from: KEN KUBE
reply-to: mr_ken@mail.ru
to:
date: 13 July 2008 20:46
subject: FROM: Mr. Ken Kube.

FROM: Mr. Ken Kube.
Good Day,
Please Read.
My name is Mr Ken Kube, I’m the credit officer in International Credit Bank Ouagadougou Burkina Faso.
I have a business proposal in the tune of $5.5m, (Five Million Five hundred Thousand only) after the successful transfer; we shall share in ratio of 40% for you and 60% for me.
Should you be interested, please contact me through my private email (mr_ken@mail.ru) so we can commence on all arrangements and I Will give you more information on how we would handle this project.
Please treat this business with utmost confidentiality and send me the
Following information:
(1) Full names:
(2) Private phone number:
(3) Current residential address:
(4) Occupation:
(5) Age and Sex:
Kind Regards,
Mr. Ken Kube.
Note: Strictly reply through my private email account if interest is shown.

This is my reply:

from: Andrew Taylor
to: mr_ken@mail.ru
date: 13 July 2008 22:20
subject: Re: FROM: Mr. Ken Kube.

2008/7/13 KEN KUBE <mr_ken35@biz.by>:

FROM: Mr. Ken Kube.
Good Day,
Please Read.
My name is Mr Ken Kube,

No, it isn’t. Don’t be ridiculous.

That didn’t get a response.

I can understand the idea behind halal chicken and so forth. It’s the fact they sell a halal ‘ham’ option that puzzles me. Pigs are considered “unclean” in Islam, so the ham comes from a turkey. That’s daft enough to begin with, but the turkey breast sub is still there. So you have a choice of two distinct turkey-based subs. In fact, it’s better than that, because Subway also offer bacon, which again is made from turkeys in the Halal stores. This means that the turkey breast and ham sub is now turkey and turkey, and the Subway Melt becomes turkey, turkey and turkey, so there are four subs with different combinations of turkey on them, and two options — double meat and ‘add bacon’ — to increase your turkey intake yet further.

It seems to me that a far more sensible approach would have been to leave regular ham and bacon from pigs on the menu for non-Muslims who might want to eat it, and trust the Islamic community not to break their own rules and then complain about being given the opportunity to do so.

Or just design an entire halal menu that isn’t bloody stupid.

Here are my solutions. I may have got some of the level names wrong.

• The Grabber (Back and Forth) — similar to this solution, really.
• Flailey Tank (Up The Stairs) — as you can see, by now I was getting pretty into building little carts to move stuff about.
• Spatula Tank (Big Ball) — tanks made this level easy. Other players went for speed. Some went for Sling It And Hope. I went for Power!
• Serious Tank (Awash) — Serious Tank will take all comers.
• Kamikaze Tank (Mission to Mars) — I had done this in the Normal Boring Way, but that didn’t involve nearly enough tanks for me to get really excited by it.
• Short Work Tank (The Wall) — Short Work Tank rolls over the wall with such consummate ease that the Chinese government will probably block this link.
• Train Tank (Full Up) — I’m sure I was supposed to do this by knocking the big ball into the hole, but instead I built another tank.
• Oil Thing (Higher) — I did this using a tank as well, but this is so much better.
• Junktank (Junkyard) — About half of Junktank is pointless, but why on Earth would I remove it?
• Hill Tank Light (Up the Hump) — I did remove about half of Hill Tank. The big square block was Man enough for this.
• Scorpion (Down Under) — There are hardly any tanks at all in this one. But there are more than there are in this player’s solution. This one is also good (no tanks, though).
• Uptank (Tube) — Which isn’t really a tank at all, but if I call it “tank” it may become one. (Tanks are only called tanks because they were originally disguised as tanks of water.)
• Freight Tank (Handling) — This calls for flexibility and precision. The obvious solution is therefore another tank.
• Tank on a Chain (Unpossible) — Nothing is unpossible if you have a large enough tank.
• Slavedriver (Four Balls) — This is the only level I didn’t manage to complete using at least one tank. But don’t think that means I’m going easy on it. I’m getting Ancient Egyptian on its ass, Ancient Egypt apparently being the theme for this evening. I did consider this approach, but couldn’t get it to work.

These include a paper¹ whose principal conclusion “is that the regional distribution of the incidence of violent injury is related to the regional distribution of the price of beer”, one about restoring torn up documents², a mildly terrifying study in which scientists managed to work out what someone was looking at by reading the information from their brain with electrodes³, and a fantastic paper in which someone built a device that can rotate objects without touching them using angular momentum carried by sound waves⁴ — and somehow managed to resist the geek temptation and so rather boringly called it an “acoustic spanner” (and people say that the science in Doctor Who is unrealistic).

But my current favourite is one entitled “Housing in Pyramid Counteracts Neuroendocrine and Oxidative Stress Caused by Chronic Restraint in Rats”⁵. The gist is: take 52 rats, and split them into 4 equal groups (or suits). One group is left well alone, the other three are put in “restrainers” in smaller groups of 3 or 4. This is designed to piss them off. Then, you put one group’s restrainers inside a Pyramid. The pyramid is a wooden affair two and a half feet tall, with a window and a hole for ventilation.

The four triangular sides of the pyramid angled upwards at nearly 51° to the base and met at the apex of the pyramid.

My word, the triangular sides met at the apex? So it was a pyramid, then. They even have a picture, in case you’re somehow still unsure what a ‘pyramid’ might be:

Figure 1: Ratiphar had very feeew cares…

Another group’s restrainer is left in normal conditions (in a presumably-non-pyramidal laboratory), and the last is left in a square box about the same size as the pyramid, because this is a strangely well-conducted seeming study considering how completely fucking mental you have to be to imagine that a pyramid shaped box can reduce stress in rats simply by being pyramid-shaped. They even made sure to align the square box due north, as if that made any difference. The rats (in their restraining cages) were even put on little stools in the boxes, because

Maximum effect of the pyramid is believed to be exerted at one-third the height of the pyramid from its base.

I would have thought maximum effect would be at the apex, since that’s where you’re in the most pyramids. But what do I know of Pyramid Power?

The whole thing looks like ‘cargo-cult science’ to me, right down to the extensive list of references — of which there are fifty-four, although quite a lot of them come from the same couple of books, and at least one is a Geocities page which apparently no longer exists (presumably due to being stored in an insufficiently-pyramidal server room). This latter is cited to support the sentence “Pyramid exposure is believed to put the mind into an alpha state”. This comes hot on the tails of the even better sentence “Research has shown that the energy field within the pyramid can act as antistressor and thus protect the hippocampal neurons from stress-induced atrophy (10)”, in which the promising-sounding Reference 10 is a PhD thesis (not apparently available online) from the same university that ran this study. Probably one of the authors’ luckless students. Another few references discuss “bioresonance”, apparently as something reasonable, to ground the pyramid theory in something people will accept, which would work if bioresonance wasn’t also a load of made-up shit.

The strange thing is, though, that despite all the made-up woo in the discussion section, and despite the rather preposterous premise being tested, it looks like a basically okay experiment. I’d have liked to see it run as a crossover, so we could make sure it was the pyramid rather than the rats being tested, and the square box was three times the volume of the pyramid because they matched base area and height, so there’s a chance the pyramid rats got less air than the controls, but it’s not at all a bad design. Ooh, a control group not aligned to the compass would have been good, too.

And yet, apparently, it worked. The rats in the pyramid were about as stressed as the rats in ordinary cages, whereas all the other rats that had been put in restrainers were pretty pissed off about it. Apparently this is reproducible because reference 11 is an almost identical study to this (right down to the main author) without restrainers.

Of course, I’m not about to convert to pseudoscience and declare that therefore pyramid power is real, partly because the odds of even a hundred p<0.05 results coming up on the trot are still far, far higher than the odds that the shape of a pyramid works “at a hormone level”, and also a bit because the most reproducible result in science is one you just make up.

But this is still interesting — because if this is genuine research, then on some unconscious level these researchers have conspired to rig this experiment very subtly, and I for one would very much like to find out how they did that. The endless lies and deceptions that the human brain pulls on its hapless owners is infinitely more fascinating than the crystals and dowsing and pyramids that result.

1. Matthews et al, Violence-related injury and the price of beer in England and Wales Applied Economics 38, 661–670 (2008)
2. De Smet, Reconstruction of ripped-up documents using fragment stack analysis procedures, Forensic Science International 176, 124–136 (2008)
3. Kay et al, Identifying natural images from human brain activity, Nature 452, 352-355 (2008)
4. Skeldon et al, An acoustic spanner and its associated rotational Doppler shift, New J. Phys.10 013018 (9pp) (2008)
5. Bhat et al, Housing in Pyramid Counteracts Neuroendocrine and Oxidative Stress Caused by Chronic Restraint in Rats, eCAM 4, 35–42 (2007)

Teaching a large first-year course at a British university, I am fed up with correcting my students’ atrocious spelling. Aren’t we all!?

But why must we suffer? Instead of complaining about the state of the education system as we correct the same mistakes year after year, I’ve got a better idea. University teachers should simply accept as variant spelling those words our students most commonly misspell.

Let’s mention now that the course he teaches is in criminology and not English. Don’t assume he has any particular understanding of the language at all. Make him demonstrate that by clever writing*.

The spelling of the word “judgement”, for example, is now widely accepted as a variant of “judgment”, so why can’t “truely” be accepted as a variant spelling of “truly”?

Let’s mention now that as I write this Firefox’ British English spellchecker has chosen to underline “judgment” in red†. It has done this because ‘judgement’ is not so much a variant spelling as it is the principal (and to many, only acceptable) spelling. Not going so well for his demonstration so far. Still, here are some of his suggestions for words whose common misspellings should be adopted as variants:

Ignor for ignore

Well, sure, maybe, but only if we also accept ‘ador’, ‘bor’, ‘cor’, ‘deplor’, ‘for’, ‘gor’, ‘whor’, ‘lor’ and so on. Because otherwise people might think ‘ignor’ was pronounced like ‘elevator’ or ‘Bangor’. There are rules in place for a reason, dammit. Adding any more exceptions will only make life harder, especially for English-as-a-second-language speakers who will see this variant spelling and have utterly no idea what it is. This would seem to have the opposite effect to Smith’s implicit aim. Sure, it’ll be easier to write, but what use is that if it’s harder to read? Text is written once and read many times: the writer should accommodate the reader, not vice-versa. Writing well is hard, that’s inevitable; reading should be easy. If it’s not then the flow of the text is interrupted and that means the writer has failed whether he’s technically checked all the boxes or not. Of course what that means you should do depends on your audience, but the point stands: I moderate internet forums and I routinely have to tell people off for typing like they would in a text message. It’s inconsiderate: they’ve saved themselves maybe 10 seconds by missing out a few vowels, but between everyone who reads that post a good ten minutes more will be spent decoding it than if they’d just typed properly — and generally they’re the ones asking for help!

Occured for occurred. There is no second “r” in the words “occur” or “occurs” and that is why nearly everyone misspells this word. Would it really upset you to allow this change, and if so why?

That’s right, there is no second ‘r’ in ‘occur’ or ‘occurs’. But there’s no second ‘r’ in ‘mar’, ‘bar’, ’scar’ or ‘tar’, either, and they all get double ‘r’s in the past tense. Once again, the variant spelling goes against all standard usage rules. Also, “occured” implies the pronunciation ‘a-cured’, because that’s how the language works. I’m not against accepting new variants per se, of course. His suggestion of “speach”, for example, makes perfect sense to me. I see no particular reason why ’speak’ and ’speech’ should use different letters for the same sound. (Possibly, though, there is a shining good reason for this that I’m ignorant of. This is why you shouldn’t trust physicists and criminologists to prescribe changes to languages.) But I think that adopting variant spellings that go against established rules of the language will serve only to make the formally accepted form of English more complex, and it will dilute the meaning of the letters: what good is it to me knowing the difference between ‘planning’ and ‘planing’ if both are accepted as variants of the other? It’s unimportant, you might say, when we’re talking about words whose misspellings aren’t already other words, but I use it when I meet a new word: generally speaking, I can pronounce it without looking it up to see which letters are real and which are errors accepted by lazzez-faire editors at the behest of ignorant criminologists. Other variants he proposes that would be pronounced strangely if read according to the usual rules of English include “opertunity”, “arguement” and “que” (for ‘queue’). Oh, and these:

Thier for their … and all those others that break the “i” before “e” rule (weird, seize, leisure, neighbour, foreign etc)

Now first of all, because we’re constantly berating Creationists for doing exactly this to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, the “i before e” rule in full goes “‘i’ before ‘e’, except after ‘c’, when the sound is ‘ee’”. The sound (at least, in Britain) in ‘leisure’, ‘foreign’, ‘neighbour’ and ‘their’ is clearly not ‘ee’, so those are not exceptions to any rule. Again, his proposed spellings would be unphonetic and, well, weird. What the hell is a nigh-ber? And can I covet theer ass?

Truely for truly. We don’t spell the adverb “surely” as “surly” because this would make another word, so why is the adverb of “true” spelt “truly”?

Maybe because ‘truly’ isn’t another word? I could just as easily (not ‘easyly’) argue that since ‘wholly’ isn’t spelt ‘wholely’, “truely” shouldn’t be accepted either. I’m unsure what the usual rules are here, as I honestly can’t think of another adjective ending in a vowel sound and then an ‘e’, so I can’t think of an ideal example to prove or disprove his point (although there’s a strong case for using ‘argument’ in the meantime — which you’d think he’d have spotted since he proposed accepting “arguement” in its stead). But whether he’s right or wrong, his argument for “truely” is still rubbish: the ‘e’ in ‘true’ isn’t needed in ‘truly’ because the ‘-ly’ ending modifies the ‘u’ in the same way; the ‘e’ in ’surely’ is needed to modify the ’s’ and stop the word becoming ’surly’. I don’t think ’sure’ is a very systematic word in any case, but this one is:

Twelth as twelfth

There is, it turns out, a lot more to spelling than mere phonetics. If there wasn’t, then the argument over “thier”/’their’ would go away: that word, as well as ‘they’re’ would be spelt ‘there’. Why not? That’s how they’re pronounced. But ‘twelfth’ is the ordinal version of ‘twelve’; you can’t just drop the ‘v’ just because you’re talking about a position now. That would be crazy. Okay, so it runs into the ‘th’ sound somewhat when you say it, but the consistency is elegant and informative. Okay, so it’s become an ‘f’ somewhere along the line, but that happens in ‘leaves’, ‘dwarves’, ‘hooves’ and ‘halves’ when you only have one of each, so I don’t think we should be complaining too much about that either. In fact, ‘twelfth’ is a perfectly simple word to spell — it follows the same rules as ‘fifth’ — and anyone who can’t spell it has been short-changed by English teachers who concentrated too much on rote learning of common words and not enough on how the language fits together (or, I suppose, naturally grasp language phonetically and have a problem with spellings). Most of the words on Smith’s list are ones whose spellings could be predicted by anyone who understands the language properly.

I just worry that if you adopt his suggestion of accepting the 10 most common errors as variants, there will still be 10 most common errors, and the errors are getting dumber but it’s getting easier to find example words spelt the same way because you allowed them in the last batch, and before you know it you’ll be writing like Shakespeare (only, you know, not so well).

I could support him if his thesis was “we should stop worrying so much about spelling in criminology exams”, but he wants to lower the bar for everyone to accommodate bad spellers, and I just can’t see how that’s remotely helpful. Aside from anything else, if you’re not proposing to change the official language in dictionaries, then why the most common errors? It doesn’t make sense to ignore mistakes on the basis of how many people make them — unless of course you’re just lazy.

For balance, here is another British secularist Andrew expressing the opposite opinion. I reckon that’s some pretty shit-hot balance right there.

†It’s also underlining “Firefox” and “spellchecker” so I’m not sure who coded it…

I can’t see how this could help him. Since, if elected, John McCain is definitely going to die in office, he’s basically naming his Gordon Brown. Unfortunately, he only has two options. He can pick someone nobody’s heard of, in which case he’s basically pitching an unknown quantity against a far more popular unknown quantity, or else he can pick a high profile Republican, the problem there being that they’re all mental.

It’ll be interesting to see who he picks, but there’s no way it should ever make any difference.

For the rights to republish information or theories from this website, please contact: hamish@thejoecell.com

Only cranks ever imagine they can own information or theories and legally stop people disseminating them.

First things first. A Joe Cell is a series of tins of water, arranged in a Russian Doll formation, kept at low pressure. Then you ‘charge’ it: hook the inner-most and outer-most metal cylinders up to a voltage and leave it for a bit. When you’re done, it becomes a never ending battery (which may explain why “Joe Cells are reportedly… prone to dying for no apparent reason”). But then they also say that you can test it by checking the pH of the water, which is just downright silly because it’s chemically impossible to make any pH above or below 7.0 using whole, pure water, because pH is a measure of how many H⁺ an OH⁻ ions there are and water is H₂O. That’s one of their saner ideas — they go on to say

Some people have claimed that the Joe Cell harnesses some type of magical life force energy referred to as Orgone. Others believe that it pulls energy straight from the very fabric on the universe – the aether.

That presumably being the same æther that was proven not to exist in the late eighties? Of the 19th century?

The website says the cell is “essentially a capacitor”, but one that doesn’t lose its charge as it, er, releases charge. This isn’t even bad science by this stage; this is a violation of basic maths. But the real genius lies on the “references” page. Highlights include Cold Fusion patent with similaries [sic] to Joe Cell.doc, Positive Electricity (doc), which explains that if you line up a load of protons, then “the positive charge of the hydrogen nucleus - a proton - passing rapidly down the chain by relay, without the proton actually moving down,” which is a lot like saying you can move the weight of a rock without moving the rock, and Water Car Instructions (PDF), which is just what it sounds like.

You should be careful when filling the Joe Cell, because

The Cells are reported to function only when a strong vacuum is created within the cell. For this reason, adding a pressure gauge is recommended. For the Cell to function properly, around 15 psi of vacuum will be required.

For reference, atmospheric pressure is a little over 14psi, so you will need some amount of negative gas in the cell. How you stop the water in there from instantly vaporising and thereby creating pressure I don’t know. I didn’t know atmospheric pressure in psi, of course. I read that claim and thought it sufficiently likely he’d just made the number up to warrant me looking it up on the off-chance. It paid off. Who knows how much of the rest of his site is nonsense I’m too ignorant to spot — or similar guesses that happened to be plausible?

Of course, what makes all this really perverse is that it’s designed to power a car. Even if they’d really discovered a way of getting more-than-100% efficient electricity, cars run on fucking petrol. They wouldn’t run better with a Joe Cell for the same reason that you don’t get a boost of energy when you swallow a AA battery and your car doesn’t run if you fill the petrol tank with brie. Even if it worked, it would only replace the car battery, and you won’t run a car long on batteries and no petrol (unless of course it’s an electric car). If you don’t put petrol in a car, it won’t drive from the starter motor until the battery runs out, it just won’t go. And if you modified the engine so it did, the motor would be destroyed before you hit second gear. Their “clean, green technology” is petrol. If this thing worked, he’d hook up eight of them to a copper and zinc electrode pair and run his entire house on a lemon.

In fact, he suggests having two in your car for “redundancy”, the idea presumably being that if the laws of physics don’t allow you to build a perpetual motion device, try try again. Apparently,

It would make sense to mount then on opposite sides of the engine bay, to reduce them interfering with each other’s magnetic field.

Hang on, what? What magnetic field? Beyond the same tiny field you get from any electrical current, I can’t see any part of the Joe Cell that would have a magnetic field, much less be influenced by one. He goes on to say that the water has to be utterly and completely pure. This is pretty well impossible, but he’s got an answer. Apparently you can mke 100% pure water using a device called a “conditioning cell”. Furthermore,

A conditioning cell is the same as a Joe Cell except it separate from the vehicle.

You’re just being deliberately silly now, aren’t you? Anything else it can do? Can it bringeth the rains to provide the water in the first place?

Because the Joe Cell is creating a cloud like condition on the ground, it makes sense that it could influence weather conditions.

Alright then.

Here’s a great bit explaining how to avoid interference. Also, it’s good advice for anyone who thinks the Joe Cell doesn’t yet look sufficiently ridiculous:

The charge state within the cell can be affected by electromagnetic interference from other electrical devices and power sources. This interference can be minimized by using insulating material to prevent shorting. Wrapping the Cell in Burlap (Hessian) and placing it in a plastic bucket, held in place with blocks of wood is recommended.

I love cranks. I can’t help but.

I challenge George Monbiot to test out which is the most dangerous fuel - coal or nuclear power. I am prepared to go into a room full of CO2 [sic] for two minutes, if he is prepared to go into a room full of radiation for two minutes.

Okay, let’s try that. He can stand in “a room full of CO₂” for two minutes, and then, when the paramedics have resuscitated him and explained that you can’t breathe carbon dioxide, we can discuss what “a room full of radiation” might be.

Presumably he has in all his years seen at least one dimmer switch. He might like to explain at what point the room becomes “full” of light. Because you could easily endure a small amount of radiation for two minutes with no ill effects. You do exactly that every two minutes of your life. In the same way, you can endure a small amount of carbon dioxide.

So first we need to work out exactly how much of each thing each room will need to be “full”. Then we need to decide if Scargill will be allowed to supplement his CO₂ with any oxygen — bearing in mind that if there’s room for oxygen, it can’t really be “full” of CO₂ now, can it?

We should also decide what kind of radiation to use. We could use alpha, beta, gamma, or anything we like from the EM spectrum including long-wave radio, heat or visible light.

After we’ve done that, and Scargill and Monbiot have spent the required minutes in their respective rooms — personally I vote to up Scargill’s sentence to five minutes as it’s by no means unheard of for people to simply hold their breath for two and that’s cheating — we can discuss what the hell any of that was supposed to prove because CO₂ is dangerous because a sodding greenhouse gas, not because it’s poisonous.

Scargill’s challenge is like the NRA saying guns are safe and proving it by standing in a room full of bullets for two minutes and failing to die. Or a company showing their new Arsenic Sandwich is safe by sitting in a room with it for two minutes. Or Dan challenging the claim that cigarette smoke is more toxic than car exhaust fumes by challenging me to inhale thousands of times more of the latter than he willof the former.

Another interesting bit of his article is this:

…we live on an island with more than 1,000 years of coal reserves from which we can provide all the electricity, oil, gas and petrochemicals that people need, without causing harm to the environment.

I was going to mock him for this too, but I’ve looked into it, and it turns out he’s right. Modern coal-fired power stations are really quite clever. You don’t actually need to burn the coal. Instead, a kitten gently caresses the coal, and the coal starts to give off heat. This is used to drive a turbine and create electricity. Meanwhile magical pixies suck any CO₂ the kitten may have exhaled into magic pixie bottles, which then vanish in a puff of pure joy. It’s true.

This brand of puritanical secularism is little more than inverted religion. It substitutes reason for god, science for theology, relentless progress for original sin and human fall. Its followers see secularism not as mere separation of religion and politics, or as state neutrality vis a vis matters of faith and belief. To them, it is a set of dogmas to be embraced willingly or imposed coercively by the force of the state.

I don’t think that’s a fair assessment of the “militant secularism” I know, but I shall ignore that. I think the major problem stems from a disagreement about what the new headscarf reforms in Turkey mean: Grayling says that “Turkish Islamists are encouraging more women to hide that automatic trigger of unbridled male lust, the tresses on the female head”, whereas Ghannoushi says “those genuinely committed to civil liberties and individual freedoms would applaud the relaxing of an oppressive law that denies women their basic right to decide their dress”. Personally, I’m not going to comment on who is right — pretty clearly the ideal is that women should be allowed to wear whatever they like, but there’s every chance that without the headscarf ban 95% of wearers would be wearing them against their will, and in that situation I think a ban can be justified easily.

Grayling’s thesis was really much more wide-reaching than that:

If the Brian-sandalistas cannot succeed by direct assault, they will do it by constant nibbling and encroachments: prayers in American publicly-funded schools, headscarves in Turkish publicly-funded universities, a little bit of anti-evolutionary biology there, a little alcohol ban there – and if that doesn’t work, they try more robust means. So it goes: creep creep, whisper, soothe, murmur a prayer with the kids in assembly, ecumenicalise, interfaith-schmooze, infiltrate, subvert, complain, campaign, scream, threaten, explode.

And that’s the point. It’s all well and good Ghannoushi saying

This crude interventionism practised in the name of secularism in Turkey and France, and religion in Iran and Saudi Arabia can only be described as despotic. Individuals’ minds and bodies are not part of the state’s jurisdiction. The state is only the manager of citizens’ public affairs, not a judge of their consciences, appearances, habits, and preferences.

but in a society like Turkey, with a 99% Islamic population, if you have completely open democracy then there’s a very real possibility that people are going to vote for an alcohol ban, the death penalty for apostasy, a ban on dogs as pets, legalisation of forced marriage, and yes, a mandate to women about what they can wear on their heads, because what unites the people is their irrational conviction that a load of nonsense in a rather silly book, as well as a lot of other nonsense that even Mohammed never thought of, handed down by word of mouth, is How You Absolutely Should Live. And before you know what’s happening, you’re living under Sharia law in an Islamic state in all but name. And then they’ll vote to change the name. Because that’s what Islam is:

“Islam is not like Christianity. It doesn’t just aim to be practised in the realm of belief but also to regulate and rule the state,” — Omer Faruk Eminagaoglu, “chairman of the association of judges and prosecutors (Yarsav) and deputy to Turkey’s chief prosecutor”

The aim of a secular democracy then, cannot be to do what the people want, but to do what the general underlying values of the people dictate — just as in this country I don’t want the Chancellor of the Exchequer to do what the people think he should do; I want him to do what the people would think he should do if we were smarter and in possession of all the information and a good working knowledge of economics. Otherwise there’s no point in having anyone remotely qualified doing the job. You end up with lowest-common-denominator politics and the country’s de facto run by the editor of the Sun. (Frankly “tabloidism” can be treated as a religion for all practical purposes.)

The problem is, though, that if you have a large majority of one religion, it stands to reason that any candidate for government office would do well to make a big deal of subscribing to that faith. If they say things like “my religion guides my values and my values guide my politics” then he’ll do well in an election because he’s playing to something that’s seen as very important by the majority of the electorate — lowest-common-denominator again — but he’s just promised to act totally unsecularly. (That’s a word. Don’t say it isn’t.) And you end up living in a theocracy, no matter how secular the values enshrined in your law may be. You only have to look to America to see how strong this effect is. That Ghannoushi refers to this as “the neutral soft secularism of the United States” baffles me.

But what can you do? You can’t simply not tell the electorate what religion the candidates are; that would never even nearly work, and in any case it wouldn’t stop a candidate championing the teachings of their religion explicitly. You can’t demand that only atheists stand for office (or only atheists vote); again it’s unenforceable (unless perhaps you make the ballot out of ham) and it’s not exactly liberal. You can’t expect religious people, either government or voters, to set their faiths aside when making decisions, because it’s too big a part of who they are.

The problem isn’t secularism; the problem is that the religion exists in the first place. You can’t justly govern lunatics without recourse to the sane, and in a population 99% Islamic, you really have no baseline level of sanity to refer back to. Don’t get me wrong, in a pluralistic, multi-cultural society like Britain religion is mostly harmless and I think any attempt to stamp it out would fail and end up doing far more harm than good. The issue, though, is that if one of the many religions present in a society is somehow ‘fitter’ than the others, it will prosper. It’s easy to imagine a large majority of Muslims or Evangelical Christians establishing itself in such a society, feeding off the good-will towards faith that the other religions have fostered.

I believe that the only solution to this problem is to make sure that children are not indoctrinated with dogma. By all means they can be taught the various customs and traditions of their parents’ religion. But threats of eternal damnation or literal Earthly punishment, for breaking stupid and arbitrary rules are not okay. Of course we can’t legislate how parents raise children. (I have no particular ethical problem with that — it just wouldn’t work.) But we can grant them all the fundamental human right to an objective, neutral and secular education. With that in place, there’s not much parents can do to stop their children becoming tolerant and balanced members of society.

Religious parents will object to this, of course. Some non-religious ones will as well. They will say that they have a fundamental human right to raise their child any way they like. I say no. I say they don’t have the right to fuck up a child’s mind any more than they have the right to fuck up the child’s body. You can very easily totally ruin someone’s life before it’s even begun if you teach them to live in an imaginary version of the real world. They grow up and experience agonising dilemmas caused by a conflict between what they want and care about and some made-up rule implanted by their parents when they were small. I’ve seen it happen. But I think that children’s rights must always trump parents’ rights because they are in every way more vulnerable (although since parents can vote and children can’t this isn’t perhaps a view shared by everyone in government). So give them a decent secular education and I think they will, in the vast majority of cases, grow up to be balanced, liberal, tolerant people — even if they do still pay mostly-harmless lip-service to their faith. They’ll be a people who can be justly governed by democracy without religion taking over. Is that “crude interventionism”? Maybe. But I think it’s a good goal and a practical and fair means by which to achieve it.

See, Odone? I’ll see your choice of “faith schools or terrorism”, and I’ll raise you a choice of “secular education or Sharia law”. They’re both false dilemmas, of course, but I’d rather live in a secular democracy that gets bombed periodically than the peace that comes with the brutality of Sharia.

…to ask [them] to investigate fully the plight of increasing numbers of people who have become electro-sensitive (ES) or electro-hypersensitive (EHS) in the UK due to electricity or the new pulsed microwave radiation technologies such as TETRA, mobile phones and masts, WiFi, radar, cordless phones and a host of “wireless” gadgets.

ES and EHS are made-up conditions. They’re technophobic knee-jerk idiocy kept alive by people like Alasdair Philips so that they can sell you utterly useless shit. At first it was “wifi is dangerous, phone masts are cancer factories, and so on” but when it became too obvious even for them that the population at large was bathed in radiation and still basically limping on okay they decided to say it was just some people and give it a name. The prefix “hyper” was added to the condition to make it seem like they were just more suceptible to microwave radiation, rather than having a whole new way of getting disease. That makes it seem more plausible.

They also want:

1. Demand independent research into this “FUNCTIONAL IMPAIRMENT CAUSED BY ENVIRONMENTAL TRIGGERS” - which does have a distinguishing feature from other illnesses/conditions with similar symptoms i.e. the ES/EHS CAN AND DO recover if they are isolated from the cause(s) of the sensitivity.

The research has been done. The condition does not exist^[1-3]. (The third abstract there includes the phrase “Sham-Math” and is therefore excellent.) I’ve never seen a petition before which so repeatedly strives to establish some objective statement of (supposed) fact. It’s as if they think people don’t believe EHS is a real condition.

2. Demand monitoring by personnel trained or researching in this field who are aware of the effects of pulsed microwave radiation/electricity.

You’re demanding monitoring done specifically by people who know the monitoring is pointless.

“Pulsed” microwave radiation is just regular microwave radiation that turns on and off quickly. That doesn’t make it somehow more dangerous any more than turning a light on and off a lot makes it dangerous (assuming you don’t have epillepsy, anyway). I assume they go after pulsed radiation because that’s what’s used for modern things like mobiles and wifi, whereas regular, continuous modulated radiation must be safe because the wireless was around when they were little and nothing was dangeous then because they didn’t have the Daily Mail then.

3 Ensure that the Human Rights of the ES/EHS are observed fully and recognise electro-sensitivity as a disability in the UK, as in Canada and Sweden.

Maybe we should officially recognise stupid as a disability while we’re at it.

4 Provide safe zones so that the ES/EHS have places to recover/live in OR replace pulsed microwave radiation with a safer technology.

A safer technology? Like what? I hope you’re not advocating yoghurt-pots-and-string, because that string, stretched tight across streets, is a real hazard to cyclists, especially when it’s dark.

Just… no. Go and do something else.

Part of me hopes they get a lot of names on this, so I can see the government response. You can only say “your concerns are imaginary and we fully intend to ignore them” so diplomatically.

1. Rubin et al, Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity: A Systematic Review of Provocation Studies. Psychosomatic Medicine 67:224-232 (2005)
2. Seitz et al, Electromagnetic hypersensitivity (EHS) and subjective health complaints associated with electromagnetic fields of mobile phone communication—a literature review published between 2000 and 2004. Science of the Total Environment 349(1-3):45-55 (2005)
3. Lyskov et al, Provocation study of persons with perceived electrical hypersensitivity and controls using magnetic field exposure and recording of electrophysiological characteristics. Bioelectromagnetics 22(7):457-62 (2001)

Darwin on Dawkins would be preferable - evolutionary thinking would be divided overnight - DAWKINS -v- the rest of us !!!!

Ian Payne, walsall,

Leon from Melbourne very nearly understands the phrase “mathematical precision”, but not quite.

The mathematical precision of space, galaxies and ourselves (DNA etc) is no more than chance; formed from a big bang lie in a nano second 1000 billion years ago.

This is an insult to intelligence.The only worship today is material gain. Sell more Books Richard.

God forgive us.

leon, melbourne,

J Geraci has a defective irony gland.

Dr. Dawkins’ arrogance is astounding. I can imagine how wonderful it must feel to know, without any doubt, that his view is the only correct one. Apparently he has a “curious ambivalence towards Christians who accept” evolution. That is, of course, the majority - including my Catholic Church.

J. Geraci, Austin, Texas

Robin here has scientifically proven the existence of Sauron.

Atheist Supremacist Richard Dawkins displays plenty of ignorance and foolhardiness himself in his attacks on God, theists and religion. . . I invite Richard Dawkins to look skywards on August 1st and explain why the total solar eclipse so distinctly resembles the pupil and iris of an “Eye of God”.

Robin Edgar, Montreal, Canada

SD Goh is mounting an Appeal to Long-Winded Authority

Atheists can be so arrogant that they only believe what they want to believe. Augustine Ong with a PHD from King’s Cllge.in Organic Chemistry, a Fulbright-Hays scholar at MIT, was Visiting Prof. at the Dysons-Perrin Lab,Oxford University, Pres.of the Malaysian Scientists Ass. is a staunch Catholic.

SD Goh, PJ, Malaysia

I can’t work out if Dennis is arguing for an old Earth or against dinosaurs:

The Catholic Church were the first to work out he age of the Earth using the Bible (A continuous story that runs from creation to Christ) They concluded that the Earth was created in 4004 BC. So, Dinosaurs came into existence, lived, became extinct and fossilized all within 6000 years. Believe it ??

Dennis, Gaithersburg, USA

Greg, who we will meet again later, tries his best to promote creationism, but then remembers that he doesn’t believe in it.

Scott:”Creationism/ID is not science.”

In part science is the observation of nature. If nature has been influenced by intelligent forces (God in the first place, us latterly) then that is part of science also, else our observations will not be comprehensible.

Catholics can accept evolution.

Greg Lorriman, Leatherhead, UK

I think Richard is more used to questions about immigration. He gets confused easily. But he tries ever so hard, bless him.

The subjects of science and maths etc are meant to educate and train students in the scientific method, analytical thinking, logic, not to contrast beliefs and viewpoints. I can assure you, most people in the UK taking postgraduate technical phds and the like are not english. WAKE UP.

Richard, Newcastle,

Kurt is ignorant of many things, notably “how to safely contain snakes”.

Humans create things all the time, including habitats for animals that have no concept of our existence, from bee hives to python cages at the zoo. Our fiction is rife with “superior aliens”. Why is it so hard in science to AT LEAST CONSIDER that our habitat was designed by an architect, God?

Kurt Heckman, Hagerstown, USA

The imaginary version of Expelled in Chucks Own Little World is much better than the real one. I imagine.

Too bad he gets owned by Ben Stein in “expelled”. So much so that he files a lawsuit to stop the release of the movie in hopes that people won’t see that he became a creationist for a few minutes. People reject God because they WANT to… very simple. “They did not LIKE to retain God in their minds”

Chuck, Grand Blanc,

I think JL may be attempting sarcasm here.

WOW! This is exciting news! Now we can all have no hope in the future and all embrace the fact that nothing happens once we die! This is fantastic. I can’t wait to ruin everyone’s lives and shatter little childrens dreams with this news!

JL, Deadwood,

Simone has been talking to JL.

I can imagine a primary school class in evolutionary theory based on Dawkins’ book: “kids, to start with, there is no hope in the universe and when people die they just rot, no matter what mum or dad say about going to Heaven. And now let’s talk about this fluffy chimpanzee…”

Simone, derby,

Robin isn’t going to shut up without a fight.

What ignorance Linnet? It is a fact that total solar eclipses distinctly resemble a gigantic “eye in thy sky”. The odds against this *purely symbolic* “Eye of God” occurring by random chance “coincidence” are astronomically high. Do the math. Intelligent Design *is* a plausible explanation here. . .

Robin Edgar, Montreal , Canada

rustan has invented a new argument, which I shall call “Pascal’s Personal Ad”.

B.R.R. There are two ways and two outcomes.Outcome 1 (There is no God); Outcome 2(There is God); Way1: Believer, Way2: Disbeliever; Assumption: life after death is for keeps, then the LOSS of a disbiliever in the Outcome 2 is infinitely larger than the LOSS of believer in the Outcome 1. U decide!

rustam, Stuttgart, Germany

I don’t know if the quote in this one it right, but it sounds like something Jesus might say.

I have read Dawkins and admit it is a most readable book. But it has done nothing to shake my faith. He has become a millionaire based on a lie that God does not exist. I am surprised that so many gullible readers have swallowed Dawkins completely.”Be a believer and not an unbeliever” (Jesus)
John

J.M.Job, LLanfairpwllgwyngyll , Anglesey

A Don supports the downgrading of religion to the Class C Narcotic of the Masses.

Many people love living life in a structure that resolves difficult questions and also creates a community space to interact with others. As my tennis coach says to me “You play tennis better when you don’t think” Religion may be the drug of the masses but what’s wrong with that? Leave them alone.

a don, Sydney, Australia

I have literally no idea what Guy is trying to say.

I wish people would leave Christians, Muslims and Jews alone. People who have deep cultural beliefs should be supported by others. When they are gone we will miss them. It’s a shame for their children, but who are we to judge others beliefs? Religious faith should be encouraged as far as possible.

Guy Smith, Bexley, UK

DM sets a challenge: spot as many different foodstuffs in his comment as you can. I can see four.

Ok so evolution is how we arrived where we are now , just one thing ..which evolved from the soup first ..the chicken or the egg?.. or should that be the egg or the chicken ?
One day we`ll all find out ..roll on that day .

DM, Craigavon,

Jessica considers all researchers arrogant:

The only “stupidity” here is for anyone to assume they can answer a question of faith which has existed for thousands of years.
Do you truly think you know more than anyone else who ever lived? Now that is arrogant.
As to stupidity being proven by a belief in God..someone should warn my patients.

Dr Jessica S, Wrexham,

Michael Walsh makes up any bits of the world he doesn’t know about.

Mark, Brisbane, Australia:
i hate to put it so bluntly, but: why not believe in god? god is impossible to prove and impossible to disprove, so basically: why not? faith in something greater than yourself & a sense of duty towards others has much to reccommend it, as does something to pray to, no?

michael walsh, Manchester,

Peter really fucking hates his dog.

My dog is an intelligent creature, he believes in food and being loyal to me his master, but I don’t think he believes in God (I’ve never heard him pray)
Frankly I don’t care, he’ll be dead in a few years and I’ll get another dog, he’ll be just a memory
People want to be like dogs, no more no less

Peter B, Lincoln,

Matt from Omaha is making a stand for the silent majority of Christians who don’t believe in any of that “god” nonsense.

You know what I hate most? It’s people that judge Christians as a whole group saying we are ignorant for belief in God. I believe that people who continually bash on groups with differing views than their own (both Christians and Atheists) are inherently ignorant.

Matt, Omaha,

HT has not read the Qu’ran lately.

Surely, billions of Christians, Muslims, Jews can’t be wrong saying something else each one of them for thousand years. Surely, God exists, Jesus is his son, Mohamed is his prophet, their land is promised, etc. All of them are right, all in the mind, all in the barrel of the gun.

HT, Geneva,

“EO” writes under a pseudonym so that her friends don’t realise what kind of weird shit she believes. She’s not very good at it, though. I appreciate her typing like she’s one of the Wurzels, though.

There is absolutely no reason why a refusal to believe in a God for whom there is not the slightest shred of evidence should also mean that the theory that we continue, after the body dies, in some other doimension, should be thrown overboard. And DO learn how to use the adverb ‘hopefully’.
EO

Eileen O Conor, Cordoba, Spain

Greg’s back, having carefully calculated the exact chances of God existing.

“to believe in a God…not the slightest shred of evidence”

Even discounting people’s personal experience of God (which *is* evidence): the probabilities of an orderly universe are so extreme that atheist scientists are desperately inventing multi-universe theories. So right now it is 50/50.

Greg Lorriman, Leatherhead, UK

He could have worked it out for sure, though, as there are 6 billion humans and only 1 god, and as we all know, minorities do not exist.

“Religions could have adopted evolution as another evidence of the work of God ”

The only formal creationists are protestant biblical literialists. By far the majority of Christians are not literalists, and are open to Biblical interpretation. Dawkins is using strawmen: he is a hypocrite.

Greg Lorriman, Leatherhead, UK

In fact, nothing outside Tyler’s apartment exists.

I am sick and tired of people shielding evolution behind the term “science” and believing that it settles it. There is about as much “scientific evidence” in support of evolution as there is in support of midichlorines being the catalyst for the force in Star Wars. Its “science fiction”

Tyler, Greenfield, USA

Carmine invites Dawkins to kill her. She also cites her sources, in case people don’t believe that Jesus was crucified.

I believe in d Big Bang 2: God spoke and “BANG” there it was!

I believe in God b/c Jesus walked d Earth 2000 yrs ago n there r witnesses 2 attest that.

Mr Dawkins, u can criticize n laugh at Christians, no biggie, people criticized n laughed at Jesus 2, infact they even killed him. 1Cor 1:21

carmine cicchiello, adelaide, australia

Hindu philosophy apparently isn’t up to much.

@ Adam: all of them? As a Hindu philosopher once put it, the various religions are like the spokes of a wheel.

As you move towards the centre of the wheel on your particular spoke, you also get closer to all the other spokes.

Richard Flynn, Huntingdon, UK

Chris has missed one very small logical step.

Every book has an author.

Chris, London,

Alan Eric worships the Zimbabwean Dollar.

If Darwin’s therory of evolution were true, the fossil record would be exploding with intermediates! I mean real differences, not the kind of changes found WITHIN species, but BETWEEN species. AND we would find intermediates alive today!
Hawkins god is Father Time. He gets bigger when you add 0’s.

Alan Eric, san antonio, texas

Carmine is reading a lot into 1 Corinthians 1:21.

I believe in d Big Bang 2: God spoke and “BANG” it happened!

I believe in God b/c Jesus walked d Earth 2000 yrs ago, he died n resurrected 3 days later. There were many witnesses 2 attest those events , not one of them was taken to court 4 spreading lies, either under Jewish law or Roman (there were 2 many living witnesses)!

Mr Dawkins n company, u can criticize Christians all u want, but u r disregarding truth to ur eternal peril ! 1Cor1:21

carmine cicchiello, adelaide, australia

I have it on good authority that Dawkins will never debate against an invisible talking giraffe either.

Dawkins assumes that all creationists know nothing about the origin of species, that’s why he won’t share a stage with them. However surely he would share a debating platform with a creationist who also happens to be emimently qualified in appropriate fields of science. Interestly, no he won’t.

Russ, Nth Lincs.,

Al Bloom has found the three least-unanswerable questions in the world.

I know this probably won’t change the fortress of ignorance that is the religious person’s mind but how do you all answer these questions:
Why did God create Dinosaurs?
Why did he decide to make horses run faster, birds fly. etc.
Why did he cover 2/3 of the Earth with water?
You get the picture

al bloom, london, united kingdom

Simon has been talking to JL as well, I think.

But it is not debated by anyone who knows anything about it.

How ridiculous. One of so many reasons why Dawkins is so lamentably comic. He is destined to be forgotten; his lifes work crumbling into an empty nothing.

Simon, Birmingham,

The answer to David’s question is “because he was making a show about creationism, genius.”

I am frustrated by Dawkins’ refusal to engage with the idea that God works at a higher level than physically tinkering with His creation. He chooses to ignore approaches to religion that don’t conflict with science. Why?

The original Bible was written and edited by the Catholic Church btw.

David Burke, Manchester, UK

I like to think the exclamation mark in Barry’s post is there because he is posting from an aeroplane and has just realised something is amiss.

where are the wings??!

Barry Bethel, Tamworth,

Gary just made one small error in this post.

scientists keep saying how much ‘evidence’ they have for religion, but i’ve yet to see any. even if i did it wouldnt change my mind about it. as far as im concerned the bible is the exact words of God and any ‘evidence’ which contradicts it has to be, by definition, wrong.

gary, cheam,

Charles doesn’t credit Muslims with much practicality.

“I said something about Islam, but not as much…”
” I know more about Christianity, so I emphasised it.” He doesnt know much about it at all except that Christians wont saw his head off for mocking them. Dawkins is a coward.

Charles, Columbia, USA

David credits Noah with lots, though.

Noah’s Ark: 2 by 2 or just the DNA? How you look at it doesn’t have to be dark-aged.

David Smith, Stourbridge, UK

Robin keeps defending God by talking about eyes and hasn’t yet mentioned how they couldn’t possibly have evolved.

Leon, most people who believe in God are monotheists these days. This is certainly true of Christians, Jews and Muslims. They just have differing beliefs about God aka YHWH aka Allah. No atheist can authoritatively assert that, “There is no God.” There IS evidence of God for those with eyes to see.

Robin Edgar, Montreal, Canada

Greg’s back for yet more, and hasn’t read the Papal Bull lately.

“any semblance of intellect religion doesnt withstand the most basic of scrutiny”

That may be true of protestant christianity, which is riddled with nonsense (like justification by faith alone), but not of Catholics and Eastern Orthodox. ie. a Catholic priest invented the Big Bang theory.

Greg Lorriman, Leatherhead, UK

Guy has discovered two new planets.

Dawkins is as ignorant and arrogant as those he mocks. How can a tiny organic speck, on an irrelevant planet -1planet of 10, part of 100 billion stars in 100 billion galaxies presume to understand the whole of creation. Atheism/ religion - 2 sides of the same galactically irrelevent human viewpoint.

guy , london,

Edward is not satisfied with arguing creationism, and wants something sillier to defend.

How can a scientist of such brilliance write so much sense and then totally destroy his credibility by exposing factual ignorance of the simplest kind.eg his piece on Dowsing was simply a joke I imagine.The desert peoples have been very happily dowsing for water for centuries!

EDWARD SYNGE, TISBURY, UK

The important thing is that Mark was wearing an onion, which was the style at the time.

In old communist times, in Moscow a young party activist walks in into the old church. He spots an old women praying in a dark corner. “How can you believe in this nonsens?” he asks her. “Some people believe He exists, some people believe He does not” is her answer.(nothing to do with evolution).

Mark, York, UK

Andrea provides not only an analogy, but a demonstration.

“A man can no more diminish God’s glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word, ‘darkness’ on the walls of his cell.”

CS Lewis

Andrea B, Canterbury, UK

As a scientist, Dan knows all about different kinds of space.

Is intellectualism being ignorant of someones beliefs as well, as dawkins is when he will not give oxygen space to creationists. Nothing, science or religion, an be totally proved. Why “attack” those with beliefs. Wouldn’t leaving them be more “intellectual”. Hypoctritical. And i am a scientist.

Dan, Mitcheldean,

I wonder if “Leatherhead” is Greg’s hometown or occupation. (The link here is my addition to his post.)

“Amazing in this day and age that some people still actually believe in stories of invisible god-creatures and magic heavens”

That’s because you’ve been fooled by Dawkins in to thinking that the concept of a supreme being/God is equivalent to fairies and unicorns. Silly you.

Greg Lorriman, Leatherhead, UK

Before you read this post, a quick Bible lesson. Order of creation events in Genesis: light, water, plantlife, the sun, fish, birds, animals, people.

Science and God are not necessarily opposites to be pitted against one another. It is quite possible that God could have created science and evolution. The order of events in Genesis is exactly the same as in evolutionary theory, it is only the timescale which differs.

NM, Bristol, UK

Chris Nel does not own a calendar.

So his book has sold 1,5 million copies and translated into 31 languages. The Bible has been around for over 3000 years, is translated in most languages of the world, continues to sell millions each year. It will be loved and read when Dawkins is long forgotten & Jesus will still be changing lives!

Chris Nel, Ripon, England

I actually met Jeff Richmond once. Nice guy. Made entirely from straw.

It’s been scientifically proven that organisms control there own evolution. A hundred million years ago after several generations of fish staring up at the shore a fish grew legs. Other fish saw this and they grew legs to. Was God involved? that is the question to answer

Jeff Richmond, Vancouver, Canada

I guess I must just not be smart enough to understand Drew’s strange, self-referential meta-proverbs.

Scourge? More someone who is flogging a horse that is deader than the proverbial. Next he’ll declare that artists/poets can’t possibly have a basis for their views of the world as science disproves their notions of beauty and aesthetic. His philosophy is bankrupt!

Drew, Los Angeles, USA

For balance, a dumb post in favour of evolution.

If God exists and was truly supreme he would have devised evolution as a neat way for life to self-regulate and adapt without constant intervention or design. Only a stupid god would not do such a thing. Seems many religions think their god is stupid.

Roger Thornhill, London, UK

Too noisy, is the problem with the Big Bang.

Many Christians are comfortable with Darwin. No atheists are comfortable with the Big Bang.

Kevin Dunn, Perth, Australia

Martin would make a really crap lawyer.

“Creationists never come up with any proof, evidence.”
Evidence is not proof but facts to be interpreted which is why Dawkins does not have proof either.
To interpret evidence requires belief about what the evidence shows. Belief therefore affects the conclusion. Dawkins has faith in his beliefs.

Martin, Skye,

Greg has run out of things to say, but is going to keep posting anyway, dammit.

“..what created God?”

God would be existence itself: your question is a nonsense. You are attempting to reason from nothingness, the perverted reasoning of the atheist, but it’s not possible. There is no such thing as nothingness: the default is existence. The question is does it have personhood?

Greg Lorriman, Leatherhead, UK

I’m pretty sure I can mock whatever the hell I like.

good grief - look at yourselves. Everyone of us has the right to believe in whatever we want and no one has the right to mock or deride what anyone else believes. If you believe in God then live your life accordingly. If you don’t then don’t worry about it.

David, London, UK

I really hope RW is joking.

If the universe is infinite, every possible event has happened, or will happen somewhere in the universe. The existence of God is a possible event, ergo God exists.

RW, Sta Eulalia, Spain

G P is Helping!

“…people still actually believe in stories of invisible god-creatures and magic heavens, made up by stoned hippies living in the desert a few thousand years ago. I want some of whatever it is that they’re on!”

Alastair, you can find it on any given day day; the Holy Spirit

G P, Milton Keynes,

Let’s watch Greg get progressively dumber.

” please stop taking the moral high ground when neither side of the argument can successfully be proven.”

A true atheist is irrational, and an agnostic who doesn’t give the benefit of the doubt is likewise.

Since a God could prove His own existence religious do have an advantage.

Greg Lorriman, Leatherhead, UK

Yeah! Naleen really told those creationists who’s boss: they are!

I love to put a creationist in his/her place. How can you ignore the scientific work behind evolution and its evidences. But on the other hand, how did it all began? Evolution only shows what happened once a single cell got here but not how it got here. God made Earth billions of years ago.

Naleen Lal, Northern California,

Simon is not crazy. Don’t say he’s crazy.

“Dawkins slaps creationists into … soup”
… NO!!!

All you people probably don’t realise that the single cell evolution to man is still a theory - not proven! It’s just easily accepted by the ignorant. So darwinism is also a faith, yes?

PS. Dawkins is the devils work, who also exists

Simon Chung, Edinburgh, UK

Virginia thinks people were designed and robots evolved.

Zim of Wolverhampton, you have just proven that evolution is rubbish by admiting that this is a stupid age! If evolution is true, we would not evolve to be stupid and no one will have the concept of God. We will all just behave like robots and react predictably. The evidence is crystal clear.

virginia, Brisbane , Australia

There are many ways to state the first law of thermodynamics. This is none of them.

The 1st law of thermodynamics states matter & energy need no creator, they simply always existed. The second applies only to closed systems where we are gaining energy from nothing - in our universe we have the sun. Both are arguments FOR evolution, and AGAINST the existence of an intelligent god.

Isabel, Bournemouth, UK

Greg has moved the bar of “evidence” yet lower. By now he has buried it in his yard.

“the Athiest stance is that there is no evidence for god, nothing, not a jot”

Nonsense. Just 1 believer *is* evidence. My Uncle was a nuclear phycisist and said that he saw “the finger prints of God everywhere”. Atheist multi-universe theories exist to avoid the otherwise inevitable conclusion.

Greg Lorriman, Leatherhead, UK

Ah, but where does the Bible address that episode of The Next Generation with Locutus of Borg in it?

Belief in God is more that an intellectual exercise - it’s lifestyle changing event. Where does Dawkins world view address the 20+ teenagers killed by knives in London? Living true to your faith changes people and would give these kids an alternative hope in their lives. Dawkin’s worldview doesn’t.

Pete B, London, UK

I don’t think “hypocrite” means what Anne thinks it means.

The religious can publically talk against gay people, athiests and those of other religions. But the moment someone believes in something other than creationism, they are fiercely attacked. The word hypocrites comes to mind.

Anne, Nottingham,

Andy has a pretty dystopian view of comfort.

Religion is psychological comfort by forcing groups of people to think and act the same. Have your religions I dont mind them . . . . but at least stop hurting other people.

andy, London,

Reto kills people who work weekends.

Mr Darwin introduced the theory of evolution but also scientifically “proved” the intrinsic inferiority of Africans and other “dark” peoples as well as the superiority of the NW Europeans over other whites. Evolutionists cannot pick and choose what they like–have some intellectual integrity man!

Reto, Cape Town, South Africa

Theodore Shulman has not quite got the hang of this.

If there is a god of comedy, PG Wodehouse is it.

Theodore Shulman, NYC, USA

Ika is scary.

Dawkins can believe what he wants now, but the time will come when wishes he didn’t believe in what he believes now..the end is near…

ika, Darwin, Australia

Greg clearly has not actually bothered to read The God Delusion.

David:”we don’t believe in a god or gods.”

…which is not the definiton of an atheist; it is a form of agnostic. Go and join your chums at dawkin’s website, where they will confirm that you have made a mistake on the definition of ‘atheist’. And stop reading wikipedia.

Greg Lorriman, Leatherhead, UK

I have no idea. Anyone?

Dawkins is wrong to espouse atheism. Religious belief is no more than another theory with a claim to verification, just as scientific theory is. Science is the winner because it can come up with its verifications in the here and now.

Kevin Straw, Leicester,

Greg promises to do the world a favour, although only because Jesus made him sign an NDA.

David”Merging with the holy spirit…god module installed. ”

I appreciate the effort, but no. I can’t say more without inappropriately giving positive clues to something you don’t deserve to know, and I am not permitted to tell you:Matt7:6″Do not cast your pearls before swine”. Time to clam up.

Greg Lorriman, Leatherhead, UK

I was going to mock David Jones for thinking there were Christians in 1CE, but then I remembered that of course the Bible had been around at least 1000 years by then.

Presumably for 1CE Christians, the notion of the trinity and sacraments like holy communion were dangerous in a strictly montheistic society. However, hiding behind a ‘pearls before swine’ injunction now to create a woo factor when the details are published by the church anyway is mere flamboyance.

David Jones, Loughborough, UK

The witch hunt is on. A Government obsessed with phoney egalitarianism and control freakery is aligning itself with the strident secularist lobby to threaten the future of faith schools in Britain.

I shall defer responding to this to the rather brilliantly ranty article published by Andrew Copson in the Guardian:

Few apart from than Odone can have noticed this dangerous development. Under Labour governments since 1997 more new state-funded faith schools have opened than under any other government, and there is no sign that this increase is being stemmed or about to be. Certainly no evidence for such a change of direction is presented in today’s pamphlet, a mish-mash of anecdote, selective factoids and non-sequiturs (”The schools are not divisive. Not one of the 72 British citizens convicted under the Terrorism Act of 2000 attended a faith school.”).

So what’s the problem?

[Faith schools] are out with Gordon Brown.

The Prime Minister may acknowledge that his faith is important to him. But so is his standing with the Labour party – all the more so given his record-low popularity with the voters. Gordon Brown knows that for the ‘Old Labour’ rump of the party, equally committed to secularism and comprehensive education, faith schools are anathema. Tony Blair and ‘New Labour’ were ready to ignore this constituency, but Gordon Brown cannot afford to.

It occurs to me that what people voted for in the last election was not faith schools, not Blair, nor Brown, but it was Labour. If Labour are largely against faith schools then surely Odone is accusing Brown of nothing more than keeping the promise Blair reneged on?

Here is her example of a faith school that’s good:

In contrast to the graffiti that covers the neighbouring buildings, and the litter on the streets and pavements, the Sir John Cass complex is impressively tidy and clean. Youngsters (the school is co-ed) in navy blue uniforms walk briskly but quietly in the corridors, greeting teachers with ‘Hello Sir’ or ‘Hello Miss’. When they spot the head, Haydn Evans, they fall silent to attention. It is easy to understand their awe: when one boy arrives with his tie askew, Evans, eyebrow raised, picks him up on it: ‘Where’s your uniform?’

He sounds like a dick who rules by fear to me. I mean, I’d hate to generalise just from that, but it’s hardly convincing me that faith schools are worth the rampant discrimination and segregation required to sustain them. In any case, this is a Church of England school with 60% Muslim students (just like most faith schools, I’m unwilling to bet), and yet they persist in the pointless and rather silly charade of having a little prayer that most of the students don’t believe in. If this school, with students from a broad mix of (parents’) faiths, is the best example in favour of faith schools you can find, surely that’s an argument against them? At least it’s an argument against the aribtrary suspension of discrimination laws for their special case?

After this she bangs on for a while about the good results faith schools get in league tables. Now I don’t know a lot about schools, but I do know a bit about science. I know that you can’t just say they’re good because “they account for a third of all primary schools but make up almost two-thirds of the top 209 primaries”. That could mean anything. It could mean that selection works. It could mean they’re largely in areas where people get good results. You have to compare them with a matched control group, not just every other school. That’s a meaningless comparison.

In any case, to be frank I’d not be at all surprised if faith schools gave good exam results. I just think that those good exam results will be on the CVs of fucked up children. That, to me, isn’t progress. I for one would rather my children, should I ever have any, grew up to be well-balanced people with poor grades than unlikeable conservative nerds. Obviously I’m exaggerating, but it’s the children of ultra-religious people who need secular education most, and saying “if you don’t like it, pick another school” is like saying “let’s legalise murder, and if you don’t like it, don’t kill anyone”: it very much misses the point. Faith schools are a Catch-22: the people who want them are the people it is most important shouldn’t get them.

She also makes an appeal to populatity, saying

Among Christian parents, faith schools are so popular that they are allegedly pushing their children into late baptisms to secure places at these schools. Meanwhile, parents who were turned away from over-subscribed faith schools refuse to accept the alternative: about 70,000 appeals are launched each year.

But this is also misleading: the public in general are against faith schools. Parents want their kids to go to good schools. They don’t care what religion that school is.

In chapter two, Odone makes a poor attempt to address the idea that selection may be responsible for the better results:

Critics maintain that faith schools use the admissions procedure to usher in a better-off intake. As evidence, they point to the schools’ under-representation of children on Free School Meals (FSM)…

But the National Audit Office warns that FSM do not necessarily serve as the best proxy for poor income. Its reservations were corroborated by research carried out last year for the Centre for the Economics of Education.

Fair enough perhaps, but let’s not forget you’re happy to use league tables against a hopelessly unmatched control as a proxy for efficacy. Besides, she’s in favour of selection:

To the Government, as Ed Balls’s attack revealed, a request for a marriage certificate as part of an application form is an ignominious attempt to flush out single mothers. To the Orthodox Jewish school, it is the only way to verify that both parents are born Jews.

Yes, but here in Britain we don’t stand for that kind of shit. Born Jews? That’s not “maintaining the religious ethos of the school”, that’s racism. I’d think Jews, of all people, would know better than that. She lists other, similar examples, which yes, do ensure that the school’s religious makeup is controlled, but plainly also act as proxies for performance selection.

Chapter four (chapter three saying nothing of any consequence) again opens with what Odone wrongly considers a lovely story about what she hopefully-wrongly perceives to be one of the better faith schools. Since the schools featured are her choice from the minority of ones that responded, from the minority of ones she contacted, I dismissed it out of hand. After that she starts explaining the idea that Muslim students or their parents might be offended by many aspects of what she quite wrongly describes as our “secular” state school system. These include “gym where their modesty is affronted” — believe me, at secondary school I would have liked little more than a decent affront to modesty in gym class and it really doesn’t happen — and “the school trip to a farm where they might come into contact with a pig” — which did happen. It was a Gloucester Old Spot. It wasn’t scary or offensive in the least. Of course, I’m not a Muslim, but screw them; if they want to complain about the prospect of their child maybe meeting a pig then they should have a better reason than “oh, we just don’t like pigs”. But Odone says that “feeling misunderstood or rejected by their peers at school, and frustrated in their ambitions beyond it, these youngsters are likely to be receptive to radical messages.” People will blow up trains because they met a pig? Are you serious?

Next is her observation, if you can call it that, that “not one of the 77 convicted on terrorism charges since the Terrorism Act 2000 attended a Muslim school”. What the Guardian article didn’t tell me was the comedy gem hiding after the semicolon: “one, Ader Ahmed, was home-schooled.” So basically he went to a really small faith school? I’m against home-schooling too. That plays right into my existing prejudice. (I realise the pamphlet isn’t aimed just at me, but then, I tend to think that people who share one opinion with me probably share other related ones too.)

Next, she starts implying that the alternative to proper Muslim schooling is little girls being packaged off to Pakistan to marry close relatives:

“The Drugs sex and rock and roll scene is not an option for Muslim girls,” Humeira Khan points out, “or if it is, it sparks huge conflict. So suddenly marrying them early or sending them home [to Pakistan or Bangladesh] becomes a huge pressure.”

Trust me, it’s not an option for anyone at school. Did you never even watch The Inbetweeners? Unless you’ve been sitting up all night watching Skins, which frankly raises even more worrying questions, there’s no reason to be afraid of what happens in the average British school. I’d be far more concerned about the effects of a Muslim education on a young girl. If that results in some people sending their children to more illiberal countries, I think we have to accept that as a consequence of being ahead of the rest of the world. Lead by example. You know or “liberate” Pakistan and Bangladesh.

The fifth chapter (by which point I was skipping the “example” schools entirely) points out that far from “educational ghettos where Christian children learn about Creationism and Muslim children about jihad, while Jewish children are taught they alone are Chosen People” (an accusation I would never make — they’re not educational! Ho ho!), “faith schools in the state system must follow the National Curriculum, including Citizenship education.” Well that’s swell and all, but — and again I don’t know a lot about schools so this may be totally wrong — surely a school which actually is pluralistic, multicultural and inclusive is going to be more effective than a school which is monoreligious, monocultural and exclusive, with a lesson (eating up an hour a week of expensive teaching time) in place to teach students tolerance as if it’s something that can be examined? Odone points out that “all maintained schools are under an ‘obligation’ to promote community cohesion,” but that doesn’t mean they actually do it. The government could mandate that all bank clerks must fly to work on jetpacks, it wouldn’t make it so.

Chapter six, ‘Smears’, mentions creationism. Odone claims that creationism in Britain is basically a myth:

Creationism, then, is not a wild fire sweeping the country’s schools; it is not taught in science classes in place of, or as an alternative to, evolution. Instead, Creationism is taught, in a handful of schools, as part of their study of the Bible in RE. Those Christian students who subscribe to a literal interpretation of the Bible will believe that God made the world, and man, in seven days; but thanks to the National Curriculum they will also know that science has proved otherwise. In this way their Christianity has to accommodate their learning.

Channel 4 say otherwise. And so does the scary Jewish headmaster in their film.

After that there is a summary saying “as we have seen, the charges against faith schools can be
dismissed one by one” which as I think we have seen, she didn’t actually do with any kind of success.

And that’s why she’s awarded this month’s Crackpot title.

• Things Younger Than John McCain: a blog which lists things which we all take for granted but that are younger than Republican presidential pipedream and probable next host of Countdown, John McCain.
• Cake Wrecks: a blog showing photos of bad cakes. Professional ones only: no mocking your family. It started when the author got this cake back from the rather dim bakers.
• Passive-Aggressive Notes: notes and signs, and emails, left by housemates, co-workers, employees, and so on. There’s some shocking stuff in there.
• The “Blog” of “Unnecessary” Quotation Marks: signs, shops, and the odd cake wreck or passive-aggressive note, with “scare quotes” or just plain “wrong quotes”.
• Postcards From Yo Mamma: emails and web-chats sent by mothers to their grown-up children.
• The FAIL Blog: photos of stupid things, ruined by the application of large block letters saying “FAIL”, all of which were added in Paint Shop Pro. You can tell because Photoshop does letter corners correctly.
• Not Always Right: collecting stories of daft and unreasonable requests made by customers to put-upon retail staff.
• Signs that Fascinate and Intruige: a Facebook group with thousands of photos of dumb signs. Has a strict rule about it having to be something the submitter found, so no internet virals. Still a scary number of things.
• spEak You’re bRanes: a collection of dumb comments written by idiots, mostly from the BBC’s singularly awful Have Your Say section, where right-wing morons make bad suggestions, jokes that don’t work, and unreasonable demands. That’s probably why it’s at ifyoulikeitsomuchwhydontyougolivethere.com.
• Readers’ Letters: a similar site aimed at primarily-offline media such as newspapers and magazines. Annoyingly LiveJournal-based, but I think we have to forgive that if only because [nja]’s current userpic looks so delightfully like Elvis Costello cover-art.
• Photoshop Disasters: pictures from newspapers, websites, magazines and the like, which have obviously been edited by morons. There are a few on here that I disagree with, though — at least one where they’ve highlighted a wrist and said “look at the unnatural way that wrist is bent, did they think we wouldn’t notice”, and I can bend that way.
• Patently Silly: rarely updates any more, but lists a lot of strange patents issued in America.
• Engrish: badly translated English-language signs and products from Japan.
• It’s Lovely! I’ll Take It!: badly chosen photos from house adverts.
• Literally, A Web Log: tracking misuse of the word ‘literally’.

Those are all the ones I know. Anyone know any others?