1. Fury at funeral songs ban

Comment #211373 by somersetsimon on July 15, 2008 at 11:08 pm

I don't have a lot of sympathy for people who choose to belong to an irrational organization, then complain when it behaves irrationally.

Have a non-religious funeral, then do whatever you want.

nobody wanted to appear disrespectful to the clergy

I didn't realise that the purpose of a funeral was to pay respect to the clergy.

2. Periodic Table of Videos

Comment #210431 by somersetsimon on July 14, 2008 at 2:12 pm

This is great. My 7 year old son is working his way through the periodic table. We are on Nitrogen at the moment. I'll see if he likes these!

3. Thousands Flock to Revival in Search of Miracles

Comment #209005 by somersetsimon on July 11, 2008 at 1:46 pm

Trying to take a positive from this sorry tale, this was a skeptical report from a major news organization. That's got to be a good thing.

4. Religious bigotry upheld in court

Comment #208991 by somersetsimon on July 11, 2008 at 1:37 pm

I've had some further thoughts on this...

1) I'm not sure that the 2007 Goods and Services (Discrimination) Act applies directly to all the individuals within an organization, more so that the organization should provide all its services to all people. In these cases, as long as the council was able to provide sufficient registrars to officiate at same-sex ceremonies, then that Act would be satisfied.

2) I assume her religious beliefs are such that she dispproves of same-sex relationships entirely and not just the concept of civil ceremonies that recognise the legitimacy of the relationships. In that case, would she also be allowed to refuse service to same-sex couples in any line of business or service? Her refusal would be analagous to a hotel owner refusing to let a room to a same-sex couple or a cleaner in that hotel refusing to clean their room.

3) Are there any implications if you turn this situation around? What if the service provider is a fine upstanding atheist and the customer has some particular religious custom that the provider objects to. Would it be ok to refuse them service?

5. Religious bigotry upheld in court

Comment #208389 by somersetsimon on July 10, 2008 at 11:06 pm

But I would go much, much further. In fact I think the law of the UK, particularly the 2007 Goods and Services (Discrimination) Act, compels us to go further. Not only should all civil registrars be compelled to perform gay marriages, so should all religious institutions which offer marriages. All those vicars and priests and imams and rabbis and grand hierophants and what have you. All of them. No exceptions.

That's what I thought too. I hope that Act gives good grounds for the council to appeal.

If this case is allowed to stand does this mean that discrimination only means discrimination on the grounds of personal opinion with a free pass for a religion?

If I was an atheist employer and put 'No Jews' on a job advert, I would be rightly prosecuted. If I was a Muslim employer, would I be allowed to claim some religious reason why I shouldn't have to associate with Jews?

6. PLEASE WRITE IN SUPPORT OF PZ MYERS

Comment #208112 by somersetsimon on July 10, 2008 at 3:26 pm

Would contributions from those of us who aren't in the USA help?

I don't know, but I have just written. It surely couldn't do any harm, and I think it would probably help in showing that PZ Myers has a high international reputation.

Richard

PZ certainly has a high international reputation, but one that is slightly disconnected from his employer at the university. The university is surely aware of what PZ gets up to and would have said something earlier if they thought that his extra-curricular activities may cause embarrassment to them.

7. Conversation between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

Comment #208063 by somersetsimon on July 10, 2008 at 2:40 pm

I think it just goes to show Christopher Hitchen's point: Atheists don't want to let go of religion any more than religious people do. It's the fight that we enjoy.

In a real fight, there's always a chance that your opponent will get beaten into submission and concede defeat!

I'm not sure why these sort of events get dignified as debates or discussions - maybe it is more like a fight. All that happens is that one side makes their point, then the other side makes their point. Nobody ever changes their mind based on the strength of their opponents argument. I guess the supporters of each side come away thinking that their guy won the argument, but feel frustrated that the opponent didn't concede that they were wrong.

I've been trying to put down some more thoughts on this on my blog www.hancockfamily.org.uk and would welcome any comments to help me flesh out the ideas.

Simon

8. Religion's role in the climate debate

Comment #205355 by somersetsimon on July 7, 2008 at 7:21 am

The faults in both our modern political system and our ancient religions can be rectified but their strengths may be hard to replace.

I think what they are refering to by 'strength' is the power of both political parties and religions to mobilise large numbers of people behind a cause without the need for any evidence. I.e.

Religion ought to impel its adherents to act

I was struggling to understand the real point of the story. It seemed to make the starting assumption that negative human effect on the climate is a fact and something needs to be done. Unfortunately, those pesky scientists are so inconsistent (*), that the public won't believe anything they say, even if it IS true.

Is the point of the article that, if you can convince a religious leader (presumably by showing them the scientific evidence), then he can convince his flock that environmentalism is god's work without them having to go to the trouble of accepting, understanding or even reading the scientific evidence?

* A thousand scientific studies show one result, one study shows the opposite. A TV show gives both sides 5 minutes each. The public now think the scientific community are split 50/50.

9. Stupid flies live longer: study

Comment #189359 by somersetsimon on June 6, 2008 at 5:57 am

One half was left in a natural state while the other had its intelligence boosted by Pavlovian methods, such as associating smell and taste with particular food or experiences. Over 30 to 40 generations, these methods led to flies which clearly learned better and remembered things for longer.

No doubt this is due to a deficiency in the reporting, but the above quote puts the flies' increased intelligence down to Lamarkian evolution!

Does anyone know how the one group of flies actually became more intelligent?

It looks like a poor grasp of the subject by the reporter. The quote certainly does appear imply a Lamarckian model of evolution. I suspect the truth was that the 'Pavlovian' tests were simply used to identify the more intelligent members of the population so they could be selected for breeding.

10. Scientists rally against creationist 'superstition'

Comment #186944 by somersetsimon on May 31, 2008 at 11:12 pm

I would really like to see where the figure of 40% of the British population doesn't accept evolution comes from.

I can accept that 40% of british people believe in god and feel that god had some role in how life turned out on this planet.
It wouldn't be hard to phrase a question that indicates that these people support ID/creationism rather than purely scientific evolution with no supernatural involvement.

11. Police: Girl Dies After Parents Pray for Healing Instead of Seeking Medical Help

Comment #150450 by somersetsimon on March 26, 2008 at 11:38 pm

"They are still in the home," he said. "There is no reason to remove them. There is no abuse or signs of abuse that we can see."

If the parents say they would act in the same way again if this happened to one of the other children, then wouldn't the state be obliged to protect the children's safety?

I guess this is similar to JW's refusing certain life-saving treatments. What is the legal position in that case when the parents refuse treatment for a child?

12. Full house captivated by atheist Dawkins' take on religion

Comment #142745 by somersetsimon on March 13, 2008 at 4:25 am

Let's think about statistics and the world's population - the US accounts for only 4.55% of it - and the Pew report suggests that around 28% of that 4.55% are changing religions. But what do we MEAN by changing religions? Are we talking about Jews becoming Muslims? Muslims becoming Jews? Christians becoming Hindu? Or are we talking about Catholics becoming Protestants, Orthodox Jews becoming Reformed Jews, and Evangelicals becoming Fundamentalists? Let's be careful how we interpret statistical data and also how we can view data gathered in the US as having any relevance across other countries in the world.

If we are talking about people really changing their position, i.e. Muslim to Christian, Atheist to Jew, apart those who hypocritically change for reasons of marriage, then I've always suspected that Religion -> Atheist would be the most popular. It would interesting if there was a survey of religious beliefs (or lack of) for those who have made a genuine free choice of all the options available.

13. How Evolution REALLY Works

Comment #112613 by somersetsimon on January 17, 2008 at 2:34 pm

nickthelight: true, but there are other more obvious simulations out there. This is a favorite of mine by Karl Sims (and it's 14 years old to boot!).

http://web.genarts.com/karl/evolved-virtual-creatures.html

Pdiff

There's also the work of Jeffrey Ventrella. I met him at an Artificial Life conference in LA a few years back and he gave me a copy of his Darwin's Pond program. You can now download that from his website. It's great fun to watch. :-)

http://www.ventrella.com/Alife/alife.html

14. Hook, line and rapture

Comment #109563 by somersetsimon on January 9, 2008 at 7:23 am

Maybe god has a sense of humour and just wants to make Pat look stupid.

Not all the Christians are supporters of Pat Robertson

Here's a short song by Martyn Joseph.

http://www.piperecords.co.uk/audio/MJGB06/11%20Mr%20Robertson.mp3

Martyn is a fantastic Welsh singer/songwriter. He rails against the hypocrisy and downright corruption of big-time religion, especially the televangelists. I agree with virtually all his views on the world - politics, fairness, compassion. He is a great guy and he even donated a specially recorded song to our village pre-charity that I help out with. An all round great guy.

As well as all that, he is a devout Christian. I think he's really an atheist, but doesn't realise it yet. He would probably say the reverse about me! He seems to stand for all the things that Christianity supposed to stand for. If they were all like this, I wouldn't be so worried about religion.

His best Christian "anti-religion" song is 'He Never Said', co-written by another big hero of mine, Tom Robinson. I couldn't find a free to air clip of that :-/

15. Clegg 'does not believe in God'

Comment #100773 by somersetsimon on December 19, 2007 at 10:12 am

I have enormous respect for people who have religious faith, I'm married to a Catholic and am committed to bringing my children up as Catholics.

I guess the first point is just being pragmatic as a politician, but I can't comprehend how an atheist would be committed to bringing up his children as Catholics. Can anyone explain this logic?

If he is an atheist and his wife is Catholic, then it would be reasonable to expose the children to both points of view and let them decide for themselves when they are older. I wonder if they have decided that the children will also be forced to be Liberal Democrats?

16. CBC News: Sunday - Richard Dawkins

Comment #100361 by somersetsimon on December 18, 2007 at 2:24 pm

I like that RD, when the interviewer says "Darwin says we evolved from apes," says, "We did." The interviewer clearly didn't not want to admit that. It's like he was just itching to say,

"I didn't evolve from an ape."

To which the reply should be...

"not yet"

17. Turkey probes atheist's 'God' book

Comment #91709 by somersetsimon on November 29, 2007 at 3:08 am

Does anyone know how 'incitement to religious hatred' is defined? TGD, etc. certainly make the point that religions are untrue and potentially harmful, but I would have thought that hatred implies that the books are advocating that the reader should actively hate religious people and possibly act on this feeling. Does RD ever suggest that we should hate anyone?

Perhaps someone could extract pertinent quotes from religious texts and ask a lawyer whether these qualify as 'incitement to religious hatred'. I'm sure that any quote that promotes physical violence towards some group of people purely because of their religious beliefs must be illegal and should therefore be banned. :-)

18. Call for major science campaign

Comment #77417 by somersetsimon on October 9, 2007 at 8:38 am

As someone who has always had an interest in science, maths and engineering, it's difficult for me to appreciate why people are drifting away from these subjects, while the overall number of students is steadily rising.

I'm not sure how you get well qualified, bright engineers and scientists to be teachers. I have a reasonably senior position in an engineering company and I doubt that a science teacher of similar standing would earn half my salary. I try to help out where I can. I go into my son's primary school occasionally to talk to the kids. One talk was 'How aeroplanes fly' and the last one was a 'What your dad does' week, so I talked to them about being an engineer. When I prepare this stuff and talk to the kids, it does come home to me that "wow - this stuff really is exciting and interesting!"

We seem to be stuck in a society where scientific and technical ignorance is almost seen as a badge of intellectual superiority. When some celeb claims "Of course, I know nothing about computers - I'm a complete technophobe, ha, ha, ha", people treat them like they are Oscar Wilde. My reaction is "No, you're just stupid". In the land of Big Brother style reality TV, demonstrating a level of ignorance that would ordinarily mark you down as mentally subnormal and completely useless to society, is now seen as cute personality trait, like having a nice smile.

Last year I heard something really sad. A 10 year old was being interviewed on the radio. He was asked what he wanted to do when he grew up. He said he wanted to be a footballer like David Beckham. When asked why, he said that he wanted to be rich and famous. When I was young we had dreams of being professional sportsman or astronauts and other daft ideas, but it was because we wanted to be recognized as being the best at something or achieving something that nobody else had achieved. TV programs like the X Factor let people think that there is a shortcut to fame and fortune and there is no need to spend years working your way up. It's pathetic when you see 18 year old X factor failures crying "singing is my life - it's all I ever wanted to do. It's not fair". Have they spent years practicing and working in clubs? No - they want it all now without any hard work.

It's now the same with university. Students look for the easiest course that will get them a well-paid job. It used to be that you got a good solid grounding in core subjects, then you chose the area that you moved into. You get good at something first, then the rewards come afterwards.

(Gets down off hobby horse)

19. Response to My Fellow 'Atheists'

Comment #77117 by somersetsimon on October 8, 2007 at 1:42 pm

I can see Sam's point. To me, this links in with some other articles I have read recently. I am an atheist (I expect most people reading this are too), but being an atheist just defines my point of view on one issue. I'm sure atheists have a wide range of views on various issues, but sometimes there seems to be a drive, both internally and externally, to paint us as a single group with a single fixed set of ideas.

I can understand that 'atheist' can be seen as a negative term as it is a specific rejection of an idea. I prefer to think that my views on life and politics are more based on a positive secular, humanist, liberal philosophy rather than trying to define myself in terms of the rejection of what other people believe.

Taking the example in the article, I can see why you can make a much stronger case when your particular logical, scientific or moral argument can stand on its own, rather than it just being put forward as a 'standard' atheist stance.

20. Keeping the faith at school

Comment #73514 by somersetsimon on September 25, 2007 at 6:56 am

"Simon, that's a great story. I'm only 19, a little young to have children but I fear someday that when I do, they might turn out to be religious nutjobs despite how I may try to bring them up. Glad to see its working just fine with your kid, makes the future seem much brighter!"

We make a point of not telling him what to think about things, just how to think about things. We have told him that we don't believe in God, but other people do. Also, if someone tells you that they believe something then it is ok to ask them why they believe it. Earlier this year, we took our kids to a zoo/farm (http://www.noahsarkzoofarm.co.uk/) which turned out to be run by creationists. They had lots of posters on the walls describing how Noah carried all the animals (including dinosaurs) on the ark. After looking at all the 'evidence', his view was "they are all crazy"

21. Keeping the faith at school

Comment #73496 by somersetsimon on September 25, 2007 at 5:29 am

Quote "

You went to a faith-based school. My daughter, who goes to a standard, non-denominational, state-funded school here in the UK came back with a report card from Primary 1 (five years old):


Religous and moral education: ..... has learned that the Bible is a special book.



Yeah, a special book in the same way as Star Wars is a "special" film

"

My 6 year old son goes to a Church of England Voluntary Aided school. This means that, like all the local schools in the area, the land and buildings are owned by the Diocese of Bath and Wells, so they get an input into the ethos of the school. They aren't too religious, but there is an attachment to the local church and it is assumed that you are a believer.

We keep reminding him that lots of people believe different things. This was an easy subject to get into - he is interested in Egyptian history, so we can talk about all the different deities that they believed in and that everyone knows now that none of this was true.

After breakfast this morning, he suddenly piped up with "some people believe in god, but he's not real, he's just a story. If something is real you have to prove it. Little children think the tooth fairy is real, but it's not really". He then carried on playing with his Lego Bionicles.

That's my boy!

PS can someone remind me how to include block quotes?

22. Interview with Christopher Hitchens

Comment #70330 by somersetsimon on September 15, 2007 at 1:20 am

I listen to the The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe podcast every week (subscribe via iTunes). It's always interesting - they take on all kinds of pseudo-science and superstitious nonsense. Well worth a listen.

Simon

23. Arrogance, dogma and why science - not faith - is the new enemy of reason

Comment #62242 by somersetsimon on August 9, 2007 at 3:40 am

We are living in a scientific, largely post-religious age in which faith is presented as unscientific superstition

Thank you for the compliment Ms Phillips, we are doing our best


unscientific

–adjective
1. not scientific; not employed in science: an unscientific measuring device.

2. not conforming to the principles or methods of science: an unscientific approach to a problem.

3. not demonstrating scientific knowledge or scientific methods: an unscientific report.

superstition
-noun
1. a belief or notion, not based on reason or knowledge, in or of the ominous significance of a particular thing, circumstance, occurrence, proceeding, or the like.

2. a system or collection of such beliefs.

3. a custom or act based on such a belief.

4. irrational fear of what is unknown or mysterious, esp. in connection with religion.

5. any blindly accepted belief or notion.

24. Arrogance, dogma and why science - not faith - is the new enemy of reason

Comment #61805 by somersetsimon on August 7, 2007 at 1:14 am

Disturbing indeed. But where Dawkins goes wrong is to assume this is all as irrational as believing in God. The truth is that it is the collapse of religious faith that has prompted the rise of such irrationality.

What? So what percentage of new-age therapy believers are atheists and what percentage have some religious faith? I know where my money would be.

While there probably are some true believers in these quack therapies, I suspect that most people who use them aren't aware of how false they really are. I wonder how many people who use homeopathy actually understand the wacky concept behind it and are aware of all the studies that have proven it to be useless?

25. Scientist Build a 'Brain' From Rat Cells

Comment #53049 by somersetsimon on June 29, 2007 at 5:32 am

I remember someone developing a project in the late 90's that evolved artifical neural networks to fly aircraft in a flight simulator. Oh wait - that was me :-)

http://web.archive.org/web/19990117012705/http://www.newscientist.com/ns/980509/features.html

I remember doing an interview on the BBC where they assumed I was building 'real' artifical creatures from organic material. They were also worried about future planes developing a mind of their own. I tried to reassure them, but secretly I thought that sounded quite cool :-O

26. Evolution IS a Blind Watchmaker

Comment #51837 by somersetsimon on June 25, 2007 at 9:02 am

The externally specified fitness criteria for Genetic Algorthim-style evolutions could be seen as a reason to discount it as an true analogy for real biological evolution. In real evolution, the fitness goals are basically eat, mate, survive.

Allowing the user to specify a measure of fitness makes these techniques great for solving all sorts of problems. My PhD supervisor organized conference back in 1995 to discuss the use of GA's in science and engineering (GALESIA). Guest speaker - Richard Dawkins (small world).

I moved on from GA's to Artificial Life (ALife). One of the first things I looked into was the work of Karl Sims (http://www.biota.org/ksims/). His simulations simply set up a world and gave his evolving creatures the goal of surviving. If you have a look at the mass of Alife stuff out there, there are loads of examples of simulated evolution. It really is astounding how efficient the method of reproduction and random mutation and survival of the fittest is at producing very complex solutions very quickly.

27. U.S. circumcision rate drops

Comment #50583 by somersetsimon on June 18, 2007 at 11:29 pm

Ignoring the obvious gag about the name...

"These findings are a very important contribution to HIV prevention science. Male circumcision has major potential for the prevention of HIV infection", said Kevin De Cock, Director of the WHO HIV/AIDS Department.

I heard somewhere that the correlation between circumcision and AIDS prevention was statistical - there was no medical explanation. It's possible that the sort of men who were circumcised had different sexual habits that those who weren't.

I think I'd like to wait until we could find some real science before we start chopping bits off.

28. U.S. circumcision rate drops

Comment #50582 by somersetsimon on June 18, 2007 at 11:26 pm

"The edict to have your son circumcised was the first covenant with God -- the first challenge to being Jewish," said Katz, pursuing a master's degree in business administration. "I am a progressive person and think a lot about human rights issues, but I have never questioned this."

Wouldn't it be more of a challenge if adult males had it done to themselves without pain relief instead of doing it to a child?

I've never understood how people have accepted this practice as a good thing to do to their sons. Lukcily in the UK, it seems to be limited to the Jewish (and Muslim) communities.