Things Christians say, part 47: Atheists have no reason to live

A (more-or-less) weekly series (although there was a pause for a while) of responses to the things Christians say to atheists, based on the video reproduced here on 30th January 2012.  The aim is to tackle one every weekend, to give both a moderate, polite response to each question ('Piano'), followed by a more forceful rebuttal of the same question ('Forte'). 

Atheists have no reason to live

Piano

In some ways you have hit the nail directly on the head.  Atheists would tend to say that they are not here for a reason; that nothing is pre-ordained; that there is no divine being who has directed the forces of good and evil (however incompetently).  But that is not to say that we don't like to be here and don't want to work for the benefit of the world or for future generations.

A lot of atheists are humanists.  In my own case, I still can't quite decide whether I am or not.  I do happen to be a strong secularist.  That means that I'm happy for you to worship whatever mythical being you like as long as it does affect my life.

That, for me, is a reason to live (even if I have no others).  I want to make it possible for other atheists to live without the threat of organised religion.  In many parts of the world that is a dream that will not be reached for many decades.

***

Forte

That kind of statement is hardly worthy of a response.  It is not exactly well defined; not clear and transparent what it really means.

And of course this is a typical hallmark of organised religion.  Its proponents like to keep things vague and transcendental for all sorts of reasons - none of them good! 


Last episode: Atheists are responsible for all the world's ills
Next: How can there be goodness without a measure to judge it by?

Religion is the least popular genre

In a report from the National Secular Society today we hear that religion is the least interesting thing on publicly funded broadcasting.  In spite of that someone with an obviously non-Christian name makes faith-based claims.

Head of religious propaganda at the BBC, Aaqil Ahmed, commented: "Easter is the cornerstone of Christianity and the programmes across the BBC reflect the beauty and mystery of the season through sacred music, reflection, live worship and documentaries".

And any critical commentary, it appears, will not be tolerated.

I enjoy it when the BBC will not tolerate my views.

I criticise the BBC.

Is that bad?

Bad me!

What a parent can never say to a teenage child!

This came up on Facebook.  It is what most sensible parents of teenagers really need to say but few of us would dare to try it.  Imagine the sulks!

Words for teenagers - what parents ought to say!

So if you are an uncle/aunt or family friend and can say it on behalf of apparent, then I think you will find that you have grateful friends.

After all, it it only explaining about the things that kept us entertained when we we teenagers.

Remarkable faith claims - culpable nonsense!

Someone calling themselves T-Herbert kindly left a comment on my post How to beat William Lane Craig!  I always welcome comments, even if they are culpable and incomprehensible nonsense like this one.  It went like this.

What Hilary is trying to present is if one refutes God's goodness and grace one would have to look at Jesus which is God 'manifested in the flesh' - Paul. To truly label God (an infinite and non-natural being) with natural qualities one needs to look more at his natural manifestation and not what he did in the old testament. I think a very good argument for how compassionate God is towards us is the fact he loved the world so much he allowed the execution of his son so that we might be able to go to Heaven-John 3:16. In laymen's terms, God essentially wrapped himself in dirt, then fellowshipped with dirt, in order that dirt might be able to spend eternity with him. That, to me is remarkable, and I think that any non-incredulous person can not refute this as evidence of how compassionate God is.

Remarkable, I agree, but to me it is most remarkable that an obviously intelligent and literate individual thinks so completely differently to me.  How can any of this be considered as evidence in any way at all? 

Remember how philosopher Peter Boghossian defines faith?  He says "Faith is pretending to know things that you don't know".  Having said that I will unpick the arguments from the comment above.  It is an interesting variant on the usual themes that we hear from the faithful.

First of all, the only evidence presented for this point of view is either biblical or faith based (or both).  Since I can't accept the bible as more than fable, and faith is nicely defined as it was above I can't see any value in the comment at all.

Second - I don't think that is what Hilary was talking about anyway, even though she and T-Herbert are clearly on the same side of the fence.  So the argument about how much God loved the world is worthless.  It is a claim about something that you just can't know.

Then moving onto the nice explanation of the comment for us laymen, this is a typical Christian point of view.  God wrapped himself in dirt??  Humanity is dirty and sinful, not intelligent and respectable.  From a humanist point of view this (and indeed reducing it to a layman's explanation) is simply offensive. 

That doesn't mean that you can't say it, but it does mean that it isn't likely to convince anyone to change their point of view and suddenly accept Jesus into their hearts (or indeed to stop thinking of William Lane Craig as an intellectual criminal, as Boghossian also said).

The fall of Tyre - but it didn't happen!

Quite rightly, it was pointed out to me in the comments on my recent post  Ezekiel's surprising bread recipe, that I might not have been entirely fair to the book of Ezekiel.

'Baking bread with dung' could conceivably be imagined to mean that the dung was the fuel for the fire, rather than an ingredient of the bread.  I might point out that human dung probably doesn't burn very well, whereas the dung of herbivores would be a better fuel. 

However, in order to do justice to the book of Ezekiel I will mention one of its other famous problems.

Much of chapter 26 is devoted to the devastation of the coastal city of Tyre.  God seemed to be rather biassed against it and there is a long description about what he plans for the city.  In fact, the destruction was not planned for some vague and generic time in the future.  It was to be at the hands of Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon.

But it didn't happen!  Tyre is still there and was never destroyed as the bible predicted.

Biblical infallibility is again shown to be wrong!

The surprising origins of YEC - 'The Genesis Flood'

Young Earth Creationism (YEC) is a surprisingly recent phenomenon!  Yes - I know that some of the old arguments are based on the work of Archbishop James Ussher, but Ussher's ridiculous literal calculation had gone out of favour long ago.  Christianity had settled into an acceptance that science had the answers to some of the questions about the universe and his claim about the creation happening 'on the night preceding Sunday 23rd October, 4004 BC(E)' is risible for many reasons.  Presumably that was 'the night' in Greenwich Mean time?  But GMT was not a concept that had been formulated at the time.  Perhaps it was in Local Time at Armagh in Northern Ireland - or perhaps during 'the night' somewhere more holy - like Mecca or Jerusalem?  Anyway, how could there have been a night preceding the creation? 

But all that changed in 1961 when a book called "The Genesis Flood" was published.  Interestingly, the original publishers, Moody Press, pulled out when they found out about the actual contents, but the company that stepped in, Reformed Publishing Company, found itself very fortunate!  They sold 200,000 copies over the next 25 years, and started a powerful movement in some otherwise civilise and rational countries..

The authors, John C. Whitcomb and Henry M. Morris set the cat among the pigeons, and they are widely blamed for re-starting the YEC movement.  Fundamentalist home-schoolers refer to this 'scholarly work' in order to justify to their children that their claims are true - which of course they are not.  How can the children be protected from such lies though?

One of the worries of the original publishers was that the accepted (but still bonkers) traditions of Day Age Creationism and Gap Theory Creationism were threatened.  Indeed they should have been worried because neither of those points of view remain as prevalent as they used to be, especially outside USA.

So where does that leave us?  The rational scientific world has been downgraded especially in USA, and people who believe in science when they board a plane lose their faith in it when it comes to estimating the age of the Earth.

So now we are stuck with the pseudo-scientific claims of people like 'The Discovery Institute' who propagate YEC and Intelligent Design.  Thank goodness that some people keep an eye on their activities and report what they are up to!

The Rocks Don't Lie - Noah and other floods

This week's episode of the popular and increasingly informative podcast Skepticality featured an interesting interview with a geomorphologist, David Montgomery, (Professor of Earth and Space Sciences, University of Washington), about how his work led him to write his latest book The Rocks Don't Lie: A Geologist Investigates Noah's Flood.

You can listen to Episode #203 at read the show notes here. Montgomery talked about flood myths worldwide, and how Christians use the existence of these myths in so many cultures as evidence that a global flood really happened.  However, he notes that some of them pre-date the time of the Old Testament significantly (as I have mentioned before in my series of blog posts about the flood, starting here.

He added some facts that I hadn't come across before.  Apparently flood myths tend to be tailored to the environment of the cultures which propagate them.  It is not too surprising to find that those who live on the Pacific coast of the Americas describe floods that sound very much like tsunamis, whereas others sound more like overflowing rivers.

I was also interested to hear that the resurgence of biblical creationism that we witness today is a comparatively modern phenomenon.  Even in the early 1800s geologists had completely established that a global flood has never happened and by a century ago, very few people were concerned about the apparent contradictions between science and the bible.  The story of a regional flood that just seemed to the local people to have destroyed the whole world was mainstream Christian teaching.  It is only in the last 50 or 60 years that this topic has become so hotly debated, particularly (but not exclusively) in North America.  The resurgence of Young Earth Creationism can be traced back to a 1961 book by a theologian and an hydraulic engineer, called The Genesis Flood. I might come back to that topic another day soon.

One thing that I did find surprising was that Montgomery described two well-established flood events that could have been the factual origin of the Noah myth.  One was the breach of an ice barrier leading to a devastating flood in the Mesopotamia region, and the other was the filling of the Black Sea through the Bosphorus.  The former seems quite plausible, but the latter less so for one simple reason.  Noah's flood receded after a hundred days or so.  As far as I'm aware, the Black Sea is still there.  However, that is my only criticism of an otherwise excellent interview.

Have a listen to it.  While you are there, listen to the rest of the podcast.  It has a number of regular features contributed by fascinating people and I never miss an episode.  Also check out David's research group online.  Now I'll add another book to my wish list.  I just need to make time to read some of them!

Related posts:
Was the flood the only way?
2 by 2 - but not only 2 of each
Where is all Noah's water now?
Was the Ark big enough?Evidence in the geology - cliffs and varves
Noah's aquaria?
Noah in Islam
Rafts of Baramins
Before Noah came Gilgamesh
Kangaroos - the final evidence against Noah?

Things Christians say, part 46: Atheists are responsible for all the world's ills

A (more-or-less) weekly series (although there was a pause for a while) of responses to the things Christians say to atheists, based on the video reproduced here on 30th January 2012.  The aim is to tackle one every weekend, to give both a moderate, polite response to each question ('Piano'), followed by a more forceful rebuttal of the same question ('Forte'). 

Atheists are responsible for all the world's ills

Piano

Isn't it odd that Satan used to have the position of being responsible for the ills of the world.  Have atheists taken over from him?

I know quite a lot of atheists, and although I am sure that there are evil atheists in the world I don't happen to have met any of them yet.  Those who are indeed intent on spreading ills through the world would surely have their work cut out.

After all, there is a lot of competition from the people of all the world's religions.  I venture to suggest that you personally know more bad Christians than I know bad atheists.

***

Forte

Well, if atheists are responsible for ALL the world's ills then there must be a lot of atheists in the Roman Catholic Church and indeed even in the Vatican.

To claim that atheists are responsible for all the world's ills is manifestly mischievous, and indeed, as such, I think it is a self-refuting statement! 


Last episode: Can't you just make yourself believe?

Next: Atheists have no reason to live

Ezekiel's surprising bread recipe

Chapter 4 of the Old Testament book of Ezekiel contains a surprising recipe for bread.  It is not exactly the finest bread, but more something designed to help the people survive periods of famine when the normal ingredients of bread could not be found.  Barley has never been favoured for bread for good reasons.

Verses 9 to 12 say this:

4:9	Take thou also unto thee wheat, and barley, and beans, and lentiles, and millet, and fitches, and put them in one vessel, and make thee bread thereof, according to the number of the days that thou shalt lie upon thy side, three hundred and ninety days shalt thou eat thereof.
4:10	And thy meat which thou shalt eat shall be by weight, twenty shekels a day: from time to time shalt thou eat it.
4:11	Thou shalt drink also water by measure, the sixth part of an hin: from time to time shalt thou drink.
4:12	And thou shalt eat it as barley cakes, and thou shalt bake it with dung that cometh out of man, in their sight.

Did you read that carefully enough and see the final ingredient described in verse 12?

Most of the ingredients for the Ezekiel recipe for bread!

Oddly, you can buy the ingredients for Ezekiel 4:9 on Amazon if you want to have a go at the disgusting recipe.  Presumably they were not able to include the final ingredient because you have to see personally that it cometh out of man'

God certainly does inspire the writers of his holy book in mysterious ways.

Why didn't God just start again?

Some people claim that God was planning to start again at various points in the Old Testament, but that something persuaded him not to do the job properly.  The flood was a fiasco and the whole story of Sodom and Gomorra would frankly not have achieved enough.

But all of that was much too late wasn't it?  He had let things go too far.  And yet, omniscient and omni-benevolent God had seen what had happened in the Garden to Eden when there were only two people there.  Obviously he new what was going to happen as history progressed, and that he would end up 'having to' send billions of people to hell for eternal torment.  (Why he still had to do this just because to the irresistable power of 'original sin' anyway is a separate mystery.)

Yet all of that suffering could have been easily avoided if he had just wiped out his (presumably) first attempt, including Adam and Eve and had another try where he didn't put that powerful tree within reach of his favorite creatures.  Surely that course of action would have been for the greater good.

It's not as if it had taken him billions of years to do the whole creation job after all.  Another six days of work and he could have rested again, secure in knowledge that fairness had been well served.

But no - instead of that much of the population of the world lives in dread of hell. 

Surely that is evidence enough or substantial underachievement!

Small note:  Yes I know that not all Christians believe in the literal truth of Genesis!

That's the spirit!

I happened across this reference to a product sold by Amazon, namely Rustin's Methylated Spirit. In spite of its attractive colour, it is not normally a beverage served at the finest parties.  However, it received a surprising commendation at this link.

Review by Mr Harold Ramp - Gentleman Of The Road (Brentwood)

What better way to celebrate yet another restraining order from the ex-wife than with a glass or two of this reasonably priced beverage. The initial bouquet can be a little daunting for some but after a glass or two even the uncontrollable defecation that tends to follow can be easily ignored and the words "If you come near me or the kids again, I'm calling the police" sound like a declaration of undying love...

I'm still chuckling!

Top-battery.co.uk's excellent 3 year warranty

If you want to buy a replacement battery for a laptop or netbook, why not buy one from a web site?  After all, internet buying is easy isn't it - I buy a lot from Amazon and get great service.

Given the choice of web sites, when I happened to discover that the best price for a high capacity battery was from another company using a UK domain name I was quite pleased.  No worries about import duty or how to return it in the event of a warranty claim or faulty delivery.  And on top of all that, the battery came with a 3 year warranty.  Too good to be true perhaps?

It arrived a few months ago.  It weighed more than the netbook, but at least I didn't have to carry a charger with me.  Its capacity was absolutely prodigious.  The netbook had a battery lifetime of over 10 hours - enough for a return trip from Oxford to Paris by train!  But being aware of looking after batteries, it was rarely discharged below 70% full.

But of course it was not a case of 'happy ever after'.  Quite soon it started to show signs of problems.  Sometimes the netbook wouldn't start up unless I took the battery out and replaced it.  Sometimes even that wasn't enough.  I had to plug in the charger for a few seconds and it would start.  Having started, it would run fine for hours without the charger but odd battery-related lights would flash at me ominously.

During a long conversation, my 'dear friends' at top-battery.co.uk usually replied promptly and courteously, but I don't think they understand English very well.  Or maybe that is just a tactic to avoid answering difficult questions.  They ask similar things all the time, take little notice of your answer and finally when I asked for a warranty replacement they asked me to send them £15.  You see, they are not in UK at all.  Who knows where they really are, but they claim China. 

What?  £15 in order to claim my statutory right to a warranty replacement - no chance!  Their excuse was

"As yo [sic] know, our battery is so competitive.The battery is used for some times,We will resend you once get the payment."

I'm sorry to say that it all reinforces my view that (at least some) Chinese companies have a different view of contract law and indeed common decency.  They make promises that they have no intention of keeping.

e.g.  http://top-battery.co.uk/, says "We promise all the products sold are 100% brand new and free from defects in material and workmanship. Our goal is 100% customer satisfaction."  That is, unless you make a warranty claim.

They masquerade as something that they are not - namely a UK company - and their excuse "our battery is so competitive" is quite pathetic.  The battery is not at all competitive because it doesn't work properly!  In fact, in the following disclaimer you can see how they are playing with the law in innovative ways. 

Disclaimer:

The batteries supplied by our Company are [replacement for] sold for use with certain products of computer manufacturers, and any reference to products or trademarks of such companies is purely for the purpose of identifying the computer manufacturers with which our products [are replacement for] may be used. Our Company and this Website are neither affiliated with, authorized by, licensed by, distributors for, nor related in any way to these computer manufacturers, nor are the products offered for sale through our Website manufactured by or sold with the authorization of the manufacturers of the computers with which our products [are replacement for] may be used. 

And yet they claim

• ACER Laptop Battery
• APPLE Laptop Battery
• Dell Laptop Battery
• HP Laptop Battery
• LG Laptop Battery
• SONY Laptop Battery

You see how they flaunt the names of top brands to sell their dubious products?   You might be lucky if you buy something from top-battery.co.uk, so it is (of course) up to you if you want to take the risk as I did.  The ironic thing is that I was about to buy another battery for another laptop and I would certainly have bought it from them if they had been the reputable supplier that they claimed to be.

But now they can f*** off, and they are not getting another £15 or another order and I write this in order to warn other potential customers who they are dealing with!

I have no way to know how many UK domains they own with credible-looking web sites, but since my correspondent has always signed off with the name 'Sunny', I'm wary of any companies with the word Sun in their name, especially when they also come from Shenzhen province.

I think I'll stick with other traders via Amazon (who don't have the word Sun anywhere in their name)!

Small note:  I haven't actually given up on the prospect of a refund via Paypal yet.  They should expect the possibility of a long-lasting dispute to occupy them for a while.  But I offer a limited warranty on that claim.

Amazon intelligence

I buy lots of things through Amazon and have done for several years.  I probably spend thousands each year via that site and in the few cases where there has been a glitch in the product or the delivery they move heaven and earth to correct the problem.

Compared with other internet merchants I find that they balance quality and cost exceptionally well.  Buy from some of the Far-East merchants masquerading as UK companies and you have no idea whether you will get a product that complies with local safety regulations, or that your product with its '3 year warranty' will really have a warranty at all.  More on that topic in the next post, very soon, in a post called Top-battery.co.uk's excellent 3 year warranty.

But Amazon does do one thing that surprises me.  I'm more amused than annoyed but I wonder why they do it.

Now, if I happen to browse for a product (such as a replacement watch battery) and later choose to buy it from somewhere else then I could understand why Amazon might continue to offer other versions of the same or similar products to me.

But if I do actually browse Amazon and place an order for the product, what is the point of continuing to offer me alternatives?  There must be some reason why this is a good algorithm or they wouldn't keep doing it.  But I only need one watch battery for the next 5 years, so why would I buy another one just now?

The benefit of this strategy isn't obvious - not to me at least!

Things Christians say, part 45: Can't you just make yourself believe?

A (more-or-less) weekly series (although there was a pause for a while) of responses to the things Christians say to atheists, based on the video reproduced here on 30th January 2012.  The aim is to tackle one every weekend, to give both a moderate, polite response to each question ('Piano'), followed by a more forceful rebuttal of the same question ('Forte'). 

Can't you just make yourself believe?

Piano

Some people can clearly find ways to make themselves believe in God.  That fact is inescapable, and this is not a question of intelligence or rationality.  Those people are free to believe what they want.  In fact, it is observed that the more intelligent the person is, the more innovative they are at finding ways to rationalise their beliefs.

Then again it works the same for the opposite opinion.  If you find it difficult to believe things without any evidence (as I do) then I can say that I can't just make myself believe.

Empirical evidence might change that, but I would be very surprised if such evidence is ever forthcoming.

***

Forte

What do I have to do to get you to believe in the tooth fairy?  Or Santa Claus?  They are well documented in literature after all.  Yes, that literature is fiction, but then again many people believe the bible to be fictional too.  It is a collection of bronze age myths which are not well supported by historical evidence.



Last episode: Atheists are immoral
Next: Atheists are responsible for all the world's ills

Religious discrimination in Wales

Flint is a county in Wales.  It used to be most significant for having had a small detached section which was an island of Wales in North-West England.

Now it is notorious for another reason.

Apparently, according to the Daily Telegraph, parents will have to produce evidence that their children have been baptised before they can get on a bus to school!  Is this the UK's version of the bible belt?

So how can this type of activity be legal in a country like UK?

I blame the barely elected government for failing to act decently (again)!

Caste discrimination is not illegal??

I was amazed to find out today that it is not illegal in UK to discriminate against people of specific castes.

How can this be true in a 21st century Western Culture?  It seems almost unbelievable.  And apparently our government is doing little to change this. 

Fortunately The House of Lords has introduced an amendment to the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (ERR) Bill, as explained at the National Secular Society's site here.

Keith Porteous Wood, Executive Director of the National Secular Society, said: "The Government set a poor example by refusing to follow the UN's recommendation last year to the UK to make caste discrimination unlawful – as it was obliged to do so by its international obligations. Instead, all the Government offered those suffering from caste discrimination was conciliation where there is conflict. The peers, however, were determined to aid the vulnerable more effectively by providing legal protection on caste. Their view prevailed, leaving the Government embarrassed."

I still find it incredible that caste discrimination was not outlawed over a hundred years ago!

I also like things that embarrass the current government!

Only an opinion about nothing . . .

Oxford Skeptics in the Pub had an unusually 'empty' talk this week, entitled "Why nothing matters".  An I'm not saying that the talk didn't happen but that it was full of nothing.

An audience of only about 30 heard Ronald Green speaking about "Why Nothing Matters", hawking his book and clearly expecting to be heckled.  Indeed his style was more-or-less confrontational while he told us that he had spent 5 years studying 'nothing' very seriously.  It is not quite clear where he was when he did that study, nor indeed which universities he has taught at in various continents, or exactly what post-graduate studies he participated in at Oxford University (or indeed which university in Oxford).  But maybe I am too skeptical in wondering about those questions.

Was it obvious that it is true that nothing matters?  You have to ask yourself how deep the following comments are.

"There has to be something around nothing, and there has to be nothing around something."

"Luke says 'nothing is impossible with God' ".

"Zero apples is not the same as zero oranges" and "there are different kinds of nothing".

"Really, nothing is the absence of everything, including ourselves"

Apparently 'silence' might be one kind of nothing [but I don't think the absence of sound is enough to count a real 'nothing']. But he claims that you can never actually have complete silence.  I venture to disagree with this particular claim on grounds of some physics.  If you were in a vacuum there definitely would be silence.  His claim that you hear yourself when it gets quiet enough and that there there is never silence is surely philosophically flawed, because the role of the observer is irrelevant.  If you were not alive and were in a vacuum there definitely would be silence and it doesn't matter a jot that you therefore don't know about it.

More interesting was the tale of the theft of the Mona Lisa in 1911. Apparently far more people queued to see where it had been stolen from than had wanted to see the painting itself. 

But my final point is that I prefer the approach taken by Peter Atkins in his recent talk and Lawrence Krauss in his "A Universe from Nothing".  Green claims that "even Krauss gets terribly mixed up about it".  I think I would ask whether it is overwhelmingly probable that that is true.  Ask who is more mixed up, and I think the answer seems obvious.

On the other hand I saw a review of his book . . .

[Unlike the talk] This is not a book to be dipped into or skimmed over a coffee break. Green writes very clearly and with a great deal of humour, but he is dealing with ideas that perhaps go to the very core of what it means to be human. That he can do so without the nihilistic melancholy of so many of the people he quotes is a tribute to his writing skills. Would I recommend this book? Yes, with the proviso that if you choose to read it you give the time and thought it deserves.

So maybe I misjudge him. 

Needing contraception?

Just a pertinent cartoon from the glorious Jesus and Mo series . . .

One foot per nano-second

If anyone ever asks you how fast light travels, you might like to tell them

One foot per nano-second!

Translating that into metric units it is about 30cm in a billionth of a second (where this is a UK billionth - namely one thousand millionth of a second).

Not many people know that!  But for some of us it is actually a useful rule-of-thumb in our daily work.

You might also like to surprise someone with the unit of a micro-century.  Just between you and me, that is just over an hour.  Business meetings should generally limited to a micro-century.  In that time, light manages to travel about 750 million miles.

Libel reform set to founder . . . unless . . .

Unless our barely-elected UK government takes some positive action in the next few days, all the work that has been done to reform the UK libel laws will have been wasted.  Sadly they haven't shown a lot of interest in doing anything sensible and I fear the worst.

I received an e-mail from the Libel Reform Campaign (having previously and currently supported them).  It was rather disturbing, when I had naively thought that we were on the home straight.  It included this introduction:

Dear Friends

We need your urgent help this week to get the libel reform bill back to the House of Commons. There is the real risk that unless we act it will be dropped.

We have all worked hard to win the case for reform – to show the chilling effects of the current law on citizens, to secure commitment from the three main parties and to get a bill that ends bullying and protects the public interest. We did all of this and politicians rose above the fray to work together on it.

But it is now threatened. As you may have read over the past week, the bill has been hijacked by a group of peers who have inserted amendments to introduce press regulation proposals from the Leveson debate ‘by the back door’. The bill needs to go back before the Commons in the next two weeks, but the Government has not tabled it. It has to do so, because if the bill does not complete its passage before the parliamentary session ends in late April or early May it will be lost.

Then it implored me to write to my MP, which I promptly did.  You have my permission to borrow some or all of these words if you would like to write to your own MP and can't decide how to phrase it.  If you can do better, please tell me how.

Write to an MP from this site theyworkforyou.com/

I chose a fairly direct approach with my MP.  We are not ideally politically aligned but I try to remain neutral on that.

Dear Mr *******,

I'm writing to express my deep concern about the chance that the Libel Reform bill might be lost.  I understand that several peers are using the bill as a way to introduce items recommended by the Leveson Report.  This leads to an intolerable risk.

After making such good progress towards the reform of our archaic, embarrassing and risible libel legislation, the government should  feel nothing but utter shame if it fails to complete the process.  A huge amount of work has been put in by many dedicated people.  Now it is your turn, as a member of the government, to make the required effort for the good of all of us.  The Government should put the bill back into the Commons within the next two weeks, so that the amendment can be removed, and the law changed.

British libel law has been the laughing stock of the world for as long as I can remember.  Please can you assure me that you you intend to support the re-tabling of the bill ? Time is of the essence.

Yours sincerely,

Me

Guidance from Catholic priests

You might consider this post to be somewhat insensitive to victims of sexual abuse, or you might agree with the questions that I am asking.  In this particular case, the alleged victims are Roman Catholic priests.  Does this make a difference?  Personally I think it does.  (And since drafting this post I have also heard notable Christains, even Catholics, agreeing with most of my points.)

Presumably the training for the priesthood involves quite a lot of guidance about what is generally right and what is definitely wrong.There are some topics where there are no absolute answers, but there are others where things are much more obvious.  At the end of their many years of training, these men are sent out into the world to advise their parishioners on matters that they have not generally experienced for themselves.  But they can be matters of life and death.

I recognise that it must take a special sort of person to devote himself to this way of life, and although it would not be my choice, I do have some respect for their selflessness.  That respect is limited though.  After all, all rights are accompanied by responsibilities.  In general (and I can think of few exceptions) I have no respect at all for the teachings that emanate from the Vatican. Anyone who propagates those teachings is partially culpable, however good their intentions might be.

So what happens when a priest needs guidance himself, and he goes to his bishop for advice.  In the case of certain bishops - now ex-cardinals - that advice would appear to me to fall into a rather special and particular category.  It has a simple name . . .

Sin!

This is not an anti-gay comment.  It is all about the way that powerful men in the Roman Catholic church have been able to make inappropriate sexual advances to 'vulnerable' people.  I have heard Christian theologians trying to make the point that this is not systematic sin associated with the church itself, but that it is associated with the individuals themselves.  But they would say that, wouldn't they!

Now in the case of children, or even innocent adult parishioners, most could very reasonably argue that they are the victims of a crime.  They are truly vulnerable and someone has taken advantage of that vulnerability.  They have been indoctrinated to follow the leadership of their priest for their whole lives, and his power can't be questioned.  Many of them have the intelligence to realise later that they have been abused, and with the proper support they have to go through the long and difficult healing process.

But men who are formally qualified to know the difference between right and wrong - ordained Catholic priests - might possibly be in a different category.  If they do not stand against sexual abuse and take refuge in the law then they are hardly men of the right calibre for the role are they?  Professional men have an absolute responsibility to make a stand for truth and justice - unless, of course, they are lawyers!

Or am I being too judgemental?  I'm not saying that there is actually anything wrong with being judgemental, because the only people telling me that this is immoral are the Christians who seem incapable of behaving correctly themselves.  But society tends to shy away from making judgements and I tend to think that is a special form of cowardice and insecurity.

I can only make a comparison with other professional bodies and particularly those which award a special type of qualification.  For example Chartered Engineers or (even) Chartered Accountants have a responsibility to society.  In most professional institutions the failure to 'do the right thing' in this sort of situation is one of the few things that can get your membership withdrawn.  It is all part of being a professionally qualified person.

So now, are priests 'professionals', or 'victims'. 

Make a choice!  It matters.

Original Sin and the sins of the fathers!

A C Grayling said:

Compare: a pharmaceutical company tells us that we are all born with a disease that requires that we buy their product all our lives long, and that if we do it will cure us after death.

Christopher Hitchens paraphrased or supplemented this by saying:

God creates us sick and then offers a cure under penalty of eternal torture.

Does anyone have a good counter-argument?  By 'good', I mean something that actually makes sense, and not a silly quotation from C S Lewis or some other patronising preacher.

I would be genuinely interested in hearing a real, well-reasoned explanation about what is good in Christianity's guilt-ridden philosophy of 'original sin'. 

As both of those fine men have pointed out, Christian teaching seems not to be the nice friendly teaching of Jesus that many people expect - love thy neighbour and all that - but a set of stories that are cunningly crafted to terrify believers into submission.  Where is the objective morality that we should all aspire to follow in that message?

It seems to me that the concept of original sin is simply a doctrine of cruelty, thinly disguised as a 'truth', based on obvious mythology and mysteriously inherited by each new generation.  This is in spite of the bible's other teachings that the sins of the fathers shall (only) be visited on the next four or five generations.

Its obvious!  It has been carefully tailored with the aim of subjugation.

The sad thing is that it works on so many innocent people.

Things Christians say, part 44: Atheists are immoral

A (more-or-less) weekly series (although there was a pause for a while) of responses to the things Christians say to atheists, based on the video reproduced here on 30th January 2012.  The aim is to tackle one every weekend, to give both a moderate, polite response to each question ('Piano'), followed by a more forceful rebuttal of the same question ('Forte'). 

Atheists are immoral

or  You just don't want moral restraints - which is also addressed in this post

Piano

It is very frustrating to hear this old chestnut repeated over and over again.  Those who make this claim seem to think that it will become more true if they say if more often.  I leave it to the integrity and judgement of the reader to decide whether there is an validity in this approach?

So is it true?

I know atheists who sometimes joke about this topic.  Usually this happens in a situation where there is a question of honestly being discussed.  Take an example of having a meal with a group of people in a restaurant.  The bill is complicated, and the waiter makes an error and misses several of the meals off the bill, or maybe gives you the bill for a neighbouring table.  The net result is that the bill is for a figure much less than the actual price of the meals that you have eaten.

What do you do?  Well in a recent case of this in a restaurant in Oxford the table of atheists had this discussion.

Shall we be good honest typical atheists and tell the waiter about the error and pay the full sum? Or should we be typical Christians and read the bill like they read the bible - picking the bits they like and discarding the rest as irrelevant.  The choice was very easy and the waiter was suitably grateful.

Does this count as morality?

***

Forte

In this week when a pope has retired into a life where he is going to have to hide himself very well to avoid the risk of prosecution, let's look at a couple of big moral issues.

What does Jesus say about contraception?  I think you have to agree that he was silent on the subject, and only with the most convoluted theology could anyone claim any biblical teaching on the matter at all.  And yet the Catholic Church teaches that contraception is against the will of God, even where it is a matter of life and death.  Millions of people in Africa have been infected with HIV AIDS because of the teachings of priests, under the direction of The Vatican.  Is this objective morality?

Apologising for being too predictable, the issue of systematic cover-up of child abuse within the church must also be considered. (It is not just the pope, but it has happened in other countries too, notably UK as described here.)  Not only is it immoral in the minds of most people to abuse children, but then to move priests to new parishes were they can offend again is only compounding the problem and confounding justice.  To refuse to give the evidence to the secular authorities is not only immoral but specifically and clearly illegal.

Now try to tell me that atheists have lower standards of morality!

Who is it that fails to demonstrate moral restraints?


Last episode: God bless the pope
Next: Can't you just make yourself believe?

A budgie called Onan

When I was at university I had a friend and neighbour who had previously owned a pet budgerigar.

Somehow, it was revealed one day that the budgie had been called Onan.  At the time I hadn't heard of this minor character from the book of Genesis.  If you read about him in this story you can see that the name was chosen by someone with a sense of humour and a good knowledge of the bible.

Just like the budgie, Onan 'spilled his seed on the ground'.

Things Christians say, part 43: Bless the pope.

A weekly series of responses to the things Christians say to atheists, based on the video reproduced here on 30th January 2012.  The aim is to tackle one every weekend, to give both a moderate, polite response to each question ('Piano'), followed by a more forceful rebuttal of the same question ('Forte'). 

God bless the pope

Piano

Admittedly not all Christians would like God to bless the retiring pope. But on balance I have even found that died-in-the-wool Protestants are more likely to support the pope that to support my view that he should be prosecuted for all the evil done in the name of his church.

Many would like him to have a long private retirement, in solemn prayer, forgiven for all his deeds.

I suppose he could be allowed solitude without living in luxury.  Justice might be better served it it could be arranged for him to be solitary in a prison cell for the rest of his days.

After all, he has a hotline to God, so he wouldn't be lonely.

***

Forte

There's an alternative point of view about Pope Benedict, of course.  Tim Minchin presented it in quite a forthright song - The Pope Song.  Follow the link if you want to hear it, but I should warn you that it contains bad language from the very beginning.  Alternatively this one is a slightly more entertaining and less polished performance. 

You might be offended by the repetition of disrespectful terms and tha amount of swearing.  Does it need to be so offensive?  Well I think it was done deliberately to make a strong and valid point.  As Minchin sings (towards the end of the song), if you find  him more offensive than the Catholic Church's tacit approval of the activities of many of its priests, then you are the one who is morally misguided!

Last episode: Who are you to question the almighty?
Next: All atheists are immoral

Diderot, on theologians.

"Only a very bad theologian would confuse the certainty that follows revelation with the truths that are revealed. They are entirely different things." — Denis Diderot

How can we argue with that?  Christians tend to 'just know' things that they can't possibly know.

In my own case I am sometimes asked "how do you know that".   My usual 'off pat' answer is "native wit".  The truth lies somewhere between that humorous response and a degree in physics, a career in engineering and an enquiring mind which notices interesting things in the world around me.

However, the difference is that I only get that question when someone is surprised to find that I was right, and that is very different from the case of the theologians.

Nobody can tell whether theologians (or Christians) have access to some sort of special knowledge, but I think all of us can take a shrewd guess . . . using native wit!

Their claims are not falsifiable - and by some definitions they are therefore not science.  That might not matter to everyone . . .

. . . but it matters to me.

Catholic light switch

Catholic light switch

Given the latest news from the Catholic church, this almost seems appropriate.

Icy surprise in the hedge rows

Having mentioned one icy mystery last week, here is another that I have spotted in southern England this week.  We have had a spell of bright but cold weather - around freezing plus or minus a few degrees for a few days.

In the hedgerows by the roads, once in a while you find a surprising and spectacular patch of icicles like this

Icicles in the hedges in UK

or this

More icicles in the hedges in UK

and just a metre or two to each side the hedges are completely dry and free of ice.

It turns out that there is always a puddle of nearly-freezing water on the road and that it is constantly being splashed into the hedge by passing vehicles.  Some of it freezes and forms icicles, and the remains that drip off might form icicles on the ground.

Correcting the Ten Commandments

Correcting the Ten Commandments

Attempting to visit the Stone Museum in Great Bedwyn today, I found this amusing plaque on the wall.

See the second line.  The notion of correcting the ten commandments seems to be a very good aspiration. The rest of the plaque is entertaining too.

I wonder what the commandments said after correction.

Saving Sophie

I was in Newbury (Berkshire, UK) this afternoon, looking (with a little dread) at the rate that the water was flowing on the Kennet and Avon Canal (and River Kennet).

Walking along the canal I saw this sight, which is the sort of thing that boaters never want to see.  The water flow had caught her helmsman unaware as he approached his mooring, and the boat was wedged across the canal.  I wondered whether I might be able to help.

Saving Sophie - atheistic altruism at work!

But the tow path was closed to pedestrians . . . so I walked around in order to approach from the other direction, only to see this view and . . .

Saving Sophie - some engineering assistance needed.

. . . to find it closed too.  Another helpful fellow and I decided to go the the rescue, along the closed tow path.

One hour later, with shoes full of water and trousers wet up to the knees, we had the situation in control.  I had not expected so much exercise this afternoon!

Next time someone asks that question "Have you done much boating?" the answer will be a confident "Plenty!"

Small note:  Have been looking on ebay this evening for a light-weight chain hoist.  I think it would be useful to keep one on the boat for 'interesting' situations like this!

Francesca Stravrakopoulou - Think Week

Of the events that I attended in Oxford Think Week, Saturday afternoon's talk by Professor Francesca Stravrakopoulou was the most interesting, comprehensible and entertaining.  (Peter Atkins was a close contender though!)

She explained how much she loved studying the bible.  As an atheist she claimed that anyone suggesting that the bible should only be studied by religious scholars was doing a disservice to it.

She started with an amusing tale about a conversation with her grandmother who told her that the classical demi-gods, the Greek heroes, were the offspring of a god and a human.  She said "Oh, like Jesus then?"  Apparently though, the suggestion that Jesus is a demi-god doesn't go down well with Christians, and this was the beginning of her rejection of Christianity and fascination with the bible as a human-written book.  After some years of study in Oxford in the minority position of being an atheist in a community of theologians she has risen to the position of Professor of Biblical Studies in Exeter.

From this position she was asked to host a short BBC series called The Bible's Buried Secrets, (e.g. here) which I remember enjoying.  The seemingly controversial claims of the series led to something of a furore.  The BBC was inundated with complaints that it was not appropriate for a series about the bible to be presented by an atheist.  She received a lot of personal hate mail which was rather disturbing, but on balance the 'love mail' was even more disturbing!  She has also been accused of being anti-semitic, anti Israeli, and more amusingly, 'really stupid' because she has read the bible and knows it well but apparently hasn't understood it.  I think she has understood it very well!

Worse still, some have said that she was 'too young-looking', complained about what she was wearing, that she was a woman and worst of all an atheist!  One fellow scholar claimed that she had 'betrayed the guild' and another said that she had 'discussed things on TV that should only be examined in the safety of the lecture theatre'.

She likes to show her students the core and difficult stuff in the bible, like the partly hidden presence of a wife of Yahweh, namely the goddess Asherah.  In particular she is interested in the tension between biblical views and historical realities.

For the remainder of the talk she moved on to the subject of Think Week's theme - namely 'Death'.

The concept of hell has only become so widely believed because of Christianity.  Before that time it was believed that you would go to the underworld and you would be united with the ancestors or 'gathered to the ancestors'.  The way that material remains were treated was important.  The very idea that the dead are unclean is a modern one.  In ancient times the period of decomposition was an important part of confirming your place in the underworld, and your bones would have been gathered into an ossuary some time after your death.

Furthermore, death was not regarded as breaking the bond with the living, and rituals were important to maintain this link.  Now we are increasingly segregating the living and dead and she teaches that this is completely different from the ways of ancient people.

In one special case, namely that of Jesus, his resurrection and the lack of a verifiable tomb to venerate diminishes the value of what it is to be human.

Summarising, she emphasised again that biblical texts are incredibly alien to modern eyes, but that, on the other hand, the bible and religions that gave rise to the bible are incredibly important to human society.

I suppose that last claim is a matter of opinion, but it is one that I can respect and not reject out of hand. 

All told, this was the best Think Week event that I attended.  How sad that the audience was only 29 people.  I for one am looking forward to any new TV series involving Francesca's fascinating insights into the bible.

BBC might resist controversy . . . 

Go to Channel 4!

Sex and Death

Another Oxford Think Week activity, on Saturday 16th February included a talk by Professor Beverly Clack about Sex and Death.  Before the talk started I wondered what the title might mean, and I was only there to be sociable while I was waiting for the event that I really wanted to attend later in the afternoon.  (It did not disappoint - see my next blog post.)  By the end of the talk I was left in the same state of confusion, but then again I'm only a sort of scientist.

She talked a lot about the Marquis de Sade and feminism, but for me it was not clear what her message might have been.

We had been invited to 'Pre-Read: “Sex and Death – Reappraisal of Human Mortality”, Polity Press, ISBN-13: 978-0745622798.'  I must admit that I hadn't felt compelled to do so.

From the back cover: For centuries people have debated the nature of the human self. Running beneath these various arguments lie three certainties – we are born, reproduce sexually [is this a certainty?], and die. The models of spirituality which dominate the Western tradition have claimed that it is possible to transcend these aspects of human physicality by ascribing to human beings alternative traits, such as consciousness, mind and reason. By locating the essence of human life outside its basic physical features, mortality itself has come to be viewed as a problem, for it appears to render human life both meaningless and absurd. Complex connections have then been made between the key features of life: sex is linked with death, and birth becomes the event that introduces the child to the world of decay – and ultimately to death itself.

Personally I see no link between sex and death but perhaps that just shows how I am depraved in some obscure way.  In fact, the suggestion that human life might be meaningless and absurd is far more believable to me.

One good thing that I can say is that she stuck to the theme of Think Week quite well.  The theme was 'Death'.  The talk was suitably morbid.

I had almost lost the will to live.

Small note:  I should have stayed in the kitchen to help with drying the cups and plates!  Sorry, but that was more fun!

Richard Dawkins and Stephen Law - Think Week

On Friday 15th February as part of Oxford Think Week, Richard Dawkins and Stephen Law met on stage in the Sheldonian Theatre.

The discussion was generally an interesting revision of the sorts of things that I hear on scientific and skeptical podcasts, week in and week out, and I write about here.  A few of the audience were a little disappointed that there was nothing very new in it.

However, I can listen to these two men for a very long time without getting bored, and you have to admire their dedication to their cause.  They give up their time (and indeed money by sponsoring the event) in order to be visible to another audience - predominately of young people. 

Getting the message of rationalism and science out to the public takes a lot of effort and they show little sign of tiring.

As usual, the questions asked by the audience varied in quality.  Some were thinly veiled angry responses from a religious world-view that had clearly found itself on the back foot.  Others were more statements than questions in spite of the chair imploring people to keep their questions short.  Also as usual there were questions which were politely answered, but could have be met with simple advice to go and read a book.

Asked about objective morality and how one should address the competing requirements of different moral values we learned that RD claims to be a consequentialist.  SL agreed that he had got the description correct.  I doubt that the questioner felt satisfied with the answer that he got as he was clearly under the impression that he had deal the knock-out blow.

I for one thought it was the best answer available.

When the video of the event is posted I will link to it here.

Pecha Kucha

Last week a colleague introduced me to another new concept. It is a teaching technique (with a competitive element).

At the time he was presenting a module of a training course and he introduced the idea of 'pecha kucha', which apparently is Japanese for chit chat.  The idea is that you present your message in 20 'PowerPoint' slides and that the presentation is set up so that the slides advance automatically, once ever 20 seconds.  The whole thing is over in less than 6 minutes.

Apparently pecha kucha nights (PKN) are arranged for brave speakers to put across their point of view in a concise way, and some people develop an expertise in it.

I was looking forward to the training - but he said that he wasn't able to present it in that way after all.  :(  I have a suspicion that people get so close to their particular areas of expertise that it is difficult to present the items that matter to others without going into the detail that you need to be an expert yourself.

So . . . rising to the challenge I thought I might have a go at it and translated his detailed and knowledgeable training into an attempt to present the things that we really need to know.

I'm delighted to say that he approves.  Now I just need a chance to present it while he is there to answer the really difficult questions!

Swedish icy mystery

My friend and colleague, Tom, was visiting family in Sweden recently and on a forest walk he came across this remarkable and so far unexplained icy feature and photographed it.

Surprising sharp edge around a patch of ice. 

At first glance it just looks like an icy puddle, but when you look more carefully it has some very peculiar and surprising features.

Closer view of the upstanding edge - Swedish icy mystery!

Tom described it as follows:

I have never seen or heard of anything even remotely like it before. I probably saw about a thousand other frozen puddles that week, and none of them had any unusual features at all.

Stalks of grass through the mysterious sharp ice feature.

It had snowed about 10-15cm some days before we got there and this had largely thawed by the time of this forest walk, after several days of the temperature being about -2°C overnight and 0 to +2°C during the day.

There are many deer in the forest, and a few dog walkers. Several other puddles showed evidence of the water level having gone down under the ice crust before refreezing. I now see that where some larger grass stalks had lain through the developing ice wall, presumably wiggling in the breeze, they have made round holes in the wall. The little ones are just frozen in position as I described the other day.

Another view - including a reed passing through a melted hole.

Perhaps the explanation for the large green reed having melted a hole is more related to it being a dark colour, and thus collecting more warmth from the sun, but how this sharp edge was formed is still a mystery.

So . . . are there any arctic explorers out there who have an explanation please?

Circular Reasoning Works

Circular Reasoning works!

Where the pope will be hiding . . .

Following on from yesterday's post, apparently the pope is planning to hide himself away in that non-country called The Vatican, in order to avoid the risk of prosecution.  See this link.  It is a good read and it covers the main points quite thoroughly.

I'm glad that this concept demonstrates a small hint of contrition, but I don't think it goes far enough.

Looking at it another way, is this fair to the new pope?  Anglican priests who retire will always move to another parish, so that their successors can take charge without being influenced by a predecessor. 

Obviously former popes have different rules.  But then again they have different views of morality too. 

Now the question arises . . . does the non-country called The Vatican have an extradition treaty with any country in Europe?  If so, it should expect a phone call quite soon. 

If not, it doesn't deserve to be called a country, and the whole problem of the prosecution of its leading criminals is recursive.

Monopoly provides the answer to the question "What does a retired pope do next?"

In general terms this is a virtually meaningless question because most popes do not abdicate and retire.  No doubt it will be a while before we hear the real reason for the retirement of Pope Benedict, even if we ever find it out.  The Roman Catholic Church could hardly be say to be famous for its openness.

Like his brother, Pope Benedict has been accused of quite a number of misdemeanours during his professional life.  It is asserted that he has personally been responsible for covering up the nefarious child abuse activities of many Catholic priests.  Although it is not implied that he was actually involved in the rape of children, it would be regarded as a very serious crime in any civilised jurisdiction to take actions intended to impede the police in their investigation of crime.  And yet this is exactly what he has been accused of.  Aiding and abetting one criminal would be serious enough, but it if is true that Ratzinger's Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith activities have been systematically confounding law enforcement then someone should take personal responsibility for it.  That someone should clearly be the head of the organisation.

Now that Ratzinger will no longer be acting as 'The Pope', and therefore no longer the head of state of that 'non-country' called 'The Vatican', one might hope that he is getting rather worried.

Please think about that and feel some satisfaction at my optimism.

His immunity to prosecution must surely have been rescinded along with the other responsibilities of the position.

Surely, just like that other notorious European tyrant Mladic, Ratzinger should be arrested and denied bail while his alleged crimes are thoroughly investigated and he is ultimately brought to trial. 

Therefore the answer to the question of his retirement plans should come directly from the Monopoly board!

Ratzinger - 1st March - Go to Jail. Go Directly.

Go to jail.  Go directly to jail. Do not pass go. Do not collect £200 (or whatever currency or culture you prefer).

After all this is a man who should know more about morality than anyone else on Earth if the claims of his church are true.  If God really set the standards of objective morality, then the Vicar of Christ (and his older brother) should have been able to tell that it is immoral to shelter his fellow priests from justice (or whatever his older brother is accused of).

There is little evidence that they have grasped that concept yet.

Go to jail.


Update: 22:30.  This evening I attended an event in Oxford, where Stephen Law and Richard Dawkins were in discussion as part of 'Think Week'.  One of the questions from the audience was on exactly this topic.  RD has been involved in a previous discussion about an attempt to prosecute the pope and together with Christopher Hitchens had paid a top lawyer to look into the idea.  Sitting in the audience this evening and knowing that this post was scheduled I felt quite amused.

Peter Atkins talks about absolutely nothing

No really . . . he was talking about the absolute nothingness before the beginning of the universe, as part of Think Week in Oxford!  The talk was so popular that people had to be turned away from the door.  This event was held in a teaching room in the famous Ashmolean Museum. 

Atkins is of course a popular speaker and people expect to get good value from any talk that he gives and he did not disappoint.  This time he included a number of his usual (witty and pithy) atheistic comments but he was aiming to explain a possible view of the origin of the universe to a bewildered audience.

The point of the talk was to demonstrate that the creation of the universe from absolute nothingness might be open to scientific elucidation, contrary to the view that religion offers the only answers.  As he said, unlike religions, when different branches of science intermingle there is support rather than conflict.  He also re-stated his assertion (which I find very reasonable) that the 'why' questions should really be rephrased as portmanteaus of 'how' questions that science can answer.  When theologians claim that science can't answer the why questions, his reply is to shrug and say "So what? There is no valid question beginning with 'why'".  By asking how questions, we get rid of the need for omnipotent beings, and the supernatural has no place in science.

He went on to show some different models of families of universes, and mention that our notion of time might be far too naive.  Time might be circular but for today he wanted to assume that there really was an instant in time when the first universe came into being.  Following similar lines to Lawrence Krauss in his book A Universe from Nothing, Atkins went on to explain how the universe might look as though it is full of energy but in fact the positive energy, including that which exists as matter, is exactly balanced by the negative energy associated with gravitational attraction. When questioned about why gravitational energy is negative he used a nice analogy that I had never heard before.  Take two objects.  One distorts space-time to make a gravitational well, and the other rolls into the well to reach a lower energy state.  I like it!

Getting gradually deeper into the science of origins and carefully pointing out that he was not telling us that this is the answer, but only a possible answer, he went on to talk about conservation laws.  Taking as his first example, the law of conservation of energy might be inferred from the observation that the universe has no net energy.  If it came from nothing then the simplest explanation is that 'the nothing' had no energy, and that state has been preserved.  He invoked Noether's (first) theorem which states that any differentiable symmetry of the action of a physical system has a corresponding conservation law. In the case of the conservation of energy, the associated symmetry is the uniformity of time.  Similarly, conservation of momentum is associated with the uniformity of space, and angular momentum with the isotropy of space.  In fact almost all laws of physics probably imply the uniformity of the 'nothing' that was there before the universe, and he gave some examples of how the alternative to the physical laws would lead to virtual anarchy.

Concluding the first part of the talk he pointed out that at the creation almost nothing happened.  There is still nothing here, but it is a much more interesting form of nothing than it was before nothing happened.

The second part of the talk became much more abstract, getting into set theory and some other mathematics and without admitting where I lost the plot I'm not going to describe it in detail.  Someone was recording it, and if it is published on the web I will link to it so that you can listen for yourself.  My short summary of it is that time may be regarded as a dimension, but that it is a very special kind of dimension.  The idea that there is only one dimension of time (when there are three spatial dimensions) implies that you can't turn around in it.  (Eeek!  How?)

He then concluded that the whole point of his talk was to show us that science is not afraid to confront the concept of nothing at all, and that the properties of nothing at all can be discussed quite rationally.

In the Q&A there was a question about how (a) god (the creator) might not have been god at all, but that aliens might have seeded the Earth with life and having realised that it was all going wrong had gone away leaving no sign of their involvement.  Having tried to answer the question politely, the questioner persisted with a little rant about how he wasn't being taken seriously.  He refused to stop even when asked by the chairman. 

In his typical politely assertive way Atkins answered that if there was any evidence at all for that idea then it would definitely be worth considering, but that there isn't any evidence.  The questioner picked up his coat and left, much to the relief of all of us.

All in all, it was an entertaining evening with a great speaker and a great chance to meet some very interesting people, older friends and newer.  I will be attending more Think Week events, (although unfortunately not all of them).

Why aren't ghosts naked?

We all know people who claim to have seen ghosts, even if those people are usually sensible enough not to have told you about what they have experienced.

But have you ever heard anyone claim that they have seen a naked ghost?  I'm left wondering how these disembodied spirits have some way of remembering what clothes their corporeal forms used to wear, and indeed how they choose from the wardrobe that must have changed throughout their lives.

You might argue that this is no stranger than the concept that the ghost's former self changed its appearance throughout its life, but that somehow the apparition has chosen a snapshot in time - presumably normally at the point of its final demise.

Maybe they keep the clothes that they wore at the same time.

Or maybe there are just no ghosts and the people who have the requisite imaginations to conjure up such an image in their minds have no trouble conjuring appropriate-looking attire as well.

Why are there no dragons?

For Darwin Day, it seems appropriate to write a post about evolutiion.

Evolution seems to have produced a wide range of surprising abilities.  In many cases the same ability has come about separately in different species at different times.

Sight seems to have evolved in tens of separate ways.  Many creatures share the optical band that humans are able to sense (around the part of the spectrum where the atmosphere has the lowest absorption), but other creatures have developed to use infra-red and ultra-violet.  Some are very sensitive to the polarisation of light and others like us are almost completely unaware of it.

Sonar seems also to have evolved in about four separate ways.  Even in mammals like whales and bats there is nothing in common between their organs to suggest common evolution.

More surprisingly, electricity has been co-opted by completely unrelated species of fish, and Bombardier beetles have even evolved ways of creating explosions by secreting fluids which are unstable together.

But what of things that seem never to have evolved?

No animal has naturally evolved radar.  Perhaps the other options are good enough for short distances but much cheaper in terms of energy.

But fire is another property that is noticeably and more surprisingly absent from the animal kingdom.  This is the stuff of legend, with fire-breathing dragons being common in folk-lore.  Nobody serious suggests that these creatures really lived, even though there are creatures that create fuel (as cattle create methane in large quantities) and as we have already seen, electricity is generated at the voltages needed to make sparks to ignite the fuel.  The potential was there.  So why are there no dragons?