TheirSpace

No longer are atheists permitted to communicate with each other in great numbers on "social networking" site MySpace. After repeated lobbying from Christian groups, it seems MySpace has deleted the Atheist and Agnostic Group - because the poor believers find it offensive.

I'm having a hard time not simply swearing my fingers off at this point, so to save you from such an embarrassing display, I'll shoot some links at you instead:

The discussion on Richard Dawkins' website.

The account of Brian Pesta, group founder.

The New Humanist breaks the story.

I'm considering how to respond to this; I am sorely tempted to delete my account (I never use it anyway) - but this would have to be done in such a way as to send a message about why I was doing so. If MySpace is attempting to become a home to intolerant religious nutjobs, I say let them have their site.

Just another reason to hate Rupert the Bloody and boycott everything he owns.

Blink 2: the 10% myth

It's one of the more popular misconceptions that humans only use ten per cent of their brain; it's used in advertising, casual remarks and even comedy.

It seems to have arisen out of the idea that only 10% of our brain is active at any given time. This does not mean that there is 90% of the human brain that goes entirely unused - this is a myth. It is simply false.

Here's a pretty great page explaining everything you need to know about the 10% myth.

Damn heathens...

So there are apparently some Christian Scots who are all up in arms about a gathering of the enemy on their home turf: "Scottish pagan gathering spells worry for some Christians".

Without getting into petty squabblings which in my opinion would end quite nicely with the phrase "we were here first" from the pagan camp, what could be wrong with this communal gathering? I may be biased (being sympathetic to the pagan cause as those who know me well will attest), but in my experience those of a pagan faith are more friendly and open-minded than those of a more "mainstream" religion. Too open-minded, sometimes - to the point that their reason deserts them and they end up believing that a stick waved in a particular way at a particular time can cure their ills; but open-minded nonetheless. Even where they are more dogmatic, in their core beliefs regarding the unity and harmony of the world, there are more beneficial ideas than you might find in the largely anthropocentric religions widespread today.

The Rev Graham Swanson of Elgin Baptist Church, told the newspaper: "I have grave concerns and reservations about this event taking place. As a Christian I believe the Bible warns us about dabbling in such things as witchcraft."

But has he ever stopped to wonder why the Bible says that? It's not because God said "witchcraft" was bad - it's because that's what Christianity's rivals were doing when it was written. It's quite astounding that we are today still exposed to anti-pagan propaganda that has been put forward by Christianity for thousands of years - possibly the most effective campaign of misinformation in the history of humanity.

As a personal note, I'll admit that paganism is my sacred calf - although I'm a practicing and fervent sceptic, I happily immerse myself in the mythology of paganism (Nordic by preference). This is not to say that I head off to Stonehenge and dance naked when it's Solstice time - or even believe in the gods; it's rather a way of defining myself. I may post about this in more detail some other time - it requires some serious thought to get my ideas in order on this.

So, briefly back to the topic at hand, why might one be tempted to support a pagan gathering rather than a Christian one as such? I think that there is a communal spirit to paganism that is not as commonly found in Christianity, and the best thing about it (to my mind) is that, despite being misguided on a great many things, paganism is a far more friendly way to spend your free time. For one thing, they are far less judgmental - and in my experience are far more likely to forgive than the Christians. Perhaps we should follow the Reverend's example and start protesting about Church picnics and such, claiming them to be gatherings of a sinister cult.

Tip of the laurel wreath to The New Humanist

Small victories...

"NHS Trusts 'reject homeopathy'".

This can only be good news - only 37% of the 132 primary care trusts investigated "still have contracts for homeopathic services and referrals are decreasing". Obviously this is not a knockout blow to the popular pseudoscience, but it's certainly better than nothing. To be honest I'm surprised the NHS are able to offer any homeopathy at all given its non-evidence-based nature and the NHS' famous funding problems.

It is based on the principle of treating like with like, so someone with an allergy who was using homeopathic medicines would attempt to beat it with an ultra-diluted dose of an agent that would cause the same symptoms.

But while patients often report that it makes them feel much better, clinical evidence that it works is lacking, and some scientists argue the solution is so diluted it does not contain any active ingredients at all.

The principle of treating like with like is without any sound scientific basis (at least the way in which it is done in homeopathy - vaccines work in a very different way). The success rate of homeopathy is based almost entirely on the placebo effect, magnified now by the belief in its success rate. As far as chemistry is concerned, the "most potent" (most diluted) homeopathic solutions (diluted 10 to the 60th power) are classified as pure water. Not many people know this, but homeopathy gets around this by claiming that the water retains some sort of spiritual imprint of the original "remedy" which is then transferred to the sugar pill over which it is poured.

Does that even sound likely? Does it even sound like science? And yet homeopathy relies on its practitioners being seen in the same way as real doctors and scientists are by the general public - far, far smarter than they are, and trustworthy. He's wearing a white coat - he must know what he's doing.

The NHS has certainly made the right call here - even if it's only done to cut costs, they've chosen the dead weight to throw overboard first. You have to prioritise treatments that are proven to work through exhaustive clinical trials and experimentation.

In the Blink of a Sceptical I

I've come up with an idea for a small featurette in this blog - occasional short, snappy posts blowing one widely-held belief or another out of the water by simple statement of the facts. In the blink of a sceptical eye, as it were.

Blink 1: Chameleons do not change colour to match their background. The colour change is instead a form of communication, often (but not exclusively) relating to mood. Recent research [via] has suggested that they can change colour for a mere millisecond - long enough to be understood by their fellows but not long enough to be spotted by predators.

Philosophy and scepticism

As a postgrad philosophy student and active sceptic, it's perhaps unsurprising that I'm interested in the areas of confluence between the two. In fact, I'm thinking of writing my dissertation on a similar subject, so this post is really just getting some thoughts out on the matter.

Wittgenstein had some very interesting ideas in his Philosophical Investigations regarding the purpose and study of philosophy. He regarded most foregoing work in the field to be misguided, built on the false assumption that one could approach philosophical questions such as "what is time?" in the same way as one approached questions like "what is the atomic weight of gold?". Because they are grammatically similar, one is fooled into approaching the task of answering them in the same way - by use of the scientific method. If this method is followed, he argued, we inevitably end up with meaningless metaphysics rather than philosophical "theories" on a par with those of science.

What, then, is the purpose of philosophy in Wittgenstein's mind? Certainly it had a vastly diminished role - no "meaning of life" stuff any more. Rather, it was to take on a "therapeutic" role, helping to elucidate the causes of philosophical confusion that arise from "the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of our language", as he put it.

The great strength of this is that it puts philosophy firmly into the real world, where it can do useful things - rather than argue over which account for or against the existence of a god is more convincing or logically coherent. Indeed, it becomes a companion of scepticism itself - examining assumptions and underlying premises that may prove fallacious. It remains, as it always has, a questioning discipline - and in itself this has always been parallel to the sceptical cause - but the subject of that questioning has shifted from the metaphysical to the linguistic, from questions about the nature of things to questions about our methods in discovering them.

Add pinch of salt before swallowing whole...

OK so this has been a long while coming, and was in fact the event that sparked the creation of this blog. Basically the story here is that I happened across a post on a personal blog I occasionally read, which urged anyone planning to vote (particularly for Obama) in the next US election to watch this video. I clicked through, and found something that struck me as most likely part conspiracy theory, part political propaganda. But, being a good sceptic, I wouldn't want to condemn it as such without actually looking into it - it concerned a subject I'd not heard much about before. But the alarm bells were ringing right from the start, before I even watched the video, because of the blurb at the side. It asks "What Presidential Candidates are part of the CFR?" and lists Fred Thompson, Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, Mitt Romney, Jim Gilmore, Newt Gingrich, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Edwards, Joe Biden, Chris Dodd and Bill Richardson. Then it asks "Who opposes the CFR?", under which there is but one name: Ron Paul.

Suspicions are confirmed when you click through to the authors other uploaded videos - every one of them is regarding Ron Paul, and (on brief inspection of the titles, at least) appear to all be in support of him. Now is it just me, or does that suggest that this video might be a bit of campaign material designed to frighten people off of voting for anyone except Ron Paul?

Start the clip rolling, and this hypothesis is supported by its use of Rage Against The Machine's track Wake Up - the perfect music for creating a mood of anti-establishment fear and, well, rage. I can imagine some of the quotes used in the introduction having the opposite effect with the use of a more soothing, optimistic-sounding backing track.

So now that we've established (to my own satisfaction at least) that the video is most likely an attempt to scare people into voting for anyone other than Ron Paul, we must consider the case that the video puts forward - it may be propaganda, but that doesn't mean it's entirely false. In fact, if it were entirely false it would fail as propaganda - its effectiveness lies in it being a subtle misrepresentation of the facts.

So what is the CFR? The Council on Foreign Relations is "an independent and nonpartisan foreign policy membership organization", apparently. But what does that mean? Well, it accepts both Democrats and Republicans as members and seeks to inform policymakers of the important facts in any given foreign policy situation. It is undoubtedly an important player in policy formation due to the large number of its members who have key roles in government, but its official position is that it does not take an active role.

It's naturally been the subject of many controversies (read - conspiracy theories), probably due to its secret and elite nature. Anywhere you get top dogs from both major parties, especially behind closed doors, there are going to be a lot of people who think the worst; this is probably due to the common perception, encouraged by the politicians themselves to a substantial degree, that the parties are in 100% opposition to each other - diametrically opposed in every way. Of course this is a gross oversimplification, and often you'll find members of one party who have more things in common with some from the other than with many from their own party. It's the inevitable product of having two huge umbrella parties supposedly representing the vast majority of a country of around 300 million people.

The message that this video is pushing is that the CFR is trying to undermine the sovereignty of the United States by creating a North American body like that of the European Union, encompassing the US, Canada and Mexico. The article they link to (right here) mentions nothing of such plans, but is clearly intended to be read in light of the video. What it actually argues is that, given the increasing power of non-national entities (corporations, terrorists, crime syndicates) in the increasingly globalised world, some of the older ideas about sovereignty are becoming outdated and in fact stand in the way of tackling global problems. It makes sense to me, but then I've studied this in a fair degree of detail. The quotes from Richard Haass in the video are perfectly reasonable, and are not arguing for the creation of a one-world government. He may believe that such a thing is necessary, but that is not what he is arguing there. (But wait, the music - he must be up to something!)

I'm sorry, but the speech by Stan Jones at around the 4-minute mark started well (he admitted it sounded like a conspiracy theory, something which conspiracy theorists don't often do in my admittedly limited experience), but as soon as he uttered the word "communist", it was over for me. He lost all credibility. Not only is it a lie (even those in the CFR who do wish to create a supreme world government have never to my knowledge said that it would be a communist one, and the very idea is preposterous given the clear impracticality of such a system [anyone remember the Soviet Union?]), but it's also one of those buzzwords you will often hear in predominantly right-wing US political speeches, designed to tap into the fear and hate that they so painstakingly created after the second world war.

The second point from that speech is the comparison with the European Union - particularly the constitution. Probably banking on the fact that his audience know little or nothing about the EU (why would they? It's a whole other continent), he claims that they implemented the constitution after it was "rejected by a few". Not true. It was rejected, and yes they have attempted to implement it via a treaty that does basically the same things as the constitution would have done, but with important opt-out clauses for member states. After this point, Jones' speech becomes even less believable - a single North-American currency, "the Amero", and a new constitution "modelled on the Soviet Union's Constitution". Even if the other charges are true, this last one is simply impossible - no constitutional adviser is going to draft a new constitution based on the Soviet model. It would be career suicide, because nobody would take them seriously ever again. I'd love to see where they're getting this stuff, as it's now supposedly "out in the open".

Basically, the CFR seems to be a forum for discussion of the big issues in foreign affairs. The reason it operates partly in secret is because if the big names are to be involved in hypotheticals, they need to be able to do it without press attention. What I think this conspiracy theory has done is say that because there are people in a room talking about something (some will be advocating, some putting the case against), and not letting anyone else know what exactly is being discussed, everyone in that room (4,300 life members at the moment apparently) are all in league together, bent on implementing this plan.

While there are certainly those in the CFR who would like to see a world government realised, it is a fallacious generalisation to infer that every member is an advocate of the same policy.

And never trust a video that ends with 30 seconds of a politician grinning.

Faith Fighter

I have tears in my eyes from laughing so hard at this game. Pick your fighter (Jesus, God, Mohammed, Buddha, Budai, Ganesha) and face off against the others in the fight to become the supreme deity. I don't want to spoil the surprise, so play it for yourself - there is a mystery final "boss" character to fight - which is what made me laugh hardest.

I'm working on that political post I mentioned over a week ago, so expect that to be up within an hour or two.

Enjoy!

(Hat tip to Pharyngula)

Just when you thought you could trust the police...

...they go and do something like this:

POLICE officers across the country have been used by the Church of Scientology to promote its antidrugs campaign in schools.

Officers have been handing out booklets that praise the science fiction writer L Ron Hubbard, the church’s founder, and describe both prescription and illegal drugs as “poison”.

You have got to be kidding me. This is the police force of the UK - if only one group is to be seen as protecting the populace, you'd think it would be them. I appreciate that they need all the help they can get when it comes to increasing awareness of drugs in schools, but do parents seriously want their children being educated by one of the craziest cults in the world? People who believe a science fiction writer who (shockingly enough) started talking about Big Alien Baddies? A writer who had stated explicitly that a great way to make money would be to found your own religion? Go consult Operation Clambake for more info on the great many reasons not to trust this cult with the education of our children in any area.

Sure, they might get a kid off drugs. And many years later, after giving the Church inordinate amounts of money and cutting herself off from all family ties, she might even get to hear the one about that guy called Xenu.

The most practical point, putting aside the wackiness and dangers of the cult itself, is that the material they gave the police officers to distribute in schools is pretty damn misleading - claiming that all drugs, prescription drugs included, are "poison", and that other detoxification methods are ineffective. I seriously cannot believe that those who are entrusted with our protection are blithely distributing the lies of a dangerous cult. I'd say "this had better be the last we hear of this connection", but I've got a horrible feeling that some Church official is saying the same thing to a police representative.

Hat-tip to The new Humanist.