Expelled Exposed

You may recently have heard of the film called Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. Google it, it’s about Intelligent Design. The usual bollocks, but somehow this one’s made it mainstream, I won’t bore you.

Anyway this website was recently brought to my attention by The Friendly Humanist and Skepchicks. It’s basically a collection of responses to the issues brought up in the movie, many from respectable sources such as the New York Times and www.richarddawkins.net.

I’d urge anyone with a blog or website to link to it, let’s get it higher on Google so anyone who searches for it’ll find the truth.

The Media

It’s so important that it’s often given the title “The Fourth Institution of Government”, and yet sometimes the media is so frustrating, I’ve decided to have a rant at it. As you may know I’m at home at the moment, there isn’t an awful lot to post about and I’m just slightly bored so we’ll see how this goes. The keyboard’s also playing up so excuse any typos.

So what started this? My parents read the Daily Express, and when it arrived on Saturday morning, there was the usual sensationalist headline: “MILLIONS FACE ARCTIC EASTER” (well… seeing as there’s about 60 million people in Britain, you’d expect it to be about that many). Yes the Daily Express would have you believe that we all had to batton down the hatches and prepare for the worst. Each one of us may lose several family members and Britain will never be the same again. And yet here I am on the other side of a 4 day weekend and the weather’s actually quite nice, I only noticed about… 10 minutes of rain tops, all weekend, although admittedly it was quite cold.

Reading into the article, “…Britons will face the worst Easter weather in 25 years…” That’s hardly surprising since it’s the earliest Easter in 95 years. The weather isn’t any worse than usual, it’s just because Easter’s come earlier. Duh! And for the last… as long as I can remember, this “news”paper has had a picture/headline of either Madeleine McCann, Princess Diana or a member of the Royal Family on the front page. It’s as if there’s nothing more newsworthy.

Now of course none of this would matter except that the media is the only way most people know what’s going on, and of course so many people have somehow lost the ability to think for themselves that editorials in such rags are now public opinion. You can tell just by looking at the opinion polls each of these papers run every now and again. The Sun would have us believe that 99% of the population want to bring back the death penalty. My arse to that.

Take last night. I was having a conversation over the dinner table and someone mentioned Australia. My over-opinionated, overweight, over-drinking hypochondriac dad came out with the remark “well, it’s the only place to go!” I asked him what he meant and he said “well they’ve got it all right with immigration, not letting the bastards in.”

I replied “oh right yeah, because immigrants are the source of all this country’s problems…” I was being sarcastic, but before I knew it, everyone else at the table was agreeing with me as though I was serious. I wouldn’t mind, but none of them have ever met an asylum seeker, they know several immigrants but have nothing but praise for them, and yet they’re still complaining that “they’re stealing our jobs!” “They’re stealing our benefits!” (at the same time? They must be cleverer than I gave them credit for). All their opinions about anything vaguely political is drawn from what they’ve read in the tabloids, with no consideration given to it.

Don’t people realise that blaming immigrants for everything is downright dangerous? It’s what the Nazi’s did with the Jews before WW2! And why don’t we take into account the irony that if my dad actually did move to Australia, he’d be an immigrant himself! Of course he doesn’t see himself that way, so really, this is nothing but thinly veiled racism. He doesn’t want to keep immigrants out, he wants to keep the paki’s out.

I hope Richard Murdoch’s happy when he starts World War 3.

Death and beyond

Today’s humanist society meeting was very interesting. We had a man with us who’d never been before, and he soon told us that he’d had a pretty bad time and that he’d been diagnosed with a terminal illness, and he’d been going to all different religious organisations, and now he was looking at humanism for answers. He asked some really good questions and brought up some issues that I want to discuss here a little. It’s going to be a brief one because I’m due in work fairly soon.

Anywho this man (let’s call him John for anonymity’s sake) was scared, quite frankly, by the humanist viewpoint that there’s nothing after death, it’s just oblivion. David, our rather blunt philosopher-in-residence, replied that there’s nothing you will experience that is oblivion because you won’t be there, so it’s not that bad.

Personally I gave my own slant on the issue, which I’ve probably mentioned somewhere on here before. For me, although there is nothing physical or “spiritual” after death (Tim at the Friendly Humanist would probably not like me using the word ’spiritual’ in this way, contributing to religion’s monopoly on it), you live on in people’s memories of you and the
legacy that you leave on the world and on people around you. You would hope that these memories and your influence would be a positive one, but maybe not.

The conversation took many twists and turns (including a hell of a lot about brain surgery, can’t imagine why), but somewhere along the way we got onto the topic of the meaning of life, or to quote exactly from John, “why am I here?” Again, humanists don’t agree on everything, but I’m sure a lot of them would agree with me that since there’s no creator, noone has sat down and made a purpose for each one of us to live, or given a reason for life more generally. So your reason for living can be whatever you think is important, and we agreed that “making people’s lives better”, as we put it, was a very good start. John was a healthcare worker so I’m sure he’s done this in many ways.

John asked if we thought it was necessary to have children in order to leave a positive legacy on the world, and each one of us replied with an emphatic ‘no’. Although in purely scientific circles the reason each one of us lives is because of a long line of predecessors, and so it could be argued that our purpose in life is to continue the species and to “live on” through them, personally I think it has less to do with the continuation of your DNA, and more to do with how you’ve influenced people, regardless of whether they’re of your bloodline or not (or to put it in Dennettite language, “less to do with genes and more with memes”).

I’m glad we had this discussion. It showed us that although the humanist worldview is perfectly capable of providing comfort and guidance to someone in quite a difficult position, so far organised humanism has found it difficult to replace the community feeling that religion benefits from. It’s my vision that in the future this will change.

To finish this off, I’d like to quote Richard Dawkins from the opening lines of his book Unweaving The Rainbow, which are very meaningful for me, and I’m sure a good number of other humanists feel the same way.

“We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could be here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, who are here.”

I think I’ll leave it at that for today.

Scientology Protest 2: Operation Party Hard

As this Saturday was L Ron Hubbard’s birthday, Anonymous decided to celebrate it in style with a full blown protest party near the Church of Scientology in Hunter Square. Admittedly I forgot about it completely, but luckily I happened to be crossing the road at the exact same second that Stuart was driving past (he didn’t run me over), and I was duly reminded. The protest itself was pretty much the same as last time. Plenty of signs, about the same amount of people but we were a bit more spread out in the square so it didn’t look as many, but I thought it was much better organised. People had learned their lessons from the last one and brought extra cardboard for signs, as well as tape, and we had balloons, party bags and stickers rather than just flyers. I’ll spare you the details.

In any case from the last protest there’s been a few issues brought up. The student media saw it as pointless, or even discriminatory, and various comments were made such as “what are they trying to do?” and “what will an attack on the people they claim to be victims of the organisation actually achieve?”

It’s a fair question, but it’s totally missed the point of the protest. This isn’t an attack on the ‘church’ members, the protest isn’t about them at all! The whole point of protesting is to raise awareness to the general public that the building we were outside is a church of Scientology (misleadingly called “The Hubbard Academy for Personal Independence”) and that the ‘free personality tests’ and ‘free stress tests’ that they’re offering are actually ways of getting you into their cult and robbing you of their money. It is a public awareness campaign.

Before I wasn’t so sure it was necessary, but since the protests I’ve spoken to several people who have briefly fallen victim to it, or who have taken a test and not gone any further, and it’s entirely necessary and appropriate to make people aware of what they’re getting themselves into. They take advantage of people who are vulnerable or gullible and take their money away and it’s not remotely fair. That’s why Anonymous is protesting.
Captain Shamrock

Quality sign

Protestors

Our Sign

An “oath” of allegiance

The former attorney-general, Lord Goldsmith, has suggested that people (particularly school children) should be encouraged to take an oath of allegiance. Read the story here in The Times or on BBC online.

Now of course the discussion online has largely been to the line of “I’m not swearing allegiance to that bloody Queen”, and I agree 100%, how in a modern liberal democracy can we justify someone being born into such institutional wealth, power and influence?

But my objection goes further than that. If I’m going to swear something, it’ll be something that I believe in, and I’ll say it in my own way. Having millions of drones saying the same thing will reduce any “oath” to mere words without meaning. What happened to independent thinking? It’s dogma in its highest form.

There’s something a little more sinister as well. The BBC article mentions towards the end that:

“Young people who volunteer could receive a reduction in tuition fees, while others who work in the community could be given a small council tax rebate.”

I personally find this disgusting, and self-defeating. Not only do I think it’s wrong to effectively punish people just because they have an ounce of integrity and won’t recite something they don’t believe in, but I think this paves the way to differentiate between “truly” British people and the rest, which is a very bad idea, and will only lead to further division of society, possibly fuelling extremism and pseudo-apartheid states. Furthermore, bribing the public into taking an oath will make it meaningless. I’d swear an oath to Satan if it meant my student debt was reduced, because it doesn’t mean anything to me whatsoever!

I read up a little on the topic, and was very surprised to see that Canada, that bastion of common sense, already has one! It reads:

“I, ……………, do Solemnly swear (affirm) that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second, Queen of Canada, Her Heirs and Successors according to law, forever. So help me God.”

I’m glad that the part at the end about God is optional, but at the same time, this oath must be made by some certain judges, the armed forces, mounted police, the Queen’s Privy council, and most importantly, by MP’s. Indeed MP’s who refuse to take it are not allowed to sit in the house! Disgusting!

Reverse Eugenics

I’ve just been made aware of this story which is doing the rounds on the web at the moment. A deaf couple are claiming the right to choose a deaf child, over a hearing child, through IVF screening, in the face of a new law which will say that once the embryos have been screened, the most healthy one must be chosen.

Mr Lichy says that being deaf is a core part of his culture and identity, and (quoting the BBC article), “it is those who are able to hear who are at a disadvantage in a world of deaf plays, deaf poetry, and deaf jokes.”

I’m going to discuss this part for a little while. Although I don’t deny that deaf culture is both distinct and fascinating, and that I wish I could do sign language, being deaf isn’t a prerequisite for being a part of that culture. They could easily teach a hearing child sign language, which makes them able to take part in the deaf culture. Indeed I’m sure a child brought up in a deaf family would have a very rich culture; being bilingual with English and sign language isn’t very common at all, and I’d love to have had that opportunity.

So I dispute the assertion that hearing people have a disadvantage. Deafness IS a disability, no matter what the Lichy’s want to think. It is an inability to hear which presents all sorts of practical problems and disadvantages, and although a lot of positive aspects (not least deaf culture) have sprung from it, and it’s easier than ever to live with, that doesn’t mean it’s not a disability. I think that choosing a deaf child, just so they can relate to it a bit easier, is very selfish, and they really don’t have the child’s best intentions at heart.

That said, this is only a very narrow part of a much wider issue. The Lichy’s argument is against the new bill which says that once they’re screened, the most healthy embryo must be selected. But, if they choose not to screen the embryos, then they can take their chances, which means they might get a deaf child and they might not. What they’re saying is that the new bill basically implies that deaf or otherwise disabled people aren’t as valid as hearing people (incidentally a commonly used Spanish word for disabled is minusvalido, literally meaning “less valid”. Imagine that in today’s world of political correctness).

To a certain extent I agree with them, but I think their argument is a bit skewed. Just as the law implies that disabled people are less valid than ‘normal’ people (for lack of a better word), so does their selection process of choosing deaf embryos over hearing embryos imply that normal people are less valid than disabled people, which is just as untrue.

What I think the Lichy’s should be campaigning against is IVF screening in its entirety. But then again I’m unsure where I stand on this issue as well, mainly because what little I know about IVF, I learned in religious studies classes at school. The way I see it, there are practical reasons for screening embryos; some may have been damaged by the IVF process, for example. For me the most ethical thing to do would be to screen embryos for damage, but then how do you differentiate between damage done through the process and a disability that would have occurred naturally anyway? I have no idea if it’s possible. I know that at the moment you can choose not to have them screened, but does this result in a higher level of disabled children born compared to non-IVF methods or not? I don’t know.

The fact that it’s commonly done, however, leads me to believe that it’s not too dangerous, so I think the most ethical way to avoid eugenics, either the conventional type or the reverse type we can see here, is not to screen IVF embryos at all, depending on my assumption that it isn’t a big cause of disability.

Humanist Society Update

A plug first . Today and tomorrow are the EUSA election days. If you’re a student at the University of Edinburgh, I don’t care who you vote for but it’s very important that you vote. Don’t leave the decision in the hands of the politically-minded cronies in the various party headquarters, pull your finger out and go and vote. It’s a shame that, yet again, the elections are so male-dominated and that there isn’t such a diversity of choice, but there’s bound to be someone who says something you agree with.

I haven’t got a lot to say today seeing as I’ve mostly been writing essays or working for the past few weeks, so I’m just going to try and update the outside world on what we at the Edinburgh University Humanist Society are up to. I should be doing another essay so I really am just procrastinating.

This coming Friday is the last in our series of “God’s Warriors” video showings in Appleton Tower. Starting at 6 sharp, this week will concentrate on ‘God’s Christian Warriors’, perhaps tacking the sticky issue of Christian fundamentalism in the US. I urge you to come and see for yourself. It’ll be followed by a discussion, and in the past 2 showings these have proven to be refreshingly open-minded.

Talk at the moment is about the upcoming AGM (date TBC but at the moment we’re thinking late March/early April) and nominations for officer positions next year. It’s a little awkward because out of our active membership, several people are leaving the university, and so won’t be able to take positions. I think one of the main aims next year will be to attract some new blood, as I know we’re going to have similar problems this time next year. I for one will be going on my year abroad and other people will be either graduating or finishing off post-grad courses.

Recently we’ve been trying to get an honorary humanist chaplain at the Chaplaincy, with our preferred candidate being Tim Maguire from the HSS. This would be someone that any person at the university with humanist tendencies could go to for advice or counselling, rather than the Advice Place or any of the religious chaplains that exist already. In particular, we were keen to get more of a voice on issues relating to inter-belief events at the university and in the wider community, and although not in an evangelical sense, we thought Tim would be particularly useful when someone is considering leaving their faith, as some of us have found it quite distressing in the past.

Nevertheless, Di at the Chaplaincy has suggested that Tim take the slightly different role of humanist contact, which half-suits us at the moment because we don’t know how well used a humanist chaplain would be, and until we know we can’t really demand a chaplain, but at the same time we’re out of the loop just slightly on Chaplaincy issues. We’ll see if Tim gets much use as a humanist contact and try and raise his profile a little if possible.

The next thing on the agenda to consider is what we’re going to do during Fresher’s Week. Gordon Aikman, the current EUSA Vice President Societies and Activities, has given us until Monday to decide on what we’re going to do and give him some details. Suggestions today involved some kind of debate or discussion about what to do if your friend is a nutcase, something else which would involve going out and informing people about humanism (something similar to the prayer contest was mentioned, during which we tried to use scientific experimentation to find out which deity was best to pray for for divine intervention – IIRC it turned out to be Emmeline Pankhurst, the women’s rights campaigner who famously threw herself in front of a horse), and my own suggestion was a walk up Arthur’s Seat, not an awful lot to do with humanism except for an appreciation of nature, but it’s a good way to get people together.

So that’s what we’re up to at the moment.