I’ve been tagged by the ever-readable Scribbles.

Q1) How would you define atheism?

The provisional conclusion that there is no compelling evidence for the existence of spiritual overlords.

I still use the term ‘atheist’ as it’s pretty easy to explain what I mean, which I’d have to do for ‘freethinker’, ‘nontheist’ etc. anyway. Don’t get me started on ‘agnostic’, though (the director’s cut of Donnie Darko defines an agnostic as ’someone who believes that there can be no proof of the existence of God, but does not deny the possibility that God exists’. WTF.).

Q2) Was your upbringing religious? If so, what tradition?

Not really. I wasn’t Christened, and I can’t recall my parents ever making outright claims one way or another. But when I was a kid my (not all that religious) grandmother inexplicably bought me ‘the Bible in 365 easy stories’, or something, and I made my parents read it every night. I recently asked what they thought of that, and they said they didn’t anticipate how violent it would be. I remember the artwork more than the stories, but some of the old testament stuff stuck. I’ve yet to re-examine the battle-watching dude who had to hold his arms aloft to prevent the mass slaughter of all his people, but even at 10 that was a bit weird. But I bought into anything that seemed mysterious, so I was Generically Christian until probably 14-15ish. By then I’d begun to realise the assembly-guest vicars sometimes came out with total rubbish, and I remember calling myself an agnostic (argh) in a discussion with über-Christian RE teacher¹ at about that age.

Q3) How would you describe ‘intelligent design’, using only one word.

Dishonest.

Q4) What scientific endeavour really excites you?

My favourites have always been astronomy and cosmology. I mean, stars are only ever point sources no matter how big your telescope, but by analysing their light we can figure out their chemical composition. The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter took a picture of the Pheonix Lander parachuting to the ground². The light from the Big Bang is still bouncing around, making up 3% of the static on an untuned tv screen, and we can use this to figure out the conditions in the first microseconds after the Big Bang. It’s just nuts. And brilliant.

But the older I get, the more I’m impressed by the basics. Just the easy little physics equations, and that they actually work. I get regular holy-shit flashes about natural selection, too.

It seems like most things, the more I think about them the more they descend into grey-area mess. Politics, photography, the day-to-day running of my life, whatever. But science is the inverse: the deeper I look, the more detailed and clearer things get, and it’s both a lifeline and a joy. So I’m rather a fan of the endeavour as a whole

Q5) If you could change one thing about the ‘atheist community’ what would it be?

Erm. I don’t think the ‘atheist community’ share anything but a disbelief in deities, really. The Internet forums suffer from the usual problem of online communities, though, and I’d like to kick out the mental atheists who forget religious people are human too.

Q6) If your child came up to you and said ‘I’m joining the clergy’, what would be your first response?

Which one? Why that one? Will it make you happy? Can I be a guest speaker?

Q7) What’s your favourite theist argument, and how do you refute it?

I quite like the ontological argument, which essentially says:

Imagine the most perfect being you can. Got it? Well, that one’s just in your head. A really perfect being would actually exist, because existing is more perfect than not existing. Therefore god exists.

This one’s quite good as it’s obviously completely bloody stupid, but it’s actually quite difficult to put your finger on why. People have, of course, and it’s fun wrapping your brain in knots trying to keep up.

The ontological argument doesn’t come up much in the cafeteria, though. Pascal’s Wager is better: if you die and god does exist you’re screwed, but if he doesn’t there’s no experience of any kind, so play the odds. That’s always entertaining, as I reject it for the same reason I don’t erect shrines to my toaster.

Other than that, there’s the moment when someone looks at you with pity in their eyes and says ‘Jesus’. As if that proves shit.

Q8) What’s your most ‘controversial’ (as far as general attitudes amongst atheists goes?) viewpoint?

I suppose thinking the Iraq War was at least a tricky decision is pretty controversial. And I’m a total relativist on the arts. But these don’t really count - they’re counter to the general opinion of commenters on atheist forums, but only in as much as they’re common to everyone.

As regards general attitudes amongst atheists, I can’t think of much…I take the Dawkins / P.Z. Myers approach that critical thinking + scientific knowledge will inevitably erode religious belief, and that saying the two are compatible is duplicitous. That one does at least split the scientists in the atheist community.

I also harbour some suspicions about the arguments over the best ways to change people’s minds. There are endless arguments over the merits of meet-them-halfway versus stand-up-for-what-you-believe-in, and I’m not sure there’s evidence for any of it yet. Although I haven’t yet read Carol Tavris’ book, so I might be talking rubbish.

Q9) Of the ‘Four Horsemen’ (Dawkins, Dennett, Hitchens and Harris) who is your favourite and why?

Dawkins, for reasons that will be terribly tedious to anyone who’s read this blog for a while. The Blind Watchmaker literally changed my life - I haven’t looked at the world the same way since - and I’m thankful to and admire the guy such that I have to be careful not to let biases get in the way of critical thinking. A couple of years ago I got him to sign my original TBW, and I think it’s time to read it again.

Q10) If you could convince one theistic person to abandon their beliefs, who would it be?

Ahmadinejad. And Katie Holmes, because she seems so nice.

Also: Russell Brand. He’s not specifically religious, but goes in for all sorts of spiritual mumbo-jumbo. It’s a shame, as the guy would be such a force for rationality.

Pass it on

I’m setting you free, little meme. Run, run like the wind.

1. ”on Christmas morning I want you all to get up and shout, as loud as you can, ‘HAPPY BIRTHDAY JESUS!’” [↩]
2. I so want a poster of that photo [↩]

Meant to be Christmas shopping, but instead getting annoyed by the radio. The Jeremy Vine show is incredulous that Richard Dawkins, avowed atheist, enjoys singing Christmas carols. They interview him. He explains that singing is nice and means nothing. Vicar retaliates that singing is inherently an act of worship. Which is stupid.

Penn Jillette put it well: I’m not in your club, so I don’t have to follow your rules. Rumour has it that senior Freemasons wear special rings - junior members are not permitted such jewellery. But I’m not a Freemason, so I can do what the hell I like. Any senior Freemason objecting to my wearing their special ring is going to get laughed at. You don’t get to impose your own club rules on the rest of society. Christians think singing carols is an act of worship, and that’s fine - go ahead. But don’t tell me what I can and can’t think, thanks.

A Guardian cartoonist stood up for good sense, but briefly took a wrong turn, imho, when he started to argue historically. It’s used frequently, but I don’t much care for the argument that Christmas was a pagan tradition so it’s ok for atheists to celebrate it, or the debates over whether the Christmas tree is a traditional Christian thing. Doesn’t matter, for two reasons:

1. The meaning of any particular tradition is entirely relative - if I like the tradition, I can appropriate it without dragging along all the historical baggage. The Guardian columnist pointed out that his favourite ink was used to stamp people in concentration camps - should he boycott it for this reason? No, that’s silly. It’s ink. Culture is a great big amalgam of unpatentable ideas from throughout history. Christmas trees look good - I like decorating my home with them. I don’t care whether some Christian came up with the idea, or what it means to religious people. I just like having a pretty tree, it’s nice! Some would raise politeness at this point - if Christians get offended by my having a tree, isn’t it polite to avoid it? No! People can declare offence at anything; bending over backwards to accommodate beliefs that make no sense never a) works b) leads to anything good.
2. Religion appropriates nice things to attract people¹. It’s a trick. A toffee-sprout. “Look, we sing nice songs, decorate our homes and all meet up once a week - these are all unequivocally nice things! Also by the way guy-came-back-from-the dead-angels-demons-witchcraft-magic-crackers-floods-smiting-gay-people-bad-also-snakes-don’t-ever-have-sex-unless-we-give-you-permission, and you only get to do all the nice things if you believe all that. This applies to everyone”. No. Get lost with your manipulative crap. I’ll take the yummy toffee, which is nothing to do with you, and leave the sprout for anyone who wants it.  This isn’t all that different from #1, actually - free-floating ideas can be netted by anyone, and nobody gets to claim copyright.

I like carols too. Don’t care that Christians consider carols an act of worship. Tell you what: if you can do that, I’m going to declare doing the vacuuming a rejection of god. From now on any Christian who hoovers the hall is a hypocrite.

1. not necessarily maliciously, but probably just through cultural natural selection - memetic, if you will [↩]

I really enjoyed it. I was a little worried it might just be a look at the bizarre things people believe, which would probably have been entertaining enough, but there was also an excellent explanation of the reasons we all stumble into supersition - I thought of Skinner’s pigeons seconds before they turned up¹ - and probably the best tv explanation of the scientific method I’ve seen. Rather than being overwhelmingly negative about the reach of the paranormal into society, there was a healthy dose of wonder: ’science is the poetry of the universe’.

I particularly enjoyed RD² calling out the cold-reading card guy, and the discussion with the magical-thinking astrologer was very revealing - the guy refused to validate anything he believed! I was also amused that Jonathan Cainer’s name was blurred, but it was obvious anyway :-) I liked the swipe at postmodern/relativists - Melanie Phillips take note - and the dowsers, while demonstrated to be completely wrong, were treated humanely. I’d be interested to see more of the interview with the ”I’ll be around for billions of years” spiritualist, although it was probably all as bonkers as the clip we saw.

I didn’t think the Warwick Uni sociologist’s point was followed up as well as it could have been. He claimed that people could interpret evidence in different ways, and that a stalemate could result. I can see that refuting this is fairly complex, though. Do you go with the concept of a scientific consensus, or argue that interpretations cannot be inherently opposed if taken from the same data - that any differences must be resolveable through logic³?

There could possibly have been more time spent on the reasons irrational belief is bad for society, but I suspect that’ll come in next week’s show on alternative medicine and the NHS. Astrology and psychics irritate and worry me, especially when you realise how much money they bilk from gullible-but-often-desperate victims, but it’s alternative medicine that’s the really despicable, dangerous area. Looking forward to it.

(update: this Richard & Judy interview sums up some of the main points. Richard M talks sense, Judy seems…less impressed)

1. I must have read about them in a Dawkins book, I guess [↩]
2. who channel 4 seem to have decided is ‘Mr Grumpy Face’, given the not particularly representative pics they’re using on their website [↩]
3. which I’m not claiming is necessarily true, but seems possible [↩]

The Enemies of Reason. Tonight. Channel 4. 8pm. Because you know you want to see astrologers trying to argue with Richard Dawkins.

I’d planned the post in my head. I was going to talk about Richard Dawkins’ new Channel 4 show: The Enemies of Reason. The Telegraph describes it with:

The 66-year-old scientist has investigated a range of gurus and therapists, including faith healers, psychic mediums, angel therapists, “aura photographers”, astrologers, Tarot card readers and water diviners, and concluded that Britain is gripped by “an epidemic of superstitious thinking”.

I was going to predict responses to the show. I reckoned there’d be a couple of types. Comment Is Free might have a few “science is a faith and doesn’t have all the answers and there’s actually something to all this stuff”, and the Guardian itself would have “yes of course it’s all nonsense, but don’t you see that it makes people happy and it’s a bit mean to attack it. Also Richard Dawkins is a fundamentalist and the show would be better presented by someone else”. But I wasn’t quick enough: Melanie Phillips got in there first¹.

I know she’s usually a bit, um, extreme, but this is just nuttery of the highest order. And it starts off so well:

In a TV programme to be shown later this month, Dawkins looks at a range of ludicrous therapies and gurus, including faith healers, psychic mediums, ‘angel therapists’, ‘aura photographers’, astrologers and others. Not surprisingly, he is horrified by such widespread irrationality, not to mention an exploitative industry that fleeces people while encouraging them to run away from reality.

He is right to be alarmed. What previously belonged to the province of the quack and the charlatan has become mainstream. The NHS provides funding for shamans, while the NHS Directory for Alternative and Complementary Medicine promotes ‘dowsers’, ‘flower therapists’ and ‘crystal healers’.

She agrees! Wow. I was expecting the first type of response.

Disturbing indeed. But where Dawkins goes wrong[...]

Right, here we go.

But where Dawkins goes wrong is to assume this is all as irrational as believing in God. The truth is that it is the collapse of religious faith that has prompted the rise of such irrationality.

What? Seems like a non-sequitur, but whatever. The collapse of religious faith is to blame for the rise in irrationality? This seems immediately unlikely as much of the irrationality has been around for a long, long time. The murder of Abraham Lincoln prompted massive conspiracy theories. Astrology has been around for centuries. Alternative medicine could only really be seen for what it is once evidence-based medical science came into being, but would seem to be far more in response to that than anything religious. In Britain religious faith is down, but it’s had a massive resurgence in the US, which is also a major stronghold for all types of the irrationality being discussed. So I’m not sure the timeline really works. But let’s see how she backs this up…

We are living in a scientific, largely postreligious age in which faith is presented as unscientific superstition. Yet paradoxically, we have replaced such faith by belief in demonstrable nonsense. It was GK Chesterton who famously quipped that ‘when people stop believing in God, they don’t believe in nothing — they believe in anything.’ So it has proved. But how did it happen?

Proof by repeating yourself, apparently. All right then, how did it happen?

The big mistake is to see religion and reason as polar opposites. They are not. In fact, reason is intrinsic to the Judeo-Christian tradition.

The Bible provides a picture of a rational Creator and an orderly universe — which, accordingly, provided the template for the exercise of reason and the development of science.

So, let’s get this straight. The whole world has stopped believing in god, apparently. Everybody sees religion and reason as opposites, so they’ve taken up irrational things in its stead, despite having rejected religion for rational reasons. I’m not really following this. But, anyway, it’s not even true because religion and reason aren’t opposites. We know this because it says so in a magic book, and we should believe anything written in magic books.

Dawkins pours particular scorn on the Biblical miracles which don’t correspond to scientific reality. But religious believers have different ways of regarding those events, with many seeing them as either metaphors or as natural occurrences which were invested with a greater significance.

I wonder if she’s been reading Alister McGrath - he’s always going on about ’significance’. Still not sure what her point is. Magic book says things happened. Dawkins says they probably didn’t. Melanie Phillips says they didn’t and are of course metaphors. So? Presumably she doesn’t deny all the miracles - virgin births, a child of a god, resurrection etc. etc.? If she denies it all, she has little in common with most Christians I’ve read. She’s using the initially-persuasive idea that the Bible can be interpreted in such a way as to make logical sense. Which still doesn’t mean it’s true, but would be a start. Sam Harris and others would argue that the Bible is such a mess of contradictions that there’s no way to interpret it without simply ignoring the parts you don’t like. But I digress.

The heart of the Judeo-Christian tradition is the belief in the concept of truth, which gives rise to reason. But our postreligious age has proclaimed that there is no such thing as objective truth, only what is ‘true for me’.

Knew we’d get to relativism eventually. Note that Dawkins isn’t mentioned here. Not one of the ‘New Atheists’/'Fundamentalist Atheists’/whatever has any truck with relativism. Nor do the vast majority of scientists, as far as I’m aware. I never understand how people so willing to read Christian theology can be so ignorant of secular philosophy, which pretty much rejects relativism outright. I also strongly doubt that any sizeable percentage of the population think there’s no such thing as objective truth (outside of postmodernism students, anyway), but then I can’t really back that up.

That is because our society won’t put up with anything which gets in the way of ‘what I want’. How we feel about things has become all-important. So reason has been knocked off its perch by emotion, and thinking has been replaced by feelings.

This has meant our society can no longer distinguish between truth and lies by using evidence and logic. And this collapse of objective truth has, in turn, come to undermine science itself which is playing a role for which it is not fitted.

What? Scientists now don’t believe in objective truth, so science doesn’t work any more? What? I’m not a sociologist, but I’m pretty sure all her statements about society are complete nonsense.

When science first developed in the West, it thought of itself merely as a tool to explore the natural world. It did not pour scorn upon religion; indeed, scientists were overwhelmingly religious believers (as many still are).

Oh, for crying out loud. Yes, Newton was religious. With the information he had, it made sense. Before the theory of evolution came along it was pretty damned hard to see any other explanation. But now, with the evidence we have, religious belief is undoubtedly irrational. If Newton were around today, it’s reasonable to think he wouldn’t be religious.

In modern times, however, science has given rise to ’scientism’, the belief that science can answer all the questions of human existence. This is not so. Science cannot explain the origin of the universe. Yet it now presumes to do so and as a result it has descended into irrationality.

No it doesn’t. That’s just not true. There are plenty of questions on which science hands over to philosophy. There are incredibly speculative ideas as to how the universe started, sure, but nobody with scientific credibility claims to have actually explained it. I don’t think it’s necessarily a question outside of science, though. We just don’t know. Presumably she doesn’t mean ‘how the universe started’, she means ‘why there’s something rather than nothing’, but the same applies.

The most conspicuous example of this is provided by Dawkins himself, who breaks the rules of scientific evidence by seeking to claim that Darwin’s theory of evolution — which sought to explain how complex organisms evolved through random natural selection — also accounts for the origin of life itself.

No he doesn’t. This is also completely false. In fact he specifically says that evolution doesn’t account for that. Biochemistry is investigating that particular problem. It depends what she means by ‘the origin of life’, of course. Does she mean consciousness? Cells? Things that evolve?

There is no evidence for this whatever and no logic to it. After all, if people say God could not have created the universe because this gives rise to the question ‘Who created God?’, it follows that if scientists say the universe started with a big bang, this prompts the further question ‘What created the bang?’ Indeed, if the origin of life were truly spontaneous, this would constitute what religious people would call a miracle. Accordingly, this claim in itself resembles not so much science as the superstition that Dawkins derides.

I’m not sure she isn’t confusing the origin of the universe with the origin of life, but whatever. It might be that the origin of life is extremely unlikely - indeed, it seems that it took millions and millions of years for (presumably) one chance event to occur - but that’s not ’spontaneous’ any more than the weather is ’spontaneous’.

Moreover, since science essentially takes us wherever the evidence leads, the findings of more than 50 years of DNA research — which have revealed the almost unbelievable complexity of the arrangements which are needed to produce life — have thrown into doubt the theory that life emerged spontaneously in a random universe.

Uh oh. She’s not going to…she wouldn’t, would she?

These findings have given rise to a school of scientists promoting the theory of Intelligent Design, which suggests that some force embodying purpose and foresight lay behind the origin of the universe.

She did. I don’t believe it.

While this theory is, of course, open to vigorous counter-argument, people such as Prof Dawkins and others have gone to great lengths to stop it being advanced at all, on the grounds that it denies scientific evidence such as the fossil record and is therefore worthless.

A bit, but not really. The problem with intelligent design is that it’s not science. It makes no predictions. It has no causal mechanisms. It hinges completely on the idea that if evolution is wrong, god must have done it. It occupies the infinite space of crap-I-made-up-ness. I could say that the process of evolution is actually controlled by an intelligent and incredibly tiny bumblebee named Gordon. It’s possible, but a) if evolutionary theory is wrong, it doesn’t mean Gordon is real, and b) until I can provide any kind of experiment that would provide a different outcome for evolution vs. Gordon’s Design, how can we know? There are an infinite number of things that could be true, and we believe what the evidence suggests and nothing more. The reason scientists and rational thinkers have tried to stop intelligent design progressing is that it has no substance.

Yet distinguished scientists have been hounded and their careers jeopardised for arguing that the fossil record has got a giant hole in it. Some 570 million years ago, in a period known as the Cambrian Explosion, most forms of complex animal life emerged seemingly without any evolutionary trail. These scientists argue that only ‘rational agents’ could have possessed the ability to design and organise such complex systems.

Oh, man. There are any number of books which explain the Cambrian explosion. It’s actually really, really cool. I’m surprised she didn’t bring up punctuated equilibrium, but then she has just claimed all scientists are incapable of performing science. I like how she mentions the Cambrian problem, then tries to get out of it:

Whether or not they are right (and I don’t know), their scientific argument about the absence of evidence to support the claim that life spontaneously created itself is being stifled — on the totally perverse grounds that this argument does not conform to the rules of science which require evidence to support a theory.

There is no such claim, so their argument is bogus. You don’t need to be a scientist to understand this point.

As a result of such arrogance, the West — the crucible of reason — is turning the clock back to a pre-modern age of obscurantism, dogma and secular witch-hunts. Far from upholding reason, science itself has become unreasonable.

And thus, the whole of science is now ‘unreasonable’ because of, even from her viewpoint, a spat limited to evolutionary theory.

So when Prof Dawkins fulminates against ‘new age’ irrationality, it is the image of pots and kettles that comes irresistibly to mind.

Aha! I knew it!

So: the world went all rational and rejected religion. Religion, though, is secretly rational, and people are therefore rejecting rationality. So they now believe in all sorts of crap. This breaks science, because all scientists no longer believe in objective truth and think they can explain everything without using any kind of logic. This results in heroic evolution-deniers being silenced by conspiracies. Yes, looking at this evidence it does seem like religious belief lends itself to rational thinking. Also, Richard Dawkins is wrong about everything, and the program would better be presented by someone else.

I know it was fish in a barrel. I know I probably shouldn’t pay attention to such nonsense. But it was an incredibly annoying fish.

1. I wrote all the below before showing the article to my girlfriend, who said ‘yeah, it’s Melanie Phillips’. Which is a fair point. But as it’s written I might as well publish [↩]

The last eight months have seen many critical reviews of Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion, and the most consistent criticisms, once you get past dull relativism, unthinking accusations of ‘fundamentalism’, and seemingly unending debates over what ‘agnostic’ and ‘atheist’ mean, boil down to two points:

We’re told RD hasn’t addressed the sophisticated theology¹ behind the belief in a divine being. He instead concentrates on the points that are easy to shoot down - Aquinas etc.. This argument appears to implode, however: this supposedly sophisticated theology is incredibly difficult to find. It’s continually referred to, but is never actually clarified. When asked to provide these arguments, we’re usually told it’s too complicated. I consider myself intelligent enough to understand such things (and would quite like to know if there really is a deity in the sky, actually), and even if you disagree there are plenty of atheists who’d be happy to read these sophisticated arguments. There is no reason that an intelligent person shouldn’t be able to understand the arguments for the existence of a deity - theology is not quantum physics and does not require twenty years of mathematical training. If it’s out there, bring it on. Another common answer is that you can only understand once you’ve read everything ever written about every religion ever. Dawkins hasn’t read Such-and-Such on grace, or So-and-So on how shiny angels are - who is he to say anything about theology! This is well answered by the Courtier’s Reply.

It’s worth mentioning that the hints of this sophisticated theology diverge massively from the popular understanding of religion. I’ve had people argue that something must have created the universe, and, although this is your standard god-of-the-gaps argument, it’s still far more reasonable than claiming you have contact with a magic sky-fairy who answers your prayers. The average Catholic doesn’t believe in an Agent that started off the Big Bang, they believe in an intercessory deity who turns wine and crackers into blood and flesh. The God Delusion was attacking this popular notion of religion that’s believed by billions. It wasn’t a deep philosophical tome. Even so, the supposedly sophisticated arguments don’t appear to stand up to scrutiny. Saying ‘god is simple so could have spontaneously popped into existence’ is no use if you don’t actually have any evidence to back it up. Tom Hamilton has interesting commentary on this latter argument, as well as the necessity of stepping into these areas of argument. If only more commentary was as intelligently written as his, the dialogue would be far more productive.

I think it’s possible to argue most believers to a point where they stop being logical about the existence of deities, and they’ll admit it. It’s nigh-on impossible to change a believer’s mind, but you can reach a point where the argument becomes, simply put, ‘I just think it because I do’. Religion is like every pseudoscience out there in this regard, and the psychological investigations into this phenomenon are fascinating. And this is where the second major objection appears: it’s just rude. Of course there isn’t really a god, but why upset people? Referring to divine beings as the equivalent of fairies at the bottom of the garden offends, so you shouldn’t do it. I’ve had commenters on this site tell me I should couch my language in ways such as ‘while I can see you have incredibly deeply held beliefs, I have a small problem with one particular aspect and I’m sorry if this offends you but I consider it important.’ This gets increasingly pathetic. It’s insulting to me, and it’s insulting to anybody religious who is perfectly capable of having adult discussions.

If an atheist starts insulting you and telling you you’re stupid, damn right s/he’s being rude and there’s no reason you should put up with it. But Dawkins / Harris / Dennett etc. don’t do this, no matter how often we’re told otherwise. Even if they did, there are thousands out there who don’t, yet are no less strident in tone. They are at pains to emphasise that it’s the idea that is being attacked, not the person. Saying somebody don’t know something is not the same as saying they are stupid, neither is ignorance a criticism. If you get offended when I tell you there’s no reason to think your deity exists, that’s your problem, and saying ‘maybe so, but I am offended nevertheless so shut up’ is simply a way of stifling debate. Surely this is obvious. Even if there were a way to phrase objections so that people weren’t offended, and this I doubt, it would be making a massive, pointless exception for religion when it comes to debate. We’d probably just be called patronising, too. The tone with which religion is discussed in The God Delusion is no different from any political discussion, and a thousand miles away from the excesses of art criticism, which we regularly ingest as valid commentary. That somebody believes something strongly is no reason not to attack it, but not them, when there is good reason to do so.

From this point there are other objections: the argument that religious ‘moderates’ provide a shield for extremism by being perfectly pleasant in their belief in fairies is certainly one of the more controversial areas; questioning the ‘rights’ of parents to inflict their religious beliefs on their children is another; saying that faith is sweet and harmless and good for society also comes up (although I find that one deeply patronising). But it’s the above two that are the most frequent.

The above introduction was longer than I intended, and was originally only meant to serve as a lead-in. If you have problems with Richard Dawkins, and thought The God Delusion was an insulting title, I bring you Christopher Hitchens’ God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. Here’s an excerpt:

There are four irreducible objections to religious faith: that it wholly misrepresents the origins of man and the cosmos, that because of this original error it manages to combine the maximum of servility with the maximum of solipsism, that it is both the result and the cause of dangerous sexual repression, and that it is ultimately grounded on wish-thinking.

Blimey.

While some religious apology is magnificent in its limited way—one might cite Pascal—and some of it is dreary and absurd—here one cannot avoid naming C. S. Lewis—both styles have something in common, namely the appalling load of strain that they have to bear. How much effort it takes to affirm the incredible! The Aztecs had to tear open a human chest cavity every day just to make sure that the sun would rise. Monotheists are supposed to pester their deity more times than that, perhaps, lest he be deaf. How much vanity must be concealed—not too effectively at that—in order to pretend that one is the personal object of a divine plan? How much self-respect must be sacrificed in order that one may squirm continually in an awareness of one’s own sin? How many needless assumptions must be made, and how much contortion is required, to receive every new insight of science and manipulate it so as to “fit” with the revealed words of ancient man-made deities? How many saints and miracles and councils and conclaves are required in order first to be able to establish a dogma and then—after infinite pain and loss and absurdity and cruelty—to be forced to rescind one of those dogmas? God did not create man in his own image. Evidently, it was the other way about, which is the painless explanation for the profusion of gods and religions, and the fratricide both between and among faiths, that we see all about us and that has so retarded the development of civilization.

Christopher Hitchens writes so damned well that I have to be careful not to get carried away by his eloquence. He’s occasionally come out with statements that have pushed it even for me. It sounds like a good read - I’ll certainly be picking up a copy.

1. ’theology’ throughout means the ‘research’ into the existence of deities, not the study of religious belief in general [↩]

I was very impressed with Radio 2’s ‘Pause for Thought’ this morning. The preacher managed to combine the Dawkins/Kay non-story and last week’s highly dubious global-warming denying C4 documentary into a tirade against the pitfalls of absolute certainty. A standard misrepresentation, but he then compared this to the wonder of his faith, which comes from experience and is therefore better. It was astonishing.

So apparently the Guardian printed something nutty today. I don’t think anyone’s had the strength to fisk the whole thing - every few paragraphs there’s something jaw-droppingly stupid - but Shuggy, Ophelia and The Labour Humanist have good responses, mainly concentrating on the idea of ‘fundamentalist’ atheists being as bad as ‘fundamentalist’ religious crazies who like blowing things up.

I’m rather tired and shall try to read the article properly tomorrow, but right now I fail to see how this made it past the editor’s desk:

Neuberger is to take on Hitchens, Dawkins and Grayling when she speaks at a debate against the motion We’d Be Better Off Without Religion next month. The debate has been moved to a bigger venue. “What I find really distasteful is not just the tone of their rhetoric, but their lack of doubt,” she says. “No scientific method says that there is no doubt. If you don’t accept there’s doubt in all things, you’re being intellectually dishonest. ”

This is a thought taken up by Azzim Tamimi, director of the Institute of Islamic Political Thought. “I refer to secular fundamentalism. The problem is that these people believe that they have the absolute truth. That means you have no room to talk to others so you end up having a physical fight. They want to close the door and ignore religion, but this will provoke a violent religiosity. If someone seeks to deny my existence, I will fight to assert it.”

Tamimi’s words also resonate with what the Archbishop of York, John Sentamu, said last November: “The aggressive secularists pervert and abuse any notion of diversity for the sake of promoting a narrow agenda.” They also parallel the chilling remarks of Richard Chartres, Bishop of London: “If you exile religious communities to the margins, then they will start to speak the words of fire among consenting adults, and the threat to public order and the public arena, I think, will grow and grow.”

Quote complete crap all you like, but some kind of reasonable response would be nice. There’s no counter-argument pointing out that the whole point of everything Grayling, Dawkins or Hitchens say is that there is doubt. Or even mentioning the tiny bit of irony in the above quotes.

The author starts from an H.L. Mencken quote:

We must accept the other fellow’s religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.

And comes back to this throughout the article:

The gay adoption issue also outraged many non-believers, among them philosopher AC Grayling, author of Life, Sex and Ideas: The Good Life without God. “These groups are trying to be exempt from the effort to be a fair society, and we are faced with the threat of a possible return to the dark ages. We are trying to keep a pluralistic society, and elements in the Christian church and other religions are trying to destroy it.”

Why this departure from tolerant, if nicely ironic, Menckenism?

Yes, why? How strange that anybody would want to fight against bigotry using strong language. How strange that in a world where people who spout such vile opinions are taken seriously by newspaper columnists we should fight back with everything we have. How strange that we would be considered rude for doing so.

I was doing ok for a while, but this bit of commentary tipped me over the edge:

One example of this growing conscientiousness is a recent paper for the new public theology think-tank Theos, in which Nick Spencer concluded that in the 21st century, liberal humanism would face a challenge from an “old man” - God. “The feeble and slightly embarrassing old man who had been pacing about the house quietly mumbling to himself suddenly wanted to participate in family conversation and, what’s more, to be taken seriously.” Indeed, in Britain’s ethically repellent consumerist society, even some atheists might consider it would be good to hear from the old man again, if only to provide a moral framework beyond shopping.

Oh, grow up. I’m going to bed.

The Independent has an entertaining Q&A session with Richard Dawkins, with questions sent in by the public:

What is there to distinguish your intolerance from that of a religious fanatic? TONY REYNOLDS, By e-mail

It would be intolerant if I advocated the banning of religion, but of course I never have. I merely give robust expression to views about the cosmos and morality with which you happen to disagree. You interpret that as ‘intolerance’ because of the weirdly privileged status of religion, which expects to get a free ride and not have to defend itself. If I wrote a book called The Socialist Delusion or The Monetarist Delusion, you would never use a word like intolerance. But The God Delusion sounds automatically intolerant. Why? What’s the difference?

I have a (you might say fanatical) desire for people to use their own minds and make their own choices, based upon publicly available evidence. Religious fanatics want people to switch off their own minds, ignore the evidence, and blindly follow a holy book based upon private ‘revelation’. There is a huge difference.

Other questions range from asking what he does at Christmas to his opinions on global warming, but the most popular topic, bizarrely, is Lalla Ward. Does she say ‘bless you’ when you sneeze? How did you attract somebody so beautiful? Does she still have the sailor outfit?

I am highly entertained by the Stratford Herald’s review of last week’s Richard Dawkins talk. Whether you agreed or disagreed with the various points raised during the evening, and taking into account that it’s just a local paper, it’s still astonishingly bad. There are many, many problems, but I’ll concentrate on one paragraph from the centre, which starts off badly and ends up completely nutty:

Religion imposes social control on society and without it, as the vicar of Holy Trinity rightly said, anarchy would rule in a state of chaos.

I think believer and non-believer can agree that this is ridiculous. Whether you take the humanist, evidence-based position that humanity is essentially good, or even the H.L Mencken “[p]eople say we need religion when what they really mean is we need police” side, this makes no sense. Some go further and suggest there’s evidence of the inverse: Sam Harris has pointed out the positive correlation between levels of religious belief and crime levels throughout the world, but that of course doesn’t imply causation.

However, to demonise one particular “brand” or denomination and pitch it against another is surely leading to the new world order[...]

Woah. ‘new world order’? That phrase rarely appears outside of conspiracy websites. Odd. I don’t know what this sentence is all about, to be honest - it doesn’t relate to anything that came previously. Maybe it’s the old ‘atheism is a faith position too’ argument, but it’s far from clear.

[...]which is precisely the reason for Britain and America’s fanatical anti-Islamic attitude.

Ah, that. Yeah, it’s terrible that Muslims don’t get to live freely and practice their religion without hindrance in the UK or the US. Also that both countries have intervened on behalf of Muslim countries, or tried to liberate them from dictatorships. I appreciate most people disagree with the Iraq war, but are there any sensible people who actually think it was because of an anti-Muslim agenda?

It would appear that Prof. Dawkins is a one-world government devotee[...]

Bit of a leap.

[...] and he seems to promote his ‘non-belief’ with all the zealousness of the religious afficionados he corrals together as the deluded.

I’ll come back to this point.

This one trick pony of a man, I would suggest, is a signed-up member of the illuminati.

*splutter* What? I’m going to assume the author - the deputy editor of the newspaper, no less - isn’t actually suggesting the Illuminati really exist, even though his use of ‘new world order’ is bizarrely compatible with that view. I’ll charitably assume what he really means is that Prof. Dawkins is of the opinion that scientists should rule the world. I think that in debating circles this is known as the Argument from Dan Brown.

The review ends by saying that the whole religion debate is clearly about making money. It’s just godawful, to coin an appropriate word, and I don’t understand how it got through editorial controls.

I’ve been trying to read reviews of The God Delusion, both positive and negative, and haven’t seen much coherent argument against. The best I’ve come across was somebody who said he knows God exists through personal revelation, not scripture. I can counter that I think it far more probable that whatever experience he had was the result of something in his brain - psychologists can induce states of religious euphoria in laboratory situations - but this will always end in stalemate.

Incidentally, the vicar of Holy Trinity who argued with Prof. Dawkins during the evening does himself no favours by being quoted here:

“Dawkins is the acceptable face of what he espouses, but an atheistic world would be very ugly at the edges - remember Stalin’s Russia and Pol Pot’s Cambodia. At the end of the day the man is an Oxford don trying to sell a book. I wonder who or what he turns to in his hours of need? He’s probably too ashamed to say he prays.”

Ah, the age-old debating technique of making things up. It’s a shame he said this, as on the evening he did a good job of being friendly and polite. This just sounds petty.

Russia and Cambodia are flawed arguments, too. It’s not like the horrors were committed because of an atheist outlook. If you’re going to say that a lack of religion caused it, you have to deal with the genocides and wars in the name of religion (plus the many in which religion fostered hatred and prevented any hope of dialogue between the sides). I personally tend to agree with Steven Weinberg: “with or without [religion], you’d have good people doing good things and evil people doing bad things, but for good people to do bad things, it takes religion.”

The point that comes up time and time again in descriptions of Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett etc. is that they are ‘fundamentalists’ and ‘dogmatic’ in the same way as religious extremists, therefore no better. That completely misses the point. They’re not fundamentalist in the same way, because there’s always room for doubt. Criticisms of the dogmatic nature of religious fundamentalists are because they do not acknowledge any possiblity of error, not that they hold their opinions strongly. There’s nothing wrong with having and expressing strong opinions, providing you’re open to evidence and will debate reasonably. If you’re going to argue that they are not open to argument - this review called Dawkins “brainwashed by his own beliefs” - then present your alternate evidence. But no reviews do this, or they come out with the same old tired comments about Stalin, or atheism as a faith position, which have invariably been ripped to shreds in the very tomes they’re reviewing. The Dawkins-as-fundamentalist-therefore-we-must-look-for-middle-ground argument gets way more time than it deserves.

Buried in the depths of this site is a list of 50 Things to Do Before I Die. #12 is ‘Thank Richard Dawkins - in person or as close as possible’, which I’m happy to say I can now tick off the list!

A friend, my parents and I went to see him in conversation with a local radio presenter at the local civic hall. I’ve mentioned on countless occasions that he’s one of my intellectual heroes due to his The Blind Watchmaker launching me into science and skepticism at age 19, and I’m not ashamed to admit I was quite excited. A little nervous too, in case he disappointed. Although not a part of the official tour, the topic was his latest novel: The God Delusion. Happily, he was as eloquently vociferous in person as in print.

The first 45 minutes saw him questioned on various points from the book. The presenter wasn’t hostile, but didn’t shy from the big questions - as well he shouldn’t. What’s the problem with moderate religion? What about the wonder we all feel when we look at the stars? Why is there something instead of nothing? He also brought up various other famous moments, such as the so-often-misinterpreted comments equating religious upbringings with child abuse, which RD was quick to clarify.

Having read him, Sam Harris (whom he wholeheartedly endorsed) and various other atheists I could almost predict the substance of the answers and it was tricky to gauge how it came across to a ‘lay’ audience. I think he did a good job of emphasising that his quarrel is with religion, not the believer, although there were certainly audience members who took it personally. I can see how people could tune into the inflammatory parts and ignore the rest, but I don’t know how you counter that.

There was a final question regarding faith schools - he’s not a fan - then the interval, during which he signed copies of The God Delusion. I of course joined the queue! I’d taken my copy of The Blind Watchmaker along with me, and he kindly signed that instead

I said the thank-you I’d been rehearsing in my head and toddled off so as not to delay the very large queue. I am now most chuffed.

After the interval came a question and answer session, which was great. First up was a local vicar, complete with dog-collar (he’d come straight from a meeting rather than ‘attending in uniform’), who took great exception to the criticism of his church. He wanted to know what the evidence was that removing religion would result in a peaceful world. Stalin was an atheist, etc. RD replied that this misinterpreted the statements - he’d said that suicide bombings and many acts of horrendous violence would not happen without religion, not that the world would be peaceful. Despite having the reasons detailed, the vicar then again asked for the evidence, which didn’t make him look very good. He then wanted to know why there was something instead of nothing, which had already been addressed.

Possibly most interesting was a young guy who accused RD of attacking a straw-man. The extremists in The Root of All Evil? were not indicative of mainstream religion in any way, surely? It was pointed out that it may seem that way to those of us in the UK, but America is very different. The guy expressed doubts about this, but was visibly taken aback when told that 50% of US citizens believe the Earth is fewer than 10,000 years old.

The people behind me had been whispering incessantly throughout the evening, clearly unimpressed, and raised their hands en masse during the Q&A session. I was expecting something dramatic, given their apparent disdain. They turned out to be pagans, which utterly surprised me, and asked what RD thought of worshipping nature. I don’t think his reply about revelling in and adoring nature, but not seeing anything supernatural therein, impressed them much.

Somebody couldn’t see how picking and choosing from scripture meant you were applying an external system of morality. Another came out with the weird statement that mutations are only ever detrimental, so how could evolution occur in the way that’s claimed? Somebody actually asked how you can know right from wrong without a morality from God, which took me aback - I’ve never seen anybody say that in person before.

The evening’s only off-note came at the end, when the presenter asked how many people in the audience believed in an intercessory God, and how many were atheists. The latter far outnumbered the former, but then it was a self-selecting group - far more atheists will have heard of / be interested in seeing Richard Dawkins in the first place.

A highly successful evening! I know there are various commenters who will argue vigorously against Dawkins and some who would mock my excitement. I’m happy to debate anybody, but give me this one, please? It’s really intended as a description rather than an argument, and there’ll be plenty more posts detailing my religious views where you can lay into me as much as you like, I promise

In a pleasing coincidence, yesterday I posted my 2000th blog post, as well as the 2000th photo upload to flickr. I shall therefore spend an introspective few paragraphs…

Well, maybe not. Well, maybe a little.

Since installing the mint stats collector just under a year ago, the most popular posts have been on HDR photography, 75 Bands and life coaching. Most ‘interesting‘ images are an HDR shot of a London market, Cadillac Ranch in Amarillo, Texas and Pink Floyd at Live 8.

Busy few days ahead. I’m off to see a Richard Dawkins talk this evening - I’m taking my copy of The Blind Watchmaker on the off chance he’s available for book signings - then tomorrow I’m going to St. Annes for a dancing weekend. I’m supposed to get a deluxe room after an email exchange with the hotel owner over the use of some photographs I took last year, which should be pleasant! It’s half an hour’s walk from Blackpool, and I’m hoping to ride the Manic Rollercoaster of Death during the day. I also have a 2200 word entry for a writing competition with a 1500 word limit, which will probably drive me nuts for the greater part of next week.

The Flying Spaghetti Monster gets a mention in Richard Dawkins’ Newsnight interview from last Friday, in which he talks about his latest book: The God Delusion. Jeremy Paxman does a better job than most by asking some interesting questions, and I think the answers do a great deal to clarify the usual misconceptions about criticism of religion by atheists. The best Dawkins interview I’ve heard was on the Point of Inquiry podcast, where the humanist presenter raised the most reasonable counter-arguments I know of, and there was a genuine discussion between them.

Like Ophelia Benson, I didn’t know about richarddawkins.net - not sure how it managed to slip under the radar. I think it was launched a few months ago as a companion to his new book, as well as a front for the new foundation. I really like books with accompanying websites that provide responses to criticism as well as links to related material and reactions to recent events. The Freakonomics blog is a great example of this.

I picked up The God Delusion at the weekend¹ and it’s certainly an entertaining read thus far. The second chapter has some fascinating information on the religious proclivities of the USA’s founding fathers. I’m trying to take my time as I find I don’t absorb information when I read this kind of book too quickly. I read Blink on a single plane flight, and now find it’s all a muddle in my head. RD is at my local civic hall in a couple of weeks - I did a double-take when I first saw the newspaper ad - and I’m hoping to have finished the book by then. He’s being interviewed by David Freeman - anybody know who he is?

1. it’s rather a lot cheaper on Amazon! They seem to think it’s not released yet, mind [↩]

Tagged by Tom…

1. Name one book that changed your life.

I do actually have one of these: The Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins. I read it at 18, and found it to be a clear, detailed and convincing argument for evolution over any kind of design theory, but also much more than that: a compelling ode to a rational worldview. These were not the scientists I’d envisaged from years of reading the pseudosciences. As a direct result of the attitude and reading recommendations of this book - Carl Sagan, Richard Feynman etc. - I went from vaguely religious to atheist, and from credulous fan of pseudoscience to a skeptic supporter of the scientific method.

2. One book you’ve read more than once.

Northern Lights - Philip Pullman.

3. One book you’d want on a desert island.

The Third Policeman - Flann O’Brien.

4. One book that made you laugh.

The Amulet of Samarkand - Jonathan Stroud.

5. One book that made you cry.

Bag of Bones - Stephen King. Those bastards.

6. One book you wish you’d written.

Snow Crash - Neal Stephenson.

7. One book you wish had never been written.

Dianetics - L. Ron Hubbard. Even books like ‘The Bell Curve’ could be argued to have some virtue in that they provided an opportunity for counter-arguments to be clearly and forcefully thought-through and expressed. But imho the manual of Scientology is completely worthless, and actively wrecks lives.

8. One book you’re currently reading.

Fallen Dragon - Peter F. Hamilton. Except I left it at my parents’ house yesterday, which is really annoying.

9. One book you’ve been meaning to read.

The Language Instinct - Steven Pinker. Not one I can read in small daily chunks - need to take it on holiday, I think.

10. Now tag five people.

The usual suspects

The Guardian have an article from last week that completely misses the point, and Norm’s comment on it isn’t much better. The Guardian says:

Dennett’s latest book, Breaking the Spell, is a vigorous attempt to preach atheism to the unconverted.

No, it’s not. It’s been reported as such, but that’s not true. Dennett’s book is about investigating religion as a phenomenon, and positing the theory that religion has evolved for its own survival, rather than as a byproduct of humanity’s survival (if my understanding is correct.) Much like a meme, religion evolves to survive in different societies, Dennett says. The book is an analysis of this process and is trying to break the ’spell’ of ‘religion must not be investigated’. It’s not specificially arguing against the existence of a deity, although Dennett is an avowed atheist, it’s simply looking at religion as an institution and trying to explain it, and there’s a big difference between the two. Dennett has in fact stated that he would not want to get rid of religion.

Norm then yet again¹ takes the opportunity to tell Richard Dawkins how silly he is for saying religion causes all evil, which is also arguing against a big straw man. Dawkins argued strongly against the “Root of all Evil?” title of the channel 4 programme, as this isn’t at all an accurate representation of the argument. This misunderstanding has unfortunately been a major topic of debate, while the issues raised in the shows have been neglected to an extent.

The Point of Inquiry podcast recently interviewed both Dennett and Dawkins, and put exactly this kind of question to both men. Their answers are fascinating, and a long way from their portrayals in the media.

1. I know it’s been argued more extensively, but these one-liners do keep appearing [↩]