Silver Pirate Things

Unity over at the Ministry of Truth has an article about how European Law impacts on the Silver Ring Thing court case thing involving Lydia Playfoot thing. Unity has made something of a study of the case in fact.

If I read article 9 of the 1950 European Convention on Human Rights correctly, my daughter can go to school in full pirate regalia, despite the fact that her school has a fairly strict dress code, because she is (or claims to be) a worshipper of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. FSM's worshippers are exhorted to wear this regalia because it will reduce global warming (of course).

Article 9 protects the right of a person to manifest their religion or belief in worship, teaching, practice and observance.

Dressing like a pirate is in fact an act of worship, possibly an example to others (teaching), definitely a religious practice (since it dates from the religions foundation), and an observance. Consequently this is protected by the full force of European law.

All of which goes to show how ridiculous this religious stuff is.

UPDATE: She lost, of course.

Wicked Vicious Faith

My friend Nick has a typically considered post about the Nick Griffin trial. By contrast the Devils Kitchen is a bit ruder.

I can't, for the life of me, see why calling Islam a 'wicked vicious faith' should be considered as race hatred. There's a fundamental difference between insulting a religion, and insulting a race. The difference is that one is born into a particular race, whereas religion is voluntary.

It's easy to change religion. At various times in my life I've been a follower of the invisible pink unicorn, the flying spaghetti monster and the universal church triumphant of the apathetic agnostic (motto "we don't know, and we don't care"). At the last census I embraced the Force, putting my household down as Jedi Knights, and found myself a member of the UK's 4th largest religion, behind the Christians, Muslims and Hindu's, but ahead of the Sikh's, Jews, and Buddhists.

I was brought up in a Christian household, attended a cathedral school, my grandfather was a vicar, and my mother a missionary. I have been an atheist since I was 8 years old.

I vividly remember my damascene un-conversion. I was in bed, listening to my parents argue over something that I'd done downstairs, and thinking about theodicy. My thoughts went like this:

• I was incapable of being good (or not being naughty).
• Furthermore, I was doubly incapable of not wanting to be naughty, even if I managed not to misbehave.
• God was omniscient, so he knew all this.
• Therefore, there wasn't any point in even pretending to be good, because God would know that I was just pretending to get into His good books, and was naughty really.
• Therefore I was going to burn in hell for all eternity.

It was with a considerable sense of relief that I resolved this by concluding that it was all a load of old hogwash.

Religion is just childish part II

There is a fascinating article called Why Johnny Can't Reason based on the work of Jean Piaget, which in a nutshell, shows 68% of the adult population are incapable of abstract reasoning. Abstract reasoning, in this context is:

"...abstracting from directly experienced objects or situations to broader groups which could not be directly experienced. For still another example, children could begin to grasp the idea of probability..."

In other words, the majority of the population are incapable of reasoning about situations that they have not directly experienced. Such as religion, which almost by definition is not objective.

Why do people get religious in the first place? Young children are naturally predisposed to be religious, because they can only copy what the adults around them are saying, by rote. Older children, and most adults, are unable to look beyond their limited experiences, and analyse what they have been taught.

It would take a whole book to write about where religions come from, but essentially, people are very good at seeing patterns in the world, and making theories about cause and effect, but we don't understand probability, overgeneralise, and become superstitious.

Superstition is a false conception of cause and effect, where we see things happening together, and assume they are connected, when in fact they aren't. So, for example we may reasonably notice that cloudy skies tend to precede rain, and conclude that rain is caused by clouds. We might also see that meat left uncovered becomes maggoty, and conclude wrongly that meat causes maggots (or causes cats to eat it).

In a discussion of programming methodologies Steve Yegge comments obliquely on BF Skinners work on Superstition in the Pigeon, saying: "...superstition isn't necessarily a bad thing! We couldn't possibly go and verify every single fact we've heard that we think is probably true. We'd never make any progress (as individuals or as a civilization). We have to take most things we know for granted. Most of what we know at any given time is superstition. It's normal."

He's right of course, but for 68% of people, that's all they have.

Can we be religious and sane?

Martin Newland over at the Grauniad's Comment Is Free offers the following assertion - "I am a Catholic. I'm also sane". It is an assertion that the majority of believers in any faith would make.

It is also an assertion which cuts to the heart of the religious vs scientific debate, and makes arguing with theists such an intensely frustrating experience for atheists.

What do we men by 'sane'?

Of course we need to consider what we mean by sane. Wikipedia defines sanity as a legal term denoting that an individual...can bear legal responsibility for his actions. I think that most believers fit this definition, although the definition of children as insane seems odd. I digress.

Generally, sane means whatever the majority agrees is sane. In England a century ago, homosexuals, and umarried mothers were regarded as candidates for the local asylum, and a few hundred years previously you would have been thought insane not to believe in god.

Nowadays, by contrast, having an interest in sexually mature members of the opposite sex who are under eighteen is regarded as insane, despite being the norm for most cultures for most of history.

However, probably the definition that most people use in everyday life is: mentally healthy; free from mental disorder. And it is here that atheists and theists disagree.

Atheists believe that it is mentally disordered to believe in supernatural beings without a shred of evidence. They, and I include myself here, feel that all we need to do is point out the irrational nature of belief to a theist, and they should accept our logic and join our ranks. Unfortunately this doesn't happen. Why not?

Why do religious people not listen to reason?

A recent study by Emory University shows that people who are strongly attached to a partisan position do not use facts to make decisions. Brain imaging studies of comitted American political party members using fMRI showed that it is the emotional parts of the brain which is active during discussions, not the reasoning parts. If you argue with someone about an entrenched position, they defend with their emotions, allowing them to ignore contradictory or conflicting evidence.

In other words, it's very difficult to change someone's mind about an entrenched position with logic, because the logical part of their brain isn't listening.

So, is Martin Newland sane? Yes. He's no more insane than the rest of us. He is, however less rational than the majority of his countrymen.

Darwin Online

The complete works of Charles Darwin have recently been digitised and made available here, courtesy of the British taxpayers via Cambridge University.

Darwins seminal work not only explains that we are in fact descended from a long chain of ancestors, all of whom reproduced and passed on their characteristics to their offspring before dying. What is particularly impressive about this is that Darwin managed to formulate his theory without knowing Mendel's mechanisms of genetic inheritance.

Daniel Dennett called natural selection "the single best idea anyone has ever had", in his book Darwin's Dangerous Idea. He's right. It explains why every creature on this planet looks, acts, eats, sleeps, thinks and fucks the way they do.

Religious fundamentalists of all persuasions should read it before uttering another word about evolution.

Religion is just childish

As it says in my profile, I'm a humanist. I'm also an atheist and a bright. Actually I'm an agnostic when it comes to religion, but like Richard Dawkins, I'm agnostic in the same way as I'm agnostic about teapots in orbit around Pluto. In other words, it's possible that they may be true, but the possibility is so slight as to be not worth worrying about.

It's not that I don't know about religion. My grandfather was a vicar and my mother a missionary. I attended a cathedral school and was confirmed into the Church of England at the age of 14. I've been a scholar of ancient religions all my life. And whilst I understand the religious impulse very well, falling for it is simply absurd.

It's absurd in the same way that an adult believing in the tooth fairy, or father christmas, would be absurd. In the same way that belief in genies , rakshasa's or kami is absurd. It's absurd because as adults, we seek to know truth by the best means available to us. And if we don't do that we are wallowing in a child-like fairyland of magic and superstition.

So what counts as a good method of discovering truth?

My Parents told me so - No
My Teachers told me so * - No
Everyone in my society believes it - No
I intuitively feel it to be true - No
It has been revealed to me in dreams or visions - N0
It is common sense - No
It makes me feel better - No
It must be true for moral reasons - No
You can't prove it's not true - No

There is one way, and one way only of discovering the truth about the world. Observe, Hypothesize, Test your hypothesis. Get other people to test it. If it's correct, repeat and move on.

Luckily we don't have to do all this ourselves. There are many many great people who have spent their lives doing this, so that we can reap the rewards of their work. As Newton said, "If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants."

All the rest is superstition or hearsay. And that's no way for an adult to live.

* But I said that "My Teachers told me" is not a method of discovering truth. And it isn't if you do it uncritically. If you study what your teachers say, and find a scientist at the root of it, and the arguments are sound, then there is truth there.

Should women wear veils?

The recent debate about muslim women and veils in the UK has left me in a state of indecision. On the one hand, as an innate libertarian, I believe that people should be able to dress as they wish to. Obviously there is the issue of causing offence to other people by your choice of dress code, but it seems to me that we should all be adult enough to accept other peoples choices, whether it be a niqab or a thong.

On the other hand, the niqab represents pretty much everything that I'm opposed to - subservience to outdated religious practices, a desire for separatism, and in particular a publicly expressed loyalty to Islam, possibly the most regressive of the worlds religions.

As the wearers of the niqab are aware, they are making a statement above and beyond that demanded by their religion, and niqab wearing seems to be on the increase as a result of increased tensions between Britains muslim minority, and the rest of the christian/atheist majority.

On the surface of it, it would seem to be an irrational response to increased hostility to wear clothing likely to inflame that hostility. Terror Management Theory posits that when an individual is threatened, they respond by adhering more closely to their world-view. This seems to be a good example.

A quandary, in microcosm, of the western worlds view of Islam.