Life, the Universe & Everything.

Why Did God Create Gay Men & Women?

2008-06-17T09:43:00.002Z

It's official - and all those arguments going on in churches throughout the land about whether Gay is God, or Gay is Good, or if God is Gay. The answer is: yes. Yes, he has designed men who desire sex with other men and women who desire sex with other women.

On his drawing board he had (at least) 4 types of blueprint for humans. And then some funny peasants in the Middle East got a bit of sunstroke decided it was wrong. And, lo, they convinced almost the entire world to believe in their giddy nonesense.

But looking at it through Darwin's spectacles, why would humans evolve a brain prone to giddyness? I guess that also resolves the 'argument' over ID. Most assuredly, we were not designed by anything intelligent.

Seeing The Light

2008-05-22T10:40:00.004Z

Someone emailed the Mrs this at work. Caption: "I don't think they thought this through..."

Get Over It

2008-05-19T13:31:00.003Z

Reading Stories of Faith at the Church of England (seems odd that a church can somehow be delineated by a national border) website it seems every example lists people finding and using religion as a way of getting over some kind of emotional stress or other.

Why are there no stories about people who are perfectly happy, with no problems in their lives, suddenly finding themselves talking to Jesus?

I'm looking for the story which starts, "I was tucking into a bacon sarny, doing the Times crossword, when..."

The Church of England are selling their faith as a solution to hard-to-cope-with problems.

But I'm not complaining. Religion, I think, is a quick fix for personal trauma. Which is a good thing because the alternative is (lengthy and expensive and with a dubious success rate) therapy.

Yes, there are plenty of people not dealing with trauma who were born into their religion. But you rarely find a long-term nonbeliever who suddenly finds faith without that person having just been through some bad times.

I have a friend (who I have known for 30 years) who suddenly converted after splitting up with his wife. It was quite a surprise. He always struck me as quite a rational person.

Then there are those say they can't tell their children the truth because the truth is too nasty.

So this is how the religion delusion persists: personal trauma leads to desperation (basically, a mental illness of some kind), which leads to the need to believe in fairy tales, which leads to raising your kids to believe in fairy tales.

Meat Eating Self Defeating Rats Dressed As Lemmings

2008-05-08T16:48:00.004Z

This is the world we now live in. The dystopian future is here. Rearing organic chickens is bad for the planet cos they run around to keep warm, wasting feed. Cattle will be raised inside so they stand still and just grow big enough to eat.

Tooo many people. But that's just nature taking its course. This is what we evolved brains for - so we could outgrow our planet and have to raise cows in cow factories.

Wells's idea in The Time Machine was that the human race would split into two - the Morlocks would live underground and feed on farmed Aryans (that's what they look like in the film, anyway). Yeah, we hope we don't turn into those nasty Morlock things...

But wait a minute - we are the Morlocks. The rest of the planet is our slave. We are the evil masters of our universe and there's no James Bond character to take us down. This world is subjugated. Our tyranny is unopposed.

Okay so a few thousand get drowned once in a while, but so what? Grieve 'em and leave 'em. Life is for the living. Keep on improving, expanding and demanding. We can make a better world if we all sing together.

While theists haggle over fossils and how many kinds of nothing it takes to create a something, the rats are looking more like lemmings every day, as they race to be the first over the capitalist precipice.

Our Father Who Farts In Heaven, Hallowed Be Methane...

Creationist Caught Speeding

2008-05-07T08:16:00.002Z

"Sir, you were travelling at 30 mph over the limit."

"Prove it."

"Well, Sir, I recorded your speed on my speed gun."

"Speed gun? Pah - how do you know that really recorded my speed? Are you trying to suggest that the velocity of an object in space can be measured by a 'gun'?"

"It relies on the Doppler Effect applied to a radar beam to measure the speed of objects at which it is pointed. But I also have you on video."

"Video? The whole concept was dreamed up by video philosophers. The idea that images can be recorded via a lens onto a tape, which stores the information as a series of 0s and 1s - it's somewhat far fetched, don't you think?"

"Here you are, Sir, look for yourself. Is this your vehicle?"

"Nope."

"It's the same model, the same colour and has the same registration number."

"How can that be my vehicle? You can see for yourself my vehicle is right there at the side of the road. How can it be in two places at once?"

"Sir, you know what I mean."

"How do you know that I know what you mean? Hey, what are you doing?"

"I am arresting you for obstructing the course of justice."

"Wait a minute! I haven't done anything?! Where's your evidence?!"

"I'm taking you in, buddy. You'll have plenty of time to talk evidence with your lawyer. Now get in the car."

"I'm not getting in that car... ouch! Stop! You're breaking the Second Law of Thermodynamics!"

Square Pegs

2008-05-06T05:37:00.003Z

The theist often finds it necessary to have their faith hammered into their children. It's all about repetition. Why?

We talk about having things 'drummed into us', sometimes. With religion, this is a very appropriate analogy. Theistic ideas are presented to vulnerable young minds like the beats of a loud drum ... God is Love God is Love God God is Love ... You'll Go To Hell You'll Go To Hell You'll Go To Hell You'll Go To Hell ... with the idea that this will encourage (or force) the children to march along in step.

Theists often claim atheism is a religion. Yet I don't know any godless folk who sit their children down and have them repeat "There is no god" over and over. I don't know any godless folk who encourage their children to read The God Delusion x number of times a day and repeat key parts before they go to bed. I don't know any goldess folk who send their kids to special atheist schools where they can have the lessons on the lack of evidence for gods.

In my own case, my son knows I'm an atheist but he's free believe whatever he wants. Weeks, months, maybe years can go past without imaginary creators ever getting a mention.

But I have to wonder why, if a god is so almighty and his lessons for life so strong, belief in him has to be bludgeoned into us from an impressionable age. It's like a square peg being forced into a round hole - if you keep hitting it hard enough, eventually it will go in (and you'll probably never be able to get it out again).

Fact and Theory

2008-05-03T16:32:00.003Z

This is for my theistic friend:

"Evolution as a process that has always gone on in the history of the earth can be doubted only by those who are ignorant of the evidence or are resistant to evidence, owing to emotional blocks or to plain bigotry. By contrast, the mechanisms that bring evolution about certainly need study and clarification. There are no alternatives to evolution as history that can withstand critical examination. Yet we are constantly learning new and important facts about evolutionary mechanisms."- Theodosius Dobzhansky

"Well evolution is a theory. It is also a FACT. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape-like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered.

Moreover, "fact" doesn't mean "absolute certainty"; there ain't no such animal in an exciting and complex world. The final proofs of logic and mathematics flow deductively from stated premises and achieve certainty only because they are not about the empirical world. Evolutionists make no claim for perpetual truth, though creationists often do..."

Stephen J. Gould

"It is time for students of the evolutionary process, especially those who have been misquoted and used by the creationists, to state clearly that evolution is a FACT, not theory, and that what is at issue within biology are questions of details of the process and the relative importance of different mechanisms of evolution. It is a FACT that the earth with liquid water, is more than 3.6 billion years old. It is a FACT that cellular life has been around for at least half of that period and that organized multicellular life is at least 800 million years old. It is a FACT that major life forms now on earth were not at all represented in the past. There were no birds or mammals 250 million years ago. It is a FACT that major life forms of the past are no longer living. There used to be dinosaurs and Pithecanthropus, and there are none now. It is a FACT that all living forms come from previous living forms. Therefore, all present forms of life arose from ancestral forms that were different. Birds arose from nonbirds and humans from nonhumans. No person who pretends to any understanding of the natural world can deny these facts any more than she or he can deny that the earth is round, rotates on its axis, and revolves around the sun. "

R. C. Lewontin

"Today, nearly all biologists acknowledge that evolution is a fact. The term theory is no longer appropriate except when referring to the various models that attempt to explain how life evolves... it is important to understand that the current questions about how life evolves in no way implies any disagreement over the fact of evolution. "

- Neil A. Campbell, Biology 2nd ed., 1990, Benjamin/Cummings, p. 434

"Since Darwin's time, massive additional evidence has accumulated supporting the fact of evolution--that all living organisms present on earth today have arisen from earlier forms in the course of earth's long history. Indeed, all of modern biology is an affirmation of this relatedness of the many species of living things and of their gradual divergence from one another over the course of time. Since the publication of The Origin of Species, the important question, scientifically speaking, about evolution has not been whether it has taken place. That is no longer an issue among the vast majority of modern biologists. Today, the central and still fascinating questions for biologists concern the mechanisms by which evolution occurs."

- Helena Curtis and N. Sue Barnes, Biology 5th ed. 1989, Worth Publishers, p. 972

"A few words need to be said about the "theory of evolution," which most people take to mean the proposition that organisms have evolved from common ancestors. In everyday speech, "theory" often means a hypothesis or even a mere speculation. But in science, "theory" means "a statement of what are held to be the general laws, principles, or causes of something known or observed." as the Oxford English Dictionary defines it. The theory of evolution is a body of interconnected statements about natural selection and the other processes that are thought to cause evolution, just as the atomic theory of chemistry and the Newtonian theory of mechanics are bodies of statements that describe causes of chemical and physical phenomena. In contrast, the statement that organisms have descended with modifications from common ancestors--the historical reality of evolution--is not a theory. It is a fact, as fully as the fact of the earth's revolution about the sun. Like the heliocentric solar system, evolution began as a hypothesis, and achieved "facthood" as the evidence in its favor became so strong that no knowledgeable and unbiased person could deny its reality. No biologist today would think of submitting a paper entitled "New evidence for evolution;" it simply has not been an issue for a century."

- Douglas J. Futuyma, Evolutionary Biology, 2nd ed., 1986, Sinauer Associates, p. 15

Misquoting Jesus

2008-05-02T08:12:00.004Z

Theists are always misquoting Darwin and Einstein so I thought I'd also get creative with some of what Jesus said:

"Now, therefore, lift up your face, that you may receive the things that I shall teach you today. I am the one who ... will destroy you. You shall love your... camel... as your... Mother."

They said to Him: "Shall we then, being children... be the first to throw a stone?" Jesus said to them: "When you make... the outer as the inner... then you shall enter... the female... and have it abundantly."

Jesus said: "Blessed are the... fish... within you. Now, therefore, lift up... my shepherd... bring forth what is within Him. Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these...

"...why are you afraid? Even the least among you can... doubt... I am the Father."

They said to Him: "Look, the Kingdom is... not... in the sky," Jesus said to them: "...whatever... split."

False Logic

2008-05-01T09:01:00.003Z

Here's a list of common fallacies.

I think nearly all, if not all, Tim Keller's arguments fall into one of these catagories. Particularly this one: "Ignoratio elenchi" or an "Irrelevant conclusion".

"The fallacy of Irrelevant Conclusion consists of claiming that an argument supports a particular conclusion when it is actually logically nothing to do with that conclusion.

For example, a Christian may begin by saying that he will argue that the teachings of Christianity are undoubtedly true. If he then argues at length that Christianity is of great help to many people, no matter how well he argues he will not have shown that Christian teachings are true.

Sadly, these kinds of irrelevant arguments are often successful, because they make people to view the supposed conclusion in a more favorable light."

First he says what we believe depends on our culture and the people we hang around with. He's right. But this has nothing to do with his argument for the reasons for a god. In fact, it is the opposite. Ignoratio elenchi.

He then goes onto state that if you can't prove there is no god then there is one. This is a "Bifurcation".

"Also referred to as the "black and white" fallacy and "false dichotomy," bifurcation occurs if someone presents a situation as having only two alternatives, where in fact other alternatives exist or can exist."

He then goes on to list all the failed attmepts at disproving god. Again, this is an Irrelevant Conclusion and a false dichotomy, as failure to disprove god is not evidence for a god.

And it goes on...

A useful list if you're into debating.

Can Evil Be Good?

2008-04-30T16:53:00.004Z

Imagine you exist in two realities.

In the first reality, you are walking alone to a party one night when you are attacked by a mugger and lose your wallet. You call the police and, upset, return home to recover, with no more than a few bruises.

In the second reality, just at the point the mugger is about to attack you, he's overwhelmed with guilt and changes his mind. Oblivious, you continue on to the party. You have too much to drink and when some stranger offers you a lift home you accept. He turns out to be a psycho and murders you...

In the first reality, the mugger has saved your life. But, as you will never know it, you hate that mother fucker. You are traumatised by the experience and resent this violent act. You become more right wing in your opinions and wish for longer and harsher punishments to be dealt out to criminals, and more coppers on the beat.

By doing so, maybe you will somehow twist some other person's fate in the wrong direction.

Hitler was evil, right? But how do we know the world would be a better place if he hadn't existed. If you could go back in time and had the opportunity to finish him off before he did any real damage, could you pull the trigger with total certainty that the future you returned to would be a nicer place to live?

Didn't Hitler actually bring about the almost total destruction of fascism, by uniting the free world against it? What if Hitler had died in WW1? Perhaps fascism would have crept more cleverly and insidiously to ultimate power and we could now still be under it's brutal thumb.

Who are we to play with fate?

So, next time someone wrongs you, before you curse their name, consider that they may have just done you a favour.

Another Cool Quote

2008-04-30T08:40:00.004Z

Spotted on this blog today:

"The beauty of religious mania is that it has the power to explain everything. Once God (or Satan) is accepted as the first cause of everything which happens in the mortal world, nothing is left to chance...logic can be happily tossed out the window."

Stephen King

And on the Day of Quotes, here's some more:

ZZZZzzzzzzzzz........

2008-04-30T07:26:00.001Z

Evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts do not go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's, but apples did not suspend themselves in mid-air, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape-like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered.

Stephen Jay Gould

Human Rights

2008-04-29T08:13:00.003Z

Apparently, human rights only make sense if there's a god.

Does this make sense?

Heaven's Bouncer: "Hey, who's next?"

AH: "Er... I think it's me."

Heaven's Bouncer: "State your name."

AH: "Adolph Hitler. You can call me Herr Wolf."

HB: "Do you seek forgiveness for your sins and believe in the Lawd and Saviour Jesus Christ?"

AH: "Not really much point. You might as well give me my ticket to eternal damnation."

HB: "Yes or no?"

AH: "Listen, I know Jesus forgives and all that but, honestly, I'm well over my sin limit."

HB: "There's no sin limit, son. We're all sinners, whether you've taken the Lawd's name in vain or lead your country in a bid for territorial conquest and racial subjugation that has caused the deaths of tens of millions of people, including the systematic genocide of an estimated six million Jews, not including various other "undesirable" populations, in what is known as the Holocaust. It's all the same to me."

AH: "So it's pretty much a one-size-fits-all offer of salvation?"

HB: "You can accuse us of many a thing, but being fussy is not one of them."

AH: " Right. So what do I have to do? Presumably millenia of self-harm, salf-sacrifice, worshipping and generally arse-licking the Amighty One."

HB: " Oh, no, we don't have time for all that. Repent, don't own anything and generally stick to the old Commandments."

AH: "Sounds fair enough. I'm in."

HB: "Right. In you go. Next! Name?"

MG: "Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi."

HB: "Do you seek forgiveness for your sins and believe in the Lawd and Saviour Jesus Christ?"

MG: "Nope."

HB: "Fiery misery for you, then, mate."

MG: "But I'm the pioneer of Satyagraha—a philosophy that is largely concerned with truth and 'resistance to evil through active, non-violent resistance'—which led India to independence and inspired movements for civil rights and freedom across the world."

HB: "Big deal. Pray to the Lawd or burn."

MG: "God is Truth and Truth is God. I seek to become closer to my god by means of spiritual and practical puri... AGGHHHH!!!"

Ghandi is suddenly consumed by the fire of Eternal Damnation...

Tim's (Very Silly) Reason's For God cont...

2008-04-28T07:50:00.002Z

OK so Tim steps up to Rung 2 (you realise it takes more faith to disbelieve than to believe). He starts with the old: the probability of life existing is so small that it is ridiculous to suggest it just happened by chance. He makes an analogy with a poker player getting hand after hand of straight aces and suggests any normal person would 'slug the guy' for cheating.

This goes back to what I was saying in an earlier post - religion likes to appeal to 'common sense'. 'Everybody knows' if someone got 23 consecutive poker hands of straight aces they'd be cheating.

The problem is, nobody really knows what the odds for life-creation are. Nobody really knows what the Universe is, how big it is, how it got here, if there was anything before it or if there will be anything after it. Tim has already said his god exists outside the Universe. Mate, it's hard enough dealing with shit inside this Universe, if you're going to start looking outside it you can forget concepts such as probability.

How could you look at nature and say there's something wrong with it? To believe in human rights is to say everything else in nature is wrong.

Nope.

Tim's trying to say humans aren't like the rest of nature. Because we act against the 'survival of the fittest' principle.

No we don't. Those who think we do don't understand the principle. My evidence: 9 BILLION people by 2050. Why? - because we look after each other, use our intelligence and work in social groups to create systems by which we are THE fittest primate species on this planet, right now.

We're not the only species to work in this way, either. It's just we have the intelligence to really exploit it.

If there is a God, human rights make sense. If there is no God, human rights don't make sense.

Oh.... sigh... groan... fuck me... I hate these halfwits... make them stop... please make them stop...

Human rights makes perfect sense to me. But perhaps that's because I've spent more than 13 seconds thinking about it. Christians have burnt people, tortured people, eaten their heathen babies, stuck them on spikes, you name it, Christians have done it to their fellow humans.

Meanwhile, human societies have developed. In general, the wealthier a nation is, the more able it is to protect its citizens and the more able those citizens are to demand protection. Some wealthy countries, like the USA, let those protections slip (Unsubscribe-me.org). It's not fullproof. But, in general...

Is this so hard to understand?

Tim seems to be saying we need to explain the existence of human rights and the best way to explain them is by saying God exists.

No, Tim. Human rights exist because humans exist.

Belief in God makes more sense of life, right?

Yes, that a god would create a bunch of beings even though he didn't need them and knowing they would go bad he set up some deal where he would sacrifice himself to himself and then if those creatures believed that he had they would exist in Happy Forever while the creatures who didn't would live in Unhappy Forever.

Yes, Tim, that really makes my life make sense.

And that's about it in terms of the 'reasons' for God. The third rung is all about commitment. Now that you realise it takes less faith to believe in God than to reject him, you have to invest in your belief... blah blah blah.

So, to sum up, the reasons to believe in a god are... I think I'll break these down into 3 rungs:

rung 1) because otherwise you have to think properly about things. If you just believe 'God done it' then that explains everything without you having to think at all.

rung 2) now that you've stopped thinking, you're stupid enough to go out an buy Tim's book and make him very wealthy indeed.

rung 3) ...

2... 1... and you're back in the room!

"The Reason for God" by Timothy Keller

2008-04-25T14:45:00.013Z

I have been challenged by Tom to do a theist-atheist reading challenge: he will read "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins if I'll likewise read "The Reason for God" by Timothy Keller. Well, he's cheating slightly by listening to the audio CD of the book. And I'm cheating more than slightly by watching Tim talk about his book on youtube: Authors@Google: Tim Keller - it's an hour long.

Here's how it goes:

Tim starts off saying atheists need to understand the reasons for God because Christian numbers are growing (in Korea and China) even as their technology levels increase (which he counts as evidence science does nothing to reduce faith) and atheists therefore need to respect religion or there will be trouble.

Is that a good reason to respect something? That it's growing? Let's picture Tim living in Germany about 70 years ago...

The Nazi movement is growing - Tim could even point to it's increasing popularity in places like Italy, England and Spain. I'm sure Tim would be advocating we show respect to Nazis 'or there will be trouble'.

Fuck that shit.

I will respect something if it deserves respect. Call me eccentric, but I have a problem with people who are into human sacrifice. I don't know what it is, but I just get all twitchy around folk who like to drink what they believe is human blood and eat what they believe is human flesh. Even the ones who are into the symbolic eating and drinking of human stuff are somewhat disturbing.

Before he gets to the 3rd reason, he elaborates a bit on the personal - we are more likely to believe what our chums believe so that we'll be accepted by them.

Fair enough. We're all sheep. Is that a reason for God?

Tim now talks about how an atheist might say to him, "If you'd been been brought up on Madagascar, you wouldn't be a Christian." Tim says the atheist would likely have different views if he'd been born there too.

Forgive me, but isn't he arguing for the atheist side now? ie: what we believe is based on our culture and not some universal truth. Anyway...

Tim gets to his last and 3rd reason: Oh, wait, he's split the last reason into 3 rungs, which he assures us we will climb:

1st rung: you realise it takes as much faith to disbelieve as to believe.
2st rung: you realise it takes more faith to disbelieve than to believe.
3rd rung: you realise you can reason to a point probability, but it takes personal commitent to believe.

Is anyone else feeling a woozy at this point? "Just relax while I repeatedly count to three... one, two... you're feeling very sleepy... when you wake up you will have a burning desire to go to any good book store near you..."

Seriously, does any of this strike you as cutting edge reasoning?

Anyway, he recommends we read his book where he goes into more detail (although I suspect that means even more steps of 3 to be counted). He quickly assures us this is not because he wants to sell his book. Or is it? Well he hopes it isn't.

Er... we're supposed to takes lessons on the reason for God from a guy who doesn't even know whether he's trying to shaft us into buying his new book or not?

Tim now goes into more detail about the 1st rung (you realise it takes as much faith to disbelieve as to believe): "All of the arguments that purport to prove there is no God, fall flat... If there's no way to prove there is no God..."

Wait for it folks...

"...and therefore there is a God..."

It's about 14:15 on the youtube video, check it out. Notice how he says it off-hand, as if he's saying something Universally obvious like "water is a liquid at room temperature". This is such a cheap mind-control trick. Watch any Derren Brown show and you'll see him do similar stuff.

"... then to live as if there's no God is an act of faith..."

Jesus Fucking H Christ. What can I say? I would say, 'you must be a halfwit to go for this idiocy', but clearly you don't.

"...Follow me?"

Most of the audience are probably in a trance by now and are re-living the moment they got a really bad Chinese burn in the playground at lunchtime. When they wake up they'll suddenly feel it's totally reasonable to sacrifice humans to gods.

He now starts to list all the efforts to disprove God that failed. 1) If there's evil in the world there can't be a nice God. Tick. 2) If there was a God how could his believers have done so much evil in the world? Tick. Gets in the false notion that atheism 'created' Stalin and Pol Pot. Tick. 3) It's impossible to know for certain if there is a God or not. Tick (his answer is a 'clever': it's impossible to know that it's impossible to know).

Hmm, he's starting to convince me I'm a gnostic atheist and not an agnostic atheist after all. Or am I?

Now he says that if we insist the burden of proof lies with the claimant that in itself is a massive leap of faith. His reasoning - because if God is not within the Universe, then we don't have to prove his existence.

Does that make any sense whatsoever?

Okay... Russians went up into space and declared they didn't find God. The only way Hamlet (us) would know about the existence of Shakespeare (God) is if he wrote something about himself into the play (the Bible). "And besides that, you can't prove anything... hardly... I could be a butterfly dreaming I'm man. The world could have come into existence 5 minutes ago... see, the philosophers know... you can't prove anything."

So the argument continues - if you can't prove there's no God, and you live your life as if there's no God, you have to admit that's a risk.

Fancy a Pascal's Wager anyone? They should market that as a biscuit, honestly. Tea and chocolate covered Pascal's Wager. Yum Yum.

OK, Tim, seeings as you can't prove anything... How about I invent a story where we were created by a supernatural underwear pervert (and, Tim, I have a feeling he specifically created you in his image)? This underwear pervert says 'if you don't wear your underwear on your head, I will strike you down with eternal pustulance'.

Tim, you can't PROVE the Supreme Underwear Pervert doesn't exist, so if you don't wear your underwear in the Holy way, you're taking an almighty risk.

(It's at this point that Christains claim I am just being silly whereas they are trying to be serious, and because they are trying to be serious they must be taken seriously, no?)

Apparently, if you're with Tim on this bullshit, you've hit rung 1 on the way to God-bothering. If not - you're not even on rung 1. See how he's making it sound like bad thing. "Oh man, you haven't even made it to rung 1 - unlucky buddy. Keep working at it."

I think we'll leave rung 2 until tomorrow. I bet you can't wait.

Unsubscribe

2008-04-25T07:24:00.004Z

Whether you believe in the evidenceless insanity, like gods and stuff, or whether you believe in the insanity for which we have an abundance of evidence, like big bangs and quantum mechanics - Unsubscribe.

I'm an Agnostic Atheist

2008-04-24T11:10:00.002Z

I've been trying to tell you guys this for years but you wouldn't have it.

Here is a splendid explanation.

Those Christian Nihilists

2008-04-23T12:59:00.002Z

God is Great.
God creates Man.
God is Great.

Therefore, Man has no meaningful purpose.

wikipedia: Nihilism (from the Latin nihil, nothing) is a philosophical position which argues that existence is without objective meaning, purpose, or intrinsic value.

What is the use of morality if, ultimately, it has no effect? If we believe some Christians, the Universe is some kind of game whereby His creations try to make it through His morality filter system into His 'nice' room. It's a bit like the TV show The Apprentice, with God playing the Sir Alan role. Hired people get to spend eternity on the holy yacht, fired people get to spend eternity drinking foul tasting mugs of tea in the greasy-spoon cafe called Hell.

If we believe other Christians, there's no filter system at all. God has already chosen those lucky creations who will make it into His 'nice' room. I can't think of a more nihilistic vision of life - there's nothing you can do, folks, it's just a matter of waiting for God to open the golden envelope at the end of time and announce the winners:

"And the award for the seventy four thousand, nine hundred and sixty third most deserving of a place in Heaven goes to... Mr F H Merflplonk."

When Christians claim atheists are nihilists, they're confusing the word 'meaningful' with 'longer'.

When you point this out to a Christian, they are beside themselves with mirth at your stupidity. It's as if you've claimed up is down and down is inside-out. "HAHAHAHAHA!" they guffaw, clutching their sides, "It's the atheists who are the spoilsports. It's common knowledge. Ask anyone."

The fact is, much of what a Christian understands of the world comes from "common knowledge". Things like: 'Homosexuality is wrong. Ask Ted at the Bull & Monarch. He'll set you straight.'

Religion shamelessly appeals to the popularity of 'common knowledge': "Pigs are dirty animals and therefore God would not have wanted us to eat them", "Witches are agents of the Devil himself and God would most certainly have wanted us to set fire to them", "Woman are confusing and should be locked out of harms way as often as possible".

Sorry, Christians, but your 'common knowledge' logic doesn't have a great track record. You are nihilists and your book of 1st century peasant catch-phrases provides no meaning for our existence. It's nothing more than a longwinded manifesto on wish fulfillment - "You will have life after death. But while you're here, have fun throwing heavy objects at gays and whores and stuff".

To have peace and love preached to us by the same folk who went on the Crusades isn't even funny. I can get the concepts of 'peace' and 'love' without standing in some depressing, draughty old building listening to some grey-haired choirboy-fondler mumbling about some ancient Palestinian or other.

You claim I am the nihilist. Then show me the evidence that you are not.

Ironic Google Searches Awards

2008-04-22T08:11:00.002Z

And the winner goes to....

"DEFINITION OF INCOMPITENT"

*I have no idea why this search should lead anyone to Life, the Universe and Everything (of course it makes sense now).

Still Waiting...

2008-04-18T10:16:00.011Z

Just over 2 years ago I challenged folk to prove God is more likely to exist than fairies and goblins.

Why do we still have to tiptoe around people who believe in Christian or Islamic fairies and lock away people who believe in tiny, early 1900s fairies living at the bottom of their garden?

Since working at the movie house, one thing I've noticed - Hollywood is still flogging the 'just believe and don't trust the scientific meddlers' theme.

Polar Express - the whole theme is about belief. The young boy at the centre of the movie is - horror of horrors - questioning things! He's actually doing research into Santa and finding out the truth. The idiot - doesn't he know ignorance is bliss? A secondary character is an irritating know-it-all who Santa eventually puts in his place (in a very God-like way). They basically made Santa a Christian god in this movie - no suggestion of him being any kind of mysterious Pagan figure. In the end, the hero learns not to question and 'just believe'.

We've had two films which I think are basically the same story - I Am Legend and The Spiderwick Chronicles. In both movies the problem is created by the clever scientist who meddles with things beyond his/her capabilities (I'm not against that as a story idea). Both feature a Hollywood favourite - the reunification of the family unit theme. Both have a house beseiged by evil creatures in which the scientist struggles to develop a solution to the problem they (science) has created.

In I Am Legend the solution has very religious overtones. Although it's the science which creates a serum to kill the virus and save humanity, again it's the hero's scepticism which is shown as his major character flaw and the girl's unwavering belief (in a surviving community of people somewhere) in the face of his torrent of factual evidence against which wins in the end. Will Smith takes one last look at the photo of his wife and child (who have since died) just before he sacrifices himself to save humanity (subtext: he will be reunified with them in the afterlife).

So the girl takes the blood and finds the community - her blind faith is rewarded. And what's the first thing she sees as the gates to the walled village swing open - a church.

Eternal Life

2008-04-17T11:09:00.006Z

To be immortal, physically, is impossible. But the feeling of immortality is what we all crave.

At the cinema I'm working at we have been recently showing the Scorsese directed documentary on the Rolling Stones called Shine A Light (aka Dinosaurs 2D). If 60s hippies handed out sainthoods, Keith Richards would surely get one simply for the miracle of his continuing existence. As he himself declares to the audience packed into the theatre in New York, "It's nice to see you! It's nice to see anybody!"

People seek the feeling of immortality in different ways. Some of us have kids. Some of us want to be famous. And watching the Stones still giving it everything on stage and losing themselves in the music, you get the feeling this is another way of feeling immortal - for that brief moment, all that exists is 'now'. Living in the moment is a way of feeling immortal, because the shadow of death is lit up by the burning reality of the now.

Humanity instinctively looks for ways to live in the moment, free from the burden of mortality. Sex, rock and roll, a movie, a show, a video game, a pub crawl, a nightclub - when you live in the moment, it feels like forever.

The other way of feeling immortal is religion. Is religion perhaps a way to allow humanity to step out of the moment without fear; to give humanity the courage to think in the long term?

Imagine two prehistoric tribes. One tribe is craving sex and drugs and rock and roll because death is just around the corner and its scaring the shit out of everyone. 'Live for the moment and get it on!' is their moto. That protective wall isn't going to get built and those crops aren't going to get sown.

Then over the hill you have the second tribe. This tribe is just getting into putting large stones into circles and looking at the stars cos they've had this idea their consciousness bit is some kind of spirit that keeps living on after the body dies.

Ancient historians ask, "Why the hell did they put so much time and energy and resources to building Stonehenge?" Because you'd think they would have all their time taken up by avoiding starvation and man eating creatures. Is this not evidence that the beginnings of civilisation came from the freedom that religion gave us to think in the long term?

The tribe with long-term planning strategies will have the edge in survival terms. The crops will get sown and the defensive wall will get built. Not only that, the warriors will fight without fear, knowing their death is not the end of their journey.

"If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present." Wittgenstein.

The Spirit World

2008-04-01T11:48:00.003Z

It takes humans a while before they have any concept of themselves. This happens by gradually putting experiences together in the form of memories. Without memories, humans struggle to understand the consequences of their actions, because what is right or wrong is learned from experience. Much of our personality, then, is created by the physical process of our brains collecting information and storing it. Those who care for alzheimer sufferers talk of them becoming a different person - they often claim the person at the end of this particular illness is no longer the person they knew before the disease.

Where does this leave the concept of the spirit? What exactly is the spirit supposed to be? We can see what happens when the physical component which holds our life's knowledge breaks down - we don't know who we are, or who our friends and family are, or what we did in the past. Presumably, if you are a Christian or a Muslim, you believe your spirit will resemble your personality and you will arrive in the afterlife to be welcomed by those friends and family who got there before you.

If so, how will you recognise them and they you?

Because, if your spirit contains the memories, then any damage to the memory-containing area of the brain should have no effect, as the spirit will provide the information.

Are we supposed to believe the spirit inside an alzheimer sufferer's body is hiding away, to be released upon death, memories and personality restored?

Shetland is the New Scotland

2008-03-25T11:41:00.002Z

Coincedently, having just taken an idle interest in how the Orkney Islands and the Shetland Islands became Scottish, a news item appeared today, regarding a guy nicknamed Captain Calamity who is insisting Scottish law has no jurisdiction in Shetland.

He's campaigning for Shetland and Orkney independence (although he comes from Essex) and seems to carry a deep distrust of the EU (well, you can take the man out of Essex...).

Here's his website.

Goblins & Orkneys

2008-03-20T16:34:00.003Z

Doing some research into remote Scottish islands (for a horror screenplay I've just begun), I discovered the people of the Orkney Islands have similar relationship to Scotland as the Scots do to Britain - they consider themselves Orcadians first and Scots second. There's even something of an independence movement.

They were annexed by the Scottish crown in 1472, the nasty bullies (I don't remember that being mentioned in Braveheart). Since then, Orcadians have viewed the Scots with the same kind of contempt as the Scots have the English.

So, when the independently-minded Scots get their way, I assume they won't begrudge the Orkneys their freedom too. Who knows, they might want to join the United Kingdom (and bring their North Sea oil with them).

Check out the Northern Constabulary's Orkneys News & Alerts page. This is how desperate they are for crimes to report:

"Clothing Stolen from Washing Line
27 February 2008

Between 0830 hours on 19th February 2008, an item of clothing was stolen from a washing line in the housing scheme at Hamnavoe, Stromness. Police are appealing for anyone who may have information about this theft to contact them on the usual numbers."

Share & Share Alike

2008-03-11T11:19:00.006Z

In 1950 there were 2.5 billion people in the world.

Add one iddy biddy little century... 9.2 frickin' billion! [predicted]

That is one mother-fucker of a population explosion.

That's what happens in nature: if a species is over-supplied with food, most likely it will take up the slack in the blink of an eye.

In other words, nature is organised in such a way that a species will be (apart from those short periods where the slack is being taken up) forever experiencing a battle against starvation.

But we're humans. We're smarter than nature, right?

I think, in the industrialised world, most of us are under the cosy illusion any threats to civilisation will be sorted by the clever folks. We've had a century of these bods fixing everything from disease to hard labour. So, no worries, some genius will come up with some fiendish invention and everything will be fine.

In the rest of the world (Africa, Asia, Tyne & Wear), those thoughts are mostly overridden by the desire to eat. The need to feed one's self and one's family is a very powerful motivating force. If you meet a starving man, be assured, he will kill you to chew on your boot laces.

I'm not starving (although it is getting close to lunchtime), but my household's mortgage swallows half my household's income. Why is that? Partly because we're a 'creative' household [aka: slackers] and partly because there are more people who want houses, so houses cost more.

Well, I took another job, hoping I could pay my mortgage off a bit quicker. But every time I go to the supermarket, now, we're paying quite a bit more than we did last year - and to fill the tank in our car... luckily we don't need to use it much - so my extra income vanishes as soon as I collect it.

It's getting harder to stay afloat and that's because there's less stuff to go around. OK, we're nowhere near the levels of living conditions experienced by the working classes pre 1950 - but isn't that because we're still experiencing the boom times? We're still taking up the slack created by industrialised farming.

Are we going to reach a point where there is no more slack to be taken up? Surely, we must. Is this not the beginning of those times? Industry can only take so many people so far. There will be a limit, won't there?

If so, the idea that we are going to one day beat world poverty is absurd, isn't it? It's the same as building roads to beat congestion - the slack will be taken up in the blink of an eye.

It's the natural way of things.