A New Hope?

I was among the many millions of people who tuned in yesterday to witness the historic inauguration of the 44th president of the U.S.A.. It was as superb a speech as I had come to expect from Obama, and it was nice to see and hear true oratory art return to what is arguably the highest public office in the world.

But of course it is the content of the speech that truly matters, and here again he did not disappoint. Again he made history (to the best of my knowledge) by becoming the first president to acknowledge the existence and importance of atheists and agnostics in their inaugural speech. Even better than this, however, was the promise that science would be restored to its rightful place; the scientific community had been given promises along those lines throughout the campaign - and it was truly gratifying to see it given such prominence.

The overwhelming theme of the speech, however, had a distinct secular humanist feel, one of shared responsibility and a positive belief in society's ability to effect change.

The future looks, despite the present dark, a lot brighter than it has for some time. Thank you to every American who chose hope over fear.

A year of my Sceptical I

Well here we are, one year to the day since the birth of this blog. A lot has happened in that time, and all in all I'm pleased with the result; I remember the first excitement of getting a comment from someone with whom I'd never had any prior contact. In fact, I'd like to say thank you here to everyone who has commented on this blog over the last twelve months. There aren't many of you, it's true, but I am grateful for every word. In particular that first commenter, who has remained a regular reader throughout the short life of this blog - Andrew of WongaBlog. Thanks for sticking with me!

I was aiming to get 100 entries up by today, but sadly I have missed this target by just a few posts. Not that it matters, of course - and I'll be passing this entirely arbitrary waypoint in the very near future. I have managed to meet my one entry per week target with only two exceptions thus far, which I am very pleased with.

Anyway, to mark this occasion I've been looking back through the archives from this past year, and here I present a few of my choice highlights:

Add pinch of salt before swallowing whole
This was the subject which first sparked my desire to start a sceptically-themed blog. It turned into something of an essay, which I have tried to avoid in more recent months - certainly without use of pictures. It is an examination of a piece of propaganda on YouTube which was being put about by supporters of Ron Paul in the run-up to the primaries. I still look on it as one of the better pieces of in-depth sceptical analysis to have appeared on this blog.

A Cautionary Tale
This was a big moment for me. A very short entry just to bring Messers Fry & Laurie to my reader's attention became that little bit more special when it was linked from Skepchick. It's still awesome.

The Pagan Atheist
My post finally explaining my position on mixing paganism with atheism. Quite a popular hit on google since, it seems, and one of my better entries.

Fictional Sceptics in Pop Culture
In the first of what has become a series of posts on the subject, I discuss the importance of fictional representatives of scepticism, particularly in sitcoms - in which they are everyday people who just happen to have a rational outlook.

The importance of antidote
Here I wax verbose about the links between two of my favourite subjects: scepticism, and philosophy as therapy. It's hardly surprising the subject was on my mind, given that the latter formed a significant part of my MA dissertation.

Home Turf and Away Turf
A pair of entries on the relationship between science and religion, which got a significant number of comments between them.

The Life, Death and Legacy of Deep Throat
One of my better recent entries, this one examines the character of Deep Throat, the informant who leaked Watergate to the press. His significance for scepticism is greater than one might expect.

Still in the pipeline at the moment are posts about the links between scepticism and idealism, an examination of Obama from a rational perspective, and of course the second part of my look at Star Trek.

In the meantime, thank you again for reading my little blog - I hope it was as good a use of your time as it has been of mine.

MP ignorant, offensive

MP brands dyslexia a 'fiction'

I accept that Graham Stringer MP has the best interests of children at heart, and wants to improve standards of education by introducing a system of synthetic phonics, something that has show promise in trials in Scotland. I'm all for that.

But to do this by attacking dyslexia as nothing but a myth is misinformed, misguided, and wrong. There have been studies conducted using FMRI which apparently show clear evidence of differences in physiology (referenced here); the evidence is not yet incontrovertible, by any means, but it is far from being a myth.

Mr Stringer needs to shut the hell up and listen to the evidence before shooting his mouth off and dismissing a troubling condition which affects millions of people. There are better ways to promote more efficient teaching methods - the trials speak for themselves in this regard. If there are funding issues, you can't just call a costly condition a myth and divert its section of the budget. Yes it's a simple solution to a complex problem, but that's not always what we need. In fact, it's quite rare that that would suffice.

Fictional Sceptics #6: Star Trek (part 1)

Star Trek is one of the best-realised and most popular science fiction universes in the history of the genre. It is also fertile ground for musings on the subject of scepticism in its content; so fertile, in fact, that I've decided to give over more than the usual solitary entry to the discussion thereof.

In this, the first part, I want to focus on the secular humanism that can be seen in virtually every episode of both the original series (TOS) and the Next Generation (TNG). As noted in this thread on the Richard Dawkins forum, atheism and secularism is often portrayed as amoral; one of the best arguments against this (in the world of fiction anyway) is the Star Trek of Gene Roddenberry*.

If anything, the Star Trek morality is too prominent much of the time, and can make for some rather cheesy (some even tedious) moments of moralising. Wherever one stands on this issue, it's hard if not impossible to make a case that there is no moral message in Star Trek; and equally hard to make a case that the morality that is there is religious in origin. Indeed, back in the early days, it was quite the controversy that there wasn't a chaplain of any kind on board the Enterprise - despite the network executives' attempts to crowbar one in, Roddenberry was adamant.

What is also worth remembering is the radically progressive nature of TOS when it first aired. Not only were men and women portrayed working side by side as equals, but people of different races also. In fact, a previous draft of the proposal to the network for the show had Majel Barrett (later Roddenberry's wife) in the role of second-in-command. While this was more radical than the network could accept at the time, the version that finally aired was certainly still very progressive for its time.

This entry is not intended as an exhaustive essay on humanist morality in Star Trek; for more details on this fascinating subject, see this interview with Gene Roddenberry for The Humanist. Try to ignore the occasional typo or spellcheck error (though I have to say, "Captain Piracy" is one of the better ones I've ever seen). I also recommend the recent Point of Inquiry interview with Tom Flynn.

Tune in next time when I'll be discussing the numinous aspects of Star Trek, and how it shows brilliantly that secular doesn't mean soulless (except perhaps in the literal sense).

* Once Rick Berman took over, coming into the series of Deep Space Nine and Voyager, there is a noticeable trend of greater accommodation for the supernatural, religion, and things that cannot be explained by science. The Bajorans (particularly the crazy weirdness they had going on with Sisko) and Chakotay's Native American spiritualism are the obvious examples. While not intrinsically a bad thing, the secular messages took a substantial nose-dive with the departure of Roddenberry.

Subtext and subterfuge

Recently in my travels and travails around the city of Wolverhampton, I came across a substantially large advertisement which looked a little like this:

Which I thought was interesting. Beyond the obvious point being made, the implication that belief in a god and belief in Santa Claus were comparable struck me as unusual in what is a relatively mainstream commercial context. My first thought was that you wouldn't get that in the U.S., at least not without tremendous uproar. Perhaps I'm wrong though - I welcome any comments on the matter.

What was more interesting was the logo in the corner, showing that it was an advert for the Prince's Trust. The Prince (of Wales) isn't exactly well known for his liberal views on anything other than the barmier portions of pseudoscience, so this was a surprise. Perhaps, being simply the founder and figurehead of the organisation, he remains unaware of this particular campaign. Again, I could easily be wrong on this score.

What this allows me to do, however, is mention the charity's work itself. The Prince's Trust has a commendable mission of supporting young people in business and personal development, but I don't intend to give them any money any time soon - and not just because I'm penniless.

Firstly, some of their top dogs (or fat cats) are earning in excess of £80,000 per year. That's too much, even for those at the top, considering the organisation is set up purely for the benefit of young people looking to better themselves. Well, as long as the majority of its income goes on that, I guess it's not so bad, right? Right. Sadly this is not the case. The figures from the 2006/7 financial year are reported as follows on the Wikipedia page:

So from a total income of nearly £51 million, less than £21 million was spent on directly helping young people.

Of course, charities need administration/promotion/etc costs. But 40% of income being spent on the charity's target is simply not good enough.

I cannot deny that the Trust does good work, nor indeed that their advertising caught my eye on this occasion; but it's not a charity I intend to patronise.

Dog bites man

The sexual-liberal community is apparently up in arms about the Pope's latest comments on gender theory. I, however, welcome this news because it contributes further to the exposition of the Pope as a right-wing, conservative religious crazy person. Yes, his remarks are offensive and ignorant; but they should not be surprising.

It is quite telling that the majority of negative comments in the article come from Christian sources. It is my fond hope that this trend continues, and the religious right does more to marginalise itself in the eyes of society. I look forward to the day when "Pope spews yet more hateful ignorant pigshit" is not news.

The Life, Death and Legacy of Deep Throat

Possibly the most famous informant since Judas, the man known until just three years ago only as "Deep Throat", has died, aged 95. There are a few reasons for mentioning this here.

Firstly, he is an interesting figure for sceptics - he contributed one of the greatest amounts of fuel to the fire of the conspiracy theory culture that any one person has managed. It finally proved, in the eyes of many, that the government cannot be trusted; that there really are conspiracies and cover-ups at the highest levels of government.

Despite this being a perfectly valid point, however, what is rarely if ever taken into account by conspiracy nuts theorists is that not only do conspiracies and cover-ups happen, but so does whistleblowing. Compared to some conspiracy theories, the Watergate scandal was relatively small in terms of how many people knew the truth; and yet someone spoke up. This is a perfect demonstration of one of the mainstays of arguing against conspiracies - the whistleblower argument. So not only did Deep Throat provide conspiracy theorists with the perfect proof, he also provided the perfect counter-argument.

The second thing I find interesting about Mark Felt is his expressed misgivings about what he did; apparently he felt guilty about "betraying his FBI badge". Some critics agree with this assessment and brand him a traitor for turning on the Commander in Chief - a strange assessment considering the FBI is not a military organisation but a civilian one. Either way, I disagree with his critics and argue rather that he upheld his oath as a federal employee; the oath he took bound him to uphold the constitution, not to defend the president.

Of course, it's not as simple as that. As associate director of the FBI, he was also supposed to protect the information relating to the investigation, and send it through the correct channels. This is the obligation he violated, and surely the source of his moral discomfort. What he did, though, fulfilled the spirit of his role rather than the by-the-letter procedure thereof.

Here comes the quick ethical philosophy section, because me being me I find it hard to resist. Mark Felt suffered a moral dilemma, which is what happens when one or more roles in which you sees yourself oblige you to take two conflicting courses of action. In this case, he was obliged to follow procedure, and also to see that justice was done. Normally these two obligations would not conflict - and indeed the theory is that they are more or less synonymous. However, with regards to the Watergate scandal, the procedure was blocked, hindered, and/or corrupt - giving rise to the dilemma.

I say he did the right thing. He chose principle over procedure, and in exposing the Nixon administration's misdeeds, he carried out the most important role of his position. It was, after all, an important founding tenet of the constitution that nobody would be above the law; his obligation to defend and enact this principle overrode his obligation to follow Bureau procedure. What's more interesting than the whole Watergate débacle is his later conviction (and pardon) for approving illegal raids. That has echoes in recent legislation, and involves arguments about the right to privacy and the measures necessary to combat terrorism.

That will have to wait for another day and another blog entry. For now, it is enough to remember the man known for over thirty years only as Deep Throat, and what he did. I only hope that his Alzheimer's provided him some degree of moral peace in his final years, and he died free of torment.

Fictional Sceptics #5: Questionable Content

A very brief Fictional Sceptics post today, because this is something which has only just become apparent to me and there's not a lot to say on the matter.

You may or may not be familiar with the webcomic Questionable Content, drawn by Jeph Jacques. It's a usually-amusing serial comic about a bunch of twenty-somethings, most of whom have some pretty messed up issues. You know, the usual. It's not my favourite webcomic, certainly, but it's usually entertaining enough.

Today, it climbed up a little more in my estimations by having one of the characters fly off into a rant about metaphysical beliefs and evidence. It may not be much, but it's nice to see the sceptical mindset portrayed as another facet of an everyday person's persona.

It's a shame it had to invoke the clichéd "strict religious upbringing" as the cause of the character's scepticism, but it is true that many sceptics have that in their past. Certainly not all, however - I'm pleased to say I'm part of the exception.

So thanks, Jeph. I'm looking forward to seeing more of this aspect of Penelope's personality.

Brief update

Apologies for not writing for a while - I think this is the longest I've gone without uploading a new entry. There's a lot going on at the moment, and most of it is less than enjoyable - this means that updates here are likely to continue to be sporadic for a while. I'll write when I can, but my at-least-one-post-a-week aim might be ambitious.

In the meantime, however, I thought I'd inform you of an interesting development which is in the pipeline. As you may well be aware, London Skeptics in the Pub has been a roaring success, particularly in the last year or so. The sister event in Leicester is also doing well, with speakers booked for most of the coming year and attendance at a decent level. These two groups may be soon joined by a third - one in Birmingham. This is pretty great news for me, as I now live a stone's throw away in Wolverhampton - so naturally I'd love to see it get off the ground.

The main organiser at the moment is none other than Jon Donni, of BadPsychics fame/infamy. There's not yet a website set up, as this is still an idea being tested for feasibility. If you think you'd be interested in attending regular meet-ups with fellow skeptics in Birmingham, then head over to the FarceBook group and put your name down.

Hopefully you'll hear from me again soon - at least one post a week is still the aim - but don't be surprised if I'm a little quiet for a while. I'm still around, the blog is still active, so please be patient with me.