Terrorist Attack at Glasgow Airport – Sat 30th Jun 07

There has been a terrorist attack at Glasgow airport.  The virus strikes again.

Apparently two Asian men drove a jeep into terminal one.  No one was killed fortunately.  This follows failed attempts yesterday to explode car bombs in the centre of London.

Incidents like this test my patience and ethics.  I am opposed to the death penalty, but if the two men would have burned to death instead without harming anyone, I wouldn’t care one bit.  When the world loses evil deluded fanatics, it gets that much better.

I don’t know what exactly the terrorists hoped to achieve, but I do know why they attempted it.  You can talk about politics and war, guerrilla tactics, freedom fighting, retaliation, making a statement, fighting in “the only way you can”, but we all know what it comes down to so let’s not pretend it’s anything else: religion.

Ultimately, it all comes down to religious intolerance and hatred, because one group of people think that their invisible friend in the sky with magic powers is real and the other groups’ invisible friend in the sky with magic powers isn’t.  This is like killing yourself and innocent people over an interpretation of Lord of the Rings.  (Except LoTR is much better written that any holy book.)

Anyone who targets innocent people is evil and a coward.  Anyone who performs evil acts to please a god worships an evil god.  The fact that these magical beings are pure fantasy just makes the violence and loss of life that much more tragic, and that much more stupid.

My Eight Random Facts

Son of a bitch!

I’ve been tagged, apparently, or whatever you crazy kids are calling it these days.

Here are the rules:

* We have to post these rules before we give you the facts.

* Players start with eight random facts/habits about themselves.

* People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules.

* At the end of your blog post, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.

* Don’t forget to leave them each a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

Fine! (Perhaps this will get rid of all the e-mails I get from nymphomaniac young ladies with a fetish for schoolgirl outfits, asking to know more about me); here are my 8 random facts:

1. I despise insects. If there was one compelling argument against the existence of god, it would be the existence of insects. I’d say all insects can take a run and jump, but that’s not much of a threat since most of the bastards can fly. I’d say all insects can buzz off, but it doesn’t sound so effective for nature’s miniature vibrators. The only insect I like is the hoverfly. The hoverfly doesn’t buzz, doesn’t come into your house, and is basically inoffensive and minds its own business. Compare the hoverfly to the twat of all insects: the wasp. If the Genesis account was truly accurate, Satan wouldn’t have chosen the form of a snake, he’d have chosen a wasp: ugly, poisonous, and scary.

 

Not harming anyone.

Twat.

2. I hate R&B and hip-hop music. It’s monotonous, boring, talentless drivel for people who can’t sing properly, write music, or play an instrument. It appeals to the pretentious “tough crowd”, gangster wannabes, or teenage kids who think it’s trendy and hip. Whenever I go to a club that plays this sort of garbage I just see lots of white kids wishing they were black and jerking their heads and hands around like a robot with attention-deficit disorder. I can’t imagine anyone enjoying constant two-tone repetition to the sound of what can only be described as a cross between a chicken being slowly gutted and a car alarm going off in the background. Get an electronic keyboard, press the Demo button and release that as a chart single; seriously, it actually sounds better! If I was given the choice between being forced to listen to “hip-hop/rap etc” or being hit by an articulated lorry on the motorway…

Plan A

Plan B

3. Despite being a fan of Liverpool FC, the very first football match I ever watched was actually Manchester United vs Crystal Palace in the 1990 FA Cup Final! Fortunately, no one will ever find out about this! The night Liverpool won the European Cup in May 2005 is arguable the single greatest night of my life: it was the perfect sporting final, and meant so much to Liverpool fans.

4. My favourite sitcoms of all time are SCRUBS, ‘Yes, Prime Minister’, FRIENDS, Spaced, and Family Guy. I’m a fan of some incarnations of Star Trek; Buffy the Vampire Slayer; Angel; and Prison Break was fantastic. But in my opinion the best TV show of all time is 24.

5. Although I hated school and wouldn’t want to relive it, everything that has happened since, mostly for the better, all the positive experiences I’ve had; the amazing friends I’ve met; my de-conversion…can all be traced back to the pool table we had in our 6^th-form common room (seriously!), which quite literally changed my life! The realisation of how tiny events swing our future tangentially is very humbling.

6. My earliest memory is waking up in a cot in a hired cottage in the Lake District. My dad and older brother were either side of me. I remember waking up misty-eyed and looking forward through the house. I distinctly remember being self-aware for the first time!; I must have been 2 or 3 years old.

7. I own three computers! A gaming laptop, an iMac, and a Dell XPS desktop. I never planned to own 3 machines but it kinda worked out that way. Now I use the laptop for portability and travelling. I used the iMac exclusively for everything else until I realised I couldn’t play any games on it or run high-end software that isn’t Mac compatible. So now a corner of this room looks like a scene from Swordfish or 24! Certain people think this makes me geeky. Personally, I think it makes me look important!

8. My favourite band is U2; many of their songs are in my top 20 of all time (such as With or Without You, One, Angel of Harlem). Also in there would be Pink Floyd with Comfortably Numb; Joshua Radin with Winter; Oasis with Whatever, REM with Find the River, and Tsar with The Girl Who Wouldn’t Die. (Good luck finding that last song unless you buy the album, but if you do find it you won’t regret it.)

 

I tag:

Pink Prozac

A Veritable Plethora

Speaking Freely

Deep Thoughts – the atheist blogroll

Friendly Atheist

More Fire

Blue Linchpin

Daylight Atheism

My Evanescence

The reason I chose the name “evanescent” for my blog was not just because it sounds cool, but because I believe it’s a poetic metaphor for life.

All life is transient. If there’s one constant that is revealed from a study of the universe it’s that all forms of existence are ephemeral. It’s just a matter of time, and time is entirely relative:

Average lifecycles of existing things:

Anti-hydrogen particle: 1/10^th second

Housefly: one month

Mouse: 2 years

Dog: 13-14 years

Goldfish: 20 years

Elephant: 70 years

Human: 70-80 years

Tortoise: 150-200 years

Methuselah Tree: 4800 years

The Earth: 4.6 billion years (to date)

The Sun: 14 billion years (total age)

From the smallest to the largest, from the briefest to the longest, everything that exists in the universe eventually dies.

And yet, the death of such colossuses like a star, often produce nebulae. Nebulae are enormous gas “nurseries” where new stars and solar systems form. The death of stars leads to the creation of new stars.

Without death, life would be impossible! The very first replicating molecules that had an advantage over non-replicating molecules, survived, and the others didn’t. Success and development could only be achieved through the filter of natural selection, made possibly by the termination of life. What enables life to evolve is the ability to survive and reproduce, and therefore pass on more-successful genes to its descendants. Without the pressure of death, there would be no competition. There would be stagnation. Life, if it even got going, would not be anything like what we see today. Gazelles get faster and faster and more agile; cheetahs get faster and faster to catch them. The large grazing animals become faster, tougher, and wary, so tigers and lions get stronger, faster, more cunning, in order to hunt them. Success begets success; change begets change.

The sheer brute fact that we can die, forces evolution to strive for better ways to survive. It forces humans especially, (as sapient creatures), to invent, create, and better themselves. The ruthless uncaring competitive living world produced bats and humans from the same life-form 85 million years ago.

The very thing that evolution has taught us to fear and resist most is the very reason we’re here: death. Mother Nature it seems, it not without a sense of irony.

Life is a cycle. Without death there could not be new life. Death is an inextricable part of existence. Everything that has ever existed has perished. Everything that does exist now will perish. One could say that this is nature’s way of clearing out the old and bringing in the new. But the fact that we will all die one day should make us never rest on our laurels. Do something with your life. Leave a legacy. Raise a family. Make a difference. Be the best you can be. Or, sit around and cry over what you cannot change, and die without a word and with a life of regrets.

The brute fact of death is often unpleasant to realise, but we’re adults. And wishing something wasn’t so doing make it false. It is no wonder humans have always invented comforting stories and myths of survival beyond death. But they are dreams to assuage frightened minds. Being a human and being an adult should be about growing up and facing the facts; seeing the world not as you’d like it to be, but as what it really is. Only then can you really go about making it a better place.

The evanescence of life is really the greatest gift the universe gave humans.

My Diagnosis – Mon 25th Jun 07

If I was an alien observer of this planet and the human race, I would shake my head and think “what the hell is wrong with these people?”

Except, as an inhabitant of earth, I know what at least one of the problems is.  You see, Earth is riddled with a disease.  An ugly festering cancerous debilitating parasitic virus that leaves a trail of oppression, ignorance, suffering, and death in its wake.  But this is a virus unlike any other; this is a virus of the mind.

This particular virus debilitates the sufferer into a blind delusion that what they believe has always been right, is constantly right, and will always be right.  It blocks out original thoughts and drowns the afflicted person in a mental quagmire of myth, contradiction, superstition, and just downright falsehoods.  It convinces anyone carrying the virus that any person who doesn’t agree with them is wrong, evil, and ultimately worthy of death.  In some cases the virus is so overpowering the victim experiences a unique symptom called “righteousness”.  This peculiar euphoric manifestation in some cases even causes the carrier to take action them self on behalf of the virus, up to and including killing non-carriers.

This vile infection is so ubiquitous it has even diversified so that in some parts of the world it produces different symptoms in people.  Oddly, this mental pathogen will not tolerate variance of any kind even amongst other carriers, so a strong aversion to change and total lack of tolerance are classic symptoms of infection.

This virus is also very efficient at not only propagating itself, but also defending itself.  It does the latter often proactively, by eradicating non-carriers and variant-carriers.  A look through the history books shows entire legions of carriers wiping out others who had a different form of the plague.  Another favourite ploy of the virus is to make its victims believe that they are being persecuted, regardless of the actual state of affairs, no matter how many fellow carriers there are, and with no regard to whether any event is hardship or not.  The mind bug even causes its carriers to force non-carriers to defer to them and compromise for them, using sympathy, lies, propaganda, goodwill of others, and especially the slimy sodden salivation of political-correctness. 

To prevent any sufferers from recovering, the virus has several unique counter-measures.  One is to surround the sufferer by fellow carriers so that leaving the group is unwelcome, frightening, and lonely.  Two, is to suppress free-thought, opinion, discussion, debate, controversy, or reform.  The virus causes its victims to despise variation, lest the victim recover from whichever belief the virus produces.  The virus cunningly avoids this potential problem by inducing a paralysing stagnation: the past is overlooked, and the future is to mirror the present; trapped in the status quo of ritual and tradition.  Anything that contradicts a belief is rejected, or twisted into an imaginary scenario to account for it.  Evidence is deemed unimportant.  Questions and analysis cause an observable discomfort in the mind of the victim.  Third, some beliefs infused by the virus are so potent that carriers will hurt and kill anyone who criticises what the virus has deemed right and holy.  The virus therefore must ruthlessly oppose everything that it doesn’t stand for: facts, tolerance, peace, freedom-of-speech, investigation, and progress.

The virus propagates itself through mediums such as tradition and indoctrination.  Some permutations of sufferers produce genuine symptoms like happiness and concern for your well-being.  They might even take the effort to seek you out to help you contract the virus.  But the virus’ favourite method of procreation is through sexuality; that is, any carriers feel a deep desire to pass the disease onto their offspring (or anyone who will listen), whether such people have the chance to accept or reject the virus of their own free will.  This allows the virus to exist for generation after generation; a most successful reproductive method indeed!

Finally, unlike most other viruses, this one entrenches itself so deeply in people they are convinced that there is nothing wrong with them!  They are even glad to have the virus, and make public displays of how joyful life is with it.  They might shout from the rooftops, preach on the streets, knock on your door, sings songs, build statues and altars, and even martyr themselves!  They even want you to have the virus too!  In fact, so fervently do they want you to share the pleasure of their infection, they might even decide that if you don’t want to have the bug too, your life just isn’t worth living.  They might even make this decision for you.

Now, not all belief-symptoms of the disease are as potent as others, and not everyone is as susceptible to the mental disarrangement that the illness produces.  But whilst the symptoms of the virus vary, (usually by locality and upbringing,) the virus itself is the same; like a rose by any other name.  This bug might even smell as sweet, but watch out for those nasty thorns.

There is a cure fortunately, but the virus has long since infected people to not want curing.  The cure only works on those who accept it; whose bodies haven’t built up enough of an immunity through years of infection.  The cure is the enemy of everything the virus stands for.  That is: unforced belief, tolerance, free-thought, discussion, inquiry, criticism, and perhaps most importantly: freedom of speech.

If you find yourself opposing any of these virtues, watch out!  The virus could already have you!

My Blessing Season This in Thee – Sun 24th Jun 07

I think it’s very important to be yourself.

We live in a fast-paced society where opinions fly by us, we are constantly told how to think and act, and the mass media has a huge affect on what people believe.

Fashion is ephemeral .  Coolness is transient.  Styles, gadgets, technology, and words, change constantly.  The politically-correct crowd stalk us like Big Brother.

There is enormous peer pressure to conform, or to do what is expected of us.

This is because humans have evolved as social creatures, and the ability to fit in and be assimilated by society is not only preferable, but in many ways necessary.  But it’s easy to go through the motions, and be a sheep.

Being aware of other people’s opinions is very important.  It’s also a very good idea to understand how people see you.  However this isn’t something that we’re generally very good at.  I think most people just act how they think they are and hope that it comes across.

Unfortunately, as I’ve recently written, how we perceive ourselves is not always how other people see us.  Who we really are as people only has any validity when we interact with others anyway, so no one can be an island.  If you were the last human on earth then honesty, confidence, etiquette, attraction, and sociability would be meaningless, so you cannot pretend these things aren’t important.  And you can’t pretend that other people’s opinions aren’t important.  They are.

The other extreme is to think “the hell with everyone, I’m me and you can like it or get lost!”  Well, if that is how you want to be then fine, but don’t expect to be very popular.  I am not saying that you should change to please people, but it’s simply common sense for instance to be more polite around certain people than others; to flirt around someone you like than someone you don’t; you make the effort to talk to people at times even when you don’t really want to; to bite your lip when you really want to snap someone’s head off; to think before you speak; to wait your turn in line, etc.  You aren’t “selling out” or being a different person, you are just showing different attitudes where necessary; you’re the same person.  People who say they have a “fuck it” attitude very rarely do in actuality.  People who are genuinely like this and say whatever they want, and do whatever they want, and whenever they want, with no regard to the feelings and well-being of others, very rarely succeed at anything, very rarely have friends, and very often end up in prison.

Other people serve as a benchmark for who we really are.  That’s important to remember.

On the other hand, you should try to know who are you.  Better yet, have an idea who you want to be; what kind of person would you like to be?  If you want to be an unpopular hermit then act that way, and you will probably get your wish.  There is anything right or wrong in this as you’re not hurting anyone, so you can be whatever person you want!  If you want to be a popular confident person then you should act that way.  Now the secret is to not change your vision of yourself to match other people’s: don’t be ashamed of your interests; don’t be afraid of having opinions and expressing them; don’t be afraid to go against the tide and question the status quo; don’t be swept along with the crowd; don’t be a sheep.  Know what you want, and know what you like.  Know what you agree with and believe, and stick to your principles.

People who are intent on being “in” with the latest everything and are determined to be like their peers are insecure.  Ironically, these people brand people who “think outside the box” and don’t always go along with the crowd as uncool.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  There is nothing “cooler” than being yourself and liking what you like.  If these likes are what everyone else likes, great.  If not, that’s ok too.  What makes something “ok” is not how many go along with it.

We all need other people.  But you are just an “other” in everyone else’s world.  This means that other people need you of course, but it also means that you’re not the star of your own show.  You’re just another person on the planet.

We’re dependant on each other.  Humans form complex interrelated networks of relationships.  Just as losing one plexus in your link would probably drastically affect your life, so too you are such a plexus in someone else’s life.  Humanity is a sphere of connections; there is no centre and there are no boundaries.  If one accepts this view, it’s easy to see that ultimately we’re all connected.

I’ll leave the closing words with some poet from a few centuries ago:

“This above all: to thine own self be true,

And it must follow, as the night the day,

Thou canst not then be false to any man.

Farewell; my blessing season this in thee!”

My Soul – Thu 21st Jun 07

What does it mean to have a soul?

Does the expression have any importance?  Does it have it any meaning?

I believe we can answer these questions.

First of all we must decide what a soul is.  There are three interpretations that I’ll consider:

1.       The soul is a spiritual supernatural entity that exists in humans.

2.       The soul is synonymous with “body” and just another word for being.  i.e.: Genesis says that Adam “became a living soul”; it does not say that he was given one.

3.       The soul as a metaphor.

I don’t accept the first interpretation because it defies common sense.  Although many beliefs are based on the idea of an immortal transcendent component, that doesn’t make those beliefs right.  After all, the soul is the only way to explain such far-fetched flights of fancy like the afterlife, karma, reincarnation etc.  Though maybe not strictly revolving around the same thing, they all posit “something” that enables thoughts/memories/fate etc to survive after death.

There are at least two good reasons why the soul in this sense is irrational.  First, the soul is often described as a ghostly being with the ability to see, hear, sense, and even touch.  This makes no sense.  Everything we know about the world shows us physical creatures that interact with a physical world through physical senses.  Is this artificially limiting our understanding?  No.  Why?  Ok, close your eyes and tell me what you see.  Put headphones on and tell me what you hear.  Do both and tie your arms around your back and see how far you get.  To invent an entity that can see without any sight organs and hear without any auditory equipment, and sense without any physical form or nerve endings, is precisely that: pure invention.  You might as well be writing science fiction or fantasy.  It is a contradiction in terms.

For the same reason, so is the notion of life after death.  You’re alive now, because your body temperature is being regulated, your brain activity is at a certain level, your lungs are bringing in oxygen, and your heart is circulating the oxygen around your body and bringing deoxygenised blood back to the lungs for expulsion.  These processes maintain your vital signs. 

Your consciousness (despite what junk science and blatant fabrications might tell you) is a property of the very complex workings of your brain.  Intelligence and consciousness is directly related to brain size and activity; specifically in the cerebral cortex.  Dogs, cats, and pigs having greater cerebral cortex surface area (grey matter) than fish, horses, and mice.  As a result they are more intelligent.  The human brain is the most sophisticated brain of all on the planet.  Our brain has considerable portions devoted to higher thinking, reasoning, and language.  This is why we have the unique abilities we do.  At some point in the past, the brain of what became Homo sapiens (literally: thinking man) reached a critical mass where it was able to reason and think so much it became aware of its own existence!  Consciousness was born.  Still in doubt?  Drink a pint of vodka.  See how good your consciousness is then.  This is because alcohol (very loosely speaking) interrupts brain activity, and the result is a loss of function and reasoning.  If you’re still not convinced that consciousness resides in the brain, I suggest a less subtle approach: run into a brick wall at full speed head first, and see if you remain conscious after a concussion.

To be consciously aware when one is unconscious is a contradiction; this is common sense and no one would disagree surely.  It is as much a contradiction to talk about still having fingers without hands.  Think about that for a few seconds.  Now imagine that some terrible incident has ended your brain activity, such as: gunshot; blunt-force trauma; myocardial infarction; watching too much Big Brother.  To talk of still having consciousness after brain death is to speak of unconscious consciousness!  Our consciousness and thinking, indeed what makes us human, resides in the encephalon floating in your skull.  In other words, life after death is like talking about handless fingers, a non-brain thought, or a square circle.

I know to many the idea of life after death is necessary and comforting, but you really are kidding yourself.  I cannot put that any simpler.  Life after death is the ultimate human fantasy.  And in some cases it’s also the greatest lie of all.

What about the soul as the body itself?  Well I have no problem with this interpretation, but it doesn’t get us anywhere; it’s just another word for being or body really, so there isn’t much more to be said.

I believe there can be a use for the word “soul” though, if one is clear that the word has no supernatural connotation.  Unfortunately this isn’t always the case so it’s up to you whether you agree with me or not.

I think the word soul can mean something when we talk about what makes us human.  It is a convenient, (perhaps lazy) way of referring to all the things that define a human intellectually.  These might be: intelligence; empathy, conscience, capacity for humour and love etc; ability to reflect and predict.  No animal shares all these traits.  There might be more, and I’m not a psychologist but I believe that small list is sufficient for what we’re talking about.

I sometimes use the word soul metaphorically, perhaps poetically.  When I do, I refer to a person owning these traits above, i.e.:  their humanity.  So by this thinking, a perfect example of a soulless person would be a psychopath.  A psychopath might have no empathy for other human beings, or might not have the capacity for love.  A psychopath or sociopath might have no conscience.  These would be paradigm examples of people with no soul.

People who commit acts of terror could be thought of as courageous and brave.  It is said that one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.  Whether we agree with this isn’t the point.  Humans flew planes into the World Trade Centre, and their convictions were so strong they had enormous faith and belief in what they were doing.  They were human beings, but they were blinded by their faith and dogma so intensely, they could not reason for themselves.  Their intelligence was compromised.  I think soulless could refer to this type of person too.

The type of person that is in some respects rational and intelligent, but in others blinded by their own beliefs or faith or fear, doesn’t act normally.  They act like zombies, or robots.  They lose that thing that makes them human; and a human that acts like this is no better in some ways than an animal that either acts on instinct or does whatever it’s told.  A good example of this type of person might be a fundamentalist.  I don’t think fundamentalists have souls.

I’m not saying that people without souls aren’t humans.  I’m just speaking poetically; I’m simply invoking the word metaphorically to mean “that which is unique to humans; that which makes us human.”

If you accept this line of thought, a soul is not some ethereal cloud of magic floating around you.  Your soul is in you; your soul is part of you.  You can lose it, but you can also regain it.  And perhaps humans as the often-capricious beings that we are, oscillate between soulful and soulless each day.

The point is that if you don’t have the capacity for reason, for empathy, for love and humour, for reflection and prediction, and have a conscience, you aren’t metaphorically human.

Fortunately, very few people are like this, and I believe thinking of the soul in this rather natural poetic way is far better than the mystical quixotic mysterious entity of fairy tales and religion and all the metaphysical baggage it carries.  It’s also perhaps a far better way to check our human centres for what we really are about, instead of what we’ll be in an imaginary afterlife.

My Fall from Grace

Something’s not right.

That was what I thought as I read about hypnosis on the Skeptic’s Dictionary (SD). Wasn’t hypnosis putting somebody under a spell, a trance? It might have appeared fun when I was quite young watching Paul McKenna, but since then it had been explained to me that hypnosis was wrong, an unholy use of power, and ultimately could open a window to demons.

But the SD explained what hypnosis was and what it wasn’t, and how it worked by purely natural explanations. It didn’t reference anything supernatural. It just explained in common sense terms what was going on. After reading a lot of convoluted far-fetched explanations of hypnosis and coming across offers of “Buy this book and you will be hypnotising someone to forget their own name in 5 minutes!”, this explanation was quite refreshing.

I was raised a Jehovah’s Witness (JW). The view of hypnosis as dangerous and wrong was just one of the things I was told. But, if the SD was correct, and it certainly presented a better explanation that literally putting someone into a trance, didn’t the organisation know this?! Couldn’t they have really done the research themselves?! Wasn’t it a bit close-minded to give their own explanation, when, surely they weren’t actually scientists themselves? It just smacked of propaganda to me.

But then, I was raised to see people outside the belief as wicked and destined for destruction. Having strong friends outside the group was actively discouraged. I couldn’t quite reconcile the 5 million Jehovah’s Witnesses (at the time, now over 6 million), with the 6 billion people on the planet. How on earth would everyone get the chance to be saved or not? The organisation had existed for over 100 years, and still less than 1/1000^th of the population was to be saved? That’s a lot of death if Armageddon comes tomorrow, I thought. It was a puzzle, but I had faith so I let this discomfort pass me by.

I have never been comfortable with censorship. I could never understand why it was wrong to see what other people had to say, because if I had the truth (which I honestly believed I had), what did I have to fear? If anything, looking at the counter-arguments of others would only strength my conviction because, surely, there was nothing they could say that I couldn’t answer? That’s not arrogant really if you believe you have the truth. But the JW society frowns on that. You are not encouraged to read material that contradicts what the Governing Body says. And you are explicitly told not to read apostate material. (An apostate is someone who was part of the JW faith but now has left and expressly opposes it).

Still, I couldn’t understand this. It seemed like the Governing Body wanted to treat members like kids; not able or intelligent enough to make their own minds up and defend themselves from external attack. I’ve never shied away from a fight if I think I’m right. I will argue with anyone because my interest is the truth. So there is no fear of losing because if you lose, well you weren’t right to begin with. This seemed like common sense to me; why didn’t JWs view it the same way?

JW doctrine is that ghosts and clairvoyants and many supposedly supernatural things, are supernatural, but not caused by genuine ghosts or genuinely clairvoyant people, but through demons deceiving and being evil. But, SD explained ghosts, psychics, and clairvoyants all very well without needing to invoke a supernatural explanation. Now, this didn’t make the JW beliefs wrong of course, but it did seem to me that the Society could explain to its members the truth behind charlatanism and “supernatural” events. But it seemed like they wanted to fit demons into the explanation. Again, this is an organisation that is responsible for feeding information to millions of people, so shouldn’t they be extremely careful about what they produce as fact?

Finally, I came across a link at the bottom of this page:

http://skepdic.com/cults.html

Called the Watchtower Indoctrination process.

I also happened across a link (I spent 20 minutes trying to find the original but can’t anymore) linking to Bible contradictions. I was very hesitant at first to even click the link; afraid that Jehovah himself was watching me and I would be committing a grievous sin by looking at apostate material. But, I plucked up the courage to do it, and rationalised the action to myself by thinking that I would find the contradictions laughable, false, and easily refutable. Ultimately, I believed that my belief would win out.

For me, the bible is either the perfect inerrant word of God, or it isn’t. It’s as simple as that. I don’t accept that the bible is the word of god but also contains errors. I know liberal Christians might accept that, but that doesn’t make sense to me. Because, how can the bible be god’s message to man, whilst he allows it to be mistranslated, erroneous, or confusing. No, I’m sorry, that doesn’t work. Either the bible is god’s perfect word, or it is a lie; a myth; a collection of old primitive stories. This isn’t a false dichotomy, it is simply the only rational way to view the bible.

I always believed, and of course was brought up to believe, that the bible contained no errors and no contradictions. I knew unfortunately, that if I could find even one, that would destroy my beliefs of inerrancy. This was the very first contradiction I remember seeing:

http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/contra/ahaziah_age.html

The second book of Kings says that Ahaziah was 22 years old when he became king. The second book of Chronicles says he was 42 years old. Alarms bells went off in my head. ‘How can that be?!’, I thought. I immediately went downstairs to retrieve a copy of the New World Translation, which is the bible translation Jehovah’s Witnesses use. I looked up both passages: they both said 22! I felt a cold shiver – as one might feel when they discover themselves being watched, or part of a huge conspiracy. Had the Society re-edited their version of the bible to remove this contradiction?! (The bible isn’t talking about two different persons by the way – Ahaziah’s mother’s name is shown in the verses and it’s the same in both accounts).

I read more and more contradictions and I could not rationalise them away. I could understand faith in tough times, or believing in god even though I couldn’t see him; but I believed the evidence for god was good anyway. But I couldn’t use faith to ignore blatant contradictions. That was dishonest as far as I was concerned. I was afraid. Genuinely. The possibility of beliefs I’d held my entire life being false was dawning on me. It was a feeling of being thrown out in the cold; like the world is collapsing around you. The closest I can describe it for those who haven’t been through this, is by using a scene from the first Matrix film: Neo is strapped into a chair and Morpheus asks him: “have you ever had a dream that you were so sure was real? What if you were unable to wake from that dream? How would you know the difference between the dream world and the real world?”

Whilst this is happening, Neo is incredibly disorientated, as the mirror in front of him seems to dissolve; as the very world around him fades and become unreal; his sense of reality breaks down.

He awakens, in the real world. It is nothing like he thought! It is cold; harsh; alien; bleak. It is frightening, and there is real danger, real death, and there are no happy endings.

This is what it’s like to de-convert. It is like waking up from a comforting dream. It is like realising it’s Monday morning when you were convinced just for a moment that it was Saturday all over again. It is not pleasant. Ignorance at this point, seems like bliss.

At the time I was a fan of a popular collectible card game which led me to a fan site for it. The creator of the site was a devout Christian and had a forum for discussing Christianity and the bible. This was about two months after my first SD experience above. I had read a lot more since then about the lies of the Watchtower Society. Sheer time prevents me from listing everything I read and all my experiences in that time, so I hope you, the reader, will forgive me. Suffice it to say that reading many “apostate” sites that I was forbidden to, exposed the contradictions, turnarounds, and lies that the Governing Body had made in its past, and continued to make. Re-writing its own history, changing new editions of old books to cover errors and failed predictions, blatantly lying about what it said in the past, changing its mind on the issue of organ transplants and blood transfusions – because of which people died…are just some of the things the organisation was guilty of. It could not be the truth. I was sure of that now.

But, I was also sure that if the JW belief couldn’t be the truth, nothing else could. And the reasons for this are that the problems with the Jehovah’s Witness organisation are applicable to ALL religions. If I reject the bible as the word of god, then bangs goes all bible-based belief. Having come across the counter-arguments for the existence of god during this short time, I learned about logical fallacies; how to spot them in others’ arguments; what made a good argument; the difference between a valid and a sound argument; circular reasoning etc. I saw the argument from intelligent design destroyed. The ontological argument was also easily refuted. The popular cosmological argument or arguments from morality that I had been raised to believe as genuine hard proof of god, had in fact been debunked by sceptics and atheists decades, even centuries ago. I felt like I was catching up on an age of philosophy. So because of this, I rejected all religion. It would have been very easy to turn to another form of faith; another belief system, to keep my mind comforted and happy. But that’s not me – I am proud to say I am intellectually honest, or at least I like to think I am and try to be wherever possible. I am proud of myself now for that, because that’s something I have achieved. But I’m also proud that that’s the person I was before, because otherwise, I would never have had the guts and courage to challenge my beliefs and face the facts, however unpleasant.

On this website forum, I argued with theists and used my new powers of critical thinking to debunk their beliefs. Imagine going your entire life trying to convert people and preach to them what you believe, to in a few short months destroying these very same arguments in others! Because I used to be a theist I thought (and I still do) that this gives me a very good way of arguing with theists, because I know how they think and their arguments. It was a liberating experience, and I suppose inasmuch as I was arguing with theists and debunking their beliefs, I was destroying the remaining walls of belief in my own mind too. One day when the website was down, I searched out other forums for discussion and argument, and came across the Internet Infidels. I posted here for a long time and was even a moderator in two forums. I made many friends and enjoyed my stay there. I don’t post there anymore, but not because I don’t want to, but because I do! I don’t want to flit in and out; I would want to spend far more time there. But because I simply can’t, it’s something I’ve had to leave off altogether. I remember Rowland98 there, an Administrator. I made good friends with Alliey and Doug (I know they won’t mind me mentioning them – if you ever read this: hi!) I also remember Magus55: you will never meet a more fundamentalist fundie than him! I also made friends with Plognark on the MTG fanatic site, and he came across to IIDB later as well.

It was also on IIDB I came across the poster Ebonmuse and visited his website called Ebon Musings. I have said elsewhere that in my opinion this is the best atheist/evolutionist website on the internet (next to mine of course). I read all his essays. This was a massive help in learning more about atheism and why it made so much sense. His essays brilliantly destroyed religious belief and explained that not only was it wrong, it was unnecessary and caused more harm than good. Since then I have actively encouraged people to read his material, and at least one good friend of mine is in constant touch with Ebonmuse. He also created and maintains the blog Daylight Atheism.

I have skipped over the blackest part of my life though. I came home from a night out one evening. It was not a good night and I was upset over something, admittedly. (What it was isn’t important.) I remember just breaking down crying on my bedroom floor. Desolate. Destroyed. Inconsolable. I had lost the will to live. There was nothing. There was no god. No future. No happiness. I would die. Facing your own mortality when you’ve believed your entire life in a potential everlasting life is hard. I would see my own parents grow old and die. There was no point to life. To call my worldview nihilistic at this point would have been an understatement. I remember my dad trying to console me and being replaced with my mum, who unfortunately attributed my state to the fact that I had rejected my faith. She was right, but she didn’t understand why! In the end she spent hours regurgitating the same old tired religious bullshit that was exactly what I had rejected. How embracing Jehovah etc and committing to his way of life was the only way to find happiness. But it was exactly that which I didn’t believe anymore. I remember sitting there tuned out, quiet for ages, just wishing she would leave. I love her very much, and she was just trying to help. But she couldn’t see beyond her own worldview and as such, she was useless in helping with mine. She could not help with my doubts about belief, because to her there were no doubts!

I was off work for two weeks after this. I was very depressed but because of taking time off, my doctor’s note for work stated “stress”. I didn’t like the idea of being signed off with stress, because I felt like I was taking the piss; and I knew some people in work would think that. At the time I didn’t care, but the truth is of course I wasn’t stressed – I was severely depressed. I unashamedly admit I considered suicide. But my depression wasn’t chemical or hormonal, or the result of a mental disorder. It was simply the destruction of an entire worldview in a short space of time, resulting in total nihilism.

Some may say that this is why de-converting people is not good. And indeed, I would never wish what I went through on anyone, except perhaps bigots like Pat Robertson, or the deceased Jerry Falwell who is now very much not burning in hell. But remember, the belief system was to blame. Do I blame the facts for putting me through that living nightmare? No! I blame the belief system for a lifetime of lies and indoctrination. We should never be afraid to de-convert people! It should be done with care if possible, but never should a lie take precedence over the truth where lives are concerned.

I relapsed into depression several times after that, for reasons other than just my de-conversion.

But when I started to get over that spell, which lasted a few months, I was glad in the end to have the facts. When I asked myself: “would I go back in time and change anything, given the pain of what I went through?” the answer was ‘no’.

I wrote a few essays myself on old websites I had. The desire to write and debunk was always strong with me since then. I spent most time on IIDB during 2004. For those who are wondering, I don’t attribute any real depression during that time to England going out of Euro 2004 to Portugal. At that time I still cared about the England football team. I remember having my head on a stool as the last penalty was taken (I didn’t look) and leaving it there for about 20 minutes afterwards.

But I digress. Towards the autumn of 2004 something happened that was good for me personally. It is irrelevant to religion or anything I’ve mentioned here, and I guess you, the reader, will just have to wonder forever what it was! It doesn’t matter really. What matters is that it was a positive change in life for me. I could talk about seeing a lovely girl not long after this for a few months if you will forgive me for wandering once more. I fell in love with her (at least I think I did), and we had some beautiful times. It never really worked for other reasons. By the spring of 2005 there was not really anything of us in that way to speak of. By the summer we were good friends but didn’t keep in touch much. I still say to this day that one evening I spent just sitting outside with her rivals all my memories as one of the greatest nights of my life. Of course, there is one night in particular back in May 2005 that also ranks up there. And I’ve had two nights since just spending time with an amazing girl that I will also cherish forever.

I’ve digressed again haven’t I? Sorry.

The point is that since my de-conversion I’ve learned things about life. Everyone does, I guess. Maybe it’s called growing up. Or maybe it’s just experience, and if it’s experience then it doesn’t matter how old you are; wisdom isn’t necessarily about age. It’s about knowledge and what you’ve learned – so anyone can be wise!

I adopted a rational worldview. I don’t believe in god because I’m an atheist. I’m an atheist because I don’t believe in god. My worldview doesn’t stem from my beliefs; my beliefs stem from my worldview. My worldview is rationalism; evidence-based; logic-based; nature-based. I believe everything in the world can be explained naturally. I believe that only through evidence and study can we come to know anything. Although I’ve always loved science, this rational worldview is best expressed by science. In a choice between the dogmatic traditionalistic absolutism of religious faith and the testable repeatable evidence-based logical theories of the sciences, there is only one winner.

Rationalism for me means a life of pure freedom. A life where your mind is free from superstitions as great as god(s) and karma, to idiosyncrasies such as believing you are unlucky or fated. Atheism means that there is no one watching over you. There is no Big Brother in the sky, no one to see your secret deeds whether good or bad. This means that there is no eternal reward or punishment for anything you do. It also means that everything you do, ultimately over time, will fade. But this means that this life that you’re living now is the most precious thing you’ll ever have. Every day, every week that goes by will never come again. The friendships and relationships you have are of the utmost importance. Because there is no Big Daddy to appease or suck up to, or be afraid of, you should be nice to people because it’s nice! You should treat people like you want to be treated! You should not steal or murder because it hurts people, and hurting people is wrong. Always. No one needs a god to tell them this, and if you do need a god to tell you this then you belong in a mental institution.

To quote one of Joss Whedon’s popular TV shows:

“If this life is all there is and in the end nothing we do matters, then all that matters is what we do; the smallest act of compassion, can be the greatest thing in the word.”

Being a rationalist, and being able to think critically is very empowering. It gives you confidence in yourself, your ability to think, your ability to talk, and your interactions with other people. It makes you sure of yourself, but humbles you to realise all the ways in which you can be wrong. It serves as a constant mental checkpoint at what leaves your mouth and what enters your mind. If you say something irrational or realise the error in your own thoughts, a red flag immediately raises. It also comes in handy as a nonsense detector when someone starts talking to you about crystal healing, reiki, chi, takionics, ghosts, psychic energy, pyramid schemes, chain-letters, George Bush, and the like.

In short, rationalism is a worldview with no drawbacks, and only positives. It encourages honesty and truth. It encourages knowledge and science. It promotes interest in the common good, and cultivates respect and tolerance for other people, especially those you might not personally agree with. It makes you appreciate the evanescence of life; which demonstrates how valuable it is, and why humans should work together and live together in peace. It demands that we respect the environment and other animals, and leave a legacy for our descendants. It means that we must each give our own lives meaning, and not get given a purpose from someone else.

Some say that life is short. Well it is. But this is rather paradoxical, as a funny chain e-mail I came across once said: “Life is short. What the hell?! Life is the longest thing anyone can ever do! What can you do that’s longer?!”

There’s probably no point making sweeping statements about your life when you’re in the middle of it or in my case, still young (and virile, with the torso of a swimmer and the legs of a footballer). But what I can say with certainty is that de-converting is the greatest thing that has ever happened to me, and will be, no matter what else happens in my life. Because I’m convinced that whatever good happens in my future, will be founded on the worldview of rationalism I developed once I shed the dark superstitious mental baggage I was carrying for years.

The irony is that whilst de-converting, it was like leaving somewhere warm and bright for somewhere cold and dark. But really, religion and theism belong to the darkness and the night. And the night tends to get its coldest…right before dawn. Right before the sun finally comes up. As religion and faith are the stifling oppressive night, so rationalism, atheism, and also science, are the liberating piercing light. And without light, life would be impossible.

I’ve hope I’ve given you a glimpse of that light, or at least what it meant to me. Thanks for reading.

My Creation Account – Episode III: Revenge of the Seth

Adam now gets laid.  Eve conceives the first of many male births in the bible.  For some reason, god doesn’t think the female births are that important to mention.

They also have another child.  (Another son, surprisingly enough).  The firstborn is called Cain and the second son is called Abel.

Cain brings an offering to god; fruit of the ground.  But Abel brings slaughtered animals and fat offerings to god.  Guess which one god preferred?  Yup, the latter.  Cain is pissed off with this, and I don’t blame him.  God simply says that Cain didn’t do well enough and must try harder.  He doesn’t go onto explain why he prefers dead animals so much, but there you go.

Angry with this state of affairs, Cain kills Abel, (as you do when your brother gives a better gift than you.  How many Christmases were ruined in this family?!)

God goes through one of his senile phases again and can’t seem to find what he’s looking for.  “Where is Abel?” god asks Cain.  Cain sarcastically replies “am I my brother’s keeper??”  Brilliant.

God realises that Abel has been murdered and curses Cain, saying that he is to get out of god’s sight and be a fugitive.  This is too much for Cain to bear and he’s afraid that if anyone finds him they will kill him.  Curious, since there are only two other people on the earth at the moment, Adam and Eve.

God says that he’ll mark Cain as a warning so that no one else is to harm him, again, even though there is no one else on the earth at the moment!  The warning goes along the lines of “if you kill Cain, you will be punished sevenfold.”  So if you kill Cain, god is going to kill you seven times.  Hmmm.

This also contradicts the law that god is going to invent later which says that the penalty for murder is death.

Cain goes into the land of Nod (presumably where GDI can’t find him) and has sex with his wife.  Hang on!  Where did his wife come from?!

Anyway, one of Cain’s descendants is a man called Lamech.  It’s worth pointing out that if you killed Cain you’d have been killed yourself (seven times that is, for good measure).  But if anyone killed Lamech, they would apparently be avenged seventy and sevenfold.  That is A LOT of being dead!

Around this time, Adam and Eve get their grove on again and out pops (another) son.  Eve names him Sith Seth, and says that he replaces Abel whom was murdered.  So, there is no mention of any daughters being born (how did people procreate back then?), which means that women like Cain’s wife popped out of thin air; or there were daughters born but being female of course god doesn’t deem them worthy of a mention in his book.  Either way it seems incest is ok to god as long as it’s for procreation.

Seth also has a son (thanks to an unnamed female who comes from nowhere) and calls his name Enos.  (Gesundheit!)

Eventually a man called Enoch arrives on the scene.  He and god are pals it seems, until one day god takes him.  Where?  To Heaven.  Which is either the vault of water in the sky, or a gay club.  You decide.

A few years down the line a man called Noah comes along.

In this time mankind has begun to fill the known earth and woman were looking pretty good too.  The sons of God noticed how hot women were and wanted them for themselves.  Unfortunately, god doesn’t explain what he means by his “sons”.  Does he mean other humans, in which case, so what?  Or does he mean angels?  In which case why would angels want to have sex with women, and why now after all this time?  Did god create angels with a sexual desire?  That’s pretty cruel when you consider they had no natural way to possibly satisfy that desire.  (To them, the earth is one giant lap-dancing club, and god makes them sit on their hands the whole time.)

As a result the earth had giants in it.  The earth back then was very much like Middle-earth it seems.

Whatever the case, god’s pissed off.  He says that man will now only live 120 years.  (Even though after this point humans still go on to have much longer life spans).

He notices that man is wicked, and all man’s thoughts are evil all the time (even though he made man in the first place).  God felt regret at making man and wished he wouldn’t have done it.  It’s surprising that he didn’t actually see this coming though.  After all, isn’t he supposed to know everything??

God likes Noah though because he’s just and perfect, even though the wise King Solomon in years to come will declare that no man has ever been perfect.

Fed up with how evil mankind is, god decides to destroy every living thing on the planet.  Slight overkill, if you ask me.  What had the animals and insects done wrong??  It’s rather fascinating to note that god’s solution to evil and violence is mass genocide.

God tells Noah to make a huge boat.  That’s right: Noah and his extended family are to make a huge sea-worthy vessel from the materials around their habitat.  Now, the largest wooden ships ever built were over 300 feet long, and required metal strapping for support, and even then they were dodgy at best.  However, Noah builds a boat that’s 450 feet long, out of wood.

Not quite happy with giving Noah a starring role in the first ever Mission: Impossible, he also tells him that the boat must be filled with at least two of every living creature on the earth.  So Noah and his family trekked all over the earth to collect over a million types of animal, and millions and millions of insects.  They also had to collect enough food for every creature as well.  How Noah managed to get to the poles and bring back polar bears and penguins isn’t mentioned.  It’s not clear how Noah assembled rare species like the Komodo dragon either, or how he kept all the animals apart so they didn’t fight, kill, or eat each other.  Also, forty days and nights is a long time for any creature to go without defecating itself.  Millions of animals and millions of tons of food in a boat for 40 days equals a lot of shit to clean up.

I feel sorry for Noah at this point.  Not only did god set him the most ridiculous task, but god messes him about but giving contradictory instructions.  Perhaps god got bored waiting for Noah to hurry up and finish!  At one point god tells Noah to take in all the animals 2 by 2.  But he also tells him to take the clean ones in 7 by 7.  No wonder Noah took so long!  I’m sure at some point he must have thought “can you not just do this yourself, please?!”

At some point after the ark was built and all the animals were in it, god causes a huge flood to come.  God was either pretty distracted at this point, or like the above he feels like playing a prank on Noah through sheer boredom, because he gives two times of when Noah was supposed to enter the ark.  At one point he says the flood came 7 days after Noah entered the ark, but later on he says that Noah entered the ark on the same day that the flood began.

God says that all the animals boarded the ark in the same day.  Since there were millions of animals at least to go on the ark, this work out at 100 species boarding every second.  Impressive huh?

Anyway, the flood comes.  It rains and rains for 40 days and nights.  It’s not clear where all the water comes from.  God says the water reaches up to the highest mountains.  He doesn’t say where all this rain water came from, and more importantly he doesn’t say where it went afterwards.  Maybe it just disappeared.

Every living thing that was left on the earth was wiped out.  Apparently, as far as god’s concerned, justice is punishing everything for the actions of a few.  God doesn’t mention sending any warning to people before killing them all.  It’s not clear why he didn’t just click his fingers and wipe out all the evil people.  No, god decided that was far too low-key for him.  What was needed was a grand gesture of ultimate power and destruction: the death of every animal and creature on the planet, and the genocide of every human not on the ark.  Men, women, children, and babies would drown to death.  It’s hard to imagine a more horrible way to die.

Finally, god decides to close up the windows in the sky where the water comes from when it rains (didn’t you know?) and drain off the excess water.  God knows where!  (Literally).

The arc finally came to rest after seven months on the top of a mountain.  Maybe Noah actually built a submarine, since apparently the tops of the mountains weren’t visible until the tenth month.  Perhaps it came to rest underwater?!  (And stayed there for three months).

Well, Noah lets a dove go to find somewhere to land.  He figures this will tell him whether the entire earth is covered with water, or whether it’s not.  Now, I’m not going to criticise Noah since I admittedly couldn’t build a boat out of wood to carry every animal on the planet, but I sort of think that the earth being entirely covered with water or not should be a pretty obvious thing to see!  Take a quick look out the window, scan around…hmmm, aaaaaaand yes!!  The earth is actually still totally submerged by water.  Perhaps the dove needed the exercise though, who knows.

Noah, apparently unable to discern between dry land and an ocean with his own eyes, keeps sending the dove out.  Eventually after 7 days it returns with an olive leaf in its mouth.  That must have been one magic olive tree!  Where was it?  Did it survive 150 days covered by water?  Or did an olive tree manage to germinate, grow, and produce leaves in a seven day period?

Finally the waters were gone from the earth.  It was dry.  When did this happen?  A good question.  God gives us the answer.  Well, actually, being the great wise-cracker that he is, god gives us TWO answers!  How about that?!  In the first month, on the first day of the month is one answer.  In the second month, on the seven and twentieth day of the month, is the second answer.  So, urm, take your pick!

After the flood is over, Noah wants to thank god for his mass genocide so he decides on an appropriate thank you.  The key to gift-gifting is: know what the other person likes!  ‘What does god really like more than anything else?’ Noah thought to himself… dead animals!  So, in possibly the greatest single act of stupidity by a human being, (after preserving two of every clean animal alive in the arc), Noah goes and sacrifices at least one of each animal on an altar.  Brilliant.  So after all that, Noah single-handedly wipes out the entire “clean” animal kingdom.

It’s ok though, because god likes the smell of burning animals.  Mmmmm.  Bisto….

Where did all the animals alive today come from if they were virtually wiped out by the flood, and certainly by Noah’s sacrifice (which can only be described as shooting yourself in the foot with a harpoon)?  Who knows?  Maybe god created more animals (so what was the point of preserving any?) or maybe animals evolved from scratch to what we see today, in just a couple of thousand years?  It’s a tough one.

Finally, after enjoying the sacrifice and seeing a desolated and wrecked planet, god promises that he will never destroy the earth again because of man.  Well that’s good news.  Couldn’t he have decided that before the flood?!  Why the change of heart?  Well, god says that man’s thoughts are evil, all the time.

So, just to clarify: man is evil, so god destroys the entire earth.  Then he promises that he will never destroy the earth again, because man is evil.  Riiiiight.

Finally, just to piss off scientists in the future once and for all, god creates something called a “rainbow” in the sky which symbolises his promise never to destroy the earth with a flood again.  I guess that means he’ll use something else next time, say, fire?  He says the “rainbow” will remind him of his promise.  Well, I suppose we all use memory aids.  Apparently, before the flood, the action of light passing through water droplets didn’t split white light into its constituent colours.

Noah lives 930 years and dies.

After this, Noah’s descendants grow and become evil once again, and the entire human race of 6 billion people today, dates back to this small family a few thousand years ago.  I guess “like bunnies” would be appropriate to describe Noah’s offspring back then.

In one last act of mischief, god hides all the evidence for this flood, hides anything that might prove man is only a few thousand years old and that EVERY creature on the planet spread out from Mt. Ararat in Turkey in a few thousand years.  How did the polar bears cross the deserts and get back to the arctic?  How did the penguins make it to the south pole?  How did all the creatures specifically designed to survive in particular climates get back to those climates without dying?  God doesn’t explain this one.

And here ends our creation trilogy.  I hope you found it as enjoyable as I did!  I know some parts of it seem a tiny bit unrealistic and perhaps require a slight stretching of the imagination, but hey, I didn’t write this, god did!  If you have any doubts, don’t worry, just take it on faith.

 

THE END

My Creation Account – Episode II: Attack of the Snake!

God now goes into more detail about the sixth day, which is incredibly decent of him.  He creates man by forming dust from the ground and breathing into it.  Original, to say the least.  Notice that “man became a living soul.”  It doesn’t say “man had a soul”, it says man was a soul.

God creates a garden and puts the man in it.  Even though earlier he said he created male and female, at this point there is no mention of the female.

God now tells man that there is one tree in the garden that he must not eat from, on penalty of death.  But, since the man was the only human around and had never witnessed death, I’m not sure this threat would have meant much to him.

“All by myself…” was the man, so god created things to keep him company.  In an almost-admirable blatant contradiction, god now decides to create the animals, even though earlier he said he created the animals before man.  Either way, god brings the animals to man so he can name them.  There are over a million different species of animals, not including subgroups (for instance there are over a quarter of a million known types of insect, and over 250,000 kinds of beetle alone!), so this naming process must have taken the first man a very very very very very long time.  (Perhaps this explains why the age of man is hundreds of thousands of years old, and not just a few thousand like the bible says.)

God created all the animals (before or after man, depending on which story of god’s you believe), so that man would have a “help meet”.  Unfortunately, after Adam had finished naming them all, there was still not a help meet for him.  Didn’t god see this coming though?  Did god expect one of the animals to be just what Adam was looking for?!

Not daunted by this apparent waste of time, god now finally creates a woman.  He could have formed her from the dust and breathed into her, of course, but god chooses a slightly different approach.  He knocks Adam out, takes a rib, and makes a woman from it.  (Despite this, men and women do have the same number of ribs).

God finishes (himself) off by saying that a man should leave his parents and stick to his wife and they’ll be as one.  This doesn’t seem to have stopped god’s followers in later times from having dozens of wives though.

At this point, one of god’s creations (which he forgot to mention earlier), makes an appearance: the talking snake.  God doesn’t give his reasons for creating a talking snake.  I can’t quite see the logic behind it myself.  God simply says that it was more subtle than any other creature he’d created, which presumably included language skills.  Quite a feat for a creature with a long forked tongue.

The snake asked the women what god had said about eating from the trees, so the woman (apparently unfazed by talking to a snake) explained that they could eat from any tree, except the one that god forbade, on penalty of death.

The snake now tells the woman that she won’t die!  Not only a talking snake, but a lying one too!  The snake explains that if the woman eats from this tree, she will become like god, and have the knowledge of good and evil.  So presumably evil did actually exist at this point, (although man and woman didn’t know what it was), but where did it come from??

The woman eats from the tree and gives some fruit to Adam.  At once their eyes are opened and they realised they were naked.  This must mean that god preferred them in their docile ignorant state.  Since the knowledge of good and evil made them realise their nakedness too, I guess this means that being naked is either good, in which case they wouldn’t have wanted to cover themselves up, or being naked is evil, in which case why did god create them naked in the first place?

The pair made for themselves aprons.  Perhaps they were in the kitchen at the time.

Now god comes along, walking in the garden.  But Adam and his wife hide themselves from god.  So although god created everything in the entire earth, he has to ask where Adam is because he can’t find him.

Adam explains that he hid himself because he was naked and god wants to know who told him that he was naked!  A fair question.

Adam stands up and like any good man, passes the blame squarely onto his missus.  The woman explains that the talking snake told her to do it.  (We’ve all been there.)

God now turns to the snake (which was conveniently nearby, probably playing scrabble or something), and curses it.  The snake is to crawl on its belly from now onwards and eat dust.  One wonders how snakes got around before the curse!  The curse wasn’t very lasting as the snake soon learned to feed off a variety of substances, which funnily enough didn’t include dust.

Because Adam listened to his wife (his own stupid fault apparently) God punishes him by making him toil the ground all the days of his life until his eventual death.  God curses the woman by making her a crap driver.

Adam names the woman Eve (if you hadn’t guessed by now), and god makes skin coats for them both.  So nakedness must be bad then, even though that’s how god initially created humans.

The moral of the story apparently is: if you’re a woman, don’t listen to talking ophidians, and if you’re a man, don’t listen to your wife.

Man and woman now know the difference between good and evil (just as the serpent said they would) so god drives them out of the garden so that they won’t keep living forever.

He also places angels at the entrance of the garden to stop them going back in.  Curiously, god also places a flaming spinning sword in the way too.  This is very impressive, since man wouldn’t go on to invent crafted tools of metal like swords for a few hundred years at least.  Presumably, god looked into the future, saw that man would invent swords and thought “hey that looks good, I’ll use that here.”

Man and woman now go on to have kids and populate the earth.  Despite what god says about them positively dying on the day they eat from the tree, they don’t.  In fact, Adam goes onto live 930 years.  On the other hand, everything the snake tells Eve was true: their eyes were opened, they would gain knowledge of good and evil, and they would not die in the day they ate from the tree.  So, who was the liar really?

Also, eating of the tree gave Adam and Eve the knowledge of good and evil.  In other words, it told them what was good and what was bad.  Presumably obeying god was good, and disobeying god was bad.  But since they didn’t have this knowledge until after they ate, the concept of good and bad would have been meaningless to them!  God punished them for choosing wrong over right, although he knew they didn’t have a clue what right and wrong was.  Basically, god screwed them over.

What happened next will be looked at tomorrow…

My Creation Account – Episode I: The Phantom Menace

In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth.

There was nothing on the earth; it was void.  It was dark, and god moved on the face on the waters, kinda like a tugboat.  So I guess with there being water, the earth wasn’t all that void after all.

God now wanted light, and there was light.  He also divided the light from darkness.  I’m not sure how he did this, or where the light came from, but let’s read on.

God called the light Day, and the darkness Night.  This makes sense.  There was now an evening and a morning and this was the first day.  Now, God doesn’t mention anything about the spin of the earth to cause changes in light or dark, but then he still doesn’t mention where the light is supposed to be coming from.  We’ll just have to use our imaginations at this point.

God now created a huge structure between the water on the earth.  So he placed some water above this huge structure, which he calls a firmament.  And the rest of the water he left on the earth, presumably called the oceans.

God calls this huge firmament Heaven.  This is the end of the second day.  So he spends the entire second day creating a huge Heaven in the sky where water would be stored.

As if there was any doubt about Heaven being a place high on the earth containing waters, God confirms it by gathering all the waters under Heaven (the oceans) into one place, which resulted in dry land appearing.

God calls the dry land earth, and the gathering of waters seas.  He is apparently pleased with himself now.

God now creates all kinds of vegetation; plants, grass, trees etc, on the earth.  Unfortunately, since god hasn’t created a sun yet, presumably they were kept alive through some process besides photosynthesis.

 This all happened on the third day.

Onto the fourth: god now creates light-sources to divide the day from the night, even though he apparently already did this earlier.  These new (redundant?!) light sources he places in the firmament in the sky.  So, in the huge vault of water called Heaven about the earth, god places the sun and the moon.  As if this wasn’t enough, he now creates trillions and trillions of stars which presumably are in the firmament too.  That the sun and moon appear to be at great distances from earth, as well as the stars, is apparently one great optical illusion.

God talks about the sun being a greater light and the moon being a lesser light.  Perhaps god is just being poetic here since the moon doesn’t actually give out its own light.

So, so far there have been four days and a division of day from night on each one, even though god didn’t create the sun to give light or separate light from dark until the fourth day.  I wonder what the earth was orbiting until the fourth day.

The following takes place between Day 5 and Day 6: god creates great sea creatures, and flying creatures.  Just to reiterate that the great firmament called heaven that contains the sun, moon, and stars, is actually a huge vault of water in earth’s sky, he specifies that flying creatures will ‘fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven’.

(In his wisdom, god creates some animals with curious anomalies.  For instance, he creates whales, but also gives them vestigial hind limbs.  He also seems intent on throwing in lots of junk DNA, redundant body parts, and the occasional design flaw.)

God yet again seems to be pleased with himself for this.  He blesses the life-forms he’s created.  (In other words, ‘good luck, you’re going to need it!’)

Day 6: god now creates living creatures on the earth.  Although he doesn’t explicitly state it, it is presumably around this time that god creates and hides fossils all over the earth of apparently-ancient never-existing creatures.

God also creates all the creepy things on the earth.  Although not directly stated by god, one would assume this includes Marilyn Manson.  It definitely must include flesh-eating bacteria, killer diseases, deadly viruses, and millions of insects that specifically feed off and damage other life-forms, causing suffering, blindness, disease, and death.

Interestingly enough, god says that the waters and the earth themselves ‘bring forth the living creatures’, as oppose to saying that he directly created them.  Could god be talking about nature itself producing new living creatures gradually over time??

Once again, God is chuffed with himself.

But he’s not finished yet.  God creates man “in our image”.  Maybe god is talking to other gods, or maybe he’s talking to himself.  Cuckoo!

God creates male and female, and wants them to have dominion over all life on the earth.  He also needs to give them something to eat, so in a wonderful act of generosity that isn’t in the least bit confusing, god declares that he’s giving trees and fruit…for meat!

The animals also need food, so god gives them green herb…for meat!  At this point in time, one assumes that predominantly carnivorous creatures like cats, which cannot live on a non-meat diet, had a different digestive system.

That’s the end of the sixth day now.

So, to recap: there was nothing.  Although there was nothing, there was also water.  God made a huge transparent vault in the sky to store some water.  He then created trees and plants.  Although there was no sun for the earth to orbit or get light from, there was apparently still day and night.  Realising now that there needed to be a day and night (?!) he created a sun and put that in the vault too.  He also put the moon and stars in there as well; in the area of water in the sky.  Great.  By the sixth day, he creates animals and man and gives them fruit for meat.

Wow.  After all that I’m a bit tired now and need a rest.  It seems god had the same idea…

 

This story is continued tomorrow…

The Light of the World

I’ve talked about science a lot lately on here and with friends, discussing the pros and cons. I don’t want to overkill the points here but there are things that need to be said. So I’ll just share with you my musings and we’ll see where we go:

I’d like to explain briefly what science is and isn’t and what it does and doesn’t do, but this list will not be exhaustive.

First, despite what New Agers, pseudoscientists, or Joe Philosophy with his own metaphysical worldview might think, science doesn’t dismiss anything a priori. Science does not have a list of rights and wrongs and check off new ideas against them. Science doesn’t assume it knows everything and that its theories can’t be changed.

Science tries to understand everything in the world around us. It doesn’t pretend that it can know everything. It doesn’t say that the supernatural doesn’t exist. It doesn’t say that god doesn’t exist. It doesn’t say that chi doesn’t exist. It doesn’t say that metaphysics or spirituality is rubbish.

Science uses natural explanations of the natural world. It tests claims. It tries to disprove claims. This is important, because if one tries to confirm something, one can look for things that confirm an idea and ignore things that don’t. In other words, if it’s true or false, it might always appear true. But, if you start out with an explanation and try to disprove it, if it’s true you will still prove it and if it’s false you will disprove it, but what you can never do is prove it if it’s false! That’s the difference.

Despite science’s great track record, some people don’t like science because they don’t like playing by the rules. It’s as simple as that. If you make a claim and want others to believe it, you should test it. If it fails a fair controlled test then maybe it’s just wrong!

Now, it’s been said that there are some things that science can’t explain. Ok fair point, there might be. Anyone care to give an example? You will find that the things science ‘can’t explain’ are things designed to be so mysterious, intangible, and ethereal that they are by definition unknowable! (e.g.: the supernatural). Science isn’t some special rigid limited way of getting knowledge that we can use in some situations and not others. We all use science in some way every day. Does something work? Test it, re-test it. Try and disprove it. Explain how it works. Make predictions with it. Surely that’s just common sense? That’s what we should do to test any claim.

When someone asks to remove their beliefs from the study of science, they’re basically asking for the easy way out; for special treatment. What they want is to believe comfortably, or make others believe by making science out to be the bad guy! “Oh well there are some things that science can’t explain!” Really? It’s funny that, because people have been saying that for thousands of years, and every time there has been a mystery it’s been solved by empirical evidence, natural explanation, tests, re-tests, and logical natural theories. Nothing in human history has ever been solved by supernatural explanations. Ever. EVER. That doesn’t mean that the supernatural doesn’t exist. But come on, how many times does this have to happen before we admit that ok, science just might be pretty good at discovering stuff; more so than anything else we’ve got.

What I’m saying is that people of a more metaphysical disposition, that is, more likely to believe in gods, spirits, chi, karma, spirituality, ghosts, vitalism, TM, synchronicity, Freud etc, recoil at the label ‘science’ as if it were an enemy, but embrace it if it seems to support them. But science is just another way of saying “testing claims in controlled conditions, objectively, using evidence and rationality, and explaining what happens naturally.” I can’t see what the problem is! What other way is there of finding out if something works or not than this?! If someone says they can cure your brain tumour with a crystal, wouldn’t your very first question be “how do you know it works?” Well that’s all science does. But it is ruthless and has no preference, sentiment, or favourites. And if you can’t demonstrate your claim repeatedly under controlled conditions, that’s not science’s fault! No one in their right mind would accept anything less than this, but when you put the label ‘science’ on it, all of a sudden these types of people think they’re being badly done to.

I know many would like to believe that there is another world beyond the scope of science, and as long as they believe this their beliefs can last a little longer, (before science shines a light in these regions and maybe blows their beliefs out the water too). This way of hiding beliefs in the recesses of the unknown is called the God of the Gaps fallacy. It basically works by saying “we can’t explain X, so [insert your belief here] did it”. That could be God, aliens, chi, etc.

However, history has shown that science eventually figures most things out. That’s not to say that it always will. But, if science can’t do it, why the hell should anything else be able to?!

Science can be wrong. Science has been wrong in the past. E.g.: the theory of plate tectonics. But when science was proved wrong; when the existing scientific theory was disproved, it was disproved by other scientists! It was disproved by a better scientific theory! Science has never been proven wrong by religion or faith. No scientific theory has ever been defeated by a supernatural one. Ever. It has never happened.

In fact, what tends to happen is that we start out not knowing something. Religion, faith, superstition, and the supernatural have a go at explaining it. We gain knowledge, we study it, we test it, and we come up with a testable natural explanation that clears everything up. Why does it rain? Why is the sky blue? What causes thunder? What is the sun? What happens after death? Where do we come from?

One by one, what appear to be questions beyond the scope of science and firmly in the realm of pseudoscience, metaphysics, religion, and faith, actually get answered by science. So perhaps they were answerable all along! Maybe, just maybe, these questions aren’t beyond science. Maybe, just maybe, certain parties with a vested interest in having it their way don’t like what science has to say so just reject it! E.g.: evolution. I know if evolution is fact it blows apart most monotheistic beliefs. Well guess what, evolution is a fact. So what? I don’t feel sorry for you. Get over it. It’s called accepting the facts. If creationism was true you’d want everyone else to accept it! So now it’s your turn.

Unfortunately, for those who side against science, they’ve picked a rather one-sided war. A war with no victories for them and only defeats. Note: not accepting a defeat doesn’t stop it from being one. You’d think these people would have learned by now! But because they don’t like to play by the rules it’s easy to paint science as the evil atheistic sledgehammer with an agenda. (Science is equally viable for theists and atheists.) But the rules are fair and objective, so when someone says their belief is beyond science, what they’re saying is that it can’t be proved fairly or objectively. Now, if you’re happy with that kind of basis for belief that’s your choice, but I’m not!

And this is why, and it’s so simple!: if you have the truth on your side, what have you got to hide?! The ones who shy away from tests, analysis, scrutiny, facts, and evidence, have probably got something that isn’t worth testing, analysing, scrutinising, and has no facts or evidence to support it. In other words, if you don’t want to live in the dark you’ve got nothing to fear from the light.

Science is a spotlight. Nothing more, nothing less.

To say there is something beyond science is really to say there is something beyond the world we can detect. I cannot strictly say this isn’t true, but I will say that it is so capricious and whimsical as to be meaningless. Yes, I suppose there could be something beyond this world, and a fish with a trunk could be an elephant. But if there is something we can’t detect in any measurable way, then how can it have any measurable effect on us? In other words, what is the point talking about it, as it would be meaningless in the world we live in anyway? One might as well talk about alternative universes or parallel dimensions.

So if this world is all there is, and science is the best way to study this world, how can anyone have a problem with it? To paraphrase Richard Dawkins: if science can’t figure it out, then sure as hell nothing else can!

Your Eyes – Wed 13th Jun 07

You’ve just tossed a perfectly fair coin for the 6^th time. The five previous times it came up heads. What are the odds of it coming up heads again?

Think about it. I’ll just gaze at my Avril Lavigne wallpaper for a few minutes.

Ok, my patronising encouragement aside, most people (but not you my intelligent insightful reader) will probably estimate that it’s unlikely that the coin will yield another head on the 6^th successive flip. Not 6 times in a row surely? The answer is of course 50/50, each time, every time. Unlike humans, the coin has no memory, but it is human magical thinking that clouds our judgement of probability and suggests likely/unlikely things that are pretty ordinary.

For instance, did you know that 0.999… equals 1.0?

Another puzzle: let’s assume there are three boxes (Derren Brown presents this game with a ring in one of the boxes. We however will use a far more valuable gift: a lunch date with me). In one of these boxes is a free security pass through my many levels of groupies, cling-ons, bodyguards, escorts, and hired friends. The holder of the pass may spend a lovely lunch hour with me.

You don’t know which box the pass is in. I ask you to select one at random which will be your box, box A. I’ll now get rid of another box, let’s say C, leaving two boxes. I then give you a choice, do you want to stick with your box, or swap it for B, the one I’m holding?

What are the odds that the ring is A or B? 50/50?

What do you do?

You should always switch. You double your chances of winning if you switch to the other box, and thereby avoid having to eat out of a dustbin whilst reading Hello magazine.

Here’s why: there are three boxes. You have a one-in-three chance of guessing correctly at your first try (assuming your intent is of course to win the lunch-date with me, but then only a fool wouldn’t want to win). Which means you have two-thirds chance of being wrong. Assuming you don’t guess the correct box on your first try, one of the other boxes must contain the pass. I know which box the ring isn’t in, so I will remove it from play, leaving two boxes: one with the pass and one without. In other words, assuming you don’t pick the right box on your first attempt (1/3 chance), it will always be in the other box (2/3 chance). So the odds of winning if you switch double.

This is more famously known as the Monty Hall Problem, but I’ve phrased it far more eloquently than Wikipedia ever could.

How many dimensions are there? Length, breadth, and height we all know. There are of course four dimensions though; the fourth being time. It boggles the brain to think of space in four directions, in the same way that it’s very hard to conceptualise huge objects of mass, like planets and stars, bending the fabric of space-time itself, the way a heavy object on a 2D elastic surface will stretch the elastic and create a dent – but this is how space is, in 4 dimensions!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Spacetime_curvature.png

Can you image life before you existed? Do you find it difficult to comprehend a world before you were born? How about after your death? Can you imagine a universe before time?? Well really there was nothing before time. But think about going back in time now. 1 billion years. 2 billion. Let’s go back about 14 billion years to the Big Bang when it all began. Where did it come from? What was before time?? Can you wrap your brain around that?

Think of something small compared to you. (Now now, stop that!) How many times bigger than an ant are you? Millions. In fact, you’re larger to an ant, than the sun is to the earth. But even ants are quite considerably large than say a human hair, at least in width. Can you imagine holding a human hair in your hand now (where you got it isn’t important). Do this now: stretch it out in front of you and hold it tight at both ends, preferably against a light background. Notice how incredibly thin it is! Try and imagine splitting that hair, widthways, a million times! Impossible? Incomprehensible?

A human hair is 6 million atoms wide!

Just to reduce our brains to quivering jelly even more: imagine a single human cell, which in itself is far too small to be seen with the naked eye. The average human cell contains about 100 trillion atoms!

If you were the size of an atom, travelling at the fastest speeds humans can achieve (comparable to your size), it would take you millions and millions of years to travel across the human body. And yet look at the human body compared to a house, or a country, or the earth itself! What if I told you that like an atom is to our planet, so our planet is to the universe!

Look at the sun on a clear day. Well don’t really as if you get blinded you won’t be able to read any more of my website. But even if you tried, you wouldn’t be able to. It’s so bright. Our eyes can barely look anywhere near the sun on a bright day. Can you imagine if it were twice as bright? What about ten times as bright? That doesn’t even make sense does it? How can something be ten times brighter than the brightest possible thing? But a star called Canopus is 14,000 more luminous than the sun! Impressed? The stars Betelgeuse and Rigel are both over 60,000 times more luminous!

Returning again to size: remember how infinitesimally small the atom is compared to a human hair? And how many hairs are there on a human head? And how many humans on the earth? Now let’s say that over 1.3 million earths could fit inside our sun, does that tell you how massive the sun is? Imagine how big that burning son-of-a-bitch ball of plasma is out there, 93 million miles away. For arguments sake, let’s say god exists, and it’s you. You’re holding the sun in your hands now. It’s the size of a tennis ball. Picture that for me. Good. Next to the tennis ball is another ball, which has the diameter of a row of houses, let’s say 700 tennis balls across. Try and pick that up. Go on! That’s the equivalent of the star Betelgeuse compared to our sun!

One last exercise: imagine that Betelgeuse itself was now the size of a tennis ball and you’re holding it in your hand. The star VV Cephei is now about the size of a football!

Scientists suggest that Betelgeuse will go supernova perhaps as soon as in the next few thousand years. When this happens it will brighten by another 10,000 times. Fortunately for earth, the star is over 400 light-years away. But here’s something: we will see its death from earth! Despite being millions of times further away than the sun, it will appear as bright in the sky as the moon!

We’ve looked at just two stars. There are over 200 billion stars in our galaxy. The nearest galaxy is 2.5 million light years away. And there are billions of galaxies. Daylight Atheism wrote a fantastic article recently putting things in perspective when certain people believe that the universe was created especially for man.

My point is something far more ‘everyday’-ish:

As Richard Dawkins has said: the human race evolved to survive in Africa hundreds of thousands of years ago. We have evolved to see medium-sized things on a medium-scale with medium-sized senses. Given the ranges we have looked at briefly, from an atom to the universe, what a human being can actually see, hear, and feel, is so small on the spectrum of existence that it’s barely worth mentioning. And yet, it’s the sum of our existence. Our entire life is filtered through this average equipment that nature has given us.

It’s why we think magically. It’s why we don’t always think rationally. It’s why logical thinking has to be taught to us. It’s why we believe in fairy tales so easily when we’re children but take so long to walk, speak, learn, and analyse facts. It’s why our brains are not naturally good at logic puzzles and at understanding probability like in the examples above.

There are things humans can do, like love, and enjoy music, that I wouldn’t swap for all the understanding of the universe itself and so in that way, we haven’t exactly been dealt a rough hand by Mother Nature!

Fortunately, we’ve been given another gift too: sapience; self-awareness! Although the Turing and Mirror tests might not be conclusive, I think it’s safe to say we’re the only conscious life-forms on the planet. This really is the greatest evolutionary invention of all; you only have to look at the dominance of man on the earth to see it. Putting aside arguments that we may eventually kill ourselves, it is undoubtedly our intelligence more than anything else that has aided our species. It’s our intelligence that allows us to learn and develop more than any other life-form. We can overcome our animal instincts and primitive superstitious thinking with logic and education.

There is no better example of this than science. Everything we’ve looked at here from atoms to galaxies, we know because of science. Despite our narrow window to the external world, science gives us extra hands, bigger eyes, better ears, and longer legs, to examine the world around us. It is the technological extension of our own senses allowing us into a grander world we were never “meant” to understand or see! But because of it we can tunnel with microscopes and see individual atoms of gold, or push aside the heavens with telescopes and look back through time, at galaxies almost as old as the universe itself.

We live in exciting times. You can know more about yourself, your planet, and the universe than humans could at any other time in history! In the here and now we’re at the cutting edge of understanding. You can understand the world in a way never previously done; you can look at the world with the brain of a critical-thinker and the eyes of a scientist; you don’t always have to be the latter, but you should always strive to be the former.

The Greatest Story Ever Told – Mon 11th Jun 07

This is an incredible video that was sent to me on Myspace today by the Universe Pink Unicorn (oh come on, it’s happened to all of us!).  I’ve not done total research on it myself, so I won’t uncritically accept everything it says at face value (lest I be accused by theists of the same thing I accuse them of).  But most of it to my knowledge is incredibly accurate and revealing.

Even if you don’t particular find religion interesting, take 25 minutes out to watch this simple unaggressive educational mini-documentary.  It is so revealing.  You will never look at religion the same way, or probably take it as seriously ever again!  I promise anyone who watches it that you won’t regret it.

My Honest Opinion – Sun 10th Jun 07

I think almost everyone who knows me, knows that I’m sceptical of extraordinary claims. As the adage goes: extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Depending on the situation and context, whenever the subject of the supernatural or paranormal comes up in conversation, I will generally throw a few common sense questions in there, (assuming of course that it’s polite to do so). I might point out how cold-reading works, or subjective validation or confirmation bias. I might casually point out how science really works, or that testimonials and anecdotes are not really solid proof of anything.

I was speaking to a woman on the phone a few weeks’ ago. She believed she was psychic and had special powers. In many ways she was the paradigm True Believer. She claimed to have actually seen angels and spirits, and could directly divine events. She’s even given readings to people who I work with, and impressed them. The conversation lasted quite a while and we managed to have a very frank discussion. It was about 10 minutes before I said anything of interest really as she spent the first ten minutes telling me stories and anecdotes of her own experiences. I mean no offence to her, but these stories (whether she realises she was doing it or not) were simply there to try and impress me. And if I would have been more inclined to believe in the supernatural or female (in my experience women show far more interest in these things than men) I would have been blown away. I wasn’t, and I think she sensed that. I explained to her some of the principles mentioned in the first paragraph, and said that I didn’t think she had any special abilities. The conversation was very amicable, but I challenged her to “read” me the next time we met; hopefully this will happen in the next few weeks or months.

Now again, I mean no offence to this lady, but imagine that instead of saying that she’s actually seen and communicated with angels and spirits, she said aliens – what would your opinion be of her then? Less credible? Perhaps a little bit too farfetched? What if she said animals spoke to her, or evil invisible Mexicans? Would we be inclined to think she’d lost the plot? Well, I don’t know what the lady’s state of mind is. In all fairness, she’s able to hold a normal job and life on a day-to-day basis, but then most people are regardless of their mental health. There is no difference between saying you can talk to animals, aliens, invisible evil Mexicans, or supernatural beings. If anything, we know that animals, aliens, and Mexicans exist. But yet, counter-intuitively, because of today’s culture, most people would be more likely to invest belief in her supernatural claims.

Personally, I don’t know what goes on in the head of people like that. But the experts have had a very good go at explaining it. There are many good explanations for paranormal experiences: brain-states, hallucinations, sleep-disorders, chemical-imbalance, emotional-instability, ignorance, misunderstanding perfectly natural events, magical-thinking, wishful-thinking, self-delusion. None of these terms are meant aggressively or pejoratively. The truth is any of us may be affected by them at any point in our lives. Sometimes our experiences seem incredibly real and very powerful. And they happen to us. It’s much easier to dismiss other peoples’ claims, but take our own seriously. This is human nature, but it’s also very self-centred when you think about it. Are we so convinced that other people are probably just wrong, but when something incredible happens to us, we just know we’re right?!

And so people ask me, what if you saw a ghost? What if something happened that you couldn’t explain? What if you had a supernatural or paranormal experience? What if a psychic told you something she couldn’t possibly know?

Would I still believe? No. Stubborn, close-minded, I hear you say? Absolutely not, and I’ll explain why soon.

Because of what I just said above, we all know that people can be wrong about their experiences. Remember that what people think they are experiencing might not necessarily be what is going on. Even something as mundane as a cold draught on the back of the neck could be interpreted as a ghostly presence if someone was inclined to think that way. Perhaps the breeze occurs when a person is thinking of a loved one, perhaps recently passed away. Hey, perhaps they’re even holding a photograph of the deceased in their hands?! Now do you see how spooky that rather boring gust of wind is? All of a sudden the experience has taken on a whole new meaning, and when that person recounts their story it will probably be embellished and exaggerated (most of the time unintentionally). Because you’re not that person, it’s not possible to know what happened at the time or know what happened in their minds. But what is more likely to be true?

“When confidential information leaks out of an organization, people suspect a spy, not a psychic.”
–John Allen Paulos, Innumeracy

This quote above had me smiling for a while. It’s so delightful in its parsimony, and so full of sheer real world common sense. Think about it. Also think about this: when was the last time a psychic was banned from a casino? It’s never happened. Why?

It’s often jokingly said the best way to not get abducted by aliens is to be a sceptic. Sceptics never get abducted by aliens! All joking aside, this is actually pretty good advice. Sceptics for example, understand that sometimes the natural paralysis that starts at sleep and ends with consciousness sometimes doesn’t activate and deactivate properly, leaving people with a temporary waking paralysis. It’s rare, but explains a lot of reports of alien abductions. Isn’t it strange that people who don’t believe in aliens never get visited? Why don’t sceptics see ghosts? For that matter, why don’t Christians see Allah, and why don’t Muslims ever see Christ?? Could it be that they are all having ordinary or natural experiences, and interpreting them their own way?

I know how “psychics” work, so if a “psychic” impressed me, she’d just be impressing me with how good a con-artist she is. Even if she isn’t trying to deceive, I know how they work and the techniques they use, so I wouldn’t be led to believe in them. The only way a psychic would convince me of anything is if they were tested in controlled conditions. Any psychic who passes such a test would make history. It’s never been done at all, so why would we believe that the one time we get a reading it’s actually real? Surely that’s pretty arrogant of us.

You see, it’s precisely because I know I can be wrong, even about myself, that I wouldn’t accept supernatural or paranormal experiences of my own! You cannot get less stubborn and close-minded than that! Also, if I rejected other people’s fallacious reasoning and “proof” (rightly so) but accepted my own, wouldn’t that make me a hypocrite? Wouldn’t I be just as guilty of incorrect thinking as the ones who accept “paranormal” experiences?? Of course I would!

What sceptics do is stick to their principles. We know we can be wrong. We know that humans are prone to being emotional, illogical, fallacious, and can suffer from a variety of mental problems that can be rather innocent and also very serious at times. A person might swear on their family’s lives that they saw a ghost stand before them in the room. This person might be joking or plain insane. There’s no way to know, which is why we simply cannot accept the anecdotes of people, no matter how genuine they sound, as proof. We need real evidence.

And yet the popular view of sceptics and debunkers is of being cynical, close-minded, stubborn, and arrogant. But as I’ve explained, we are anything but! The very reasons we’d reject even our own experiences proves great integrity, honestly, and humility. And once you admit that no matter how convinced you are of something, you might still be wrong, there is only one option left: rationalism; that is, a world where evidence decides facts, and we don’t choose our beliefs.

We should believe what we know, and not know what we believe.

 

(This article isn’t an exhaustive debunk of the paranormal or supernatural. My main purpose was to highlight that applying critical thinking even to our own experiences, although it doesn’t come naturally, is actually one of the most honest and modest things we can do. It’s also incredibly rewarding!)

My Visit to see Richard Dawkins – Fri 8th Jun 07

Yesterday I had the pleasure of travelling to London to see Richard Dawkins being interviewed by the BBC for the World Book Club. I went with my friend Tobe and his father.

The subject was his first book and international best seller, The Selfish Gene. I’ve not actually read it all the way through but I know enough about evolution and Richard Dawkins that nothing was lost on me.

Professor Dawkins had to leave quickly after the interview so there was no opportunity to meet him properly or take a picture.

Still, it was a brilliant experience. I was sat in the front row of a very small audience, about 6 feet away from Richard Dawkins. He was intelligent, well-spoken, charming, precise, and humorous at times too.

He answered questions from e-mails, recorded messages, a live telephone question from the USA, and the audience. I didn’t ask him a question but I was planning to at the end but didn’t get the chance. My question would’ve been something like: of all the scientific theories ever proposed, some better than others of course, is evolution in your opinion, the best example of a successful scientific theory? It’s probably a matter of opinion and science is replete with fantastic theories, but is anything more powerful, predictive, explanatory, and personal than evolution? It’s hard to think of such a theory.

I was surprised by a couple of questions from the live audience. One person confronted him on his use of the metaphor “selfish” when talking about genes. Despite my personal admiration for Dawkins, I cannot possibly see what the problem is. Genes are selfish, metaphorically, but organisms aren’t. In fact, anyone who’s read even part of The Selfish Gene will understand that selfish genes give rise to altruistic organisms. As Dawkins himself points out, it is only possible to misquote or misunderstand his metaphor when one hasn’t read the entire book. But in that case in my opinion one shouldn’t attempt to comment on it!

He was also curiously challenged over the fact that copying errors in DNA (mistakes), give rise to progress in evolution, as though this were some sort of flaw in the theory of evolution. This actually sounded more a question a creationist would ask! Dawkins quickly set the gentleman straight: they’re errors in that they’re copying mistakes, which produce diversity. But “progress” and “better” are subjective terms in evolution – progress simply means doing better at a particular task. Deep sea creatures cannot move at the speeds of a cheetah, but a cheetah cannot survive incredible water pressure and in zero sunlight, so which is “better”?

There was also a fascinating question asked about homosexuality and how it came about in evolution, despite the apparent fact that it wouldn’t be good for species as a whole, reproductively. I won’t explain his answers here because it would take too long to reproduce all the points that were covered.

To be honest, on some of the questions that were asked of him I had such a profound sense of agreement and understanding with Professor Dawkins I felt like jumping in and saying “I’ll field that question Richard”, or “have you even read the book?!”

As he is one of the world’s great thinkers and intellectuals, a leading scientist, and one of the most prominent atheists on the planet, it was an honour to be part of such a small and select audience so close to Professor Dawkins. It was an honour and a privilege and I would love the opportunity to do it again.

What I took from the interview was just how wonderful a thing it is to understand evolution. You can see the passion and wonder in Dawkins’ voice as he talks about it, and it is contagious. It is something that he has never gotten bored of, and you can understand why. As he himself says: since Darwin, we can actually explain why we are here! Ten of thousands of years of confusion, doubt, superstition, and fairy tales, but now the human race knows where it came from and how it survives. Surely that’s one of the most important discoveries of all time! And yet, at this time even now, there are people actively lying and spreading misinformation about evolution because it clashes with their personal interpretation of a book of myths. It’s ridiculous really. Dawkins observed that the education system has well and truly let a lot of people down. At the point he said this, there was a “here here” from the audience and a round of applause!

He also reiterated his opinion that anyone who doesn’t believe evolution is either ignorant, deluded, stupid, or evil. Deluded need not be an insult. Stupid and evil doubtless are. What about ignorant? No. If someone is ignorant of evolution that’s not necessarily their fault. If only people would be willing to learn about it and see all the evidence – most doubters would evaporate, and with them, all the silly mythical stories of creationism that go along with a rejection of evolution.

The sad truth though is that because of the religious evil in the world, a simple beautiful truth such as evolution is being subverted and lied about by people who see it as a threat to their beliefs and power. The fact that $25million of taxpayers’ money in America can be spent to build a (tax-exempt) Creation Museum just proves what a sad delusional state some parts of the world are in. One might as well build a museum about Father Christmas.

Fortunately, if people like Richard Dawkins and the people he inspires, keep talking, writing, propagating the beauty of science, and warning about the evils of faith, the world might slowly become a more enlightened place. As Professor Dawkins said last night: “in the end I believe education will win out.”

Here here.