The Sockmonster

I went to Ray Comfort’s website today, the one where he is trying to “pull the plug” on atheism. I was shocked by his arrogance and total lack of knowledge about the subject he thinks he knows most about, namely evolution. He essentially has two arguments, in fact they’re not really his arguments, they’re just recycled guff that he polishes up and pushes on unsuspecting members of the public. The arguments are as follows: (1) “Something can’t come from nothing”. This old chestnut has got to be the worst argument used by creationists. What has this got to do with evolution? Evolution makes absolutely no claim whatsoever about the origins of universe, or even the origins of life, it simply explains how one species changes in to another over time. Comfort, and his fellow creationists, seem to think that the Big Bang and Evolution are the same theory. They are not! Why is this such a hard thing for creationists to grasp? But this isn’t what makes the argument laughable, it’s that they think it somehow helps their cause. “God must have created the universe because something can’t come from nothing”, OK, but what about god, where did he come from? As they are so willing to point out “something can’t come from nothing” but they’re not so willing to apply this logic to god. All this argument does is simply replace one mystery (the birth of the universe) with an infinitely bigger one (the birth of god). And if god can come from nothing, then so can the universe. (2) “A painting has a painter, a house has a builder, a watch a watchmaker. Therefore man has a god”. This is of course a regurgitation of William Palley’s watchmaker argument which has long been refuted. The fact that Comfort uses the argument in this form shows that he hasn’t even got a rudimentary understanding of evolutionary theory. It amazes me how Comfort talks with such confidence about a subject he so very clearly knows nothing about. There is a good reason why a painting, a house and a watch cannot be compared to living things in this way. They don’t have babies! Evolution requires three things; variation, competition (a struggle for existence) and reproduction with inheritance. All three of these things need to be present for evolution to work. Now, unless there is something I’m not aware of, watches do not have baby watches that are similar, but not identical, to themselves. No reproduction with inheritance, no evolution, its that simple! (Some readers might argue that there is a way in which watches may be said to evolve, but that’s a whole other discussion which I want to talk about in another post about a totally unrelated topic).

Having realized just how naive Ray Comforts arguments were, I was over joyed to find that he wants to debate Richard Dawkins on the subject. In fact, so badly does he want this debate, he is willing to pay $10,000 for it. Most people wouldn’t pay a penny to be publicly humiliated, but not Ray, he’s totally up for it! But as much as I would like to see creationism ridiculed on stage, Richard Dawkins holds a policy to not debate crazy creationists because it makes it look like there’s a real controversy surrounding the evolution/creationism debate when of course there is no such thing. But Dawkins apparently has made a proposal to Comfort, if Comfort (or someone on Comforts behalf) donates $100,000 to the RDF (Richard Dawkins Foundation) and agrees to the debate being filmed by the RDF team then the debate will go ahead. I would gladly donate to this cause, the debate would be the most hilarious show. Ray Comfort vs science. It would be like the Lenox Lewis vs Mike Tyson fight, but perhaps more painful to watch.

When I first heard about faith schools I thought that eventually people would realize how stupid they were, and they would disappear. But they haven’t. Why not? Why are faith schools still operating in the UK? What was the government thinking when they decided the best way to secure community cohesion was to start separating youngsters based on the one thing that has, in history, led to violent and bloody conflicts. If you want people to start hating each other the best thing to do is start separating them, preferably by something that gets them very worked up, and making their differences as visible as possible. Good work Labour! Just when we need to bring communities together you drive an enormous wedge of ignorance between them. Honestly, you couldn’t make this stuff up!

I know what people are going to say, “faith schools don’t just take on students of their own faith, but enroll pupils of other faiths as well”. That’s all well and good, but do you really think many Jewish or Muslim parents will willingly send their child to a Christian school if they had the choice of sending them to a school backed by their own faith? It’s no surprise that faith schools are mostly populated by students of the faith that the school is backed by. Why are religious groups getting into the education business? What is being taught differently in a Muslim school to say, a Christian or Jewish school? I can’t imagine that any subject, other than religious studies, would differ in these two schools. In fact not even religious studies should differ between schools backed by different faiths, if we want communities to join together then we need to allow children to experience each others cultures and beliefs. We should teach children about all religions and also we should teach about religions as cultural phenomena and let the child decide if they want to believe in one or not.

The other thing that annoys me is that some of these faith schools are actually teaching bare faced lies to children. Creationism has found a small safe haven in some of these schools, the students are being taught utter rubbish like the Earth and the Moon are somewhere between six and ten thousand years old! Check this video out it features an excerpt from a Dispatches documentary called “In Gods Name” which shows an independent school in the UK lying to children about the age of the Earth and the Moon. There’s a reason the text books say the Earth is 4 billion years old; many people studying many different disciplines have gathered lots of evidence which all indicate the Earth is 4 billion years old. I’m sorry if this doesn’t fit in with some peoples faith but unless it can be demonstrated that the book of Genesis is accurate, then we have an obligation to teach our children the most up-to-date scientific knowledge. If we allow creationism to be taught in schools then there is no reason to stop someone pulling any old theory out of their arse and demanding we teach it in schools. What worries me most is that this particular school, the one teaching creationism, is Ofsted inspected and registered with the government. The government know exactly whats going on in that school and aren’t getting involved.

When is the UK going to realize that faith schools are in principle a bad idea? Over the past few years our society has become more and more divided when you only have to look in the newspapers to find many examples of this. With the continuation of faith schools I can only imagine this will get worse.

I heard about a campaign not so long ago about placing an advert on the side of London buses to promote free thought and Atheism. There’s enough Christian adverts around so its about time Atheists had a little pay back hehe.

I was quite dubious about whether this campaign would work because its very hard to rally Atheists, after all there is nothing really holding them together only a common skepticism about the supernatural. Lots of people think Homeopathy is a load of rubbish, but they don’t form anti-Homeopathy groups and start advertising campaigns, so I didn’t hold out much hope for this. But I was totally shocked at the amount of support it received, to put things into perspective the target amount was £5,500, the current total amount of donations stands at a whopping £49,000!!! And I believe that the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science is pledging a further £5,500 bringing the total to a stagering £54,500!!!!!! Considering that this amount of money has been raised in a single day it shows just how MUCH support for Atheism there really is out there.

I think this really highlights how the public feel about religion in this country. It seems that people have just had enough of religion. People are just fed up with it, at least the people I’ve spoken to, and don’t want it rammed down their throats anymore. If nothing else, this campaign has shown just how strong the secular community is, it’s flexed its muscle for the first time and found out that its quite a beefcake If the secular community works together like this more often then maybe we can start changing things for the better. Anyways if you want to donate to this cause (I donated £5 and I’m a poor student) then go the this address http://www.atheistcampaign.org/. Lets see how strong the secular community really is!

Oli.

I read a review today of Bill Maher’s new film Religulous. The film is a documentary about Bill’s (and many other peoples) concerns that religion threatens humanity. The review was pretty scathing and in places got quite personal, it seems that the reviewer has a real problem with Bill Maher, probably because Bill is about as Democratic as you can get and the reviewer is a raving Republican, a bad mix at anytime, without a presidential election around the corner! Anyways, personal insults aside, the criticism of Religulous was a pretty bog standard one. However, I’ve heard this criticism made against so much secular media that I thought I would write something about it. Basically the criticism is this; the media in question distorts the “REAL” religion, basically the people in the film and the views they express aren’t really Christian, so of course its easy to poke fun at. Every Christian I have ever spoken to has told me my perception of Christianity is wrong or that the other Christians I have spoken to aren’t “REAL” Christians because they said such and such, or behaved this way or that. My guess as to why so many Christians do this is to give an air of credibility about their own beliefs. The problem I find, is that no matter how much Christians dispute each other over certain things, the core of their beliefs are the same. They can attempt to add as much credibility to their beliefs as they like, but at the end of the day they can’t hide from the fact that if you take Christianity seriously you have to believe that Jesus really was born to a virgin, really did turn water into wine, really did make a loaf of bread feed more people than is reasonably expected of a single loaf, really did resurrect etc. But more than this, you have to believe in an uncreated creator of the universe who, for reasons only he knows, decided to create us and make us suffer so that we might choose to love him one day! But as soon as anyone says this, most Christians real back in horror and say “Your misrepresenting my beliefs”. Is what I’ve just written really that far off the mark or is it more or less correct? I’m sure I’ve missed out a lot of Christian beliefs but all I’m really asking is this; “is it possible to be a Christian and NOT believe in everything I just wrote”?

What this criticism highlights is that there are many versions of Christian belief going around. Christians simply don’t agree, as evidenced by their readiness to wash there hands of other Christian interpretations of their beloved faith. Either one of these versions of Christianity is correct and the others false, or none of them are correct and they’re all false. But given that Christianity is based on faith and NOT reason, how exactly does one know which version of it is correct? Christians are so ready to brush aside other Christians and other faiths, but they’re not prepared to provide a reasoned argument based on evidence for doing so! Why should we believe that fundamentalist Christians have misunderstood Christianity and liberal Christians haven’t? Clearly both schools of thought THINK they understand Christianity better than the other, but why? What scale of Christianess are they using? Evidence is all you need to settle this, the one thing that Christianity is so reluctant to produce.

I think I’ve found a way to understand Christianity, probably not in the way that Christians do but in a way that makes sense to me. I’ve been reading about Greek mythology and other ancient (some may say extinct) religions and I noticed that the all the myths had something in common. They all had within them a message, a lesson that shouldn’t be forgotten. Myths were a way of documenting human knowledge, the stories themselves were totally unbelievable but thats what made them memorable , they didn’t even need to be fully memorized because the core of the story was what was important not the little details. Rightly or wrongly, but in a way that I understand, I applied the same logic to Jesus. And I found a certain beauty. Did Jesus exist? I have no idea, I can argue for and against with as many people as I like and get no closer to an answer. But it doesn’t matter if he existed or not! The message that he embodies certainly did, and does, exist. People really did come to the conclusion that forgiveness, neighborliness, gentleness, kindness and compassion are whats important if we are to live peaceful and worthwhile lives. Was Jesus God? I don’t think so, but the message he embodies is whats important. It’s so obviously a good message, that it should ever be forgotten is a very frightening prospect for me as a person and an atheist. So I just want to remind fellow atheists and Christians that being skeptical about supernatural events and entities should never overshadow the deeper meaning in all this. We can still understand Jesus’ message and even strive to be like him ( or any other legendary character whether they exist or not, I for one try to be like Gandalf ) without having to accept supernatural things.

“Atheism is just a new religion with its own beliefs (belief that God DOESN’T exist) and complete with its own high priests (Richard Dawkins and the like)”. If I had a Pound for every time I heard someone say this I’d be rich by now! What’s strange is that I’m hearing this argument more and more and the people that are using it seem more and more convinced by it. They use it like some finishing move in one of those early arcade beat ‘em ups “…Finish Him!! Well atheism is just another religion anyway!”.

I can see why it has become such a popular argument, it places atheism on the same plane as the religion its refuting, and in so doing makes it open to the same arguments as the ones it uses against faith. The thing that worries me is that its such an obviously BAD argument, and no-one seems to see why.

How can something, that is making no claim whatsoever, be a faith position? There is no central doctrine, no teaching, and no myths, legends or beliefs that have been compiled and bind all atheists together. An atheist is simply someone who has listened to a belief, weighed up the evidence and found that beliefs to be nonsense. Atheism is the default position, or at least should be, for ANY question regarding ANYTHING. If a bunch of people make a claim, for example: “A flying spaghetti monster lives in our solar system between Earth and Mars” then the atheist position is to assume that the Sphaghetti Monster DOESN’T exist until evidence convinces them otherwise. Atheism is just a blank slate on which evidence is pilled, if the evidence is compelling enough then skepticism turns to acceptance. Put it another way, if religion/spirituality/faith never existed, then atheism would never exist. Atheism is 100% reliant on someone making a claim, if no-one was religious then there would be no atheism!!

Its rather annoying when your discussing religion, and the religious person, the one who is making the extraordinary claim without a shred of evidence, starts accusing you of using faith to justify your position! I’m NOT the one who made the outrageous claim, I simply listened to your beliefs and found them to be completely unjustified. Where in that logic did I use faith? I’m the one asking for evidence not the one making stuff up!

So please can people stop saying things like “Atheism is a religion” or “Richard Dawkins/Sam Harris/ Christopher Hitchens/ Daniel Dennet is a fundamental/extremist/dogmatic Atheist” because the argument is so clearly bogus.

Please comment.

Two weeks ago Michael Reiss – professor of science education in the Institute of Education at the University of London – spoke publicly about the teaching of evolution in UK schools and gave his opinions on the age old question “should creationism, or to give it its newest name intelligent design, be taught in science lessons?” It appears that Prof. Reiss, although clearly somebody that understands and accepts evolution, supports creationism in UK science classes. An opinion which has now cost him his position at the Royal Society. I listened to a section of his talk and from what I can tell he wants education institutes to treat creationism as a “world view” which should be freely discussed in science classrooms. However, he did make it very clear that he is not in favour of teaching creationism as an alternative scientific theory that explains the origin of species.

Now for my opinion on this matter. I can see why Prof. Reiss said what he said, and there is a part of me that agrees with him (slightly). Science teachers should not be scared of tackling creationist issues in their classrooms. If a question is raised by a student which relates to creationism then it should of course be discussed like any other matter. As far as I’m aware there is no law in place that restricts the discussion of creationism in biology classes, its just that creationism doesn’t feature on the Biology curriculum. As far as I’m concerned there is no problem with this current stance, creationism shouldn’t be taught in sciences class but discussing it with the class if it comes up is fine. But it appears that  Prof. Reiss wants to move away from this stance and start introducing creationism into science classes, why else would he have brought this up if he didn’t want to change the way evolution is taught in the UK? If this is indeed what Prof. Reiss wants then I have to say that I completely disagree with him. But why? Why shouldn’t creationism be taught in science class? Well for several reasons:

1. Creationism is simply not science. Science is a process of generating hypotheses that can be tested by reproducible experiments. Hypotheses eventually emerge into Theories which can be used to predict events or results verifiable by further experiments. If a theory fails to predict anything, or predicts something which later turns out to be false, then the theory is modified or dropped altogether. Creationism is not a scientific theory because it has never been tested and has never once made a prediction. Also, it is impossible to interogate the creator, God. So it explains exactly nothing because we can’t explain the creator. Let me give an example, the creationist answer to this question “why does the Human eye have a blind spot?” would go something like this “Because God made it that way!” Great that hasn’t explained anything! For creationism to be scientific the creator needs to be explained.
2. Evolution, like all scientific theories, has been subject to massive public scientific scrutiny. It has produced thousands of predictions which have been independently verified by reproducible experiments. Evolution has fought tooth and nail to be taught in schools, whilst creationism fell at the first hurdle! Why should creationism be allowed free entry into our schools when every other theory has had fight for its acceptance?
3. Teaching creationism in science classes makes it look like there is a real scientific controversy when there clearly isn’t. We run the risk of confusing children.

These reasons are mostly from a scientific perspective but there is another issue underlying Prof. Reiss’ talk which worries me. Prof. Reiss is clearly a good scientist and accepts evolution whilst rejecting creationism. Presumably he doesn’t want children to leave sceince classes thinking that creationism is a perfectly legitimate alternative to evolution. It appears that he wants to introduce creationism into science classes as a way of teaching evolution more effectively. Put it this way, kids aren’t dumb! By allowing children to weigh up evolution and creationism they will almost certainly see the absurdity of creationism and as a result learn evolution even better! Creationism is an easy target for kids to argue against and see the power of evolutionary theory. But the problem is that it makes idiots of the vast majority of religious people in the UK that reject a literal account of creation. To misrepresent as science, texts that they see as allegory, and then let kids rip those stories apart using evolutionary theory is just plane wrong and completely misses the point of both science and religion!

Finally, I want to say something about Prof. Reiss’ resignation. I think this is totally over the top and will only result in increasing the controversy surrounding this issue. Basically, this has given ammunition to those people that really do want to see creationism taught as a legitimate alternative to evolution.