Planet Humanism

The more observant among you may have noticed that I’ve added Planet Humanism to my blogroll. It appears to be basically a humanist feed reader. I’ve also been added there, so any time I post here, it should come up on there. Cool!

I urge you to take a look around on there, it’s got loads of articles and links which any humanist would find useful.

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 123 Meme

Normally I wouldn’t do this, but I saw the word meme and I couldn’t resist. Memes are pieces of information that are transmitted from one mind to another, kind of like genes.

The 123 Rules:

1. Pick up the book nearest you with at least 123 pages. (No cheating!)
2. Turn to page 123.
3. Count the first five sentences.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five other bloggers.

The book closest to me was my Spanish Dictionary, which doesn’t really have sentences on pg 123, so the next nearest is ‘Farewell to God’ by Charles Templeton (again, don’t buy it, it’s crap).

But check the record. Mark’s Gospel does not mention the Ascension. Luke’s Gospel, after a disclaimer stating that he was not an eyewitness but is simply passing on what he has been able to learn from his research, then presumes to quote verbatim not only what Jesus said but entire conversations, including what Jesus’ respondents said.

And I hereby tag (people who I expect won’t pass this on), The Darwin Report, Feminism 101, Mano Singham, The Frame Problem, and The Bound Dragon (a literally random blog).

Birthdays

Today is my birthday. So far it’s been a completely normal day, which is a good thing. I had a pretty heavy weekend with work, my parents, the rugby and the Superbowl, and was drinking for 14 hours yesterday :|, so I don’t think I could have handled another exciting one today.

In any case I’m noticing that birthdays are becoming less of a big deal as I get older. I’m genuinely not bothered if I do anything or not tonight, and I wasn’t excited about it at all. It’s my first birthday away from home, though, which is a bit new. This year and last year have been pretty big years for celebrations in the family though. My cousin and I were 18 last year and my sister and my other cousin were 21, and this year my brother’s 18 and my mum’s 50, and my dad’ll be 60 next year.

It’s a little strange how we comemmorate events like birthdays. It’s not like I’m a year older today than I was yesterday, and it’s just a day like any other if I’m perfectly honest. And in the words of Pink Floyd I’m just one day closer to death. Woo! It’s strange how we mark the passage of time purely for the sake of it.

It makes me wonder when birthdays became the norm. There was undoubtedly a point when the calendar and dates were invented, and before that it would have been somewhat impossible to have a birthday. Time would just pass, unmarked by human hands.

But then I suppose if you look at it another way, you are literally supposed to be celebrating your birth. But nothing you do on your birthday has anything to do with your birth, it’s just more of a general celebration. We humans are strange creatures.

Blog for Choice Day 2008

Today is widely dubbed “Blog for Choice Day” in the blogosphere. A quick google search will show you just how widely. In 1973 (35 years ago today), the famous Roe vs Wade case struck down Texan anti-abortion laws in the US Supreme Court. But it is merely what we would call in the UK “common law”. That is, law by courtroom precedent, and many believe it happened by a mere technicality rather than a fairly won case. So abortion law in the US is extremely fragile, which is why people choose the anniversary of this date to blog for a pro-choice agenda. It could be overturned at any moment by a rejection in the courtroom, or by new legislation.

I think when making highly controversial decisions about whether abortion should be allowed or not, it’s very important to look at it objectively. The pro-life camp (by the way, I object to them calling themselves that, it implies that everyone else is pro-death) has all too often made their arguments from a dubious religious perspective on what is ‘moral’ and what isn’t.

But of course many of these people take their morals purely from sources of authority, rather than thinking about it themselves. What I believe to be moral is the choice that gives least suffering to the least amount of people. A lot of scientific research is done to ensure that abortions are not carried out when the foetus is at an age where they can feel pain, except in cases to save the mother’s life, so there is no physical suffering. But aborting the foetus could potentially prevent a lot of the mother’s suffering, particularly if the child is a result of rape.  So on that count, abortion is not immoral.

There’s another argument that aborting a foetus is destroying the potential for life, but you could use the same argument to legislate against contraception or masturbation, and last time I checked, wasting potential is not a crime. Meanwhile, the foetus is unable to live outside the mother’s body. It is in effect a part of her body. Therefore she should be allowed to choose what happens to it.

So, although I don’t personally agree with abortion, and I don’t think I’d ever take the option of abortion given the choice, from an objective moral viewpoint I think it’s quite obvious that the choice should be there.

New humanist blog!

It appears another humanist has joined the blog scene! The more, the merrier, I say. So take a look at That humanist, who I’m sure will be making great contributions to the blogosphere.

Happy New Year!

Yes, I hope you all had a good one. I myself caught the train back up to Edinburgh, went straight to work from there, did a 10 hour shift and then lugged my suitcase, laptop and uni books all the way from Market Street to Newington. Not fun when the city’s full of drunk people, but all in all it wasn’t such a bad night. The highlight for me was when my phone started working again, after I threw up on it a few nights ago. Classy, I know.

Anyway a couple of my friends from home have come to visit, seeing as my whole building’s gonna be empty for a few days. Shockingly though, loads of places yesterday (New Year’s Day) were closed! Even Scotmid! Even in Scotland’s capital city! Luckily quite a few of the bars close to the Royal Mile were still open, and we had a great night, finishing in Whistle Binkies.

So here’s to memories shared, New Year’s resolutions, and the good times still to come.

Winter Solstice

Yesterday was the winter solstice (or the 21st December usually is, I must admit I haven’t gone and checked the calendar to see if it’s changed for some reason), and I think I speak for us all when I say “it’s about frigging time too!” I think the FSM had better get off his divine arse and put those noodly appendages to use keeping the sun (or ‘ravioli of the sky’, as some [mainly me] prefer to call it) up there longer!

Anywho, here’s looking forwards to longer days, warmer nights and onwards to summer, safe in the knowledge that the worst of the winter is over. Cheers everyone. Have a good Christmas, and a happy festive season.

American Presidential Elections

Few would doubt that the American Presidential Elections have a fairly profound effect on all of us, particularly in the UK, because of our very close political relations with the Americans, and the effect that the US Presidency has across the world. But one thing that differentiates British politics from its equivalent across the pond is the role that religion takes, particularly in election campaigns. Whereas here the absense of religion in politics is almost as concrete a convention as the monarchy’s abstention from intervention (although Blair did make it an issue when he went against Alastair Campbell’s advice, “we don’t do God”), the exact opposite seems to be the case in the good ol’ US of A. In fact, according to a 2007 Gallup Poll, 53% of Americans would not vote for an atheist. More people would vote for a 72 year-old.

Next year’s election looks to be particularly controversial, with the Democrat candidate looking to be either a woman or a black man, and the Republican either a Mormon (another group discriminated against by voters), or Mike Huckabee, a Baptist anti-imigration bigot (who, I was very sad to hear, is being supported by Chuck Norris). What’s worse is that the Presidential elections are so personality-based that it doesn’t matter what policies each candidate has, it’s likely that a large proportion of the votes will be allocated purely on appearances and the money spent on the election campaigns. On that logic, Huckabee is quite likely to be the next President of the US, unless voters continue to be disillusioned with the Republican Administration.

Now I can’t be the only one who finds it more than a little strange that, in a country whose sacred constitution expressly forbids the joining of church and state, based on the principles of the French Revolution, which in many respects was a rejection of organised religion, that same religion can be so instrumental and institutional, with phrases like “One nation under God” and “In God we trust” being features of the state vernacular, as well as many politicians describing it as a “Christian country”, which it expressly is not. Interestingly though, poll results show that generally speaking Americans would rather vote in a religious person of any faith than an atheist, rather than just candidates of their own religion. Do they think atheists are bad policymakers?

Sometimes I wonder how atheists in America must feel, governed by a system which is almost inherently religious and biased against them. Tyranny of the majority isn’t even in it. I was in Texas with my scout troop in 2004, and my brother and I were staying at the homes of 2 different families, both of which were very religious. They were very nice people, and I was a Catholic at the time anyway so it didn’t matter, but even then, I could still tell they were taking it to a whole new level. Christianity literally pervaded every part of their lives. My brother was a non-believer and one day he happened to mention that he didn’t believe in heaven. The mother of the family he was staying with didn’t speak to him for 3 days until he took it back. I think that’s quite disturbing.

I speak a foreign language!

This may not be surprising for anyone who knows me (I study Spanish, Portuguese and Chinese at uni), but I’ve discovered that apparently I’m also fluent in Mumbojumbo, the language of creationists. I’m going to take some extracts from a leaflet that was handed to me outside the Main Library recently (entitled, “For Thinkers Only”) and translate them into Modern English.

Original: “You don’t need to have a PhD before you can settle life’s most important questions. Like an ordinary jury member you can simply weigh up the evidence and come up with a verdict”

Translation: Yeah! Screw learning and all that boring shit, just read this tiny little biased leaflet and make up the answers yourself!

Original: “The evidence points to a designer. Since every design has a designer - and both life and the universe exhibit staggeringly intricate and often irreducibly complex design - life and the universe must have had a creator”

Translation: Everything that we’ve designed has a designer, because we know that we designed it. We already know that God exists because the Bible told us he designed everything. Therefore everything has a designer, which is God. Therefore God exists. Evolution? What’s that?

Original: “The evidence points to a source of objective and moral values. Every law has a lawgiver - and there is a universal moral law (e.g. it is always wrong, for all people in all places, to torture babies) - there must therefore be an absolute moral lawgiver.”

Translation:  The evidence points to a set of laws that are almost never objective and not always even moral. Every law that we’ve made has a lawgiver, and there is a universal moral law which isn’t really all that universal. We can’t have developed this moral code ourselves because… because obviously God told us!

Original: “You can personally experience this God”

Translation: If you’re really gullible you can convince yourself that he exists.

Original: “[the Bible] has survived centuries of ridicule, opposition and government bans, being the world’s best selling book, with over 8 billion copies printed out in more than 2,000 languages.”

Translation: “Even though people realised it was all bullshit centuries ago, for some reason people STILL insist on murdering millions of trees to print this crap.

Original: “It has more ancient manuscripts to authenticate it than any other such pieces of ancient literature combined such as Homer’s Iliad and Caesar’s Gallic Wars.”

Translation: It’s a work of fiction so it’s fitting that we compare it to other works of fiction like Homer’s Iliad, and it’s really biased as well so why don’t we throw The Gallic Wars in, just to be fair?

Just a bit of fun.