EUSA AGM – the other motions

So my last post was about the Bibles in Pollock Halls motion going through the EUSA AGM tomorrow night (again, if you’re at Edinburgh Uni – GO AND VOTE!), but in this one I’m going to take a briefer look at the other motions of interest that are going before the meeting.

First up, and this’ll be the one I concentrate on, is the No Platform Policy motion. Basically the proposers of this motion want it so that anyone belonging to an organisation deemed racist, homophobic, sexist etc should be banned from giving talks or holding debates on campus. I’ll just pull out a select quote:

“EUSA believes:
4. That there is a difference between supporting freedom of speech and promoting or inviting speakers who are very likely to incite hatred on the specified grounds;
5. That therefore, freedom of speech can be respected and maintained whilst actively not giving a high-profile platform to an individual or group who is very likely to incite hatred and has been known to have incited hatred on the specified grounds;”

This is kind of true if it means what I think it does, but irrelevant. It’s true that although organisations have freedom of speech, that doesn’t mean that EUSA has to provide them with a platform, and freedom of speech is perfectly respected if EUSA doesn’t offer that platform. However, that is quite different from banning a group on campus from providing a platform. Yes, the societies we’re talking about do form part of EUSA, but they have their own regulatory systems, and they’re not bound to represent the majority of students on campus, like the elected bodies of EUSA are. In my opinion banning a student society from hosting a controversial speaker is an infringement on freedom of speech, it would be banning someone from giving a platform who actually wants to, quite different from what is stated in this quote I’ve taken out.

I also think this is something of a bad idea. Banning a speaker merely drives the group underground and stifles debate, when the best thing we could hope for is to have the debate and have them well and truly trounced by people with better arguments. It’s very much an idea of Mill’s, but we should encourage opposing ideas to go against each other, it’s the best way to arrive at the truth. Stifling debate in this way could actually make the problem worse.

So, does this make me a hypocrite for opposing allowing Bibles, but also opposing banning fascists? Absolutely not. You’ll remember my argument about the Bibles centred around the religious texts being imposed on people who didn’t want them. I had nothing against the CU or anyone else distributing Bibles on campus to people who wanted them. On campus, ideas should be able to flow freely, that’s what university’s about, but putting them into people’s homes is a different matter. It’s not inconsistent to say that people who want to go to these talks can go, and it’s not being imposed on anyone who’s not interested, and in the same way anyone who wants to protest it can go.

The next motion is Boycotting Israel. I’m afraid the motion is extremely long. I appreciate that there’s a lot to get in, but they’re going have to read this out to be able to vote on it and people are going to get bored and vote against it just for that reason. The motion basically says that Israel is acting illegally through the occupation of Palestine (that much is indeniable), and that EUSA should boycott, disinvest and sanction Israel and its produce, as well as any Israeli institutions. I can’t say I disagree. What’s happening in Israel is nothing less than modern-day apartheid, they’re explicitly treating the Palestinian people differently (most recently there was a report on how Palestinians don’t have enough water for their basic needs, whereas Israelis in the settlements are still able to water their lawns – most of which comes from reservoirs on Palestinian land), getting money from the natural resources of occupied territories including the Golan Heights, and bombing civilian infrastructure. We know that international pressure from NGO’s can make a difference, as we saw in South Africa, so we should be doing everything we can to turn Israel into a pariah state so that it stops what it’s doing. Unfortunately I don’t see this motion going through, there was quite a big backlash against the occupation in George Square.

The Smoking Kills motion is an effort to ban the sale of cigarettes at EUSA outlets. I think students aren’t children and they can decide whether they want to smoke or not. Meanwhile EUSA could use the revenue. They do have a couple of good points about how tobacco companies act in the third world, but tobacco products aren’t like Nestle products, there aren’t any alternatives like there are other chocolate brands. If the proposers of this motion were to ban specific tobacco companies that are known to act badly in the third world, rather than just a blanket ban on cigarettes altogether, I think they’d have a better argument. I also don’t see this going through, there are too many smokers in the student population.

Finally, and most importantly, is the Enabling motion. This one carries a weird amendment with it, some of which doesn’t seem to have an awful lot to do with the motion itself. It basically means that future issues can be decided either at a general meeting as usual, or in a referendum (most likely to be held online). This will prevent problems with the meetings not being quorate, and will enable more students to take part in the democratic process, which can only be a good thing. I only have one problem. It is not clear what will happen if we have the general meeting voting for a motion, and the referendum voting against it. But I’d still vote for it.

Bibles in Pollock Halls? You’ve got to be joking…

Edit: Since writing this, it has come to my attention that the Christian Union actually have nothing to do with the motion (see comment dated 11/11/09). It was proposed by two of their long standing committee members, which is what led to the confusion on my part. I can only apologise for that assumption. Please note, however, that although much of the argument here is misdirected towards the CU, it loses none of its validity.

Unfortunately not. The Christian Union at the University of Edinburgh have put forward a motion for the student association’s AGM to allow themselves or another organisation to put Bibles in each of the bedrooms in Pollock Halls. If you’re a student at Edinburgh University, I urge you to read this post, although it’s likely to be quite long, and if you have a comment, if you disagree or whatever, post it here in the comments thread. I’d like to get a discussion on this motion going and hopefully get a bit of interest so that the necessary 300 students turn up to the AGM and it’s not a complete waste of time for everyone involved.

But first, a bit of history. A few years ago the Student Representatives Council passed a motion banning Gideon or any other religious organisation from putting Bibles in the rooms at Pollock Halls, the student halls. Following that, the CU proposed a motion to the general meeting lifting this ban, which got a majority of the vote, but not enough votes for it to pass (the EUSA system requires that at least 300 people vote for a motion for it to pass, they got 200 and something). This all happened before I was at uni and before the Humanist Society existed, but there are legends that when Gideon were allowed to place their Bibles in the rooms, it resulted in them being thrown out the window, torn to pieces or even in some cases burnt. I’m not exactly in favour of that but it demonstrates how a lot of students feel about evangelising on campus.

Anyway here’s a copy of the motion as it is now. As far as I can tell it hasn’t been amended so this is what will go before the general meeting. Seeing as I’m not in Edinburgh and won’t be able to attend the meeting, all I can really do about it is post a point-by-point rebuttal of what is says. This is more or less the argument I would give if I were to speak, and if I were given more time than you’re allowed at that meeting.

So, first up

The association notes: Article 9 (Freedom of thought, conscious and religion and freedom to manifest such beliefs in public and private) and Article 10 (Freedom of expression which includes the freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers) of the European Convention of Human Rights which is incorporated into UK law by the Human Rights Act 1998.

That’s absolutely true, it does say that. This is no doubt an inclusion of one of the proposers of this motion, law student David Nixon, who even managed to use the right to freedom of assembly to justify denying non-Christians access to the Christian Union earlier this year. That was bizarre, twisted logic and so’s this. He’s trying to use the right to freedom of conscience and expression to justify leaving a Christian text within the privacy of someone’s room. You have the right to express your opinion, you don’t have the right to come into my living room and do it. Interestingly, the motion doesn’t mention the second point to each of these articles, which states that these rights may be subject to conditions or restrictions in order to preserve the rights of others, among other things.

Next:

The association believes: That the Bible has had a powerful impact on Scottish Culture and is useful to the study of many disciplines including literature, history, law, social anthropology, classics, divinity and philosophy.

That’s true as well (although I’m not sure how it’s useful for the study of law – it is, of course, a perfect example of how not to do philosophy), but so what? Would you use it to justify putting the complete works of Robert Burns in every room in Pollock? The Bible is available online (this point will come up repeatedly, just to warn you), as well as in the library. Anyone needing access to it has it right there at their fingertips.

That many religions, philosophies and spiritualities respect the contents of the Bible.

Most of them consider it blasphemy, actually. Regardless, this is a popularity argument and has no place in a motion of this type.

That many students have taken comfort in a Bible passage in times of distress and this is important given that the University Chaplaincy Centre is only open 9am – 9pm weekdays and is only staffed 9am-5pm.

Let’s take a look at that claim, shall we? Nightline is also open throughout the night, but let’s leave that aside for a minute. What are common causes of distress? Maybe being a member of a disadvantaged or minority group? Say there’s a student who’s gay, but having only just moved to university, noone there knows. Quite a difficult situation, I’d say. Now say that student opens the Bible and discovers that according to that philosophy, they deserve to be put to death. Not exactly ideal. The same kind of discrimination found in the Bible refers to women, pagans, and anyone who’s not a Christian. This isn’t exactly the kind of thing that should be allowed to be placed in people’s rooms. Those who do want to consult the Bible can do so online, or in the library.

That by providing the Bible and other Scriptures the University is not necessarily promoting the contents of such texts but merely making a service available to students. There is nothing to prevent the university or EUSA attaching stickers to any books placed in Pollock making clear that the University does not endorse the views contained within such books.

Yes, it would be making a service available. A service that is already widely available on the internet, or in the library. Hardly one that is lacking at the moment.

5. That it is in the interests of promoting religious diversity and promoting freedom of expression and religion that EUSA do not prevent Bibles being placed in rooms in Pollock.
6. That the University should be a free market place of ideas and as such no view should be suppressed or censored. True tolerance would allow all views a chance to be fairly represented and would not ban the distribution of any books.

Erm, starting with number 5, no it’s not. It’s in the interest of freedom of expression and conscience to allow people to believe and express themselves as they wish in public or private. This is completely contrary to allowing people to impose the Bible onto people who aren’t interested or who hold different beliefs.

As for number 6, the Bible is not being censored. As I’ve said several times now, the Bible is available online and in the library; the University is in fact actively making it available. To claim, therefore, that it is being censored, is nothing short of ludicrous. In addition, the distribution of the Bible has not been banned. The CU is free to, and regularly do, distribute copies of their religious texts. I have 7 copies of John’s gospel given to me by members of the CU. Unless they’ve been taken away since I was last there, there’s a big box of them underneath the stairs in George Square Lecture Theatre, the very building where the AGM will take place! The only difference between them distributing them on campus, and putting them in people’s rooms, is that when they’re distributing them, people can say no. This motion just allows religious groups to push the Bible or other religious texts onto people who otherwise wouldn’t want it.

That any group or society representing any particular point of view who wish to provide literature to be placed in every room in Pollock should be allowed to do so providing the books are made available freely at their own expense.

Oh so we’re not just talking about religious groups? So why don’t we allow the Socialist Society to put a copy of the Communist Manifesto in each room? Of course in response, the Conservative and Unionist Society will want a copy of their literature in the rooms too, and so will any other organised group out there. The University already has this kind of resource available, it’s right next door to George Square and it’s called the Main Library! But that last part, about the books being made available freely “at their own expense” is an interesting addition, I wonder why they put that in? Could it be that they know the CU, with its large membership and funded by the UCCF, is the only group on campus that would be able to afford such a project? Methinks so. More on that later.

The Association resolves: To mandate the President of EUSA to represent these views to Accommodation Services so that the situation can be returned to what it used to be prior to the SRC deciding Bibles
should be removed from Pollock.

You mean returned to what it was before progress was made, right?

Secularists tend to have two responses to this kind of problem. The first, very prominent in the States, would be to allow every group, religious or not, to put their book in the rooms. This is how ludicrous situations like the Washington State nativity scene come about. The second would be to not allow any groups to do it. I favour that option, and here’s why. It doesn’t matter if you give access to all groups, the big fish will always be able to dominate, in this case the CU will be able to put the Bible in the rooms and other groups will struggle. Then we’re back to the situation, where one group is favoured over another, that we were trying to avoid in the first place!

So that is why we shouldn’t pass this motion. Agree? Disagree? Put your comments here!

There are also a number of other motions going through the AGM which are of interest. One is about taking action against Israel, and another is about not giving a platform to discriminatory groups on campus. Maybe I’ll put a similar post up about that one. But regardless of where you stand on any of these issues, go to the AGM and vote! It’s on the 17th November 7pm in George Square Lecture Theatre.

Should the BBC have hosted the BNP?

Before I start, because this won’t be too long, a few pieces of news in case you haven’t heard:

1. Last week, Simon Singh was given permission to appeal against the ruling on meaning in the case against the British Chiropractic Association. That means David Eady’s ruling on the meaning of the word ‘bogus’ might not stand. In a stunning display of stupidity, the BCA also accused Singh of attacking them maliciously on their website, which gives him the option of countersuing, which inimitable law expert Jack of Kent reckons will bring the case to an end. I hope that doesn’t happen except as a last resort. As always, check out Jack of Kent’s blog for more information.

2. Over at the Friendly Humanist, Tim’s wife Deena has recently given birth to their second child, a healthy boy named Javan Allan Mills. Congratulations Tim, I’m made up.

3. Last week the Daily Mail published a disgusting column by Jan Moir on the death of Steven Gately, which drew links between his homosexuality, his lifestyle, his death and the deaths of other gay celebrities, saying there was nothing natural about his death (I mean it can’t possibly have been, after all he was gay), even though that’s exactly what the coroner has found. Fortunately the British public aren’t as homophobic as she is, and a record number of over 22,000 people have complained to the press complaints commission about the article. We’ll see what comes of it.

Anyway onto the issue. Last Thursday the BBC’s Question Time, a show during which members of the public can put questions to member of a panel including public figures like politicians, featured Nick Griffin, the racist and homophobic leader of the British Nationalist Party. I’m not in the UK so I couldn’t watch it live on the web, having to rely on Youtube the next afternoon to find out how it went.

I understand from discussions in forums that there has been a fair bit of controversy over whether the BBC should have allowed Griffin to appear in the show. There have been protests outside BBC headquarters, and the main claim is that it gives a platform to extremist and offensive views, and may lead to a further rise in popularity for the BNP.

This question was brought up at the end of the show, and the opinion of some of the panelists was that in our democracy we enjoy freedom of speech and under that freedom, the BNP has a right to express its opinions and the BBC has the right to broadcast them. I agree. The thing about freedom of speech is that you can’t just choose what kinds of opinions can be expressed, you have to include things that the majority might find offensive. Otherwise it would just be a tyranny of the majority. Just as the BNP has a right to their opinions I have a right to point out why they are wrong and express my opinion too.

But of course it’s not that simple. Mainstream media outlets have to realise that they have a wide audience and they have to take responsibility for what they broadcast or publish, especially when some things are put across as fact or as a voice of authority. This is one of the reasons why I objected to Jan Moir’s article above, she claims that there was nothing natural about the death when there was, and her frankly disgusting views were given a veneer of respectability by their prominent position on the pages of a mainstream newspaper. It’s not good enough.

So, does that mean I don’t think the BBC should have allowed the BNP on TV? No. The show pulled no punches; where someone tried to chat shit or avoid the question, they were pulled up on it, whether it was that Tory with the weird accent, Jack Straw, or Nick Griffin. Admittedly it was Griffin more than anyone else, but that’s just because his views are so extreme, they needed pulling up more often than anyone else. That’s one of the reasons why I think his complaint that they changed the format will fail. The format consists of questions posed by the public. Clearly the public wanted to challenge Griffin on his views. Planting other questions on the postal strike against what the majority wanted to focus on would have been changing the format, so he doesn’t have a leg to stand on. He was shown to be the racist homophobic fool he is, despite his attempts to lie to the audience, so the BBC did not give his voice respectability and neither did they allow him to present his lies as facts. In that sense, I think they were quite responsible in their broadcasting.

Beppe Grillo and V Day

Just to draw attention to a new addition to the blogroll. This is Beppe Grillo’s blog, which I’ve been reading regularly for a couple of weeks now. You can read it in English, Italian or Japanese. Grillo is an Italian comedian who has turned his attention to political reform. He is scathingly critical of the current regime there, to the point that no public Italian TV network wants him on air for fear of attracting the furore of politicians, many of whom have a big hand in the media, not least Berlusconi himself. In spite of this, he is still one of the most famous personalities in Italy, broadcasting over the internet (not easy in Italy, where internet access it quite strictly controlled), and when he did make a rare TV appearance in the 90’s the show got huge viewing numbers.

Here’s an introductory video from the New York Times. I don’t know how to embed it else I would but it’s worth watching, please do come back . I think ‘Va Fan Culo’ (or however you spell it) is now one of my favourite expletives. It translates quite well into the fine Scottish term, “get to fuck”.

Each post will typically have a video which obviously is in Italian, I can understand more or less because I live with an Italian and I’m used to hearing it and translating into Spanish, but there’s a nifty little tool which I’ve grown to love. If you go the the bottom right of the video and turn on captions, then subtitles come up. You can then translate these subtitles into English which I believe uses Google translate (don’t knock it, it used to be crap but it’s got much better in the last few years, although it’s still not perfect). So you can enjoy too. Here’s an example so you can see just how brilliant a public speaker Grillo is, it’s a 25 minute video outlining what the movement wants to do. You don’t have to watch it all, the part about information is the best, that starts at about 16:10.

Anyway there are two things making headlines in Italian politics at the minute. First of all is the so-called ‘Lodo Alfano’ which is a law granting immunity from prosecution to the holders of the four highest offices in Italian politics. Basically it was a means of making Berlusconi not have to face prosecution for his crimes. It works quite well in conjunction with another law which shortened the time limit of prosecutions for some offenses, mainly the ones he and his cronies have been accused of. So if he can avoid prosecutions whilst in office, and he’s been in office for more than 10 years, and a law put through by him means that after 10 years he can’t be prosecuted, well then he’s just getting off scot-free. A select Orwellian quote I read somewhere by one of his supporters was that the Prime Minister should not be seen as a ‘first among equals’ but rather ‘first above equals’. Fortunately this Lodo Alfano got struck down this week by the constitutional court, because it conflicts with an article of the Constitution which says all citizens are equal before the law, and a constitutional amendment would need to be passed to pass the law. Lots of my Italian friends are celebrating this, it seems to me that good news is few and far between in Italian politics.

The other thing is the Fiscal Shield. This is a move designed to allow 300 billion euros to move back into Italy from offshore banks and investments with just a 5% tax, which the additional guarantee of anonymity. I can’t stress how corrupt this is. Basically any money from dodgy dealings, money laundering, mafia money, tax-dodgers etc will be able to reenter the country to create a legitimate-appearing front for any other illegal activities. Brilliant. This one’s still going ahead, and the deputies of the opposition parties were noticably absent from the vote in Parliament. 24 outspoken opponents were absent, and 20 would have been enough to overturn the law, which the government had also turned into a vote of confidence, so it was a monumentally important vote.

Anyway although Grillo and his V Day movement is massive in Italy, I don’t think many people know about it outside of there. I myself had never even heard about it until my Italian flatmate mentioned it. So if you’re interested in this kind of thing, spread the word. There are hordes of like-minded people throughout the rest of the world who can do a lot of damage to the Italian government’s already terrible public image, if only they had a bit of information. It’s in the interest of democracy and liberty, something that humanists should definitely be concerned about.

Ray Comfort and The Way of the Master

I presume people will be familiar with Ray Comfort. He’s the guy with the Atheist Nightmare video which you must know. If not just type Atheist Nightmare into youtube, there’s lots of versions but the one that hasn’t been modified is the best one. Anyway I stumbled across this video today which I genuinely thought was a spoof. So here it is, and I’ll take apart a few of the things said within it. Sorry it’s a bit outdated.

So first of all we have the thing about atheists removing the part about the coke can, “missing the point of the illustration completely”. I fail to see how taking out the part about the coke can misses the point. I haven’t found the part about the coke can but I know how Comfort works, he takes something that is designed and compares it to something natural, indicating that it must be designed. He’s done it with the Mona Lisa, a painting in a cave, all kinds of stuff. That message about how bananas must have been designed for us came across clearly without the need for the stuff about the coke can. But that’s not important.

Next up is about how the atheists actually ended up helping Ray Comfort. Apparently on the day of release, Comfort’s book “You Can Lead an Atheist to Evidence, But You Can’t Make Him Think” went from number 69, 572, up to number 38 on it’s day of release. Meh, that’s kind of impressive but books always shoot up on their release days, they’re being released that day. After the kind of audience that were viewing the atheist nightmare vid, I suspect a fair few of those were atheists looking for more material to laugh at. But whatever. Next up it beats The God Delusion on Darwin Day. Comfort’s book came out in 2009, according to the inside cover which is on Amazon. The God Delusion came out 3 years earlier in 2006. This is not good evidence that more people are interested in Comfort’s opinions than Dawkins’, just that lots of people already had a copy of the God Delusion. That doesn’t really matter either.

Ray apologises for the atheist nightmare after it’s pointed out that bananas were bred by humans, but maintains that God gave ‘man’ the ability and knowledge to modify it. So God gave people this knowledge but chose to conceal it until people figured it out for themselves, or what? This is an act of humanity, God can’t take the credit for this one. But more than that, he’s missed the whole point of the criticism. The videos weren’t just showing that this example was wrong, but that he’s using a dodgy argument. Why does he just look at the banana when there’s the whole of creation out there? The coconut isn’t easy to eat at all, but supposedly God also designed that. Additionally, fruit evolved on this planet, often collaboratively with birds, for example, so that they’ll be eaten and their seeds will be spread, so it’s no suprise that they’re tasty, it’s in their own interest.

Now the video slips into weird casual sexism which is why I thought it was a spoof. It repeatedly refers to people as ‘man’, which is nothing new, but then says that “man did the same [modified through hybridisation] with wild cats, so that they are perfectly fit for his wife”. What the hell! Accompanied by an old sepia photograph this definitely gave the impression of women as sitting at home helpless, waiting for their big strong husbands to come back with a gift of a domesticated cat. The waaay outdated use of a singular, masculine pronoun to refer to the human race actually gave me the impression that Ray was talking about God at this point, which got a bit weird when he started talking about God’s car and God’s wife.

Then the vid takes a swipe at Dawkins using the Expelled film. When pushed to admit that Intelligent Design may have some kind of input into genetics and evolution, he said that it’s possible that a very intelligent being with superior technology may have designed a form of life, which is a possibility, and that it’s possible that there could be some kind of signature. Stein then goes on to claim in a voiceover (drowning out something else that Dawkins said) that Dawkins considers Intelligent Design a possibly legitimate pursuit. I notice he didn’t say that in the interview, else he would have clarified that there’s no evidence of that in the evolution of life on Earth. The implication is then that Dawkins just has a problem with the idea of God and is biased, when actually he even says in the clip that whoever created this new life would have had to have evolved by Darwinian means, because it couldn’t just spring from nothing! This isn’t a bias, this is a good argument! What’s the problem with stating a possibility, I mean we’re not all that far from creating life now! But instead of listening to what he actually say, the Way of the Master video hears a reference to an alien and giggles like a schoolgirl “ooh, he say alien, he stoopiid”, as if mentioning this possibility is as stupid as Ray’s banana argument. Wow.

What Comfort doesn’t seem to realise is that Dawkins’ objection to debating stupid creationists isn’t anything to do with money or fear that he’ll lose. He has stated repeatedly that he won’t do it because he doesn’t want to give creationism the honour of being put side by side with science.

The Ontological Argument

Ok, so seeing as the Ontological Argument is so terrible and won’t take long, I’m going to preface this with a bit of a jibe at Conservapedia. If you read the blogs you’ve probably heard by now that they’ve decided to rewrite the Bible to get rid of all the liberal bias contained within it. It’s pretty ludicrous but nothing particularly new, there are plenty of translations out there with their own theological bias and this is just one more. One little thing though. If we’re taking Conservative to mean an effort to maintain the past and oppose reform, then isn’t this action quite distinctly un-Conservative of them? I mean it’s bordering on liberal to just change the Bible. Also, they say it would take one person a year to do it, which is obviously going to be spread across a lot of people. But if anyone can edit it (in fact it’s likely a Poe that started this whole thing), then how are they going to be sure that only Bible experts are going to translate? There aren’t all that many people fluent in ancient languages.

Anyway onto the Ontological Argument. The argument was devised by St Anselm, and I’m ashamed to say that my school was named after this dweeb. One day I decided to look up who he was and when I came across this argument, it was a real facepalm moment, even though I was still a Christian. Here’s how it goes:

1. God is defined as the greatest individual that can be conceived.

2. A God that exists is greater than a God which does not exist.

3. Therefore, God exists.

Just go and read that again, hopefully you won’t need to read the rest of this post. Amazingly I’ve heard this argument used within the last couple of years. A friend of mine who isn’t a Christian but has been known to consider the first cause argument quite persuasive wrote an essay for his philosophy course agreeing with it, and somehow got a good mark. I read it afterwards, it was bollocks!

Anyway there are several lines of argument against this travesty of logic. Let’s start with the most obvious. Being able to conceive of something does not mean that it exists. Sounds pretty obvious but Anselm was one of those people who claimed faith comes before reason, which tends to lead to circular reasoning. What this argument does is assert God to be perfect, and then claim existence to be a perfect attribute, effectively asserting that God exists in the first premise! When what we should really be doing is taking a list of all the things that can be conceived, next to that taking a list of everything that exists, and then cross-checking the lists to find the Highest Common Factor (in terms of perfection), which then we know exists. This would be something like… Oreos, I dunno.

Secondly, since when is existence a greater attribute than non-existence? I don’t think you could even call existence an attribute at all since things that don’t exist don’t have any attributes. That’s a premise that you would have to justify. But besides that, I can conceive of plenty of things better than the Christian God. One who’s not such a prick for a start! So suck on those mouldy apples, Anselm, my God is more perfect than yours and therefore by your logic exists.

Another thing is, we could prove the existence of anything! Every God who is claimed to be perfect exists, even the ones who say the other ones don’t exist. Babe Ruth is apparently the greatest baseball player ever. But I can conceive of a baseball player who was better than Babe Ruth, and since existence is a greater attribute than non-existence, then a baseball player better than Babe Ruth must exist!

There are plenty of parodies of this argument but this is my favourite, which I robbed off Iron Chariots (which, by the way, is an excellent resource both for counter-apologists and for religionists who want to strengthen their arguments). It’s called Gasking’s Proof:

1. The creation of the universe is the greatest achievement imaginable.
2. The merit of an achievement consists of its intrinsic greatness and the ability of its creator.
3. The greater the handicap to the creator, the greater the achievement (would you be more impressed by Turner painting a beautiful landscape or a blind one-armed dwarf?)
4. The biggest handicap to a creator would be non-existence
5. Therefore if we suppose that the universe is the creation of an existing creator, we can conceive a greater being — namely, one who created everything while not existing.
6. Therefore, God does not exist.

Fine tuning argument

PostScript: This has turned into a massive post, I do apologize. It’s also kind of dry and not particularly funny. Maybe I’ll see if I can liven it up with pictures or something to make it less daunting.

I believe I wrote a piece on this topic a while ago after some goon gave a talk at an Edinburgh Creation Group meeting but this will be a more structured approach rather than a rant, I hope. The fine tuning argument is something that I’ve seen come up a few times in online discussions and it’s pretty stupid. Not quite up there with the ontological argument which I may write up about soon, but pretty stupid when you come to think about it.

The fine tuning argument simply states that there are a number of cosmological constraints which must be within a certain threshold in order for life to exist, and since they are within those thresholds that allow life to exist, it’s reasonable to conclude that the universe was designed that way with life as it’s purpose. It often comes side by side with arguments about the earth being perfect for human life which I’ll also mention here very briefly, and the strong anthropic principle which is quite similar, but also goes further to say that a universe must have the properties necessary for life, otherwise it wouldn’t exist.

So lets start with the whole Earth being designed for us thing. The argument usually goes along the lines that if the Earth was any further away from the sun it’d be too cold for life, and any further away, it’d be too cold. If the moon was any closer then the tides would cause massive flooding which would make land based life impossible, any further away and the tides wouldn’t be enough which means a lot of water based life forms wouldn’t be able to survive, things like that.

Well I have two arguments agains this. First of all is that life has evolved on this planet to adapt to its environment. Yes we couldn’t survive if it was too cold, but if it was a little more cold other life forms could have arisen. We do have some beings on this planet living in very difficult conditions. Similarly if the tides were different, we would have evolved differently, just as if gravity was greater on this planet we’d have evolved a lot differently. The second argument is that we shouldn’t be surprised that we are able to live on this planet, since this is where we live and those conditions are necessary in order for the development of an intelligent observer. If this planet wasn’t capable of supporting life, then we wouldn’t be here, just as if another planet that now isn’t capable of supporting life was, then life may have evolved there and they’d be saying the exact same thing. It’s no coincidence that life has developed in conditions suitable for life. As Douglas Adams was known to say, a puddle wakes up one morning and thinks: ‘This is a very interesting world I find myself in. It fits me very neatly. In fact it fits me so neatly… I mean really precise isn’t it?… It must have been made to have me in it.’” This is the weak anthropic principle. If there are more planets capable of supporting life than the inverse probability of life developing on any one of them, then actually life developing somewhere in the universe would be a statistical certainty rather than something to be surprised about.

Then we get to the fine tuning argument itself which is that not only is the planet designed to support us, but the universe too. So if the strong nuclear force was a bit different then heavier elements would be impossible to make, meaning life wouldn’t have formed, and if the Big Bang had expanded any slower it would have collapsed leaving not enough time for life to develop.

There are a great many arguments against this. First of all, to notice that the VAST majority of the universe does not support life, and then to claim that the purpose of the universe is to support life, is massively arrogant. Clearly the universe is better suited to making black holes than it is to supporting life, since we have observed many black holes and are yet to observe a planet with life other than ours (ok, black holes are also easier to observe but you get my point). The supporters of this argument are arbitrarily deciding that life is the purpose of the galaxy, even though it does other things much better. There is no reason to suppose that any natural phenomenon requires a fine tuner any more than any other, other than subjective judgement. In fact human beings have created areas far more finely tuned to supporting life than even just the planet Earth, never mind the rest of the universe. If we can do better than this creator, well then I’ve got better things to do than waste my time worshipping this lousy intern with a bad attitude.

Secondly, many of the constants are related so although Hugh Ross says he has 101, it’s actually much fewer than that. For example the force of gravity and the rate of expansion of the universe are related, and cannot be changed independently. This reduces the odds considerably.

Thirdly, we can also apply the weak anthropic principle to this argument. It’s entirely plausible that there could be a multiverse out there with a universe for each one of the possible combinations of the cosmological constants. Many of them may have ended by now since their particular combination rendered a universe un-maintainable. Many of them may not have even started. In this case, just as it’s no surprise that we’re on a planet that supports life, we should not be surprised that we’re in a universe that is capable of supporting life, since we are, you know, alive.

At this point the religionist will point out that since there is no evidence of a multiverse, then it is faith just the same as believing in a creator. My response to that is that it is a small leap of faith, but nothing like to the extent that belief in a creator is, since we live in one universe and see no reason why something similar could not exist outside of it, whereas we have no experience of anything like a being capable of creating a universe.

On a similar vein, it could also be that the cosmological constants are different in different parts of the universe. We have only observed a very small part of the universe and although I’m not so big on physics that I know it’s possible, it’s not beyond question. If we live in an oscillating universe, every time there’s a big crunch it could be that the cosmological constraints are scrambled. The idea of a fine-tuner is one that I don’t really accept because it implies that there’s some kind of machine with knobs that are turned by someone, which assumes the conclusion and begs the question, but let’s say that the universal constants can be changed and are, at random. Maybe in the vast majority of cases a universe isn’t possible, so the constants keep scrambling until a Big Bang happens. Maybe only a fraction of those universes are capable of supporting life, but again with the weak anthropic principle we should not be surprised that we live in one that does.

Just as a bit of an addition to this point, it could be that the constraints of our universe are conducive to the development of many different forms of life. This would kind of piss on the fire of a religionist who considers humanity to be the sole point of the universe. It could also be that a fairly wide range of universal constants different to the ones we enjoy in this universe may be conducive to the development of some kind of life. This reduces the magical properties of the universal constants we have and reduces the odds of life developing considerably.

Additionally, we don’t know how the universe works and we have no idea how many different combinations of the universal constants are possible! Without such knowledge, claiming that the constants have been fine-tuned is nothing more than speculation.

Now I’m going to get a little more philosophical and try to argue that the argument is actually self-refuting, partly inspired by the “Why God almost certainly does not exist” chapter of Dawkin’s God Delusion (which in that context I actually don’t think is a particularly good argument, but whatever). The argument claims that in order for life to exist there must have been a creator who fine tuned the constants. And yet in the same breath it assumes the existence of a creator who existed in conditions that did not require a creator. So either the initial premise that these conditions require a creator are false, or we have an infinite regress of creators fine-tuning the universe to make the existence of the next creator possible.

Additionally, it could be that the probability of the constants being the way they are is lower than the probability of the existence of a supernatural creator. That would make our existence unlikely, but a naturalistic explanation more likely than that of a creator, which means it was just a lucky roll of the dice.

The final part of this set of arguments (and I promise this’ll be short) is that the universe must contain life, else it would not exist. Well, that’s just a lie. The universe would still exist if there was no life in it, it would just go unobserved.

So I think I’ve made a pretty strong case. Sorry about that.

Jesus Camp Canadian Style

I’d just like to draw attention to a series of videos I just discovered. After a few days without internet, I went to take a quick peek at The Atheist Experience Blog, where just today, Tracie posted this little review of a YouTube playlist. She didn’t post the link but luckily (because I couldn’t find it) a commenter posted a link to the YouTube channel she was talking about, which can be found here.

The playlist is called ShwaNerd’s Camping Trip and it deals with a trip he took to a Pentecostal church camp. He attempted to make something similar to the Jesus Camp film which made the rounds a while ago, and I presume it’s not finished because it seems to just cut out at the end. A great deal of the video is actually just audio. I presume this is because (as well as keeping the size of the videos down for upload) this kid is seriously in the atheist closet and he doesn’t want to reveal where he was filming from in case he’s found out. As an atheist living in Europe I am so grateful of the accident of birth that put me in a situation where it’s OK not to believe, where I don’t have to hide and pretend to be someone else. I can be as outspoken as I like and noone can do anything about it.

Anyway one of the things that comes up in the videos is about money, which I think is a bit strange. In the Catholic Church there was a collection every week but it was understood that this money went to third world projects, especially to CAFOD, and only a small amount was taken for the upkeep of the church, for example. Maybe that wasn’t true but it’s the way it seemed to me. Here, it’s explicitly clear that this money goes to the church, you’re giving to God (because God needs money). In the first clip there’s a glimpse of how much money comes into the church from donations. They get $55,000 from donations (I think that’s just for this week long camp) and they still ask for more. In other clips, most significantly the fourth, they’re asking kids (this is a youth camp) for money at the services telling them that they can catch God’s eye that way. The giving is nothing to do with doing good deeds, it’s just for that personal relationship with God which is so crucial in a lot of fundamentalist ideologies. It’s really shocking for me, hussling kids out of their money with promises of God’s love which they can’t possibly know they’ll get. There wasn’t even any mention of the story in Mark’s gospel about the poor old woman giving more than the rich man, even though she only gave a few coins, which in a sermon about giving is pretty standard, in my experience. I don’t know what else to say.

We gets email!

So like I say I’m not having much luck finding humanisty stuff around here in Malaga. I did find a(nother) cool video by QualiaSoup which I think I’ll be blogging at some point, but here’s something a little closer to home. The Humanist Society at UoE regularly hold a prayer contest, which goes like this. The morning of the contest, a member of the society randomly generates a number, which goes into a sealed envelope. Noone else knows the number. Two other members of the society run the contest, getting people to choose a ‘god’ which could be anyone, and pray to this god for intervention whilst they roll the dice, trying to get as close as possible to the randomly generated, and unknown, number. Whoever wins, well then their God is obviously the one to pray to for divine intervention! Last year we also ran a parallel experiment using the wisdom of crowds phenomenon, where people had to guess the weight of a candle, the object being that none of the Gods were right, but the general guess of humanity was more or less on the money. Harmless, you might say.

Anyway so someone’s complained and I’m going to take their complaint apart piece by piece. I should mention that I haven’t actually sent this email back. You may call this two-faced but a response has already been sent from the society and I think it would be inappropriate to send another which probably says more or less the same thing but a bit more diplomatically. But if this person decides to read it here I’ll be happy to address any other complaints.

“okay.. this Wednesday at your freshers fair one of members decided to taunt the other religions at the fair by requesting four digit numbers and names of gods, then rolling a series of dice to prove that the peoples gods did not care.”

That’s not actually true, we don’t do this to taunt (in fact I don’t believe the members of the religious societies I know would even be bothered by it), there are indeed many other reasons why we do it. It demonstrates that the supernatural is difficult to quantify and measure, it makes people realise that there is more than one god out there on the market, it encourages people to question the world around them, it shows that if you’re going to make a claim about divine intervention, you should back it up with evidence. Perhaps most importantly, it demonstrates a sense of humour.

“This was a vague and frankly stupid attempt to taunt people of faith and to demonstrate your own faith as superior (and yes I mean faith in the same way that Richard Dawkins, the confessed atheist, has faith). It was
purely a random attempt to insult and aggravate and proved only that you were little, and did not understand your own cause.”

As I’ve said, we didn’t do this to taunt anyone. Humanists do not have faith. Please try to understand this, because it’s an argument that comes up time and time again. Faith is believing something without evidence. Humanism and atheism are not faith, they are simply a lack of belief in God (or that and more, in the case of humanism) since there is no evidence to demonstrate that there is one. There is no leap of faith involved. If we were to say “there definitely is no God”, then yes, that would be a faith position, because we couldn’t back that up with evidence, because you can’t prove the non-existence of an invisible being that seems determined not to be detected. But in the absense of evidence we maintain the neutral position of not believing until sufficient evidence is supplied. Google “Russell’s teapot” or “the invisible pink unicorn” for more information.

Yes, many of us are passionate about our lack of belief, but that is because we see the harm that religion often does to society and the way it affects the rational thinking of the population, as well as in some cases the public understanding of science, but this does not make it a faith position. Some even lean to the side that the evidence (such as the Problem of Evil), points to there not being a god, certainly not in the sense that the Abrahamic faiths tend to see it. But again, this is only going where the evidence takes us, there is no faith involved.

“As you claim to be humanist, a belief/devotion to the respect of humankind as a whole and one that accepts that people, even those of faith, should be approached with compassion, I would like to hear a public apology from your society for its members actions.”

I wonder if you actually heard any of our members directly insulting anyone else in the room? I was not present but it would be very out of character of any member of the society. What this experiment did was challenge an idea, the power of prayer, not an individual. Religion is an idea just like any other, it is not protected from criticism. We do not hold respect for any idea, not even our own, because if you can’t defend your ideas from criticism, then what’s the point in holding them in the first place? The only apology you will get is that we’re sorry you think independently-minded students need to be protected from our gentle questioning of an extraordinary claim such as the power of prayer.
“Should this not be forth-coming I shall label your society as obviously only intended to offend and shall report its actions to the student societies council (who ban societies based upon racist or discriminatory views) and the various humanist organisations across the UK and request that your society should be shut down.”

I fail to see how the experiment was discriminatory. Anyone who wished to take part was allowed to, and those who declined to (only 6 out of over a hundred) were not asked again. EUSA and the student societies council are well aware of our group and what we do, and I’m certain that any attempt to have the society shut down would result in failure. We comply with EUSA rules and enjoy the freedom of speech that being a member of a liberal democracy involves. The hypersensitivity of others is no reason to suppress freedom of speech.

Furthermore if you think this is sufficient justification to shut down a society, perhaps you should consider making a complaint about the majority of the religious societies, many of which explicitly state that anyone who doesn’t believe as they do will suffer for eternity. We do not take this seriously, although it is certainly much more offensive than what we were doing at the Fresher’s Fair.

“Before you ask.. I’m an agnostic (In the words of Old Harry’s Game an Atheist without courage in their conviction). However I have more respect for a Christian evangelist who believes he is trying to save my soul that an atheist who preaches just to taunt me because they believe they are right.”

Atheists who argue against religion do not do so because they believe they are right. They do it because they see the bad effects that holding religious belief can cause, some of which I have already mentioned. They do it simply to search for the truth, just as a scientist would publish a paper refuting the ideas of a well-respected theory. Ideas, as I have said, are not immune to criticism, they should invite it! I have little respect for someone who makes the claim that my soul is in danger, and then uses that claim to convince me of that same claim’s truth, without consideration for the evidence. If it held any sway with me then I would simply believe the faith which has the greatest penalty for disbelief. I would expect anyone to respect more someone who strives for the truth via science and evidence, than someone who gets their truth from an Iron Age text or a nice feeling in their stomach, for example. I also presume you would respect such a person more than someone who denies women their rights, or who discriminates against gay, lesbian and transsexual people, or who preaches to children that they are going to burn in hell unless they adopt a certain lifestyle?

There’s nothing positive about positive discrimination

This is the latest column in Humanitie. This time, Tim at the Friendly Humanist and I tackle positive discrimination and come to fairly different conclusions. Be sure to read this side by side with Tim’s column.

When I was at school, one of the things we did in Spanish class was to take a newspaper article on a subject, split the class and debate over its content. One day, the article was on Zapatero appointing equal numbers of men and women to his Cabinet, and I was supposed to argue against it. “Bloody brilliant,” I remember thinking, “how the hell am I supposed to argue against equal representation for women in government? That’s like arguing in favour of apartheid!”

I was about to bite the bullet and falsely take the machista line, all too familiar in an all-boys Catholic school, when I looked at the accompanying photograph and suddenly it hit me. (An idea, not the photograph.) Why are they making such a big deal out of this? Why does it matter how many women are on the Cabinet? If we’re going to insist that the government represents the demographic from which it gains its legitimacy, then are we also going to select people based on religious belief? Race? Disability? Age?  Class? Left-handedness? I understand 1 in 18 people have a third nipple… The whole point of the equality movement is that race, sex, disability and all that shouldn’t matter, and yet this positive discrimination malarkey is shining a huge light on each feature and saying “Look! Women in government! Big deal! Big deal!”

Whatever happened to just hiring someone because they’re most suited to the job? Wouldn’t women (or any other disadvantaged person for that matter) rather get a job because they’re the best person for it, rather than because they fulfil a quota? I’d rather have a black, 50 year old blind woman who’s good at her job represent me in government than someone who shares some of my attributes but wouldn’t know a good law if it bit him on the arse. Now some affirmative action advocates are going to stop me here and explain that it’s not about passing over someone who is more suited, it’s only about discriminating when two candidates are equally suited. Equally suited? There’s no such thing! When you look at everything, attendance rates, references, qualifications, interview performance, experience, one candidate will always have the edge, and that’s who should get the job.

But the main reason I despise positive discrimination is that it’s the easy way out. Without it, we’d have a lot of work to do improving access to education, facilitating social mobility and changing hearts and minds so that earlier down the line negative discrimination won’t have had an effect, and there won’t be any need for positive discrimination to make things right at the end stage. As it is, positive discrimination just puts a blanket over all the background work that needs to be done, tweaking the numbers at the end to make it look like everything’s ok, because the alternative would take a lot of time and a bit of effort. I want equal opportunities, not just equal numbers.