An Independent Hogmanay

An old university friend pointed me to a web site campaigning for Scotland to remain part of the United Kingdom a little while ago.  Reading One Dynamic Nation  I find myself wondering what is in this for the English.

I find that it is disproportionately aimed at convincing the Scots to remain part of the Union because they get such a good deal out of the arrangement, and I think that is only half the story. 

I wonder, can anyone can put a positive spin on it from the point of view of the English?  We never get a chance to vote in these referenda, but if we did I suspect that the cause of Scottish independence would get quite a big boost. 

The main point is that rural England gets the worst of both worlds - we get trampled underfoot by the London government, just like Scotland, and we get the blame from the Scots for the way that government treats everyone else.  (I am writing from the constituency next to David Cameron's - one where my vote counts for nothing as the Conservative majority is insurmountable.)  Many of us who live outside the metropolis feel just as powerless as the Scots to influence the country towards a successful future.  Somehow we feel that this is not appreciated by those in the other parts of the Union, when solidarity would be better for all of us.

Remember that England warms to London about as much as Scotland warms to Glasgow - and yes I know that Glasgow is not the capital.  Somehow most of the English lump all the Scots together in their uncomplimentary thoughts, and the Scots lump all the English together in the same way.  But ask a Devonian what she thinks she has in common with a Geordie, or a resident of Barra what she has in common with someone from the Gorbles, or indeed Holyrood.  None of them understand each other, in either country.

In my travels around the world I have found people to be nicer than I expected in every country, and my inbuilt bias against the people has never survived intact.  Those who don't travel outside their own home area find their bias unchallenged.  I know a chap who seems to think (humorously of course) he needs a passport to go North of Woodstock (just a few miles North of his home in Oxford).  I expect most of us know people like that. 

It is not surprising that many Scots want independence when they have been taught to hate the English since they were toddlers.  But why fight it?  Why not just let them have independence and see how much they like their own government after they have got over the euphoria.  Its not use claiming the wealth from North Sea oil or gas.  That is a drop in the ocean - or should I say 'a potential slick in the ocean'.

English Independence!

I think many of the English would be happy to go for independence from Scotland too.  The subject came up over dinner on Boxing Day, and without actually taking a vote, it was clear that the majority of the adults would be quite happy to see this happen.

Or Independence from London?

As an alternative, should we all vote for independence from London?  That would make just as much sense as independence from the Union for Scotland.

Sadly we all have to put up with a London-focused government, or suffer the consequences of prime ministers and governments of the type we have today - namely those who were barely elected and who are laying waste to Britain by all their actions.

Dinner for One

Some time during the last year I heard a story about a short black and white British comedy film which is played on German TV every New Year's Eve. I heard that it was a tradition to watch it, and I knew that almost nobody in UK had ever heard of it.

So I didn't really believe a word of the story - at least not until I had asked some of my German colleagues.

And sure enough, each and every one of them confirmed the story and most of them said that they will watch it.  Almost all said that they found it funny, at least at a certain level.

Here it is. Dinner for One, (or The 90th Birthday), starring Freddie Frinton and May Warden It really is quite funny, and although some people in UK claim that it is a pathetic type of humour I think that they are missing the finer points.



This video is only 11 minutes long - and the point of the last scene is worth the wait. Just remember that the butler is required to follow the 'same procedure as last year', four times and that the four empty seats at the table would formerly have been occupied by 'gentleman friends', sadly now deceased.

I'm a Creation Agnostic too

Have you ever noticed how some people just need to believe something about everything.  There are no areas of knowledge where they are content to know that they don't know.

Of course, as with everything in the world there is a spectrum of people.  It is often said that the world is made up of people of two types - namely those who divide people into two types and those who do not.  I am in the latter category.  I observe a spectrum of people from those who question very little and accept a lot, through to those who question a lot and accept very little.  Questioning and accepting are 'orthogonal' quantities in my opinion.  In other words, some people neither question nor accept, whereas others do both with vigour.

Now, I put myself fairly firmly into the more questioning but less accepting corner of this two dimensional diagram, but I notice that there are certain areas where I feel that I neither know the answer, nor ever will.  The fact that I don't know how the universe was created does slightly interest me but it doesn't bother me unduly.  As I mentioned on 5th August this year, I am a Multiverse Agnostic.  There might be other universes, but by definition I will never know whether there are or not.  Even if the maths describing such a situation is beautiful and convincing it doesn't make it true in any real sense.

I just don't know.

And the same line of reasoning applies to the creation of the universe.  Who knows whether it began with a big bang.  Maybe it was a big bounce.  Or maybe it never began at all and has always been there.  There are scientific (or at least semi-scientific) theories that describe all of these options and each theory has its followers.

I am a proponent of none of the theories for several reasons.  Why do I not ally myself with any of the theories?  Its easy.  Even with a degree in physics I simply don't understand any of them well enough to be able to choose.  I do like the idea that there are some things that are not known to us.  Indeed there are some things that probably can never be known - and that is fine with me.

On the other hand I have noticed that certain religious apologists just 'know' that the universe came into being because a god put it there.  In fact they 'know' that it was their particular favourite god.  Somehow they can ignore reasonable doubts.

• If their god did create the universe, who created their god (as of course all things are said to have a cause).  This infinite regress makes you question all the premises associated with the argument for a Creator.
• If indeed the (I mean our) universe was created by their god, and it was created specifically for mankind, why would it have to be so complicated?  The universe is unimaginably vast, and mankind has such a tiny, puny and dangerously insecure presence.
• An even if those two arguments are accepted unquestioningly, what makes you think that this god would alter the physical laws according the the desires and prayers of just one tiny person in this unimaginably vast universe.

All in all, claims that the universe was created by a Creator are even less satisfactory to me than my ignorance of the actual mechanism.  I'm as certain as can be that invoking an Old Testament or Qu'ran style Creator god is not an explanation that I find credible or useful. 


Claims that science requires belief in itself and that it must start from unproven assumptions are, in my opinion, merely an example of desperation and the need to rationalise the irrational.  As Kenny Wyland wrote in the comments of the recent post A life without belief is possible - if not preferable! :


"Ah, but the part that I think you, and many other theists, miss is that actual science combats this problem. A single scientist _absolutely_ has a pre-conceived idea and attempts to prove that idea exists. They research, they experiment and then publish their findings... which are then VERIFIED by other scientists who do not have the same initial bias that scientist had.

That's why it doesn't take faith to believe scientific findings, because knowledge gleaned through science strips away individual biases and relies upon independent verification. The scientific community may run with a reasonable hypothesis for a short period of time, in order to experiment with it and verify, but if the community cannot produce verifiable and reliable information then it eventually discards the notion until additional evidence is introduced. "


The scientific process is imperfect, but at least it is self-correcting, whereas the religious approach has no such virtues.  Let's face it.  A creator god has no right to a place in the mind of any truly rational thinker.

Wisdom from an economist? Yes really!

John Maynard Keynes, 1883-1946, was a British economist who overturned the earlier ideas of neoclassical economics and worked to replace them with modern macroeconomics.

We are all doubtful about economists these days and would do well to remember the adage that:


"The economy depends on economists about as much as the weather depends on weather forecasters."


However, surprisingly, Keynes spoke a lot more sense than most of them and here are a few interesting quotations from him.


The long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead.  Economists set themselves too easy, too useless a task if in tempestuous seasons they can only tell us that when the storm is past the ocean is flat again.  -- 1923

Words ought to be a little wild, for they are the assault of thoughts on the unthinking. -- 1933

There is no harm in being sometimes wrong — especially if one is promptly found out. -- 1933

If the Treasury were to fill old bottles with banknotes, bury them at suitable depths in disused coal mines which are then filled up to the surface with town rubbish, and leave it private enterprise on well tried principals of laissez-faire to dig the notes up again (the right to do so being obtained, of course, by tendering for leases of the note-bearing territory), there need be no more unemployment and, with the help of the repercussions, the real income of the community, and its capital wealth also, would probably become a good deal greater than it actually is. -- 1935

Newton was not the first of the age of reason. He was the last of the magicians, the last of the Babylonians and Sumerians, the last great mind that looked out on the visible and intellectual world with the same eyes as those who began to build our intellectual inheritance rather less than 10 000 years ago.  -- 1942

If economists could manage to get themselves thought of as humble, competent people on a level with dentists, that would be splendid.  -- 1931

This one seems to tell the secret of Richard Branson's success:

The old saying holds. Owe your banker £1000 and you are at his mercy; owe him £1 million and the position is reversed. -- 1945


and finally, one that I empathise with very strongly (at least the first half):


I work for a Government I despise for ends I think criminal. -- 1917

A life without belief is possible - if not preferable!

A few days ago, on the post 'Long live the legacy of Hitch' one of my most regular and popular commentators, @Hilary, wrote a paragraph.  As you know - I like to engage with the topics that people leave as comments, and this one is worthy of further inspection because it gets to the very heart of the difference between those who have faith and those who do not because the faithful simply find it impossible to believe that a life without belief is possible.


Y'know I was thinking, it takes a real lot of faith to be an atheist. When looking all around at the complexity of life and all created things whether animate or not, it must be very difficult not to come to the obvious conclusion that there is in fact a Creator, a Grand Designer, and to go against the grain so to speak, to imagine that actually, all of it happened by mere improbable chance, and not just mere improbable but where the improbability is ridiculously as improbable as to make it pretty much a certainty that such a thing is impossible, then to carry on believing so in the face of abundant evidence to the contrary is nothing short of amazing faith, based on so little as to render it greater by far than the faith needed to believe in a Creator God, or in Jesus Christ for which evidence abounds. So well done all you atheists for having so much faith in so very very little. 


I wondered first of all, which logical fallacies could be found in this paragraph.  I think I only recognise one of them, namely the 'argument from personal incredulity' although several times over.

We are faced yet again with the suggestion that there is abundant evidence for the existence of god, and as usual no actual details about what form this evidence takes.  This is one of the most common claims for god which many atheists find frustrating.

From our perspective there is abundant evidence for the lack of existence of a god, but it is just had to find the final clinching argument to prove it.

Returning to Hilary's comments, we can easily dismiss the idea that atheism is a belief at all.  Atheism is in fact a very specific 'lack of belief' in a very specific type of god.  Atheists have all sorts of personal beliefs, but the one that we must share in order to wear the name 'atheist' is that we do not believe in a god who intervenes in the universe to change physical laws in order to answer prayers.

For this viewpoint there really is abundant evidence, as whenever studies of the effectiveness of prayer have been conducted it seems that God goes on strike - or worse than that it can actually be bad for people to know that they are being prayed for.  (See this link - not part of the evidence in itself, but at least it is a friendly description of that evidence.  Alternatively here is a Wikipedia article.)

Aside from that, the very suggestion that all the 'evidence' of design and beauty leads to any one specific god is utterly illogical.  It is only a matter of upbringing which leads most people to the god that they worship.

As we often say, all religious people are atheists too, but it is just that those of us who admit to being atheists take it one god further.

Human figures in the chalk

I had planned to conclude the series about the chalk figures of England, with two human figures carved into the hillsides.  However, people have kindly been sending me links to other objects and I have not had chance to investigate them.  For now this is a tentative conclusion, but I might follow up in future weeks with some additions.

The Long Man of Wilmington, in East Sussex.  (See on Google maps.)

and the famous Cerne Giant, at Cerne Abbas in Dorset.  (See on Google maps.)

Not a word of a lie!  You can find them for yourselves.

See also:
White Horses in the Chalk
More Hillside Art
White Spires at Christmas

Uncontacted Tribes

This moving and amazing aerial footage of an uncontacted tribe in the Amazon forest says more than any words I can imagine.



Just imagine how it would feel if you have never seen a plane before.  Something is circling round your village, obviously looking at you.  Does it think you are food?  Or is it not a natural predator but a supernatural one - one of the gods just checking up on your behaviour?

Has it now gone down in the folklore of the village about the day that the great  noisy bird circled around and scattered the people?

Mind you - looking at that photo - one could be forgiven for wondering whether stainless steel has already made it to that village.  The knives have an oddly commercial and shiny look to them.

What I want for Christmas

If I had the power to produce exactly what I want for next Christmas, I would have all the kings and emperors resign and allow the people to govern themselves.

I would have all the nobility crop their titles and give their lands back to the people. I would have the Pope throw away his tiara, take off his sacred vestments, and admit that he is not acting for God -is not infallible - but is just an ordinary Italian. I would have all the cardinals, archbishops, bishops, priests and clergymen admit that they know nothing about theology, nothing about hell or heaven, nothing about the destiny of the human race, nothing about devils or ghosts, gods or angels. I would have them tell all their "flocks" to think for themselves, to be manly men and womanly women, and to do all in their power to increase the sum of human happiness.

I would have all the professors in colleges, all the teachers in schools of every kind, including those in Sunday schools, agree that they would teach only what they know, that they would not palm off guesses as demonstrated truths.

I would like to see all the politicians changed to statesmen, to men who long to make their country great and free - to men who care more for public good than private gain - men who long to be of use.

I would like to see all the editors of papers and magazines agree to print the truth and nothing but the truth, to avoid all slander and misrepresentation, and to let the private affairs of the people alone.

I would like to see drunkenness and prohibition both abolished.

I would like to see corporal punishment done away with in every home, in every school, in every asylum, reformatory, and prison. Cruelty hardens and degrades, kindness reforms and ennobles.

I would like to see the millionaires unite and form a trust for the public good.

I would like to see a fair division of profits between capital and labor, so that the toiler could save enough to mingle a little June with the December of his life.

I would like to see an international court established in which to settle disputes between nations, so that armies could be disbanded and the great navies allowed to rust and rot in perfect peace.

I would like to see the whole world free - free from injustice - free from superstition.

This will do for next Christmas. The following Christmas, I may want more.

Robert Green Ingersoll
The Arena, Boston, December 1897.

White Spires at Christmas

Following the theme of the strange forms of art found in the chalk uplands of England (having covered horses in the first post, other animals in the second), and with human figures to come in the next, this one is about some other shapes that can be found.

Bledlow Cross - pretty hard to find due to the unfortunate lighting!  (See on Google maps).

 Whiteleaf Cross (See on Google maps).

The Watlington Triangle  (See on Google maps). This one has a funny story attached.  Although I have driven past it and wondered what it was several times, it is only this week that I have discovered the story.

The Watlington White Mark was designed by local squire Edward Horne, who felt that the parish church of St. Leonard, when viewed from his home, would be more impressive if it appeared to have a spire. He had this unusual folly cut into the chalk escarpment of Watlington Hill in 1764. It is 36 feet (11 m) wide at its base and 270 feet (82 m) long.

We might not have a white Christmas here in Oxfordshire, but just a fake white spire.


Related posts:

White Horses in the Chalk
More Hillside Art

Human Figures in the Chalk

The 'New War on Christmas'?

So . . . there is a war on Christmas.  Or so we are told by so-called Christians who seem to think that their 'ancient traditions' are being eroded away by honest questioning in the free-thinking blogosphere.  It seems that demands from secular organisations for fairness to people of all-faiths-and-none are being twisted into an attack on Christmas.

This claim of the 'new war' does make me ask some other questions though.  Who is really leading the war against Christmas and who is fighting for Christmas.  I think I would claim that in some ways it is the same people who are fighting on BOTH sides.

I don't think that the Christian communities can with any degree of honesty claim that the modern Christmas has much to do with their faith for most people.  It would be highly disingenuous to try that argument.

Let's face it, the commercialisation of Christmas was completed many decades ago.  To paraphrase Tim Minchin's great song "White Wine in the Sun", a dead [and mythical] Palestinian has found himself press-ganged into selling Play Stations and beer.  It is obvious that the main thrust of the Christmas message these days revolves around commercialisation.  Businesses rely on the excessive Christmas spending for their very survival.

The tradition of the tree is ancient and pagan, and Santa doesn't even have a place in the polytheistic pantheon of Christian 'deities' alongside God, Jesus, something godly and intangible called the Holy Spirit, and Mary.  Whichever of the particular sects of Christianity you choose to prefer, none of them include the character of Santa.   Perhaps this is because of the simple fact that there is too much evidence for the existence of Santa and that he therefore cannot be considered to be sufficiently god-like.

Even the really ancient parts of the Christmas tradition - such as the choice of the date of Christ's birthday - were stolen from previous traditions.  The time of the solstice had ancient significance, but 25th December was stolen directly from Mithraism in the Roman world when Constantine chose to change religion - for whatever political reason seemed expedient at the time.

All in all, I think it is much too late to cry that there is a war on the Christian version of Christmas now.  I accept that rational voices have the power to communicate with each other world-wide for the first time in history and the confidence of the Free Thinking movement is growing, but for most people, the spiritual version of this holiday has gone, long ago.  Whilst it is sometimes dressed up as a nice story for the children, it is important that those children don't find out too early about the disgusting 'scape goat' philosophy of Christianity.

We wouldn't want to spoil their Christmas, would we?

Mass

A priest greets a Higgs Boson and welcomes him into the church.

"We haven't seen you here before"

The Boson replies

"You might not have noticed me before, but you have mass don't you?"

Small note:   Any more boson jokes?  Feel free to put them in the comments.

Subtle but cheeky advertising

Remember a few years ago - amazingly it was 2001 when it was published - when this advert went 'viral'?  I don't think the word viral meant the same thing then, and I'm pretty sure that I didn't see it for a couple of years after that.  I wonder how much of the world it touched, being a French product? 

Anyway - it is due for revival due to its ssurprisingly subtle but highly entertaining imagery.

Small note: it was an advert for a lubricant gel, in case your French is even worse than mine.

UK needs its own Dover Trial

We are now 6 years on from the historic Kitzmiller vs Dover Trial in which brave parents challenged a US school board's decision to teach 'Intelligent Design' (ID) as if it were part of some sort of scientific controversy.  By doing this the ID movement neatly tried to sidestep the obvious truth that ID is not science in any real sense.

Kitzmiller et al were pointing out that ID's backers had sought to avoid scientific scrutiny by advocating that 'the controversy', but not ID itself, should be taught in science class. They claimed that this tactic was at best disingenuous, and at worst a canard. The goal of the ID movement was not to encourage critical thought, but to foment a revolution which would supplant evolutionary theory with ID.

Tammy Kitzmiller

It seems obvious that we desperately need a 'Dover Trial' in the UK to counter the spread of irrational teaching in our new plague of 'faith schools'.  Things in UK are even worse than they were in US.  They are actually trying to teach ID and creationism as if they were science.  They do not even need to dress it up as controversy.

The problem is that the UK has no constitutional protections against the spread of pernicious supernatural beliefs throughout the state system, infecting the minds of our children while they are still vulnerable.  We have no constitution in the sense that USA has one.  Worse than that, we have no First Amendment guaranteeing the separation of church and state.

Most people in UK are probably completely unaware that USA even has a First Amendment.  It they are aware of any at all it is most likely to be the fifth, as a few Brits bandy the phrase "I'm claiming the fifth".  They use this expression to boast that they are not going to admit to an indiscretion that they are secretly proud about, but they probably don't know what the fifth is the fifth of.

Tammy Kitzmiller et al were fighting for rationality, as was their constitutional right.  UK rationalists have to fight even to gain that constitutional right, and the problem is that few people have noticed the impending problem.

UK in fact has state sponsored church, being one of only two countries in the world which appoints religious officials as part of our government.  The only other is Iran.  Aren't we in good company?  So things seem to be going from bad to worse as faith schools establish a new foothold, trying to drag the country back to the beliefs and technology of medieval times.

In the Dover Trial - and I think to the great surprise of many people - the conservative judge, Judge Jones, ruled in their favour, doing a great service to the young people of their nation.  A few of the findings leave it in little doubt that the Dover School Board lost the case with no hope of appeal.

"The overwhelming evidence at trial established that ID is a religious view, a mere re-labelling of creationism, and not a scientific theory."

and

After a searching review of the record and applicable case law, we find that while ID arguments may be true, a proposition on which the Court takes no position, ID is not science. We find that ID fails on three different levels, any one of which is sufficient to preclude a determination that ID is science. They are:

1. ID violates the centuries-old ground rules of science by invoking and permitting supernatural causation;
2. The argument of irreducible complexity, central to ID, employs the same flawed and illogical contrived dualism that doomed creation science in the 1980s; and
3. ID's negative attacks on evolution have been refuted by the scientific community.

It is additionally important to note that ID has failed to gain acceptance in the scientific community, it has not generated peer-reviewed publications, nor has it been the subject of testing and research. Expert testimony reveals that since the scientific revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries, science has been limited to the search for natural causes to explain natural phenomena.

Judge Jones headed off all hope of an appeal with a wisely worded paragraph.  (We could do with some wise judges in UK too!)


Those who disagree with our holding will likely mark it as the product of an activist judge. If so, they will have erred as this is manifestly not an activist Court. Rather, this case came to us as the result of the activism of an ill-informed faction on a school board, aided by a national public interest law firm eager to find a constitutional test case on ID, who in combination drove the Board to adopt an imprudent and ultimately unconstitutional policy. The breathtaking inanity of the Board's decision is evident when considered against the factual backdrop which has now been fully revealed through this trial. The students, parents, and teachers of the Dover Area School District deserved better than to be dragged into this legal maelstrom, with its resulting utter waste of monetary and personal resources.



May Europe learn something from this sensible decision!
 

Fusion gets a bad press - a personal view on the reasons

Why has there been so much negative news about fusion energy this month?  I suppose it is because the EU has finally committed itself to spending some extra funds on the ITER project, and a few people still try to pretend that 1.3 billion Euros is a lot of money.

Is it?  What can you buy for a few billion?

How much did CERN's LHC project cost?  I have heard figures up to 10 billion Euros spent over about 10 years, with most, if not all the funds coming from European countries.  (The LHC itself admits to a figure nearer 3 billion, but I'm sure it depends what you count as LHC and what infrastructure was already there.)  Its a beautiful project and it is sure to produce some beautiful science.  But it is also certainly not going to be part of the solution to the world's energy crisis.

The London Olympics comes with a similar price tag, but this time it is being funded almost entirely by a single country.  For a few weeks of sporting 'fun', (or to me, a few weeks of sheer tedium), the UK tax payers are paying out £10 billion after private investment failed to materialise.  Is that value for money?  No doubt many will claim that it is, and I have to try to respect their opinions.  However, it will also not be part of any solution to the world's energy crisis.

The International Space Station is another $10 billion scale project.  And many people point out what a sheer waste of money that has been!  It has a certain fascination for the inner child, but none of the excitement of earlier manned missions and certainly less value for money than the unmanned space programme.

These three examples - and believe me, there are countless others - show that it is actually a paltry investment when you consider how the ITER project is being funded.  Half the world's population are paying towards it, and the total cost is a mere £1 billion dollars per year.  (I am deliberately changing units of currency as I regard them as broadly equivalent, within the measurement errors that we are dealing with.)

Is it part of the solution to the energy crisis though?

The answer to that is clearly not known with absolute certainty, but I can tell you that it has a much better chance of returning value for money in this endeavour than big science, big space missions or big sport.  I don't consider ITER to be big science in the same sense as CERN.  It is more of a technological challenge where we know what we want the machine to do and just need to find the best way to make the most efficient and reliable machine.  The science that we get from ITER is interesting and relevant, but its main value (to me) is that fusion might finally come to the rescue as the fossil fuels dry up.

I'm not saying 'don't invest in renewables' at the same time.  I'm not even advocating an end to spending on other things.  I'm just saying that the coming energy crisis will affect us all and if you open your eyes to the possible consequences of shortage of energy you will realise that the world as a whole cannot afford not to invest in every possible solution however weird and wacky.  And as weird and wacky goes, ITER is very much towards the sane end of the spectrum.  Fusion already works on a smaller scale and all the indications are that bigger is better, and that ITER is at least nearly big enough.

Given the context of the level of spending on other things around the world the 'gamble' of building ITER is certainly worth it and at least construction is progressing now.  Buildings are starting to appear on the site and large contracts have been placed with industry.

ITER construction site.  More photos from here

Fusion might be thirty years away, and it might always have been 30 years away, but since the last credible device built to take the technology forwards is now over 30 years old I wonder why anyone would expect that to have changed.  Can you think of any other area of technology where a 30 year old device is still 'state of the art'?

Let's just keep in mind that 'the huge price tag' is not huge in the context of the things happening in the 'real world'.

As in everything - context is king!

Small note:  This is the private opinion of an almost irrepressible enthusiast - not representing the views of any official organisation in the fusion community.  Far from it in fact!

Poe's Law, and lying for Jesus!

'Poe's Law' is one of those expressions that seem to have arrived in vernacular English from nowhere.  There are several variations on a theme and another altogether independent option here.  One possible application is:

"Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is impossible to create a parody of Fundamentalism that SOMEONE won't mistake for the real thing."

In other words, No matter how bizzare, outrageous, or just plain idiotic a parody of a Fundamentalist may seem, there will always be someone who cannot tell that it is a parody, because they have seen similar real ideas from real religious/political Fundamentalists.

Pretty image 'ethically sourced' from here, (thank you).  Isn't it better than those horrible smileys that you try to get by struggling to find the right combination of keystrokes?  :)

A more general case of Poe's Law is

"It is impossible to tell for certain the difference between genuine stupidity and a parody of stupidity."
[You should know that intuitively from reading this blog!]

It seems that this version of 'Poe's law' was created by Nathan Poe in August 2005 at the website christianforums.com (deliberately not linked from here because I doubt that you will want to go there).  Apparently it was in the the section of their forum which focuses on creation vs. evolution debating.

Another version - independent from the others - is a Christian theological principle that states:

"Elements of the Gospel speak to different levels of spiritual concern in different cultures at different times."

This one was named after theologian Dr. Harry Lee Poe, a cousin of Edgar Allan Poe.  It is taught to modern evangelists as a way to better target the message of 'The Gospel' to different audiences for 'maximum salvific efficacy'.

In other words - feel free to indulge in cherry picking of verses that seem to prove what you want to prove here and now, and ignore the possibility that they really mean something else - or indeed nothing at all.  Elsewhere it is known by the expression 'lying for Jesus'.

So next time you hear someone quoting Poe's Law, ask them which version they mean.

Do they suggest a lack of sense of humour or lack of total open honesty?

Small note: And remember that expression 'maximum salvific efficacy'.  Mind you it is quite hard to forget it as it is so utterly awful!
 


 

Seasonal Sunday extra

Just an innovative Advent Calendar

More hillside art

Following on from the surprisingly successful post about White Horses in England, here are some other animal figures.

The Whitehawk Hawk, near Brighton in East Sussex, (see on Google maps).

Whipsnade Lion, close to Whipsnade zoo (see on Google maps).

And now two figures from areas where the geology is not based on chalk.  The flora have been cleared away to reveal quartz-like rock near Strichen in Aberdeenshire.

This is the only 'white horse' in Scotland (see on Google maps)

 and this animal is a little more typically Scottish (see on Google maps).

Next time - some other shapes in the chalk.

See also:
White Horses in the Chalk
White Spires at Christmas
Human Figures in the Chalk - Coming soon - link to be added

A Big Question for Christians

Christians often ask atheists a question that they seem to think is the blockbuster that proves that their faith is well founded. 

"How do you know what is right and wrong if you don't believe in (our) god?" 

It is not unusual to hear them ask what stops us from killing and stealing and raping, and it is not even unusual to find people - christian people! - who will claim that if there was no god then nothing would stop them from a frenzy of 'sin'.  I find that quite shocking!

Strangely, atheists have no problem knowing the answer to this.  If anything, we struggle to understand how the question is in any way meaningful.  We don't need to use data (such as the observation that only 0.2% of people in prison in USA are atheists, whereas perhaps 15% of the population are 'out' atheists).  We just know that some things are right and some are wrong, and can distinguish between them quite easily.

But let us turn the question the other way round.

"Dear Christians - if you know that you can be completely forgiven for all your sins, what stops you from killing and stealing and raping as much as you want to just now?"

Doesn't that question sound ridiculous when it is that way round?  Doesn't it sound offensive? 

Many atheists are similarly outraged and offended when you ask it your way too - please remember that.

Incidentally - this is not really intended to be a question for Catholics.  I have noticed that this concept has not escaped some of them.  Whole 'Catholic countries' cheerfully ignore some of the teachings of their church and perhaps they confess it - or perhaps they don't.

Long live the legacy of Hitch

Sadly, the news this morning tells us that Christopher Hitchens has finally lost his battle with cancer.  I wonder whether anyone could replace his wit and wisdom, his drive to achieve justice across the world and his sheer energy.

Jut grabbing a few examples of his work from my collection of notes:

We often heard him claim about religions:
"What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence."
Never afraid of a controversial truth, he said about Jerry Falwell - evangelical fundamentalist Baptist pastor, televangelist - 1933-2007:

"If he could have been given an enema, he could have been buried in a matchbox"


and who could argue with his claim that

"We don't have any choice but to have free will"  and


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



I'm sure the tributes will flow around the atheist blogosphere for a considerable time.  Let's hope that some of this tide of adoration leaks out and influences other thinking communities.

White Horses in the Chalk

Real white horses make me sneeze and wheeze, but the horses you see here don't have that effect on me. 

I was browsing around the superb resources of Google maps the other day and looking at some of the amazing figures carved in the chalk hills of England.  Some of them are quite ancient and others are positively modern.  Several were quite hard to find.  All are a little eccentric.

Chalk has its uses for artistic purposes and that is the main point of this, the first of a short series of posts - more in a few days.  However I'm sure you would be disappointed if I didn't take the opportunity to mention that it is also undeniable evidence for 'the fact of evolution' - evidence cast in stone.  (Or else it all happened in the flood - but you can believe that if you like.)

Here are a few of my favourites, with a link to their locations on Google maps.  They are all real.  I know that people are too sensible in most countries around the world to indulge in such follies, but fortunately the English have historically been different in this respect at least.

Uffington White Horse in Oxfordshire (view on Google Maps), probably the oldest one in the world, dated to a few thousand years BCE.

Kilburn in North Yorkshire (view on Google Maps) - a Victorian mess?

Hackpen Hill in Wiltshire (view on Google Maps), rather an eccentric image, almost more like a long legged rat than a horse.

Osmington in Dorset (view on Google Maps), depicting George III.

Alton Barnes in Wiltshire (view on Google Maps)

Westbury in Wiltshire (view on Google Maps), now covered in concrete and painted white, but possibly the most realistic shape.



That shows you quite a variety of hillside art, and there are others in different parts of England.

In fact, the English hillsides are covered with other interesting figures too, including other animals, and figures of people.  Over the next week or so I will show you a few of them.

See also:

More Hillside Art
White Spires at Christmas
Human Figures in the Chalk - Coming soon - link to be added