More fun from Jesus and Mo

This made me laugh today - not bad for a Friday.

From Jesus and Mo

A hollow victory - with a wry smile!

The news this week is full of the 'victory' in the European Court of Human Rights of an employee of British Airways, who wanted to wear a cross over her uniform.

What a hollow victory!  She was awarded the magnificent sum of 2000 euros in compensation for her distress.  The size of that award demonstrates that the whole case was risible, and that the judges in the court have a sense of humour after all.  When you consider that every lawyer involved in the long series of court appearances leading to this small 'victory' probably earned an order of magnitude more money than their client was awarded, you have to ask who really won the case.  As usual - it was the lawyers.

Do I care that she won?  Of course not.  That is the basis of secularism.  If she wants to wear a cross over her uniform so that its chain get caught and breaks from time to time I don't mind.  It won't affect my views about her religion (even if I personally feel different about her as a rational being).  

If someone wears a cross so obviously and ostentatiously then I feel that it is open season for people to ask them questions.  They could be practical:

"What does the T stand for?"

or doctrinal

"Do you really believe that the wine turns into the blood?"

or theological, sectarian, denominational . . . or simply logical

"How do you actually know that the bible is true?"

None of those questions would be appropriate with a normal person who did not advertise their point of view using an iron age symbol of torture.

What the news has almost failed to mention is that the other three cases heard at the same time were dismissed.  One cannot discriminate against gay couples on religious grounds or put patients at risk. (I think it was slightly perverse and contra-evidential to assume that hospital managers know anything useful about running hospitals, but we will let that one slip as it is probably true that lawyers know even less about it!)

The strangest thing is that the British Airways case was only won because the airline had tried so hard to reach a compromise.  They had changed their uniform policy in order to appease - and as a result they lost the court case.

Never mind.  Almost everyone is laughing at a militant Christian and it was worth it.

FSM-mobile

It is rumoured that The FSM will be touring a large city near you this year.  However, I'm sure that this is just Catholic propaganda.  Unlike the pope, the FSM would not need four inches of bullet-proof glass for protection!

FSM-mobile . . . Catholic propaganda!

FSM in Christmas lights

At this Facebook link, you can see an entertaining and surprising photo of some seasonal lights.  Is this the Flying Spaghetti Monster, the deity of pastafarianism?

FSM in Christmas lights

Was this created by the church of the FSM, or the reformed church of the FSM?  This is the important question.

Which has truly been touched by his noodly appendage?

You may find guidance in your search for the truth in the related posts:
FSM strikes in Austria
The Invisible Pink Unicorn

Small note: Thanks to Paula and Theodora for this link

You haven't arrived until you have spoken

I was (reluctantly) attending a training course a little while ago, and the trainer opened with "You haven't metaphorically arrived until you have spoken".

She also commented that "because I'm not a scientist I had to draw myself a picture".   That just shows how science is misunderstood.  After all, scientists never draw pictures do they?

But it got a little better when she told us that "Neurologically, humans work better if it is clear what is required"  (wow!) and then a little worse when we were told to "embrace praise but let criticism slide off".

After too many hours of being patronised by a trainer who would have been perfect for a younger less-experienced audience I fall back on the words of George Bernard Shaw.  You can find them at this link.

Paradoxically the poor trainer suffered the consequences of her opening remarks a little later when everyone was so outraged that they had almost all arrived metaphorically to an extent that required her to call in reinforcements.

I actually felt sorry for her.

Another aspect of the story is that fellow atheists might take her advice too.  You haven't arrived until you talk about your atheism.  That gives me an excuse for going on about it so much.

Science sings new songs

Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks was speaking on BBC Radio 4's 'Thought for the Day' spot this morning.  Predictably he didn't fail to be patronising and . . . to be blunt . . . wrong!

Being one of those people who has reached his position by being a master of rhetoric you might expect his metaphors to be more reliable than these.

Science is prose, religion is poetry.

Science speaks, religion sings.

These are the words of someone who is clearly scientifically illiterate - a technological luddite or philistine who seems to be constantly looking for ways to show how much his particular religion is supported by scientific discovery.  Let's take his metaphors at face value and work from there. 

Firstly, it is no insult to say that science is analogous to prose.  Prose tends to be more objective and accurate than poetry (admittedly not exclusively).  Prose is more easily modified and corrected, as its factual content is more important than than how nice it sounds.  Prose is not as constrained by rhyme or rhythm.  Prose is not necessarily less beautiful than poetry.

On the other hand, while poetry might also be aesthetically pleasing, I would suggest that it is more subjective, emotional and unreliable.  So I agree that his first metaphor has some value, but certainly not in the way that he meant.  It demonstrates very clearly that he does not understand the value and beauty of science.  I think it shows him up as having the sort of intellectual deficiency that the religious often accuse scientists of portraying.

The second metaphor is much more risible.  It is clear that the symphonies of science do not work for this man.  Although he is tone-deaf in this context he makes out that he stands on the aesthetic high ground.  I don't think this metaphor has much value for a few reasons.

Science sings wonderful new songs every day, striving for greater harmony all the time, while retaining the best and most successful melodies which then become well loved classics.  Many of the songs of science have greater beauty than the age-old unchanging dirges that religion chants to itself over the centuries.

Platitude of the Day, the parody site for Thought for the Day responded typically well to Sacks on this outpouring of nonsense.

It is worth a quick read! 

IronEE telecoms

I might have mentioned that I recently changed mobile phone network from the well known T-Mobile to a new and thriving, community led, network called GiffGaff.  I like 'community led' technology and hence Linux is my computer operating system of choice too.

And the result is that the change was definitely a good move.  T-Mobile had massively increased their tariffs recently and over the years had gradually eroded my feeling of good will.

Having spent a few days in Paris recently, I was amazed how little it cost me to use the phone so often, even though at international rates. But the point of this post is not so much to praise Giffgaff as to ridicule my former network.  I haven't yet converted all the family from their clutches.  I had to top up the credit on another phone tonight.  What I found was briefly interesting, and quite quickly risible.

In what appears to be the beginning of a major rebranding exercise, Orange and T-Mobile are now going to call themselves Everything Everywhere Ltd (UK), or EE for short.  Taking the name literally, one might expect more than appears to be on offer.

Given that I anticipate a lot of visits and calls to Paris over the next 3 years, for just the briefest moment I wondered whether EE was going to fill that huge and obvious gap in European telecoms, by providing a network that treats the whole EU as a single entity.  By doing that they could make it so easy for EU citizens to travel freely between countries without paying exorbitant prices for accidentally straying to a roaming network.  I've noticed this happening tens of miles from a border in some cases.  It must be annoying to live in an area where a local call accidentally becomes international.

Too good to be true?  Indeed yes.

Apparently and ironically, 'Everywhere' is not an area as big as you might expect.  Just the other side of the English Channel, France is presumably 'Nowhere'  in the eyes of EE, as any 'Somewhere' would surely be included in 'Everywhere'.

The first deception - regarding Eve and the apple.

Presumably most of us feel uneasy when deceiving other people.  If you work for the secret services it might be part of the job, but until you become too well practised at this particular skill then you will suffer cognitive dissonance.   After you become good at it, I would imagine that all the people around you will start to suffer from the same problem.

Who started this problem off?

God did.  Yes, to be quite clear, in the garden of Eden, God (with a capital G) was the first deceiver, and yet for some reason people still worship various forms of him.

Why do I say this?  Well - read the bible.  The relevant passages are in Genesis, chapters 2 and 3.

'You may eat from every tree in the garden but not from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; for on the day that you eat from it you will surely die.'

Well, we all know what happened.  The talking serpent persuaded Eve to eat from that tree and contrary to what most Jews and Christians say, the serpent actually told her the truth.  The 'deceiving' serpent, known to Jews as 'the evil inclination', was more honest than God.

So they ate the fruit - which the more observant of you will notice is not an apple.  The apple is never mentioned in the biblical account.  It was 'fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil'.

And then they both died?  That is what honest, loving, omnibenevolent and omnipotent God had told them after all.

No - they lived!  Precisely as the serpent had told them!

I'm taking this story as literally as creationists take the first chapter of Genesis.  Yes, yes, you can claim that it is metaphor or allegory, but not with a great deal of intellectual integrity.

Looking at this story again, I notice another odd feature of this whole myth is that God had apparently created Adam and Eve without a knowledge of good and evil.  And yet, because Eve did not recognise that the serpent ('the evil inclination') might have had evil intent (which as I mentioned above is already a non-sequiter), she was somehow 'to blame' for having been deceived.  This is the same justice as we see in Islam today - where a woman who is raped is deemed to be 'to blame' for it

God likes to have his cake and to eat it.  He said to the serpent:

'Because you have done this you are accursed, more than all cattle and wild creatures . . ." etc.

Here is another strange inconsistency though.  The serpent was accursed, and in Leviticus defined as unclean.  Had God wanted the serpent to be most badly affected by humanity surely he would have made it ritually clean and kosher - in other words, edible!

Eat snakes?  Yuk!

Russell's Teapot

As philosophers go, Bertrand Russell is well known to us.  He was one of the most notable and outspoken atheists of the 20th century.  If you have not had the chance to read his essay "Why I am not a Christian" then I recommend that you take the time to read it soon.  In some ways it feels like a condensed version of 'The God Delusion'.

One of the interesting concepts that Russell brought to the attention of the public was the idea of a supernatural teapot.

Many orthodox people speak as though it were the business of sceptics to disprove received dogmas rather than of dogmatists to prove them. This is, of course, a mistake. If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time.

Russell's teapot - image from here

Naturally, since Russell first suggested the idea, it has been extrapolated to the concept of the Invisible Pink Unicorn, and the Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM) which was last manifested in Austria as you might see at that link.

St Valentine's massacre in religion wars

A somewhat desperate article entitled "St Valentine's massacre in religion wars as Dawkins forgets full name of seminal Darwin book" can be found at this link.  Just glance at the original to get the context before you read this parody.

Originally written by someone called Tim Edwards, it was full of irrelevant claims.  A new corrected version is featured here on Something Surprising.

..............

In a typical act of clutching at straws, Christian apologists today claimed that RICHARD DAWKINS suffered 'a rare skewering' at the hands of the clergy after taking to the airwaves to argue that people who call themselves Christians are often using the term in an unexpected way.  At one point the so-called 'high priest of atheism' even cursed under his breath as he struggled to remember the exact title of Charles Darwin's monumental treatise on evolution.

Dawkins - the facts of the UK census, 2011

Dawkins went on BBC Radio 4's Today programme yesterday morning to explain a survey he had published, showing that half of the people who described themselves as Christian on the 2011 census do not consider themselves religious.

The object of the poll, carried out by Ipsos Mori for the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science, was to show that census data could not, in all honesty, be used to justify the UK's habitual favoritism for Christian practices such as government funding for faith schools and bishops having seats in the House of Lords.

Struggling to get a word in edgeways, against a 'gish gallop' from Rev Giles Fraser, the former canon of St Paul's Cathedral who was forced to resign last year, Dawkins was  able to squeeze in the fact that 64 per cent of people who said they were Christians in the census were not able to identify Matthew as the first book of the New Testament.

For some surprising reason Fraser asked him if he could tell him the full title of On the Origin of Species, the book by Charles Darwin.  Why this might be relevant to the actual facts of the survey were not exactly clear.  Perhaps Fraser was indulging in the common Christian tactic of rhetorical distraction to avoid admitting the unpleasant facts.  Dawkins, was able to provide "On the Origin of Species, er, with... oh god [N.B - small g!] ... On the Origin of Species, um... There is a subtitle... er, um, with respect to the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life."

Not bad, under pressure, with an audience numbered in the millions, to give almost exactly the full title of a text book written a century and a half ago.  On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life is of course the proper answer, as I'm sure you know.

It has to be said that it is a bit easier to recite the complete title of "The Holy Bible".  It was not revealed whether Fraser was able to remember the sub-title.

A jubilant Fraser then claimed - as if it actually mattered: "You are the High Pope of Darwinism. If you asked people who believe in evolution that question and only two per cent got it right it would be terribly easy for me to say they don't really believe it after all."

I suppose that shows the difference between discredited clerics and respected scientists.  Clerics think that everything comes down to belief and scientists think that the evidence is more important.  Someone should remind Fraser that the official doctrines of both the Anglican and Roman Catholic churches accept evolution.

Meanwhile evolutionary biologists tend not to refer to themselves as Darwinists, as the term is often used pejoratively.  They rarely find any need for a pope - neither ordinary nor high.