The Sceptic Tank

The trouble with Salman

2012-02-03T10:15:00.000+11:00

I'm not so sure if you all caught this so I thought I'd summarise and share.

Salman Rushdie was due to appear at the Jaipur Literature Festival in India. Word got out that Rushdie would be appearing at the Festival (despite visiting India on a regular basis) and word went around that he would be the target of violence. further threats were made and some called for Rushdie to be prevented from entering the country.

Read "Why Salman Rushdie's voice was silenced in Jaipur" for more info.

Some of the many writer's who did attend chose to quote from his books, in particular the Satanic Verses. Here is a great article from Hari Kunzru on "Why I quoted from The Satanic Versus" and the subsequent nervousness and chaos that ensued. Some excerpts:

We decided that we would use our afternoon session, in which Amitava was due to interview me about my novel Gods Without Men to highlight the situation. We decided (without consulting the festival organisers, or anyone else) that I would make a statement, and then we would quote from The Satanic Verses. We knew this little-read and much-burned book was banned in India, but it was our understanding that this meant it was a crime to publish, sell or possess a copy. We knew it would be considered provocative to quote from it, but did not believe it was illegal. A pirated text exists on the internet, and we downloaded two passages, 179 and 208 words in length respectively.

...

News of the readings travelled fast. Sanjoy Roy was soon taking calls from clerics and politicians, including one from the chief minister of Rajasthan. The Jaipur police commissioner arrived, interviewed us briefly, and went away, apparently reassured that no law had in fact been broken.

A lawyer appeared who closeted himself with the festival organisers. He drafted a statement, which we were asked to sign, making clear that the festival was not responsible for our actions. It was left to my friend Sara Chamberlain to find someone to provide legal advice to me. This advice was blunt: I should leave India immediately, as otherwise I risked arrest and might well find myself unable to return home to New York until any resulting cases had been resolved.

Botton is a nutter

2012-01-29T15:17:00.000+11:00

I'm not so sure it's a coincidence the release date of Alain de Botton's new book "Religion for Atheists" came not long after the death of Christopher Hitchens.

If I wrote a book as crazy as the one Alain de Botton has just done, I'd also wait until Hitchens wasn't around before releasing it too.

If Hitchens was here to read Botton's ideas on building an atheist temple and going up against 'destructive' atheists such as Dawkins, he'd knock him off his perch with one swift sentence. Perhaps two, if he could summon the energy.

Now I haven't read the book, but his ideas in the Botton TED video were bizarre and his comments about changing the university system to building temples makes me want to buy it in case we run out of toilet paper.

Here are a list of links if you want to read more:

The Guardian's review of Religion for Atheists.
Botton's plans to build a temple for atheists.
And a great rebuttal of the stupid temple plan. Love this one.
Dawkins' response to the bollocks.

Religion for atheists

2012-01-20T11:30:00.000+11:00

"The Glorious" drew my attention to the Alain de Botton interview in the SMH over the weekend as he is in the country giving a few lectures.

I know the name Alain de Botton from books that popularise the popular philosophy sections of book stores. I've even seen them in people's homes that I wouldn't expect to see philosphy books.

He has a new book out called "Religion for Atheists: A non-believer's guide to the uses of religion".

I don't want to say anymore for the moment but I'd like to hear what you think of Alain de Botton's TED talk on the very aspects he mentions in the book (20minute video below). Ok, it's a time investment but I'm really keen to hear what you think on this one.

Anti-porn activist sues blogger

2012-01-17T09:56:00.001+11:00

Here is something that could be worth keeping an eye on. Apparently, anti-porn activist Melinda Tankard Reist is suing blogger Jennifer Wilson for deformation.

The blogger usually goes by the name No Place For Sheep and has claimed to merely exposed MTR's religious belief's which would surely be behind the her anti-porn stance. According to the blog, MTR is allegedly back by "seriously wealthy Christian fundamentalist lawyers, and that money may not be a problem for her as it is for most of us."

This post from the always great Catherine Deveny was an interesting point too.

Institute Of Public Affairs supported Andrew Bolt's right to free speech and set up a fighting fund. Why not the same for @NoPlaceforSheep?
— Catherine Deveny(@CatherineDeveny)
January 16, 2012

As someone once said, trying to ban porn is like trying to ban oxygen but this case may be a good test of facts v defamation. As I understand it, our defamation laws aren't quite as bad as in the UK, but like the chiro's v Simon Singh case, this may end up being an argument over whether merely stating the facts are defamatory.

Here is some more reading about MTR.

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/3776500.html

http://noplaceforsheep.com/2011/03/03/the-conservative-sexual-crusader-wants-kilos-of-mcfaddens-flesh/

Why am I the ignoramus?

2012-01-16T10:01:00.000+11:00

Some thoughts form the Horned God:

I have a friend who claims to be a catholic and a well scriptured and church going catholic at that. After a bit of good fortune descended upon my wife and I our friend blithely pronounced that my wife’s grandmother (who’s life story may have helped secure us the windfall) was ‘looking down’ on us.

When I pointed out that my wife’s grandmother was Jewish and would certainly be in some catholic hell and therefore be more likely (in my friends worldview) to be screaming up at us rather than gazing lovingly down at my bald patch she dismissed me as a Christmas Grinch and told me ‘it didn’t work that way’. My indignant spluttering of; inconsistent, basic tenant, rubbish, small boys, how, what, where.... was dismissed with a polite smile and a glazed eye as the drooling mumblings of a beer sodden argumentative ignoramus.

How do you argue against a fairy story that is allowed to be amended and adapted on a whim. A fable that is, with utter conviction, described as a core belief but the only bits that count are the ones that fit immediate need? Why am I the ignoramus? Red riding hood and the three little pigs have less contradictions. Is it too much to ask for consistency of yarbles?

Priest fight!

2012-01-03T13:34:00.002+11:00

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-16347418?

Praise be to Woody Allen Jesus

2012-01-02T15:24:00.000+11:00

Tim Minchin was asked to perform on The Jonathan Ross Show. He performed this piece but it was deemed too offensive to go to air, so they pulled it.

Here it is.

RIP Chritopher Hitchens

2011-12-16T16:16:00.000+11:00

In Memoriam: Christopher Hitchens, 1949–2011

In memory of the great man, a small blog post.

He was flawed of course, but definitely great. His writings had a huge effect on my life, and always will. I'm kind of embarrassed I didn't encounter his writings earlier, but at least they'll always be around. Says something about the written form of expression and one reason this blog is here.

Getting wealthy by throwing dice.

2011-11-09T14:45:00.010+11:00

There's a lot to be said for working hard and getting paid for what we do. This is of course what the vast majority of people do. But unlike the mega-wealthy, at least most people don't labour under the illusion that our completely disproportionate remuneration is completely justified because we are "wealth-creators".

This recent article by George Monbiot in the Guardian outlines the problem and goes on to argue that not only is this an unjustifiable fallacy, the top 1% are actually destroying wealth.

George Monbiot - The 1% are the very best destroyers of wealth the world has ever seen

Quantum physics is not difficult: Brian Cox

2011-10-28T17:04:00.001+11:00

He's right. It's not. It just forces you to throw away all preconceived notions and begin again.

Here's the link to the BBC Radio 4 site where he does his best to explain to the interviewer its relevance. The interviewer is rightly sceptical, but once you hear the answer you can't go on being sceptical as he does.

Peter Cundall on Compass

2011-10-19T17:57:00.001+11:00

You might never see Gardening Australia the same way after watching this.

On Sunday night's ABC show Compass (religious/spiritual show) Gardening Australia's host Peter Cundall was interviewed.

Hailing from Manchester he has had quite a life. He had a happy childhood despite his father beating his other constantly and living in poverty. He experienced the worst of war and admits in this interview he killed people as a machine gunner. He spent 6 months in solitary confiement and had what others might think as a religious experience. As "not even an atheist" he knew it wasn't and found out the real meaning of his apparition.

While I'm not that comfortable with the interviewer, Cundall is quite compelling. I'm not sure I've had all of my exact thoughts on some of the big questions spoken on TV in this way before. Not to mention on a religious program. You have to hand it to Compass though, they aren't afraid to put the spotlight on atheists but I'm suspecting it is because they view it as a form of religion. As wrong as that is.

Put aside 25 minutes and watch the video below. It will probably hold greater meaning if you know him from the gardening show. I'm never known anyone to get as passionate as he does about lettuce growth.

Watch video

Thanks to Martin S. Pribble for bringing this to my attention.

Harris on consciousness

2011-10-18T16:40:00.003+11:00

Every time I read Sam Harris, I become more aware that more pool of deep thinking is shallower than I thought.

He tackles the big questions all the time and reading his essay’s remind me of playing chess after a long layoff from the game. They’re hard work.

But they are as rewarding as the time you put into them (same goes for The Wire by the way) and his recent essay on consciousness is no different.

Here’s the link to the article The Mystery of Consciousness and an excerpt;

Likewise, the idea that consciousness is identical to (or emerged from) unconscious physical events is, I would argue, impossible to properly conceive—which is to say that we can think we are thinking it, but we are mistaken. We can say the right words, of course—“consciousness emerges from unconscious information processing.” We can also say “Some squares are as round as circles” and “2 plus 2 equals 7.” But are we really thinking these things all the way through? I don’t think so.

Dawkins honours Hitchens

2011-10-11T17:44:00.001+11:00

Christopher Hitchens has been honoured this week by being awarded the 2011 Richard Dawkins award.

The official award criteria is:

The Richard Dawkins Award will be given every year to honor an outstanding atheist whose contributions raise public awareness of the nontheist life stance; who through writings, media, the arts, film, and/or the stage advocates increased scientific knowledge; who through work or by example teaches acceptance of the nontheist philosophy; and whose public posture mirrors the uncompromising nontheist life stance of Dr. Richard Dawkins.

The text version of the speech given by Richard Dawkins at the ceremony on October 8th, is at the Richard Dawkins Foundation website and you must read the whole thing.

He will certainly go down as one of the great men in history and it makes me proud to say I've finally found his words and I'm reading his books while he is still alive.

A snippet:

Christopher Hitchens is known as a man of the left. Except that he is too complex a thinker to be placed on a single left-right dimension. Parenthetically, I have long been surprised that the very idea of a single left-right political spectrum works at all. Psychologists need many mathematical dimensions in order to locate human personality, and why should political opinion be any different?

Steven Pinker: The decline of violence

2011-10-06T16:55:00.002+11:00

I'm not too familiar with the writings of Steven Pinker but Sam Harris has been speaking highly of him on his blog and recently asked him a few questions about his new book.

A snippet from the question and answer session:

Need I remind you that the "atheist regimes" of the 20th century killed tens of millions of people?
This is a popular argument among theoconservatives and critics of the new atheism, but for many reasons it is historically inaccurate. First, the premise that Nazism and Communism were "atheist" ideologies makes sense only within a religiocentric worldview that divides political systems into those that are based on Judaeo-Christian ideology and those that are not. In fact, 20th-century totalitarian movements were no more defined by a rejection of Judaeo-Christianity than they were defined by a rejection of astrology, alchemy, Confucianism, Scientology, or any of hundreds of other belief systems. They were based on the ideas of Hitler and Marx, not David Hume and Bertrand Russell, and the horrors they inflicted are no more a vindication of Judeao-Christianity than they are of astrology or alchemy or Scientology.

The book is titled "The Better Angels of our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined" and sounds bloody interesting. Here's a Booko link if you want to check out where to buy it from.

What are you waiting for?

2011-08-31T12:14:00.001+10:00

Love this. It’s an image taken from CrapGraffiti.com which features, as you might guess, crap graffiti. This one is just plain clever.

Taking back skepticism

2011-08-09T13:40:00.001+10:00

One of the best Australian skeptical bloogers, Sean the Blogonaut looks have had enough. It seems he has had it with not only ignorant proponents of woo or closed minded religious folk, but with skeptics themselves.

He has linked to an interesting rant about self-proclaimed skeptics who may not be as skeptical as they claim to be.

Atheism is correlated with education and IQ; it seems reasonable that skepticism would be as well. However, I have seen little evidence that, beyond many successful professional skeptics and scientists, they are any more open-minded or flexible than the general public. In fact, I would not be surprised to find that the opposite is generally true.

It took me a while to understand who this rant was directed at but I think I can relate.

Read the full article: Take Back Skepticism

Only on the weekend I heard news of an atheist friend who now dabbles in the black art of Alan Jones podcasts and think that there are doubts over human induced climate change.

Some times it is fun being in the minority and having a different view on things. It can become your ‘thing’, your talking point at parties. But like Hitchens talks about in “Letters to a Young Contrarian”, you shouldn’t be contrary of skeptical for the sake of it.

Nor should one ‘just’ be skeptical. It’s not enough.

How to qualify as a tax-free religious institution in Australia

2011-08-03T12:51:00.001+10:00

As outlined by the Australian Government.

Some “highlights”:

Your organisation will be exempt from income tax and can self-assess its exemption if: it is a religious institution it is not a charity, and it meets at least one of four other conditions.

And:

The categories of religion are not closed. Nonetheless, to be a religion there must be:
- belief in a supernatural being, thing or principle,
- and acceptance of canons of conduct that give effect to that belief, but that do not offend against the ordinary laws.

Wow. If I hadn't read it myself, I wouldn't have believed it. Extraordinary.

Is it ever your fault?

2011-07-28T13:18:00.001+10:00

Fast becoming a favourite columnist of mine, Elizabeth Farrelly has written an opinion piece in today’s SMH about whether or not one can be held accountable for one’s actions when there is some evidence to suggest it is all biological.

Titled “Fairness, fault and the killer instinct”, it’s a thought provoking piece which no doubt you learned readers have thought about at one stage or another.

Some excerpts:

“examples such as 25-year-old Charles Whitman, who on August 1, 1966, killed his mother, stabbed his sleeping wife five times and then, with an arsenal of weapons, climbed the University of Texas Tower, bashing-in the receptionist's skull before positioning himself as campus sniper, killing a further 13 and injuring 32.

Whitman had earlier recorded his ''tremendous'' headaches, his concern over his increasingly violent urges and a request that his brain be autopsied. The subsequent dissection, after police shot him dead, showed a small but aggressive tumour impinging on the amygdala, the brain structure that regulates emotion.”

and…

It's not your fault your mother gives you foetal alcohol syndrome, like people around the streets here in Redfern. It probably wasn't her fault that she, like most serial killers, was abused as a child.

Perhaps Amy Winehouse had some gene or imbalance that drove her self-destruction. Perhaps the same gene or imbalance produced her remarkable, broken-hearted talent. None of it was her fault, but it was certainly her responsibility.

Preaching to the influential

2011-07-18T12:54:00.001+10:00

A little self-indulgence today, but hopefully somewhat relevant to the pursuit of truth.

In yet another example of the power of Twitter, I managed to convey some important facts to a journalist about the enigma that is Bill Maher.

As we’ve seen before, Bill Maher is so good and smart when it comes to discussing religion but is incredibly incompetent and illogical when it comes to vaccination and Western medicine.

An Adelaide journalist by the name of Samela Harris has been writing for years in The Advertiser and elsewhere, and I’ve followed her stuff on Twitter for a while now.

Harris tweeted how she thought Bill Maher is very sane, (something I too thought after seeing Religulous) and I just had to reply. See the Twitter conversation below, read from the bottom up.

So now I’ve been thinking; it’s nice when you have some information that changes someone’s outlook on something. But perhaps it’s pointless if they don’t have any influence, or power, or want, to pass on the epiphany?

Maybe all these inane conversations we have with the everyday person, trying to convince them to be more sceptical should be forgotten?

Maybe we should be saving our energy for when someone with a bit of power and influence over the masses comes along who is willing to listen?

Anyway, I’m slightly chuffed either way. I feel like I’ve done my bit for the week, all from my phone. Didn’t even have to get off the couch.

Austrian man works miracle

2011-07-14T15:30:00.001+10:00

This guy has reached god-like status.

Billy Connolly on religion

2011-07-06T15:04:00.001+10:00

I caught this video posted on Pharyngula this week. Love it.

Attractive woo

2011-07-01T10:04:00.001+10:00

I post this almost purely as a reference for future inane conversations.

I’ve known plenty of people who wear magnets around their necks or wrists who claim it helps blood flow and all sorts of other claptrap.

A study was released a few weeks ago claiming that a magnetic field appears to increase the viscosity of blood through blood vessels. This is how the main news outlets reported it anyway.

For a cautionary look at the study and a few pinches of salt, please read “Magents and Blood Flow” which was published at Science-Based Medicine. It explains the exact details of what this study outlined and why it would be very difficult to extrapolate the findings help blood flow due to a magnetic bracelet.

There are numerous problems with extrapolating from this study to a net clinical effect, and also in the interpretation of the mechanism of the effect. The researchers claim that the effect comes from the red blood cells clumping together, mostly in a line, like box cars on a train. The cells moving together as a train produces less resistance than if they were all bouncing around separately. Further, they tend to flow more down the middle of the tube, reducing friction with the tube wall.

The picture above shows the clumping of the cells. Immediately it seems as if there can be a problem applying this to a person. The glass tube used in the study was larger than the smallest arteries in people. Further, capillaries are only large enough to allow red cells to flow through single file. I would not want my red cells clumping as in the picture above and then trying to squeeze through capillaries. I would not be surprised if the effect on viscosity were reversed for smaller arteries, or even caused serious problems with capillary flow. But I suspect the net effect on blood flow in vivo is negligible, because we have been exposing people to magnetic fields of this strength in MRI scans for a couple decades now without any ill effects.

Check out the full article for full details. I know I’m going to have to refer to this soon.

School chaplains under the spotlight

2011-06-28T16:46:00.001+10:00

The 7:30 Report last night focussed on the School Chaplaincy scheme now in many schools across Australia. I'm still baffled as to not only what they do, but what they can do.

They are forbidden from counselling any students as they are not qualified, nor are they allowed to impose their personal beliefs on students.

Surely it's obvious the money should be put towards counsellors. It's ludicrous. Maybe we should all sign up - Say No To Chaplains

Here's the link to the 7:30 Report story and a previous look at the issue via Hungry Beast embedded below.

7:30 Report: School chaplains under the spotlight

Minchin interview

2011-06-27T11:11:00.001+10:00

A nice interview with Tim Minchin as he begins to make his mark in the US.

I don't mind offending people if I know how to defend my song, you know? I've got a case brought against me by some idiot with the Australian Human Rights Commission for religious prejudice because "Pope Song" was played on TV in Australia. And I would go to the highest court in the land to defend that song—not that I'll need to, because it defends itself, because it's very well thought-out and clear. Everything that I could possibly say about that song is in the song. It's got its defence built in.

Science is not my God

2011-06-15T16:24:00.000+10:00

A great article – Science is not my God - by "The Lay Scientist", Martin Robbins at The Guardian.

Deborah Orr wrote an article (Science is my God, which is more like a couple of sentences than an actual article) on the search for the Higgs boson at the LHC in Geneva. Robbins firmly squares up to it by attacking her definition of faith.

Her argument then is that since trust in science is faith and religious faith is also faith, then atheists who attack faith while having faith in science are being a bit illogical and unreasonable (and presumably hypocritical).

For me the argument falls apart because 'faith' is a hopelessly overloaded term that just isn't synonymous with 'religious faith'.

Check out the whole article, it’s very well written. If I remember rightly, DG always tries to pull this one on JT from time to time.