Apathy Sketchpad

A few days ago, a friend of mine told me about a thing called the ‘Joe Cell’. Apparently it’s yet another attempt to build a device that puts out more energy than you put in. I’ll be honest, I’ve seen so many that this one didn’t interest me at first, but then I read the website, and it really is delightfully and repeatedly demented. You can tell he’s a crank because the website has this at the bottom:

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.

Here are some of the comments from a recent Times Online article about Richard Dawkins. I have no idea what this one is even about:

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 other day I posted about Dr John Briffa’s rant against p-values. He has since then posted some responses, in the form of several comments under the original post and a whole new rant. Er, I mean, blog entry, of course. Not “rant”!

His thesis remains much the same: no matter what anyone does, since science can’t prove a negative, we can’t be sure MMR doesn’t cause autism. Which is true, but of course can be applied to any stupid hypothesis you care to come up with. In his recent post, which is called “Why the MMR-autism ‘war’ is far from over”, he says

What I am saying though is that there’s a huge pile of anecdotal evidence and some experimental evidence too which supports the idea that MMR vaccination might cause autism.

This really isn’t true. The Cochrane Collaboration examined 139 studies about MMR (not all about MMR-autism) and concluded that

No credible evidence of an involvement of MMR with either autism or Crohn’s disease was found.

In any case, this always goes the same way. There’s a bad study done that “suggests” something, in this case that MMR might cause autism, and a load of people latch onto this for some personal reason, then when someone points out that the research is rubbish they deny it. Eventually the weight of evidence becomes so great that the course of least resistance is to drop that one tiny part of their stance: their position switches to “that study was bad, yes, we can see that, but our theory is still right”. If you ask them to show some non-bad research that supports their hypothesis then they’ll go and do a literature search vast (if not rigorous) enough to put any PhD student to shame, before coming up with some bizarre study about giving vaccinations to chimps or something, and I always look at those and think “hang on, where the fuck did that come from? You’ve been ranting about how bad MMR is for years, and this is the first time you’ve mentioned that study. In fact, you were ranting about MMR for years before it was published! How do you expect to convince me that that’s influenced your opinion in the slightest? I want to see the evidence on which you’ve based your opinions, if there is any.” Of course that doesn’t invalidate their chimp-based study, but it does show that they’re starting with a conclusion and then collecting evidence to support it, when they should be starting with evidence and basing the conclusion on that. Once you’ve established that, the last thing you should do is to criticise their evidence — it’s much quicker for them to find more shaky evidence than it is for you to dismantle it, so they’ll always be a couple of steps ahead if you let yourself get drawn into that fight.

The evidence used to persuade us of the safety with regard to autism is simply inadequate. The fact is, I don’t know whether MMR causes autism or not. But then again, it seems neither do those who insist it is safe.

He also says

Now, I’ve got a sneaking suspicion that those of the pro-vaccine lobby will want to claim that this blog is scaremongering by making out that MMR vaccination causes autism.

I agree with jdc about that quote.

And while the reason that the debate rages on is usually put down to the likes of Dr Wakefield and the parents who believe their children were damaged by MMR, the real guilty parties here have been our Governments whose intransigence regarding proper, definitive research in the area has inevitably left a huge question-mark hanging over MMR.

That’s plain wrong. As I said in his blog comments (assuming that he hasn’t deleted them, although he’s been good to jdc’s, so I don’t want to imply that he will), it would be unethical to do that study: if the study group was large enough to show the effect (which even anti-MMR types claim is very rare, even when they’re demanding that all three of their children were hit by it) then you’re deliberately avoiding giving a potentially life-saving vaccination to at least hundreds of children, on the basis that a few ill-informed, untrained, tabloid-reading morons think there might be a risk. There’s no way that would ever get past an ethics committee.

You have to be a little bit detached and just accept that the so-called link between MMR and autism is, in fact, just made up. That doesn’t prove it’s false, but it puts its odds at much the same level as other made-up hypotheses, such as “cider causes shortness” or “MRI scans cause blindness”. (I just pulled those out of thin air.) Doing huge studies to attempt to disprove things you’ve made up would be a tremendous waste of time, and that doesn’t change just because they were made up a long time ago by someone else and then relentlessly repeated by bad journalists and angry but unqualified mothers.

I’ve just been pointed to a fantastically bad article about statistical significance on the blog of one Dr John Briffa, former natural health columnist for the Daily Mail, no less. He says:

This tells us, supposedly, whether there’s some real effect or change going on, or it’s merely something that’s most likely to be due to chance. Statistical significance in scientific studies is denoted by what is known as the P (or probability) value. A value of less than 0.05 is generally regarded as denoting ‘statistical significance’.

Sounds fine so far. Except, I do feel compelled to point out that the choice of 0.05 as a cut-off is utterly arbitrary. It’s a value that the scientific community agree on. It’s a consensus – it’s not carved in stone like some irrefutable scientific truth. If the scientific community decided that 0.01 was going to be a cut-off, then less things would be ‘statistically significant’. If the limit was set at 0.1 then many more things would be deemed significant. When we understand this, we begin to see just how arbitrary a lot of scientific ‘findings’ really are.

And that’s all true, although the fact that p<0.05 is a totally arbitrary choice isn’t exactly a secret. We all know it. Often, people will demand p<0.001. That’s why we quote p values rather than just printing “yes” or “no”. It’s a bit like saying “People over 6′2″ are considered ‘tall’. Except, I do feel compelled to point out that the choice of 6′2″ as a cut-off is utterly arbitrary” and then saying that therefore tallness isn’t a useful concept in real life.

One commenter said

yes totally agree
“science”.. statistics.. are black and white
life is grey, a vague misty kind of grey

so it’s clear that his plan is working. Medical science is anything but “black and white”. It’s all about measuring and weighing risks and benefits. About p-values and error bars. Confidence intervals and placebo effects.

There ends Briffa’s explanation of p-values. He hasn’t bothered to explain what they are and doesn’t plan to. (In fact, a p-value is roughly defined as the odds of getting a result that good if the hypothesis you’re testing is false: if you get a high p-value then there’s really no reason to think your hypothesis is true.) Instead, he charges straight into a badly thought out analogy:

Let’s imagine someone decided to do a big study on road safety. Let’s say they counted up the number of times someone, somewhere, crossed the road. And now, let’s imagine, they also count up the number of times someone gets run over (and hurt or killed) as a result of crossing the road. Now, I’m writing this on a plane and can’t even check if these statistics exist. But I think it’s reasonable to assume, that compared to the total number of road crossings, the number of people being knocked down is likely to be very small indeed.

Now imagine we applied some statistical ‘wizardry’ to this (with that arbitrary P value, remember) It’s not too difficult to imagine that one would turn up a result which shows: ‘crossing the road is not associated with a statistically significant increased risk of getting run over.’ Now, many doctors and scientists would interpret this finding as evidence that crossing the road is ‘safe’. However, we all know that while most of the time it is, sometimes it’s not.

He seems to be trying to implicitly conflate probability of an event occurring with statistical significance. He’s implying that because accidents are rare, the results of a study will be statistically insignificant. In fact, if a prospective study looked at people crossing the road (the tests), and the same number of other people sitting at home for the same length of time (the controls) then if even six of the test subjects got run over, your p value would be less than 0.05 (assuming the controls all survived). If eleven of the test group were hit by cars then you’d get p<0.001 level significance. You can test for very unlikely events and get good p-values; you just need a large sample space. In this case, you need to look at enough people that six die. That’s probably a much bigger number than is at all feasible, so in fact, you’d do a retrospective case-control study. You’d locate a group of people who were killed by being hit by cars, find out how many of them were crossing the road at the time, and compare that to the proportion of the general population crossing the road at any given time. I suspect you’d find a big (and statistically significant) difference there. That’s how we test for rare events. His analogy proves nothing at all.

That said, he’s right that one could do a study that shows no link. That’s pretty easy: we all know that crossing the road actually is very safe considering how many times most people do it. The point is that that study would not say “crossing the road isn’t linked to death by car accident”; it would say “we have not found a link between crossing the road and death in car accidents”. It certainly wouldn’t prove that no such link exists, and no competent scientist would ever claim it did.

The point that he is attempting to prove by this is as follows:

An example of where statistical significance appears to have got in the way of a constructive debate on the subject is vaccination. Our Government here in the UK, most doctors (I suspect) and many commentators would have us believe that vaccination, including the measles, mumps and rubella vaccination (MMR) is ‘safe’. Many will not even entertain the thought that there may be a problem with MMR.

That’s totally untrue. Of course injecting pathogens into people has associated risks. Nobody with any relevant knowledge is claiming otherwise. The claim is simply that the risks are tiny compared to the benefits, and that autism isn’t one of the risks.

Science hasn’t proven that there’s no risk. Science can’t do that: you can’t prove a negative. It’s possible that there’s exactly one person in the world whose body is set up in such a way that the MMR jab would cause them to become autistic. In that case, there would be a risk, but it would be impossible to detect it unless (indeed, even if) your study contained that one person (in which case the risk would go away when the study was done anyway). So we’re stuck? No, not really.

We know that all the ‘evidence’ that MMR causes autism is, for want of a better word, shit. It’s rubbish. It is insignificant. We also know that a number of better studies have found no risk at all. So yes, it’s still theoretically possibly, but why should it be true? Crossing the road causes car accidents? That figures. We don’t need epidemiology to convince ourselves that that’s pretty likely. But “MMR causes autism”? Why not “MMR causes tallness” or “MMR causes hair loss” or “hats cause kidney stones”? None of those have been absolutely disproven either. There’s absolutely no reason for it to be true, except that many people irrationally believe it to be true, and their beliefs can all be traced back to a load of scary stories published together in a right-wing, anti-scientific propaganda tome. And in Dr Briffa, it even has people standing up for it by harping on about “the limitations of science”. (He has form on this.)

What we have here, then, is a religion. Classic case.

While reading something more sensible on the internet, I was directed, by a Google ad, to a website called “Relativity Challenge”. The author describes himself thus:

Steven Bryant began studying Einstein’s theory of relativity in the mid 90’s with the intent of returning to graduate school to pursue a PhD in physics. During the process, he identified mathematical inconsistencies in each of Einstein’s derivations of the Special Relativity transformation equations. Correcting the problems has led him to produce the model of Complete and Incomplete Coordinate Systems, offering an alternative view of space and time. … Steven has a Bachelor of Science and a Masters degree.

Steven seems unaware that someone with a Bachelor’s degree is a bachelor — that’s why they have a bachelor’s degree. They do not have a bachelor. That would be crazy, but then, there’s a very good chance that Bryant is crazy.

His main thesis is that the derivation of ξ in Einstein’s 1905 relativity paper is wrong. It’s not wrong. I’ve checked it myself, and I also have a Master’s degree (and the knowledge required to correctly apostrophise it) so I must be right. I did it literally on the back of an envelope. It was an envelope from The Cooperative Bank, who will doubtless be pleased at my recycling it so. But wait, Bryant has proof that the derivation I just did was wrong. He invites us to substitute numbers into the various forms of the equation. If they are all equivalent, he reasons, then the answer should be the same every time which, he imagines that he demonstrates, it isn’t:

You can try it. All the answers in the results column are correct for the given values. What he’s done, either cunningly or stupidly, is to use values that don’t correspond to any possible physical universe. The derivation of ξ is done using other equations which state that x′ = x − vt and t = x′v ÷ (c − v), and his values of x, v and t don’t satisfy those equations. It’s like saying “Newton says that F = ma, but given that F = 5, m = 2 and a = David Duchovny, we can plainly see that Newton’s law is flawed.” You can’t make something true using only the word “given”.

So we’ve established that Bryant can’t do maths, punctuation or semantics. He also can’t do physics. As well as the imaginary maths error, he also says that the Michelson-Morley experiment was wrong. The experiment, done in 1887, was designed to measure the absolute speed of the Earth, and the result was that it didn’t have one. Bryant says that this analysis was done wrong, because he’s redefined frequency to include an extra, redundant length term. Then he’s incorrectly added this term into the equations and discovered that now the Earth is going about 30km/s, and therefore relativity is wrong.

He also doesn’t understand that Special Relativity only holds when things aren’t accelerating. He claims that an advantage of his idea is that “the twin paradox goes away”, but it also goes away under General Relativity. His proof appears to involve a lot of talking about cats and birds in cages on trucks. I honestly don’t understand it well enough to find specific errors. It would be like looking for continuity errors in Jabberwocky.

The upshot of all of this is that the universe is broken and E no longer equals mc². It now equals mw², where w is defined as “the speed of the phenomenon in question”. Presumably, therefore, we should put nuclear power stations on trucks and drive them around so they make more power. This also implies that nuclear power should produce a hundred million times less energy than we expect (and observe) it to. You would think that someone would have noticed that.

Bryant has not noticed that.

The whole ‘bad-science blogs’ thing has given rise to an amusing retaliation movement of ‘bad science-blogs’ run by homeopaths. There’s a little network of them and they all link to each other and post approvingly about each other’s updates. I was put onto them by Blogging The Organon, wherein Gimpy posts sections of Hahnemann’s Organon (upon which homeopathy is largely based) one at a time and then people discuss them for a bit, then it descends into farce and the next chunk of Organon goes up. But of course, they’re clearly not as good, because they haven’t got a central aggregator website.

They all have names like “good science”, “suppressed science” and “remedy reality”, and they all update every few days about homeopathy. This is somewhat pointless, because homeopathy hasn’t changed since it was invented in the nineteenth century, except for the addition of a few extra remedies and the decision to start making their magic water using preposterous machines instead of dilution and succussion (which is fair enough since neither works anyway so you might as well do it the quick way). One of my favourites is Homeopathy4Health. I think it’s always a good sign when a website carries a disclaimer like this:

Disclaimer: I am not the owner of any website named homeopathy4health.

I think you have to question the mental state of someone who would say that at homeopathy4health.wordpress.com, under the name homeopathy4health. Many of the posts do at least allow public comments, although I’m given to understand there’s some censorship there. But some posts have no comments on them. An example is “Medicine: blind and in the dark?”, which is essentially a long attack on evidence based medicine for blinding studies. The anonymous author’s thesis seems to be that looking at more than one subject is bad because it means using “statistics which are incomprehesible to the lay person and which are subject to statistical interpretation bias” instead of just looking at one patient and trusting yourself not to indulge in any confirmation bias. That, and

The foundations of the scientific approach are suspicion and doubt: both are deeply negative mental processes.  I am told that a good scientist should doubt his results as his first reaction; I would say that this is an unhealthy reaction in most normal situations: someone who doubts his reactions has poor intuition. Someone who is doubtful isolates themselves from experience. Suspicion causes peers to doubt each others results and slows progress.

…

Sceptics believe that the scientific method is the answer to medical problems, I am unconvinced.

That sounds like Biblical thinking to me. The whole idea of “negative mental processes” leading to negative outcomes sounds like something Master Splinter would say. But just as I was thinking he was crazy, I saw a link in his blogroll that put that into perspective. The “Freedom of Science” blog is proper crazy. Honestly, I’m not totally convinced it’s not an elaborate joke, although the archive goes back over a year and that’s dedication if it is. It’s inextricably linked with “Alphysics”, which I think is a joke, but is a rather stupid one written by a crank in the style of Facts For Life in an attempt to discredit physics by equating it — I think; it’s not clear — with alchemy.

It’s very telling: there’s always the chance that the author of Homeopathy4health genuinely has had the astonishing good fortune claimed, and that the range of symptoms described on the “about” page genuinely did vanish just after taking homeopathic remedies. I could see something like that being very convincing, and once you’re there it follows logically that anyone who dismisses it is being overly suspicious of it. But no amount of coincidental remissions could justify listening to the cranks at Freedom of Science (which really should be called Freedom From Science). It is a website devoted to “removing Newtonism from the education process”. It says, with no apparent trace of shame,

Physics is Newtonian religion. Physicists are priests who believe in Newton’s laws as their immutable faith. Physicists are the enforcers of Newton’s occult laws in the name of God.

Now I am a physicist and I’d be the first to tell you Newton’s laws are wrong. They’re wrong because they break down when you look at very small objects. They’re wrong because they’re an approximation to the truth; an expectation value. They’re wrong because they don’t account for relativity. But they’re not wrong because

Occult does not exist therefore Cavendish did not measure the Newtonian force. 

“Occult” is the author’s favourite word to describe force:

Occult does not exist outside physics. Occult may be the official faith of physics and every physicist must believe in it as part of their professional faith but occult does not exist in nature.

This is especially vexing, since he says on the same page:

If we look at the Newtonian force closer we see that force is not really occult.

He is of the opinion that what he calls “physics” is actually a religion devoted to pushing Newton’s politics and never questioning his Laws:

In order to understand what force is a scientist must question it. A scientist, unlike physicists, is not bound by Newton’s authority. For a scientist there is nothing sacred about Newton’s arbitrary definitions. To understand force a scientist must take it apart and then put it back together. Since this is forbidden and illegal in physics a scientific investigator must look at the Newtonian force from outside of physics.

It’s brilliant. The lengths some people will go to be wrong has never failed to astound me. I suppose it starts with one unshakable belief in something — homeopathy, Jesus, racism, whatever — or a fundamental and equally unshakable disbelief in something — relativity, vaccination, science, maths, the holocaust, whatever — and from there you quickly hit a contradiction. Clearly either your pet theory is wrong, or else something very sinister and slightly stupid is going on, and clearly the pet theory can’t be wrong, so you end up justifying it in increasingly moronic ways…

[Force] is a placeholder because it cancels. We cannot cancel radius R and Period T from R3 = T2. But if we write it as Newton did as

Force = R/T^2 = 1/R^2 = Force

we can cancel the superfluous terms of force. We can also write

Newton’s soul = R/T^2 = 1/R^2 = Newton’s soul.

Or

Newton’s wig powder = R/T^2 = 1/R^2 = Newton’s wig powder.

So planets may be powered equivalently by Newton’s force, Newton’s soul or Newton’s wig powder. The last two are as good as force.

Well done for proving we can give a quantity a different name, although the idea that if something cancels it must therefore be antique powdered starch is a rather strange one. Freedom of Science thinks that Newton’s Laws are just made up, and that the actual fundamental law at work here is Kepler’s Third Law, which he calls “Kepler’s Rule”. This is, you may remember, much the same idea that Mark McCutcheon utterly failed to defend when I emailed him.

The site is also hooked into a “wiki” (which is not a wiki at all — it uses Wikimedia but it’s not a wiki because, like with Homeopathy4health’s more preposterous claims, I can’t edit or comment on it) with similarly strange ideas:

We know that Newton started from Kepler’s rule and wrote it as

where R is the radius and T is the period of the orbit. Newton then multiplied both sides by a label he invented, mass, then labeled each side by another label he invented, force, and labeled each side Newton’s laws

This guy thinks that mass is made up. Indeed, he thinks this of all quantities which cancel out even if there are other equations from which they do not cancel. Mass cancels in discussion of gravitation because the gravitational force is proportional to mass and therefore acceleration, and therefore speed and position, aren’t affected by it. Force is a slightly redundant concept when discussing gravity, although it’d be hard to discuss electrostatics without it. Presumably, therefore, he would be happy to play my game: he drops a 4g mass on my head from a height of one metre. Then, I drop a 2-tonne mass on his head from the same height. Then, assuming he survives, I give him £50. See how strong his faith in a massless universe is.

Essentially, he’s angry with Newton because he’s replaced k² with GM (when I learned this at school I never for a second imagined I’d hear even one person take umbrage with it, and here’s at least the second) and arbitrarily defined another quantity as “force”. He seems to consider this a pointless (and indeed politically motivated, although what the politic in question might be is unclear) obfuscation of Kepler’s elegant theory, which indeed it is, as long as you never want to discuss anything but planetary motion. The moment you want to discuss apples, Kepler’s Laws, brilliant as they are, just don’t apply. One of Newton’s greatest achievments was thinking in terms of general theories, rather than having one theory for planets and a separate Theory of Apples. Furthermore, introducing the concept of “force” (which we could always simply call “rate of change of momentum” which is a physically manifest quantity — although so is force if you want to talk quantum) means that we can then add three other forces and describe the whole of the universe, or at least what Richard Dawkins calls “Middle World”, in a few short equations. That has to be better than knowing how fast planets go, doesn’t it?

Well, you would think. But apparently there is what I shall generously term “some debate” about it.

The first Religious Crackpot Of The Month this year goes to Patrick O’Donoghue. There are those who would prefer I call him “the Right Reverence Patrick O’Donoghue”, but I won’t be doing that. I think that people’s relative reverence and honourability is something they earn by their actions and not something they’re granted by their job titles. And, since this doesn’t appear to be 1992, I won’t be using the word “right” as an intensifier. Patrick O’Donoghue is shockingly ignorant, not least of the rules of chess: despite being Bishop of Lancaster, he is moving decidedly backwards.

He has earned this dubious honour by sending what the Guardian called “a 66-page document” to all the Catholic schools in his diocese, though I’ve found it and it is in fact a 68-page document with two blank pages at the end. (It’s a PDF; they recommend Foxit to read it. I don’t know what’s wrong with Acrobat Reader; possibly Adobe refuse to condemn abortion or something.)

He is by no means the only crackpot mentioned in the article — the Vatican body who endorsed his document must be at least as stupid as its author — but he is the most vocally insane of them all. So let’s be explicit about why he in particular is getting this award. (It is perhaps worth noting that if I had my way, this letter would never have existed as there would be no faith schools to receive it, although if I really had my way there would be no bishop to send it either.)

Normally I’d be saying that he, like most other winners of the prize, is placing religious teachings above basic safety advice, but in this case that would be being far, far too kind. The teachings he’s advocating are barely even religious — there’s not a single word in the Bible about condoms. This isn’t religion. Religion is when someone writes a book which, centuries later, is found and taken far, far too seriously. What we have here is a large organisation deciding that something is bad and dictating that all their followers will believe it too. This isn’t religion: this is cult behaviour (though there’s less difference than most people would care to admit).

Worse still, he doesn’t consider that he is putting it above basic safety advice because he disputes that condoms can prevent AIDS.

Parents must insist on continence outside marriage and fidelity in marriage as the only true and secure education for the prevention of AIDS. Parents, schools, and colleges must also reject the promotion of so-called “safe sex” or “safer sex”, a dangerous and immoral policy based on the deluded theory that the condom can provide adequate protection against AIDS.

Exactly why he thinks this is unclear. At no point does he bother to explain how a 120 nanometre wide retrovirus can penetrate seventy thousand nanometres of rubber in only a few minutes. This paragraph cites a book called The Truth And Meaning Of Human Sexuality as its only source, so I did a quick Google search and discovered that the book in question was published by The Catholic Library, and its full text is available on their website. To save you the bother of looking, the paragraph is a direct quote from the book (paragraph 139; as we know, Catholics believe that any sentence with a number is true) and the book doesn’t justify it any further either. Presumably they just believe unquestioningly whatever would best serve their agenda if it were true. (That, one might argue, is very much the idea of religion in any case.)

He also repeats the Vatican’s anti-Amnesty International stance:

Schools and colleges must not support charities or groups that promote or fund anti-life policies, such as Red Nose Day and Amnesty International, which now advocates abortion.

To be fair to him, he also suggests some non-abortion-condoning alternative organisations, but I can’t imagine any of them have the resources Amnesty do, and in any case, Amnesty International do not advocate abortion! He goes further, though (and I should mention for the sake of integrity that the ellipsis below represents a 38-page break, much of which I didn’t read):

Anything that evokes wonder and reflection about the fundamental questions of human existence in Science, English, or Art, for example, is an opportunity to teach the truths of the faith.

…

Under no circumstances should any outside authority or agency that is not fully qualified to speak on behalf of the Catholic Church ever be allowed to speak to pupils or individuals on sexual or any other matter involving faith and morals. Nor should a Catholic school or college ever refer a pupil to an outside agency for advice or counselling; such is the prerogative only of the parent.

That’s nothing more or less than indoctrination: under his system, a pupil in a Catholic school is not allowed to talk to anybody except Catholic representatives about any aspect of religion or emotion (or, probably anything except mathematics, and even then the distinction between the numbers three and one is probably taboo). This will lead to them being effectively brainwashed, exposed to only one ideology every day for 15 of their most formative years. He says in the Guardian that this is “absolute rubbish”, but then he would say that, because apparently he’s a total bastard who will say anything if he thinks it will get people on his side.

Like most religious crackpots, O’Donoghue utterly fails to understand the meaning of the word “secular”. Like the current incumbent Specifically Mormon Crackpot of The Year, he seems to think that it is itself a religion. He demonstrates this very neatly when he says “the secular view … may not be presented as neutral information”. The whole point of secularism is that it is completely neutral. It considers all ideas purely on their own merits, affording none any special treatment regardless of what various religions may say about them. O’Donoghue would presumably prefer the “woo” version of neutrality, where all ideas are given equal credit regardless of their relative merit. This system is in reality as neutral as giving poorer entrants in a competition a proportional head start so that all players have an equal chance of winning: clearly it benefits the worst and removes any incentive to improve, and only a really stupid sport would do that.

In fact, he appears to be falling into another brain-trap more commonly associated with quacks than crackpots: he’s adopted an Us And Them mentality. Creationists do this, by describing anything that contradicts creationism as “evolutionist”, including the Big Bang theory, geology and abiogenesis, which have nothing at all to do with evolution. Homeopaths call anything that contradicts homeopathy “allopathic”, including vaccines, chemistry, epidemiology and basic scientific methodology. Here, O’Donoghue would appear to be saying that anything which contradicts the Vatican’s random assertions is part of some “secular” conspiracy. Let me let you in on a little secret: there is no secular conspiracy. It just wouldn’t work. It’d be like herding cats. There is no “secular view”: secularism is not a religion, or an ideology or a political affiliation; it’s just a single idea (that religious teachings should be ignored wherever possible) with a name. Most secularists agree on other things too, but that’s largely because great — or at least, non-awful — minds are known to think alike.

He wants teachers to discuss “the ’sacrament of marriage’” and to “insist that contraception [is] wrong”, all while criticising secularism for being insufficiently “neutral”.

I’ve not read the whole thing. I don’t think I could do that to myself. Luckily, the document (called “Fit For Mission? A Guide”) ends with a summarised list of “actions” for schools. Here are a few of them (word for word):

• Create/enhance respect for the doctrinal and moral truth safeguarded by the Pope and the Bishops
• Challenge TV broadcasts, films and books … that are disrespectful, suspicious and scornful of Christ and His Church.

It should be noted at this point that Jesus, being long dead by the time it was established, has never publicly endorsed the Catholic church and would in all probability loathe it as much as I do.

• Promote films and books that build up trust and enthusiasm for the faith.
• Ensure support is given to Chaplains so they can complete their role, including evangelisation and catechesis through proclamation of the Word.
• Provide opportunity for the governing body to discuss and pray about this document.

What the fuck? How will that help? Does he think God is going to personally reply and say “yeah, it’s not a bad document but I didn’t like the font”?

• Teach the Trinity
• Use the Core Curriculum of the Catholic Church

…whatever that is; Google doesn’t know.

• Teaching and Learning for the profession of faith
• Ensure active participation in the Liturgy is encourage [sic]

He actually considers liturgy a basic human need, presumably alongside oxygen and nutrition (assuming he doesn’t think those are “deluded theories” too.

• Teach the real presence from a Young Age [sic]
• Promote our call to holiness
• Ensure [not 'encourage'] regular prayers for vocations
• Ensure that no outside authority or agency … is allowed to speak to pupils … on … any matter involving faith and morals
• Ensure that pupils are never referred to an outside agency for advice or counselling
• Carefully scrutinise Year Planners to ensure they do not promote the services of organisations incompatible with the Church’s moral teaching
• Teach meditation on the Word of God
• Teach Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament
• Arrange weekly adoration of the Blesses Sacrament [sic]
• Teach Devotion to Our Lady and the Rosary

(It’s not mentioned whether this devotion should be weekly or not.)

• Ensure [not 'encourage'] meaningful memorisation of basic prayers
• Teach Devotion to the Saints

Honestly, those last dozen read like some kind of scary cult handbook. Because that is precisely what this document is. It is a guide to how to effectively hijack a child’s state-funded education and use it to brainwash them into your religion, thus ensuring a nice supply of minds (and money) in the future. That people would do such a thing is still shocking to me, and that they would then be widely thought of as good people is almost as bad.

You can email the team behind the report at Mission.Review@LancasterRcDiocese.org.uk. I intend to. (I will of course blog any and all relevant correspondence.)

Edit:

They also have something they call a “blog”, but is in fact just a boring newsletter powered by WordPress. The skin they’ve chosen for it was designed by a girl who “at an early age [decided for herself] that there are no gods or supernatural forces”. Presumably they will take more care than this when “scrutinising” those Year Planners.

Having tired ofbaiting 419 scammers I set my sights a little higher and aimed at an actual published author.

Well, not really. I was directed to The Final Theory, I think by a Google ad. It’s a dreadful book. I’ve only read one chapter and the website, because I’m simply not willing to pay him any money, but that was enough to get the basic idea. He’s pedalling a bunch of pseudo-scientific gibberish (that any scientist could disprove in less than four minutes) as cold hard fact and without a shred of irony, and not only that, but he’s actually stupid enough to give out his email address on the same website.

Well, I figured that is as good as inviting debate, so I started one.

From: Andrew Taylor
Mailed-By: gmail.com
Reply-To: Andrew Taylor
To: MARKM@thefinaltheory.com
Date: 06-Jun-2005 15:20
Subject: Just one question

I’m a physics student, and I’m always interested in new theories,
particularly controversial ones, but I’ve been flipping through
thefinaltheory.com, and I’ve noticed quite a range of errors in your
science, most notably your repeated assertion that gravity should
require a power source, and your claim that scientists don’t know how
magnets cling to fridges. I can explain both these things rather
simply, so I’d just like to know why I should buy a book claiming to
refute major scientific theories authored by a man who clearly doesn’t
understand them.

Solving the great unanswered questions is an amazing achievement, but
solving the great answered questions is less impressive.

Of course, misunderstanding one theory doesn’t necessarily stop anyone
coming up wioth a different one, so I’m intruiged by what theory you
could have come up with, but I can’t bring myself to buy a book that
might just be bad science aimed at spinning out a profit, because I’m
dead against that kind of behaviour.

Andrew

I didn’t honestly expect a reply, but I got one all the same. If just goes to show how little power positive thinking has after all:

From: Mark McCutcheon
To: Andrew Taylor
Date: 09-Jun-2005 02:20
Subject: Re: Just one question

Thank you for your inquiry, Andrew. First, I would suggest that you download
the first chapter from the website and give it a read. The answers that you
feel you have to the questions I pose are, of course, the same “answers” we
are all given in school. I show that these are not actually answers at all,
but diversions that have clear flaws themselves on closer examination.
However, see what you think after reading the first chapter, and if you
don’t agree then this book probably isn’t for you. You may even be able to
get ahold of the book from your local library if expense is your main
concern — I know that it has become popular enough to be carried by many
libraries at this point.

Best regards,
Mark McCutcheon

“The same “answers” we are all given in school”? You mean the correct answers? Yeah, them’s the chaps.

From: Andrew Taylor
Mailed-By: gmail.com
Reply-To: Andrew Taylor
To: Mark McCutcheon
Date: 09-Jun-2005 15:43
Subject: Re: Just one question

If by “school” you mean a four-year physics degree course, then yes, I
learned physics in school. It seemed pointless to discover everything
from first principles when a lot of people far smarter than I had done
the legwork for me.

I have indeed read the first chapter of your book, and you may be
interested to know that I have, just this minute, PROVEN, from first
principles, geometry, and the observed speeds and distances of planets
in our solar system, that K does indeed equal GM. I did it on a side
of A4, with plenty of space to spare. You might wish to write to the
people who bought your book and let them know that that is no longer
the “unsupported and arbitrary assumption” you say it is. If you want
to save some money on stamps I could prove some other things to you
and you could send them all out at once.

Andrew

Oddly enough I never heard from him again.

There’s another (much longer) email discussion with him here, in which he abjectly fails to convince David Ruske that his theory explains orbits. As far as I can tell, Ruske is absolutely right and Mark McCutcheon’s theory is (a) an interesting diversion but not an actual explanation of anything much, and (b) the same theory put forward by several other people, at least one of whom is a cartoonist and not a scientist, but it’s hard to say for certain without actually reading the book, which as I mentioned I’m not willing to do unless I can find a copy for free.

I was disappointed today when, looking through my Favourites list, I discovered that some miserable git at AT&T has blocked the Armageddon Watch website. Well, how will we know when it’s the Armageddon now? The site, presumably, fell prey to the same laws as the Two Towers Protest Site, a delightfully idiotic page set up by well-meaning but basically stupid people who are extremely angry at film makers for trying to cash-in on the September 11 attacks by calling a film The Two Towers. I’m not about to sit here and list all the reasons this is imbecilic, but rest assured that if you need me to tell you why, this page is probably a bit high-brow for you.

All of this leads me, eventually, to one piece of advice: Check out www.alexchiu.com before they close that too. There’s quite a lot of it, so I’ll summarise:

Alex Chiu is an idiot who thinks he has developed an “Eternal Life Device”.

In more detail, he believes that placing a magnet either side of your pinky (the fingers, of course, being the positive and negative terminals of your body — presumably you should plug them into the mains to recharge, unless we run on DC) will amplify the natural magnetic energy in your body and allow your cells to line up better, and make you look lounger, heal faster, and live forever. Apparently, their “lawyer told [them] to use the word believe”. This was good advice on the part of their lawyer, but a more thorough lawyer may have suggested removing the word “proof” from half his pages. And maybe the phrase “Everything you read is true and is important”.

I suspect, though, that the lawyer was a tad busy. He had to write their disclaimers, which range from the standard “Please consult your doctor if you have a heart problem or if you are pregnant before using this device.” to the slightly Engrish “All written and oral statements are my true beliefs. There are at this moment not yet medicalclaims. I am basically writing this disclaimer to protect myself from the FDA. Thedevices are for research and experimentation of the buyers. Not to be carried outas treatment on someone else’s body.”, and culminate in his guarantee. His guarantee is separated into two lists.

The rings are believed (but not guaranteed) to:

1. Alter aging process. (Turn a person physically younger.)
2. Allow humans to stay physically young forever.
3. Cure various kinds of illnesses and diseases.
4. Improve health.

Alex Chiu guarantees:

1. Speedy delivery

But, as Alex says, “I am not one of those stupid moron who don’t know what I am doing”, so obviously he patented his design. Surely not even the US Patent Office would allow this? This is his patent document (which includes his postal address). The truly bizzare thing about it is that it has been cited as a reference by another patent. Somebody has based an invention on the Magnetic Immortality Device.

The other intresting thing I found on the patent office website was the “Kids Section”. I quickly tired of this, and decided to type in a URL I’d seen on TV, in an advert for The Video Copilot. I thought it was a joke. When I first saw the advert, I genuinely expected the Egg logo to appear and offer me a credit card. But it turned out to be a wonderfully worthless device from the makers of the Garden Claw, a company called (really) Joseph Enterprises, who also offer monthly gardening tips from Peter Surridge, who is well known “as the horticultural expert who demonstrates the Garden Claw on TV”. This month (september, apparently), he reccomends using the Garden Claw. Isn’t that a suprise?