My Raison D’etre – Mon 30th Apr 07

What is the meaning of life? Nothing. Life has no meaning. There is no rhyme or reason to life; there is no purpose or master plan to the existence of anything, let alone life, and certainly not intelligent life.

There cannot be purpose without design. And the universe was not designed. It the product of natural forces working without direction but by precise laws of physics and logic. The inter-working of these rather simple forces can produce pretty complex things, and these complex things can produce more complex things over time. This is where life came from. But it was not planned, or designed, and therefore not purposed. Hence, life has no purpose.

This may sound nihilistic. And at first glance, with good reason. When I de-converted from belief in God, I felt alone, afraid, and cold. I felt a world that was empty, harsh, remorseless, transient, ephemeral, and meaningless. I despaired. I was broken.

But I began to learn new things about the universe and about life. I realised that although life is meaningless, lives are not. There is no purpose to living things, but intelligent living things have the unique ability to give their own lives meaning! What does that mean? It means that the purpose of life is an irrelevant question. It is viewed as the apex of metaphysical questions…the ultimate riddle that only perhaps the very wise could ever answer. But I believe the question is a red herring. It has no meaning. The real question should be: “what is the meaning of my life?” And the answer is: “whatever you want it to be.”

The purpose of life that we should all give ourselves is: happiness. It’s as simple as that. Do things that make you happy. Aim to bring as much happiness to your life and the lives of others as possible. Of course if you hurt or exploit people you are not making anyone else’s life happy, and ultimately, if this doesn’t make you unhappy, perhaps you are not a human being worthy of the name.

But life is about being happy. I can’t tell you what that means for you, as I’ve barely begun to figure it out myself. We all have to figure it out for ourselves. The meaning of lives is, to find happiness.

My Rule of Thumb – Sun 29th Apr 07

A Load of Bright’s most recent blog quoted an obnoxious piece of pro-theistic propaganda in response to the Virginia school massacre two weeks ago. Steven Grant, writing here says:

“The shooter at Virginia Tech was a madman. However, he had also been raised on a solid diet of secular humanism which teaches no moral absolutes. “If it feels good, do it,” is one of the many mantras he ingested. Consequently he did what felt good, and innocent people died as a result. Today, we cannot condemn his actions unless we judge what we fed him as a society. What we sow, we also reap. And we will continue to have a bloody harvest until we return to what we know worked to make America great as a nation in the generations before us; the culture, training, and absolute morality of the Christian faith and our Savior Jesus Christ.”

It could be pointed out that the shooter’s family was ultra-Christian. Obviously all the forced indoctrination in the world didn’t stop him becoming a mass murderer.

The above is an example of yet another religious fundamentalist using a tragedy to further their own agenda. It reminds me of the comments Pat Robertson made about America bringing 9/11 on itself because of homosexuality, feminism, abortion etc.

It could also be pointed out, as I have done before, that America was not founded on any religion let alone Christianity, which the founding fathers explicitly stated.

But I don’t want to concentrate on the negatives above. I want to show why an atheist morality is better than a theistic one. I want to address the strawman in the passage above. This is a popular one amongst people who aren’t atheists: ‘do whatever feels good.’

No atheist I know lives by this rule, and I’d bet money that no atheist ever has. The real principle or rule that free-thinkers, humanists, rationalists, naturalists, and atheists tend to live by is: “if it hurts no one, do as you wish.” (Similar to the Wiccan Rede mentioned in my About page.)

“If it hurts one, do as you wish”, or variations on that theme seem so reasonable and straight-forward I would fail to understand what problem anyone might have with it, except that I’ve been a theist, so I do know what the problem is. The problem is that living by such a principle makes you free.

When I was a theist, I was governed by restrictive laws on food, drink, drugs, lifestyle, sex, relationships, friendships etc. The breaking of any of these wouldn’t have hurt anyone; they were the definition of victimless crimes. The Jehovah’s Witnesses’ ban on blood, although bible-based, is superstition and silly. It has caused many to die needlessly. If you give or receive blood, who is being harmed? Health issues aside (which are rare), there is no harm, no victim, so no crime. And the religious laws against blood transfusions aren’t based on health reasons anyway! They’re based on a superstition magical notion of blood.

Other religions have similar laws against sex before marriage. Why?

There are religious laws against the use of contraceptives. Why?

According to most religious beliefs, homosexuality is an immoral crime and should be punishable by death (according to holy books). Why?

There are possible positive side-effects are going along with religious laws. For example, if you never sleep around you will probably never catch an STD, although no one is ever completely safe anyway from infection. If you never have blood transfusions you will never contract a disease of infection from somebody else’s blood (although this will do you little good if you die from not receiving a transfusion). If you don’t commit adultery you won’t break anyone’s heart or wreck homes. (So why don’t religious laws just say “don’t wreck homes or break hearts if you can help it”?)

But, and this is where religious hypocrisy is so transparent: these religious rules are not there for the health and safety of humans! Any positive effects that result are really just side-effects of laws made to please a fictional being!

Laws prohibiting pre-marital sex for example, serve no purpose but to control people. Religious laws are always there to oppress and dominate every aspect of human life – to keep people from acting like free moral agents, like adults, and to treat them more like immoral children that can do no right and must have rules and regulations to govern every part of life, as if we’re not responsible enough to decide for ourselves. Perhaps some people enjoy religious laws because it saves them having to think for themselves what is right or not; a book or a man can just give you a quick and easy answer that you don’t have to think about.

And if the religious would answer that pre-marital sex is wrong (for example) because it can result in unwanted pregnancies (as if unwanted pregnancies don’t occur within marriage!) or other negative consequences, then a quick question to them can illuminate their real motives: “what if contraception is used? If contraception and safe-sex education is free and readily available, is pre-marital sex okay then?” Surely the religious would agree then, yes?; their concerns being addressed? No. You’d be sure to get an answer mentioning “immorality” or some other vacuous nonsense, and they’d be hard-pressed to explain exactly why sex outside of marriage is wrong: it hurts no one; it’s between two consenting adults, what’s the problem?

The problem is that religions don’t care about the greater human good; they care about blind obedience and control. The problem is that religion has got to have its claws in you somehow, and if followers were allowed to make their own moral decisions based on the simple principle of “if it hurts no one, do as you wish”, there would be pretty much no need for religion anymore!

This moral rule of thumb can have its grey areas though. For an extreme example, if child pornography was created without real children being involved (CGI or holographic simulation for example) there would be no victims and no one would be hurt. Putting aside the claim that this could actually fuel real-life attacks (which I don’t buy – attackers will attack anyway. What simulated pornography would do is replace illegal material that does harm real children with legal pseudo-material that doesn’t), the person viewing such material, however offensive the idea may be to the rest of us, would not be committing any crime and would have the right to.

Like I say, this is an extreme example and I don’t expect everyone to agree on it. I am demonstrating that we have thought through the principle to one extreme logical possibility.

However, if it could be shown that simulated “harmless” material did have negative effects in real life, the principle would still hold! Because, then “if it hurts no one…” would no longer apply, so the adherent would have to refrain from such actions.

The only other grey area arises because “if it hurts no one” is not always something we can always know. It is not always possible to foresee the outcome of every choice. There is no real solution to this except to make the best possible decision you can. This is because we are moral agents with responsibility for our actions. In truth though, it is not very often that the principle will pose a serious question. For everyday living, the principle is flexible and robust enough to survive anything.

Adherents to this rule recognise that all other people have the right to their own decisions, so the rule is founded on human freedom. It makes people aware that whether you want to wear your hair up or down, dress conservatively or dress extravagantly, prefer Lost to 24 or Scrubs to ER, prefer girls to boys or boys to girls, prefer hip-hop to rock or R&B to real music, it’s your choice. So the rule also teaches liberalism and tolerance.

A simple handy rule that respects difference and freedom, liberalism and tolerance? What religion can claim to have anything that matches that?

This is the real rule that most rationalists and atheists like by. Rather than represent strawmen of us or just outright lies, and rather than continue to live by and control people by superstition laws created thousands of years ago by ignorant cultures, the religious should join the rest of us with this rule in the 21^st century. They might just find that it really is a much better place!

My Worldview – Fri 27th Apr 07

I had a conversation earlier with a friend about reaching theists. I don’t mean reaching out to them, I mean actually reaching their rationality with logical arguments that will make them re-examine their beliefs. By extension, this applies as much to any kind of true-believer, not just theists.

This friend quoted another acquaintance who had something interesting to say on the matter. It was ‘if your beliefs are not themselves based on evidence, then you aren’t likely to be swayed by evidence.’

This is very interesting, mostly true, and rather worrying. I’m sure anyone with their logical cap on could look at the situation and think “that’s stupid. Who would actually believe something without any evidence, and actually in spite of the contradictory evidence?” Well yes, it is stupid. But we’ve all been guilty of it, mostly as children when we didn’t know any better. We can probably all think of someone we know who disagrees with us (except me; everyone I know agrees with me because I’m infallible), but it’s interesting that we mostly disagree with others over ambiguous (at least seemingly-so) or subjective issues; for instance morality, politics, tax, beauty, music, or art. I can’t remember the last time I’ve ever argued with somebody over gravity, the orbit of the earth around the sun, the colour of the sky, etc.

In general areas of debate, the intensity of argument seems to be inversely proportional to the knowledge available. For example, I am pro-choice, but understand the ambiguity that surrounds abortion. The problem is that not everyone is aware of the facts, and emotion and propaganda get in the way of logical thinking often. Another example might be music or beauty, inherently subjective and very broad subjects; we may argue for hours over Bach or Mozart, the Backstreet Boys or the Pet Shop Boys; or who has the nicest physical features between Christina Aguilera and Avril Lavigne. The obvious problem here is that evidence to support positions is not readably available. And thus we spend hours fighting over whether the Matrix: Revolutions was a stunning action movie or a disappointing clichéd pile of faecal matter. If you introduce objective parameters into the discussion, it makes it easier to reach conclusions: e.g.: camera work, acting, directing, storyline etc – I might agree with you 100% that Film A is objectively superior in ways x, y, and z than Film B, but that doesn’t mean I like it more – how can you prove me wrong? You can’t.

However, if our purpose is to reach an agreement, we help ourselves greatly by establishing some objective criteria. If what we’re arguing about isn’t subjective, and there is sufficient evidence, then we should reach a conclusion that everyone can agree on.

Returning to an earlier example: all the facts in the world can’t tell you to agree with abortion or not. That depends on further issues. But if the question is: is abortion (before a certain time) the taking of a human life? That is an objective question, and the answer is no (fact based on evidence). Therefore abortion isn’t murder, and there is nothing wrong with it from that sense. The question: is it right to terminate the life of a glob of cells living inside a woman? If someone answers yes, then I hope they’ve never stood on ants or swatted a fly, or killed any insect/animal life of any kind. I’d personally answer the question with “no”. In fact, “pro-life” arguments usual appeal to emotion or spirituality of some kind. Whether these arguments are right or wrong is not my point, but they aren’t objective, and they aren’t based on evidence.

A sinister example of belief not based on evidence is theism. Theists make claims that aren’t based on evidence, and they actively deny the evidence that would prove them wrong.

This allows me to return to the conversation I mentioned in the opening paragraph: I used to believe in God. But I think the biggest reason I was able to deconvert is because my beliefs weren’t based on faith. I had faith, but it wasn’t necessary for my belief. When I believed in God, I honestly believed I had good reason to. I believed there was evidence for his existence, and I thought I could logically and rationally prove it. Now, as wrong as I was, perhaps it was because I was receptive to evidence in favour of my belief, I was also receptive to evidence against it. Of course this isn’t always the case; I think the majority of believers are open to evidence for their beliefs but not against it. But how can we tell the difference between a believer and a “true believer”, that is one who will believe no matter what? This is an interesting question, and I think the proof of the pudding is in the eating. That is, a person’s true colours will be shown only when they have to finally decide between their faith and their intellectual integrity.

For me, I didn’t think I had anything to be afraid of, so I learned and read and studied. I have always rejected the notion of censorship because, what does the truth have to fear?! That day unwittingly came upon me, though it was more a brief period of time than a specific day and it didn’t all happen consciously, when I had to either retreat back to the beliefs I’d always held, or reject them. By that time, I’d lost too many bricks in my wall of belief and it crumbled very quickly.

But I have argued with people online and in person, some of them very close to me, and I have seen the first cracks appearing in their wall; I have eliminated every argument they had; I have countered all the “reasons” and supposed evidence for their beliefs, to the point when logic had triumphed – they simply had nowhere else to run; there was no possible logical argument to give to support their belief. And then I’ve seen their eyes glaze over, the bricks in their wall get another coat of filler, and their desire to continue debating end. This is the acid test I referred to above. Want to know if your beliefs are really based on evidence or not? Then see what the evidence has to say! And if you still find yourself wanting to believe despite the evidence, then perhaps your belief was never based in evidence in the first place. It was based on your desire to believe. You wanted to believe, and whilst the evidence seemed to agree with you that was all fine and dandy. But when you discovered that what you thought was evidence was not, and what you thought was proof and reason were not, did you reconsider or run away?

My friend above recently had an e-mail conversation with a fundamentalist Christian. After both sides debunked the opponent’s positions and offered critiques and counter-arguments, one person was left with the same arguments and evidence unchallenged, and one person was left with their arguments and “evidence” debunked, resorting to “I believe” and “I know he exists” and “you will never convince me that the bible isn’t God’s word”. (I’ll leave you to decide which side is which). The funny thing is, this is quite a strong and irrational thing to say. Actually admitting to someone that nothing will ever change your mind is, to me, a concession! Even when I was a theist I would never say that because I honestly thought my position was logically unassailable. To acknowledge that you cannot be swayed by logic is the slightly less-playground version of sticking your fingers in your ears and shouting “la la la la la!”

However, it takes an actual logical argument and review of the evidence to find out what someone is really basing their beliefs on. Perhaps this is why religions discourage honest enquiry and peer-review? Could this be why fundamentalists are so ignorant – in a twisted way it’s not their fault: they really have no interest in the evidence at all so why would they bother looking at it? At least they’re being consistent, but then why even pretend there is evidence anyway? They may as well come out and say “I can’t find any problems with the theory of evolution, and I can’t really objectively prove that my God exists, but I’m going to believe in him anyway.”

The irony with religion (and other false beliefs) is that most of its claims are actually objective. If there is a god there should be evidence. If there are aliens where is the evidence? If people are really psychic then prove it. If faith healing works then reattach severed limbs. If evolution is rubbish then explain why. Evolution is one of the best scientific discoveries of all time – what part of it is hard for you to accept?

Is any book the word of God? This is an objective question. Let theists and atheists come together and establish some criteria. Then, with the rules set and no one allowed to flake on them, analyse the book. Unfortunately, this has been done countless times:

http://ebonmusings.org/atheism/pillows.html

http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/

…to name but two of myriad atheist articles on the internet that prove that no holy book can be the word of a divine being. (But they’re a good place to start).

Many wonder why the debate still goes on then if the facts are so obvious and dramatic. I’ll tell you why: one side of the debate will not accept the facts and the evidence. One side has a vested interest in their beliefs being right. One side has emotion and hope invested in their beliefs, not to mention control, power, and money. One side has a history of deception, superstition, ignorance, delusion, and oppression of opponents. One side will twist and distort the language and words of their own text so as not to appear contradictory or to justify any chosen course of action. One side has absolutely no problem with science until it says something that conflicts with its cherished notions, and then it insists that science change to match its beliefs!

And the other side is atheism.

This may sound like a simple case of tu quoque with theists and atheists pointing the finger at each other. But it really isn’t. When was the last time an atheist got to the point in a debate where they had to resort to faith? When was the last time an atheist ever said anything like “well, nothing will ever convince me that God exists?” It would be silly of me to claim knowledge of everything every atheist has ever said or done, but it almost certainly the case that this hasn’t happened. There is a very simple and powerful reason why this is so: atheism is usually the result of rationalism and critical thinking. For an atheist to use faith would be a contradiction of their worldview because faith is irrational. Theists have no such problem though! Faith is encouraged for them! If the going gets tough: faith. Having doubts about all the suffering in the world? Faith. Evidence for evolution indisputable? Faith. Atheists’ debunking of holy book unassailable? Faith.

As long as theists rely on faith their position is ultimately indefensible. This is because 1. Faith requires the rejection of logic and is the last resort of the desperate and 2. Faith is an admission that there is no evidence, e.g.: if God came down in the sky and revealed himself to all mankind, whether we accepted him or not, everyone would have to believe – so there would be no use for faith). (And we could add 3. Faith isn’t objective).

So if faith is irrational and basically a refusal to argue objectively, then what is its purpose? Why do theists start out handicapping themselves? Well, the simple answer is: because they have to! Faith only exists because there is no evidence or objective proof.

And this is why atheists will always defeat theists in arguments, because an argument is a logical proposition to support a position, and ultimately religion is rooted not in logic, but faith. And the further irony is that theists will of course disagree with me – but not on logical grounds!

So is there a solution? I don’t know. I don’t think so. Speaking for myself, when I had to make that decision, I chose reason over faith – it was a non-contest for me. In all fairness, I did it myself without being pressured or attacked. I never had to react defensively or feel my faith and beliefs being criticised by “evil” atheists. When atheists argue with theists for any length of time, theists are unavoidably going to feel uncomfortable if the discussion gets to the stage where the theist’s belief system is starting to shake. That can be a very scary feeling, and this is often why theists retreat even deeper into the belief system. It’s asking a lot for a theist to be deconverted in one conversation! But what is the alternative? In an ideal world anyone trapped by false beliefs would scrutinise them and free themselves. But then in an ideal world people wouldn’t be so deluded by their belief system that they fly planes into buildings, or set off bombs in schools, or try to change the law of the land to reflect their personal opinions.

Atheists keep speaking out, but not to deconvert. I think this point is lost on many people. Atheists speak out because some theists would change the way other people live their lives. If fundamentalists didn’t try to affect anyone else’s life, atheists probably wouldn’t bother saying anything. I cannot think of any atheist who actively sets out to deconvert people. At most, critical thinking, knowledge, and rationalism is encouraged – but this is just good advice. What results from these will be a multitude of good traits, and a lack of superstition and rejection of belief systems just two examples.

And apart from trying to counter the dangers and lies of organised religion that is trying to wield its power politically, atheists who are prepared to give their time and effort (and often money) to provide resources for other atheists or curious theists, are doing something special. If it wasn’t for websites like the Skeptic’s Dictionary, the Internet Infidels, or Ebon Musings, I might very well still be a theist. Becoming a rationalist is the best thing that has ever happened to me, and I know I am not alone there. Rationalism has had so many positive results for me – actual measurable, useful results that benefit me in every aspect of life. One result of thinking rationally was my rejection of gods, and that makes me an atheist. So most of the positives in my life I have as result of that, I owe to the websites above, and I know many other people have their own similar stories to tell. But if those places didn’t exist, many lives (such as mine) wouldn’t have gotten changed. There are hundreds of thousands of people who were trapped in their belief systems and have been freed because there were other people prepared to argue and debate with them. And when the facts and evidence were presented, the walls of faith came crashing down; the prison break from belief was complete. The deconvertees could just as easily have rejected the evidence and retreated to faith. But how could this be known in advance? Like I said above we’ll never know unless we try.

If believers want to be irrational, that’s their choice (as long as they don’t hurt anyone). But it’s important that everyone knows why: because the reason and the evidence isn’t on their side. Reason and evidence and objectivity are and ever shall be on the side of rationalists. One day, that might result in belief in god; a rationalist might also believe in psychic powers. But if it happens, it will be because the evidence proves it, and not because any belief system tells you “you must believe this, no matter what the evidence says”. And faith will not even enter into it. This flexibility to go wherever the evidence points, wherever the truth leads, is surely what every mind should yearn for: freedom! Rather than being bound by the mind shackles of dogmatic beliefs, why not just follow the evidence? If you already have the truth you have nothing to fear, and if you don’t you will acquire it. Sounds like a win-win situation to me!

My Patron Saint – Mon 23rd Apr 07

There is a current patriotic revival going on in England at the moment.  I believe it is a counter, whether planned or impromptu (but probably a bit of both) against a huge influx of foreign people and ideas into this country.  I think the majority of people in England are worried and angry by groups of immigrants continually allowed free access and accommodation at the expense of the British taxpayer.  There is distain that foreign religions and customs are given more deference than incumbent British and England traditions.  In some parts of the country, the ultra-PC crowd would have a St George’s flag taken down, lest it offend non-Britons.  (For an excellent debunking of one aspect of political-correctness, see this post by fellow blogger A Load of Bright).

I don’t believe most non-Britons would be offended by the British flag or the cross of St. George.  I don’t believe the majority of non-Christians are really offended by the Christian cross.  Even though I’m an atheist, I find the logo of Manchester United far more offensive to my eyes than the Cross.  (Indeed, I fear I will start smoking should anything Man-Uish touch my pure skin.)  It is actually the politically-correct crowd who, being the true racists, would have anything that reminds people that they’re different, removed.  My own personal response to any outsider who is really offended by the symbols and customs of people in their home country is simply this: “fuck off.  Who do you think you are?”

An acquaintance of mine, Pat Condell, quite astutely in his own jocular way says that “nobody has the right not to be offended”.  If you are a visitor to another country, you have absolutely no grounds on which to take offence at the residents of that country – assuming they aren’t committing immoral acts or hurting people.  You are a guest, and as such a modicum of humility and respect is required.

And yet, the British government seems to be happy to open up more times in a day than the local streetwalker, and the PC crowd make sure that when any foreigners do arrive in this country, it is the locals who are made to feel unwelcome.

Having said all of that, I’m not a very patriotic person.  The number one reason I would see St. George’s Day as a National Holiday is so that I get a day off work.  But I don’t believe what I’ve said above requires patriotism.

National pride should be treated like a dog on a leash.  I understand being proud of your heritage and culture if there is something to be proud of, and I appreciate that people believe their origins represent certain values and ideals.  Like a silhouette cast at a distance though, this is a murkier, distorted, and exaggerated version of reality.  What I said about American rubbish a few blogs ago was that no culture in the world represents any unique set of human values and ideals.  Anything that says differently is nothing short of propaganda.

Patriotism unchecked leads to nationalism, which at extreme levels is almost religious in its faith-based convictions, and just as dangerous.  Wikipedia has this to say: “Extreme forms of nationalism, such as those propagated by fascist movements in the twentieth century, hold that nationality is the most important aspect of one’s identity and attempt to define the nation in terms of “race” or genetics.”

Believing you are better than another human being because of your race and/or nationality is just as ridiculous as believing the same because another person doesn’t share your faith or religious convictions.

Just as all forms of faith are irrational and potentially dangerous, and there is no clear line between harmless delusion and evil delusion, it is not always clear to see where patriotism because nationalism and nationalism becomes racism.  (I am not saying that patriotism necessarily leads to nationalism, or that patriotism is irrational or evil.)  This is because humans tend to mistrust and dislike things that are different.  History is replete with individuals and establishments taking advantage of human differences to fuel racial hostilities and wars.  Let us never allow our pride to turn to righteousness!

The reason patriotism can lead to nationalism if left unchecked is because it is very easy to allow faith to creep in.  Faith is that horrid ominous insanity that would say if personified: “believe, even though you have no reason to.”  There is a difference between having a healthy pride in your country and heritage, and believing there is anything special about you because due to sheer luck you were born in a certain place.  To believe this is nothing less than an act of faith.  I’ll go into this in more detail shortly, but first an example:

In the original 60s Star Trek series, the crew of the Enterprise encounter two beings who are intent on destroying each other: Loki and Bele.  They are from a planet that is millennia ahead of Earth technologically, but the planet has been torn apart by racial hatred.  Loki and Bele (however realistic this is from a biological point of view is irrelevant as the metaphor is beautiful), have an usual phenotype: their skin colour is black on one side of the body and white on the other.  However, Bele is black on the right side, and Loki is black on the left.  This is the source of their racial hatred!  How stupid!  How ridiculous.  How, pathetic!

When the Enterprise reluctantly returns to the homeworld of Cheron, the entire population is dead – self-annihilated.  And thus the metaphor is complete.

Humans are no better than Loki and Bele.  We fight over every possible difference, and the pathetic thing is just how arbitrary these differences are.  Not only is your colour and nationality irrelevant to how you should be treated as a person, these things are completely out of your control!

As Jack Dee laughably says in response to (imagined) people who act better because they are taller: “wow, I do wish I’d had the forethought to grow that high!”

It’s funny, because no one can control their height, or nationality, or place of birth, or eye colour, or skin colour.  So to discriminate against a human being on these grounds is the definition of insanity.  So is believing you are better because one aspect of your social/genetic makeup is different to someone else’s.

You have absolutely no control over where you are born, so it really that important?  Is it really something to be proud of?  If you were born over the nearest border your entire life would be different and you’d likely have an entirely different set of beliefs.  Actually, given the state of affairs in the world today, being born over the nearest border in land B would result in a hatred of land A based on events that happened centuries ago.  Land A thinks its right and Land B is wrong, and Land B thinks the reverse.  How similar does that sound to religious intolerance?

In fact, as I see the apathy with regard to patriotism in England when compared to the self-adulation of the Americans, I am reminded of older more-established religions like Catholicism who are less interested in fundamentalism; smaller less-powerful nations resemble religious cults – believing they are fading or somehow oppressed, and with a fervent desire to keep the original language and culture strong.  Their national pride is analogous to supporting a football team: ‘my team is the best in the world’.  National flags become like football logos, to be adorned on cups and walls, and hung from windows.  The other teams and fans are rubbish compared to theirs’.  This is an observation more than a criticism.

The point is: what makes you different and special as a person, is not your hair colour, eye colour, skin colour, weight, size, height, looks, tattoos, age, religion, race, or place of birth.  It is the decisions you make.  The cliché is true: actions speak louder than words.  Perhaps it should be rephrased: actions speak louder than anything else.  In our society (rightly so), you are judged reprehensible or responsible, rewardable or reproachable, by your deeds.  It is how you live your life, how you treat other people, and what you do to make a difference for the better, which defines you as a person.

Good people and bad people can all come from the same country.  Honourable people and horrible people can be black or white.  A lot of beautiful people have been religious and a great many disgusting people have been too.  This is because these things are irrelevant.  The fact that somebody else might share a capricious characteristic with you tells you nothing about that person.

But good people, honourable people, and beautiful people, can be found in all corners of the earth.  This is because the best qualities in humanity are not confined to religious beliefs, or national boundaries, or genes.  They have the potential to be in each and every one of us.  And the realisation that we are one race and one people, isolated by crude and ultimately-meaningless nuances, like long-lost brothers and sisters separated at birth, makes nationality to me just another not-particularly interesting fact about someone.  It makes religion silly and irrelevant.  It makes racism meaningless and incredibly primitive.

What matters is what you do, not where you come from.

My Way or the Highway

You know what pisses me off? Post-watershed programmes being edited so they can be televised before the watershed!

I’m not talking about Basic Instinct either. I’m talking about Scrubs. I was watching Scrubs on E4 before about teatime and it had been edited so much there must have been at least 5 minutes of the episode missing.

Heaven forbid viewers are subjected to words like “knockers”!

Never mind the fact that any teenagers watching it already use more profanities in one hour than can be found in an entire sitcom series. Or that most of them have already got more active sex lives than the people in these programmes. No, we must think of the children!!

If a program is deemed unsuitable to be shown in full at teatime, then don’t fucking show it at tea time! What is the point? You take out large portions of the humour and the resulting edit leaves viewers bemused.

This is even worse than the way the BBC edits TV shows, not to remove “inappropriate content”, oh no, but to save time! They edit the “fade to black” so the scenes just roll into each other. This must save, oh, thirty seconds at most over an entire show! Perhaps the BBC is feeling so guilty about raping a TV license out of us every year in return for piss poor television, they’ve decided the least they can do is make sure all the programmes start on time. Well, you can keep your silly little license fee, and I’ll just wait the extra 30 seconds for my programme to start. (I’m only joking: there is nothing on the BBC I watch).

My Exposure – Thu 19th Apr 07

There are plenty of examples in this society of people and companies exploiting other people’s ignorance and credulity. An excellent example of such a social parasite (but by no means the worst) is Derek Acorah. Derek Acorah is a self-professed spiritual medium who claims he first discovered his spiritual powers by communing with an Ethiopian from 1500 years in the past. (I would like to see Acorah translate ancient Ethiopian writing with no help whatsoever apart from the help of his ethereal friend).

Some people are ignorant. Some people really believe in a spiritual world. Some people are emotionally invested in a belief of divination. And some people are just plain gullible. The real thing all people (but especially these types) need is education. After all, you can never know too much; you can never be ignorant of too few things. But what Derek Acorah does is exploit people’s emotions, ignorance, and gullibility. He makes a very healthy living at the expense of other people, and offers nothing of substance in return. This is the very definition of parasite.

Acorah, like all “mediums” achieves his affects through cold-reading, the Forer effect, and/or simply fraud. Not only is this simply the best explanation, but every time anyone has been tested for supernatural or paranormal abilities in controlled conditions, they have failed, and any success they have in regular conditions can be dismissed by the three explanations above.

The irony I have discovered is that, if you dismiss spiritualism or the paranormal amongst lay-people (that is, people who have no strong opinions either way but lean towards the possibility of the occult, whilst having few critical thinking skills), you are considered close-minded, or perhaps arrogant to think that you have this life sussed; to be certain that there is nothing else beyond it.

This is an incredible irony because if critical thinking was applied, i.e.: if society was generally better educated, and fraudsters, horoscopes, and psychics were rigorously criticised the way other less-sensational issues are, people wouldn’t actually give conmen like Uri Gellar and Derek Acorah the time of day. (I say conmen, because they are either dishonest leaches, or belong in a mental institution – I think I’m being generous by using the former descriptor). So, contrary to the ultra-liberal “we can’t be too sure about everything to let’s say nothing in case we’re wrong or piss people off” politically-correct mentality that pervades society today, you have to remember that if you’re a sceptic and somebody suggests that you are close-minded or stubborn because you think the woman down the road who wears a dress made from leaves and listens to Enya all day can’t talk to your dead mother by using a glass sphere, this person doesn’t know what they’re talking about. They think you are stubborn and refuse to believe, but in reality they are the ignorant close-minded stubborn ones.

The proof? Ask any psychic to demonstrate their abilities in controlled conditions. I challenge anyone in the world to tell me something about a dead loved one, or myself, that they couldn’t have known from information fed back to me from myself, or a bit of deduction. A simpler way to do this when having a “reading” is: don’t talk! Say nothing! Show no reaction! See how well the medium does when he/she cannot get feedback from the mark or gain any insight into his/her fishing for clues.

Most “psychics” and “mediums” like Acorah are not interested in proving themselves to the world though. They paint a picture of tortured talents, rejected by the heartless “I’ll only believe if I see” scientific community. The reality is quite the opposite. And here is why: if any human being could really communicate with the dead, or apprehend knowledge from non-natural means, it would be one of the single most important discoveries in human history. It would change the way people interact and think, and change how we believe the world works. It might prevent a great many crimes (through predictive insight). We would probably have to introduce laws to make sure the psychically-gifted didn’t acquire information that they shouldn’t be privy to.

Why bother with archaeology and history? Clairvoyants could commune with the dead and tell us everything we need to know about the past. Where is Hitler’s ghost? Where is Napoleon’s ghost? Where is JFK’s ghost? Surely his immortal soul could reveal who really assassinated him? But they aren’t forthcoming are they? The world we see is not the world we should see if people like Acorah were genuine. Mediums reveal nothing of interest to the arts or sciences, only to emotional people who are desperate for a connection with a deceased one. Psychics tells us nothing about the human brain or telepathy, only that cold-reading can be very effective for reading body language to acquire information – but we know that anyway. No casino in the world bans psychics. Why? Because there is no need!

Psychics don’t win the lottery. Why not? And if it’s because they don’t want to use their “powers” for personal gain, (a laughable suggestion at best given their business), they could win the lottery and donate all the money to charity. But this never happens does it?

Compare Acorah, who uses his rather human skills for deception and exploitation, to another entertainer who uses similar skills (albeit better and broader) to please, baffle, stupefy, shock, scare, and enchant his audience. A disengagingly-charming man who freely admits he has no special power at all, and admits to sometimes deceiving to achieve his goals – but part of a being a magician is that the audience knows they are being deceived. I refer to Derren Brown. There are too few Derren Browns in the entertainment world and far too many Derek Acorahs.

Doesn’t Derek Acorah give people hope and happiness? Don’t people like him touch peoples’ lives? Perhaps they do. If a lie is cathartic then may the victim never know the truth. But whose decision is that to make? What right does anyone have to exploit another human being on the grounds that “it will make them feel better”? For the lie to be effective anyway, the person can never know the truth, which requires keeping them ignorant and deluded. Again, is this really in the person’s best interest, and either way, who makes that decision in the first place? Surely not the victim! Do we grant the exploiter the role of judge, jury and executor?

Let us return briefly to the issue of proof. It is not my job to prove that “psychics” and “mediums” are liars, although I happen to think most of them are. (I say most and not all because it’s possible some “mediums” out there really believe they have special abilities.) I work in the pharmaceutical industry, where the tests and trials for drugs are rigorous: a company cannot bring a drug out with supposed benefits A, B, C, if it cannot clinically prove the efficacy of said drug. False advertising in most industries is a crime. Why are these demanding tests not applied to people and businesses that make a fortune out of cheating people out of their money?

If a person wants to advertise their ability to read minds or speak to the dead in exchange for money, that is, if they want to make a business from it, they should have to prove this ability beyond a reasonable doubt. What do they have to fear? It is not everyone else’s job to prove them wrong – it is their job to prove themselves right. The burden of proof is on them.

And yet, all Acorah can come up with is a deserted house with the lights off, leading a group of people who are already susceptible to his spurious bullshit abilities around, pretending to be in union with a spirit, with spooky music playing. His game of scare amounts to no more than children’s stories, or when you turn the lights off on your younger sibling and try to freak them out by making frightening sounds or telling imaginative tales. But these are grown adults we are talking about. Acorah is making a lot of money, not just by being an over-rated cheat, but by exploiting people and pretending to have powers that he simply doesn’t have. This is unfair, but also a slap in the face to anyone who respects hard work, and making a living the honest way. People like Acorah are losers. They couldn’t make it in life with real jobs, so they had to resort to using what skills they had to get rich quick at the expense of the ignorant and emotionally vulnerable.

Just to put another electronic nail in the coffin of this selfish obnoxious buffoon, here are two links which highlight that, even for a “medium”, Acorah isn’t particular impressive and even less honest:

http://www.randi.org/jr/200511/111105derek.html#i1

http://www.doublexposure.co.uk/

I don’t like the idea of telepathy, mediumship, or clairvoyance. I don’t like it because it is so flagrantly false. (I might be proven wrong, but I don’t think I will be. I don’t like to beat around the bush and I’m not afraid of nailing my colours to the mast. I welcome argument. I welcome reason. If I am proved wrong, great! I’ll freely admit it.) The reason I dislike these things so much is because they are based, not on evidence, reason, logic, understanding, or intelligence, but because they are based on faith, superstition, ignorance, deceit, and delusion. I cannot possibly see what long-term good can come from the perpetuation of the latter.

If these things did no harm, and if people like Derek Acorah hurt no one, I could live with my distaste. But my distaste is based solely on the effect superstition and faith have on people and society. When people like Acorah rake in millions for being a fraud and lying to people, and another single mother has to work three jobs just to pay the bills, I feel society is really losing out. And individuals are losing out. Real people are being fed a lie, that their loved ones are still alive and watching over them. As comforting as this can be – (the notion of eternal life appeals to everyone!), that doest make it right; it doesn’t change the fact that it’s a lie.

Parasites like Acorah might better be described as symbiants, because they do meet demand with supply. As long as people believe in the supernatural because they don’t know any better, there will be those like Acorah to take advantage of that ignorance. From an evolutionary point of view, this places mediums somewhere alongside pathogens and viruses. This is rather apt, since most mediums have the conscience and morality of a pathogen or virus.

The short term solution? Demand controlled tests for anyone who tries to make a living out of offering a product or service. And it doesn’t have to be psychics; some companies will sell you ordinary household products on the notion that they have special metaphysical powers. Why are these companies allowed to operate unfettered? I have no idea.

The long term solution? The mass media should stop sensationalising the paranormal and supernatural, and have a modicum of scepticism and responsibility. Critical thinking and scepticism should be taught in schools – there are no possible disadvantages to this and society has everything to gain. Remember – there is nothing to fear from the truth. If a product works, it works. If a claim is true, it is true. If someone cannot prove what they are claiming, they do not deserve to make that claim.

Critical thinking solves so many problems and has absolutely no side-effects. It educates people. It enlightens people. It restricts the operation of fakes and exploiters. It promotes understanding and respect. And these things better mankind, and better society.

Somehow I think the likes of Derek Acorah don’t care one bit about that.

My Paradox – Tue 17th Apr 07

I remember when it really hit me how useful Wikipedia was: it was when I ready about paradoxes. As anyone who’s used Wiki before can confirm, there are always related links at the bottom of each article. Like a trail of breadcrumbs, but one that doesn’t lead anywhere in particular, it is so easy to follow these links one after another until you end up on a subject that is unrelated to where you started out. I didn’t realise that by starting on this reading “quest” of mine, I would stumble across the greatest paradox of all.

I fleeted away two hours one evening just by reading about the possibilities of extra-terrestrial life. It was not a waste of time. I’ve already talked about the likelihood of aliens visiting earth, or even being aware of us.

I believe it is incredibly likely that aliens, if they exist, will never visit earth. Personally, I strongly disbelieve that aliens have already visited earth.

But, I strongly believe (and it isn’t on faith of course, because the evidence would seem to be in my favour) that there are aliens out there.

I could spend hours and hours reading, or talking about this, and speculating what their homeworld might look like. Would it bigger than earth or smaller? I wonder if aliens themselves would evolve to resemble anything human. Surely their planet must be comparable to earth in terms of atmosphere and life-sustaining properties. There are very good biological reasons which favour the human form in terms of intelligence over other animals – large skulls, bipedalism, opposable thumbs. It is not unrealistic to suggest that sapient aliens might evolve along similar lines. But the manifestations of another planet, (with different climates and environments, challenges and perils, predators and prey) might spin the alien gene pool in a totally different direction.

If aliens could communicate with humans without prior knowledge of the species, what might be the first thing they ask us? Richard Dawkins suggests a question. Is he biased? Perhaps. But after giving it thought, I agree with him. Without a doubt, one of the most important stages of any sapient species’ evolution is the realisation of their own origins. What is Dawkins’ suggestion? “Have they discovered evolution yet?”

Think about this briefly. The human race has existed for about 130,000 years. For a much shorter time than that we have recorded history. The question of “where did I come from?” and “how did I get here?” is one that every human child asks its (occasionally awkward) parents. As a species, the human race has been asking this question for probably about as long as it could conceive thought or speech. For millennia, humans offered answers to this question. Genuinely seeking truth, but seriously lacking knowledge, mankind invented tall tales and stories to explain its own existence. Perhaps we should think of early humans as children. Barely able to speak. Naïve. Innocent. Gullible. Full of wonder and questions. Prone to thinking magically and teleologically, in fact tending to do so more often that not.

Most explanatory myths took the form of creation stories: a powerful being directly created human life. For an ignorant and superstition people, can we blame them? No. Certainly not. No more than we can blame the contemporaries of Louis Pasteur who believed that germs and bacteria could spontaneously blossom out of nothing, until Pasteur proved germ theory.

When you think about how long the Renaissance endured; modern science was starting to come into its own, and all the incredible and clever scientific discoveries that were made in the 16^th – 18^th centuries, it is perhaps surprising that only 148 years ago, Charles Darwin proposed his theory of evolution by natural selection. A proper empirical evidence-based powerful predictive scientific framework for explaining how all life on this planet came to be. It finally answered one of the most deep and important mysteries of life! Can you think of many discoveries more important?!

It took biology onto a whole new level; nothing we understand or practice in biology today makes sense without evolution.

Perhaps aliens might consider a species’ discovery of its own origin as an important threshold. They might consider humans more “worthy” of contact than we were 148 years ago. I am just speculating. But if human scientists had the ability to study another planet of sapient creatures, what might we look for? Would we see if they had discovered fire, the wheel, and language? What about government or money? Or for a more advanced race, have they discovered evolution yet, or do they have a “pre-discovery-of-evolution” (PDE) society, perhaps with their own creation myths?

If aliens had their own myths, I wonder how similar they would be to ours. It would be nice to think that a species advanced enough for interstellar travel would have long since eradicated silly superstitions from their culture. Not necessarily by intent or force, but through education and enlightenment. Perhaps there could be a kind of natural selection for advanced civilisations: it must be the case that surviving so long with such powerful technology would either result in self-destruction or survival (there are no other possibilities). And presumably survival would be achieved through better communication, education, and understanding, as oppose to fear, hatred, superstition and violence. This might be something that nature resolves at the genetic level (where, after all, evolution really takes place anyway). Or it might just be a matter-of-fact state-of-affairs without reference to evolution (although what I’m about to say is strictly a kind of natural selection), that is: any race that has existed for any length of time with the capacity to destroy itself but yet hasn’t must necessarily be a more intelligent, less-aggressive, and enlightened species. Because, if it wasn’t they would have killed themselves and wouldn’t be around to talk about it anyway.

Would they look on the human race with pity now? Well give that a lot of enlightened humans look on their own species this way, I would be very surprised if aliens didn’t look at us and shake their ‘heads’. Maybe we’d remind them of how they used to be. Or perhaps the problems on this world are unique to humans (although I tend to think not).

“Can you believe we used to go to war over land on our planet?” they might ask each other.

Baffled, they may question: “Did we really kill each other over imaginary creatures in fairy tales?”

They may scrutinise humans and think: “On such a tiny world, how strange that they cut themselves off with arbitrary lines on a map, rename themselves, build up walls and weapons to keep others out, and distrust those on the outside, and pretend that because they just so happened to be born on this side of the line, they are somehow better than the others. And yet, within the same region, they break themselves into subgroups and give their group a new name, hating people from other subgroups and fighting over nothing more than that sheer fact of being from different groups, or having different interests, or supporting different sports teams, or having different skin colours. And even within those subgroups, they split into gangs, and fight over drugs, weapons, and material possessions that aren’t even their own.”

Or perhaps they would be so confused by humans they couldn’t draw any conclusion!

The fanatical hatred and evil in the world contrasts to things like love, joy, music, beauty. How can the same species that blows up school buses and flies civilians into buildings for the sole purpose of killing thousands of innocent people show such courage and bravery? How can we reconcile Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin with Mozart and Beethoven? Are fanatics and bigots like Pat Robertson really the same species as Shakespeare, Albert Einstein, Richard Dawkins, Charles Darwin, and Stephen Hawkins?

The profound affection between two people who love each other. The beauty of another human being. The art forms of Leonardo Da Vinci and Michelangelo. The works of Bach, Handel, and Vivaldi. The engineering feats of the tallest skyscrapers; the fastest supercomputers; the deepest submarines; and the spaceship-cum-aeroplane Orbiter. And yet some people still believe that rocks in space influence their fortunes. Some humans will believe whatever they want without any shred of evidence, and think this is virtuous! Some people think they are better because they are of a different race, country, and upbringing. Some humans even enjoy hurting other humans.

The great literary works of human fiction over the decades and centuries cast a huge embarrassing shadow on the primitive superstitious ramblings found in all holy books. Intended fiction (as oppose to religious myth) is conceived better, has more believable characters, and has more depth, metaphor, and storyline. If any holy book is truly the word of god, then god is a significantly poorer writer than Shakespeare.

Would aliens think our good points outweigh our bad ones? Would they see great potential in us? Or perhaps they’d write us off as “on course for self-annihilation”.

Would they even be entertained by our humour? Moved by our music? Pissed off with chain letters and enthralled by sport?

It may be that non-human life could evolve in the metaphorical sense too; all the things we think of as qualities of humanity might be foreign – alien – to another species. Compassion, empathy, kindness, and courage might be irrelevant to an alien. Alien evolution might favour cold ruthless dispassionate thought.

But, I think there is good reason why this wouldn’t be the case. There is good reason to think that the principles of altruism, empathy, kindness, and eventually love, could be ubiquitous in the universe. Evolution might endow all enlightened sapient species with these characteristics. It seems a certainty that peace and communication are more favourable than mistrust and superstition in terms of survival.

Evolution gave us some ruthless qualities along the way, no doubt the basis for xenophobia, territorialism, violence, the fight for survival. That does not make them necessarily good or bad. We are here now, so clearly, natural selection has done something right. But we also have something else that aliens would possess too: intelligence. For all the animal traits that humans still have, there are qualities probably born from our self-awareness – because we can appreciate ourselves as a unique being with needs and feelings, we can recognise the same in others. Perhaps courage and love are truly the products of a reasoning mind; something an animal cannot replicate.

Maybe we would have that in common with aliens. It might be the only thing we have in common with them. Who knows?

Will we survive long enough to meet them? Will the human race come out of infancy and outgrow the delusion and violence that it is drunk with today? Will we take our place amongst the stars? Will we colonise other worlds? Will the human race be spread throughout the Milky Way even unto the last day of Earth in about 5 billion years time, when our tiny world is engulfed by the sun and everything she ever is, everything she ever was, everything that ever occurred on her, is gone?

The earth is going to be uninhabitable for humans long before that though, perhaps as near as 900 million years. I don’t think I will be around to see that. Probably not, anyway.

The human race won’t be around then either if it wipes itself out in the next ten thousand years, thousand years, hundred years, or even this decade. The old cliché says: “the longest journey begins with a single step”, so let’s get there one step at a time. Hardly anyone on earth now will see the 22^nd century, but I think we’d all like to see tomorrow. And the only way to ensure our survival, as a civilisation, hell, as a species, is through the qualities we talked about above: education, communication, empathy, understanding, enlightenment. And thus the decline of superstition and irrationality, dogma and doctrine, war and violence, hate and mistrust. The latter are the things that threaten our world every day, and the former are the things that can save it.

To paraphrase J. Michael Straczynski, we are standing in the middle of history. When you look at the sad state of some parts of the world, it’s easy to get your head down. But we need to lift our heads up, and our eyes back to the horizon. We see our ancestors before us, urging us on saying “make my life have meaning”. And we turn around in the other direction and see our inheritors saying “create the world we will live in.”

I have absolutely no idea what kind of world that will be. I’m afraid of what it could be. But I also know there are plenty of people who won’t let that happen. Are you one of them?

Perhaps we will create a world in which our children can say to us “thank you”.

18 years – Sun 15th Apr 07

18 years. 96 lives. The Truth. Justice for the 96.

 

You’ll Never Walk Alone.

My Friggatriskaidekaphobia – Fri 13th Apr 07

Warm summery evenings. The sound of birds tweeting outside. Lazy evening naps. Being woken up by the sound of kids playing outside. Kids can scream pretty loudly; more so with an airgun pellet to the face.

Perhaps it’s because I don’t have any irrational phobias, or I don’t expect bad things on this particular day, or maybe it’s because I’m the spawn of Satan himself, but Friday the 13ths are usually good days for me. At least I can’t remember having a bad one.

Of course, that doesn’t really mean anything, because I think that Friday the 13ths tend to be good days for me, I’m no different to people who think the day is unlucky, evil, or occultish somehow. What’s really happening is that if you have certain expectations or presuppositions of something (or someone), even unconsciously, you’ll tend to look for the things that support them and dismiss the ones that don’t.

It’s like when you have a lucky charm; (most people do at some point in their lives, especially when young). Humans are inherently creatures of magical thinking. There is actually a very good evolutionary reason for this but I won’t go into it here. Our brains are wired to infer connections and links between events. Sometimes it backfires though because we start to see links that aren’t there. For instance, you play crap without your lucky necklace, then put it on and enter “the zone”. You kiss the turf before stepping onto the football field and play well, but when you don’t kiss the turf you don’t seem to play as good! You’ve had a few bad days forgetting to take your lucky stone with you then when you take it your day is all sunshine and flowers. Your headache gets worse and worse until you put on your New Age therapy headset and it goes away. Your cancer suddenly goes into remission after you pray to God.

These are all symptoms of Event B occurring after Event A. But, just because one event happens after another, doesn’t make them related. Of course, when it’s put like this it seems obvious! It seems like common sense; so simple. And, really it is. But it’s hard to use cold rational logic when a link seems so strong. Believing that Event B is related to Event A because one happened after the other is a fallacy known as post hoc ergo propter hoc.

For example, if Event B: your favourite team wins on the same day of Event A: you forget to shower in the morning, you are very unlikely to think anything of it! But what if Event B was: someone close to you dying, and Event A was: you had a dream of them dying.

Wouldn’t that mean something? That surely would prove some kind of connection wouldn’t it?!

The truth is, no. Because the event was so personal and the link seemingly so strong (i.e.: on the same day), it would be very hard for a non-critical thinker to see this as anything other than a prophecy; a true vision of the future.

But what if the dream came a week before? Or a month. Or a year. What about ten years? Still as strong do you think? Well, the events that cause someone’s death have no memory or knowledge; they are random occurrences that have unwittingly combined to kill someone, for example in a car crash. The truth is, the “link” is just as meaningful if the “prediction” comes a day before, or ten years before. And when I say meaningful, I mean meaningless; because there is no link.

The odds of winning the lottery are enormous. But somebody somewhere will win it. There are 6 billion people on this planet, most of them sleeping every night and having several dream themes a night. The odds that people will have dreams, and some of those dreams will coincide with actual events is not only probable, it’s actually to be expected! In fact, it would be strange if people never had predictive dreams! Think about that.

Humans are good at seeing patterns that agree with what they think, and ignoring contrary patterns. The technical term is subjective validation and it basically works like this: if I believe in UFOs, my mind is automatically more open to their existence than evidence to the contrary. So if I see a strange spot in the sky, I might think “that’s them!”, or either way it might reinforce my belief. If I already believe in ghosts and feel someone in the room with me, or see something that I can’t explain, I will likely feel “visited”, but either way it will strengthen what I already believe. Ever wonder why sceptics never see ghosts? Or why Muslims never feel Jesus? Why do Christians never ever feel the presence of Allah or Vishnu, only of Jesus? They can’t all be right after all! Yet, religious people consistently report “revelation” of their own God and no one else’s. That’s strange isn’t it? Well, no, because we have an explanation: subjective validation.

To apply it in practice, let’s look at the examples of magical thinking above: you play crap without your lucky necklace then play well with it on. But are you keeping track of all the times you have played well without it? And if the lack of a necklace is playing on your mind then you might not play well anyway. Even an imaginary problem can be real in your mind. What about other lucky charms? How many bad days have you had with the lucky charm? A lot I would think! But, when you have a bad day, do you come home and throw the charm away? No. You’re more likely to not even notice the significance! But if tomorrow you win the lottery or get laid (whichever is the most unlikely) you will probably thank the charm!

I’ll mention one more thing that explains some baffling events. This is actually very interesting, and easy to understand. It’s called regression. Let’s use an example above: you put on your New Age therapy headset when your headache gets bad, and it goes away. Or, you do a rain dance when the drought is at its worse and it rains; you perform a solstice festival on the darkest day of the year and the sun slowly starts to return.

But, we know that headaches come and go. We know that rain comes and goes, and droughts won’t last forever. In fact, you are more likely to do a rain dance when things are at the very worst – but logically this is after the drought has been going on a long time, which means it has far less time to go before the rain comes! Pure common sense. And we know that the seasons mean that we get less sun in the winter, progressively so. It gets darker and darker and darker to the point where we have the shortest day in winter (round about Dec 21^st). But once a cycling event reaches its perigee or apogee, it will start to come back the other way. You are more likely to try out a useless contraption when your headache is at its worse, but natural fluctuations dictate that it can only get better after this point anyway! If you’re playing bad at snooker, you might try a lucky charm, but assuming you’re at a certain standard, your average will not deviate too much from that standard. So if you hit ten awful shots in a row, the odds strongly suggest that the next one will be better anyway, whether you use a lucky charm or not. Things like cancer do go into remission. In desperation people try out a lot of worthless junk to make it go away. When it doesn’t go away, the person dies, and no one is around to tell the story of failure. When it goes away (naturally, by itself), the fake therapy/prayer is given the credit.

 

Personally, I find it pretty easy to see the holes in other people’s arguments and beliefs, because I don’t share them. I can be more objective than them because I have no vested interest in the outcome. This isn’t because I’m better or more intelligent, indeed there are many “believers” out there who are smarter than me, but everyone is limited by their preconceptions, even sceptics like me.

Sometimes people deliberately ignore evidence and reason (like a lot of creationists), but very often they simply don’t take any notice because the filtering software in their brain doesn’t process it fully. This, unfortunately, is the nature of the human mind; it’s imperfect. I’ve been a victim of it and I’ve also seen victims of it.

Fortunately, there is a solution. It’s called critical thinking, and it consists of knowledge about how logic works, common sense, and examining beliefs (especially our own) objectively and rationally. It requires no special skill, and anyone can learn it. It sits in your mind like a mental checkpoint, evaluating what you see and hear, like a mailbox filter, and automatically raises a red flag whenever somebody says something like “I saw my dead grandmother the other night” or “my dream came true” or “there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq although we can’t present the evidence”.

If I could give one piece of advice (apart from my Insecurity blog the other day), it would be this: learn critical thinking. It will be invaluable in every single aspect of your life, and unlike a lot of self-help trends that come and go, it will never go out-of-date or lose its importance. In fact, in a time when irrationality and superstition appear to be getting stronger in some parts of the world, it might become more important than ever.

My Fear – Tue 10th Apr 07

I’ll make this brief, because I’ve been overkilling religion lately. But this isn’t another rant. This is important.

Some of you may or may not be aware of Pat Robertson. You can check out the Wikipedia entry on him yourself. Suffice it to say that Robertson is an ignorant close-minded hate-spewing fundamentalist bigot. This isn’t just my opinion (although it is indeed), it is fact.

In a world where we are (rightly) worrying about the religious fanatics in the Middle East, I worry that many people are overlooking a potentially worse threat in the Far West.

Robertson is an outspoken fierce proponent of Christianity and its fundamentalist values. He would have the Church-State separation of American torn down, and have the whole country governed by the Ten Commandments, if he could.

His views coincide with those of Jerry Falwell, and he agreed with Falwell who blamed the 911 terrorist attacks on “pagans, abortionists, feminists, gays, lesbians”. Back in 1998 Robertson said that accepting homosexuality “could result in hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes, terrorist bombings and “possibly a meteor.” – quoting from Wikipedia.

Does this sound like the ranting of a man in touch with reality?

It gets worse. Robertson has established his own Regent University. One of the graduates of which is Monica Goodling:

“Goodling is only one of 150 graduates of Regent University currently serving in this administration, as Regent’s Web site proclaims proudly, a huge number for a 29-year-old school. Regent estimates that “approximately one out of every six Regent alumni is employed in some form of government work.” And that’s precisely what its founder desired. The school’s motto is “Christian Leadership To Change the World,” and the world seems to be changing apace. Former Attorney General John Ashcroft teaches at Regent, and graduates have achieved senior positions in the Bush administration. The express goal is not only to tear down the wall between church and state in America (a “lie of the left,” according to Robertson) but also to enmesh the two.

The law school’s dean, Jeffrey A. Brauch, urges in his “vision” statement that students reflect upon “the critical role the Christian faith should play in our legal system.” Jason Eige (‘99), senior assistant to Virginia Attorney General Bob McDonnell, puts it pithily in the alumni newsletter, Regent Remark: “Your Resume Is God’s Instrument.”

So as if George W. Bush being an ignorant deluded bigot wasn’t bad enough, some people serving in his administration are “disciples” of the obnoxious Pat Robertson.

By the way, I am not trying to be objective here. My own opinions are laced in this blog because, well, it is mine and that is the point of a personal blog. But is anyone else not truly terrified by what this world is coming to?!

We have murderous fanatics on one side of the planet and well, the same on the other. Anyone who thinks Christianity is a more enlightened religion these days is kidding themselves. If Christianity is more enlightened than other faiths, say Islam, it is only because Christianity has been tempered by secularists and the non-religious. Remember when Christianity ruled the world? We called it the Dark Ages. In fact, whenever religion has any kind of authority over people the result is always always repression, oppression, curtailing of freedoms and human rights, fighting, and death. Fact. That isn’t my opinion. History has taught us this lesson time and again.

Imagine America if the separation of Church and State was abandoned! The world’s most powerful country would be a police state where the law of thousands of years ago would become new rule. Were adultery, abortion, homosexuality, believing whatever you want, saying whatever you want, would be capital crimes. Free-thought would be a thing of the past. And would science have to cater to the whims of the fundamentalists? Would research and discovery be limited to those areas the Church felt didn’t contradict the bible?

My fear is that this state of affairs is possible! We have Christians and Muslims spewing vitriolic bile at anything they disagree with; at anything that contradicts their person beliefs; both claiming they have the truth and the world should belong to them; that anyone who is an “infidel” should be killed. Talk about being caught between a rock and a hard place.

And yet, people still ask atheists and free-thinkers “why do you bother?”; “why do you keep going on about religion?”; “can’t you just let them get on with their beliefs?”; “why do you have to keep attacking other people’s faiths?”

If people kept their beliefs to themselves, I would be happy (I cannot speak for all atheists) to let them get on with it. Preaching and converting is one thing; I do no like it but everyone has the right to free speech. But the faith-deluded fundamentalists out there are trying to change the world. Our world. Your world, and mine. They are trying to turn it into their world. They want to change the way you live, and think, and act.

And all for what? Because of an imaginary creature they believe in! Isn’t it ridiculous?! Humans have fought and died for all sorts of reasons, but to kill and be killed over a traditional belief in a fantasy creature that lives in the sky??……to quote Richard Dawkins “it would be hilarious if it wasn’t so tragic.”

We can’t let this happen. But we cannot fight with weapons of war, no. Free-thinkers and people of enlightenment must use the very tools that the religious hate: reason, intellect, freedom, communication. Let’s not turn a politically-correct eye to the nonsense of religion. If we keep challenging it and saying “I’m sorry, but you’re talking shit. Your belief is one thing, but don’t tell me how to live my life”, and if we all keep saying it, we can push back the onslaught of this intellectual homicide and stop people like Robertson trying to dictate how any government should operate.

The world belongs to everyone. If it hurts no one, you should be free to do whatever you want. Everyone is free to believe what they want. Freedom of religion includes freedom from religion. Which means that no one should be affected by another person’s delusions. The power to stop this happening lies in the free minds of each of us.

My Advice To You

I’ve written a lot about religion lately, and I know a lot of my articles (article sounds better than blog, just like “pounding” sounds better than “making love”) have been very long, so here is a non-religious and hopefully not too long piece of advice from a not-particularly wise nor experienced person. So feel free to ignore it:

Don’t be insecure.

Insecure people make the worst kind of people in relationships; any kind of relationship. Because if you’re around someone who’s insecure, you feel insecure. You’re not sure what to say to them or how they’ll take it because their mood is always teetering on the brink. You never know if they can take a joke or not, so you play it safe and don’t make any.

Insecure people have such low esteem that they don’t respond to compliments and kindness. You may think that you’re lifting someone’s spirits or counter-acting their low self-opinion by telling them good things, but in reality the inside of the insecure person’s head during this time sounds like this: “la la la la, la la la, you don’t really mean it, la la la, I’m still this this and this.” This is because a lot of insecure people lack the confidence necessary to do anything about what they feel insecure for, so it’s easier to just wallow in self-pity and pretend that there is something wrong with the world and other people, than themselves. For this reason, insecure people don’t respond to generosity very well: because they don’t act like that themselves (see above) they are suspicious of genuine people because they don’t understand them. So when you do something nice for an insecure person they’re always thinking “what is he/she doing that for?” or “what are they trying to gain?” And since they feel suspicious they don’t act appreciatively or gratefully which makes other people think “why did I bother?” (Of course, people who do nice things without wanting anything in return, still like to be told ‘thank you’ or feel appreciated!)

Insecure people also don’t like being with other people because they have to make an effort. People who are comfortable with themselves don’t care if they have too much to say or not, so they’ll happily sit there telling stories all night making people laugh or sit there quietly taking it all in and not worry how they’re coming across either way; (note: secure people don’t have to be loud). A lot of people might seem insecure because they don’t have many friends, but in reality, they can’t be arsed having friends because it’s too much effort.

However, most insecure people will always have a few people in their lives who they do want to be around. They latch onto them because they look up to them, feel comfortable around them, and think that they will be liked/loved/popular by being this person’s friend/partner etc. Unfortunately, what tends to happen is that because the insecure person fixates on this select few so much, they become needy and clingy and the other person(s) senses this. It’s like when you’re making plans: you can always tell the person who hasn’t found their niche in the group because they’ll be like this: “so when are we going out? Yeah? What time? Shall I call you or you call me? It’s ok I’ll call you. Make sure you let me know!”

But insecurity makes people feel uncomfortable, and people are less likely to want to have someone in their company who is needy and clingy – it’s a fact of friendships and especially relationships. This is probably because it puts pressure on the other person who senses the other person over-compensating and naturally backs away. Unfortunately, the insecure person senses the other person backing away and gets paranoid, which not only fuels the insecurity even more, but it makes them try even harder and get even needier and clingier – vicious cycle again.

Paranoia and low confidence continue to be result of insecurity, and these things perpetuate the insecurity even more. And if your self-confidence is that low, you won’t say the “right” things and act the “right” way because you’re thinking “what could anyone find interesting in me anyway?” or “why would anyone like me anyway?” You can spot these people a mile off because their body language screams “don’t look at me! Don’t give me attention!” And they phrase everything like it’s a question because they’re afraid of making definite statements.

Insecure people never compliment other people. This is because they hate compliments themselves (they can’t accept them because their paranoia gets in the way), and because they are jealous of people who actually are secure and confident. It takes a really confident person to put aside their own feelings and say “you look great” or “that was a fantastic shot” or “you beat me there! Yeah you destroyed me, I had no chance!” or “you are much better than me at…” This is because secure people don’t mind making other people feel good, because they are comfortable with themselves. Whereas insecure people want everyone to feel as miserable and unconfident as they are. And of course if no one ever has anything nice to say, people won’t like them.

Paranoia, whether it’s justified or not, is one of the most unattractive qualities. It’s related to jealousy in that sometimes it is justified and the two can be corollaries of each other, but they both have the same effect of driving people away. And when people keep their distance, the insecure person becomes even more paranoid and eventually convinces themselves that they don’t need other people really. They start to invent stories in their mind and see patterns and connections that aren’t really there, and when the slightest word / joke / action seems to correlate to the imagined scenario, the insecure person thinks “A-ha! I’m onto you!” And either backs themselves off from a potential good friend who’s done nothing wrong (remember most insecure people don’t actually want equal friends), or they cling even more to the one (or few) people they idolise (thus making that person feeling trapped and pressured).

For the third time: it’s a vicious circle.

Or is it? Can the trap be broken? Can the mind be freed?

Yes. And the answer is so simplistic you won’t need to pay a psychotherapist £100 an hour to tell you it: get over it. Yup, that’s the answer.

If you are insecure about yourself, it’ll either be your physical person or your mental self. If it’s your mental self, this is good for many reasons: you can change who you are. Aside from true mental illnesses, you can work on your personality and make it whatever you want to, if you try. You can learn more; you can socialise more; you can become more cultured; you can try and kick those nasty habits; you might want to improve your spelling, maths, or language. You might want to be a better problem solver, or a more fluent speaker. You might want to be better at multi-tasking, or listening to people. Maybe you need to work on your empathy, or maybe you talk too much. This list isn’t exhaustive; the point is, if there is something about you as a person you feel insecure about, ask yourself: can I change it? If the answer is yes, then what are you waiting for? If the answer is no, then is it really worth worrying over?

The same goes for your physical self. (Obviously there is no mind/body split here and I’m not getting metaphysical on you, I’m simply referring to bodies and personalities separately). Are you underweight, or are you overweight? Again, barring chronic medical issues, there is always something you can do about this. Do you need to tone up? Do you need to shed some pounds (or kilos for the Eurotrash out there)? Do it then. If there is something more serious than that bothering you, consider cosmetic surgeon. Seriously, there is so much we have the power to affect with ourselves. It’s your body and mind and you’ve only got the one life. You may as well make it the best! You don’t have to be perfect – accept that you’re not and you never will be. But strive as if you can be.

And like I said above, if there is something that you really can’t change and just have to live with, then you just have to accept yourself for who you are. And if you do that, and if you don’t let those things bother you, they won’t bother other people either. You will be ok with yourself, so other people will be too! They will accept you and like you for who you are, and that will make you feel good! You won’t feel insecure because either you’re working on your problems or you’re not worrying about them. And people will sense your confidence and how at peace you are with yourself, and that will make them feel good! They will want to be around you and invite you out before you even have a chance to ask! This will make you feel comfortable around people and secure around them, thus fuelling how good you make them feel, making them like you even more, which will make you more confident –

– Another cycle again, but this time a good one.

My Easter Message – Sun 8th Apr 07

I’ve had a few messages on this most sacred of days wishing me happy Easter and it dawned on me that I hadn’t sent any goodwill messages of my own! So here goes.

I think it’s important we remember just what Easter represents. (Aside from the Anglo-Saxon goddess of Spring Eostre.) Yes it’s that time of year when we celebrate that 2000 years ago, God was so pissed off with humans for failing a test he lied and tricked them into in the first place, that he decided that only a blood sacrifice could make him feel better and bring himself to forgive the human race. So he sent his son, or a part of himself (depending on your beliefs) to earth to be killed.

He could have just forgiven mankind, but I guess that would have been too simplistic and straight-forward. No, what god decided was required was a unique original tale of gods coming to earth, blood sacrifices, redeeming mankind, miracles, and rebirths. Unfortunately, like a bad Hollywood script writer, god either wasn’t aware of the legends and myths of other cultures (like Hercules, Prometheus, Osiris, Krishna, Mithras, Apollonius, Eostre), or like a good Hollywood script writer, he was aware, but copied them anyway and passed them off as his own.

I’m not really sure what the point of Easter is to be honest. It’s like celebrating the ultimate Indian gift that you never quite received! God promised us the best Christmas present, just what we’ve asked for every year, and after 2000+ years, he still hasn’t delivered it. (Maybe it’s coming by Royal Mail). Doesn’t anyone think it’s strange that after supposedly forgiving humans, nothing has changed? What exactly was the point of Jesus’ death?

And so even though it’s a myth passed down by tradition, a myth that isn’t unlike any of a dozen others from around the world, a poorly thought out story and an illogical theme, what is the point of Easter at all?

Well, it’s a good opportunity for families to get together, to reflect on supposedly positive things (albeit false), and we get a couple of days off work too! Like Christmas, it promotes a good atmosphere, puts people in a good mood, and generally brings them together. What I can’t figure out is why we need a myth about an executed carpenter to do this!

Values, Religion, Sex, and American Bullshit – Sat 7th Apr 07

I do a lot of reading online so I come across a lot of opinions I agree with, and I see a lot of articles, essays and speeches that interest me and sometimes annoy me. I keep seeing one particular form of fuckwittery that turns me into a twitching quivering wreck from rage, making Rainman look like fucking Indiana Jones.

“American values”. What a load of shit. As if America has values and ideals that no one else in the world does.

American has one great thing to be proud of: the Constitution of the United States. It’s a formulation in theory for devising the best possible government and civilisation. Would that the whole planet could be united by a Constitution of the Planet Earth.

Unfortunately the majority of Americans are deluded ignorant self-righteous bible-thumping patriotic flag-waving shitkicking fools who have no idea what their own constitution stands for.

Truth. Justice. Love. Family. Freedom. Equal rights. Life. These are HUMAN values! They’re aren’t “American” values. America is one of the newest nations on the world stage, and I’m pretty sure these values were respected long before those 13 colonies told Great Britain to fuck off.

American this. American that. Blah blah. And American is supposed to represent freedom and democracy in the Information Age? American is shoved down our throats everywhere. As if being the self-appointed Policemen of Justice and Democracy in the world wasn’t enough, Americans claim that their entire nation stands for all the qualities that make humanity great. (The inhabitants of My Lai were unavailable for comment.)

This obsessive patriotism (which borders on nationalism) is not limited to fundamentalist bigots with shit for brains, but can also be found (although less so) amongst the non-religious who are trying to protect “the greatest nation on earth” from a society without church-state separation. I cannot possibly imagine what there is to be proud of being born in a particular location on earth. It’s blind luck; out of your hands. 50-100 miles is nothing in America, but my birth in England 50 miles west would’ve made me Welsh and 100 miles north would’ve made me Scottish. Who cares? I didn’t have a say in it. It’s like being proud over your name. It’s funny how you very rarely see people piss off to a foreign country and want to become a citizen of that country because of its culture and values; strangely enough everyone is just happy to be from where they’re from and wouldn’t want to be any other nationality. Hmmm, what a coincidence.

It’s different if there is some particular part of your heritage that you’re proud of – but being proud of being born in a particular patch of this planet, separated by arbitrary imaginary lines that humans have drawn up over the ages based on geography, religion, and war – seems foolish to me.

Of course if you ask Gary L. Bauer, President of the American Values society, he would disagree. (This man makes a mockery of the name Bauer, now passed into living legend by the great JB himself. The following takes place… beep beep beep – sorry, got carried away there.)

 

The US Supreme Court made two rulings back in 2005 about the displaying of the Biblical Ten Commandments in public places: one allowed the Ten Commandments to remain in public buildings; the other required them to be removed if the Commandments’ religious content is “overemphasized.”

This is in a country with a constitution demanding a separation of church and state. So, sounds good to me so far!

For those who aren’t aware, the Ten Commandments are the supposed God-given instructions in the Bible to Moses as a master guideline for living.

What did Gary Bauer have to say?: “The Ten Commandments rulings today from the U.S. Supreme Court send confusing signals to all Americans who embrace the faith of the Founding Fathers, which is the historical foundation of the world’s greatest legal system.”

Even if you say so yourself. More American autoeroticism I see.

First of all, some of Founding Fathers didn’t have any faith at all. Some considered themselves deists. The 1797 Treaty of Tripoli states: “The government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion.”

So, not only is the faith of (some of) the founding fathers irrelevant, the legal system of American is most certainly not founded on any religion, including the Christian one. Gary Bauer is either stupid or a liar.

More from Bauer: “We are facing the cultural fallout of a loss of knowledge and understanding of the faith which founded a great nation and built a great people.”

Well, as separation of church and state implies, and as the widely varying beliefs of the founding fathers illustrates, and as the quote above proves, the great nation and people of American are not founded on faith, of any kind. Which officially makes America the most deluded hypocritical country in the world.

And more: “It is a sad day when our nation’s highest court closes its eyes to the immutable standards of right and wrong.”

No. It’s a sad day when any human of the 21^st century defers reason and modern enlightenment to the superstitious bronze-age ramblings of sheep-herding primitive Jewish chauvinists who worshipped a diabolical God of Wars.

Besides, who would want to follow the Ten Commandments anyway? A could invent a better set of rules for living after a drunken night out and two hours’ sleep.

Commandment 4: “You shall not make for yourself an image, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me.”

In modern times, punishing people for the crimes of others is the definition of anti-justice.

Oh yeah, look closely at the first part of this commandment. It does to rather denounce the use of idols in worship doesn’t it? Remember that the next time you see a Christian with a cross around their neck.

This is Commandment 1: “You shall have no other gods before me.”

If I had to point out the biggest problem in the world today, the above would be it! Oh and guess what the punishment for disobeying the above (well any of the commandments!) was? Yup, death. Adultery, theft, or desiring something you don’t own as capital crimes. Enlightened huh?

I’m not being funny but I wouldn’t last long in that kind of society, and not just because I want to plough Avril Lavigne morning noon and night.

I think having parts of the bible on display is American is a great idea! I would pick out the most revealing parts of the “good book” and hang them up. The Yanks could have “scripture of the year”. I suggest the following for 2007:

Numbers 31:

Verse 7: “And they warred against the Midianites, as the LORD commanded Moses; and they slew all the males.”

No preaching. No proselytising. No standing on the mountains faith-healing and asking for money. No going door to door. No trying to felate the leaders of the government or sneaking your faith into every aspect of the Midianite’s lives. Nope. This was the good old days before God could be bothered reaching out to people with love. Ah simpler times: kill anyone who has a different faith from you. Thank God that we no longer live in such times!

Verse 14: “And Moses was wroth with the officers of the host, with the captains over thousands, and captains over hundreds, which came from the battle.”

Moses is pissed off! Oooh. What could have possibly pissed him off? Let’s read on:

Verse 15-16: “And Moses said unto them, Have ye saved all the women alive? Behold, these caused the children of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to commit trespass against the LORD in the matter of Peor, and there was a plague among the congregation of the LORD.”

Ah, I get it. They pissed off the Lord so naturally we have to kill them because God can’t fight his own battles.

Verse 17: “Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him.”

So, kill all the males. All of them. Not just the soldiers. From the babies to the young men, the boys, the elderly and the infirm. If you were male, you were killed. Simple as. In modern times, a person committing such an act would be guilty of war crimes.

But hang on, what about the females?

Verse 18: “But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.”

So all the young girls that are still virgins can be kept alive. Ah, mercy. Kept alive “for yourselves” though. What does this mean? Yup, you know exactly what it means. Spoils of wars. Sex slaves. Of course, how would the brave God-fearing men of Israel know if the girls were still virgins or not? Well there is a physical inspection that can be made to determine this, but I don’t think I need to say much more. Cherry or no cherry – life or death. And teenage girls these days think they have it bad!

Verse 35: “thirty and two thousand persons in all, of women that had not known man by lying with him.”

I think the above, although rather cumbersome compared to the Decalogue (qv), would be an excellent reminder to the American people of what the “foundation” of their society is all about. When asked why America has the “world’s greatest legal system”, Americans can point straight at the plaque hanging on every school wall and in every public place with the above on it.

Back to Bauer: “To enter a public building and see and be inspired by — or simply be reminded of — the standards of conduct that great men and women have used for centuries to overcome our most base instincts is a good thing.”

Yeah I think I know what “base instincts” he has in mind, like two people having sex in the privacy of their own homes, whether they’re married or not, or the same sex or not. Who cares? If the Ten Commandments inspire you, I think you probably have a mental illness, but whatever. Just keep it to yourself.

If I really believed I was a lowly human slave to an almighty blood-hungry demanding god with obsessive-compulsive disorder who wanted me to change everything about myself, I might ask why he made me that way in the first place.

Bauer: “Whether people read it as a historical narrative or faith-filled ideal is irrelevant. Judicial opinions need to be grounded in consistently applied principle.”

They are. It’s called law.

Bauer one last time: “Sadly, Americans can now only be more confused concerning the rightful place of our historical and religious heritage in society.”

Yeah, they are confused because of fanatics like you who obfuscate an otherwise transparent and clear-cut issue. Freedom of religion includes freedom from religion, which is why the government should always be independent of any groups’ personal beliefs. Otherwise it cannot function objectively.

It’s really quite simple but I’ll spell it out anyway: believe whatever you want. But don’t expect other people to take you seriously. And certainly don’t expect to get some kind of preferential treatment from a government that has vowed not to prefer any religion or lack thereof over another. And certainly don’t try and re-write the history of your own country to make it look like it should!

So what does it mean to be an American? Well, the same as it means to be any other nationality: that you were born in particular place. By chance. Big deal.

As I said before, Americans (and therefore the human race) does have one thing to be proud of: the Constitution. What would truly make America the best nation on earth is if it actually followed it.

My Problem with Society – Fri 6th Apr 07

Imagine two people asked to say what they think their most impressive abilities are. Let’s imagine they are youngish people (under 30), as this will illustrate the point better.

“I can run faster than anyone I know!” says Person A.

“I can speak two languages” says Person B.

“I’m a good fighter”, says Person A.

“I can explain to you the Theory or Relativity”, says Person B.

“I’m good at jumping and throwing balls” says Person A.

“I’m good at maths”, says Person B.

Which of these people do you think would be more popular, or considered the most interesting? Which of these people is more likely to impress other people in general?

Well, if you’re a rebellious cynic like me, you’ll probably agree Person A. And this is one of the problems with people, and society. I think that human physical talents almost always tend to be admired more than mental ones. If you want to be popular and with the “in” crowd, you have a better chance (in England anyway) if you can play football or keep up drinking with “the lads” than if you are well-read, a good listener, or put more emphasis on your mental skills.

Contrary to the impression given by peer pressure, this is actually really really sad. Not only is it simply false that physical skills are better than mental skills, unless you’re going to be a successful athlete, in the real world mental skills are always more useful. Ok, given the choice, I’d love to be a world-class footballer and play for Liverpool FC. But I can’t. But at least I can spell. I know plenty of people who were popular in school and very sporty, but where are they now? Do they have good jobs, nice cars, families, good money, or are they working at MacDonalds, or smashing rocks together, or maybe they’re just selling drugs. All that pissing around in school doesn’t seem as much fun in retrospect does it?

It’s like those people who spend 20 hours a week in the gym but can’t tell the difference between “you’re” and “your”, “definitely” and “defiantly”, “to” and “too”, and how to work out a percentage.

The funniest thing about how much society drools over models, sports stars, people who can throw a long piece of metal really far, or shove their arse out for pictures whilst making embarrassing pouty faces is just how ironic this is. Of all the things humans have to be proud of, our physical abilities are nothing to shout about. Evolution has generalised mankind so that we can do a lot of tasks pretty well but we’re not particularly good at anything; not like animals are. Most animals are proportionately faster and stronger than us, have better eyesight and hearing, and have much better equilibrium with their environment.

It’s the human brain that sets us apart from animals. If you can dribble a football, have brilliant hand-eye co-ordination, can sing, can draw, can make people laugh, can talk and listen very well – these are all skills to be found inside the human head. And yet society draws a distinction between the physically expressive ones as “cooler” and more coveted.

The really rare skills that can last all your life and really benefit mankind are the mental ones. Most people consider Pele to be the greatest footballer who’s ever lived, but what has he done to further the species? Fuck all.

Can Naomi Campbell, David Beckham, Jenna Jameson, Michael Jordan, Bono, Michael Douglas, Tom Cruise, Ronaldinho amongst others, be compared to people like David Hume, Edward Jenner, William Harvey, Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawking amongst others?

Yet I don’t see many kids growing up wanting to be the person who cures AIDS, or cancer, or finalises a quantum theory of gravity, or be the first human to land on Mars, or invent a new form of clean cheap energy.

Society has brainwashed people into thinking that success is getting on Big Brother, being a celebrity, looking like a model, having the perfect figure, kicking a ball, acting, singing, shagging, or just being famous for famous’ sake.

There is nothing wrong with any of those things. There’s nothing wrong with bettering yourself in any way. You can be whatever you want, as meaningful or as capricious as that might be. I’m not saying what anyone should be. And I’m not saying that being a scientist is better than being a rock star.

My problem is that this Western Culture we live in (still better than the Eastern one though!) has a profound lack of respect for the really important long-term skills that actually mean something and will better the human race long after the top models have grown wrinkly and the sports stars can’t run anymore; when nobody is listening to U2 and the Killers, 50 Cent and Eminem (the sooner the better), Oasis and Coldplay, ABBA and the Spice Girls, or watching the last 20 years of Hollywood shitfests – yes when all these people and things are long dead in the cold cold ground, people will still be using electricity; still talking on their mobile phones; still be vaccinated from smallpox, polio and TB; still able to talk to anyone anywhere in the world; still be able to drink clean water at will; still have access to medicine and food at will; still have the right to vote; still curing diseases and coming up with new technologies; and hopefully making society and people more enlightened and mature.

Let’s just get things in perspective people. I wish this shitty arrogant condescending attitude to mentally-challenging skills and professions would end. The sort of veneration given to the superficial entertainment world of looks and physique is out of all proportion with what it actually does, the skill level involved, and what it really contributes to the world.

Yeah, being a top-class sportsman requires skill. Not many people have the looks and figures required to be a model. Not many people have the self-righteous egotistical demand for attention required to be an actor. But the talent required to be an expert in Maths or Physics pisses on anything the entertainment world has to offer. The skill, concentration, dedication, creativity, and talent necessary to be a world-class musician far outweighs the luck of being born pretty enough to have your picture taken for a living, or having the capacity to punch someone unconscious in the shortest possible time.

I’m not against the entertainment world as a whole, nor being as impressive a physical specimen as you can be ; I’m just calling for a modicum of perspective. Let’s have some respect for the rare and even more important talents out there.

My Message to the Messengers – Thu 5th Apr 07

Here we go again. Another supernatural thriller movie. Zzzzzzz. Just like the teen “comedy” that comes out every year, the perennial Gladiator / Roman / Troy / Spartan CGI-generated million people fighting each other, cheesy action-blockbuster, or “romcom”, the supernatural thriller movie is another in a long line of regurgitated clichéd shit that Hollywood excretes every year.

“THE MESSENGERS” – (cue man who puts on the same deep voice for eeeevvvveeeerrrry fucking film that comes out).

There’s a kid who can see things no one else can. Sound familiar? There’s lots of screaming. Lots of shocked looks. Bit of eerie lighting. Play some creepy music. Oooooh!!! Am I supposed to be scared yet? Yet people just horde around this garbage like flies around shit. Ghosts from the past are tormenting people of the present in the same house. That’s not been done before has it? The crows are actually some kind of supernatural avengers for the good guys (well duh!), and the bad guy gets dragged away by spirits and sort of melts into the shadows. Where have I seen that before?

What do I know though? Hollywood doesn’t make films to tell stories. It makes films to make money. The Messengers made over $14.5m in its first week. And I’m sure the next supernatural “thriller” that comes out will make at least as much. And same for the next one.

I think the secret to so many rubbish films (read: 99% of which are supernatural movies) being successful is because they appeal to all the true-believers and wishers out there. The headline says it all:

THERE ARE HUNDREDS OF DOCUMENTED CASES OF CHILDREN REPORTING SUPERNATURAL ACTIVITY!

Ooooh! I’m captivated! Because the media in general has a good reputation for not embellishing any story that sounds good or playing up to peoples’ ignorance if it means making a lot of money, doesn’t it?

My new movie is coming out soon:

-DÉJÀ VU ABOUT MESSENGERS OF 13 GHOSTS WITH SIGNS OF THE UNDEAD THING FROM THE HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL 2: What lies beneath the shining of the Amityville horror of beetlejuice that knows what you did last summer-

And the promo-script (just imagine that annoying deep voice guy saying it):

“Are you afraid of death? Do you believe in Tarot cards and psychics and crystal-healing? Do you really want to believe that spirits are talking to you, or perhaps you’re convinced that crop-circles are really caused by intelligent life centuries ahead of mankind that has nothing better to do than travel one-thousand light-years just to sneak down in the middle of the night and piss off the local farmer by landing their spaceship in the middle of the cornfield? Wonder why your kid keeps making strange noises and looking past you? It’s not because of ADD or Tourette’s, or the fact you smoked whilst having him or dropped him on his head twice – could it be “visitors” (ooooh!) from the nether world trying to communicate with him? Or perhaps you’re one of those “this life can’t be all there is!” types which of course means because you don’t like the fact that you will die one day, life seems sooo much more magical if you get to come back as a ghost and do what all the other ghostfolk do, namely: almost-kinda-sort of appearing to people who already believe in ghosts when they’re half-asleep or mentally incapacitated?

Well this film is for you! It’ll satisfy all those wishful yearnings of yours about ghosts and the spirit realm and not make you feel so bad about spending £1000 on a pair of healing crystals with ‘Takionics Inc’ written on them.

Feeling a bit down that your yin and yang don’t seem to be balanced? This film has your name on it! Wondering why ‘nana-from-beyond’ doesn’t seem to be able to provide the clairvoyant with any real information that the clairvoyant couldn’t have known herself? This film will assuage all your doubts! There are ghosts! Honestly! Oh you can’t see them, only kids can. Of course.

Had a spooky dream that came true, (even though most people use the loo at least once a day anyway) or find that that déjà vu feeling that definitely isn’t caused by natural brain functions just won’t go away? This film will provide a nice magical little explanation for it all.”

(This blog isn’t over just yet by the way. Go get yourself a cup of coffee coz tonight’s gonna be a large one!)

You know what else pisses me off (I’m pissed off by the way)? Check out this description of upcoming film 1408 (another fluid-product of Stephen King’s mental masturbation):

“Mike Enslin (John Cusack) is a celebrity author of the paranormal, riding high on the success of his last three published works while trying to cope with the loss of his young daughter (Jasmine Jessica Anthony). Because of this tragedy, Mike has thrown himself into his work, proving that supposed supernatural myths are nothing more than a fabricated hoax. All of this has turned him into a man truly immune to what he hears about such haunted legends. On one such venture, Enslin discovers room 1408 at the Dolphin Hotel in New York City, a supposedly haunted room with a horrific past. Eager to expose it just as another hoax, he eagerly reserves the room, against the protests of hotel manager Mr. Olin (Samuel L. Jackson), who is aware of the notorious history that accompanies 1408 and who has seen his fair share of what’s happened there. But despite Olin’s warnings, Mike won’t listen and will have to find out for himself what 1408 is all about. As Mike Enslin is about to learn, not everything is just a rumor and some things are better left undiscovered, when the terrifying myth might turn out to be the real thing.”

Richard Dawkins, great man that he is, has said something incredibly astute that I shall paraphrase here. It also has the unfortunate benefit of being true!

Imagine there is a police detective drama on TV. Every week the protagonist narrows the suspects down to two people: a black man and a white man. Now imagine if in every episode it always turns out to be the black man. Every time.

I wonder what people would have to say about such a show, or how long it would remain on TV!

The point he was illustrating was about the (then popular) X Files show. Every week, a nymphomaniac depressed loser that won’t stop whining about his sister and his strangely sexy (but of course cynically and boring) scientist colleague disagree about the cause of a particular phenomenon. There is a choice of explanations: the rational logical scientific one, or the mysterious paranormal supernatural one. Guess which one won almost every week?

But no one bats an eyelid. People love it! Yeah fuck you science! What have you ever done for us?!

Take the film 1408 above. Wouldn’t it be great if the closed-off depressed slightly-obsessed sceptic (which all sceptics are don’t you know??) actually discovered that the room isn’t haunted after all??:

“Yeah so I stayed in the room all night”, says Mike Enslin, “and it turns out the air-con was broken and that explains the eerie whistling noise. The cold draught? I just closed the window. The ectoplasm on the bed? Someone just whacked off. The sound of creeping doors and steps? It’s a fucking hotel, what do you expect?!”

The film ends with all the deluded true-believers examining the evidence rationally and concluding that not only is there no good reason to believe in creatures that belong in children’s fairy tales, but that all the evidence and logic actually suggests that the existence of such things is next to impossible and defies all our understanding of the world. They then get themselves (properly) educated and devote their money and lives to being happy and caring for their families, or perhaps trying to better mankind through the ONLY reliable way of gathering information and advancing knowledge, technology and quality of life – namely, science. Oh, and they don’t go and watch any more shitty Hollywood movies anymore, putting the overpaid wankers out of business until they start producing good movies.

I don’t think it would gross $14.5m, do you?