Center for Inquiry

Center for Inquiry is an educational organisation in the US that promotes evidence based reasoning and secular ethics in the face of pseudo-science and religious propaganda.

They have very kindly provided a link to my book on their website.

Thanks chaps and chapesses. I'm much obliged.

My radio interview

I was invited to be interviewed on my local BBC radio station, BBC Guernsey, last week. I can't tell you how nervous I have been, but it's all over now, and I must say I think it went quite well. I haven't had the courage to listen back yet, so I hope my nerves didn't come across too much.

The interviewer, Jenny Kendall-Tobias, put me at ease almost immediately, and I actually found myself enjoying the experience.

I've never done anything like this before, but I figured that if I am serious about marketing my book, I ought to take advantage of every opportunity that presents itself.

Anyway, you can listen to the show here. I start at about 30 minutes in and I'm on for about an hour. If anyone is reading this, please let me know what you think.

Thanks

In Memoriam: Christopher Hitchens, 13th April 1949 – 15 December 2011

One year on...

Stocking filler

Just to let you know. There is 25% off the print version of Unbelievable until Christmas, if you buy it from Lulu.com.

It would be an ideal stocking filler for a friend or family.

Poking the bear

A couple of weeks ago, just for giggles, I decided to tweet Shirley Phelps-Roper from the Westboro Baptist Church, telling her about my book, linking to my blog and asking for a retweet

Strangely enough, I've not yet received a response. 

Today, I tweeted a similar request to the Pope. I sent two tweets, one in German and one in English. *

I wonder if, unlike that Phelps-Roper woman, the Bishop of Rome; the Vicar of Christ on Earth; the Holder of the Keys of Saint Peter, will do the right thing. We'll see...

*EDIT
After some advice from a friend, I have sent another tweet in Latin.

Appetizer #5: Intellectual Dishonesty

One of the most pernicious and objectionable things about the concept of religion is its tendency to creep into the education system. When my son was five years old, he came home from school one day and announced that God had made the world in six days!

It is still the law in the United Kingdom that some form of religious instruction be present in the school curriculum, and whilst I have no real objection to a comparative and historical study of religion in schools, I would have thought that a five-year-old could manage quite well without it until he or she is older. Of course, there is an argument to be made that the kind of religion taught in British primary schools only serves to inoculate children against religious belief in later life. For my son, however, I would prefer that the inoculation be forgone, and the balance of time yielded to extra reading, writing and arithmetic.

In any case, the issues at stake are much wider than that of primary education. It would appear that, left unchecked, faith would eventually make its way in to secondary school science classrooms as well. It hardly needs to be said that there is no room for faith in the field of scientific inquiry; there can be no greater affront to science, and the scientific method, than the acceptance of unsubstantiated dogma on the grounds of faith. You do not hear people talk about their faith in the theory of evolution say, or in the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics. One either accepts the evidence or one does not; faith has nothing to do with it. So it should be with the teaching of science.

When faith does rear its ugly head in the scientific arena the results are invariably disastrous. Take for example the Intelligent Design (ID) movement. This movement appears to be most prevalent in America, although the idea is gradually creeping into Europe as well. Using the teleological argument, proponents of ID argue that the complexity of the biological world, as well the wider cosmos, imply some kind of creator or intelligent designer. Of course the arguments are couched in more 'scientific language', with words such as God, creator and faith judiciously left out. This is because the main bone of contention in the ID community seems to be that their theory is not represented in American school science classes. The inclusion of words like God or faith in the ID literature would preclude the theory at the outset from being taught in schools, because to do so would be an infraction of the constitutional 'wall of separation' between church and state, an eminently sensible idea which unlike in the United Kingdom, exists in the United States.

In order to get around this constitutional obstacle, the Intelligent Design ‘theory’, as it is publicly presented, makes no claims to the identity of the designer and proponents are fond of pointing out that he/she/they could in fact have been some kind of ultra-intelligent alien. However, it would appear that the majority of ID proponents are in fact religious believers, and it is a safe bet that behind closed church doors the Intelligent Designer is positively identified as the supernatural Judeo-Christian God.

The inadequacies ID theory are really laid bare when it is stacked up against real science. Mainstream science begins with observation which, through experiment, can be used to describe a model. As evidence is gathered, a hypothesis can be suggested to explain the model. Any hypothesis must make predictions which can be tested by further observation and experiment, during which time the hypothesis can be modified or abandoned in favour of another one. Only once a hypothesis has survived rigorous testing may it be used to formulate a scientific theory, but even then it must, unlike a mathematical proof, be open to falsification should any conflicting evidence come to light. ID on the other hand begins, and ends, with a hypothesis, with its proponents merely interpreting the evidence to fit their conjecture. This has meant that whenever it has been tested in court, the ruling has been that ID is not science. Indeed, one of the chief criticisms directed towards the ID camp is the distinct dearth of peer reviewed papers emanating from it. In its efforts to ‘debunk’ the neo-Darwinian paradigm of evolution by purely natural selection, ID does not appear to undertake any science of its own. The game plan appears to be to cast doubt on a well established and rigorously tested scientific theory and then to replace it with, at best, unimaginative guesswork, or at worst, pseudoscientific garbage.

Intelligent Design can best be thought of as a contemporary manifestation of the Creation Science movements of the 19th and early 20th centuries. In fact, the only real difference between them is that proponents of Creation Science make no secret about who the Intelligent Designer is. ID is therefore, merely a denomination of Creationism, and so words like Creationist and Creationism can justifiably be used to reference both groups—something that I intend to do from now on.

Evolution by purely natural selection and Creationism are not just at odds with one another, they are wholly incompatible; the findings of evolutionary biology threaten the perceived ‘truth’ of the teachings of bible. However, when one listens to the Creationists one gets a very different impression. It is as though they think they have uncovered overwhelming inconsistencies in current scientific dogma, inconsistencies that are an affront to science, and must be countered with ‘real’ science. The picture painted is that of avenging heroes that have, against all the odds, reopened the debate on the origins of life on earth. In the real world though, the sole motivation of the Creationist movements appears to be not genuine scientific inquiry at all, but rather the desperate reaction of those who know that they are in a weak position.

Let me expand upon this a little. The book of Genesis states quite clearly that God made all the creatures of the earth, creatures that would bring forth only after their kind, and then as a separate enterprise he created humanity in his own image. Imagine instead that Genesis 1:20-31 said something like this:

And God planted the seed of life upon the earth.
Then, God said “From this tiny seed may life be set in motion, undirected by me, across the face of the earth”.
And so it was that the seed brought forth a menagerie of creatures, each generation, to a tiny degree, different from the one before. Each minuscule difference being utilised by life itself, according to its ability to survive.
Then, when life had achieved a form that most represented God’s image, God said unto it, “Thou art my most important creation and thou shalt be called man and woman.
“Listen up; I’ve got a few ground rules for you”

I would like to bet that if that is what the bible had said, the Creationist movements would never have got started. There would be no need for them. When Charles Darwin put forward his exciting discoveries in 1859, far from being attacked as a heretic he would have been hailed as some kind of saint; a hero of the faithful. The theory of evolution would have been seen as scientific proof of the veracity of Genesis and Christianity in general.

Of course, you may think that I am being a little frivolous here, but the serious point to be made is that if Genesis had been written differently, then what are now perceived to be ‘errors’ or ‘lies’ or 'gaps' in evolutionary theory would be overlooked, perhaps even ‘covered up’ by the very people who attempt to 'expose' them today. Ironically though, their beliefs about the way of the world would not be based on anything even approaching science; stubborn faith in a few words of ancient scripture would be more than sufficient to convince them.

Sound familiar?

Pity me

I have just watched a video of a debate between creationist Eric Hovind and atheist Bernie Dehler. Now that my blood has stopped bubbling and I have managed to unlock my clenched jaw, I find myself unable to refrain from unloading some of my frustration into this post. 

I have listened to/watched more than my fair share of creationist debates and lectures in my time, many of them involving that proven liar and thief, Kent Hovind, who just happens to be the father Eric, the creationist in this video. However, I can't remember a time when I have been so ticked off as a result.

Eric Hovind is every bit as arrogant and ignorant as his father, but he manages to be even more irritating, if such a thing is possible. You'll have to watch the video for yourself to get a feel for what I mean, but I don't recommend it. I lost count of how many times Eric displayed his total lack of understanding of science, philosophy, logic or morality. Indeed, virtually every argument he made did violence to those terms. Like his dad, Eric never really shut up and let the other guy talk - he just steamrollered all over him, spouting nonsensical drivel to the delight of a baying crowd - and he used the perennial debaters trick of evading difficult questions by asking one of his own.

Although the whole debate was a torturous tangle of stupid, there were two hoofing great fallacious arguments that stood out for me:

First, whenever Mr Dehler said anything, Eric always asked "could you be wrong about everything you just said?" 

In the spirit of intellectual honesty, his opponant was obliged to answer "Yes". "Well," came the gleeful reply, "that means that you admit that you don't know anything". Hovind's 'logic' is that if you 'know' something that later turns out to be wrong, you didn't know it in the first place - you only believed it. 

So, if you admit that you might not be right about anything, you are admitting that all of your thoughts are merely beliefs and that you have no knowledge. The problem with this is that it wipes out all of science, and unless one aspires to be as arrogant as a creationist, it wipes out all forms of knowledge on any subject. And this, by the way, applies to Hovind's claims to knowledge as well - he's just too shit stupid to realise it.

Second, there was another particular piece of 'argumentation' that Hovind used throughout the debate, that it is so inane, so wrong-headed, so bat-shit crazy, that it stands out, in a strong field, as the most stupid thing that either of the Hovind boys has ever said. It is this:

"If you don't know everything, you can't know anything."

Yup, you read that right - If you don't know everything, you can't know anything....

....unless...

...unless you know someone who knows everything. 

Or, to put it another way, there is can be no knowledge without God.

Brilliant! Genius! Change one syllable and the whole delicate epigram just falls apart. Here is how the conversation should have gone as soon as Hovind made this staggeringly moronic statement:

Dehler: But wait, Mr Hovind, I have a question for you. Do you think you are God?

Hovind: Of course not.

Dehler: But you just said that you know everything.

Hovind: No I didn't.

Dehler: Er, yes. Yes you did. Think about (if you can). You claim to know God.

Hovind: Uh Huh

Dehler: But 'knowing God' is 'knowing something' right?

Hovind: Erm

Dehler: So if you claim to know God, you are claiming to know something and so, by your argument, you must be claiming to know everything...

Hovind: Well I...

Dehler: ...and if you are claiming to know everything...

Hovind: Hold on a minute now...

Dehler: ...then you are claiming to be God. QED. At what is more...

Hovind: Whoa there...

Dehler: ...you are in fact claiming that in order to know God, you have to be God. 

Hovind: That's not what I meant.

Dehler: I'm sure it isn't, but that it what you said......and another thing...since you claim to know everything, and since I know you, I can, by your own arguments, safely say that I know you are a glans.

Sadly, Dehler was too nice a chap to go down this route, but Eric did get his comeuppance in the Q&A when an 11 year-old called him on the very point I've just made, and he was forced to bluster and patronise and condescend his way out of it. I'd like to say that this delicious moment made the rest of the video worth the watch. But it didn't. Ho hum.