Faith & Begorra

Aliens and stuff

2011-11-09T11:33:00.001Z

This got me thinking.

Now, never mind god etc, but what would happen if aliens landed tomorrow - would you go to work? Or bother with the laundry - or do your shopping? (I'm talking Vulcans in Star Trek type aliens - not your brain eating reptilians).

It would be rather momentous. Our whole existence would change - we would have a new perspective on everything, and we would be starting a new future in outer space (presumably).

But what if...

What if, they told us the story about how billions of years ago they had come here and assembled our solar system. They pumped huge amounts of hydrogen into once place to form the sun and then got lots of heavier elements and produced the planets and the rest of the solar system.

Then after a billion or so years, they came back and created a self-replicating molecule that with their advanced knowledge they knew would grow to fill the 3rd planet with life. And let's say at various stages they tweaked that life - a little here, a little there. Maybe sending an meteorite to wipe out the dinosaurs, maybe directly interfering with the brains of primates to create consciousness (or whatever).

All good so far - well impressed I am...

Now they've come back and they want to tell us something - something really important.

It's so important, that it's the very reason why they created the solar system in the first place. They can't do this themselves, they need us to do it, but they won't force us to do - we have to do it because they say so.

Here goes...

"You must kill all children with blue eyes."

Well... do we do it?

Define atheism

2011-10-10T10:39:00.002+01:00

Michael Nugent wrote a nice piece last Tuesday ago in the Irish Times about atheism - and other than the fact that he has the audacity to exist, there is little anyone of faith could complain about.

That didn't stop them.

Of the responses to it - this one gets my goat the most. I was going to write a response to this - but on mature reflection it seemed rather pointless, the author is a bit of an idiot and... well I don't really want to be associated with him.

I will, however, deal with this rubbish within the safety of my own blog (limited safety - as you are free to make any comment you like).

So what's wrong with his argument: well I think the great Catholic philosopher Peter Griffen said it best:

Yes, only we can use that word. Or at the very least - because we are describing ourselves, we get to define it.

I am an atheist - but I don't deny the existence of gods - or the possible existence anyway. To my mind that would be unscientific - you have to at least allow for the possibility of something. Then you find evidence (which up to this point - theists have singularly failed to do).

And more importantly I don't define what a Christian is - that's not my place. Though, I start with a working definition that seems common: Someone who accepts the risen lord Jesus Christ as their personal saviour.

Of course, there are different definitions, but I'm not going to use that as a pathetic strawman to beat them with. Why would I? I have their bible to do that.

Let me google that for you:

define atheism

a·the·ism/ˈāTHēˌizəm/

Noun:

The theory or belief that God does not exist.

Oh wait, he's right.

There are other definitions - but they don't matter.

Actually they do - the definition above is a very specific kind of atheist, and not a very common one (not sure why it comes up as the main one all the time), and with the capital G up there, not likely one that was determined by consultation with an actual atheist.

The better definition that most atheists would identify with (including those that believe 'that God does not exist'), is nicely expressed in the Wikipedia definition:

Atheism is, in a broad sense, the rejection of belief in the existence of deities.^[1]

That is more me. I'm not saying that there are no gods - I'm saying I have yet to come across a theistic belief system that (a) made any self-consistent sense, and (b) was supported by evidence.

Ah! But you have to use the first definition from "Dictionaries of Philosophy"!

No, I don't have to do any such thing. I am an atheist - an agnostic atheist actually, as Michael Nugent eloquently described. Also, I imagine that philosophers would be appalled at the idea of using a dictionary to govern their art - so don't do that again.

That's going on the blog

2011-10-06T11:53:00.001+01:00

Idiots...

Personally I think the iPhone sucks - but I have a great amount of respect for Mr Jobs. And I reckon the closest these clowns will get to his funeral will be their own front door.

Please keep your mental illness to yourself - no one else is interested.

More Psychics

2011-09-16T10:22:00.000+01:00

For the last post I did, I had a root around the Internet to see what people said about Psychic Sally and I came across this:

I used to work in a pub and one night they had a 'medium night'. I was pregnant with dd but you couldn't tell, and I was due to have my 20wk scan the next day. At the end of the night she told me that I was having a girl I know there're only two options with a baby, but no one at all knew that I was pregnant.

Now this is a real classic and demonstrates clearly how the con works (that's not Psychic Sally she's talking about, just some other fraudster).

Firstly, I'm a man - and therefore not worldly wise in these matters, but if I saw someone who was 20 weeks pregnant, I'd be saying to myself "I wonder is she pregnant." Of course, I'd never say anything, she might just have a beer belly.

Look at this picture:

The third picture is 20 weeks - seriously, you wouldn't notice?

Granted, the comment says "you couldn't tell". I accept that, but if I was a woman and my job depended on picking up on such things - I'd know. Midwives can tell, mothers can tell - fathers not so much. (There are other hints - firstly, she's probably not drinking and second, even early stage pregnant women, once they know they are pregnant, tend to cradle their bellies in a protective way).

Second, and this is the big thing that the "psychic" con relies on, is "Confirmation Bias". This medium needs to get two things right: that a slightly pregnant looking woman is actually pregnant, and that it's a girl.

If she's right this it's: "OMG! That medium said I was pregnant and nobody knew - and she was right about the sex." Story is retold, many are converted.

If she's wrong - will any one say: "I went to a medium 5 months ago but she said it would be a boy."

And what if she's wrong about the pregnancy.

"No, I'm not pregnant," says the not-mum-to-be.

"I think you'll find you are," says the medium.

Again, if she's wrong no one will give it a second thought - it's no big deal, just a laugh down the pub. If she's right, everyone will shout it from the roof tops. (Remember as well, that the deck is stacked already because the "medium" can probably tell anyway.)

That's confirmation bias, that's how the con works and that's how it has worked for thousands of years. And as long as people keep falling for it, it will keep on working.

I must say....

2011-09-13T10:46:00.001+01:00

I'm appalled.

Apparently, "Psychic Sally" was being fed lines by some kind of accomplice.

This is shocking: It's as if she is just exploiting vulnerable people with simple parlour tricks.

Say it ain't so, Sally!

I wouldn't worry to much about it - for every charlatan like Sally there are plenty of genuine mediums that have real powers. Just send me €10 cash or a cheque made to cash and I'll post you a list of them.

Of course, no intelligent person would take this nonsense seriously, however, I find it outrageous that the Grand Canal Theatre would put out the comment:

The theatre stressed it would "never be a part of any scam", or attempt to "mislead" its audience

They must have been involved in setting up the stage - and therefore they know how the con works. The suggestion here is that there isn't a scam, when there clearly is - and though I'm sure they aren't part of its actual workings, they do know that when people are crying because "Psychic Sally" pretends to communicate with their dead loved ones that she is preying on them.

In some ways that's actually worse.

At least Joe Duffy is reasonably cynical about the whole thing.

Bump...

2011-08-18T17:37:00.003+01:00

It's a pity when the comments on postings are delayed (by a period of months) because really I'm the only one that reads them (I don't think many people read this stuff anyway - I really just do it for fun).

Anyway the following comment was made two weeks ago on a post I wrote last December.

Megan E Lowry said...

Really, I find myself at something of a loss to appreciate the rationale of a piece like the above. So, the author is an unbeliever in God. That is his choice. One fails to understand, however, why he finds it necessary to go online with a sneering, insolent attitude of humbug towards those things in which others believe and from which they derive solace. It is easy to grow sick and tired of people like this and their carping disparagement of what they do not understand. If I understand aright, the author is in Ireland. We really ought to have transported more of them to the penal colonies, I think.

July 31, 2011 8:44 PM

So I'm bringing it out into the light to give it an airing.

Firstly, as to the rationale of the original piece: The structure of the piece parallels the original article about so-called miracles of Lourdes. The purpose of my piece is to demonstrate that each claim in that article fails to meet basic standards of evidence and that the claims are incredulous.

What am I trying to achieve? Well, I'm hoping that someone somewhere will read my original piece and say to themselves "You know there really isn't much to this miracle claims" and then maybe they would unchain themselves from religion and live a free and happy life appreciating the world for what it really is, and not living in a self-induced fantasy bubble.

Why do I care? Well, first I care about people in general, and second, I firmly believe that if we live our lives based on truth and reason instead of faith and superstition then the world will be a better place for everyone.

And I'm sorry Megan E Lowry but I understand perfectly well what is happening at Lourdes - I went to great lengths to explain it. It is superstition preying on the vulnerable, and as I pointed out in the previous article if (a) the Catholic church were to be supportive of stem cell research and (b) the money wasted on trips to Lourdes were directed to more useful causes, then those people might not be in the state they are in.

If I saw a thug beating up a little old lady, I'd like to think I'd do something about it. Equally, when I see a multi-million euro organization growing fat off the sick and weak, I'm going to stand up and say something. And I'm not the only one - so get used to it.

Your racist remarks, of course, do little to support your case (especially as most of those deported from Ireland were poor Catholics who would likely also disagree with me).

Bring out the guillotine

2011-08-05T10:32:00.002+01:00

Unfortunately, as I read the independent online and they generally neglect to include the authorship of this kind of tripe, I can only assume that this is penned by that idiot David Quinn.

This is really why the Catholic church is in such a mess - they and their mouthpieces just don't get it.

David Norris' most important goal in life has been taken away from him by an act of kindness for a friend. Yes, it was ill advised to put it on Seanad letterhead. But as soon as it was made public he did the decent thing. He didn't try to cover it up.

Neither, for that matter, did all the liberal pinko fags working for him - they resigned en masse and without hesitation.

Strangely, Ronan Mullins, other than being an moron, has done nothing wrong here. How are we to know how the Seanad would react if he did the same thing. Were he to write a letter defending a hypothetical priest who was a friend of his - wait, "defending" is the wrong word, because David Norris didn't defend Ezra Nawi, he merely attested to his character and asked for clemency - so if Ronan Mullins merely attested that he knew said priest and that in other respects he knew him to be a good man, would he be dragged over the coals. I don't know.

But, of course, we do know how shabbily poor Ivor Callaly was treated.

Are you fucking joking? Callaly is a chancer of the highest order. I know it and you know it, and I dare say Ivor Callaly knows it. He got off on a technicality - not because he was some paragon of virtue wrongly accused by a baying mob - but because what he did, while morally wrong, just wasn't illegal enough.

Then we have the other victims of liberal madness: Kevin Myers, mild and gentle Kevin Myers - who never spoke a bad word against anyone - suffers the horror of a week's suspension (probably with pay). Oh never in human history has an innocent man suffered so.

And in his agony he is joined for this interminable week of suffering by Mary Ellen Synon - the Eve to his Adam. All she ever did was slag off some "spas". She deserves a medal, not chastisement, for sticking it to that bunch of freeloading wasters. 100 metres in 12.5 seconds - that's pathetic.

At least, Desmond Connell is accurate: A Catholic receiving Communion in a Protestant church is a "sham"; anyone receiving magic biscuits in any church is a sham.

Why was he singled out for pariah status? Well, because he was rude and unprofessional - you know, a dickhead. To be fair though, at the time he was busy covering up sex scandals in the church, so maybe he just didn't have time to think.

Anyway bless them all - at least they've gotten back to their lives.

Cowboys and Aliens

2011-08-02T13:35:00.001+01:00

I'm looking forward to this film. I saw the trailer again on Saturday - it looks cool.

But what about this: "Jesus and Aliens".

Given Clarke's Law:

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

How does "The Second Coming of Jesus" etc etc weigh up against, well... erm, aliens?

If you are a believing Christian - why are you? If I were to answer this I would say the vast majority of people believe in this because, simply, they adopted it from their parents - and anything else is just an attempt at rationalization.

However, to give them the benefit of the doubt, they might say that when they have a problem, for instance, praying to Jesus or God would solve this problem. Or maybe they've been convinced by a healing or maybe Jesus found their keys. I'm sure there are plenty of similar reasons.

But what if aliens visited - what then.

If they cured cancer and made us live 200 years more - would that make them better than Jesus.

If the had advanced MRI technology and could read your mind with it, they would know your deepest fears and desires - and quite possibly resolve them for you - in a manner that is fairly haphazard when using the prayer method.

They surely could find your keys.

So let's say these guys come along, do all this - then Jesus comes along with, basically, a late warm-up act - who do we follow? (If anyone). "Ah but he is the creator of the universe". "True" - but the only way he could demonstrate that would be to create the universe, which would really work out for us. In fact, outside of creating the universe - the aliens could match him or even improve on his abilities.

The only real difference might be their comparative moralities.

I'm with the aliens on that one.

What's this nonsense you're going on with, Enda?

2011-07-27T11:38:00.007+01:00

As I read the letters pages of various Irish newspapers, I'm struck by the number of commentaries in defense of the Catholic church that are not impressed by the "crude and intemperate language of the Taoiseach’s Dáil speech".

Now personally, I don't think there are limits to how far the Taoiseach or any other representative can go - but I would say that, wouldn't I. However, it might be possible that the Taoiseach did just rattle his sabre in order to curry favour with the mob. I think I'll check for myself.

First, what did Enda say that was so bad - well I think we can all agree that this is the problem text:

a report into child sexual-abuse exposes an attempt by the Holy See, to frustrate an Inquiry in a sovereign, democratic republic.as little as three years ago, not three decades ago.

And in doing so, the Cloyne Report excavates the dysfunction, disconnection, elitism....the narcissism that dominate the culture of the Vatican to this day.

This criticism is at the start of the speech, and is really all anyone could complain about. The rest is either not very critical - or deals with the specific abuse case in Cloyne and how that was handled so badly locally.

So the question is: had the Taoiseach and his advisors based the speech on the report or was it, as one letter writer puts it, "embarrassingly clear that Mr Kenny had not done so".

According to the Cloyne report, did Rome itself frustrate the enquiry three years ago? And are there examples of disconnection and elitism? (Dysfunction clearly exists as, if one element of the church is dysfunctional, as Cloyne diocese was, then that charge applies to the church as a whole and as to being narcissistic, this clearly refers to an elitist stance when considering the church as a group).

Now to read the Cloyne report for examples of these.... I haven't read it yet - because, frankly, it wasn't going to make me more appalled by the evils Catholic church and also I didn't want to prejudice this post.

Right, so three years ago Enda says. What happened three years ago?

Firstly, on reading the report you will see that Catholic church in Ireland implemented various models for dealing with child abuse. Initially, the "Framework Document" in 1996 and then "Our Children, Our Church" in 2005. There have been other models.

In response to the Framework Document and its insistence on mandatory reporting, the church originally said (section 1.18, Cloyne report):

In particular, the situation of ‘mandatory reporting’ gives rise to serious reservations of both a moral and a canonical nature

This was confirmed in a secret ("strictly confidentially") communique in 2005 by the Papal Nuncio (section 4.21, Cloyne report):

The Congregation wishes to emphasize the need for this document to conform to the canonical norms presently in force

There's the elitism right there. The Framework Document must conform to canon law - not necessarily the law of the land. But as mandatory reporting (of any crime) is the law of the land and canon law has "serious reservations" - the law of the land is clearly superseded from the church's point of view.

And if you are in any doubt, the commission confirmed this in section 4.22:

There can be no doubt that this letter greatly strengthened the position of those in the Church in Ireland who did not approve of the Framework Document as it effectively cautioned them against its implementation.

But did this still apply three years ago in 2008. Well Monsignor O'Callaghan clearly seemed to hold disdain for the requirements:

The Bishops rolled over under pressure from the media. And they expected Rome to endorse the new policy!

To be fair though, as long it doesn't affect how the church treats abuse cases - it doesn't mean he did anything wrong, or that he frustrated the enquiry. Or did it, in section 1.21, the report lists as one of the failures:

The failure to report any complaints to the health authorities between 1996 and 2008

So before 2008, despite the requirement to report abuse cases - none were reported to the enquiry. That doesn't mean abuse was going on in 2008 - but there were cases from previous years that O'Callaghan was required to report.

And based on his on own letters - his failure to report was wilful.

And, most importantly, the Catholic church in Rome actively supported this failure. In fact, they had made it clear that:

If such procedures were to be followed by the Bishops and there were cases of eventual hierarchical recourse lodged at the Holy See, the results could be highly embarrassing and detrimental to those same Diocesan authorities.

There can be no doubt that the Catholic church in Rome frustrated the enquiry, and that they did it wilfully because of the elitist view that the privileges of the church out-weigh the needs of the victims of child abuse within the state. And the Taoiseach was not only justified in his comments, but as one of the highest representatives of the Irish people, he was actually obliged to make the statement.

But then I would say that - I'm biased.

How low can the Catholic church sink

2011-07-14T11:02:00.005+01:00

Various Catholic commentators and opinionators and letter writers would over the past number of years have complained that there was a large amount of 'Catholic-bashing' going on.

I like Catholic-bashing - the fundamental principle of which is to blame the whole of the Catholic church for the ills of its past with respect to child abuse. It's a useful exercise because the principle still applies - it was not necessary for an actual abuse to be perpetrated, merely that it was possible.

Dismantling the privileged position was necessary to ensure child protection in the future - even if they had successfully dealt with the issue.

HOW WRONG WAS I?!!

When you've been caught with your hand in the cookie jar (or the altar boy's trousers), you don't leave it in there.

I seriously believed that, while it was not enough, that the Catholic church had somewhat cleaned up it's act. Now we learn that not only had they not done so, but that they were actively doing the opposite.

I can "excuse" the abuses of the past - I lived in those times, I remember hearing about boys being sent to "industrial schools" - shit, my mother threatened me with it on occasion. Things were different - it was still wrong, people should have known better - but a little leeway could be granted.

Not now though: This is 2009! Not 1909, not 1959 - but 2009. That was two years ago - I checked it on the calculator.

Anyway - it's "good news" in a way.

First off, the papal nuncio is going to get a well deserved bollocking from Eamon Gilmore. I hope he uses all his atheistic powers to sort that bastard out (I say bastard even though I know nothing about the man but, because he is the representative from The Vatican, he is a link on the chain of denial and seedy cover up, and it is the whole chain that is morally bankrupt).

Apparently, he also the Dean of the Diplomatic Corp. What they need a Dean for I don't know - but hopefully that office is in doubt.

Secondly, in the recent forum on primary school education - many commentators lent support to the idea of a Catholic education and the ethos which it instils. This puts pay to that nonsense - the Catholic church has the ethos of a paedophile ring, nothing more.

Thirdly, any chance that the church had of claiming the rotten apple defence is long gone. Every diocese in the country is now clearly in the gun sights.

And finally, legislation is on the cards, firstly to protect children's rights etc., but one that I do like is the idea that there is a protected confidentiality in "confession". I don't see any reason why the state should have anything to do with promoting that - it makes no difference on way or the other to the state, people just won't confess their crimes any more (and will have to burn in Hell like the rest of us).

Of course, this little bit of triumphalism aside - it's important not to forget the victims.

As I said, this happened to years ago (and is probably still happening for all we know): my son was 7 years old two years ago, and if we were good Catholics he would have been an altar boy. It just doesn't bear thinking about.

Why there are any boys or girls that are within arms reach of any priest (good or bad) totally baffles me. And I'm sorry, I understand their pain, but in this case I totally blame the parents - their knew what was possible, but they let their wilful ignorance stand in the way of their only sacred duty. Don't you dare lecture atheists on morality and how to raise children - don't you dare!

This sucks balls

2011-07-12T09:50:00.002+01:00

Friendly Atheist is to be no more:
http://friendlyatheist.com/2011/07/11/saying-goodbye-to-this-site/

Richard Wade is good and all as an occasional agony uncle, but without Hemant Mehta it won't be the same. I shall pine for my twice daily (tactful) update on the world of stupid religious peoples, though I won't miss the other twice daily updates on secular meetings and talks not in my area.

:-(

The God Delusion was shit

2011-07-06T09:49:00.001+01:00

Right, this is my post on the whole girl in the elevator thing - a different approach though, which gives me an opportunity to give out about an Emperor's New Clothing issue I've had for a long time.

Basically, IMHO "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins was shite. I just didn't get it. There were a couple of insightful things in it - I liked the scale of belief thing, for instance. But at the start of the book it claims that any theist who gets to the end of the book will be instantly deconverted. I didn't get that at all - I started the book as an atheist and I finished it as a "not-so-impressed-with-myself" atheist.

I thought it was just vitriolic. There were no convincing arguments. I learned nothing from it. There are plenty of blog posts that people have made that are far more insightful.

What the fuck does this have to do with the guy in the elevator?

Well, as we all know, Dawkins made a comment on this issue which was intended to say "Yolanda calm the fuck down" - but which had the exact opposite effect.

Of course, the initial reaction was "That's not Richard Dawkins - it couldn't be".

So PZ Myers says, "Yup, I checked. It's him alright".

Then a common response was: "How could he? I feel like I've been violated. I'll never talk to him again." Swoon, and faint.

And this is where I have a problem. I would have expected Richard Dawkins not to get involved - but once he had gotten involved, what he wrote doesn't surprise at all. It seems typically his style.

What seems to be the case is that there are a load of people who don't know who Richard Dawkins is. He is a brilliant evolutionary biologist and science author. "The God Delusion" may be shit, but all his other books are pure gold. And I reckon these people only read "The God Delusion" - because his style is always very blunt - the brutality of nature does not phase Richard Dawkins at all - which is what I'd expect from an evolutionary biologist.

It wouldn't surprise me if he sees this whole thing as normal primate sexual practice (which it is really) - and is wondering what all the fuss is about.

Now, here he is making a comment on gender issues, on which he is not an expert, and he comes across as insensitive as he does towards religion, which to my mind he also isn't an expert, in "The God Delusion". And everyone's acting all shocked.

I just don't get it.

....and to be honest, I don't think it's a privilege thing. I think that's being use as a red herring because it was OK when he was using that privilege to trample other peoples sacred ideals (however stupid they were), but it's not OK when he does it to me.

The Power of Prayer

2011-07-01T17:41:00.001+01:00

At the moment I find myself under a lot of stress. Lots of things are going on that are out of my control and that feeling of helplessness can really get in on a person. As the pressure builds up, I find myself getting depressed, I don't want to get out of bed, I couldn't be bothered talking to people, the usual symptoms. Even thought about going to the doctor, but I can't afford that kind of luxury.

So while I was on the bus I thought to myself: What Would Jesus Do?

Well, we know from the New Testament that when the world was getting him down, Jesus gave it up with a good old prayer. So I decided to give that a go.

The obvious problem here is, as an atheist, to whom do I pray. The obvious option is Jesus, because it was his idea. Three problems here: first, Jesus is a bit of wuss, second, from what I see of others that pray to him, he's not that big on delivery - he'll take the credit, but he won't put in the effort, thirdly, he's dead.

So what about the old God of Abraham, Muslims and the various Christian cults. Problem here is that he's a bit ethereal. There's not really anything you can get your teeth into. Of course, there's the big guy in the toga and flowing white beard - but that's just imagery. Most Christians would deny that image once you actually pushed them (there's a lot of baggage with that one). On top of that, by all accounts, he's a bit of git. And he doesn't exist, which makes the whole problem solving through prayer thing a bit pointless.

Where is a disconsolate atheist to turn? Well, it just so happens that recently I worked my way through The Odyssey and The Illiad - and in their ancient pages lies the solution to all my problems.

So I formulated my prayer thuswise:

Oh Mighty and Ass-Kicking Zeus: Thee, who knows how to get his leg over. Thee who helped the Trojans in their time of need and then deserted them without compunction when your misses put you under her thumb (while your were banging one of the lesser goddesses - nice one).

I call on you to use your awesome power and smite these vapours that do trouble me so. Strike them heavily on the head with lightening and thunder. Send your son Apollo and your rather hot daughter Artemis to slit their throats and still their incessant bleating in my head.

If you do this for me, I promise to a sacrifice you a young lamb (in the form of the kebab that I will be having for lunch).

Two things came of this: (1) I felt a little better (2) later that day, most of my problems went away.

The non-believer will say that the problems were all in my head, and I just anthropomorphized a facet of my own personality to solve my problems - and I'd probably agree with them.

That's the power of prayer. Cheers Zeus - I owe you a pint.

*Some liberty may have been taken with the whole Greek mythology thing there - but I feel I captured the essence of his might Zeusness.

We don't need no (Catholic) education!

2011-06-23T10:16:00.005+01:00

There's a conference going on at the moment, the "National Forum on School Patronage and Pluralism in primary schools" - which is essentially deciding whether or not churches should be allowed to be patrons of Irish primary schools.

Every Irish primary school is managed by a board of management which is headed by a patron. Most (3000 out of 3200) Irish schools have the local bishop as patron - and he gets to impose his dogma on the children (and is capable of insisting that the board of management ignore certain issues that maybe, shall we say, embarrassing for the bishop and his cronies).

Ruari Quinn is the minister for education, he's also a socialist (Auughhh!!!) and an atheist (Auuuuuugghhhhhhh!!!!-ier). He's not having this any more. And he said last week that he felt it necessary to get at least 50% of the schools wrested from the bishops' respective clutches.

Of course, the bishop's are up in arms about this. (Which is odd, because I'm pretty sure he got that figure from the Archbishop of Dublin [who's actually one of the good guys], who's studies suggested that 50% of parents were no supportive of an explicit Catholic education).

Even stranger is that in yesterday's session:

They also pointed to the danger of a two-tier primary education system if there was parental choice with no limitation.

How odd - because it is a common assertion by the Catholic church that parental choice was fundamental to the education system (especially when parents chose the Catholic church).

And then there's this obscure text:

The State acknowledges that the primary and natural educator of the child is the Family and guarantees to respect the inalienable right and duty of parents to provide, according to their means, for the religious and moral, intellectual, physical and social education of their children.

I don't know - but that suggests to me that parental choice should have no limitation. Certainly not by a bunch of lads in fancy dress.

Strawman Masturbation

2011-06-17T07:02:00.001+01:00

Is it a strawman if you are doing it to yourself?

David Quinn, much emboldened by his glorious twitter spat with PZ Myers, is now attacking those lying bastards who claim that the Catholic Church set up the Magdelene to punish unmarried mothers. Now if we could just find those people.

What a pathetic squirmy attempt to wriggle off the hook.

So what if the Catholic Church didn't set them up, so what if they were originally for prostitutes.

The first Magdalene asylum in Ireland was established in 1767 by a Protestant benefactor named Lady Arabella Denny as a home for 'penitent prostitutes'.

Good for her. Given the conditions of the time it was probably quite a positive thing to do - hooray for the Magdelene laundries... of the 18th century. (It's also a bit disingenuous to try to smear Lady Denny in order to cover up your own culpability - Tu Quoque anyone).

However, hooroo for the same institution in the 20th century. These were arrogant, judgemental institutions that exploited women by creating a "crime" and then enslaving those women, with the complicit help of their brainwashed families - and at the same time ripping children from their rightful parents based on their patriarchal dogma (while at the same time we also know that the priests of those organization were raping those very children on an industrial scale).

No, I did not know the original history of the Magdelene Laundries - thanks for the reveal. But I am well aware of the crimes of the nuns and priests - who with any luck will be exposed and prosecuted for their real crimes. And hopefully there will be a further solid blow against the authority and funds of the Catholic Church who are responsible on the basis that they assumed a moral authority that was not theirs - a hopefully it will serve as a warning not to cede our authority in the future.

That's the real veil to be lifted - and I look forward to the well deserved and long overdue justice that is coming.

So who shot the bear?

2011-06-12T17:12:00.003+01:00

There's a joke about a 75-year old man who gets his new 20-year old bride pregnant. He visits the doctor for a check-up and he tells the doctor his good news.

"Hmmm... ," says the doctor. "Let me tell you a story. Once there was a man lost in the forest. All he had was his umbrella, when out popped a bear. The man raised his umbrella, squeezed the handle, and BANG! The bear dropped dead."

"Impossible," said the old man, "someone else must have shot the bear."

"Exactly," said the doctor.

Sorry - it's not a very good joke.

But it came to mind when I watched PZ Myers being doorstepped by Hamza Tzortzis.

It's interesting that in his study of the Prophet Mohammed something something something, he dismisses the most likely, if possibly difficult, option in favour of the supernatural option.

The idea he desperately clutches to is that Mohammed, who apparently lived in a very primitive village in the middle of nowhere, couldn't possibly have written the Koran without divine inspiration. He couldn't have written it because the knowledge that embryos develop and the Arabic language didn't exist at the point. The immediate question that comes to mind is how did he write the book in Arabic, if Arabic didn't exist - but that's unimportant - what's important is why choose the complex magic man answer, when a much simpler option exists.

As PZ Myers said, how difficult is it either for Mohammed and his pals to figure it out for themselves. Muscle is anchored in bone - so bone must have developed before the muscle (which is apparently not the case, but don't worry Arabic is adaptable - so that your argument will always be right). Or alternatively, some bloke passed through on a camel with the works of Aristotle in his bag - or at least he had read or heard about Aristotle as he passed through Greece on his way to Persia.

Face it - someone else shot the bear.

If the weight of the argument for these prophecies is dependent on us choosing the impossible over the improbable, then they cannot be used as evidence for the impossible - it's a circular argument. And the same applies to the predictions in the new testament, the old testament, the prophecies on Nostradamus or the horoscopes in the newspaper. And as the man say, they can't all be right - but they can all be wrong.

If Hitler was an atheist...

2011-06-09T10:48:00.000+01:00

...then so was Jesus.

If we can ignore:

"I am now as before a Catholic and will always remain so"

Then equally we can ignore:

Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you really know me, you will know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.”

And if Jesus was an atheist - well, that's good enough for me.

Well there's a surprise

2011-06-03T17:52:00.001+01:00

First, sorry about the mess - I've decided to undergo an expensive rebranding. This is costing me the vast sum of €1.80 which what I reckon is the pro rata cost of the sandwich I had for lunch.

I've gone for a rename 'Faith & Begorra', I'll explain later - as if it needed it.

Anyway, never mind that.

My online copy of the independent is acting up for some reason, so all I can get of that Catholic mouthpiece, David Quinn, today (it being Friday) is the title his enlightening goop:

"Forget corporate donations, it's gender quotas that worry me"

Well there's a surprise... David Quinn, wannabe "Rethuglican" supports free reign for corporate corruption and manipulation of regulation (which so far has worked out really well for us) and wants to see the women kept in their place.

Personally, I don't agree with quotas for things as a rule - however, as a short term effort to promote more of an unrepresented minority, I won't complain.

Quinn will, of course, use the argument that quotas don't work, etc etc while he gives lip service to better levels of gender equality - when you can be sure that all he really want is that they would start behaving like good Catholic and get their knickers off - after of course they've gotten him his dinner and a couple of cold beers.

Asshole

2011-05-24T13:21:00.001+01:00

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2011/0524/breaking13.html

Children have been hurt because of this asshole's bullshit.

He called it - nothing happened. Nothing, not a thing, zip, nada. Like his religion, it was empty.

You don't keep getting bites of the cherry.

If this guy was any kind of religious leader, he would have had a nice tall glass of Cool-Aid on Friday night.

Watch the Atheist in Hell!! Mwahahaa!

2011-05-19T12:28:00.001+01:00

This one is just for the locals (Bray, Co. Wicklow etc).

This Saturday (21st), Christ Church Bray (that's the one with the steeple behind McDonalds) is having its annual Fete.

And every year their tradition is take an innocent non-believer or heretic and make him stand in front of burning hot smokey coals, so that he can experience first hand what it's like to suffer the searing agony of eternal hellfire.

Or to put it another way, I do the barbeque at the Fete.

I have to say, that as an experience of community a church fete is great day out. There's all sorts of things like bouncy castles and plants stalls and table full of unidentifiable crap that you might care to buy, and naturally the ladies are excellent cooks, so there are some great cakes and stuff.

And of course there's an athiest barbeque. I'll be the one wearing the "Bad Samaritan" T-shirt and smoking the cigar (I was going to wear my not-praying mantis - but that would just be showing off).

So if you're in the area drop in - it is good fun (especially if it's not raining). And if you're an atheist or similar all the better - apparently there is some kind of "rapture" going on which is going to considerably reduce my customer base. But thanks to me and my barbeque, the Tribulation will be catered.

And make sure you say hello!

God Save The Queen

2011-05-18T09:50:00.002+01:00

At last, I've figured it out. I'm Irish, I'm a Republican - but I'm not an Irish Republican. That works for me. That is the best way I can hold my political principles without associating myself with those Celtic-Jersey-Wearing Unable-to-burn-a-flag morons that are protesting against the Queen's visit. Their concept of Republicanism is integrally tied in with hatred of the British built on nothing more than base bigotry (the British have their fair share of these clowns too).

I understand where this comes from - when I was in school the British (and Protestant Irish) were demonized by the pupils and this was encouraged by the teachers. Thankfully, I have grown up since then (and by-passed the Catholic revisionism, and learned some real history) - others unfortunately haven't and are still labouring with an 8-year-old mentality.

"Irish Republicanism" is entwined with Catholicism. Which is ironic, as Catholicism is the pure anti-thesis of Republicanism - at least, in Britian there is a nod to the fact that all authority comes from the people. And the greatest impediment to Irish freedom in the 19th century (after the British naturally), was the Catholic church - ostensibly in opposition to the protestant driven Republican movement.

And of course these morons went into a blind rage because the Queen laid a wreath in Garden of Remembrance - their limited thought process couldn't comprehend the significance of the event. With their limited vocabulary - Queen, Hate, Eat, Ride - it is understandable.

In 1916, the founders of this nation were executed as traitors (to the King). From the moment that happened the people of Ireland recognized that that response as wrong - and that Irish independence was a right that couldn't be denied. Over time, that realization spread to the people of Britain and the eventually to its highest echelons.

The Queen laying the wreath yesterday was a bold statement. It recognized the legitimacy of those that claimed our right to self-determination. It wasn't the Queen giving us that right - that right is ours and alway has been, the Queen was just acknowledging that truth. A truth which is in direct contradiction to her raison d'etre. That is powerful.

In the past, Britain saw Ireland as an errant child which needed to be disciplined. Now we can ourselves as a sibling was the victim of the bullying of an imposing older sibling - but like siblings we have now all grown up and we can move on together.

The Queen coming here, and the moves being made by David Cameron are brilliant. And I am thrilled to be able to see this. The future looks very rosy for us all.

Now, the Queen is great and all that but as a head of state, in my opinion, Mary McAleese comes out on top - she exemplifies everything that is great about this country, and I am very proud.

As for "God Save The Queen", the sentiment not the song, I'm afraid not. But she need not worry - An Garda Siochana will do a far better job - I didn't know we had so many.

Pascal's Wager + 1

2011-05-11T13:07:00.002+01:00

So there's all this bullshit about the May 21st business when the Rapture is going to happen. I'm not overly impressed with the people doing this because (a) they're wrong (b) when they're shown to be wrong they'll be pathetic about it (c) it scares peoples, especially children (see (a)).

But what if they're right?

I don't mean that it's any less BS - but what would happen if they all got raptured providing what, while not being inconclusive proof of their claims, but certainly would make me think twice.

Apparently, then there would be a period of 1000 years of something. And I would be living in that period. Would I change my views on things?

If I think about it - no I wouldn't. Obviously, my grounds for not believing their claims would be shaken - but as an Agnostic Atheist (which is not an agnostic - don't confuse the terms) that wouldn't be such a huge shift. I accept that I cannot know that there are no deities - but I'm quite confident of it.

Would I change my personal moral code? Not one jot.

90% of the moral codes of all human are the same - be they Christian, atheist or other.

Am I going to stop the murdering and raping and baby eating that I enjoy so much? Eh, no. (Big sarcasm tags required there).

Would I start hating the LGBT community? No, of course I wouldn't. I don't care what it says in the bible - that shit is immoral and I'm not going to start doing it. And the pope would still be a genocidal maniac because of his stance on condoms. And all those priests that raped those children wouldn't suddenly be right.

Would I start worshiping God? No. Don't think so. I'd still feel that an individual doesn't intrinsically deserve worship, but that admiration for what they have accomplished is merited. And in that regard I'd still feel that things like Human Consciousness, Evolution and the Universe in general were pretty cool, and deserving of a "Respect!" for the dude that put them in place. Also, I can think of no greater compliment than dedicating one's life to understand something that someone else has created.

Would I accept Jesus as my personal saviour? What does that mean? Am I going to follow his teachings: sure, the one's I agree with - as I do now. Will I accept that he rose from the dead? Well, the reason I don't accept that now is because there's zero evidence of it. If people were raptured, that might count toward evidence, of something anyway. But what difference would that make.

Would I stop asking questions about how, why, who? No - sorry. That's just what I do.

So, no, nothing would change. Except there'd be a lot less annoying Christians in the world.

The Parable of the Sower

2011-05-09T11:08:00.003+01:00

You know this one:

Behold, there went out a sower to sow: And it came to pass, as he sowed, some fell by the way side, and the birds of the air came and devoured it up. And some fell on stony ground, where it had not much earth; and immediately it sprang up, because it had no depth of earth: But when the sun was up, it was scorched; and because it had no root, it withered away. And some fell among thorns, the thorns grew up, and choked it, and it yielded no fruit. And other fell on good ground, did yield fruit that sprang up and increased; and brought forth, some thirty, and some sixty, some a hundred.

Not a bad argument against fine-tuning.

The various stages of life develop all over the place to different extents. In some places the basic chemical reactions occur, but no more. In other places, the reactions produce amino acids, proteins and maybe even replicating molecules, but no more. Maybe simple cells appear - maybe complex organisms, maybe sentient life forms.

If the environment is suitable, life develops. If it isn't life dies. But it's not a case of the environment being designed - it just depends on where you are.

Of course, parables are used by their proponents in twisty turny ways. The devious mind will say: Yes, but the field where the sower sowed the seed that grew was designed by him for optimal (30/60/100) return.

True.

But any gardener will tell you a weed is just a plant where it's not wanted.

So who designed the field for the thorn bushes?

Of course, the real intent of this story is telling you that good ideas might be spread widely but they will only thrive in fertile ground.

Now it's an argument against religion.

Where is the world is Osama Bin Laden?

2011-05-04T23:19:00.003+01:00

Three mainstream options:

The Evil Bastard is burning in Hell
The Freedom Fighter is getting his knob polished by 72 virgins
He's dead

First and second options are mutually exclusive. 1.5 billion Christians versus 1.2 billion Muslims - the Christians must be right, there's more of them (that can't be right - there could easily be more Muslims - that wouldn't suddenly make them right, would it?)

Of course, the third option (the atheist option) is the only one that's actually true (if you believe the reports).

It's a good thing he's not in the world - one less religious nut. The world isn't necessarily a better place because he's dead - and I'm never keen on the death of a human being but it's hard to be sad that he's been terminated.

Is it right for people to rejoice in the streets over this? Well no. If the shoe was on the other foot, as it was in September 2011, it would be morally wrong for people to celebrate that - so with the shoe back on the other other foot: it's morally wrong to celebrate OBL's death.

But then again... I remember those towers getting blown up - it was pretty emotional stuff, scary, upsetting, sickening. And I don't live anywhere near there - I can't imagine what the people of New York felt about this whole event. Maybe a little triumphalism is to be expected.

It's not going to foment are new found anger against the West - that shit is already on the cards.

Finally, the conspiracy.

Did the Americans make a genuine effort to capture Bin Laden alive? Did they do their best to ensure due process? Did they hold themselves to the standard required to be the "Greatest Democracy in the World"?

Nope. And if you expected them to - you're a fool. There was no way, no how there was ever going to be a headline "Bin Laden escapes" - it was shoot to kill all the way, double tap to the head, game over. Personally, I'm not going to lose any sleep.

Now we're importing crazy...

2011-04-25T23:14:00.005+01:00

If you listen to Ask An Atheist, a little radio broadcast out of Seattle, you'll know that there are some number of days left until judgement day.

The reason for this is that some Americans are loopers - and believe with some obscure calculation that judgement day is on May 21st. Of course, on May 22nd there will be the usual excuses for why the calculations were wrong (I think Homer Simpson already did this). It's not okay, because (a) a number of people are damaging themselves to follow this crap and (2) because it's scaring people.

But then maybe it is okay because we know there is something in the water in the United States that cause people to disconnect from the path of reason. They're all nutjobs over there - not like us. We'd never see that kind of stupidity here.

Or would we? Take a trip to Superquinn in Bray - yes Bray, County Wicklow, Ireland - this country. They've got one of the ads.

Muppets.

The Atheist Turing Test

2011-04-18T09:58:00.005+01:00

Alan Turing was a mathematician who had a major role in saving Britain from complete destruction during the second world war. In gratitude, (conservative and religious) British society hounded him to the point where he felt it necessary to take his own life. If he hadn't died so early we might actually have robot butlers right now - so now you know who to blame. Thankfully, though they recently posthumously apologised for this atrocity.

Anyway, Turing had a test - the purpose of this eponymous test was to determine if a computer had intelligence. It goes something like this: you set up a system where a human interviewer can ask questions of either a computer or a person without actually seeing the other party - Googletalk would do the trick. If the interviewer cannot differentiate between the computer and the real person, then the computer has passed the test, and could be said to be intelligent (if you accept the test in the first place as defining intelligence).

Now, let me digress for a second, to this numpty [via Freethinker].

Look at the video, read the text etc etc. Any god-fearing atheist will be saying: WTF. She clearly hasn't even met an atheist (certainly not IRL). In fact, she wouldn't even know one if she did.

See where I'm going with this...

This is the Turing test for atheists (the format can be anything), but basically can she, or anyone else, tell from the answers to a select number of questions whether a person is an atheist or not. (Or is her opinion solely based on uniformed, ignorant bigotry).

I figure 10 questions should do it - and they should be chosen such that they are not too vague (like "Do you have dog?"), but not too obvious (like "Do you believe in God?"). Actually, the (strongly) agree/disagree with this statement model is better to avoid bias.

I wonder if she could figure it out. (Although she doesn't strike me as very bright in the first place).

Abortion is a good thing
Two adults who love each other should be free to marry
Women who dress provocatively are "asking for it"
People should be free to choose the manner of their own death
Children should obey their parents
Sometimes it is acceptable to kill another human being
Slavery is wrong
Education is good for society
Churches should be held to account for sexual abuses of their priests/pastors
Jesus was a real person

5 options: Strongly Agree, Agree, Neutral, Disagree, Strongly Disagree.

My answers for the record:

Disagree
Agree
Strongly disagree
Agree
Neutral
Agree
Agree
Strongly Agree
Strongly Agree
Agree

Am I am atheist? (Well obviously I am, but from the answer I gave). Are you?

Maybe I'm just too cynical

2011-04-14T10:19:00.002+01:00

So the Dalai Lama is in town and I'm sorry I'm just not impressed.

Apparently he is very wise. He makes statements like:

"The ultimate source of happiness, peace of mind, cannot be produced by money."

Hmmm... deep. Let me think on this.

Wait a second - that's just plain stupid. It's an ignorant trite rehashing of a useless cliche.

Two kinds of people: parents (including those with plans in that direction) and others.

First, looking at "others". Peace of mind comes from knowing that you will always have whatever you need. Starting with a bed and food - good company helps too.

So the Dalai Lama, the baldy mooch, has all these things in spades. And a lot more. He gets to fly around the world, stay in nice hotels and gets wined and dined by international governments. Oooh! The humanity.

There are people begging, sleeping and starving on the streets who would gladly forgo the need for money if they just had the peace of mind that this guy has. It reminds me of certain French monarch who wisely suggested that the peasants should eat cake.

Secondly, look at the parent-types.

Peace of mind comes from one thing - and I know: Having enough money to ensure that your kids are housed, fed, clothed, schooled and healthy. And that peace of mind only comes from having money.

This is the usual religious leader nonsense - veil something that is either wrong or pointless in a strange outfit and a knowing elderly wink, and you will con the world. These guys are exactly the same as those tele-evangelicals in the US - only better. They don't go for actual cash, they go for the trappings of wealth, that way no one can claim that they are hypocritical. And they can make truly asinine and naive statements about money.

Of course, the correct "wise" version of this drivel is that you don't need to go mad trying to get money, just get enough for peace of mind. The first billion is definitely enough. But anyone who says you don't need money is a moron.

What are the chances?

2011-04-09T04:37:00.002+01:00

What are the chances that there is someone who:

(a) Lives in Ireland
(b) Doesn't really believe in gods and all that hokem
(c) Is reading this obscure backwater blog of mine

If that is you, do me and you and everyone else a favour: don't put anything other than "No Religion" on the census when you fill it out on Sunday (or whenever).

We are seeing at the moment day in day out a bunch of moogs complaining about Ruairi Quinn getting the religion out of school - and the "authority" they have to do that is that their religion is in a majority (which doesn't mean that they get to tell everyone else what to do).

YOU need to point out that their majority is not as big as they think it is! And the census is how you do that.

Pascal's Wager wins the Grand National by a nose!

2011-04-08T10:09:00.006+01:00

Tomorrow is the Aintree Grand National day, and as usual I will be putting a couple of quid on something. But it puts me in mind of another bet that I am apparently foolish not to make...

Imagine you have €50 in your pocket, burning a hole, and you pass the bookies. Just for fun you step inside and decide to have a flutter.

In the first race the options are a horse called "Pascal's Wager" and another horse called... well actually there are no other horses. This is your archetypal one horse race. Even money odds (if he wins, you get your money back plus the same again), and as in most races if there is no winner the bookie refunds your original stake.

Should you bet some of your €50 on it?

In fact, you would be completely insane not to put the entire amount on and ring all your friends and everyone you know and get a bank loan and so on and so forth, and put the whole lot on "Pascal's Wager" to win. If he wins you automatically get double your money back - and there isn't really any scenario where you can lose (outside chance he dies half way round the track, but you still get your original stake back).

Anyway, he wins, you collect your now €100 and look at the next race. This one is a little trickier, two horses "Buraq" and "Pegasus". You have to take a gamble here, maybe you'll bet maybe you won't. "Buraq" is the favourite, and has better form. So you decide to put €50 down to win.

"Pegasus" flies in to win it and you are €50 down. But you still have the €50 you walked into the shop with.

Next race, last race of the day, the Bumper Super Derby Gold Silver Bronze Cup Grandest Grand National Nationally, International and Universally Steeplechase over 1 Lifelong.

This one's a bit odd. First, the field, that's the list of horses running in the race, basically it's any horse that's currently eligible to run in any horse race, and.... every horse that has ever run in a horse race, (Shergar and Red Rum are there), and.... every horse that will ever run in a horse race. There are fantasy horses (Shadowfax and Binkie are there), my little ponies, centaurs, Rudolf - sure, while were at it, anything with 4 legs: cows, goats, sheep, dogs, cats, tables, whatever. In fact, by best estimates, there is an infinite number of horse-like things running in the race.

Second, the form. Well there is no form. The form is how well the horses have run in past races. There is no evidence whatsoever that any horse has ever finished a race. (Sure "Pascal's Wager" won his race and so did "Pegasus" but the bookie doesn't know what you're talking about - and you still only have the €50 you walked into the shop with.) Even if you had a form what would it matter - how do you rate a normal horse against an undead horse or a flying horse?

There are odds on some of the horses, "Pascal's Wager" for one is 10-1 on (you win €5, for your €50 bet). But low odds don't mean the horse is going to win - it just means that he has a lot of punters betting on him. (Punters can be stupid - especially in a race with such a large field).

So which horse do you bet on? It's a really tough choice.

Well there is only one sane option...

Leave your money in your pocket - I like to think of this as the Atheist Bet - and walk out of the shop.

(Good thing too, Pascal's Wager fell at the first and both he and his jockey had to be shot).

BTW have a bet on the real Grand National (unless you have a gambling problem). It's a bit of fun, that's all. The good thing about the Grand National is that you don't need to know anything about the horses. Just pick a 25-1 or 33-1 horse with a name you like. Go into the betting shop, write "Grand National", the name of your horse and "€5 E/W" on a betting slip and give it with a €10 note to the girl behind the counter. Then go and watch the race.

You've put down an Each Way (E/W) bet, which is actually 2 bets. One, the Win bet, says you get 34 times your €5, if your horse wins, and the second, the Place bet, says you get 9 times you €5 if your horse comes in the top 5. (Obviously, scale the €5 up or down depending on your means)

God hates sycophants

2011-04-07T14:49:00.000+01:00

On Sunday night the BBC screened Louis Theroux's "America's Most Hated Family in Crisis". A fascinating insight into the Westboro Baptist Church, but more importantly a sad indictment of the damage religion can do to its zealots.

I know I shouldn't feel sorry for the Phelp's - they're nut jobs, but when you see parents rejecting their children for what is quite evidently pure nonsense I fail to understand - that a man could put dogma ahead of his daughter just astounds me. It's one thing to hold to such a dogma and be annoying about it, but it's a completely different scenario when you refuse to even hear one word from the mouth of your child.

And to see a small boy so filled with anger and rage over "fags" - you think, what do you know? And more importantly, why do you care? Is this a big issue in your life - or is it that it's a big issue for the adults in your life who should know better than to pass on their bigotry to a child.

The Phelp's are right, by the way, God does hate fags. He says it clearly in Leviticus 18:22, it's an abomination in the eyes of the lord. Of course, he says a lot of things in the Leviticus - have they done their duty and killed anyone they came across working on the Sabbath, and those clothes they were wearing looked a lot like different kinds of cloth to me. Oooh!

The problem is not the Phelp's interpretation of the bible, the problem is the bible - and anyone who doesn't do all the stupid things asked of them, by that book, knows it.

The old guy - he's nuts. But they younger ones should see through his nonsense, especially the adults, before they're standing around at a kool-aid party.

Eureka! I've found it!

2011-03-28T09:50:00.004+01:00

What?

"A justification for the existence of religion."

There's been a lot of talk about the rise of atheism and the demise of religion, what with all the censuses (censi?) coming up (remember if you're not religious, say so), and the paper last week showing how mathematically religion is doomed in, among other countries, Ireland.

This means that at some point in the near future, the majority will be godless. This presents a major problem. As everyone knows atheists are only doing it to be cool - and if most people are atheists, it won't be cool any more.

What is an up and coming rebel without a lack of cause to do?

Simple... religion. The best part is, you don't have to think and you get to justify any old rubbish you like. I was thinking of one of the less serious Christian groups (although evangelicals do get to be bigoted in a fun kind of way) - but I think making up my own religion is the true path to success (and riches - oh yes don't forget the riches).

Mick Wallace - don't back down

2011-03-25T09:41:00.004Z

Ok, now I'm really courting controversy here.

Mick Wallace said that prostitution should be legalized - Ruhama have given him a slap on the wrist.

I'm not a huge fan of Ruhama - and I know that's not PC to say. (Although I do respect greatly what they are trying to do, and that the have a lot more experience with prostitutes than I do.)

If I were to provide a justification for prostitution it would go something like this:

We are animals, and as such we have sexual needs. There are women who are "willing" to provide a service to satisfy those sexual urges for money.

This the leads to what I see as the only real objection to prostitution:

Prostitution objectifies women.

There are other objections:

Women are forced by economic circumstances into prostitution
Most prostitutes are drug addicts and sell themselves to feed the habit
Criminals control prostitutes and they are effectively slaves
Innocent women are trafficked here and end up as prostitutes
Many prostitutes are raped and beaten even killed by their "customers"

The problem with these objections is that they are nothing to do with prostitution. In response to the first two, imagine we could by magic eliminate prostitution - those women would still be in those economic circumstances and the drug addicts would still be drug addicts.

Trafficking, slavery, rape and murder are crimes from which prostitutes are not protected, as they should be, by the law. If a woman worked in McDonalds as a slave would that be acceptable - of course not. If a women plumber is raped on a job, would that be acceptable.

It's not the prostitution that is wrong. It's the negation of the women's basic rights - but the law locks them into a vicious circle from which there is no escape.

Ruhama describes itself as:

Grounded in a Christian perspective which emphasises the value and dignity of every human being

Never mind the fact that the Christian perspective has very little respect for women, except as breeders and servants: the Christian perspective is extremely judgemental on sexual issues - the control of which is fundamental to most Christian churches, especially the Catholic church.

It is important to remember that Christian values define sex outside marriage, whatever the circumstances, as wrong. This bothers me, in respect of Ruhama; if they have preconceived notions of right and wrong - how can they see the real problem or the real solution?

Maybe Ruhama's intentions are exclusively to better the lives of prostitutes - but you rarely see any group that is 'grounded in a Christian perspective' that isn't interested in promoting their twisted religious values at the expense of the 'tortured souls' they say they are protecting.

There is an interesting point on their About page:

None of the women known to Ruhama, including those who claim that their involvement in prostitution is voluntary, wants their daughters to earn their living in this way.

That phrase 'those who claim' is seriously loaded. Should it not be 'those lying bitches'.

And, of course, they don't want their daughters working there. I'm not suggesting that prostitution is a positive career choice - but neither is flipping burgers, and I would not want my daughter doing that either.

The life of a prostitute in Ireland is not a good one - but there are major social issues around it that need to be fixed first. The problem needs to be tackled at an individual level and at a public policy level. Ruhama are doing fine at the former, but they should let Mick Wallace and people like him fix the latter.

As to the charge, that prostitution objectifies women: that's life. My job objectifies me. My employer doesn't see me as the person, but as the 'burger flipper', 'the plumber', 'the High Court judge'. I don't know Mick Wallace personally - he's just a TD. Sure there are issues around people not having respect for women - but you don't stop that by getting rid of the women.

Please feel free to have at it if you think I'm way off course here.

Moral undifference

2011-03-24T10:00:00.002Z

I've often found it odd that in Northern Ireland the Unionists could easily be described as Nationalist, in that they have a love of their nation and wish to be part of it, and that Nationalists could be described as Unionist, in that the believe in the integrity of a nation and that it should be maintained (Edward Carson, for instance, was very much against the idea of partition).

Equally, Conservative and Liberal moralities seem to be divided by nuance rather than fact.

Looking deeply at some of the major moral divides between the two positions, it's hard to see the difference.

Abortion, for instance: who wants more abortions! No one - unless they are sociopaths. The pro-choice side might want freedom of choice on abortion, but I'm sure they would be happier if there were less people in need of that choice. They are not promoting the idea of unprotected sex and promiscuity in order to increase the number of abortions performed.

Homosexuality: (tip toe through the minefield) I have yet to see a compelling natural argument in favour of homosexuality - it seems that if the entire population was gay, we'd be done for. Obviously, the scenario where this would arise is nonsense, but there is a strong fear in the conservative moral mind of the "gay plague" - where we all catch "the gay" and wake up one day with no new babies (same goes for legalization of soft drugs).

Pre-marital sex - or more correctly low-age entry into parenthood: we don't need more people (although strangely many conservative Christians would see Genesis 1:28 as requiring that) - and a person's quality of life will be improved by having children at a more optimum time.

Modest dress: No one wants to see their daughter (or son) raped. Some say, don't dress provocatively, others say don't rape people. And unfortunately, women bear the brunt of this simply because they are more likely to be victims of rape. (Then it gets out of hand and everyone's wearing Burkas).

The difference, is therefore, not in the fundamental objective underpinning the moral - but in the different approaches to ensuring the ends. Conservative views tend towards legal restrictions on personal freedom - while the liberal view is to allow the freedom and, mainly through education and acceptance, seek to minimize the undesirable behaviour.

Unfortunately, neither way works - when conservative methods are used, it is not long before statistics clearly show the failure of these methods. Whereas the liberal approach works for most - it fails for a minority (and we have abortions and rapes and drunken wife beaters etc).

Bizarrely though, like the Unionists and Nationalists, they both seem to be living in each others pockets. Both see the application of public policy as the means to solve our problems - though the conservative model is legally based while the liberal policy is government driven. Equally, both agree with the concept of personal responsibility - the difference being when that is applied: avoid the scenario through education or punish the scenario and let it stand as a "warning".

Some people, of course, on both sides just want to be different and it suits them to ignore how "undifferent" they are.

(Obviously, David Cameron and Nick Clegg aren't morally opposed to each other - but their labels suit my purpose).

"...for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword."

2011-03-23T01:00:00.002Z

On the face it, yesterday's ruling by the UK High Court that the Sandown Free Presbyterian Church was entitled to publish what they like from the bible as protected speech might seem to be a cause celebre for the Rev David McIlveen.

Wise counsel would argue that this victory is a double edged sword that should not be wielded. Of course, they won't take that counsel and will use this judgement to pronounce their bigoted nonsense and ram it into the face of everyone they can.

However, the freedom of expression which they have gained is automatically granted to those which they attack - and when those that oppose them publish equally protected speech, it will be hypocritical to complain.

Helping people by taking your boot off their neck

2011-03-22T08:44:00.003Z

Trocaire is "the official overseas development agency of the Catholic Church in Ireland", and all this week they are getting a free ride from RTE in the "Living Word" slot.

Today's heart wrenching story is of a woman in Africa (I missed her name) who has AIDS. She got it from her husband because he got it somewhere else and she can't refuse to service him, according to local customs.

He died - she has four kids. And his family decided to kick her out of the house because she must be the slut that gave him AIDS according to these "good" people. Nice to see Christian values hard at work.

She went to the local Catholic church and with Trocaire's help got a house and some income to support her family.

So here's a positive story about the Catholic church helping a vulnerable women in distress because of a disease that is spread by the callousness of ... erm ... the Catholic church. Lucky her she is now beholden to the Catholic church for fixing a problem they caused in the first place. If her husband had been compelled to use a condom in the first place she wouldn't be in this predicament.

Don't give money to Trocaire; they are literally "part of the problem."

Give it to someone without an agenda - Goal, for instance. John O'Shea might be mad as a badger's handbag, but at least he cares about the people he's trying to help - and he does a good job.

It's like the biggest moon ever!!!

2011-03-21T10:18:00.001Z

No, it's not.

There is an awful lot of crap being talked about the "supermoon".

The thing is there is nothing super about it. The biggest claim I heard was that this was the closest the moon has been to the earth in 150 years. Wrong.

The standard claim is that it's 18 years. Sorry, wrong again.

The correct claim is three fold:
1. That the moon is at perigee
2. That the moon is full
3. That this is occurring very close to the vernal equinox

Anything else is just made up nonsense.

These three events occurring at the same time are rare enough - quite possibly not in the last 150 years. A full moon at perigee, hasn't happen since 1993 - that's what makes it appear big (oh and there's an optical effect that occurs when it's near the horizon).

But the individual events are commonplace. The moon is full once a month - that's why it's called 'month'. And the vernal equinox happens every year - vernal means spring.

The perigee thing is the rarest event but that's not uncommon either, in fact, the moon was a lot closer in 2005 than it was last night (yesterday being the vernal equinox).

So what's all this about anyway - why does it matter.

As Bill O'Reilly so accurately put it - 'Tide goes in, tide goes out.'

The interaction between the moon, the sun and the water that covers our planet is what makes the tides.

The tides are caused by the sun and the moon pulling on the sea and lifting it up. Now, when they lift it up in one place, it has to be lower everywhere else - there's only a fixed amount of water. And then as the earth rotates the pull of the sun affects different places on the earth, so we all get a tide in and a tide out.

When the sun is closest to the earth - it causes higher tides. That's now - 20th March.

At the same time the moon is on the other side pull that up as well. How do we know that? Well because there's a full moon, that means from our point of view, the sun is shining directly on the face of the moon, and that only happens when the moon is on the opposite side of the earth to the sun (it's not exactly opposite, otherwise there would be a lunar eclipse).

And then the clincher - at the moment the moon is at perigee. That means it is closer to the earth.

Put these three things together and you are going to get very high tides. That's it. Nothing special about the moon - just a coincidence of events.

What a wonderful world

2011-03-16T10:05:00.004Z

A while back when the Jehovahs came to my door, they said that the world is becoming a far worse place with plagues and wars and famines etc etc, and that it's a clear sign of the impending end.

A blind man on a galloping horse would agree when we see what has happened in Japan. But current situation in Japan is an amazing testament to how much better the world is, not how worse it is.

Absolutely, this is a terrible disaster and not a moment goes by at this time when the people of Japan and their desperate plight are not far my thoughts - but the response of the Japanese people themselves and the people around the world is something wonderful (though I'm getting sick of the word 'stoicism'). Most people...

Some are obviously using this as evidence that their silly beliefs are true. God hates atheist Japan, so he made the earthquake to destroy it (why did he not just release the Kraken?). Strangely God also loves the Christians in New Zealand, so he made an earthquake to teach them something and destroyed their cathedral. And he hates Indonesia because they are muslim so he killed over a quarter of a million of them - so they could turn away from one version of him and turn to another version of him, even though both versions apparently are equally unjustified.

This God bloke is big into vague messages that hurt people - send a memo dickhead!. It's almost as if he doesn't exist (or if he does he's a git) - and these are just natural occurrences and the best person to turn to at this time is your fellow human being because he or she is the only one likely to actually help you.

Hooray for us.

I do hope the Japanese get it back together (I'm sure they will) - because Japan is definitely top of my list of places to visit.

Supermoon Earthquake - run for your lives!!!

2011-03-11T13:06:00.001Z

You must be joking. The Daily Mail is - or are they?

Come on people - use that lump of useless flesh between your ears!

Let me explain: The Moon orbits the Earth in a slight ellipse - a squashed circle. That means that a some point in its orbit it is closer to the earth (perigee) and at some points it is further away (apogee).

Next week, on the 19th it will be closer to the Earth than normal. It might appear to be a slight bit bigger but nothing to worry about, it does this all the time.

The clowns in the Daily Mail are suggesting that the increased pull of the Moon on the Earth caused an earthquake which resulted in the tidal wave that hit Japan this morning.

We have two options: (a) Panic - because we are all going to die in a great 2012 style disaster or (b) Don't Panic - and look at the basic facts.

Check out this apogee/perigee calculator.

On the 19th the moon will be 356577km away, at apogee (March 6th) it was 406582km away - given that a lunar cycle is approximately 28days. That means we are 8 days off perigee or roughly halfway between perigee and apogee (this is crude but it will do). So the moon is 381579km away (simple average).

Now look at all the perigees for this year and last year and the year before - even the most distant perigee is a lot closer than 380000km.

That's not even physics people, it's remedial maths.

The lunar gravitational force is pretty much below par right now, and isn't doing anything more than usual. So NO, it did not cause the Japanese earthquake and subsequent Tsunami.

Next week however, on the 19th there should be higher than normal tides.

Pancakes for breakfast

2011-03-08T10:40:00.002Z

Obviously, it depends on where you are from what particular form of the pancake you had. To me a pancake is synonymous with what the French would call a Crêpe. Although I believe on the other side of the Atlantic they call pancakes what we call drop scones. And so on and so forth until general confusion reigns.

As far as I'm concerned there are two flavourings for pancakes: the classic sugar/butter/lemon (and FYI there are no lemons left in Tescos in Bray) and the imported Maple Syrup option. I had two this morning - drowned in Maple Syrup.

But it is easy to forget that Pancake Tuesday or Shrove Tuesday has it origins in religious observance. It is the day before the 40 days of Lent when good observant Catholics (and Christians) should give up their sins and get rid of all those things that give us pleasure - such as eggs, milk, sugar and I suppose Maple Syrup. Mardi Gras or Fat Tuesday is also a reference to this - so don't forget that all you scantily clad dancers over there in Rio (of course "Mardi" is named in honour of the Roman god of war).

Now given that the Irish Census is on the 10th of April, how many of those good observant Catholics will have a grand big fry of bacon and eggs to help them recover from their previous night of drunken debauchery while they tick the box marked "Roman Catholic" on the census form. (And of course we'll all get royally twisted on March the 17th).

If you do, then seriously, why do you bother? The only real distinction between Catholicism and other religions is the rules - and if you don't follow the rules, what's the point?

Pancake Tuesday is a reminder that Christianity is indeed part of the rich tapestry that goes to make up our culture - but thankfully lack of practical observance by "religious" people during lent shows that we have all left this superstitious nonsense behind, in deed if not in word.

And don't forget, if you're an atheist tomorrow is annual bath day.

I am sooo depressed...

2011-03-03T10:29:00.005Z

We'll not really - I'm just a little down at the moment.

I just turned 40 last Friday - milestone birthday like that you tend to take stock (too much stock) and then launch into some mid-life crisis response like buying a motorbike. I already have one - so I can't even do that.

Money is tight, work is slow, it's still winter outside, it's cold, it's dark - yada yada yada...

Oh, and I'm an atheist, and apparently that's supposed to make me miserable. I have nothing to look forward to after I die and my life is pointless and so on and so forth.

Now I know this will pick up - I'm not worried and I'm not spiralling downward. I'll be fine in a couple of days. But a lot of atheists who do get depressed ending topping themselves - why is that?

Well chalk one up for religious belief here. If you are a believer and things are bad for you on any front - you will be full sure that your god will fix it for you. Atheists don't have such assurances.

Now the thing is: this doesn't mean that their god does fix it. No - it means that they are able to see beyond the short term problem by the use of a psychological hack. There is a difference between the religious belief, in this one case, being a good thing and it being true. God doesn't fix it - you do, when (a) you figure out that the negative feelings you have are all internal and (b) that there is no problem big enough that you can't live with it, solve it or walk away.

In fact, it's common that the mind hack doesn't work - and then we see deeply religious people committing even worse atrocities, because they feel that even their god cannot help them, and so if he can't help them, the others around the believer are also doomed.

But all that said - is depression really a bad thing?

Well, obviously, yes. But so why does it happen. Evolution doesn't put stuff in there for no reason (replace "Evolution" with "God" if you need to - idiot).

If we have depression, then at some point that was chosen as a preferred option to being happy all the time. It's like Agent Smith said:

Did you know that the first Matrix was designed to be a perfect human world? Where none suffered, where everyone would be happy. It was a disaster. No one would accept the program. Entire crops were lost.

But if we didn't get depressed, we'd never get that nagging voice inside that tells us to slow down or stop. I know plenty of people who run at life and never have a down day - but they are really self-destructive. The keep going with no consideration for what going on around them.

Not having depression, is like having a car that has no brakes and never runs out of petrol. Eventually you just run it off a cliff.

A lot of the happy-clappy Christians that I know appear to be really happy - but when you talk to them you realize that it's not that they are happy - they're just ignoring reality.

I'm happy that I'm depressed.

LifeHacker had an interesting post yesterday about a similar thing. You should create a manual for yourself - once you solve a problem be it physical or psychological about yourself, you should write it in your manual.

So if I figure out how to cheer myself up - I write that in the manual. Next time it happens, I just RTFM.

In all seriousness, if for some bizarre reason you were Googling "best way for atheist to commit suicide" and ended up here. Don't do it - not right now anyway. The world looks really bad to every person at some point their life, you just have to ride it out and you can.

Remember the worst of what you are feeling is not coming from outside. It's coming from your own mind - give yourself a break.

Take up chess or knitting or watch a funny DVD or just go to bed early - and most importantly talk to someone... anyone (doesn't matter what you talk about).

Nothing is impossible

2011-03-01T09:41:00.003Z

Michael Nugent debates Hamza Tzortzis in the Royal College of Surgeon:

Unfortunately, Michael Nugent isn't very entertaining in this regard, though his points are well made and he refutes all that is thrown at him. He lacks that witty repartee that is required of such dog and pony shows. This is really a failure of the debate as a means of achieving reason - the techniques of debate are rhetoric which is actually the opposite of rational discourse, and it favours those that are not concerned with logic. Generally, the only good thing about debates is the moderator - we are not disappointed here.

Tzortzis is just rehashing William Lane Craig here - and I would imagine that if those two quickly got to the point where they agree that 'religion is great', you can be sure they would be fighting each other to the death over which religion is great.

Tzortis main strategy, like Craig's, is to present the atheist viewpoint and then establish how it is erroneous. Thank you but the atheist is well able to speak for himself or herself. And they certainly don't need the slightly twisted viewpoint that is missing just enough salient elements to make it appear silly. That's a strawman - which Tzortzis described so well but failed to see his over dependence on.

While I was listening this, I realized that Nugent didn't really need to say anything. Tzortzis's hollow diatribes was just a collection of self-contradictory statements - so much so that an observer could make his own mind up with out an advocate for atheism.

The one that I like is the presentation of the "Nothing from nothing" argument (so favoured of WLC). And then the suggestion that scientists all agree with it.

They don't. Or at least it's a silly point.

Heisenberg's Uncertainty principle

When I was a nipper we learned about Heisenberg and his principle. Being from an engineering background we were taught the Heisenberg for Dummies version, which simply states that because you need to fire a photon at an electron to determine where it is, you cannot measure the location without giving it a push and thereby changing it's velocity (or more correctly momentum).

Yeah sure, says I, you can't measure it but it is theoretically possible to "know" it. Some omniscient being could know it - right.

Wrong.

Heisenberg's principle says that because of the wave nature of particles, it is impossible to know the momentum and position at the same time. In order to know accurately where a particle is you need to get as many of the waves that make up that particle and see where they meet - unfortunately, to know the momentum, which is represented by each of those waves, you need to have as few as possible. The more you know about position, the less you can know about momentum and vice versa.

I always thought Heisenberg made this up, like it just seemed like a good idea at the time. He didn't - it's derived from the basic fundamental equations of quantum mechanics. It's called a principle of quantum mechanics, because if it is wrong then so is everything we know about the quantum universe.

"Nothing comes nothing" - that's a law. And which takes precedence in physics: laws or principles? Principles, every time. A law is just a rule of thumb that describes existing facts - for example, the law of gravity says, in crude form, what goes up must come down. Why? Because no one has ever seen it do otherwise. That's what makes a law.

A principle, on the other hand, is a demonstrable fact.

So does Heisenberg contradict "Nothing from nothing". Damn right it does.

Heisenberg has other forms besides the position/momentum one - all equally valid. One of which is energy/time. You cannot be accurate about the energy of a particular point in space and the time period for which that statement applies.

You cannot say that a certain point has zero energy at a specific exact time, i.e. nothing. That would violate the uncertainty principle - and good luck trying to find a scientist that would agree with that.

Nothing is impossible.

The bizarre thing is that he refers to this - when he talks about sub quantum fluctuations.

Tzortzis also wants us to dismiss the idea of a multiverse - a greater existence that contains other "universes" with possibly completely different physics.

So, where does Tzortzis's god exist?

Theist comment

2011-02-28T11:28:00.000Z

One of my posts got a comment from a theist (sub/dude) - I'm presuming from the comment that 'he' is a Catholic - the Kolbe reference suggests it.

I was thinking about rewriting it - not to ridicule, but to ensure that his argument was presented in a fair light. But I decided against it (though I have corrected some minor things for ease of reading). Handy Tip: If you are writing a defence of what you believe try to be precise in your thinking as well as your grammar. I'm not being critical - and your message is polite so I appreciate the input - but a clearly presented argument has a far better chance of convincing.

The comment has two points, so I've split it in two:

Here’s the low-down, brudda: God is love, yet, God has rules, [ok]? God gives you your [whole] existence to follow those rules. God is immortal, yet, we’re [sinful] mortals with a limited intelligence and a finite existence. If we choose to walk AWAY from God, God’ll gently nudge [us] back in the direction of eternal life through repentance, which I do every month (keeps me humble). However, if we croak in a state of mortal sin - fornication, adultery, greed, pride, murder... and we mortals think nothing of willful sin? The Abyss o’Misery is our destination PRECISELY because you [thought] nothing of mortal sin.

So, God is love - and if you don't accept him he will have you tortured for eternity. That is a strange concept of love.

It's a big ask to require people to accept this without evidence. If all this stuff is truly important to this God character, how about some evidence? Ask yourself, if your god didn't exist - what would the universe look like? Pretty much the way it does now.

5,000 years ago when science was practically non-existent, maybe your argument compared favourably with the opposing view. But over the years, the evidence against - or at least for the non-necessity of a deity - has become overwhelming, while the evidence for still does not exist.

I’d personally die for you in an instant. Betchu didn’t know that. Say we were in a bank, a person walks in with an Uzi saying, “One must die to satisfy.” I’d raise my hand quicker than a flea jumps into nowhere. Yes, I know, the world looks with hatred on the term ’to love’, yet, I’m not OF this world. I’m of the eternal; I have nothing here, I'm nothing, so why not desire the ONE realm where you can be everything?? Heaven?? If you read the story of Maximillion Kolbe, I’d do the exact same thing outta love for you, yet, I don’t even know you, yet, I wanna preserve and cherish life, for I’m a small peAce-de-resistance of a Larger Picture. God bless you.

That's very good of you. However, until you are actually faced with that choice, it's hard to say how you would react.

On top of that, this is an obscure hypothetical - you are imagining what you would do if you were involved in a story contrived by Hollywood. Yet many Christians when faced with simpler real world situations that rarely involve men with Uzis, fail miserably to respect the rights of other human beings.

Kolbe is surely someone worthy of respect - even given the possibility of some fabrication. However, all that shows is the power of human altruism. Such altruism is part of our make up: one argument proposes that it is given to us by a god, and another suggests that is an evolved function that exists in other species and which is good for genetic propagation - but the important point is that both views suggest that Kolbe's act is a consequence of said view, and is therefore not proof of either.

Anyway, thanks for your comment. It is always interesting to see a different viewpoint.

Don't trust politicians or priests

2011-02-23T08:45:00.004Z

Fine Gael are very wary of claims that an overall majority might be the result of Friday's election. They put down such claims - mainly because people are afraid of an overall majority, not just for Fine Gael, but for anyone.

We all know the struggle that it was to get rid of the current shower. Even when Government policy was in total opposition to Green values, the Green party still hung in there, until eventually enough was enough. And we can imagine how impossible it would have been to expel Fianna Fail had they an overall majority - you could forget it, we'd be stuck with them.

Someone else is talking down their popularity - apparently, the Catholic church is on the brink.

If only that were true. The Catholic church is strong in Ireland. Bizarrely, if priests were buggering young boys in the town square, the majority of Catholics in Ireland would still try to defend the morality of the church. And in their own minds they would succeed.

To be honest, I imagine that the reason for this is not due to a lack of basic morality (well maybe a little bit); people are just happy in their comfort zone. That's a bad way to be - but that's the way it is.

The only way to stop it - at the source for which support is coming from surprising places..

Bluffer's Guide to Irish Politics

2011-02-21T11:06:00.002Z

Here am I blathering on about our little election, and it occurs to that most of you haven't a clue what I'm talking about. So given that there is a General Election in Ireland this Friday (25th) - here's an explanation of what's going on.

The Ireland we all know and love today was basically founded in 1921. Unfortunately, it came about with more than a little bloodshed through the "War of Independence". We could have done it peacefully 3 years earlier if the major nations of the world (I'm talking to you United States of America) hadn't been so preoccupied with the democratic freedom of small nations to concern themselves with.... the democratic freedom of a small nation.

Anyhoo - once we had our independence (from the British) we decided to learn from the mistakes across the pond and get our civil war over and done with straight away.

From the ashes of the Civil War sprung forth our two main political parties: the first is, Fianna Fáil, pronounced 'Fee-Anna Foil' - or if you leave off the little accent on the 'a', 'Fail' as in failure. Of late, the latter pronunciation is the preferred. The second party is 'Fine Gael' - pronounced 'Fee-na Gale'.

The fundamental difference between Fianna Fail and Fine Gael is that Fianna Fail opposes "the Treaty" - the treaty between Britain and Ireland that established the free state in 1921 (that's nearly a century ago) - you'd think they could resolve their differences by now. Anyway most people in Ireland avoid using their brains and vote for the party that their parents voted for - which nicely absolves them from any responsibility for the mess we are in.

To put it bluntly though, Fianna Fail is fucked. They screwed up the country - well Bertie Ahern did - and on Friday they are going to pay big time for it.

And that's the other difference between Fianna Fail and Fine Gael. Fine Gael have been in opposition for the last 14 years, so they never got an opportunity to screw up the country. That's about to change.

This leaves a nice little niche for Labour. Labour are effectively the socialist party (though they claim to be pro-free enterprise, and they probably are). It's important to remember that Ireland is one of the most right wing (in terms of voter preferences) countries in Europe, and yet we are still left of the US Democratic party. So when ever anyone in America claims that Barack Obama is a socialist - that minor tremor you feel is the shock waves from the riotous laughter in Europe. (BTW Labour are the abortion-loving gay atheists, so hated by the Catholic church and their minions).

Then we have the Greens - who because of their recent association with Fianna Fail are also fucked.

Finally, we have the nutters - Sinn Fein (who you might remember from recent terrorist atrocities such as the Northern Ireland conflict) and the new ULA - United Left Alliance. Both these guys have basically the same policy, although Sinn Fein tend to add "Brits Out" to everything. To form a policy someone shouts something out, and the rest of them just agree with it - anyone who dissents is told to shut up (or in the case of Sinn Fein, knee-capped). All this means that when the complete idiocy of their policies is pointed out the generally say "Well, um, eh, ah... we're going to tax the shite out of rich people (if we can find them)".

The whole bally lot of them are running for seats in what's called the Dáil (rhymes with foil) - that's our lower house (our upper house is the Seanad - 'Shan' as in Shannon with an 'id' on the end).

They get elected using the proportional representation system. Arguably one of the most complicated electing systems there is. Technically, you should have a PhD in political science to organize it - in practise you just need to be able to say "Sure that sounds like fun, I'll give it a go."

While it is the most complicated system there is - it is also actually the most fair. It gives each voter are very strong say in who they send to represent them (it's similar to what the LibDems are looking for in the UK). It makes for a very close relationship between the politician and the people he (or possibly, though not likely, she) represents - how close? Too close. That's one the problems: the representatives are too busy fixing potholes and trying to get hospitals built on rocks in the middle of the Atlantic when they should be keeping an eye on the bankers leaving Dublin airport with great wadges of cash.

The vote itself will be done with pencils. We had a brief flirt with electronic voting, but that failed. The following conversation between Bertie and the people explains why:

People: "We want a printed record of our votes".
Bertie: "Eh you can't have that - it would make it too difficult for us to fix the election."
People: "Then we don't want electronic voting."
Bertie: "Tough ye's are getting it anyway."
People: "No we're not."
Bertie: "Eh yes yous are."
People:" Eh no we're not."
Bertie: "Oh."

I wonder....

2011-02-18T10:19:00.002Z

Another reason why I'm not a fan of Fine Gael, is that they have often aligned themselves with the "Ireland is founded on Christian/Catholic values" crowd - maybe they're even part of it.

Ireland has nothing to do with Christian values. Often those promoting that argument will point to one or two things that happen to match Christian values and offer this as proof of our Catholic heritage. But "Thou Shalt Not Kill" is not a Christian value - it's a fundamental human value.

As for Catholic values - forget that. Enshrined in our laws we have contraception, divorce, pre-marital sex, homosexuality and civil union. All clearly not Catholic values. We even have abortion in principle, if those doddering politicians would ever get on a legislate on the expressed wishes of the Irish people. (Surprising how many Catholic "values" are obsessed with sex).

Our values are expressed in the constitution - and, except for the ridiculous preamble, they are not in anyway Catholic. And those promoting this concept know that.

But that's OK, because they're not interested in Catholic values - what they are really interested in is Catholic control. Everywhere people are vulnerable - schools, hospitals, the ballot box - there is a badly dressed Catholic trying to push their "values". Why should the state support education of our children with values that come from the Vatican and are clearly in direct opposition to people's clearly stated values?

I see David Quinn is using this to batter Labour again this morning - and he still doesn't know the meaning of 'secular'. The title of the article is strongly anti-Labour and then he goes on to tell how Labour has protected the Catholic churches control of schools. He also promotes the idea of less demoninational schools - but I fear that's not what he really feels.

Anyway, that's part of the reason I'm not voting Fine Gael. But I wonder....

Maybe I'm wrong. I'll still vote Labour, but would it be such a bad thing if Fine Gael get in.

They won't carry out the necessary changes to the constitution that Labour are proposing - though they will proceed with educational reform and they will probably have to legislate on abortion. And they will be making constitutional changes of some sort, so here's hoping.

But comparing the US and UK. The former has a wonderfully secular constitution, yet is rife with religious nutjobs, the latter is steeped in religious tradition but becomes more and more secular every day.

Does the existence of religion in public life serve as a reminder of how bad things would be if we gave the deluded bishops the run of the place - and the people will make up their own minds regardless?

Vote for whoever you like....

2011-02-17T13:42:00.002Z

They come to our country and they take our jobs and our women. They act like they are somehow entitled to take my money and then they use it to buy drink and then they have the gall to tell me to stop whining. Why don't they and their bastard offspring piss off back to where they came from?!!

You know who you are! Yes, you - the economists! Bugger off!

Actually, it's really just the Chicken little economists, like David McWilliams, I'm talking about.

Oh the sky is falling! Why is no one listening to me! Quick someone give me a chat show on Saturday night or we'll all die horribly!

Oh, he did predict the collapse of the economy, sure - so what! so did everyone else. It wasn't like it was difficult to see. The problem was not the failure of the economy, the problem was getting anyone to do anything about it. Economics is really just a specialization of group psychology - and given that it takes an expensive doctor a number of one hour sessions to fix an individual, what chance is there for a group, especially when that group is a load of politicians with vested interests in keeping the whole band wagon rolling.

Burn the Bondholders

A more gentler economics, based on common sense, suggests that we can't really burn the bondholders. Or at least, not the ones with a guarantee.

Why not? Well because the rest of us have a guarantee too - on our deposits. And if suddenly the guarantee given to the senior bondholders is worthless, then so is the deposit guarantee. And that all adds up to a run on the banks.

But we could burn the ones without a guarantee.

They invested in what was, quite frankly, dogshit. They knew it - or they should have - and they still wolfed it up. Even if it weren't to save the economy I would say burn them anyway, so they don't do it again.

Warning: the value of your investment may go down as well as up....

They're quick enough to tell the rest of us about it.

But why aren't we doing this? Why aren't we telling them to shove it? This is a question that bothers me greatly...

Six months ago I was fine with the answer I was given: Basically, no else has done this and we don't want to be the first, the consequences could be catastrophic.

Fair point.

But now Denmark has done it.

Yet no one (FF/FG/Lab) is suggesting anything new - ULA and SF are only right because blanket bombing has a reasonable chance of hitting something. But why has Enda Kenny not added to his manifesto: "Oh and we're going to tell the unguaranteed senior bond holders to sling their respective hooks."?

It's all very suspicious.

My guess: (a) the unguaranteed senior bold holders are mostly cornerstone Euro banks and so the EU needs us to keep them sweet and (b) our debt is far greater than we know about (or are being told about) and so we need to EU. Win, win - as long as you're not an Irish tax payer. The EU cannot bail out banks - it wouldn't be allowed. But they can bail out countries - especially good little countries that for no apparent reason at all, take on the debts of speculators.

And then, of course, there's (c) the Department of Finance has already briefed Enda and Eamonn on this and they know they cannot rock the boat. Gerry and Richard Boyd Barrett haven't been briefed - because the Department think they're idiots, and thankfully, are never likely to have any say in how the economy is run.

I don't think it matters who you vote for - it'll all come out the same in the end. (Watch this space - I'm betting that our financial problems disappear with an uncanny rapidity.)

Vote for Labour

2011-02-11T12:20:00.005Z

I wasn't really going to do one of these posts, because I figured anyone who was voting for Labour would have the same reasons for doing so as I do.

...but then that muppet David Quinn stuck his two size 12s in the middle of it.

"A Vote for Labour is a Vote for Abortion"

Let me explain how this works:

David Quinn is what you might call a conservative Catholic
He doesn't like Labour because they are socialist - so while they espouse the "whatever you do unto the least" blather that is apparently fundamental to the message of Jesus Christ - they are ultimately anti-god. And a society that essentially supports the message of Jesus is worthless unless there is an theological dictatorship to back it up (in fact as long as we have the church we don't need the useless hippy).
Labour also have a problem with rich people grabbing more and more wealth - even though they don't really need it. The poor are supposed to be poor - so they can be closer to god when they starve. Or is it just greed veiled in piety.
Either way scaremongering is required.

Now to defuse the scaremongering:

I'm quite sure Labour is pro-choice. It's the kind of thing they would be into, but even if they hold a 160 seat majority in the Dail they cannot bring abortion into this country without a referendum. David Quinn is not stupid - he knows this. That doesn't bother him though.

Remember the Lisbon treaty? Where are all the Irish children dying in abortion clinics or on the fields of Flanders that we were so richly promised were that passed. Horseshit - that's what that was, and that's what this is.

Labour are also for same-sex marriage...

So if you are a bigot - don't vote for Labour and keep those that are different in their place.

This line needs correction though:

Therefore, on a very important issue ~~Labour~~the Catholic Church is utterly at variance with the beliefs of the vast majority of serious-minded practising Catholics.

Vote for Fine Gael?!

2011-02-10T14:00:00.002Z

I don't like Fine Gael - or more to the point I don't like Enda Kenny - not personally now , I don't actually know him - I just don't like the idea of him running the country. If I were to put my finger on it, I would say that the problem is that Fine Gael policy is essentially "Enda knows best - everyone else can just shut up."

I remember another Anorak'd politician had much the same attitude - and that didn't work out very well for us.

However, they do have a policy that I do like - the end of compulsory Irish on the Leaving Certificate.

There are a couple of arguments against this - but I don't buy any of them.

The main one is that Irish is part of our culture and we need to protect it.

Two things wrong with this: first, anything that is imposed from on high by diktat is not culture. Culture comes from the bottom up - not the top down. There is nothing wrong with the government supporting the Irish language - but if culture is not something you choose, it's a fantasy to suggest that it's culture.

Second, they're not protecting it - they're killing it. Young adults leave school every year and Scarlett-like pronounce "As God is my witness - I will never speak Irish again!"

And you know, if it wasn't forced on them - they might. It works for the Welsh.

The other argument, which was given by most people in the Gaelteacht is that compulsory Irish on the Leaving Cert is vital to their local economies.... Tough.

If the place you are living is so shitty that no one would visit you unless they had to in order to brush up on a language they are being forced to learn just so they can visit you - then you should move. It doesn't make any sense why other people should suffer just so that you can get a couple of shillings off them. (And dare they speak a word of the dreaded Bearla - out demon Sassanach! out!).

Language doesn't define a culture - it's just a tool to express it. And on this Enda is right - on everything else, I wouldn't touch him with a barge pole.

It's not a matter of life and death....

2011-02-08T11:32:00.005Z

...it's much more important than that - as Bill Shankly kind of said.

One of the most ill-conceived notions of theism is that without an external influence providing a reason for your existence, your existence is pointless. To which I say: what about sport?

My particular vice is hockey (field), but it doesn't really matter what it is - soccer or rugby (or even the topical American Football) - they are all made up games. And made up by the participants.

Nobody went to the top of a mountain to get the rules of soccer. They were set out by a bunch of chaps in the middle of the 19th century based on what made sense.

Then they changed them when they didn't make sense. Then they changed them again and again until they did make sense.

In recent years these simple games have taken on a life of their own - millions of fans go to matches every week just to watch 22 players who are paid £-millions just to kick a ball around. Also, you may not have noticed, but a positive result, i.e. a goal in soccer is quite rare. A draw is a very common result.

And what happens if you win the whole thing? Nothing. It doesn't count one jot in your next season.

Could it get any more pointless?

Yet try telling that to one of the fans. Or try getting in the way of the telly when a goal is on the cards.

And what about golf, the ultimate in pointless. Ever notice that 18th green is normally right next to the 1st tee.

The truth is that when someone says that you cannot have a point to your existence without their god, they are really saying that they lack the basic imagination required to find a point to their own existence.

(BTW to anyone who thinks field hockey is a "Girl's" sport - I have pretty much played them all, and in no other sport have I received more fractures, black-eyes or possible concussions. I never knew blood could "pool" in the sole of your foot until I started playing hockey.)

Is the a doctor in the House?

2011-02-04T17:07:00.000Z

I've taken to watching House - that thing with Hugh Laurie putting on a silly American accent. I'm thundering my way through the various box sets - it's really rather good.

I watched an episode last night that got me thinking - and then got me annoyed. In it a woman is having problems with the foetus/baby and she may or may not die - doesn't matter, but during the attempts to figure out what was wrong with her I noticed two things:

At one point the doctors put a lead blanket over her abdomen, in the area where the baby was and proceeded to X-ray the various bit and pieces where the problems might lie.
Then at a later stage they injected her with a drug "unlikely to harm the baby".

Now here's my problem, these are two life-saving procedures - or at least they will allow they doctor to find the problem and then save her life - that wouldn't be performed in an Irish hospital because... they might harm the foetus/unborn child.

Imagine that... you are in a hospital in Ireland and when they come in to you and say that they are sorry, they've done all they can do and they'll have to wait and see if you pull through - when they haven't. They haven't done the other potential procedures that might be able to save your life because of some bullshit Catholic ethos nonsense, that you probably don't even agree with, and even if you do, you don't care too much about.

I'm OK, though. I'm a man. Catholic ethoses are generally only used for ~~oppressing~~ empowering women.

(Oh and yeah, I know it's only a television show).

Vote for Fianna Fáil!

2011-02-03T10:38:00.008Z

I'm not normally interested in politics but the bastards have gone and called the election on my birthday (40th) - so this is the only way I can vent my anger. So get used to it for the near future.

I was watching Tonight with Vincent Browne last night with Richard Boyd Barrett and Claire Daly - and it bothers me that these people can spout nonsense and are believed - and the same goes for Sinn Fein.

Never mind that their economic policies (basically tell our creditors to piss off and then ask them for more money) are garbage. When the far left and far right agree with each other, you know it's the rest of us in the middle that are going to get screwed.

But that's not important - my issue is with a mantra that they are exploiting that is just hypocritical.

Simply put - if Richard Boyd Barrett was Taoiseach for the last 10 years he would not only have done the same as Bertie Ahern (who I have no time for either), he would have done worse.

Let's look at what Fianna Fail actually did:

Increase Child Benefit
Increase Old Age Pensions
Increase Social Welfare
Increased the size of the public sector
Increase the salaries of the public sector
Ensured that 50% of the workforce was out of the tax net
Invested in public transport

...and they reduced mainstream taxes on the higher paid, fair enough.

But in that list is there anything that Richard Boyd Barrett would disagree with, anything that contradicts basic socialist policy: No, in fact, I would say that he would feel that they didn't go far enough.

And let's not forget that all of this was done with the imprimatur of the unions.

And how did they do this: by milking a property bubble.

Am I supposed to believe that Richard Boyd Barrett, given the opportunity of creating a socialist utopia with the impressive funds available to him would have said no. That he would have sacrificed the golden goose rather than bask in the adulation of a grateful proletariat. Bollox he would.

But why would it be worse? Because the tax cuts, effectively paid for themselves, and when things got sour, those tax cuts were reversed within 2 months. All the other stuff is still in place, and even if we are in penury they will still be in place.

On top of this, Barrett would have been true to his principles and taxed Seanie Fitzpatrick and all his mates even higher and spent even more money on his ephemeral paradise - but when they dried up, he would have been in a much deeper hole.

Don't get me wrong, I'm happy to see the back of Fianna Fáil - certainly as the majority partner in government. I've voted against them for long enough and they are indicative of everything that is wrong with our political system.

But the last thing I want to see is a new bunch of gobshites making the same mistakes for the next ten years - simply because they are so arrogant as to believe they live in some kind of fantasy world where all you have to do is read "The Communist Manifesto" out loud and all your dreams will come true.

I feel so excluded...

2011-01-31T15:45:00.008Z

Christianity: a faith for the simple

The first paragraph kind of blows me away.

We are presented with a study of "1,700 scientists" that finds a different result to what we are used to.

Compare that with the study that 93% of the members of the National Academy of Science in the US do not believe in god(s).

Can anyone see the difference between those two statements? It's like the Oregon petition; who the hell are those 1700 scientists? Because if you head on down to the Discovery Institute, 100% of the "scientists" believe in God, but that's hardly representative.

It's amazing how unimportant basic provenance is to anyone making a case for Christianity. Or maybe it's not.

Add to that the fact that the study for the NAS shows a trend towards non-belief and Ecklund's study fails completely.

So which great minds do tend towards belief? James Clerk Maxwell (d 1879) and John Locke (d 1704).

Hmmm. Great minds no doubt - but products of their time - not ours. Most often the two reasons why scientists of the past, brilliant and all as they were, expressed religious beliefs was (a) because they didn't want to lose their (rich yet poverty avowed) sponsor or worse get their heads chopped off and (b) because there wasn't the level of understanding of the workings of the universe that there is now. Had Maxwell, Locke, Galileo, Da Vinci, Newton and many others lived today Richard Dawkins and PZ Myers probably wouldn't get a look in in the atheist blogosphere.

I like the title of Locke's work: "The Reasonableness of Christianity". Compare this with Thomas Paine's "The Age of Reason" written 100 years later, in which Paine, a fan of Locke, puts forward the clear case for the unreasonableness of Christianity - yet while he still believes in a god.

But maybe I am excluded for a reason:

Both Christ and St Paul implied, sometimes none too subtly, that the philosophically sophisticated were "shut out from the simplicity of the gospel; to make way for those poor, ignorant, [and] illiterate"

It is for this self-same reason that I am excluded from astrology, psychics, scientology, ghost-hunting, homeopathy and various other doses of crap. Oh woe is me.

Self regulation?

2011-01-27T09:37:00.004Z

Boy forced to submit to religious indoctrination in Leitrim.

This is actually a positive story, because next time someone tries to use "Sure they can just opt out" as a justification for maintaining Catholic madrasas in this country, this story will prove their lie.

Ironically, this man is obviously living in Ireland (him being originally Dutch) because of the EU. So while the anti-EU Catholic were looking with dreaded fear at the possibility of imposed abortion, these lads were sneaking in the back door and undermining their religious indoctrination "schools".

Thank god for the Dutch - and the Catholic church, long may they undermine themselves.

What's the collective noun for 'Bishops'?

2011-01-25T13:59:00.002Z

A 'bash'?

If so, the one going on at the moment is in a bit of bother church over women and homosexuals. How inspired.

On top of which a number of bishops are moving from the Anglican church to the (Roman) Catholic - and they are being welcomed with humility by the Catholics.

It just shows, however, that their beliefs are based on their own personal petty bigotry and not on anything revealed to them or anyone else. There are far more bizarre beliefs in the Catholic church, which is in practice a polytheist belief system based on superstitions and guilt, than in the Church of Ireland.

How can someone profess to be a leader of a religion that is fundamentally based on the rejection of another religion - and then turn around and embrace everything that they previously stood for?

Unless, of course, what they stood for previously was a load of nonsense. In which case, it doesn't say much for the quality of their new theology.

Prophetic

2011-01-24T10:32:00.003Z

In that last post I said:

...you could sit Monckton in a room with a proper climate scientist and he would be annihilated

It's not Monckton, but it's good enough: The TV interview that tied James Delingpole's tongue

Horizon BBC2 Monday 24th 9pm - enjoy.

How did that gobshite get on the telly?!

2011-01-22T00:05:00.004Z

Christopher Monckton was on the Late Late Show last night - what an odious character he is.

But anyway - climate change. You know, you could sit Monckton in a room with a proper climate scientist and he would be annihilated. Put him on the telly or in a debate and he'll probably win - mainly because science just isn't sexy and to properly demolish Monckton's crap you need time and patience, because that's what it takes to find the truth in the first place.

So how about a simplification of the whole thing.

Let's start with:

The climate is changing

There are some idiots who will argue against this, but they are idiots. Even Monckton didn't waste his time trying to justify it (which is what they were doing big time only a few years ago).

Anyway, so what's the cause. You could spend years and years studying climate science and, I feel, demonstrate without a shadow of a doubt that we are the cause of the change.

Forget that.

What are the causes of climate change?

Plates moving around
The stupid sun is having hot flashes
The earth is drunk and it wobbling in its orbit
Eyafajawallwakalokomoko and the other volcanoes in Iceland
The sea is too hot, or too cold, or too wet, or...
Us

What can we do about it?

In the case of all of the above, we can be prepared.

But there is only one that we can actually do something about: the last one, us. Even if we said that all those others were the major cause of the problem, the only thing we can do is sort out our own act.

What will it cost us?

Well some people, like those Monckon is speaking for, won't be able to drive their big fuck off 9.5 litre SUV with enhanced off-road traction control down to Tesco's to get a sliced pan - while taking up two parking spaces and running over a couple of small children on the way.

As for the rest of us: we'll have to use light bulbs that will initially more expensive are more efficient and cheaper in the long run, our cars will get more and more efficient and we won't have to pay so much to fill the bloody things, the air quality will be better, we reduce our waste costs by separating out all those heavy tin cans. How do I know this? Because it has already happened. Anyone remember the smog in the early 90s - scary shit people.

(Of course, that doesn't mean the Greens are right either).

What's the worst that could happen?

If Monckton is right - we make fossil fuels last longer, our cars are more efficient, waste costs us less - we're just generally better at not being a bunch of lazy gits with respect to our limited resources. We just have to stop going mad with them.

If Monckton is wrong - we are fucked. (Luckily for Monckton a bunch of ungrateful gollywogs in the ex-colonies will bear the brunt of the pain).

Faith isn't the problem

2011-01-19T10:12:00.009Z

A religious friend of mine thought he had stumped me with "it takes as much faith to be an atheist as it does to not."

My initial response to that is that it doesn't - depending on what type of atheist you are. If you are "weak atheist" - where you attest that the claims of theists have not been proved, then that's obviously not the case. There is no evidence for the existence of deities, there never has been and quite possibly there never will be. Personally, I am definitely behind this claim and it takes no faith to hold that position.

Rejection of the claim "God exists" is philosophically and scientifically valid. What requires faith is the "strong atheist" claim: "gods do not exist". That's a positive claim that without evidence requires faith.

It's hard to support this claim because if I am logically honest, it requires just as much evidence to suggest that there is no God than it does to claim that there is. But...

I actually do believe that that there are no gods. Not only is there no evidence to believe that there is a god, and therefore the theist position is untenable, but I am willing to go further and make an expression of faith:

I believe that there are no such things as gods (fairies, goblins, ghost, voodoo, souls etc etc etc etc).

There, I said it, now I'm as logically inconsistent as the theists, and hooray for them we are now on an equal footing and their argument is just as tenable as mine.

Sorry, but no. The faith is not the same.

The thing about faith is not what you believe, but what you do about it, how it affects you life and your relationship with the world.

Remember "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade": at one point he had to step out from at doorway into an apparently deep chasm.

He is told that he will not fall, if he makes the leap of faith. He has two options:

Option 1: Step out and hope that his faith will save him (which it did).
Option 2: Believe that he would be safe, but still turn around and go back.

Does it take as much faith to step out make the leap as it does to turn around?

No, it doesn't. The amount of faith required can really only be measured by how much it costs you.

And no it doesn't require as much faith to believe that gods do not exist, which has no effect on your life, as it does to believe that a god exists and let it affect nearly every aspect of your life.

I am the Angel of Death

2011-01-17T13:30:00.000Z

I was at a funeral of a family friend this morning.

The funeral was in a Catholic church - and I'm never too sure whether it is hypocritical of me to attend, me being an atheist and all. But I generally reconcile it on the basis that a funeral should be about the person who died and not about how great their deity or his zombie kid is - and if at least one person is there that respects that then that is a good thing.

Strangely, though, I like funerals. You can recognize me at them because I am the one at the back with the big grin on my face (like the Angel of Death).

Not because I'm happy the person is dead - but because when you look at those in attendance, especially when they are leaving, there is a great sense of how the existence of a single person can touch many lives. It is only at that point - the true final stages of a person's life - where you can see how important it is that they lived. It is a wonderful experience.

...and I have to say, all the religious talk about afterlifes and eternal rewards somehow cheapens it.

Abstinence is the best defence against HIV

2011-01-14T10:53:00.002Z

David Quinn pushes the usual Catholic propaganda and misdirection regarding Boots decision to make the Morning After Pill freely available.

Unfortunately, it's the same nonsense as the Pope's condemnation of condoms in favour of abstinence.

The simple fact of the matter is that abstinence does protect an individual better from HIV. It goes without saying.

And at the same time, a relationship based on commitment, should in theory have less need for emergency contraception. (Though it is, of course, implied that if a 'wife' gets pregnant, then it is her responsibility as a breeder to carry and whelp the potential male child.)

However, the problem with both of these arguments is that they are personal policies that do not scale.

I might be very committed or even abstinent - and I might not catch HIV or end up in a crisis pregnancy situation. But that does not mean that abstinence and commitment are suitable options for public policy makers.

Not everyone is a conscientious as I am, so is the appropriate lesson that they should catch a fatal disease or be burdened with a child (possibly on top of an existing clutch). Of course not, and society has a responsibility, however unwelcome, to protect those people from themselves as best it can - and promotion of condom use (as well as commitment and abstinence) and the availability of emergency contraception are the best means to achieve that.

Quinn is as ever very loose with his statistics - but I wonder how many of those young girls out on the drink getting pregnant are good Catholic girls who are not on the pill.

Yay the Pope!

2011-01-10T14:10:00.006Z

What a great guy Joey "The Pope" Ratzinger is... He has seen the light and called for an end to blasphemy laws, describing them as:

Among the norms prejudicing the right of persons to religious freedom

At long last - now in Ireland we have the motivation to rid ourselves of the ridiculous constitutional reference to "blasphemy". Up to this point only the secular groups in Ireland (representing approximately 10% of the population) were against these silly laws, but now we have the Catholic church against it as well - that means that over 90% of the people in this country want that nonsense removed.

Am I missing something here? - Is it possible that he's just against laws prejudicial to his particular voodoo? He couldn't be - that would just be Tyranny of the Majority - and that's only practised by backward and oppressive places, like, em, Pakistan.

Update FYI full text, which shows more clearly that the contradictory ideas of religious freedom and Catholic supremacy are somehow synonymous in the pope's addled mind.

The Meaning of Life

2010-12-31T18:51:00.005Z

A lack of purpose is often touted as why atheism is a bad thing. Without purpose our existence is pointless and of course that is why all atheists are miserable and depressed all the time.

Christians on the other hand are full of the joy of life and are never dour - even when they are telling you how you are going to hell for all eternity.

Unfortunately for them, it just isn't like that. And even if it were, wouldn't their god be the ultimate victim of such misery. He might be able to specify the purpose for his willing sycophantic slaves, but he would also need to specify purpose for himself.

The beauty of being an atheist is that in this respect we are already god-like. We define our own purpose - which has a big advantage in that it is actually defined.

So the question is how do you define your purpose...

I just thought I'd share a really useful method of discovering your goals that I read about in a book once. It being New Year's Day, it just seems apt.

The book is called "The Passion Test". I'm sure you can get it at Amazon etc - but I wouldn't bother, unless you're really interested.

Strangely, the book was written with a big spiritual dimension to it - but don't let that dissuade you. It isn't beyond the realms of possibility that occasionally the wackos might hit on a winner. On top of that, I managed to read the book and safely ignored the voodoo - and yet still got the message.

Anyway, here's how it works.

Imagine your life as perfect - go mad, visualize everything, and don't hold back, if you want hookers, fast cars and cocaine on tap, then go for it. Although you should also include all the things that are important to you. Try to explore different aspects of your life - like, what's your job, and what is that job like, where do you live, who with and so on and so forth. If any part of your dream is not perfect, then change it so it is. Oh, and write down each thing in point form - try to get an '−ing' in there. The bigger the list the better.

So for example, in your ideal scenario, you might be:

"Driving a big red train"
"Living on the moon"
"Running 250 miles a day"

Then sort it using a bubble sort.

Take two items on your list and compare them.

Which one is the more important to you? Swap them if necessary.

Or, if possible, merge the two into one, by identifying a third even better possibility.

Then repeat with all the others.

Once you've sorted them all - take the top 5. Those are your goals.

Now you have a purpose in life - and no chickens needed to be sacrificed in order to find them.

(Also, if after 6 months you don't like the goals you've set - change them. They're your goals - you owe nobody nothing).

He's having a go at the birds!

2010-12-21T08:10:00.004Z

The riotous anti-Robin campaign continues afresh in the Irish Times.

Last week, An Post provided a fairly inoffensive response to the moany scrooges who are not happy because they have to pay for an extra stamp with their particular nonsense on it.

Oh! The humanity! Jesus is tortured, crucified and dies: "Lugzhurrry!!! In my day we didn't even get free stamp."

But that's not enough for Dr Cyril Daly, no - it's them bastard robins that are the cause of it all - "the Irish vulgar ornithology".

Apparently, the Post Office is now staffed with evil aggressive secular robinists:

Ask for the religious stamps at a Post Office near you and watch the jaw drop, as though you had asked for a cooked chicken.

(That's probably because you're a weirdo - get used to it)

But it goes all the way to the top: Even the marketing department is packed with them:

The printed price shoves away the tender beauty of the Blessed Virgin’s acceptance.

I hate to have to point this out - but the image of the "Blessed Virgin" is based on the model that the original artist hired for the painting session. A further point missed is that, historically, artists used prostitutes as models. (Probably apt that a 15th century hooker is used to portray a 1st century slapper).

Dr Daly really needs to wake up and smell the roses. His beliefs are being sideline because An Post are responding to the demands of the market - his fairy stories and myths are no longer the reason for the season. They are being replaced by innocent, decent and sensible traditions that don't discriminate or judge.

As far as religion should be concerned, it's not just a bleak midwinter - it's a bleak future. God bless us, every one!

Cleavage: The Christian's Nightmare

2010-12-20T09:48:00.003Z

I'll see your misogynistic shit and raise you.... boobs!

Em... yeah! What she said!

I fear the cop, while being really good at his job, is wrong. If they just keep walking by and ignored the guy - he wouldn't go away, and some equally retarded individual would listen to him and pick up his bullshit, get a girlfriend, marry her and then beat her to death.

But then she should just submit. (What a turd of a human being).

More miracles...

2010-12-17T04:26:00.001Z

While writing the piece I did last week, I came across this piece about two apparently significant miracles attributed to Lourdes.

The Story of Gabriel Gargam

This lad fell out of a train. He was severely injured and made a near complete recovery except he was paralysed from his legs down and had to be fed through a tube.

Nowhere is it mentioned that he had a spinal injury. Merely, that he cannot walk.

He goes to Lourdes, and strangely, having not been inside a church for 15 years, gets confession and communion. So he is nagged for years by a busy-body nun/aunt and his mother; he eventually decides to go and before any miracle occurs - he has fallen off his faithless wagon. Bizarre but... no mind.

Anyway he goes through the usual bath thing and nothing happens, except they stress him so much that he passes out. Then he recovers and everybody is amazed (not very skeptical crowd).

Then he stands up and walks...

So he is cured from an affliction that no one could identify and no one could cure.

The obvious conclusion: it was in his head.

The only difference between this "miracle", and a similar modern occurrence is that we understand psychological problems. The near drowning probably kicked his brain into gear and hey presto: he can walk - no magic needed.

The Story of John Traynor

This one is worse.

Traynor ends up with epilepsy (probably cause by his brain beating inside his skull) from injuries sustained in the war. His arm is withered and his legs a partially paralysed.

So he decides to go off to Lourdes to get better. Note, before he goes, he is suffering from the illnesses mentioned above, but he's generally fine.

Skip to where he is on the trip and he's near death's door. How the hell did that happen?!

He gets to Lourdes and he gets better.

Ok, to be fair this is before antibiotics, but even I can see what's wrong. He picked up an infection, ended up with a fever, and it passed.

How did his legs and arms get better? Like the previous example, it was all in his head.

The obvious reply is: "Everything can't be in their head."

Why not?
(a) Most people who are sick have a cold - disease isn't trying for an even distribution.
(b) This is just a sample of 2 and presumably the best 2 they've got.
(c) a psychosomatic illness that passes is far more likely than the ghost of some long dead homeopath came and cured him with her magic water.

People 150 years ago had far less information than we do, so they can be forgiven for being gullible. What's your excuse?

I feel a comedy award in the offing...

2010-12-16T20:40:00.004Z

This is without a doubt the funniest thing I've read all year.

According to the comedy styling of Joey 'The Pope' Benedict, Christians are the most persecuted group in the world.

Now, I know funny - and that's funny.

Apparently, they are being restricted from their favourite activity - namely imposing their ridiculous beliefs on other people.

They are being stopped from discriminating against gays
They're not allowed to put their "Zombie on a stick" on walls of schools and hospitals - because strangely religion seems to have to have nothing to do with education or medicine (unless it's promoting ignorance and magic)
And they don't get to tell people any more what's "right" and "wrong" - maybe they should figure them out before they start telling the rest of us. Handy hint: Raping small boys goes in the "wrong" column

...and on top of that the worst offenders are the Europeans with our Christian culture (the Romans and the Celts of course have nothing to do with this).

This line is great:

"It should be clear that religious fundamentalism and secularism are alike in that both represent extreme forms of a rejection of legitimate pluralism and the principle of secularity."

So, it should be clear that secularism is a threat to secularity. Bummer.

Hard to see how "legitimate pluralism" and imposing your views on other people are in any way related.

Speaking of odd terms: Christianophobia.

Interesting that they find an "-ophobia" against a specific group of people to be a bad thing. I feel the same about "homophobia".

I don't doubt that there are places in the world where Christians are genuinely oppressed - by aggressive religious cultures - but because some are oppressed doesn't mean all are oppressed, and it certainly doesn't grant you the right to oppress others.

"Thank you - I'm here all week. Try the veal."

Would you kill for atheism?

2010-12-16T13:35:00.005Z

Two posts by Hemant Mehta on Friendly Atheist: First about a radio show he was on and second about this guy killing himself in Florida after threatening a school board.

The radio host brought up the old canard about Stalin, as you would expect. And there is some suggestion that Clay Duke, the guy in Florida, was a humanist, if not an atheist.

Now, it seems fairly consistent that your Stalin-touting Christian is fairly confident that atheists would kill for their lack of belief. Because, atheism is a religion and like religious ideas... yada yada yada.

The problem is, it seems logical to an atheist that Stalin killed many people because of his authoritarian beliefs not his lack of religious beliefs. Religious individuals threatened to subvert the state because it was against their beliefs and so Stalin had them killed.

However, Stalin fits nicely into the class of religious zealots willing to kill for atheism. And that works in the Christian mind. So it is safe for them to pop a tu quoque, and say that atheism is at least as bad as Christianity, and look at those numbers for Stalin and Mao. Bad atheism...

But how about turning the question on its head. To borrow a metaphor from physics - let's check out the symmetry.

Ask a Christian: "Would you die for Jesus?"

If someone put a gun to a Christian head and said "Denounce Jesus or I'll shoot you." Most of them would like to think they would say "No." (Hypothetically anyway).

Ask an atheist: "Would you die for atheism?"

If someone put a gun to an atheist head and said "Accept Jesus as your personal saviour or I'll shoot you." What would the atheist say?

I don't know about anyone else but the next words of my mouth would be "Praise Jesus, I'm saved."

And I think that would apply to most atheists.

And I think it would apply to Stalin. If Stalin had to implement his Communist ideas without the atheist component, he would do it in a heart beat.

It's also not a cowardly response. We, as atheists, owe nothing to it and it owes nothing to us. No one is offended if we pretend we're not atheists and no one suffers. I'm not dying for something I don't believe in any more than I'm dying for not believing in fairys or unicorns - it's simple self-preservation and lack of stupidity.

The question is would Bob Enyart and other Christians take it up the ass if Jesus told them to - again I believe most of them would like to think they would.

The contrast is clear between atheism and theism as a motivator for actions on the part of the proponent.

But don't worry Stalin will reappear as the moustachioed avenger of atheist evil.

Well you did say Jehovah!

2010-12-15T14:22:00.006Z

This is just too funny.

Devout Jews are not allowed visit their most holy of sites on the Sabbath because when they activate a sensor on security cameras by passing in front them it is classed as operating an electronic device.

...and they probably consider themselves to be wise and enlightened individuals. (They're not you know - they're morons).

Get used to it pal...

2010-12-13T10:27:00.006Z

Lovely letter in the Irish Times... or at least I think it's lovely because it demonstrates that at last Christmas is returning to its core values and that the Christian hijacking of it is coming to an end.

The deal is that you get a free stamp if you buy the ones with the robin on them - a little bird native to our land. If you want one depicting a mythological scene from over 2,500 miles away you don't get a free stamp.

Unfortunately, I doubt it's a policy decision by An Post. But at least they don't have a pro-Christian policy.

Let's get back to the true meaning of Christmas: A time of family and friends, a celebration of our successes in the year gone by and a looking forward to a new year to come - and a couple of days off to recharge.

WRT "Christian hijacking" - Christians are as entitled to celebrate Christmas as much as the next person. After all they gave us the name - however, that doesn't mean they own it, or they have the right to impose their particular Christmas traditions on other people. They may join in with the rest of us and share in the celebration if they wish - but we shall not tolerate the spoiled kids that want all the presents.

Miracles, miracles, miracles

2010-12-10T10:37:00.004Z

Indirectly I ended up at this steaming pile of Oprah turd. Please don't waste your time reading it - if you do, and you find your self inspired by it, there's plenty more of that fantastical predatory crap on www.oprah.com.

Let's be clear, a miracle is a suspension of the laws of nature in favour of one or more individuals.

Not breaking a leg when you fall on the ground is not a suspension of the laws of nature.
Being married for 17 years is not a suspension of the laws of nature.
Losing some weight is not a suspension of the laws of nature.
Eva Cassidy having a good voice is not a suspension of the laws of nature.
Spring, one of the cycles of nature, is not a suspension of the laws of nature.
Sports stars are not a suspension of the laws of nature.
The existence of free thinking individuals is not a suspension of the laws of nature.
Time is not a suspension of the laws of nature.
Older mothers are not a suspension of the laws of nature.
Human decency is not a suspension of the laws of nature.
An amicable family dinner is not a suspension of the laws of nature.
A tapestry is not a suspension of the laws of nature.

Now a fair minded individual might say, hold on. She's just using the word miracle in a different way.

She's not you know. She's just set a really low bar for her miracles, and then uses them to justify the existence of supernatural nonsense.

In fact, in the case of October where:

Of the cancer patients her center serves, 51 percent of those living below the poverty line do not have enough to eat.

The bar is so low because the miracle is sitting in a deep hole - dug by an uncaring society. Is it a miracle that such a society exists? Or that it exists in a predominantly Christian country?

What about "real" miracles?

Like people being cured of horrific diseases. Like people who are miraculously cured of cancer.

What does that mean? That they travelled to Lourdes and 6 weeks later no trace of their cancer could be found.

Statistically unlikely, yes. Miracle, no. Plenty of people go into remission from cancer with no outside help at all. Most people, however, who are "riddled with cancer", die from it. But cancer sufferers fit into a normal distribution curve - there has to be someone on the left and someone on the right of that curve.

This means that:

There are atheists who get "riddled with cancer" who are "miraculously cured" 6 weeks later.
There are Christians who get a minor form of cancer that is easily treatable who are dead 1 week later.

Lourdes has 5,000,000 visitors a year. In total, over 150 years, only 7,000 people have officially claimed to have been miraculously cured. Now, there might be more unreported miracles - there are probably a lot more. But to even get out of the trap with miraculous cures, the bare minimum would have to be beyond 0.1%. That would be 5,000 a year - and remember that wouldn't be miraculous, that's just the baseline.

But what's the harm?

People get solace from their faith - right? It comforts them in times of suffering.

A 3 day trip to Lourdes for me will cost, including flights and hotel, €450. For 5,000,000 people that's €2.25 billion.

Imagine what cures for cancer could be found with €2.25 billion.

Imagine how comforted a person would be if instead of just getting kind words, they got better.

We have a vaccine against cervical cancer now. My daughters will not die of that disease. If instead of spending the money on that research, we had built a great big temple to honour some deity, how many daughters would have to die?

On top of that remember most of these people are Catholics and a lot of them are suffering from diseases that could be cured by stem cell therapies - that the Catholic church opposes.

The Reason for the Season

2010-12-07T09:44:00.009Z

What an interesting phrase...

It has all sorts of wonderful connotations. Mainly, that Christianity is correct and everyone else is just riding on its coat-tails.

Apparently secular society has perverted all the original Christian symbols of Christmas and stolen Christmas.

This needs a list. Things associated with Christmas:

Jesus*
Nativity
Going to church
Carol singing
"On the first day of Christmas..."
Christmas - the name*
Santa Claus
Christmas cards
Snow
The Solstice
Exams
Family and friends
Winter walks
Presents
December 25th
Christmas Trees
Holly
Wreaths
Decorations
Christmas Jumpers
The Toy Show
Dark evenings
Candles
Warm fires
Barren winter landscapes
Hot port
Hot chocolate
Chocolate
Mince Pies
Figgy Pudding
Plum Pudding
Advent calendars*
Turkey and Ham
Brussels Sprouts
Gin & Tonic
Port/brandy and cigars
A pint of Guinness
A hangover
Bond movies
The Queen's speech (and quickly changing the channel)
Urbi et Orbi (and making sure the television is off)*
Work Christmas parties
Tales of inappropriate behaviour at same
Sexy Santa Costumes
NORAD tracking
National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation
The Santa Clause 1,2 and 3
Home Alone 1 and 2
Trading Places
It's a Wonderful Life
"Fairy Tale of New York" (see comments)
Smells... cooking, cinnamon, cloves and others.
Mulled Wine
Church Bells

I've marked the ones that are of Christian origin with a '*'.

Of these, which would you say are a vital part of the Christmas spirit.

(Almost forgot: 55. Budget)

Another brick in the wall

2010-11-30T08:27:00.004Z

Hey! priests! Leave those kids alone.

The Irish Human Rights Commission has come out with a report describing the teaching of religion as a human rights violation.

And more importantly, they say that it is open to be challenged in the European courts.

During the first Lisbon vote there were a number of pro-Catholic organizations that insisted that European integration would force abortion on the country - yet it's two years later and still no abortion.

The irony is, however, that Europe might impose a secular state on us. We would necessarily hear the chest beating and wailing of the religious empty vessels if this were to transpire.

Interestingly, though, because of personal circumstances, I find myself at many meeting of parents, and there is one thing I have found common: while church leaders continually drone on about ethos and the constitutional right of parents to force their beliefs on others - there are a lot of parents who are against religion in school. In fact, most of the questions asked at such meetings are about religion and are delivered in a tone that is distinctly against religion.

Why I am voting for Labour...

2010-11-23T08:38:00.009Z

...or more importantly, why I wouldn't have voted for them 6 months ago.

I have voted for Labour for the past 10 years - not because I'm a rabid socialist or anything, I'm just not a rabid capitalist either, and my dreadful fears for the outcome of the Fianna Fail agenda have all come to fruition and a lot more besides.

Who broke the country?

Well Fianna Fail, of course.

How did they do it?

Light touch regulation and mismanagement of the property market.

More importantly, why did they do it?

Because they were making a ton of money on tax receipts which they could do two things with:

Lower tax rates to buy continued re-election
Buy off the public service by inflating it massively (thereby unrealistically affecting the employment rate)

The former, whether good or bad, is about to be corrected - however, the latter is still a problem.

My greatest fear of a Labour government was that Eamon Gilmore would open up his little black book, call around all the unions and tell them to come on over, the country was theirs and the party had started - while me and my children and their children would have to foot the bill. Now, let me be clear, that was only a fear - I don't really think that would happen, Eamon has demonstrated that he's not taking any nonsense from the unions already - but there was always a chance, and I didn't want to take that risk.

Not going to happen now.

The IMF and a EU won't let it. Not only that, they are going to take an ax to the public sector tower of Babel that Ahern and Cowan built up.

Now I can vote for Labour - and it will be a good thing. In five years time, I believe that we will have a streamlined public sector that delivers value for money, we will see rid of the cronyism and the jobs for life nonsense, and the people that work there will no longer have to power to dictate to the rest of us.

And let me be more clear, lest I upset anyone: I'm not talking about teachers or nurses or Gardai or any of those other frontline workers - whatever quibbles I may have there I recognize that they work hard . Respect to them all.

I'm talking about the wasters that have been packed into public service that leech of the rest of them and use union power to blur the lines between the working public sector and the second tranche of fat cats in this country. And the worst part is that the unions have conned those hard pressed frontline workers - notice how the high up civil servants are far less affected by the cuts, even though everyone is in it in together. The unions know where there bread is buttered and they are happy to toss the plebs a crumb or too. For a suitable image, see that last page of "Animal Farm".

Not to worry, the IMF is here. May their gods bless them.

Speaking of which, Labour also have a strong secular agenda. I'm looking forward to that. And the good thing is, as they won't have much to do because the IMF will be running everything, there will be plenty of time for referendums. Maybe we can get that constitution fixed.

What about Fine Gael?

Not in a fit. Someone said it yesterday:

Fine Gael and Fianna Fail are two cheeks of the same arse.

It doesn't get more true than that - and the past week has shown them up, big time.

Every time you see Fine Gael comment on anything (and that twit James Reilly was doing not half an hour ago on Morning Ireland), all they've got is digs at the government. Labour/Sinn Fein/The Green/Fianna Fail the whole bally lot of them are all concerned about what the hell we are going to do with our future, while Fine Gael are determined to remind us who broke everything, who's fault it is - as if we didn't know - and grub about for every dirty vote they can get. That gobshite Enda Kenny is probably down in Louis Copeland's right now picking out the suit he's going to wear as Taoiseach.

If they end up as a minority partner in government so be it - but do you know who I would prefer?

Fianna Fail.

Bizarre as that sounds, there is method in my madness:

All governments need a flavour in their plain - and contrast is good. That said, it should be just a hint - 30 TDs is plenty.
Fianna Fail know where the bodies are buried.
Fianna Fail made the mess, but they have been cleaning up as well as anyone could.
They wouldn't actually have much power as a minority partner in government.
They're not quite done yet - they need to roast a little bit longer.

Let the games begin...

The Lex Luthor of Atheism

2010-11-19T11:12:00.006Z

Lex Luthor is the "Greatest Criminal Mind of Our Time" - and Christopher Hitchens not only looks like him, he is also worthy of the epithet (of course, he's not a criminal - that's just poetic license).

I watched all of the live debate between Hitch and Dembski at Prestonwood Christian Academy and you just can't fail to be amazed by the incredible intellect that Hitchens possesses.

His first statement was one of the usual set pieces from Hitchens - you see them all through his book. There's nothing wrong with it, it's mildly entertaining and gets to the point - but it's not a killer argument.

Dembski's response had me in tears. It was essentially a reading of a bibliography - and it had all the warmth, charm and entertainment value thereof.

As I was listening to it, as well as being bored silly, I was disappointed because I knew this wasn't Hitch's area of expertise. Dawkins would have shredded him, PZ Myers would have eaten him alive - but Hitch is just not an evolutionary biologist. You just can't expect someone who is not trained in that area to answer to those charges - and Dembski knew it.

Boy was I wrong! Hitch got out of his chair, walked over to Dembski and punched him square in the face - breaking his nose and his eye socket and knocking him out cold. Dembski slumped to the floor and has yet to regain consciousness.

And the best part, he did it without leaving his chair.

He used wonderful examples from evolutionary biology - but examples from common sources, none had the dull obscurity of Dembski's bibliography. I listened and thought: "I remember reading that", or "Yes, I saw that too on Planet Earth."

It was brilliant - and devastating. The man is a genius.

The rest was just Dembski blathering on about Christian this and God loves you that rubbish, that had little coherence and made less sense.

But most importantly, from the sounds of the audience, the world is richer for plenty of new 7 year old atheists - but I don't think it's what the Prestonwood Christian Academy had in mind.

Speaking of the Prestonwood Christian Academy:

The moderator was a credit to his school. He was a perfect gentleman and respectful of the differing views, possibly even open minded - the kind of Christian I like.

Until just near the end I was very impressed.

Then they brought on the clown in the pastor suit. What the hell was that about? On stage was Christopher Hitchens, one of the world's leading atheists, and this moron first tries to suggest that Hitchens and Dembski were somehow equal, which they clearly were not, and then enlightens us with his own ignorant position on how he has been unconvinced by atheist arguments - preferring to believe his own delusional voodoo.

And the final turd on the shite-pie: he leads them all in a prayer... while Hitchen's is still sitting there. And it wasn't even one of their trite innocuous prayers, it was one of those "Heavenly Slavemaster, please, please, please" grovels.

The only way it could have been any more offensive would have been if they prayed for Hitchens to "find salvation" before his cancer took him.

I love the EU

2010-11-18T09:36:00.016Z

It is possible that some atheists will not hold the same views as me on this particular subject, but hey, that's because we are hugely diverse bunch - and that's a good thing.

As you may know Ireland and as a consequence Europe is going through a crisis at the moment. The basic problem is that the PIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain) are knackered. Our debt is through the roof and a current expenditure does not match our income.

Ireland, unfortunately, is currently being targeted by the bond markets and may need help to ensure that we survive.

There is also the larger question of the survival of the common currency, and maybe even the EU.

Now, I love what the EU has done for Ireland. I have always been a fervent supporter of it and hope that it continues.

You see, Irish people are great: despite the faith and begorrah drunken ignorant aggressive stereotype common in the US; we are intelligent, hard working and deeply philosophical - and yes we do know how to take it easy and enjoy the craic.

But there are also negative aspects to Irish society: we are often too easy going and far too willing to just accept the status quo. This has led to a country where our politicians are inept, the church still has far too much influence and corrupt individuals are given free reign to fleece everyone.

The EU, however, has done much to force these evils into the spotlight. Our politicians are continually under pressure to up their game, our society is becoming increasingly secular and good business practices are now more the norm (with some notable exceptions).

Because of this I am disturbed by a number of commentators, some of them respectable, denigrating this country and, even worse, using it a stick with which to beat the Euro and the EU. The most vociferous emanations are, not surprisingly from our nearest neighbour, the UK.

See this picture. This picture has been used by many media outlets to demonstrate the desperate situation Ireland finds itself in.

If you live in Ireland, you probably know who that is. That's Berrie Fleming - she used to work for Laura Ashely - a very profitable UK company that is also very successful in Ireland. They had a shop on Grafton Street, where Berrie worked.

Now along came Disney (in a nice way) - and they wanted that shop and were willing to pay anything to get it. And they did. Berrie and her friends got the boot - but not in a nice way.

This fairy tale is one of a UK company selling something for good financial reasons to a US company and the staff who got steamrolled in the process - it has nothing to do with the state of Ireland or the Irish banks or the EU or anyone else. Yet it is used as the icon for same.

This morning that idiot, Nigel Farage was firing shots across the bow of the Euro. This twit doesn't want Britain to join the Euro - fair enough. But he doesn't want anyone else to do well out of it either (I reckon he secretly knows that Europe's gain is Britain's, and consequently his loss).

His answer to everything is scrap the Euro, break up Europe, and, probably, restore the Empire. Stop Johnny foreigner in Brussels dictating how much saw dust can be packed in the good old British Banger.

Fortunately, until now, he didn't have a question for which that was the answer. Over the past 5 years, the Euro has been extremely successful - and all the while he has been shouting "Drop the Euro! Drop the Euro!", and looking like a tit in the process.

Now, though, the Euro is in a bit of a crisis (it happens). Many wise heads are looking at this problem and are trying to work out a solution. Luckily for us they don't listen to muppets like Farage.

There are a couple of important points worth noting:

Yes, Ireland's problem is as a result of joining the Euro. We had access to a virtually unlimited supply of credit at low interest rates and we just gobbled it up. However, the nub of this problem is not that we had too much EU involvement - we didn't have enough.

IMHO our crisis was caused by one man: presidential candidate, Bertie Ahern. (And of course us, we voted him in.)

In the late nineties, Ireland was doing quite well - you may have heard of the Celtic Tiger. This was as a result of long term investment in technical education, good fiscal policy and a generally upbeat international economy.

When we joined the Euro, things got even better. And Bertie said to himself: you just can't have too much of a good thing. The construction sector was booming, people were spending money and tax revenues were up. This allowed the government to deal with their biggest problem: the public sector. How? By buying them off.

So Bertie puts his foot on the gas - and by the gas, I mean, the banking regulator. The central bank and Europe said "Ease up there Bert". Not a chance was the reply. And light touch regulation was born.

Pile up on Ireland!!!! With Royal Bank of Scotland leading the charge, the banks went mad. If you were even thinking about buying property you got a loan - and it spiraled up and up and up... and out of control. Property developers would have been insane not to build.

...but then, as many predicted, it crashed.

We are in serious trouble, no doubt about it.

However, the UK Euroskeptics would be wise to remember these points:

If the EU had more control, we wouldn't be in this mess. The ECB told us over and over again to regulate the banks.
It's not real skin of the EU's nose to fix our problems.
It was a UK bank that caused the problem.
That UK bank, and others, are heavily indebted. Why do you think David Cameron is so quick to offer support to Ireland?
Do you really believe that the UK government is telling you the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth? I wouldn't if I were them - confidence is very ephemeral.

Mark my words - in 18 months time Ireland will be fine; Britain won't. The UK isn't beyond needing international bailouts.

Now, all that said: I think it's great the way Britain and Ireland are working together. I believe we are sibling nations - we have a very similar mindset and common interests - and we should put our differences behind us and work within Europe for the benefit of North Western Europe.

Sure, isn't Stiophaín Mhac Iascín a prime example of what I'm talking about.

2010-11-16T10:17:00.002Z

Humanist Association of Ireland objects to religious instruction during school hours. (Go Humanists!)

Presumably the Catholic church has an issue with this because they know that they would have far less support if people actually had to make a sacrifice.

Automotive Miracles?

2010-11-16T08:39:00.012Z

A friend sent me this via facebook:

This is a series of 20 or so, near misses involving cars. On facebook the comments include words like "miracle", "praise be to God" and "blessed". The poster even has the doozy:

Some FB users have called the people in this video to be lucky and their 'cheating death' a mere coincidence. To them ,I say, this "coincidence" is an act of mercy by GOD.

[sic], [sic], [sic] and [sic].

The video (on youtube) is entitled: "God loves you , he'll be there for you.... Here's the proof"

It's proof alright - that the con that is religion is easily perpetrated on the statistically weak mind.

If you look at this and agree that these are miracles then you are perniciously gullible - a useful faculty if someone is trying to sell you a con.

What do I mean by statistically weak minded? Well let's go through it:

1.25 million people are killed in car accidents every year (can we safely say that "God" doesn't love these people?)

These videos are not from one year. There are far more fatalities in the time period indicated - but we'll let that slide

A car/vehicle is about 3 meters wide in the direction of motion (giving latitude for the credulous)

The zone in which these "miracles" occur is about 1 meter each side of the front of the moving vehicle

Assume that someone who sees a car coming towards them doesn't instinctively get out of the way (another assumption in favour of the gullible)

That means we know that there are 1.25m/3 = 400,000 people every year passing within a 1 meter zone in front of a moving vehicle. There are two such "miracle" zones on either side of the car - that's 800,000 incidents of near misses, purely on the statistics alone.

And they could only find about 20 of them (to be fair the "caught on video" element needs to be considered). That make's each of these people 1 of 40,000 - that's a big group. Just in case anyone is confused - that doesn't mean that the probability is 1 in 40,000. The probability based on the assumptions above of a person involved in an altercation with a car experiencing a "near miss" is actually 2 in 5 - which is quite probable.

These people were lucky - but only in the sense that they fit into a statistical cohort. Those 3 out of 5 that didn't were not lucky. It has nothing to do with miracles or supernatural Ju-ju.

What it does, however, clearly demonstrate is that a lot of people are retarded. And I mean that in all seriousness. They have chosen to hold back, or retard, their thinking brains in order to avoid dealing with the reality of their existence.

That's sad.

It's important to recognize the purpose of this video and other claims like it. You are shown a quick serious of high intensity "miracles". Your instinctive response is to suspend your thinking mind and engage your instinctive reactions. In the past this would have saved your life from a leaping sabre toothed tiger - now it's just used to sell you a pig in a poke.

Ever watched the shopping channel? "There's only 2 left, you got to but this once in a lifetime offer now!"

You have to buy that. There's only 2 left, and you'll never get another chance - SO you don't have time think about this rationally. But are you really that stupid?

The bizarre thing is that con-jobs and religion share so many of the same tricks, yet normally intelligent people can't see the symmetry.

If you are one of those people then please read this:

Dear Christian Friend,

I am a Nigerian princess trying desperately to get my $5mlllion dollars out of the country after the fall of the dictator Charles Taylor.

Please send me your bank details so I can transfer this money and for your kind helpings I will give you $1million of the dollars I have.

May the belssings ouf our lord Jesus Christ be one you.

As an agnostic atheist, I recognize that there might be a deity - and that theists might be right (however unlikely). But if they are, it is for all the wrong reasons.

You. Me. Everybody.

2010-11-11T09:42:00.026Z

"Youth Defence" - the Catholic church's youth anti-abortion wing (because they are hip with the kids) has a new campaign, that I caught sight of this morning.

Here's the poster:

Fair point, but you forgot the other embryo's (silly children):

The problem, as ever, with Youth Defence and its ilk is that they are spinning the issue: "Look at all the cute little babies - all created perfectly by God." "He" loves them all apparently, even the ones that "He" loved so much that he created them without a brain - nice one.

Maybe "He" was having too much fun killing all the other babies with miscarriage... sorry, my bad, I forgot that was Eve's fault for eating apples.

I've said it before, I'm not in favour of abortion - but I see it as necessary response to the failure of society to deal with its long term social issues - and we are stuck with it, in the same way were are stuck with chemotherapy.

And praying or listening to an idiot in a dress won't solve these problems - in fact, they make them worse.

Of course, I have no such ethical problems with stem cell research. Weighing the life of an MS patient against a couple of cells is immoral and disgusting.

Just in case you didn't get the pictures on my version:

Hitler - well known Catholic athiest
Beef - yes, cows were once also embryos. Strange that it's not a problem to kill a fully grown cow, but some people go ape-shit when we eliminate a couple of human cells that are far less significant than a cow and are virtually indistinguishable from the same cells produced in a cow.
Ectopic pregnancy - it's an embryo, that if not aborted will kill the mother (no loss says Youth Defence)
Teens - most of the time they are pregnant because they are stupid (and they should still be entitled to an abortion and definitely the morning after pill) - sometimes they are victims of abuse and/or rape. Youth Defence answer: serves them right for dressing so slutty
Debbie Purdy - who has MS, a disease which stem cell research may very well cure, and who is campaigning to have the right to take her own life with dignity.

Outsourcing

2010-11-10T09:51:00.007Z

We won a huge contract recently - one which required us to really push ourselves, even beyond our actual limits. So I asked Angela, our production supervisor, to do what she could to get the job done.

She told me that she had a friend called Bill who could do some of the designs for us. This was a lifesaver because Angela told me that Bill could help us - she had spoken to him and he was available. She said that he was really great guy, he was a top-notch designer and he had been very reliable in the past.

So Angela e-mailed Bill with the specifications and we got on with setting up the production line in preparation for the designs. Angela told me that Bill would take about 2 weeks to get the job done, which was great for us.

2 weeks came and went - but you have to allow for risk timing in any project so there's no problem. Still I got Angela to contact Bill and make sure everything was going OK. She got back to me that afternoon to tell me that she had complete faith in Bill and he was working on it.

Another week went by and we were getting slightly concerned. But then Angela told me that something had come in from Bill - brilliant.

Until I saw it - there were 10 designs required. He had only done two. The first was fine, but the second was completely wrong. I brought this up with Angela and she told me not to worry, it's just that Bill was a little quirky.

To tell you the truth, I wasn't happy.

Now we were one week over our deadline (including the slippage week). I was getting annoyed with Angela - but she said not to worry, that she had spoken to Bill and he had a plan to get back on track. I asked her to get Bill to send through his plan - but apparently Bill wouldn't, he would only tell her that he had a plan and we had to trust him.

After the next week I had enough. I told Angela to give me Bill's e-mail address. You will never guess what she said. "Bill doesn't have an e-mail address, I speak to him in my head."

"YOU ARE FUCKING JOKING ME", I said. (Excuse my French, but you can imagine how angry I was).

Apparently, she had done the two drawings based on what she said she heard Bill tell her - and when she said he had a plan, "he" didn't - she just had faith that he did.

Needless to say, we lost the contract. But on the plus side, we fired Angela - the nutty bitch. Unfortunately, we had to layoff 6 of our production crew.

United Nations?

2010-11-09T13:50:00.004Z

A lot of people criticize the United Nations as an impotent, pointless talking shop with little or no power to effect change or influence world opinion.

In this case, I hope this is true.

I'm surprised Saudi Arabia or Iran even have a word for "woman". One would have thought that "livestock" would do well enough for them.

So why one earth did some idiot think it necessary to have them involved in setting UN policy on Women's Rights?

What next, Hitler as middle east peace envoy? The Pope as head of UNICEF? Nick Leeson as CEO of the World Bank?

Scamming the scammers

2010-11-04T08:18:00.009Z

Richard Wade is a kind of agony uncle over at the friendly atheist - and a very good one at that. He is principled and, dare I say, sage, and I reckon that his counseling has done a lot of good.

Most of the time we can all agree with his advice - but this one time I don't...

I'm not saying he's wrong because he's not - but I don't think I'm wrong either. Yet our viewpoints are contradictory.

BTW I'm not discussing this because it bothers me - I'm discussing it because it is a really interesting and practical application of ethics. Would you go back in time and kill Hitler? Who cares? It's not a real application. But do you round up or down on your tax return? What are the ethical implications of that? That's interesting and worth exploring. One of the best things about being an atheist, and one of the reasons why I am one, is that you are not given a rulebook that you just have to follow. You have to make real and often difficult choices.

Some people have a simple moral viewpoint. And by simple I mean straightforward - a basic set of principles which they hold true, and they stand by them. (And I'm not talking about an organization like the Catholic church where the principles are primal, and to hell with the consequences for ordinary people).

I wish I was that lucky.

When I think about abortion or gay marriage - I don't find it easy to just pick one side. I find myself stuck in the middle (and even sharing a viewpoint with this loon).

Take honesty - the ethical question in point.

Now I have been in very few situations where I have a difficulty with honest. Most of the time I am 100%, in fact: trust me, you can trust me.

If I were in a situation where I screwed up, I wouldn't even think twice. I'd own up. And I wouldn't hold back.

If I were in a situation where someone else screwed up. Would I be honest? Would I offer up that individual. No, I wouldn't.

Then, a more fitting example. Would I be honest if a co-worker was setting me up to take a fall, but I had no way to prove it, and I was going to lose my job? No, not a chance.

In Hollywood, the answer is of course yes. Because we all know that the guy that does the right thing always comes out on top in the end - and the villain always gets his just desserts.

Unfortunately, in the real world that's not the case. Bernie Madoff may be languishing in a prison cell right now, but there are plenty who did the same and aren't. They just didn't get caught.

Would I be justified in scamming some other poor schmoe to get my money back? No, I think not. Would I be justified in scamming Bernie Madoff - still I would say no. I should report him and get him arrested.

But what if the authorities were incompetent or even complicit, and I had an opportunity to get some of my money back, even if I had to be dishonest, should I take it? Damn right - especially if that dishonesty was just an error of omission.

Honesty is a good ethical principle, but it is erroneous to suggest that it is the only ethical principle or even that it's the prime principle. I will lie and cheat and steal and even kill to protect my family. That's not because I'm unprincipled. I just have my family as my highest principle. Take that out of the equation and then honesty is right up there.

This shouldn't be the end of this or any other ethical question, though. It's important that we have frank exchanges on these issues and not assume that the cozy moral blanket in which we have wrapped ourselves is sufficient. I love being told I'm wrong - most of the time I am, but I might yet be right, and at least it's not an unchallenged view.

Discuss.

Kevin Myers - ascientist

2010-10-30T12:50:00.007+01:00

Kevin Myers is a columnist for the Irish Independent. He's quite a bizarre individual, he's very bright but his view on the world is strange.

Yesterday we got a pro-religion anti-secularism rant while at the same time claiming to be an atheist.

The problem with most of these kind of columnists is that the go so unchallenged that they forget the basics of logic and reasoning and eventually just rely on themselves as the only accurate source of knowledge.

Kevin Myers has always been contrarian. I would even go so far as to say that he actually has no ideas of his own, merely a position that is in opposition to the person he is talking too or about. I imagine he does this because it is often the case that the wise man takes a stand that is apart from the consensus - unfortunately, this also applies to the lunatic. Or in Mr Myers' case, as he simply takes the opposite stance, he is defined by the consensus and is therefore part of it.

As a contrarian he does occupy a very strange niche in the world of religious belief or lack of it. He describes himself as godless here - however, unlike most athiests Myers is opposed to science. Yeah, I know, bizarre. He considers science to be arrogant. Unfortunately, in his own personal arrogance he has failed to familiarize himself with the meaning of the word.

I'm not particularly against what he is saying in his piece - that is, that in the absence of a viable alternative, religion acts as a moderator to control the urges of the populous. This has always been true.

The only alternative Myers can see is "secular dementia" - whatever that is? And somehow Wayne Rooney is the god of this madness. So we put in place laws that keep religion out of government, schools and hospitals and suddenly everyone will worship the Manchester United striker.

Two problems with this: first we don't have a secular society, and yet a vast majority of people who adore Rooney (maybe not his wife), and second the vast majority of people who would desire a secular society couldn't care less who Wayne Rooney is.

I do agree that if religion disappears from our world we will need to think long and hard about what we will do to replace the few positive aspects it has - but it is a stretch to suggest that we will all turn to Rooniism.

Luckily we are provided with examples of "secular dementia":

Hitler - the atheist who said "I am now as before a Catholic and will always remain so."

Stalin - the atheist who reinstated the Russian Orthodox church after Lenin got rid of it.

Mao - the atheist who caused 50 million people to die in the Great Chinese Famine (he also thought science was arrogant and rejected tested agricultural methods in favour of some stuff he made up).

Kim Il Sung - a genuine atheist. Or at least he doesn't believe in other gods, because he reckons that he is a god and so do the followers of his religion.

Pol Pot - an atheist who killed lots of people... I'm not even going to defend him, because like Stalin and Mao - he didn't kill anyone because he was an atheist. He killed them because he was a megalomaniac who was obsessed with his own little idea and was willing to kill anyone who disagreed with him. And guess what - the religion that Myers thinks will save us is just such an ideaology, and has be responsible for the deaths of over 800 million people. So much for the religious moderator.

Human beings can be morons. Ideologies give them Carte Blanche to be morons. Take the religion away and they will worship Rooney - but there is another way.

Educate people in reason and science and teach them to be good to each other and not to waste their time and money on silly superstitions. If they still worship Wayne Rooney - what harm? At least we will have a better world.

Update

Of course, the other Myers is on the case.

And Kevin's anti-science view was obviously going to be challenged. And I'm sure there's more to come...

I'm a Pisces

2010-10-21T10:16:00.003+01:00

That's the fish one, born in February and stuff.

I've personally always held that there was something to Horoscopes - and I say that from a skeptics point of view.

Of course, I don't mean that the nonsense that profligates in the daily newspapers is worth anything more than a cursory read for an upbeat suggestion for you day (don't read the Sunday Times horoscopes - they are truly depressing) - and I certainly don't think that any of the charlatans that produce these horoscopes could even predict rain during a thunderstorm. However, I do think that there is a possible connection between the date of your birthday and your personality.

I don't know that this has be proved in any way, but a connection between time of birth and allergies has been found in Finland.

Apparently the reason behind this is that during summer, just before these Virgos and Libras are born there is a higher level of pollen in the air, this affect the mother and hence the developing fetus. This would tie in with my own anecdotal experience.

Does this affect personality? I don't know. Apparently, Virgos tend to hypochondria.

We are all aware of the annual cycles; especially the Winter/Summer one. These affect the way an infant get its first experience of life - for example, in the case of Pisces and Aries, is it not likely that the mother might have had a cold or flu during the last few weeks of pregnancy.

Of course, this doesn't lend any credence to this moog:

Amongst our weaponry...are such elements as fear, surprise....

2010-10-20T10:56:00.005+01:00

Apparently the Catholic Church has mistakenly laid down its weapons and let the New Atheists walk all over it:

[via]

The problem here is not that the Catholic church put its weapons down - but like most weapons they get obsolete. The Vatican is cranking out muskets, while everyone else is getting plasma charges and BFGs.

In the past, the uneducated masses readily gobbled up all this gobbledygook and stood slack-jawed in awe of the perceived wisdom of the church. However, this wisdom easily conquered because it was wise relative to audience. That's no longer the case.

It is not right, however, to suggest that it is the lack of knowledge of the ordinary Catholic that is the problem. The truth is when the Catholic heavyweights (such as Archbishop Onaiyekan of Abuja, Nigeria or Cardinal George Pell) enter the ring, we find out very quickly that they, presumably armed to the teeth with the full arsenal of the church, are quickly vanquished.

So what's up with war machine of Catholicism?

Barron cites the example of the "body of Pope John Paul II" - by which I presume he means the body of work: This stuff is worth a look, and the current work of Joey Ratzinger too.

Papal Encyclicals, as the are called, tend to be long winded (though generally well written) but containing very little substance. More importantly, the thinking them is generally very naive and woolly. They either take a very simplistic, even childish, view of the world and expect everyone to just accept it ("because I say so") or they come up with extremely complex or fantastical notions that really make no sense at all.

Maybe in the past these were accepted - it is easy for the uneducated to confuse complexity with wisdom, and the boffins in Rome probably thought "Hey, it always worked before" - but the modern human mind is being educated with science and reason, which is antidote to the waffling BS of church.

Strangely, I learned Chemistry from a Catholic priest - and what he said about my efforts applies very well here: "Must try harder".

Unfortunately, if they do try harder and really investigate what they believe, I fear they will discover how little they've got. Depressing isn't it?

A Secular State

2010-10-19T11:53:00.003+01:00

Read Michael Nugent in the Irish Times.

In Ireland today, it is necessary to get across the importance of secularism - and the first step it to dismiss the FUD spread by the religious and their supporters about what secularism is.

Just to be clear:

Secularism means that the state does not support religion. It does not mean that it is against religion.

A secular state is not one where religion is banned - on the contrary, a proper secular state guarantees religious freedom to its citizens.

The objection that people like the Pope and David Quinn have to secularism is that it takes away their right to impose their beliefs on others. Pity about them - if you are right by dictate - well, you're not right.

There are no atheists in mineholes

2010-10-15T09:35:00.015+01:00

David Quinn: Why there were no atheists in the mine

I knew he wouldn't let me down - a piece of less thought out tripe you will not find. If the Chilean miners had holes this big, they would have been out weeks ago.

Apparently this random sample of 33 people all turned to "God" while trapped under ground.

Yeah but...

They aren't a random sample. Mining is a tough job - it's also a low paid job. If these guys were doctors or lawyers or the director of a mining company, do you think they would have been there in the first place.

And do you know what correlates with low-paid workers? Religion. (It might even be a causal relationship).

Let's also not forget that Chile is not renowned for being one of the great atheist nations - nope, the god botherers got their claws deep into that place a long time ago.

And you have ask the question: Who caused the mine to collapse? Oh sorry, of course, that was Adam eating an apple.

The true question is: how many convinced atheists found religion down the mine and how many committed believers lost their faith? The answer is none. The headline "No change in religious belief" is not a headline.

When you're on roll though:

When Flight 1549 crash-landed in the Hudson River in January 2009, many of the passengers told journalists about how they had prayed their way through the ordeal.

Lucky for them Chelsey Sullenberger decide not to bother God, and instead concentrated on flying the plane.

Similarly, many of those who lived (or died) through the events of September 11 turned to their faith for strength.

Of course, if we didn't have religion in the first place.....

But this just keeps on giving:

For example, people who practise a religion live longer on average than those who don't. One reason for this is that they tend to be healthier because they're less likely to abuse drugs or alcohol, for instance.

"[citation needed]"!!!!!

And of course you could see this coming from a mile off:

The old adage says, 'no atheists in foxholes'.

He didn't!!! Yes, he did!

So who the fuck are these guys then! Please, please, please: update your stupid mid-twentieth century beliefs about atheism. Next you'll be telling us that Hitler was down the mine.

The Chilean miners were trapped, in near darkness for 17 days without knowing if anyone would rescue them - then they spent a further 52 days hoping that the rescue would work (this wasn't a movie - they didn't have any guarantees).

Under these circumstances of extreme stress the human mind is likely to snap and delusional and psychotic behaviour is common. Of course, religious faith is common too - and sure if it got them through good for them.

But isn't that odd - the same pressures that cause delusional and psychotic behaviour, also cause religion. Same cause, "different" effect. How bizarre.

Of course, I would love to find out that the 6 specialists, who went down to rescue these guys (an incredibly brave thing to do), were all atheists. That would really crown David Quinn's abject failure.

I like it: http://macleodcartoons.blogspot.com/2010/10/chilean-mine-rescue-question-for-god.html

LOL - http://amultiverse.com/2010/10/14/the-gravminers-wife/

Nice to see that Quinn is not being let away with this crap: Letters.

IVF: not for me says God.

2010-10-14T09:51:00.006+01:00

I prefer it the old fashioned way: immaculate conception

What bizarre hoops these clowns must jump through in order to maintain their fantastic house of cards.

From the Irish Times letters page:

The implication is that St Joseph and our Lady would obviously condone IVF in opposition to the church since Mary did not conceive our Lord as the result of sexual intercourse. To compare the Annunciation and the Incarnation to IVF is quite frankly gravely sacrilegious! Our Lady conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit; it was an act of God following Mary’s “yes” not only to temporal life but ultimately to humanity’s sharing of God’s own divine life. Accordingly, Mary conceived Jesus supernaturally. This in no way resembles IVF which acts against God and is therefore always unnatural and sinful.

Personally I'd go with: Teenage Jewish tart drinks too much and ends up preggers - then blames God.

Thankfully though she wouldn't have had to suffer IVF:

...NaPro Technology which is morally acceptable and an even more effective help than IVF for couples struggling to conceive.

I'm sure it is - and when it doesn't work, you always have the option of IVF. Strange though, if this NaPro is so effective - why do people even bother with IVF?

Euthyphro's Tuning Dilemma

2010-10-01T09:59:00.009+01:00

You should have heard of Euthyphro's dilemma. Basically it states that an absolute morality defined by a god is a contradiction, because:

either, if the morality is defined by the god then it is at the whim of the god. The god might see child rape might as immoral today, but be perfectly fine with it tomorrow. It is therefore subjective - the subject being the god itself.

or, it is absolute, in which case it is always wrong and the god is at best passing on the information on.

Either way, the existence of an absolute morality (if you believe that) is not evidence for the existence of any god.

It seems to me that this also applies to the famous 'Fine-Tuning Argument'. This argument says that the values of a number of specific physical constants (like Planck's constant) are extremely finely tuned - in such a way that if they were even slightly different, then none of "this" would exist. Therefore, it is proof that a deity chose those values for our universe.

However:

either, a god arbitrarily chose the values and made the universe fit them, in which case they aren't special in the first place - and the fine-tuning argument is nonsense.

or, the god chose the values because something else (the laws of physics?) defined those as the values and the god just discovered them. In which case, he is dependent on a higher power.

Fine tuning just isn't evidence of an all powerful god at all.

Is too! Is not! Is too! Is not!

2010-09-28T10:25:00.004+01:00

According to the Catholic Communications Office the Mass boycott had no effect - or even a positive effect - on church numbers.

But wait! This just in, according to the association of priests, it actually did result in reduced numbers.

Who is telling the truth?

I don't really care, as long as lies and half-truths keep ripping the Catholic Church apart.

The problem here is that the congregation of the church is demanding change and the hierarchy are (correctly) ignoring them.

Let the games begin...

2010-09-24T11:23:00.005+01:00

You may or may not be aware but a lovely old woman by the name of Jennifer Sleeman has organized a mass (excuse the pun) boycott of religious services by women this Sunday - God bless her.

Now - remembering that she is 80 years old, and in my opinion entitled to just a little respect - she has received quite a bit of fan mail.

Wait did I say fan mail - I meant to say hate mail. Hate mail? Are you serious? For an 80-year old woman...

I'm glad to see that Catholic values are still strong in our little country.

Personally, I think Jennifer Sleeman is wrong to be demanding change in the Catholic church - it's not a democracy. If you don't like it, your only option is to leave (and in large numbers preferably). But don't worry, it is possible to be appalled at abuses within an organization and still be a part of that organization even if it refuses to change (WTF?).

Anyway, there have been plenty of letters on the subject. Read from an atheist perspective some of them are a howl.

There are those who are calling for alternative protests - such as a postcard campaign to the Bishops. Clearly those people are completely out of touch if they think the Bishops will even bother to read their postcards, let alone act on them.

I can't wait for next week - the letters pages will be abuzz with irate muppets decrying the brutality of ignoring their silly little myth re-enactment show.

A Catholic and a Jew walk into a bar...

2010-09-23T10:18:00.005+01:00

and the Pope says to them...

It could be a joke, and I'm sure 2 minutes on Google would find said joke - but it's not.

Who does the Pope see walking into the bar: One man who believes the same as himself, that Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour of Mankind came to Earth and died for everyone's sins, and another man who at best simply does not agree with the Pope, at worst is part of the race that committed deicide when they nailed the aforementioned Jesus to a cross.

Quite a big difference there.

And the atheist version of this joke:

Two blokes walk into a bar...

At best the atheist just sees them as human beings. At worst, two blokes who believe in two different silly myths.

Neither silly myth is any less inane than the other. Certainly, not in the sense that you could in any way justify killing the one and not the other. The atheist could, of course, be a nut job (maybe because of his sense of despair at the pointlessness of life) and wish to kill both of them - that you could explain.

So why would Hitler the atheist kill 6,000,000 non-specific human beings for no reason.

And why wouldn't Hitler the Catholic (and nut job) execute 6,000,000 Jews for killing his god and rejecting "salvation".

WTF?...

2010-09-18T11:57:00.005+01:00

More spewing from John Waters... approved of by the Catholic zombie "check your brain atthe door" masses.

The basic premise of Waters nonsense is:

Dawkins/Hitchens say that reason only comes from rational and reasoned argument supported by evidence. No, says Waters, as the Pope says or will says, reason can also come from the heart.

WTF?

If you are waiting for an explanation or a demonstration of this - don't hold your breath.

Apparently, the heart has some magic capacity for communication that only Joey and Johnny know about. And this capacity doesn't exist in the mind.

Nonsense! The heart is a pump made of cardiac muscle that resides in a persons chest (and many other animals to). It has no capacity for communication or cognitive thought.

Oh! You meant metaphorically... you actually meant the human spirit or soul.

You got any evidence for that, no? Didn't think so - because as far as I'm concerned it's just a higher brain function that we don't understand yet.

And as sure as shit you don't have evidence that this "spirit" of yours persists past the body's death or that it has some god-related basis.

You know what - why don't you actually bring yourself up to Dawkins and Hitchens level, and stop using your heart to think (something it can't do) and start using your head. Here's a good tip for you - whenever you come up with some stupid concept like heart communication - try to explain what you actually mean. If you can't, maybe you shouldn't put it in the paper.

How this clown ever got a job working for a reputable paper like the Irish Times is completely beyond me. Maybe they were impressed with his earlier writings when he was an atheist (of sorts)

TGIF

2010-09-17T10:51:00.003+01:00

Independent day - time to see what stupid inanity David Quinn and his Catholic addled brain has come up with this week.

But wait, what's this! Some one else's is having a Friday moment: Ian O'Doherty is a bit miffed at atheists being upset at being called Nazis by the pope.

And I suppose he's right for the most part... it really isn't a big deal and Joey is

hopelessly, cluelessly, tragically out of touch with the real world and is quite obviously the worst man for the job given the global crisis and lack of confidence in his organisation.

Except:

Richard Dawkins never called for the Pope to be arrested. He gave his support to a legal challenge attempting to block the pope from coming to the UK.

The Pope's objective is to associate the horror of the WWII and most especially the Blitz with atheists. He is trying to make atheism and secularism pariahs in order to promote his insidious beliefs. You need to at least say "Sorry there Mr Pope, but your pal Hitler was a Catholic."

Should atheists protest at the Chinese, or the Saudi Arabians, or the Zimbabweans - of course they should. And I'm sure they do, albeit to a lesser extent.

However, the Pope is on British soil trying to promote his own negative values over the native's positive secular values: That's reason enough to protest.

And the straw that breaks the camel's back: it's costing a bloody fortune so that this witch doctor can promote his voodoo myths.

I'd be pissed.

Wankers!

2010-09-16T10:03:00.006+01:00

One of the big reasons I have for not accepting the theistic claims for the existence of "God", is that the "God" that is described is pathetically human. I have never heard a description of this being that encapsulates anything more than human fears and ignorance, and a method of social control (to be fair, a pretty effective one).

If I were to conceive of a supernatural being who embodied the sentiment of what is trying to be achieved by theists, it would not come with all the baggage that, say, the Catholic church associates with it.

If, for arguments sake, I take that the "Soul" is that bit of my conscious mind that at this moment in time I cannot rationalize - my sense of self, my sense of 'me'-ness. "God" then is in pure essence just a super consciousness - and ultimate 'me'. (I also have problems with this too - but that's for another day).

So this super-consciousness creates the Universe. Pretty impressive.

It creates life and starts off the evolutionary process (or not, if you wish) which then creates all the animals and plants and ultimately me. Even more impressive.

And it sets up a number of rules for us to follow - don't kill each other, respect each other's property, create loving stable family relationships, worship "God" first and foremost (a bit egotisical, but I'll let it slide), no masturbating.

All very sensible rules, when you think about.... Whooa!!! What was that last one again? No Masturbating? Where did you get that?

That doesn't make sense. Sure, fiddling with your bits is not something that should be done in polite company, and if you spend the entire day jacking off you'll never get anything done - but I think we'd could easily apply an "everything in moderation" rule there.

It seems hardly something that a super-consciousness would worry to much about. "God" presumably doesn't even have bishop to bash (metaphorically anyway) - why would he look down on his creation and say "Oi! Stop spanking your monkeys, I don't like it. Get back to enslaving people."

He knows that there is no harm in it - so why would he care?

Why would anyone care?

Well, actually, there is a group of people who would: primitive tribal leaders. Why? Well because they believe that "semen" contains micro-embryonic humans. And humans is something the are very short of.

A bunch of chicken chokers spraying baby juice everywhere is bad for business.

So what's more likely "God", the most impressive and powerful thing in or out of the Universe has little enough to be worrying about that he must concern himself with how he screwed up by making the hand easily combinable with the genitals, or...

Social mores and poor scientific understanding lead to a "God done it" moment.

Oh you poor thing...

2010-09-10T11:00:00.006+01:00

Poor David Quinn is an oppressed majority.

Apparently, Newsnight criticizing the visit of the leader of an organization that actively supports the abuse of children to the United Kingdom and at enormous cost - is picking on them.

But that's because everyone is afraid of Islam.

Bollox!

It's because the head of Islam is not visiting the UK. Of course, there isn't a head of Islam - but there are leaders of Islam. Some of these leaders are nasty, like the pope: are they given a free ride? Nope - they are thrown on the next plane out of the place and sent back to the Islamic inspired shithole they came from.

Of course, PZ Myers gets a ribbing too. He desecrated the holy donut with a rusty nail - he wouldn't dare do that to the Qu'ran (the fact that he did is obviously not relevant).

The difference between PZ Myers and Terry Jones is, of course, that Jones is a hateful little xenophobe. Both of them are intolerant of the ideas of others, but PZs intolerance is of the stupidity of people who worship slices of bread, whereas Jones just hates the dirty Muslims because...

I like this:

So, blaming the September 11 attacks on the nature of Islam is bigotry, but blaming the abuse scandals on the nature of Catholicism is not. Nor has anyone ever worried too much about inciting hatred of priests or of the Catholic Church.

Now, I'm not being bigoted when I say that September 11 was caused by the nature of Islam - because it was. Islam and Christianity require you to suspend what you know is right and wrong for the benefit of a "higher cause".

It is this suspension of reason in favour of childish superstition that is the cause of these problems whether they be just people falling down in shock over a coughed up breadstick or lunatics flying into buildings - the fault is the same and it is only a difference of scale and opportunity.

This lack of decent moral judgement is so clear with this:

In the next few days, and right through the Pope's visit, we're going to hear more about the scandals, and priestly celibacy, and the church's teaching on sex and marriage, and women priests, and Aids and condoms and all the rest of it.

Sorry? You've stated your position so that's an end to it? I'm afraid not. It stops being a stick to beat you with when you stop doing it. Even Jesus figured that one out.

"Aids and condoms and all the rest of it" - what a positively quaint way to describe an on going act of genocide.

Respect for Religion II: Qu'ran Burning

2010-09-08T10:17:00.004+01:00

A while back I wrote about how religion does not deserve respect. It still doesn't.

I also drew a picture for "Everybody Draw Mohmmed Day" - directly after which I apologized to any Muslims I might have offended.

Now I'm going to explain why religion should be given respect (or at least the case where it is merited).

Various leaders are calling for Pastor Jones to show some respect and call of his planned book burning.

Now some might say that religion doesn't deserve respect - so go ahead, burn baby burn!

I disagree. And it is incumbent on me to explain why I can draw Mohammed and decry burning the Qu'ran in the same breath.

When I drew Mohammed, it was a direct response to Muslims telling me what I could and could not do - and backing it up with threats of violence. They are entitled to the opinion, even if it is not nice, that I will burn in hell for being a heathen, but they are not allowed to tell me what to do.

When Jones' burns his Qu'rans on Saturday, he will not be making a stand for his freedom. He has one purpose, to offend Muslims because, in his mind, they are a bunch of "towel headed, camel riding, sand *********" - and they don't deserve his respect. And the best way he can come up with to upset them is to burn their book.

If he was burning it to protest at Iran's use of it to justify stoning Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani - then I shall strike the match for him. At that point, the entitlement of one human being not to be offended is insignificant in comparison to an act of barbarity against another human being.

I doubt Jones' has anyone close to him who died in the 9/11 attacks. I wouldn't be surprised if he has never been to New York. If New Yorkers decided to burn the Qu'ran in righteous anger, I could understand it. But this clown is just fanning his own xenophobic bigoted hatred.

It is hard to see how he claims justification for this. The reasons he gives for this action are all founded on the principle that he is right and they are wrong - which is again just bigotry - the same point can be made and is made just as forcefully without offense everyday.

Of course, the correct response from the Muslim world is righteous indignation - which would also give them the high moral ground. I fear I hope for far too much.

Listen to the Pope?

2010-09-06T16:58:00.003+01:00

Madeline Bunting has written in the Gaurdian that we should listen to what the Pope has to say during his upcoming visit to Great Britian.

While I may be generally hostile to the pope and everything he stands for - I would listen to him, as I would listen to anyone, if I thought for one second that he had anything to say. But he doesn't.

Most Catholics would point out that he is a powerful intellect and that his various teachings on issues of the day are insightful and far reaching. But they're not.

Firstly, you don't see the pope thoughts on issues promulgated - and even when you do, on issues such as homosexuality or contraception in Africa, they are near-sighted, crass and bigoted.

Bunting points out, however, that:

The papacy has been a powerful critic of the arms trade, war, global inequality.

So what?

If pope speaks as an individual, then I am as outspoken as he is - if not as well known.

If speaks as a representative of the Catholic church - then what particular value of Catholicism over basic (secular) human respect for the rights of others does he add to the debate?

We would be far better letting specialist organizations with no skeletons in their closet - like Amnesty International - speak on these issues.

Hello Stephen Hawking, Goodbye God

2010-09-02T13:24:00.004+01:00

Stephen Hawking has a new book - I must read it.

Apparently, there's no need for a god to start the Universe. That's a relief.

Of course, I'm sure the book is far more substantial than: "There is no god".

But that's not what the vested interests will latch on to. This should be fun.

Bible Silver Bullet

2010-09-02T10:05:00.007+01:00

When I had my little visit from the Jehovah's Witnesses, I wished I had something that would say "You're bible is a dose of crap - stick it up your arse".

But at the time I didn't.

Well actually I did... I just didn't know it.

A recent of the Atheist Experience actually had the silver bullet contained within it - I just had to open my heart to it.

A few weeks ago Aron-Ra was on the show. Aron-Ra is the Garrison Keillor of the atheist world. His voice is hypnotic - though why he looks like the "Prince of Darkness", I don't know.

Anyway there was some chat about how screwed up the bible was and Matt Dillahunty offered Exodus 21 as an example. And it's a good example. Either "God" approves or slavery or he doesn't.

There is wriggle room - "Oh that's just because slavery was necessary at the time..." - it wouldn't have been if "God" had given the Jews a handful of high-yield pest/disease resistant wheat. If Monsanto can do it - why can't God.

AronRa was repeating the mantra "Exodus 31" over and over. At the time I just thought it was annoying - I had presumed it was just another reference to slavery.

I looked it up this morning: this is not a slippery hook - this is the Phalanx anti-ship missile defense system of biblical refutation.

31:14 Ye shall keep the sabbath therefore; for it is holy unto you: every one that defileth it shall surely be put to death: for whosoever doeth any work therein, that soul shall be cut off from among his people.

There is no ambiguity, there is no doubt. If someone works on Sunday (or Saturday) you kill them - no questions asked. If you go to the shopping centre and see people working in a shop and you do not go into that shop and kill them you are violating a direct order from God.

And then the best part - how direct is that order?

31:18 And he gave unto Moses, when he had made an end of communing with him upon mount Sinai, two tables of testimony, tables of stone, written with the finger of God.

This stuff was written with the actual finger of God. It's not something that Moses might have heard wrong, or someone else wrote it and told Moses that "God done it". This was written by God himself.

You know what you have to do.

Or do you? I didn't think so.

If you are worried about a visit from the JWs (or any other bible toting wierdos):

Get them to testify that the bible is the inerrant word of god - or something to that effect.
Slap 'em with Exodus 31.
Ask them how many working folk did they kill last Sunday.

Another one bites the dust

2010-09-01T09:32:00.004+01:00

Mick Lally died yesterday.

I never was big into anything he did although I've obviously seen him in plenty of things - and he was always a very likable character, which I feel was a reflection of him as a person.

And, of course, he regarded religion as nonsense and codology.

I was listening to an obituary on the radio - and was reminded of the famous April Fools that he did where he announced that he was quitting Glenroe because he didn't want to do a full nude scene with his co-star Mary McEvoy.

Of course, it was all in jest - but it shocked the bejaysus out of poor Catholic Ireland. Have they no shame? Fair play to you Mick - thanks for your life.

Left-Handed Pride

2010-08-31T09:54:00.004+01:00

I'm left-handed and I'm reading a book.

The book is "A Natural History of Ourselves" by Hannah Holmes - it's good, so far.

There's an interesting little litany of facts about brain-handedness, one of which is that homosexuals are more likely to be left-handed.

This leads to an interesting trilemma - one of these must be true (unless this is a false trichotomy):

Left handedness is a lifestyle choice

There is a giant conspiracy among left handed people to choose being gay as a lifestyle (and I didn't get the e-mail)

Homosexuality is not a lifestyle choice - but just a natural condition just like left handedness

The first option isn't correct. I didn't choose to be left handed, and neither do small children, who exhibit this preference even before they can talk.

The second option is ... well, the second option.

The third option is the only one that makes sense.

Another interesting fact from the book - women's breasts are unnatural. That didn't actually occur to me before - but in the natural world large breasts are not the done thing (unlike homosexuality - which among some species is practically biblical).

I like the theory that breasts are the consequence of sexual selection - i.e. men are fans of simple harmonic motion.

Hmmm...

I wonder is there a correlation between left handedness and atheism. Please vote in the poll on the right (sorry the not-left) and lend a hand to popularist scientific investigation.