essentially avoid punishments. If I was given the choice between sitting in a church for a few hours or scrubbing the toilets, I am pretty sure I would be happy to pretend that the invisible sky elf existed. I suspect any sane person would be.

For the truly “devout” (note comment about sane people in previous paragraph) this may seem strange, as people with faith in whatever incarnation of the flying spaghetti monster appeals to them are notoriously stubborn. They will suffer all manner of injustices because of their loose grip on reality, and I suspect if given the choice of sit in a Mosque or scrub toilets the Archbishop of York would take the loo every time. This does not make it a rational choice and here Atheists really do have an advantage.

It really is mind boggling that the Archbishop of York could honestly come to the conclusion that because these four convicts chose to sit through a sermon rather than scrub ****, it means we are all basically theists. It is also interesting to note that the implication of what Sentamu Ebor says is that the vast majority of prisoners are Christians… So much for religion being the source of morality…

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Following a somewhat off the rails comment made on a previous post by someone calling themselves “Atheists Don’t Get It,” Nullifidian made an excellent response. As lots of people miss the comments here, and the original post was quite old, I felt it would be worthwhile repeating Null’s comment - especially as he has cited the original sufficiently for anyone to work out the nonsense Atheists Don’t Get It was spouting. You can read a related, equally good, post on Null’s blog where he talks about the crazy website which this lunatic is trying to promote.

Nullifidian’s comment reads as follows:

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In today’s newspapers (front page news even!), there is a bit about a nun who wrote down the Pope John Paul II’s name and was cured of Parkinson’s disease. The Catholic church is using this as one of the miracles towards JP’s saint hood. When I read it, I had to do a quick calendar check to make sure it wasn’t 1 April yet - phew. (It will be when this gets posted but never mind) I am not for one second going to doubt she had Parkinsons, nor will I doubt she is now cured.

Now, while I am glad that this nun was cured I think it is remarkably selfish of her to have asked for the cure - surely the fact she had Parkinson’s was part of God’s great plan? Is it not arrogant of her to ask to be “cured” of the same ailment John Paul II was suffering from? Is the suffering not the way God “tests” his followers?

When I read this, I couldn’t help but think of the “Why Wont God Heal Amputees?” web site. What is so special about this nun that JP2s powers were spent healing her? This is especially strange when he could have been doing so much more. 2005 was a harsh year, and surely there were millions of the faithful begging for help in one way or another. I mean, it is not as if he isn’t capable:

On June 2 2005, two months after the pontiff’s death, Marie-Simon-Pierre accepted her condition was so bad that she would have to resign from work. It was a difficult decision, being from a deeply observant Catholic family of five in northern France she had always felt a calling to serve in maternity. Her superior told her not to give up hope. “She asked me to write Jean Paul II on a piece of paper to give me strength. I didn’t want to write in front of anyone because I had such difficulties, and if someone was watching me, it would be even harder. But I wrote Jean Paul II. It was almost illegible.” Later the nun was “seized by a need to write”. It was such an unusual urge that she couldn’t even find a pen to hand. She wrote a few lines. “I looked at my writing and thought that’s funny, your writing is very readable.”

In the morning she was aware of a lack of the usual stiffness and pain. She said she felt an “inner strength”. She went to the chapel at 4am, with none of her usual difficulty walking. “I realised that my body was no longer the same. I was convinced that I was cured.

Seriously, if you were a saint, would you waste time healing nun’s in the backwaters or would you be putting paid to hunger, disease and the like all over the world?

Are saints limited in what they can do? (And if so, why and how much?). Is God a bit jealous about what powers he lets them have - if so, can some one in the Church have a word with God and tell him to unclench a little. How about the millions of people who died during that time - why couldn’t JP2 have saved them?

Maybe, just maybe, we are in fact slipping back to the eleventh century. The Catholic Church is indeed favoured by God and it’s workforce get special privileges. Time to get down to church, hand over some money and ask for a few indulgences. Obviously these guys and gals have the hotline to God and his saints, which no body else does.

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Short one as not much to rant about today, however some general web surfing has made me think about a few issues in science related to Evolution / Creationism.

The scientific method is well established and is certainly the “generally accepted” way of defining what is scientific and what isn’t. This method, not some half baked 2000 year old text which has been re-written more times than I can count, provides the yardstick against which all science is measured - be it Evolution, Relativity, Electromagnetism, anything. Without it, well, it’s back to the dark ages.

The crux of the method is the ability to make testable predictions and carry out proper experiments which can falsify the theory. You dont actually have to prove the theory wrong for it to be scientific (although this is a common misconception of the term) but you need to be able to construct an experiment which could prove the theory wrong. This is important so make a note of it.

Now, on to the wonders of creationism. Most, if not all, creationist propaganda carries the sole message that “Evolution is Wrong.” If you do a YouTube, Google or (especially) a MySpace search you come across all manner of idiocy and madness about the topic. People saying “evolution is wrong because … [insert nonsense].” Things range from the “missing link” oddity to crazy arguments like irreducible complexity. The main thing they all have in common is the nonsense and bad science which tends to back them.

The important thing, in the context of this post anyway, is the issue about disproving evolution.

First off, the fact that the lunatics (ID, YEC et al) are capable of coming up with a possible experimental circumstance which could disprove evolution reinforces the fact that evolution is scientific. Scientific does not mean true or correct. Newtonian Gravity was a scientific theory which turned out to be incorrect. This is part of the way science works. A scientific fact has more caveats than the average person would ever think of applying to something “factual.”

Secondly, and possibly more importantly, even if the lunatics did manage to disprove the theory of evolution, that does not mean Creationism takes a default win. That is not how science works. A flaw in general relativity (eg, interactions on the quantum scale) does not mean Newtonian Gravity is correct - or to be a more accurate analogy, a flaw in GR does not mean gravity is caused by bananas. Finding something in a theory which is wrong is the “Holy Grail” (all puns intended) of science. It means people get to advocate new Scientific theories (sorry, creationists, you dont count). People get Nobel prizes. People get huge amounts of funding. (and so on).

Intelligent Design / Creationism / whatever, is not scientific. It really isn’t. Saying “God Did It” is not science - even changing God to something you think will slip under the radar still does not make it science. If anything it is the end of science. It blocks further investigation because if anything is unknown or fails to meet the predictions you can just say “the creator wanted it that way and who are we to second guess the all-mighty one?”

Falsifying evolution would be a good thing, but it certainly would not mean creationism was the correct science. The theory of evolution is scientific. It almost certainly is not the endstate for our understanding of life and it makes no predictions about how life started, but it is a valid, solid, theory. Just like gravity. I am not going to even think of getting worked up about the “it’s just a theory” crap…

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Sending a response to one of the blog posts here by the contact form is not the easiest way to go about things, as it makes any ensuing debate a bit harder. That said, it is reasonable and we will try to respond as much as possible.Following a post made here (about why Christians don’t Get It), we had a response sent in over the contact form. Below the fold is the message in full with my return comments. The main reason I want to address these points is that there is the inference I have committed many logical fallacies, so I take it fairly seriously

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Fortune has smiled upon us… we have another chance to take a swipe at both Islam and Christian crackpots. This time the Christian ones are fairly minority (hopefully) but the Islamic one is fairly influential. Both are the same theme - vaccination.

Apparently Dr Abdul Majid Katme, head of the UK’s Islamic Medical Association (and a member of the Muslim Council of Britain) that good Muslims should not vaccinate their children. In a nutshell Dr Katme’s arguments are that the vaccines are not halal and may contain or have been made using pork-based gelatine. well, that is a good reason to encourage your followers to let their children suffer. The Time article has the following quote:

He claimed that Muslims must allow their children to develop their own immune system naturally rather than rely on vaccines.

He argued that leading “Islamically healthy lives” would be enough to ward off illnesses and diseases.

“You see, God created us perfect and with a very strong defence system. If you breast-feed your child for two years — as the Koran says — and you eat Koranic food like olives and black seed, and you do ablution each time you pray, then you will have a strong defence system,” he said.

Amazing, isn’t it. Predictably MMR comes in for a bad rap but that has become par for the course in today’s (un)enlightened age. As mentioned on Orac’s blog this whole line of thinking is not only insane for him, but threatens to undermine the herd immunity vaccine programs strive for. I think this quote from Orac sums it up brilliantly though:

“Islamically healthy lives”? Oh, yes, because Muslims were so much more healthy and resistant to disease hundreds of years ago, before vaccines were developed for common and often deadly diseases like smallpox and childhood diseases like rubella and the importance of modern sanitation was understood. Epidemics were never a problem, right? Again, what medical school did Dr. Katme graduate from?

It is worrying that Dr Katme is considered an Islamic moderate and, as part of the MCB, is working towards greater integration between Muslims and the rest of the UK. Things like this are open season for the right wing nutjobs to take a swipe at Islam, and will end up causing more suffering for Muslims anyway. Who said logic and religion could go together…

Islam is not alone though. Christianity has it’s own share of the cranky crackpots. I am not really sure what Christian doctrine is anti-Vaccine but on a web site titled “Vaccination—Vatican’s Medical Inquisition Revealed at Last!!” it is nicely spelt out for me… It seems that vaccinations and immunisations are a secret plot by the Catholic church. Seriously. Now this site is properly ranting, for example:

Dr. A.R. Campbell (another Great Scot) was a Texas doctor who discovered that smallpox was only spread by the bite of the bloodsucking insect called the BEDBUG or Cimex Lectularius. Cimex is the Latin for “bug” and Lectularius is Latin for “couch” or “bed.” Dr. Campbell proved that smallpox is not contagious and is not an airborne disease.

I can only assume (by style, structure, grammar and content) that this site is the work of some one who, in the UK, would be detained under one of the sections of the Mental Health Act. It gets worse though. Some (obviously deranged) Christian groups seem to think that vaccines come from the abortion industry (?) and that there is a biblical case against vaccines. From the latter (which is a long winded ranting diatribe of nonsense):

The Bible teaches that only God has the right to understand the realm of the supernatural (Gen. 40:8), and that intrusion into the realm of the occult makes one worthy of death (Ex. 22:18)(Also see Leviticus 19:31; 2 Kings 21:6; 23:24; 1 Chron. 10:13-14; Isaiah 8:19; 19:3).

It is interesting that several of the Greek words translated “witchcraft” and “sorcery” have the root pharm, from which our words “pharmacy” and “pharmaceuticals” are derived. This root (pharm) refers to “drugs, potions, and poisons.” Those who are familiar with the practice of sorcery both among primitive tribespeople and “sophisticated” Westerners have noted that the drugs are often used to induce altered states of consciousness which, in turn, are claimed to bring increased knowledge, sensitivity, or even contact with spirits or “entities.”

Abortion is witchcraft. There’s far too much evidence to attempt to differentiate the two. To participate in vaccinations tied to the abortion industry is to participate in two rituals of witchcraft.

Now, I was working on the principle that these two crackpot websites were from the same person (similar writing styles), but sadly, I think they are actually signs that at least two people have this insane idea.

What is the world coming to?

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Popularity: 34% [?]

It has been a while since I rounded on the Religious crackpottery which so often serves as a benchmark for humour on this site. I will seek to make amends today.

During the recent hiatus, I have been neglecting Pharyngula which is a shame as this is a wonderful source of entertaining madness. Today, I have tried to catch up but the sheer weight of posts is likely to defeat me.

One I can not pass up is titled “Kent Hovind: 10 Years” and is basically about the ultracrackpot Kent Hovind and his tax evasion. In itself that would be a poor example of religious-crackpot-humour and certainly not worthy of blogging. But there is this, from “Shelley The Republican,” certainly is: (this is the extract quoted on Pharyngula, I have added emphasis)

We conservatives have grown accustomed to liberal activist judges perverting justice for their own evil ends. Last year Judge Jones betrayed us all when he passed his verdict in the Dover school-book case. Shortly afterwards, our dear friend Kent was convicted of tax evasion.

U.S. District Judge Casey Rodgers will sentence the Hovinds at 9 a.m for the alleged crime of tax evasion. They claim that he and his lovely wife Jo owe the state almost one million dollars in unpaid taxes. A quick review of the case show that the federal court unfairly denied Hovind’s sensible and truthful defence: Kent owes no tax because everything he “owns” is really property of God. This is a fact that we would all do well to remember!

So please dear friends, join me in prayer this morning. Let us pray to Jesus that Kent and Jo will be allowed to continue their important ministry and continue teaching young scientists about the many flaws in Darwin’s theory of evolution.

Those are the two sentences which “entertain” me the most.

First off, Kent should not have to pay tax because everything he owns is the property of God. Amazing. This really is mind boggling. Now, few if any people like paying taxes, but claiming you shouldn’t because everything you own belongs to God is madness.

Now there seems to be some debate as to the Shelly The Republican being legit or parody, but that doesn’t really matter. The real humour value is that Hovind tried to use the line as a defence!

Better still, parody or not, people will have tried to pray for Hovind to get off or get a light sentence. Strangely the nutter was given 10 years, followed by three years probation, must pay IRS $640,000 and pay $7,078 costs. Brilliant.

Just shows what prayer will get you.

According to the Pensacola News Journal, Hovind really did show his true colours at the end: (emphasis mine)

“If it’s just money the IRS wants, there are thousands of people out there who will help pay the money they want so I can go back out there and preach,” Hovind said.

He is saying that if the court lets him go, he will fleece his “followers” and get them to pay the tax bill. I think he really does not get the whole concept. He is far from poor, but still wants others to foot his bills.

If the Christian God does actually exist, Hovind is going to hell.

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