Prostitution is popular in France, that doesn't mean it's right.

The House of Commons Science and Technology Sub-Committee today met for an evidence check on homeopathy. This was done over two sessions in which panels of scientists and homeopaths were brought in to answer questions of evidence for the committee.

The first panel was made up of Prof Jayne Lawrence (Royal Pharmaceutical Society), Robert Wilson (British Association of Homeopathic Manufacturers), Paul Bennett (Boots the chemist), Tracey Brown (Sense About Science) and Dr Ben Goldacre (Bad Science blogger/columnist).

The second panel was made up of Dr Peter Fisher (London Homeopathic Hospital), Prof Edzard Ernst (Peninsula Medical School), Dr James Thallon (NHS West Kent), and Dr Robert Mathie (British Homeopathic Association).

The whole session can be watched here, and the Guardian's Ian Sample live blogged the whole thing here.

This is a good session chaired by a committee who are clearly adequately sceptical of homeopathy's evidence of efficacy. There are a few interesting points where the pro-homeopathy panel members are held against the ropes and forced to give rather telling, squirmy non-answers to the committee's questions.

Phil Willis, who chaired the meeting, was responsible for some particularly excellent moments, such as answering Robert Wilson's point that homeopathy is an old tradition and popular in France with the point that so is prostitution but that doesn't make it right. Even better was his incredulous response to Wilson's argument that if they didn't work people wouldn't keep buying them with, "that wasn't a serious comment was it?"

It's well worth watching the video and it's heartening to know that at least there are people in the Commons who value evidence and take a sceptical view of alternative medicine and that they don't all lobby the government to have lunar effects taken into account.

However, the important question, I'm sure, will soon be whether the probable future Conservative government shares this committee's interest in evidence.

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Update: Read Ben Goldacre's review of events here.

The Science of Scams

Magician and sceptic, Derren Brown has recently taken part in an online project about the ways that apparently paranormal feats can be reproduced in believable looking ways. In each of the seven episodes of The Science of Scams, a different paranormal skill is demonstrated and then explained in terms of the scientific principals behind it. The topics discussed include ghost sightings, telekinesis and psychic readings among others. All the videos are well put together and are certainly worth watching.

The first video in the series is below:

Ray Comfort "not an expert on evolution" shock!

USNews has been holding a written debate between Ray Comfort and Eugenie Scott on the subject of Comfort's decision to distribute a version of Darwin's Origin of Species with a self-penned creationist introduction. Comfort's first statement is here and was followed by Eugenie Scott's first rebuttal here. Comfort replies here and finally Scott comes back again here.

It's not a huge surprise to anyone who has followed some of Ray Comfort's writing and media appearances that he uses both his statements to trot out the same oft-refuted creationist arguments that he brings to every debate. It's also not a huge surprise that Eugenie Scott knocks back those arguments with huge skill and clarity of thought, especially in her final statement, which is excellent.

Ray Comfort's second statement was so full of unintelligible non-arguments that it was impressive even for him, so I thought I'd have a little go through it as well.

Scott quoted a famous geneticist, who said, "Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution." I would like to drop one word, so that the quote is true. It should read, "Nothing in biology makes sense in the light of evolution." For example, evolution has no explanation as to why and how around 1.4 million species of animals evolved as male and female. No one even goes near explaining how and why each species managed to reproduce (during the millions of years the female was supposedly evolving to maturity) without the right reproductive machinery.

The bizarre strawman argument that evolution implies that a single male and a single female of each species must have evolved at the same time by coincidence is one of his absolute favourite arguments. It's even in the foreword of his laughable (but pun-tastically titled) You Can Lead an Atheist to Evidence but you Can't Make him Think (available with Look Inside on Amazon).

This argument is borne out of an incredible misunderstanding of how evolution works. In Comfortian evolution, a species, let's say a horse, will spontaneously decide to undergo evolution with the specific end goal of becoming another species, let's say a giraffe. In the time intermediate between being a horse and a giraffe, this species becomes a freakish chimera beast and also apparently stops engaging in sexual reproduction. Eventually, one of these asexual girorses (or hiraffes?) will give birth to a male giraffe, signifying the male line's attainment of the pre-ordained finish line. However, this single male giraffe must wait around hoping that a compatible female giraffe will be born to another hiraffe within its lifetime.

If this mechanism were even tangentially like Darwinian evolution, I would agree that the chances of a male and female of the new species co-evolving at the same time would be astronomically small and Comfort would have a valid point. Unfortunately, however, never has a concept been so badly misunderstood.

In fact evolution works at the population level. The immediate evolutionary ancestor to a giraffe would have been something very very like a giraffe, almost imperceptibly different. Each of these incredibly giraffe-like pre-giraffes would have been reproductively compatible with the giraffes that followed them and the pre-pre-giraffes that preceded them, which would themselves have been very much like a giraffe.

At no point would there been a single male or female unable to mate with other members of the population at large because Darwinian evolution occurs at the population, rather than individual, level gradually and over a very long time. So Comfort's argument is meaningless.

Nor does any evolutionary believer adequately address the fact that all those 1.4 million species managed to evolve into maturity together in our lifetime.
Nothing we have in creation is half evolved. The cow has a working udder to make drinkable milk. The bee has working apparatus to make edible honey. We don't find a half-evolved cow or bee. None of the 1.4 million species on the Earth has half an eye. All have the necessary functioning equipment, from the brain, to the teeth, to the eye, to limbs, to reproductive necessities. Everything that we see in creation is in full working order—from the sun, to the mixture of the air, to the seasons, to fruit trees and vegetables, to the animal kingdom—from the tiny ant right up to the massive elephant.

This assertion comes from a similar position of ignorance. Evolution is a gradual, directionless and blind process. The evolutionary predecessors of the bee were not working towards one day becoming modern bees. Rather, modern bees just happen to have been the outcome of the effects of natural selection on those predecessors through history.

The same is true of humans, although this can be difficult for people to reconcile with the natural and reasonable desire to believe that we are somehow special and sit apart from all other creatures. The truth is that humans are as we are largely because of chance and if any number of factors in our evolutionary past had been different, we would be different now - perhaps in noticeable and significant ways or perhaps not.

Every species represented on Earth today is equally evolutionarily suited to life. If it were not, it would go extinct. This has been true at every point in the history of the planet. Evolution is still going on today and many of today's extant species may be the transitional species of another age.

Maybe in a hundred thousand years, there will be a new flying insect on the planet, let's call it a penk, the ancestor of which will have been our familiar honey bee. No doubt a Ray Comfort of the day will snort scornfully at the idea that that penk evolved because he cannot be shown evidence of a half penk but only other similar insects. The point is that each of those links in the chain that bind the bee to the penk would have been themselves no less a complete and functioning creature than those at the arbitrarily selected beginning and end points of that journey.

Towards the end of the paragraph, Ray moves away from animals and brings the sun and the atmosphere into the argument, stating that if these had not been exactly as they are now, life would not have been possible. But this is a logically confused argument. If the sun had not formed, we would not exist. But the fact that it did and we do does not imply that it had a creator.

If the sun or the atmosphere had formed differently, life might still have existed, but in a different form, just as if any other factor in our evolutionary history had been different. If the atmosphere contained different elements, or different proportions of the same elements, life as we know it would not exist, but other life might. And if any of that life had reached the sort of intelligence that humans hold now, there would probably be another Ray Comfort using exactly the same argument.

A lot of creationist misunderstandings of evolution and cosmology stem from the belief that humanity is special and so any explanatory system must set the existence of humankind as an end goal. This is not the case. Humans are no more special than chimpanzees, rabbits, sponges and viruses. Our existence in our present form is the chance outcome, neither fortuitous nor otherwise, of a blind non-random natural selection process applied over hundreds of millions of years.

Scott continues, "There are more specimens of 'Ardi' (the newly described Ardipithecus ramidus) than there are of Tyrannosaurus . . . We and modern chimpanzees shared a common ancestor millions of years ago . . . ." But that's another evolutionary "Oops!" if you believe the learned scientists on the Discovery Channel. In a recent two-hour documentary about Ardi, the scientists said, "Ever since Darwin, we have bought into the idea that humans evolved from ancient chimplike creatures. That's because modern chimps seemed to share a lot of anatomy and modern behavior with humans. So the idea that we evolved from something like chimps seemed to make sense. But now, the discovery of Ardipithecus shows that this idea is totally and completely wrong." Did you hear what they said? This idea that we evolved from ancient chimplike creatures is totally and completely wrong.

This demonstrates a common creationist tactic: to jump on any disagreement about relatively minor scientific details as a major failing of the whole theory. The actual contention of the Discovery Channel documentary, as I understand it, was that the common ancestor shared by humans and chimps was not as much like a modern chimp as previously thought. However it certainly did not call into question the well established fact that we and chimps did share a common ancestor.

Plus, I believe the convention in science is to get your information from a source slightly more academically weighty than a TV documentary, even a two-hour one.

I am aware that it is the learning process of evolutionary "science" to continually discover itself to be wrong. So there can never be a time when believers can claim they have the truth. This is just as well, because each new and believed hypothesis, like the crazy fashions of a superficial teenager, is in time discarded in favor of the new.

Actually, to discover mistakes and adapt accordingly is a feature of all science and is actually one of its greatest strengths. Imagine if astronomy had stopped with Ptolomy's model of the solar system because science was not interested in changing to get closer to the truth. Or if nobody had bothered to work on the concept of alternating current because direct current was already in place.

However, the foundational fact of evolution and the theory of natural selection is not in doubt because no reason has ever been given to doubt it. It is only the details and the fine print that undergo revision when new evidence gives reason.

After addressing my arguments from the portion of the Introduction she doesn't want students to read, Scott says, "More fossils will provide more details, but this outline of human evolution is not in serious doubt among scientists." Hear her own words: "More fossils will provide more details." In other words, they still don't have the undisputed fossils. That's what Darwin lamented 150 years ago! He said that when a skeptic "may ask in vain, 'Where are the numberless transitional links?' " Darwin's answer was that the missing links "may lie buried under the ocean." They are still buried somewhere, 150 years later. Scott said that "human evolution isn't in serious doubt among scientists." But I say, it should be.

Finally, after all this foreplay, Comfort has made his way to every creationist's favourite argument - that there are no transitional fossils. Creationists' dismissal of the plethora of transitional forms that have been discovered comes from their bizarre mischaracterisation of the theory of evolution itself, as discussed above. Comfort's belief that any extant species must be linked to its ancestors by a lineage of bizarre chimeras like the crocoduck leads to the incorrect expectation that there should be fossils discovered that document these odd, twisted creatures of his imaginings.

We have numerous transitional fossils, but they all look too disappointingly normal and, superficially at least, too much like other extant animals to satisfy the expectations of the twisted, straw-filled version of evolution held up by creationists.

There is also the problem, when asking why we don't have numberless fossils, that for an animal to fossilise is pretty rare. A quite specific and unlikely set of circumstances lead to a dead animal fossilising, so only a tiny percentage of the animals that have ever lived have done so. Nevertheless, despite the necessarily patchy nature of the fossil record, it is full enough to be useful and to inform our understanding of our planet's past.

She also says, "There are splendid fossils of dinosaurs that have feathers and of whales that have legs—and even feet." But she doesn't give me any details of such splendor. Where are they?

In answer to this, I can do no better than to quote Eugenie Scott's own reply:

Comfort complains that I didn't provide enough detail in my brief essay about those fossil whales. You want a list of fossil whales showing the transitional features marking the evolutionary transition from land animal to marine, such as changes in the ears, nostrils, and limbs? Indohyus, Icthyolestes, Pakicetus, Nalacetus, Remingtonocetus, Ambulocetus . . . . Never mind. Start here, for a nontechnical review by a team of whale paleontologists.

Ray Comfort concludes:

There are so many gaps and holes in the theory of evolution that you could drive a fleet of a thousand fully laden 18-wheelers through them. The irony is that I can see them, and I'm not an expert on the subject of evolution. So, what does that say about the theory's experts, whoever they are? It says (as a wise man once said) that man will believe anything . . . as long as it's not in the Bible.

The declaration that he is "not an expert on the subject of evolution" is the first thing he has said that I agree with and perhaps he should consider whether perhaps it is his understanding, rather than the subject itself, that has the gaps and the holes.

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Update: The National Centre for Science Education (NCSE) has an excellent page up refuting point by point Ray Comfort's introduction.

He Works in Magisterious Ways

One area in which the so-called "new atheists" differ from what I can only assume are called "old atheists" is in their views on the possibility of harmonious co-existence between religion and science. Dawkins, Hitchens and Myers, while acknowledging that religious people can understand science and scientists can believe in God, see religious faith as either contradictory or, at worst, obstructive to good science. However, most moderate religious people, and a good number of atheists and agnostics, see no incompatibility between the two systems.


The most famous defence of the accomodationist position was made by Stephen Jay Gould in his definition of science and religion as "non-overlapping magisteria". Science is the realm of the observable, the empirical and the testable, he claimed; religion is the domain of that which is beyond human experience. Many people, in my experience, sum this position up in something like the statement that science deals with the 'how' while religion deals with the 'why' (like answer 'B' on this page); scientists may be able to tell us how the Earth came to be formed and how life evolved on it, but it is to the clergy that questions about the meaning of that life ought to be addressed.


I disagree. The 'how' and the 'why' defence is an easy maxim to rattle off in lieu of an agrument, but does it really mean anything at all? Does science helpfully limit itself to the dry mechanistic explanations? And does religion respectfully keep clear of them, only to shuffle out when someone asks a more metaphysical question? Of course not.


The Bible is full of explanations of how things work and how things happened - from the beginning of the Earth to its end. How many of these explanations you may wish to write off as poetically pregnant metaphors will be decided by the particular strain of the religion you most identify with. However, with even the most modern and woolly tea-and-biscuit fuelled reading of the Bible, it is a stretch to imply that the Good Book completely steers clear of physical and biological explanations or politely holds its tongue when any other 'how' question is raised.


Similarly, it is only a uselessly simplistic characterisation that would suggest that science limits itself to the 'how' questions. The rapidly evolving and endlessly enlightening fields of psychology, neurology and genetics have given us myriad insights into 'why' questions that mere decades ago would have been left entirely to theologians and philosophers. In fact science is even able to study the 'why' of religion itself (search Pubmed for 'religion' and 'brain' for examples).


Of course it is possible for scientists to be religious or for religious people to believe in evolution or the big bang. However, this is not proof that they are mutually compatible worldviews so much as further evidence of humans' ability to hold multiple incongruous viewpoints while coping with the resulting cognitive dissonance.


The cornerstone of science is scepticism of that for which there is no evidence. This is the reason scientists make hypotheses based on observations and then try to test those hypotheses to see whether they hold true after exhaustive efforts to falsify them. Any christian scientist (by which I mean a scientist who is religious, not a follower of Mary Baker Eddy) must either admit that they hold some parts of their life out of reach of the light of their scientific scepticism or tie themselves up in confusing knots of attempted justification and theological gymnastics.


The cornerstone of religion is faith in that for which there is no evidence, and it is for this reason that I see it as fundamentally incompatible with science. A christian (or muslim or jew etc.) who wishes to maintain their faith must approach certain questions without the genuine openmindedness that ideal science calls for.


Once again, I acknowledge that some scientists are religious and some religious people are scientists and I do not think it would be helpful to force polarisation on such people and make them choose one or the other. However, both worldviews cannot be held in one mind without the necessary compromise of one or both.


The religious scientist must protect his faith from the requisite questioning tools of his trade. The scientifically-literate believer must moderate the will, power and scope of their god so as not to to tread on the toes of what rational discovery has given us. Inconvenient as it may be, these are two almost entirely overlapping magisteria, both of which claim powers of explanation and enlightenment.

"Atheism Causes Global Warming" -Pope

The Pope has weighed in on the issue of the environment and has come up with the expert conclusion that environmental damage is caused by disbelief in God.

"Is it not true that inconsiderate use of creation begins where God is marginalized or also where is [sic] existence is denied? If the human creature's relationship with the Creator weakens, matter is reduced to egoistic possession, man becomes the "final authority," and the objective of existence is reduced to a feverish race to possess the most possible."

No, Pope, it's not true.

Isn't it a bit of a coincidence that the vast majority of the big car-driving, unfettered capitalism-supporting contingent in the US who see it as their right to pollute belong to the conservative and overwhelmingly Christian right? Or that the people who are driving the environmental movement, upon which the Vatican has finally seen fit to comment, are largely liberal and less religiously inclined?

The problem, as is often the case, is one of interpretation. In Genesis, God creates man to "have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth." Now, the Pope may see this as defining a caretaker role where humans are intended to use, but also to conserve and protect. However, many others have used this quote to justify, equally validly, their continued and consequenceless ravaging of the planet's resources. Manna from heaven - limitless in its divine provision.

Of course, it's certainly not for me to say which interpretation is correct, even if such a decision were possible or meaningful. The point is that the Pope's assertion that atheism breeds an egotistical drive to use up limited resources, while belief cures this drive is clearly untrue. Christians are perfectly able to indulge in environmentally unfriendly practices - and they can point to their godly justifications too.

Christianity, when taken fairly literally, does not encourage long term planning. In one view, life on Earth can be seen as little more than an audition for eternity. Why make provisions for future generations when surely a just God with future-viewing omniscience and a grand plan will have it covered? Apparently 55% of Americans believe in the rapture and 36% believe that the book of Revelation is a true prophecy. And if Jesus' words that the second coming will occur within the lifetimes of some of his listeners deserve any creedence whatsoever, then we must already be on heavily borrowed time. Given this world view, why should you plan for generations beyond your own?

For atheists, however, there is no assurance of a godly nanny who will clear up the toys after we're gone and no belief that we hold any special position in the world with dominion granted to us. Only we are accountable for the future of our children and our species - and whether that future is worth living in is up to us.

The Daily Mail Strikes Back

I've written before about the way the Daily Mail constantly bombards its readers with scare stories about how ever-increasing numbers of inanimate objects are destined to kill them with cancer.

Well, for all your irrational inanimate object avoidance needs, there is a blog keeping track of the Daily Mail's Oncology-related stories: The Daily Mail Oncological Ontology Project.

Unfortunately, it has not been updated since early last year. Indeed, in the last published post, "Lightbulbs give you cancer", the author writes:

"If they continue at this rate they will classify 936 objects into cancer causing or cancer curing in 2008. That’s not counting the Mail on Sunday.

I may have bitten off more than I can chew."

So it looks like the task ended up being simply too formidable for one humble blogger, but I must still commend his/her effort.

Luckily, however, a blog that is regularly updated is Daily Mail Watch, which I recommend instead.

God Hates Us All

One of the most contraversial and widely hated groups in America is the Westboro Baptist Church. Following wide-spread media attention, and features by journalists such as Louis Theroux, their methods of picketing the funerals of victims of anti-gay hate crime, as well as service men, with slogans such as “God hates fags” and “Thank God for 9/11″ have become well known and widely despised.

Their behaviour has earned them myriad lawsuits and numerous arrests. For example, in 1995, Benjamin Phelps, the grandson of the church’s founder, was convicted of assault for spitting in the face of a passer-by during one of their regular pickets. In 2007, the father of a marine whose funeral was picketed successfully sued them for damages amounting to $5m.

Most people’s reaction to hearing or reading about this group’s actions tends to be disbelief and disgust. How could anyone be this callous? How could anyone show so little respect for their fellow humans? The answer, of course, is that they believe they are doing God’s work.

Homosexuality, they assert, “pose[s] a clear and present danger to the survival of America, exposing our nation to the wrath of God as in 1898 B.C. at Sodom and Gomorrah”. They interpret the Bible in such a way that they believe it is the job of anyone who truly believes in God’s greatness to war against “workers of iniquity”, and this includes gay people, and those who accept them and enable them to lead their lives. They picket the funerals of soldiers and service men because “they voluntarily joined a fag-infested army to fight for a fag-run country now utterly and finally forsaken by God who Himself is fighting against that country.”

Quite rightly, the WBC has drawn criticism from Christian religious groups just as it has from non-religious and other-religious groups. Perhaps Christians find their rhetoric more offensive because they claim to be speaking for God and on behalf of those who truly follow him. Perhaps they are also worried that actions like this from one Christian group will bring disrepute upon the whole church and be a shot in the foot for the whole mission of the glorification of God. Perhaps they particularly dislike the way they twist the words of the Bible to justify their hateful position.

To despise this group on humanistic grounds, for their hideous disrespect of humanity is reasonable and, in my opinion, absolutely correct. However to criticise them on religious scriptural grounds is not. The reason is that the WBC does not twist the words of the Bible to justify their position - they don’t need to - those hateful words are there already.

The WBC point to Psalms 5:5, “The foolish shall not stand in thy sight: thou hatest all workers of iniquity”; Proverbs 6:16-19, “These six things doth the Lord hate:… he that soweth discord among brethren”; Psalms 11:5, “The Lord trieth the righteous: but the wicked and him that loveth violence his soul hateth”; and Malachi 1:3, “And I hated Esau, and laid his mountains and his heritage waste for the dragons of the wilderness.”

The argument that the they are misrepresenting the Bible’s meaning, because really God loves everyone starts to look a little thin when you start to read a bit more of the Bible and come across these examples of God being unashamedly hateful towards, not just people’s actions, but people themselves. Indeed, as Skeptics’ Annotated Bible points out, one can hardly fault the group’s logic: God hates “workers of iniquity” (Psalms 5:5); homosexuality is “abomination” (Leviticus 18:22); therefore God hates fags.

I will reiterate quickly that I do not think this group deserves anything but the deepest contempt and condemnation, but for the religious to dispute them on scriptural grounds is hypocritical. What are they doing but validly, albeit selectively, quoting parts of the Bible? And this is exactly what every moderate sermon does aswell. For every John 3:16 quoted, there is a Psalms 5:5 being ignored, because to give equal weight to both would lead to so much contradiction and cognitive dissonance that no believer would know what to do with themselves.

In order for Christianity to function as a religion, the Bible needs to be read selectively, or at least certain passages need to be interpreted liberally. So it should be no surprise that there is one group that pays attention to those bits that everyone else leaves out, and who saves their liberal interpretations for those sections that others might prefer to take literally. This is the problem with the claim that the Bible offers any sort of revealed moral teaching – without engaging the evolved humanist moral sense to overlook the contradictions and to only pay attention to the positive messages, the Bible can be used to justify violence and hate just as well as it can love and compassion.

The Westboro Baptist Church are a disgusting group, but theirs are the same tools that are used in every pulpit every Sunday. A long, ambiguous book of myths can be used to justify any moral position, for real goodness, we must look to the evolved sense to protect ourselves, our families and our species that we all have without having to take any book’s word for it.

Five Things Atheists Don't Want You to Know

I always enjoy reading descriptions of atheists written by the sort of deeply religious people who seem to have never met one. Generalisations and bizarre false beliefs tend to abound. It always brings to my mind the image of a stooping elderly grandmother cautioning a young child of beasts that lurk on the moors at night. "Beware the Godless, my child," they seem to caution, "they have not hearts like we have. And they feed on good children like you."

An excellent example has appeared in the letters to the editor of the Red Deer Express, a community newspaper in Alberta. I must admit, I found this through Pharyngula - I don't just routinely scan through all Canadian newspapers in the hope of gloriously eccentric characterisations of atheists.

Anyway, in response to an on-going discussion about atheism, this writer explains:

Being the hot topic of the day, any discussion of atheism, should include
these ‘difficult to admit’ points:

And then goes on to list five points that atheists would rather people not know about them.

Firstly, atheists claim that they themselves are god. They claim they have superior knowledge then the rest of us by trying to say that they have better knowledge because of their own thinking. They will not acknowledge anyone else to be above them.

"They claim they have superior knowledge then (sic) the rest of us by trying to say that they have better knowledge because of their own thinking." Uh... They claim to have "superior knowledge" because they have "better knowledge"? Buh?

I'm not sure what she means when she says "they will not acknowledge anyone else to be above them". Biologically, I don't acknowledge anyone above me. I see all organisms around today on an equal level, since by our survival each of us has proven our fitness to be here (perhaps excepting the panda, which seems to be doing it's best to become extinct, thwarted only by the tenacious efforts of a handful of Chinese zoologists). I also do not see myself, or humanity in general, above any other species. Each species that survives must be equally well evolved for their surroundings.

But on a human level, I happily accept the hierachical organisation of society that puts some (or most, in fact) people in positions of more power than me.

And I certainly do not think I am god. But, an important part of rationalism is always admitting that you might be wrong.

Secondly, atheists have been hurt somewhere in their lives, can’t understand suffering, and are mad at God — so it is easier to deny there is one.

Wow, that's quite a generalisation. Some atheists have been hurt in their lives, just as some Christians have, and so have some Buddhists and some Muslims. Everyone has been hurt to a greater or lesser extent in their lives, so this point is irrelevant. And I don't understand why atheists shouldn't be able to understand suffering.

It's also a contradiction in terms: we are mad at God so we deny there is one? We're not mad at god precisely because we deny there is one. How can being angry at something lead you to decide that it doesn't exist?

Thirdly, atheists are looking for God for the same reason a thief would be looking for a police officer. They don’t want to be accountable to a higher being because of the wrong things they do.

No, atheists are looking for God for the same reason a thief would be looking for the toothfairy. We're not. Because we don't believe it exists.

Fourthly, atheists forget that when a person goes to a museum and admires a painting, that there was a painter/designer of that art piece. The art piece is absolute evidence of a painter and not caused by random nothingness.

All of the world, stars, animals, plants, oceans, and mountains are absolute proof of a divine intelligent being (beyond our human ability and thinking) who made these things.

Can the atheist make a tree? It is scientifically impossible for bees to fly (laws of physics) and yet they do. It is impossible for our eyes to see and yet they do. What more proof does an atheist need than their own heart pumping in their chest without them commanding their heart to pump each beat in perfect timing each and every second necessary?

This is a common way of phrasing the argument from design. You can see a painting and you know it was made by a painter, therefore the Earth/a tree/humans/a sponge/HIV or whatever must have been made by some kind of designer too. The problem is, the logic doesn't follow. Just because one or two or any number of things have been created in one way, doesn't mean that everything else was made the same way. In fact, a wall may be green because a painter has worked on it, but a leaf is not green for the same reason.

She uses some interesting examples to make her point:

"Can the atheist make a tree?"

Well, no. But surely this is as much an argument against the tree being created as anything else.

"It is scientifically impossible for bees to fly"

This was believed for some time since a couple of French entomologists suggested that bees' flight defied aerodynamics in 1934. However, unfortunately for this writer, the flight of bees has been thoroughly explained since the '30s and is no longer a mystery. Plus, on a note of pedantry, saying something is scientifically impossible doesn't really make any sense. The best she could have said is that it was unexplained by science.

"It is impossible for our eyes to see"

This claim is a little more myserious. I'm not sure on what basis she has decided that vision should be impossible, but it clearly isn't, and in fact eyes are very well understood by biologists.

"Their own heart pumping in their chest without them commanding their heart to pump each beat"

It's fairly obvious after even the briefest moment of consideration that we don't need to consciously attend to everything our body does. I don't need to purposefully tell my lungs to take in air every few seconds. I don't even really need to think too hard about what I want my limbs to do. What is the writer suggesting? That God is constantly monitoring the heart and breathing rates of every human, and every other animal, all the time? If that's the alternative, the idea that our brain stem can automate our bodily functions sounds considerably more plausible. And if you factor in the biological and physiological evidence we have that this is, indeed, the case, the writer's argument starts to look rather misguided.

Fifthly, denial is a strong coping mechanism in crisis, but does not serve anyone in the long run. Like an ostrich with its head in the sand, an atheist denies God not because God does not exist—but because the atheist doesn’t want God to exist and does not want to see the truth and evidence in front of their eyes.

I would rather believe in God and make sure my life is doing what is acceptable to this Superior Being than to not believe in God and find out I will be accountable to this God for everything I’ve done after I die. With 84% of the world’s population believing in the existence of God, I think the majority rules in this case.

I wonder what reason the writer would give if asked why she does not pray to Allah five times a day, or why she does not hold the cow as sacred, or why she does not sacrifice livestock to Neptune before embarking on travel. Is she denying these other faiths because she does not want them to be true? Isn't the evidence of these faiths just as close in front of her eyes as the evidence of hers is in front of ours? She cheerfully lives her life as an atheist to all other gods yet criticises those who do not believe in hers.

She would rather believe in God and make sure her life is doing what is acceptable to this Superior Being, but she is not taking into account the other superior beings whose existence is equally likely and equally self-evident. She is almost certainly not doing what is acceptable to them.

She ends with the argument ad populum. Apart from the fact that the popularity of an idea has no baring on its veracity, she also ignores the fact that, even if 84% of people believe in God (the statistics I found indicate that 86% are religious although only 54% are monotheistic), they certainly don't all believe in the same god. Even those that do believe in the same god often disagree wildly in what sorts of behaviour will please him/her/it. Personally I do not agree that the majority rules in this, or any, case.

Michael Jackson Late Interview

The naive belief I hold that humanity as generally decent has tripped me up again. I should have known Michael Jackson wouldn't even be in the ground before "psychic" scavengers would be all over him like some sort of disgusting, odious tumour.

James Van Praagh, one of the least competent or convincing "psychics" currently on the TV circuit, will go on Oprah soon to give the results of an interview he has conducted with Jackson posthumously.

Doctors and police needn't worry themselves about the details of Jackson's death, Van Praagh has already found the answers. When asked if foul play was involved, Jackson apparently told him, "I felt sick that day, very sick. My doctor Conrad told me to rest, but I had to practice moves for my upcoming concert. I was tired, very tired, then I collapsed".

Asked where he is now, Van Praagh was told, "I am surrounded by happiness. I never felt more happier."

Not to be left out, consistent barrel-scraper, Sylvia Brown is going on Montell Williams to talk about her recent conversations with Jackson's spirit. "He is doing well. Very well. He does not miss this physical world."

I hope I'm not the only person who finds this abhorrent and disgusting.

Why is it OK for these "psychics" to piss all over someone's memory by putting words into his dead mouth?

It shouldn't have surprised me that these people are speaking for Michael Jackson, because this is what they do all the time. This is how "psychics" make their living. People pay for them to rape the precious memories they have of their dearest loved-ones by tackily sticking on their own hastily conceived addenda.

When someone we love has gone, all we have left are our memories. The images that come to us when we think about them and the joy or wisdom or happiness they gave us is what lives on. These are what exist of them now. Memories of a loved one are their most important legacy. To the godless, it is the only way that they carry on past their mortal end.

Yet many people seem to think nothing of allowing certain self-appointed strangers the liberty to add to or subtract from those memories at will. Indeed they are glad for them to make up meretricious pleasantries to appease the applauding masses while holding no remorse for the genuinely special legacy they are shitting on.

James Van Praagh, Sylvia Brown, John Edwards, Derek Acorah, Colin Fry and the many others are, in my opinion, making their money in one of the most cynically dishonest and outright disgusting ways imaginable.

Homeopathic A&E

Mitchell and Webb (of BBC's Peep Show) show us what would happen if alternative medicine really were embraced by the mainstream.

A Few Videos

Here are a few videos I've seen recently that I think are worth being passed on.

NASA's LRO launch


This is from a webcam aboard NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter which launch a couple of days ago. This really is an awe-inspiring video, and it's incredible to see just how far up it goes in the six minutes of the video.
Having been born on the 80s, by which time the 1969 moon landing was just another piece of history, I find it interesting to wonder just how incredible it must have seemed at the time to see mankind make it's first steps to another body in the solar system.
Even if a manned mission to Mars launched in our lifetimes, I doubt it will be as much of a landmark as the moon landing was at the time. So it's a shame that, like all history, time has devalued its importance in the collective minds of those born since the 70s.

Colliding Particles


Part 4 of the brilliant Colliding Particles series of videos about CERN's work at the LHC. These videos are both informative and artful. Even though my knowledge and understanding of particle physics and of CERN's work could be politely described as woefully lacking, these videos manage to remain constantly fascinating, perhaps due to the humour and humanity with which they approach the subjects.

What would Jesus not do?


NonStampCollector has made a ton of brilliant videos. He excels in finding areas of Christianity whose lack of logic makes them worthy of intense ridicule, and then goes about delivering that ridicule expertly.
I think that humour and satire are probably among the greatest weapons sceptics and atheists have in fighting silly beliefs. I like to think that every time Eddie Izzard, Ricky Gervais or Tim Minchin mercilessly mock a certain stupid inconsistency of Christianity, for example, a few comedy fans who had previously been on the fence might lose just a little bit more grip on their belief.

Instruction Manual for Life


This nice and oddly haunting conceit aptly demonstrates the divisive nature of organised religion.

Opeth - Coil (live)


And for something comepletely different, a beautiful song by Opeth. When the vocals come in on the second verse, it gives me shivers.
To get the full power of the song, though, you need to listen to it in the context of the album where it is followed by the bludgeoningly heavy opening of Heir Apparent.

Metal is our Religion is better than...

The following post was originally written as an anouncement to members of the Facebook cause, Metal is our Religion.

Everyone knows the staples of any good religion are self-congratulatory smugness, insidious sectarianism, a dogmatic reluctance to try to relate with others and the odd superficial nod towards good deeds. In the spirit of at least three of these, it’s worth having a look at some other belief systems that Metal is our Religion is better than.

Christianity

I admit Christianity certainly has some good points, most notably the fact that it worships a long-haired zombie king who plans to come back to Earth to stage an epic final battle against the devil. However, Metal can match any religion in terms of zombies – Phil Anselmo, Nikki Sixx, Slash and Dave Mustaine have all died and it didn’t take three days of hanging around for them to come back and start touring again. And as for long hair, I think it would be foolish for anyone to argue that Metal doesn’t win on that count.

Aside from its plus points, Christianity also has a few worrying factors that count against it, such as:
1. The size of its holy book
- I like to read, but an inch thick tome where each tracing paper page is filled with multiple columns of tiny text? I’ll wait for the film to come out, thanks. Then I’ll watch it when it comes on TV… unless there’s something better on.

2. Transubstantiation
- The zombie god thing was going pretty well until he turned into a wafer. Not even Mike Patton would do that.

3. The fact that some of its institutions seem to have an alarmingly relaxed view on child molestation.
- I can only think of one member of the Metal world who has done anything as disgusting as the deeds found to be endemic in Irish Catholic reform schools, and that was Dave Holland, the ex-Judas Priest drummer. Tony Iommi, who he was working with at the time, promptly replaced all his drum parts as soon as he found out, an action considerably more honourably than the Vatican’s attempted cover-ups.

4. Its many historical attempts to kill anyone who doesn’t agree with them on certain details of their belief in God.
- With the possible exception of certain Norwegian black metal bands, it’s pretty unusual for members of the Metal community to kill people they disagree with. They’re more likely to pour out their anger in music, such as Machine Head’s beautifully aggressive Aesthetics of Hate. We take the moral high ground and end up with some brilliant music. Win win.

5. It’s not true.
- A problem for any belief system.

6. Inconsistencies.
- Jesus had long hair. Samson’s long hair even gave him his strength. Nevertheless, 1 Corinthians 11:14 tells us “that, if a man have long hair, it is a shame unto him”.

7. The music.
- Alright, they’ve got Bach and Handel on their side, but I’m afraid they don’t make up for the harm caused to the world by the composition of ‘Oh When the Saints’. And when you factor in the interminable monotony of plainsong, I know which religion wins the battle for my iPod.

In conclusion, I think it is clear that the sensible choice here is to get up off the cold pew, grab your leather jacket and join the worshippers of the Riff.

My Back Hurts - Poke Me with Toothpicks!

thelondonpaper, the only newspaper I read regularly, and one which I am generally willing to defend as being relatively thoughtful and intelligent, especially for a free publication, has joined the bandwagon for proclaiming that acupuncture works based on a recent study.

Apart from a few commendable nods toward scepticism, and a fence sitting conclusion that "the jury's still out", the overall tone of the article was, in my opinion, weighted in favour of the position that acupuncture is at least worth a try. In fact it ends with an entirely useless "case study":

There was only one thing for it. We sent our promotions manager Sarah Cox to an acupuncturist to relieve her chronic back pain...

Which, in turn, concludes:

My scepticism gave way to belief

My back and shoulders seemed looser. The dull ache had eased. I’ll definitely do another session.

Don't get me wrong, this was by no means the worst reporting of the Cherken et al. study (I still love ya, thelondonpaper, with all your wacky joined up lowercase letters!), but it would still give the impression to someone unaware of the science that it is worth shelling out money ("A one-hour session with Steve Kippax costs £80", the article helpfully informs us) for a treatment with no really compelling evidence.

Perhaps I should explain what this study actually said and how this, and most other papers, got it wrong.

The study randomised 638 adults with lower back pain into 4 groups: individualised acupuncture (an acupuncturist chooses the pin points based on a consultation), standardized acupuncture (pin points are chosen from text book positions corresponding to the teachings of traditional chinese medicine), simulated acupuncture (a placebo which uses non-penetrating toothpicks, but looks and feels the same to the patient and practitioner), or no acupuncture. All subjects continued to receive any standard care as well as the treatment associated with their group.

Placebo controlled trials like this are designed to test one thing: does this modality work better than placebo. If it does, it is good evidence that it is a worthwhile treatment with a real medical effect. If it performs as well as placebo, then its effects can be put down to those of placebo itself, and the null hypothesis can be accepted.

In this case, the two acupuncture groups scored remarkably similarly to the placebo acupuncture group. All of these performed better than the group that received no acupuncture, as would be expected.

What this shows is that acupuncture, individualized or standardised, performs no better than placebo, and this study can therefore be seen as evidence against its efficacy.

However, this is not the conclusion that the authors arrived at when they stated:

Although acupuncture was found effective for chronic low back pain,
tailoring needling sites to each patient and penetration of the skin appear to be unimportant in eliciting therapeutic benefits.

"Penetration of the skin appear(s) to be unimportant"!? In acupuncture!? Acupuncture - the therapy entirely charactrised by penetration of the skin with needles?

What they're saying is, because placebo acupuncture (poking with toothpicks, need I remind you) is as good as actual acupuncture, this must have therapeutic effect too!

This is exactly like trialling a new heart disease pill against a placebo sugar pill and then, on finding that they offer the same level of benefit, stating that sugar must actually have clinically useful effects for heart disease aswell!

This is not the proper conclusion of this trial! The proper conclusion is that acupuncture performs no better than placebo, and therefore can be assumed to be offering nothing but placebo benefit.

This doesn't mean that the placebo effect can't be quite impressive. It certainly can be. The placebo effect is an incredibly interesting, subtle and potentially powerful effect. The more invasive and extravagent the treatment, the greater the placebo effect. And acupuncture is up there for invasiveness and extravagance. And it's quite expensive, which always helps.

That's all this study shows that acupuncture is: placebo. To claim anything else of it is to speak above the level of evidence given.

So, this is the letter I've sent to thelondonpaper's letters page:

I'd like to point out the recent study you mentioned yesterday does not show that acupuncture "is good for your back". The study was designed to test whether there was any benefit of real acupuncture over placebo acupuncture (using not-penetrative tooth-picks, unbeknownst to the patient). It found that there was not. Any benefit observed owing to the acupuncture conditions was entirely explainable by the placebo effect of a novel and theatrically invasive intervention. To claim that because receiving acupuncture fared as well as being poked with tooth picks shows that both have clinical benefit is a misinterpretation of the evidence.
Tim, London

By the way, the quote I used ("is good for your back") was in the print version, but isn't in the online version, linked to above.

Professor Regan's Ice Bucket

I was impressed by the aims of a new BBC2 series called Professor Regan's Pharmacy. The idea is that Lesley Regan, clinical professor of surgery at Imperial College London, assesses a number of products that appear in pharmacies. She then grants those that meet her standards of evidence a position in her own (presumably hypothetical) pharmacy.

The second episode aired last Thursday at 9 and is available to watch here, at least for the moment. I assume there'll be another one on tonight.

This last episode was specifically about medicines. In general it was very good, and it's extremely commendable that the BBC would give over an hour of their peak slot to a show that promotes evidence based medicine and spreads the word that homeopathy is rubbish. Incredible, unlike many shows about science, when assessing these claims, they actually showed people reading papers and looking at tables of numbers rather than just standing in a white coat fiddling with test tubes.

However, I did find myself getting annoyed at a few things in the show. Like all programmes with even the most tangential relation to science, they performed their own small 'experiment' to demonstrate some of the findings they were talking about. And just like all programmes that do this, the experiment was entirely useless, when it could very easily have been a lot better.

The experiment was done in order to demonstrate the finding that name-brand painkillers have been found to be more effective at managing pain than cheaper generic brands. This is a fascinating bit of research that demonstrates the power of the placebo effect by showing the additional benefit afforded a flashier looking product over its medicinally identical but less well packaged equivalent.

They did this by getting 5 rugby players to see how long they could hold their hand in a bucket of ice, first after having taken what they thought was Nurofen, and second, after having had what they though was some own-brand ibuprofen. Their 'study' gave the expected result: that they could endure the cold for longer after they'd had what appeared to be a branded painkiller (it turned out they had taken the same pills both times).

However, their study really didn't show anything. For a start, they had a meaninglessly tiny sample, but more importantly, they each went through the two conditions in the same order. By the time they put their hands in the ice the second time, their hands probably still hurt from the first time, so of course they wouldn't last as long. There are many other more subtle order effects too. For example, in the first trial, they might have tried harder, at least partly out of a desire to beat the other subjects. The second time, there would be less of that feeling of competition and resolution.

I understand that certain concessions have to be made to make a programme watchable - nobody would sit through an hour of scientists sitting around designing a counterbalancing method to properly randomise their conditions or a 6-part series that consists entirely of watching people punching endless numbers into SPSS. However, this 'experiment' could have been made about 100% better if they'd just got another 5 subjects and got them to do the two conditions the other way around. Obviously it's not a study that would have been published in the Lancet, but at least the results could have been slightly meaningful. As it is, all they showed is that if you put your hand in a load of ice twice, you'll probably keep it there longer the first time.

In a way, the fact they bolstered their message with a meaningless bit of filler about some rugby players and a bucket of ice is irrelevant - the actual research that they were supporting already exists, they were just illustrating it. But I don't see the point of scrimping on that last little bit of detail that would have made it so much more useful. Especially given that the central idea of the show is that evidence and the scientific method is important.

More Bad Science

If you have already read Ben Goldacre's book, Bad Science, head over to his blog where he has posted up a whole new chapter that wasn't in the first edition. Obviously, if you haven't already read it, get it and do.

The reason for the chapter's exclusion from the first pressing is that its subject is Matthias Rath, a vitamin pill pseudo-scientist whose marketing of a multi-vitamin 'cure for AIDS' in South Africa has had demonstrable and unequivocally tragic effects. At the time of the book's original publication, legal proceedings were going ahead for a libel case that Rath had brought against Ben Goldacre personally, and against the Guardian, for criticising his practices in his column.

Now that the case has been dropped, signalling a great win for common sense, free speech and science, Goldacre has been able to publish his true thoughts on the situation. As he points out, after preparations for legal proceedings, "I now know more about Matthias Rath than almost any other person alive". And this chapters demonstrates that.

This should be read by anyone who asks what's the harm of a little bit of alternative medicine or herbal quackery.

Kreed Kafer, please

So what has Derek Acorah been up to since his retirement from Most Haunted in the aftermath the Kreed Kafer incident? Well, it turns out he has a new self titled talking-to-the-dead show on one of the more obscure Sky channels.

It really is worth watching. For anyone who has only seen him shouting incoherently in dramatic night-vision and getting violent towards Yvette Fielding while "possessed", it will be a revelation to see him in a totally pink studio trying to work out why someone's pet rabbit is restless by talking over his shoulder to his invisible friend, Sam.

However, despite his woefully underwhelming cold reading and his hot reading, easily distinguishable by it's relative level of detail, the thing that really gets to me the most about his act is his merciless butchery of the English language.

The extent of this can not merely be described, so I have transcribed, word for word, an example from an episode that was on the other day. The following is said while addressing the owner of a pendant he is holding:

"Can I say to you, please, you would have knowledge of certain knowledge, but can I say to you, please, would I be correct, please, in my feelings of a person that would have been in - uh uh - connection with this at some time, would have come over to the world of spirit very fast?"

Did you get that?

To Answer Your Questions - Part 3

Part 3 of my answers to christiananswers.net's 44 Questions for the Yet-to-be-a-Believer. Part 1 and part 2 can be found elsewhere on my blog.

10. From whence comes humanity's universal moral sense?

The idea that religion is a useful source of morals is a common one. It is one of the few things that even many otherwise godless people are able to say in favour of religion. That whatever its flaws, the Bible is a useful moral guidebook is one of the most pervasive myths about religion's place in society. But it is a myth. I argue that wherever our moral sense does come from, it is certainly not from Christianity, or any religion.

For all the good messages the Bible gives ("Thou shalt not kill" etc) there are a good number of rules that vary between the vaguely ridiculous and the downright stupid. 1 Corinthians 11:14 tells us men must not have long hair; 1 Samuel 15:2-3 tells us that it is OK to kill men, women and children in the capture of a town; 1 Kings 22:21-22 tells us it is fine to lie if God tells us to; Exodus 31:13-15 tells us in no uncertain terms that anyone who works on the sabbath should be put to death; and Genesis 20:12 talks without criticism about Abraham's marriage to his sister.

And God hardly sets a good example. Between indiscriminately killing 3000 of his people in the Egyptian dessert for worshipping false idols to handing over the reins of Job's life, and those of this family, to Satan just to prove a point, God is the very image of a petty, capricious tyrant.

In general, modern Christians do not stone to death those who work on the sabbath, or marry their siblings, or keep slaves (as is approved throughout the Bible). The very fact that Christians are able to see past the stupid, nonsensical rules that fill the Bible's pages, and take note only of the sensible ones, shows that there is a moral sense inherent in us, apart from our religious upbringing. If our moral sense truly came from religion, then why shouldn't we take Lot's example and give our virgin daughters over to a rabble of men to be raped (Genesis 19:8)? Or sleep with them ourselves (Genesis 31-36)? The answer is simple: our moral sense does not come from the Bible.

So where do our morals come from? Well, there is a lot of compelling evidence that our modern moralistic and societal natures are evolved in the same way our physical attributes are. Many "human" societal conventions such as co-operation and even altruism have been observed in other animals, including those not closely evolutionarily related to us, such as ants. This implies that such social constructs are commonly evolved by species for whom it is useful to live and work together.

While these other animals may not exhibit exactly what we might subjectively call morals, it is certainly plausible to suggest that these tendencies of other social animals to adapt their behaviour to better accommodate living in proximity with others could be seen as sort of proto-morals. In any case, evolution is certainly plausible enough to reject any religious basis for the existence of a moral sense.

11. If man is nothing but the random arrangement of molecules, what motivates you to care and to live honorably in the world?

First, I should point out that calling man "nothing but the random arrangement of molecules" is something of a simplification of the scientific position on life and looks suspiciously like a deliberate strawman to attempt to invalidate the argument.

However, the answer to this question is really the same as the last part of the answer to number 10. Humans have evolved an in-built need to care and live honourably among our fellow humans. It is in-built because it is by these methods that our evolutionary ancesters were able to enjoy favour in society, find friends, find mates and generally make life easier for themselves. An individual incapable of showing care for anyone else would be snubbed by their group and lose the benefits of being part of the crowd, such as group hunting and the availablity of potential mates.

The assumption in the question is that it is only through acknowledgement of God that there is a reason to live a caring life. However, let's look at the flipside of that assumption: that a Christian, to whom, hyperthetically, it were proven there were no God, would immediately stop caring for other humans. This is clearly not the case as people with no belief in any higher power are able to lead just as caring lives as religious people as indeed people with beliefs in different gods are able to be just as caring as Christians.

The worst thing about arguments like this is that they remove people's autonomy. By creating a belief that our most basic and noble human traits are inextricably linked to a belief in God, we can deny ourselves credit for the wonderful things we do, as individuals and as a race.

Academic Freedom

I mentioned, in a post a little while ago, the debate around so-called "academic freedom". This is the new tactic that the creationist and intelligent design movements are using to try to sneak their own brands of faith-based dogma into the science classrooms of America, since previous attempts have failed.

Steven Novella has posted a very thorough and clear article on the subject on Skepticblog. I would urge anyone to go and read it, as it sums up this potentially worrying situation in more detail than I could.

Speaking of the Daily Mail...

I wrote a couple of weeks ago about the Daily Mail's habit of grossly sensationalising health reporting by crudely dividing all foods, objects and activities into those that cure or cause cancer.

However, their love of hyperbole extends past their health pages and even past their news. Into their film reviews.

Below is a screenshot from Rotten Tomatoes showing an aggregated list of reviews for the new film Watchmen. The concensus among reviewers seems to be that it's an excellently made film, but that its main flaw is that it will be difficult to understand for those unfamilliar with the graphic novel on which it is based.

Note the opinion of the Daily Mail's Christopher Tookey:

So, no over-reactions there, then.

Do Scientists Dream of Black Sheep?

Recently Tom Harkin, a US senator who founded the National Center of Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM), proclaimed that the Center had failed at one of its aims:

One of the purposes of this center was to investigate and validate alternative approaches. Quite frankly, I must say publicly that it has fallen short. I think quite frankly that in this center and in the office previously before it, most of its focus has been on disproving things rather than seeking out and approving.

Now, this statement betrays a very fundamental lack of understanding of the most basic tenets of science. The idea of science is to try to falsify things. By complaining that this is what has been done, Harkin is displaying the true dishonest reasons for the Center's existence.

This is a complaint that can be heard a lot among pseudo-scientists or paranormal practitioners. In a documentary shown on Channel 5 last year, Derek Ogilvie, the Baby Psychic, made a similar complaint after failing a test set up by James Randi (with a protocol to which he had unreservedly agreed beforehand, I might add). Ogilvie laments, "these tests are built for people to fail," as though he is revealing the methods of a crooked coconut shy.

Of course the truth is he is right. All scientific tests are built to be failed, because it is by these tests that something can be learnt. Science isn't designed to confirm whatever beliefs or biases are previously held by the tester, it is designed to find out whether a hypothesis is true; whether it conforms to reality. If a hypothesis fails a test that was designed to be failed, then it can't have been true. Whereas if a hypothesis passes a test you already knew it would pass, you have learnt nothing.

Allow me to illustrate this with a parable. Imagine two men go for a walk. One of them is a sceptical scientist, let's call him Karl (after Karl Popper). The other is a homeopath, let's call him Tom (after Mr. Harkin).

Our two men both see a white sheep in a field (for some reason, neither has seen a sheep before, but let's not worry about why that might be). Having seen this sheep, both of them formulate a sheep-based hypothesis - that all sheep are white - and they both decide to go their separate ways to test this.

Tom, our alternative medicine practitioner, wanders around looking for other white sheep, and with each one feels more confident about his position. He knows where he can find more white sheep, so he goes and looks at those, and by doing so further bolsters up his position in his mind.

Karl, on the other hand, heads off to unknown places looking around with genuine curiosity to see if there are any examples of sheep that are not white. Though he may see many white sheep, he keeps in mind that every new example he sees does not tell him anything new. He already knows white sheep exist, so seeing another white sheep means nothing. Eventually, he comes across a field wherein a black sheep quietly grazes.

Karl has disproved his hypothesis. Not all sheep are white. He now knows more than Tom. While Tom is confidently giving talks on his theory and backing himself up with hundreds of examples of white sheep, Karl has discovered that his original hypothesis was not true. He is now able to ditch it and come up with a new hypothesis that better matches reality, and start testing that.

By setting out to falsify their hypotheses, rather than confirm them, scientists are able to learn more about the world. Creationists, CAM proponents and pseudo-scientists look for confirming evidence and ignore or reject any evidence that contradicts their position. In this way, they leave themselves in the dark about the truth.

God's Love - The Vatican and Rape

The Vatican has officially defended a Brazilian Bishop who ex-communicated the doctors and mother of a 9 year old girl for allowing her an abortion after she conceived twins following alleged sexual abuse by her step-father.

Cardinal Re, of the Vatican, has said that, although it was a "sad case", the girl's would-be children "had the right to live" and that "the attack on the Brazilian Church is unjustified."

To me, the Catholic position on abortion in these cases seems nonsensical. Their argument seems to be that any conception is the perfect will of omnipotent God and that it is not our place, as imperfect humans, to divert its natural course by stopping the resulting birth from taking place.

Firstly, if we imperfect humans are able to override the will of God then he can't be very omnipotent. But more importantly, this logic implies that whatever act brought about the conception was also God's will.

Pre-marital sex is wrong, we're told, but if that sex leads to conception, it was God's will. Does this mean that in certain cases, pre-marital sex is actually right? Or can that only be determined retrospectively conception results. What if that pregnancy naturally self-terminates? Was it wrong again?

This leads to this present case. If any conception is sacred, does this mean that this poor 9-year-old's alleged rape was the will of God? Is the Catholic church actually confirming that God sanctions rape in some cases? Or worse, he orders it?

Of course this is a point where the theological trump card, "God works in mysterious ways" can be played. But if those mysterious ways involve the molestation of children, the supposed benefits of this belief system start to look rather thin on the ground.

Although, of course, that has nothing to do with the veracity of the existence of God. He could exist and be a vicious, baby-raping tyrant. In fact that would fit in rather nicely with his Old Testament persona. Not so well with the "God is love" mantra, though.

Need a new religion?

Are you bored of other faiths? Do you find cassocks unflattering? Do yarmulkes mess up your hair? Do you really love bacon and shellfish? Do you find it a little odd that your sole purpose in life should be to worship a being who created you specifically so that he had some people to worship him? Are you on Facebook?

Well then, allow me to present my new alternative: Metal is our Religion.

Derren Brown on scepticism

I've been a huge fan of Derren Brown since he first appeared on Channel 4 with a series of specials showcasing some of his excellent mentalism effects. His talent for the requisite skills of his art are perfectly set off by his magicians' persona, which artfully flits between the dramatic, the ironically smug and the genuinely humble.

My appreciation for his magic acts formed before my implicit, background belief in God was rejected and long before I had any concept of what has become known (in America, at least) as the sceptic (well, skeptic) movement. Therefore, I was pleased to discover when I read his book, Tricks of the Mind, that Derren Brown's views matched my own newly formed scepticism.

In a recent post on his blog, Derren excellently discribes his positions on religion, alternative medicine and belief in general. It's worth a read, because he's a very engaging writer, and if you enjoy the post, I'd certainly recommend his book.

The Daily Mail's Cancer Fetish

After reading that Facebook causes cancer in the pages of that esteemed journal of fear, the Daily Mail, I decided to have a look through their archives for some other health advice. As Ben Goldacre has frequently observed, the Mail has taken upon themselves a task befitting some mythical inmate of Hades: to divide all inanimate objects into the categories of either causing or curing cancer.

By entering cancer into their website search box, I realised just how true that was. Below are a few things from the first few pages of results (bear in mind there were 200 pages of results just in the health section, i.e not including news of Jade Goody etc).

The following supposedly cause, or adversely affect, cancer:

Tibolone (menopause drug)
HRT
Green Tea
Smoking Cannabis
Soup
Mouthwash
The Contraceptive Pill
Wine
Caffeine
Beer and Wine
Talcum Powder
Stress
Being tall
Vitamin E
Wine again
Being Black
Wine again
Bacon, Ham, Sausages, Salt & Alcohol
Binge Drinking

The following are claimed to prevent, treat or cure cancer:

Walking
Sex
Measles
Tea
Fasting
Eating slowly
HRT
Asperin
Exercise (but only with at least 7 hours sleep)
Shark Blood
Red Wine
Circumcision
Walking again
Migraines
Salsa Dancing
Allergies
Red Wine
Red Wine again
Red Wine again
Herbal Tea
Beer
Chocolate

The really worrying thing is how many items are repeated in both lists. I don't know how Daily Mail readers ever bring themselves to leave their houses; it must be a scary world for them. Although, as we've read in the Facebook article, staying inside causes cancer. Especially if you have to eat anything except chocolate. So maybe outside is the safest place to be. Unless you're tall or black, of course, in which case there probably isn't any hope anyway.

Silly as all this is, there are serious consequences of this kind of over-extrapolated, unscientific sensationalism. First, people who buy into these stories will end up living their lives confused and scared, consciously avoiding many foods and activities that are perfectly harmless because they've read an ungrounded assertion in a newspaper that it will kill them.

Far more importantly than that, though, stories like this erode and undermine the public understanding of science. A constant stream of contradictory stories about whether wine is really good for you or not leads people to believe that scientists don't know what they're doing. The whole process of science is made to look like arbitrary guess work. It becomes obvious to wonder, if scientists can't make up their minds about wine, coundn't they be equally confused about vaccines or global warming? Once the perception of scientists and their work is thus reduced in the public mind, anybody's opinion, no matter how ill-founded, can be seen as just as valid as a scientific theory. Why shouldn't Jeni Barnett dislike MMR without knowing what's in it? Scientists probably don't know much more, right?

Expelled: And Rightly So

Academic Freedom is a new favourite in creationist camps. The term certainly sounds like an admirable concept, but in truth this movement is a subtle attempt to lower academic standards in order to enable creationism to sneak into science classes. It is nothing but a PR move, a cunning rebranding of a real debate.

Under the banner of academic freedom, institutions are criticised for not allowing open debate between evolution and intelligent design. It is claimed that there are substantial flaws in the theory of evolution that intelligent design could be able to answer. However, everyone's favourite shadowy cabal, the scientists, are routinely destroying the careers of anyone who asks the justified question of whether the world has a designer, so that their ficticious fancy, evilution, can be propogated for some self-serving reason that nobody has deigned to tell us yet.

This was the premise of Ben Stein's artless propaganda-fest, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. This documentary (is it too cheap to call it a cock-umentary? Probably) tenaciously painted a picture of hard working academic after hard working academic being fired, ostracised and ridiculed for bringing up the possibility of design in front of their brainwashed darwinist peers. The film claims there is a debate to be had and the evolutionists aren't engaging with it, they're just expelling those who disagree with them.

Now, it has been demonstrated beyond any doubt that many of the 'expulsions' in the film were horribly exaggerated or simply made up. However, if any expulsions of this type have occured, I would argue they were deserved. Contrary to what these film makers, and the ID movement, would have us believe, the debate is not being stifled. The debate has already happened and been won. Intelligent design is not a valid theory.

The view that the world was created by a god is not a plucky, new, revolutionary idea, it has been the default position since as far back as history can tell us. It is only in the last couple of centuries that science has been able to show the errors of that position and present alternatives. Creationism has been evaluated and has been rightly discarded. It bears none of the necessary marks of a science: it is not observable, it is not testable, it is not falsifiable and it cannot make predictions. It is simply not helpful. Creationism is incompatible with science and therefore anyone who proposes an intelligent design explanation clearly does not understand the scientific position and should not be a scientist.

Let's say a hypothetical man were fired from a metaphorical cheese factory for proposing that they should sell cheese made from shit. He could complain that he had been unfairly dismissed without his ideas having been given a fair hearing. However, the factory owners know enough about cheese and shit not to need this worker to squat down in the board room and give them a specimin to try. From their experience in the dairy industry, they know that however long you churn shit, it will never turn into cheese. And even if it did, it wouldn't matter because nobody would want to eat it. Indeed, they would be justifiably worried about having someone working for them that evidently had such little understanding of the way cheese, and indeed shit, works.

In a round-about analogy sort of way, the ID-proposing biologist is very much like our shitty cheese eating employee. Though he may complain at the unfairness of the scientific world's apparent refusal to evaluate his ideas, the truth is that the debate has already moved on and any scientist who can't recognise that deserves to be expelled.

Happy Birthday Darwin

So today, we wish Charles Darwin a happy birthday and remember what he did for the furtherment of our understanding of biology. He was born on this day 200 years ago, and published his most important work, Origin of Species, 150 years ago - not on this day though, he was probably too busy opening presents and playing on the bouncy castle.

Contrary to the beliefs of many a creationist (at least I'd like to think it's only creationists and not also some of the more 'moderate' christians), Darwin Day is not an atheist Christmas. Darwin has not been deified and is not seen as any sort of god of some paradoxical atheist religion. The frequency with which it is possible to see claims to the contrary on the internet is a tribute to the popularity of this strawman delusion among the rationally challenged. Perhaps I am mistaken, however on the right hand side of this page is a list of blogs I read regularly, most of which are among the most godless, scientific and sceptical on the internet, and I have never read a word on any of them that I consider evidence that anybody - scientists or atheists - hold Darwin as anything more than an admirable scientist who made a great discovery.

However, one of the many strategies of the creationist movement is to rebrand concepts to twist their meanings to their own ends. 'Creationism' becomes 'creation science', 'creation science' becomes 'intelligent design', the lowering of scholarly standards to allow intelligent design into science classes becomes 'academic freedom'. These terms they have coined are intentionally misleading and untruthful - creation science has nothing to do with science and academic freedom is merely a nice sounding name for a trojan horse attack on the standards of curriculum teaching. However, these changes of tack allow the opportunity for subtle new attacks on rationality in society.

Similarly they routinely dub evolutionists 'darwinists' (the term 'evolutionist' alone is bad enough since proponents of modern ideas of disease aren't termed 'germ theory-ists'). This label is misleading. It allows the continuation of the strawman misunderstanding that those who believe in evolution are members of a kind of sect based upon Darwin. It also gives the impression that evolutionary theory has not moved on since Darwin's Origin, thus making oft-debunked arguments based on Darwin's mistakes or, even more pathetic, his supposed death-bed conversion, all the more pursuasive to those without a decent understanding of the evidence.

Modern evolutionists (we apparently still need this label, since it is still not the default position it should be) respect Darwin as physicists respect Newton. He was a great mind who authored a significant breakthrough in biology. He is, rightly, celebrated as such.

So raise a glass and put on a party hat (or not) and enjoy Darwin Day.