Taking Comfort from Darwin

I’ve written a new post over at The Lay Scientist about Ray Comfort’s ‘updated’ “Origin of Species”.

Taking Comfort from Darwin.

There may be Radio Silence in the next few days; with added punchline

The Day Job is beginning to jolly itself along, so I’ll have slightly less time to write here – but I will update when I can.

Since posting here has been sporadic anyway, I must confess that this post is largely to seek forgiveness for my article attacking Rowan Williams’ rhetoric.

[punchline coming in 3, 2, 1...]

I hereby apologise profusely for bashing the Archbishop in public.

…

OK, normal service can resume.

Bonus: Reason is the new rock ‘n’ roll – Cliff Notes edition!

Following from comments about my latest post – namely the length of it – I’ve decided to do a short reduction of my main points, as on re-reading it is a tad labyrinthine…

Archbishop Rowan Williams gives speech, decrying reason as leading to horrors; Tony Blair joins him in calling for multi-faith unity against the ’secular agenda’. Despite secularism being the only method for actually uniting people of conflicting faiths, this dissonance is lost on both.

Both very intelligent, well-intentioned men – and the point of my post was NOT a witch-hunt, nor a rallying cry for a militant campaign – merely to draw attention to the abuse of language in an area that people tend not to question.

In that regard, purveyors of reasoned discourse – often seen as blunt, shrill or just uncivil – are in some ways acting as the new rock stars, guaranteed to divide opinion, but their message needs to be shared – even if only to be disagreed with.

Thanks for reading.

Reason is the new Rock ‘n’ Roll

[this post has been updated 12th Oct to include the Jon Ronson quote, and the link to the above clarification]

We’re living in a fascinating age, right now. We finished mapping the human genome nine years ago; we finally have a President of the USA who can mention nonbelievers without fearing reprisal from the electorate or a celestial punisher; we have such a prosperous and luxurious way of life that

• we can muck around on the Internet with minimal costs, and we rarely consider anything amazing or unusual about this, unless we pause to complain about bandwith usage
• we can actually forget that we’re entrenched in a couple of wars
• people can get uptight about stem cell research on a philosophical, rather than scientific, basis
• a large proportion of humanity can be suffering and starving, and all people want to argue about is the curse of non-belief.

These, while not all desirable, are symptomatic of an incredible age where we really have very little idea of the scope of progress we’ve made in the past century. Of course, we have a long way to go to rectify the grievous asymmetry between people of differing nations – there but for an accident of birth.

And one of the gloriously unusual repercussions of this age is the state of reason, and the public image of those who espouse it. I mean, public advocates of critical thinking could be exemplified by the Betrand Russells, the Carl Sagans, the David Humes (bit of generational leaps there!).

So Reason (which I’ll treat as synonymous with critical thinking for the purposes of this post) was the grandfatherly approach, the common-sense advocated during the Cold War to placate those warring factions of wannabe Rambos and Strangeloves.

The 60s gave us a number of particular political hot buttons – the war in Vietnam obviously being a huge issue, seemingly presided over by politicians, exploiting the common man. I apologise for the simplistic historical account here, it really isn’t my area, and any corrections are, as usual, gratefully received. And as the war moved into the 70s, with the Nixon administration taking charge of the devastation, there were a large number of protests – politically, by students, by filmmakers, by musicians.

Films like ‘Apocalypse Now’ and ‘Platoon’ resonate in culture today, as do anthems such as ‘War Pigs’ by Black Sabbath. The Woodstock event, with Hendrix’s famous rendition of ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ (with the cheers added in post-production, incidentally), the period was full of grassroots consciousness-raising. They weren’t necessarily the most articulate, or politically-savvy messages – but they were voices of dissent, at a time when the world needed to hear the dissenting voice of reason.

The hippy movement was following on from the initial rock ‘n’ roll explosion in the ’50s (ignoring the initial transition from rhythm and blues music between the ’30s-50s, when it became a cross-cultural phenomenon) – a movement based on rebelling against the status quo, the perfect music to listen to if you wanted to frustrate your parents without too much effort.

And of course, that traditional voice of traditional values – the homophobic, racist, non-progressive bible-bashing tradition – was affected most by this egregious assault on ‘the family’ – back when you could just plain hate someone because of the colour of their skin. Now you had people actually buying their records! And working with them! And moving their hips suggestively!

And with the hippy movement in the ’60s, we had an imposing force at work – nihilism. Young men and women leaving home to revel in their hedonistic ideals of experimentation and community, protesting against unjust war and repressive conservative notions of sexuality and freedom. Quoth Ginsberg:

where we wake up electrified out of the coma

by our own souls’ airplanes roaring over the

roof they’ve come to drop angelic bombs the

hospital illuminates itself imaginary walls col-

lapse O skinny legions run outside O starry

spangled shock of mercy the eternal war is

here O victory forget your underwear we’re

free

And that was one of the fears – nihilism. Personified in rampant, unchecked libido – and worse, the death of God.

Come the ’80s, and we had the horrors of the AIDS epidemic (sadly still here, preventative measures still scorned by the Church) – again, blame lay at the feet of those libidos, those agnostics and atheists, those with a liberal approach to sexuality, and special ire to those in the throes of addiction, or anyone born with attraction to the same sex. What was the problem? Apparently, no consequences.

Apparently, without God, anything’s permitted. Rape, murder, theft, false witness. No consequences. The straw man pops up again.

Of course, these are all familiar arguments – and they’re flimsier now than they ever were. Living your life according to secular morals, or following your own attractions instead of tormenting yourself fitting in to others blinkered views on sexuality, or refusing to support unjust wars or horrific politics – is NOT nihilism. It is not ignoring consequences. It is taken the burden of consequences onto yourself.

The mindset adopted by naysayers – of sexual politics, of liberal attitudes to race, religion and war, of free music art and poetry – is that we must surrender our responsibility to another. It is treating God, or gods, or any higher power, or a political movement, as an abusive parent; kowtow and capitulate to the wants and petty desires, or face the consequences. But only because they want what is best for you.

We’re seeing it in the current age, too.

The Archbishop of Canterbury has recently delivered a broadside against Reason (it’s more of a broadsheet, really) – all the usual tropes are here, carefully blurred enough to render any literal interpretation meaningless. The trick is really smoke and mirrors. All it involves is looking at a system which works (the scientific method – a process of inductive and deductive reasoning, testable hypotheses, constant critical review to reduce human errors and fallibility), decrying it as ‘another religion’ (spot the baseless conflation?), then saying that your religion is just another ‘way of knowing’.

It is one of the most poisonously foolish dogmas of modern intellectual life that reducing human motivation and reflection to a pattern of determinism, whether material or psychological, is a mark of liberation and maturity.

[...]A Christian humanism is a perspective that cuts against all such illusions and faces the tragic and the unresolved in human affairs with honesty. It is ‘humanistic’ simply in that it recognises utter and lasting worth in human beings because of how God has dealt with them. But because it is based in this way on God’s dealings, it appeals to some comprehensive, absolutely free and transcendent reality about which – astonishingly – we can make some true statements. It challenges both the humanism that claims an absolute value for humanity to be self-evident and the relativism that makes such a statement of value no more than a strong expression of emotions of solidarity. It implies that what is good for humanity is truly a universal destiny, on which the minds and hearts of all people can converge; and thus it is a fundamentally non-violent humanism, seeking the grounds for reconciliation by insisting that what is good for one person, community or civilisation has somehow to be integrated with what is good for another. Friendship and converse between persons, justice and peace between communities, between ethnic and national groups are the fruits of this universalism.

Now, there are a number of irrational presuppositions in this excerpt – the number one culprit being begging the question. Archbishop Williams is using the existence of God (and we can suppose he means the Judeo-Christian concept of the Abrahamic God, and not one of the other multitudes) as the foundation of his assumptions about human dignity; and especially this odd phrase ‘transcendental reality’: a particularly useful get-out-of-jail-free card beloved of Karen Armstrong and other sophisticated theologians – define a deity beyond the corporeal realm, so if anyone questions any of the assumptions or claims, you can point into the distance at this transcendental ‘other’.

And if all religious people agreed with the sophisticated theologians, then we’d be fine; it’d be a world full of, at the most extreme, deism. Because once God is watered down to the level of a ‘transcendental’ who guides the natural laws and doesn’t interfere with our daily existence, then we’ve practically created an impotent god in the image of the spaces in scientific inquiry.

The problem is: we don’t live in that world – where the majority agree that God as a philosophy is a Good Thing. Instead we have a ‘my Dad is bigger than your Dad’ situation between warring nations; children are walled off from different ways of life in sectarian faith schools; we have leaders who treat the silent whispers of an unspecified deity as political dictation. It’d be simultaneously hilarious and tragic if it weren’t true. As Jon Ronson says in his fantastic book, “The Men Who Stare At Goats”:

For everyday agnostics, it is not easy to accept the idea that our leaders, and the leaders of our enemies, sometimes seem to believe that the business of managing world affairs should be carried out within both standard and supernatural dimensions.

If sophisticated theologians with their “astonishingly…true statements” were representing the majority, then it would be a discussion worth having. Unfortunately, they seem to be watching a completely different News channel to the rest of us.

Jason Rosenhouse has a fantastic article on this over at Evolution Blog, about this ‘ways of knowing’ chimera.

I would also strongly argue with Williams’ assertion that secular beliefs are the underpinning of a ‘pattern of determinism’ – but that’s another post for another time…

We’re not in the clear, rationality-wise, not just yet. The key to the approach is a constant vigilance to spot fallibility and bias – and no-one’s free from this. But we can only progress and improve our mass critical thinking through clear communication – jumbled, fuzzy rhetoric may look impressive on a Cultural Theory paper, but it doesn’t aid our understanding of anything. That’s not to say that these fora aren’t providing anything useful, or are incapable of doing so – just that the chosen mode of communication renders any practical comprehension impossible. I’d highly recommend Alan Sokal’s “Beyond The Hoax” for a clear demonstration of this.

My main bone of contention with this speech is the strawman of Reason. Reason isn’t some giant atheistic totem-pole. You don’t sell your soul to Godless evolutionary-development theory and start preaching militant atheism because you adopt the mental model of Critical Thinking. That’s flimsy projection. Reason, like scepticism, isn’t a set of dogmatic assertions – it’s a model for viewing and filtering information. Uncritical dismissal of information is not reason, nor critical thinking, or scepticism.

This distinction is fundamental to the understanding of my position in this area of discourse. Being a reasonable person who thinks critically means allowing the possibility of being wrong (but not at the expense of credulity) – the state of the scientist and the philosopher is much more complicated than the above speech makes out.

Being a sceptic, or a critical thinker, doesn’t mean you have to be an atheist or agnostic. It doesn’t mean you oppose religious practice (same with secularism, which doesn’t mean atheism; I seem to have to harp on about this all the time, yet Tony Blair has yet to make the distinction) – the dividing lines are very subtle, and far beyond any expertise I possess, and far beyond the scope of a humble internet essay.

If Tony Blair and Rowan Williams are attacking atheism and agnosticism – a lack of belief in a god, or gods, or just in their god – then please just come out and say so. It would save so much time. We see this misuse of language anytime there’s a contentious issue being discussed (for instance in the Catholic abuse scandals), and I’m fed up of it. If it’s the ’secular agenda’ and ‘reason’ that you oppose – what, like scientific research? Really?

But I assume that you don’t oppose scientific research – all the hundreds of hours spent developing antiretroviral drugs to help treat HIV; lives spent dedicated to the pursuit of understanding and preventing cancers.

So please just say what is the scourge of humanity – in plain language, much obliged. Pirouetting around the issue may be great for speeches, but it doesn’t aid our understanding one jot. If there’s a legitimate problem with atheism, or agnosticism, or following the wrong faith, then just come out and say so.

But attacking an unrelated mode of thought – reason, or critical thinking, or scepticism – muddles your message, and makes it seem as though you don’t have a clue who you’re against. And I don’t like them-vs.-us thought, either, but talking about a ’secular agenda’ really doesn’t help.

I’m not calling for universal atheism, or agnosticism, or whatever; these are liable to change with society. But I would join with the new Rock Stars spreading a message, controversial & humanitarian in content – Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Barack Obama, Bill Hicks, Tim Minchin, Derren Brown and many others – that with reason, goodwill, critical thinking and humanism, we can help society at large beyond any narrow sectarian divides, and importantly be self-critical enough to understand where we’re going wrong.

It’s like being a rock ‘n’ roll star. In terms of background and attitude – compare The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Pulp, Coldplay,Motley Crue and Genesis. It’s hardly a blanket set of properties you must adopt.

Like most things, it reminds me of The Simpsons, discussing how to be cool:

Homer: So I realized that being with my family is more important
than being cool.
Bart: Dad, what you just said was powerfully uncool.
Homer: You know what the song says: “It’s hip to be square.”
Lisa: That song is so lame.
Homer: So lame that it’s… cool?
Bart and Lisa: No.
Marge: Am I cool, kids?
Bart and Lisa: No.
Marge: Good. I’m glad. And that’s what makes me cool—not caring, right?
Bart and Lisa: No.
Marge: Well, how the hell do you be cool? I feel like we’ve tried everything here.
Homer: Wait, Marge. Maybe if you’re truly cool, you don’t need to be told you’re cool.
Bart: Well, sure you do.
Lisa: How else would you know?

The Atheist’s Guide to Christmas

I bloody love Christmas.

I once, as a plucky undergraduate, took part in a pantomime based on the Nativity story, up in Newcastle-upon-Tyne – the slogan on the t-shirts was the one above. And I think we all agreed on the sentiment. Although I preferred my one: “An eye for a why-aye leaves everyone blind drunk.”

[as guitarist in the band, I was less enamoured with the mandatory wearing of antlers in the band pit; a sartorial albatross that continues to haunt me.]

So, that’s why I followed the career path of the musician, rather than joke writer.

But being brought up within a religious household, as I was, does lend the Christmas period with a lot of weight (water-retention, sure) and resonance that affords all involved with a sense of community. One of the hardest parts of gradually changing belief systems was reconciling my genuine love of the festive period, the community and the traditions, with my own lack of belief in the begged question.

And there’s never been a satisfactory answer to ‘how can you, as a heathen atheist, honestly enjoy the festive period?’

Thankfully, here it is.

The Atheist’s Guide to Christmas is the logical follow-up to The Atheist Bus Campaign – and is also a completely charitable initiative, with the full book advance and all royalties going to the admirable Terrence Higgins UK HIV Trust (especially relevant as an atheist charity of choice given the egregious harm regrettably propagated by the infallible papacy recently over condom usage).

The book is split into vignettes from leading writers, thinkers, scientists and psychological illusionists, numbering 42 essays in total (and it doesn’t require too much Deep Thought to figure that one out). It’s the perfect length of essay, too – the sort of short, sharp and hopefully sweet fusion of erudition, irreverence and (importantly) a platform.

Having just recovered from the TAM London event last weekend, it was a pleasure to see so many familiar names heralding the good cheer in spite of their godlessness. Ariane Sherine, Ben Goldacre, Simon Singh, Phil Plait, Sid Rodrigues, Robin Ince, Brian Cox, Neil Denny and Graham Nunn all made appearances (some brief, some epochal, all welcome) at TAM.

And, like TAM, I had reservations about the book. The idea of uniting under a common banner, parading in the same uniform, and singing from the same hymn sheet – well, it’s all a bit of a mutual back-slapping session, isn’t it? Thankfully, both book and weekend dispelled my anxieties – the cats continue to refuse to be herded, blessedly.

I don’t want to get into every single essay here, but each one is a joy to read – really! I know I’m too much of a wee young whippersnapper to be genuinely curmudgeonly, but it is really heart-warming to read such a differing collection of views, united under a mutual appreciation of social cohesion, togetherness, family reunion, and drink. Mainly drink.

And I apologise if this isn’t the most seasonal of posts. I pre-ordered the book the day it was announced on Twitter (in June!); and I’m writing this mostly in a cafe in Wimbledon in the midst of a gloriously autumnal morning in October. Mmmmmmmm, festive.

Special prize for most idiomatic essay goes to the bally rally of Richard Dawkins as he brings the Wodehouse down, lovingly donning the Woosterian blazer.

Funniest essay has to go to Nick Doody, for his satire on the scientism of measuring Christmasism throughout the ages. My appreciation of this can be testified by all unfortunate patrons of Le Pain Quotidien, who had to endure my sides-splitting throughout.

For anyone interested by the Atheist Bus Campaign, Graham Nunn has a great article on the background of the campaign – having eagerly followed the press exploits of the buses, it was nice for me to read more of the ‘inside track’ to get all cutting-edge and pretend that I watch The Wire.

Matt Kirshen really does bring value for money to the book; how many texts can give such deep theological and epistemological musings on the relevance of the Judaistic kestrel tradition? Not many, that’s for damn sure.

Oh, and did I mention that Simon Le Bon has an essay in it? No? Well, he does.

A special mention must go to Phil Plait and Derren Brown, for some of the most thoughtful, and pleasant essays on the subject I’ve read. And Sid Rodrigues closes the book with one of the most inspiring stories in there; there’s so much more to this subject than just refutation, debunking, or cynicism, and it’s to the credit of the contributors that this shines unabashedly through. They are thoroughly good role-models for their views and various causes.

Robin Ince paints a great image when mentions his growing “bookshelf of good intentions”; we have a similar taste in furniture. But I recommend that this book doesn’t end up there.

Preconceptions are for shedding, books are for reading, and Christmas is for celebrating. Families, friends, spirits (Holy or solely chemical), traditions, or religion. Doesn’t matter: just relax and enjoy your life.

[Here's a link to my review of The Atheist's Guide to Christmas on Amazon, for anyone collecting these, or something]

Lay Science; and a surprising twist for this humble author.

Very exciting news, this week, is that I’m now guest writing over at Martin Robbins’ site The Lay Scientist.

I’ve read his blog for a while now, and so this is a most humbling development! He’s also got the great YouTube educator cdk007 presenting his series on evolution on the site – a series I highly recommend.

So, please check that out – and there are some more lengthy posts in the pipeline for here. Like any good string instrument – stay tuned!

Predicting the Lottery

Like many people in the UK, I’ve just watched Derren Brown showing how to predict the lottery.

Now, as rational, mathematically-literate people, we have at least some understanding that the lottery is a fully-random process.
That means: any sequence of numbers has equal probability of appearing.
So the seemingly ‘pattern-based’ iteration 1,2,3,4,5,6 is as likely as 21,9,15,14,22,3 appearing.
We evolved as pattern-seeking creatures, and it’s only natural that we ascribe more ‘meaning’ to the 1st iteration than to the 2nd, but statistically we would be mistaken. This was previously explored in Derren’s “The System”.
As hunter-gatherers, it was less detrimental to see a false positive (seeing a pattern of tiger stripes and falsely assuming the presence of a tiger) than to be eaten by seeing a false negative – and we carry this vestigial pattern-seeking with us today; but it’s an anachronistic computational skill that often misfires, and we tend not to possess the awareness or knowledge of probability to recognise a false positive or negative.

Derren explained, using Galton’s ‘wisdom of crowds’ principle, that he was statistically more likely to predict the numbers, especially as the team bonded socially, and got into a state of heightened arousal (the group, not Derren). This supposedly aids the emergence of random patterns (confusingly, earlier, he used the same principle to demonstrate how the process produced predictable behaviours that are the basis of superstitions a la BF Skinner) – I suspect this dissonance was deliberate.
Anyhoo, the wisdom of crowds yields a number that is, sort of, random. But a mean calculation of 25 random number sequences just gives one random prediction – so you’re just pitting one arbitrary series against another. This is not a reliable process to use to predict the lottery.
So maybe there was a big hoax, as Derren says at the end – he gives a trichotomy of possible explanations. 1 Fake the ticket; 2 Predict the number; 3 Rig the machine.
He went into reasons as to why 3 was silly, but of course, by articulating it, simultaneously giving plausibility to a rather farfetched process (but as Penn has said, Magic works because the audience underestimates how far a magician will go for a succesful trick).
It is, as we would expect from the word-manipulating Brown, a false trichotomy, that subtely dashes the main suggestion on the interweb – that of a production trick, possibly using split screen technology a la Mission Impossible (I happen to think that this is the most likely, but that’s irrelevant) – by implying that it’s a silly method, he sweeps it under the carpet.
Which suggests that the goal of the program, in addition to boosting Lottery ratings, was to show up the pop-psychology explanations that seem superficially appealing to our ‘think yourself thin’ New Age. Remember, using an aggregate of collective ignorance is NO more likely to predict 6 random numbers than 1 person doing so.
I have no way, no specialist knowledge, of saying how it was achieved, but there are plenty of possible answers, which make it rather futile. Instead, we should focus on why the proferred explanation DOESN’T satisfactorally predict a random series.
If this leads the crowds to the library, to ask questions on statistical probability, then Derren and his team have done valuable work.

Thoughts? Conspiracy theories? Mathematical models?
Please comment!

My review of Dawkins’ “The Greatest Show on Earth”

It is with great pride that I post this review at this time, for it is the morning (literally, just the morning) that the latest book by Richard Dawkins crashes onto the sales floor of Waterstones.

Needless to say, I read very fast.

As 2009 is the 150th anniversary of the 1st edition of On The Origin of Species, we’ve already been treated to Jerry Coyne’s marvelous Why Evolution is True – a book I would, without a moments hesitation, recommend as the starting point for anyone interested in the bare bones (a ho ho ho) acceptance of Evolutionary theory.

So The Greatest Show on Earth is Richard Dawkins lending his viewpoint to the mystery of development – a mystery that has led sensible folk to study, test, analyse & hypothesise, and some less-than-sensible folk to scare-monger and demonise scientific theories as ‘controversies’.

Professor Dawkins (a man, I must state in full disclosure, that I am indebted to for his contribution to scientific awareness) has presented this book as closure, if you will, for his previous entries into the annals of evolutionary literature, because “although they cleared away stumbling blocks, [they] did not present the actual evidence that evolution is a fact.” [p. vii]

Like Coyne earlier this year, Dawkins is assuming no white-coated expertise, no lab-induced presumptions.

Firstly, as it is Dawkins writing this book, let me be really clear – if you dislike the man, and his views on religion, tough. Suck it up and read the book. Guess what, he does talk about creationism, because creationist claims directly conflicts with the scientific evidence. Not because he has some ideological axe to grind (the same, incidentally, is true of The God Delusion, but because most people view that as  such an unacceptably pejorative tome, I felt it worth pointing out here. Please leave any unwarranted sense of theological oppression away from education, ta).

This is written for the lay-person, and is not intended as an atheistic call-to-arms (as he made clear in his talk on the book at the Edinburgh Book Festival on Monday). These magisteria are hardly overlapping…

This is a typical Dawkins book, in the most complimentary sense. In comparison with Coyne’s straight-to-the-point presentations, Dawkins lends an almost poetic bent to the evidence. As can be witnessed in his other books, most notably Unweaving the Rainbow.  But this attention to presentation does not dull, nor muddle his message; it serves to illucidate, to sharpen, to pique.

We leave his chapters feeling challenged – but with a sense of wonder and enjoyment that true appreciation of the beguiling aspects of life just feeds us, should we be willing to accept it.

Of course, it wouldn’t be Dawkins without some contentious ideas – following on from his essay in John Brockman’s What is your Dangerous Idea?, he does talk about eugenics [p.38 & footnote p.62], including some thoughts on why it’s a philosophically taboo area of discussion. I have my own thoughts on this (while Dawkins suggests it may be because of the aversion that we’ve never tried a long-scale experiment of that nature, I’d hesitantly posit that the main problem is one of choice. We could, I suppose, selectively breed for athletic or artistic prowess etc., but we’re still limited by the active element of choice, and it’d become unethical not during the selective breeding, but when imposing the direction of the breeding on the sentient beings we want to see the change in).

And I disagree most strongly with his suggestion, in the Only a Theory? chapter at the start, that we should differentiate between the scientific ‘theory’ and the vernacular ‘theory’ using the term ‘theorum’ to refer to scientific theory. No, no, no – why? That’s so needlessly confusing. Admittedly (and this may be down to the speed of reading on my part) I can’t find any instances of it in the main body of text, but still, the stating of it early on in the book had me most befuddled. Surely restating the proper definition of ‘theory’ and ‘hypothesis’ and sticking doggedly to those definitions would work in this context?

That is, I must admit, the only objection I have with the book (and it doesn’t impact the rest of his argument). And it’s a trifling matter, at any rate!

There are some magnificent moments in The Greatest Show on Earth - some great examples of the falsifiable nature of science, including the espousing of the Kabuki samurai warrior mask hypothesis in crabs [p 57], admitting a fondness for the hypothesis, and then soundly dashing it with a tinge of regretful necessity.

That is the scientific method, properly applied. Although it may pain us, sometimes pet theories have to be put to sleep.

If you want a brief summation of the book, my favourite is in a photo caption (oh yes, the photographic examples are beautiful and tastefully presented, too), referring to the ‘missing link’ Darwinius earlier this year:

Is it a monkey? Is it a lemur! It’s Superlink! Darwinius masillae has been classified as an Adapid primate, and it certainly lies somewhere close to the ancestry of anthropoids, but to say that ‘this transitional species finally confirms Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution’ is ridiculous. Darwin’s theory was confirmed long ago, and in any case applies to all living creatures, not just our own close relatives. This fossil has been described as the ‘eighth wonder of the world’, but the real wonder is the tightly orchestrated and bizarrely exaggerated hype that attended its discovery[...] Preposterous nonsense, but it is a beautiful fossil which will certainly shed some light on our ancestry, and that is a good enough reason for picturing it here.

[Illustration p.9]

Another great quote:

Huge leaps in a single generation – which is what a monkey giving birth to a human would be – are almost as unlikely as divine creation, and are ruled out for the same reason: too statistically improbable. It would be so nice if those who oppose evolution would take a tiny bit of trouble to learn the merest rudiments of what it is that they are opposing.

The frustrating exchange between Richard and Wendy Wright (in the documentary The Genius of Charles Darwin) is transcribed (in full) starting page 198, and it’s a textbook example of the closed reasoning that opposes Dawkins and colleagues in their educational endeavours; any verbally pugilistic tendencies could realistically stem from frequent encounters like this…

But the best is saved for last. As one might guess from the title, the last chapter (‘There is Grandeur in this view of Life’) is based on the magisterial final paragraph of On The Origin of Species. Dawkins expands and expounds, with glittering appreciation, with the glorious benefit of post-genetic-synthesis hindsight, on the profound simplicity of Darwin’s suggestions.

As someone who values that closing paragraph as being one of the finest in all literature, fiction or non-fiction, it is with surprised awe that I might concede that Dawkins has a closing paragraph that may, in fine literary circles, be defined as ‘a belter’.

Please read this book. Better yet, buy Why Evolution is True by Jerry Coyne, The Greatest Show on Earth, and Darwin’s Dangerous Idea by Daniel Dennett, and read them – in that order.

There is indeed grandeur in this way of life. The first step to seeing it is removing the blindfold.

So, am I militant yet?

At what stage does an atheist go from being ‘atheist’, to being ‘militant atheist’ (or the tacitly understood euphemism ‘New Atheist’)?

Everyone seemed to like those Old Atheists, who were content with their lot. But now, these uppity New Atheists with their dogmatic assertions (“THERE’S PROBABLY NO GOD!”) have started a campaign of a frankly Militant nature.

Well, let’s clear up a few things. For a start, I dislike the term Atheist (as does Thunferf00t in his excellent video Rejecting Atheism) – it seems odd to define people by what they don’t believe. But that’s the Non-Flat-Earther in me talking, I suppose.

And it leads to some pithy comments about the flawed pejorative rhetoric commonly used in a knee-jerk fashion – one of the more common canards is the “atheism is just another religion”, with the retort “atheism is a religion, like bald is a hair colour.” And we can play these little back-and-forths all day long if we choose to invest our time this way.

But realistically, I don’t define myself by my atheism – it functions purely as a starting point for my assumptions and actions in the world. I don’t believe that there is a celestial father-figure commanding me to be good (Santa?), and likewise I judge my own morality and fight my own ethical corner, being solely responsible for my actions.

But this isn’t a competition, and I don’t parade my atheism as a badge of intelligence, of morality or of virtue. It’s largely irrelevant to my life. And yet I spend a large portion of it defending my position. Why?

Well, my transition to atheism was a tricky one, and it led to a few years of feeling alienated and, frankly, ashamed that I’d ‘abandoned’ my faith (all for perfectly salient reasons, but that’s another post). It’s taken a while for me to actually admit to people my own position – and because I dislike sectarian attitudes to friendships and society, I don’t try and exclusively engage with people of a similar philosophical position.

And if you asked me to describe myself briefly, my answer wouldn’t be “I AM AN ATHEIST ARRRRRRRGH” followed by sacrificing a squid to Cthulu or whatever it is Madeleine Bunting thinks that atheists do for jollies.

It tends not to come up, because societal convention tends to discourage open conversation about religion or politics. But when it does come up, it’s blatantly one-sided in mixed company. By admitting to atheism (correct verb in most situations), it seems like you’re spoiling everyones fun. And some people react more strongly than others.

So, although in practice I’d describe myself as a secular humanist, I will unabashedly associate with outspoken Atheism, just so that people who are offended don’t get a free ride at our expense. A lack of belief in a deity or belief system that you disagree with is not offensive. It is not your fault. All that matters is how you act and treat others.

Freedom of speech and freedom of religion are noble, proud traditions to uphold, but are frequently misunderstood to mean inflicting damaging ideologies onto others. Your freedom to swing your fist stops at my face.

So I will not be quiet. I don’t wear my beliefs on my sleeve – and very few people can guess my position without baldly asking, so just like softly-spoken PZ and Ariane I’m hardly an obvious candidate for a puppy-stomping, card-carrying Atheist.

I will proudly associate with the ‘New Atheists’ (if people insist on the term) – I will not be ’strident’, or ’shrill’, or have a ‘foghorn’ voice. But I will voice my opinions, and I will stand by them. Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens, Dennet, Coyne, Myers, Benson & Sherine have written articles or books on this, and for this they are labelled some of the most pejorative terms, the worst being Militant. The term ‘militant’ is such an underhand, sly and disingenuous abuse of language in a quasi-Orwellian sense. Hitchens has a good article on the liabilities of writers and editors, and PZ Myers has a lovely talk on the role of the public atheist.

Without free discussion of ideas, our intellectual integrity and our own voyages of discovery will be weak and pitiful affairs. Debate, discussion, disagreement – these are all valuable activities*.

*as is alliteration.

Please endeavour to keep striving for philosophical rigour, and don’t let people tell you to be quiet. Your point will either stand on its own merits, or it will fall.

As public intellectuals and advocates for free speech and free science, we’re not condoning atrocities. We’re not tacitly endorsing genocide, or the public assent to murder, misogyny and rape. Those are reprehensible. We can’t punish people for the way they’re born, nor threaten others with eternal torture for differences in opinion or birthplace. We don’t have that right, and no amount of theological back-pedalling makes it right.

We’re not looking to hate others for their private beliefs  - we won’t violently picket, or send death threats. We treat others with the respect they deserve as human beings, but we have no such obligation to do the same for arbitrary belief systems, no matter how old they are.

These are not codified tenets of Atheism – these are just humanistic principles.

We don’t need to be bullied anymore by condescending rhetoric. Speak up.

What Would Darwin Do?

I thought I’d spare the invectives, just for a bit, about Chris Mooney & Sheril Kirshenbaum’s op-ed in the LA Times, because PZ, Jerry Coyne & Ophelia Benson have beaten me to it.

But I was interested in a thought raised at the end of the article, about the ‘conflict’ between vocal atheists and accommodationists:

Despite the resultant bitterness, however, there is at least one figure both sides respect — the man who started it all: Charles Darwin. What would he have done in this situation?

Interesting question. And it’s interesting for precisely the reason it gets things wrong. 

Of course, my post title is lampooning the ‘What Would Jesus Do?’ mantra, and as an idle thought experiment it works out fine – a bit like a spiritual ‘walk a mile in my shows’ sort of notion in empathy.

But, when we ask ourselves “What Would Darwin Do?”, we really shouldn’t neglect the postscript, “…and really, should we care?”

Because it does fall into a rather disturbing thought that those interested in science, especially evolution, treat Darwin as some form of human deity, or at least a High Prophet of some sort.

And that, to me, looks like projection from theists – they have their deity, it’s only natural that we have ours. 

I’m not a scientist, but even I have heard that accusation aimed at me. It’s rather odd.

I’ve read ‘On The Origin of Species’, and was enthralled, ditto ‘Voyage of the Beagle’ – I am by no means an expert on the life and work of Darwin, but I do find his work fascinating.

But almost more for what he got wrong. I tend to distrust gut feelings and intuition, and the mistakes made in the initial theory of evolution (hypotheses of inheritance, mainly) do cast a fascinating light on what Victorian thought viewed as obvious, or as the most likely explanation. In much the same way that backward views on inequalities of race & gender seemed, at the time, obvious and self-evident.

Remember, he was writing before the discovery of DNA. I’m too much of a spring chicken to have any idea of the revelation that that must have caused in scientific circles – but to view Darwin and his theory without that in mind is myopic, to say the least.

So, scientists tend to prefer the term neo-Darwinian Synthesis, which takes into account a whole host of discoveries since the 19th Century – and I prefer it to ‘Darwinism’ or ‘Darwinian Evolution’ (which he hypothesised, he didn’t invent), because it shifts the theory one step away from Darwin The Priest Most High.

As I’ve said before: 

‘Darwin’s thought’ is one thing. Which would be fine if evolutionary biology was literally based on ‘On The Origin of Species’ and ‘The Descent of Man’. If scientific literalism were dogma treated as gospel, then yes, ‘Darwin’s thought’ could be criticised for a lot of things. Immutability of ideology and ethics are dangerous games to play with. And there are a number of holy texts that bear this out.

And this is where I started thinking a bit tangentially.

What if ‘The Bible’ were read by theologians in the way that ‘On The Origin of Species’ is read by biologists?

[perversely, you can also invert these and have fun with 'The Gospels of Darwin']

For a start, Bible study would be quite interesting. Instead of having to deal with smart-arse children asking “Why Won’t God Heal Amputees?“, the Sunday School teacher could then simply say - 

Ah, yes, the doctrine of Hell, as laid down by Jesus in Matthew 10:28 And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell. Yes, that’s slightly antiquated (I know, I know, it says the New Testament, but it was quite new at the time, but we’ve moved on as a society and no longer need to terrify innocent people into accepting things that we say using fear rather than evidence), so let’s get rid of that one from the ‘Truth’ folder. What’s next on the cutting room floor? Yes, Bobby? That’s right, well done! OK, the concept of Limbo…

Wouldn’t that be nice? A scientific method approach to religion – is there any evidence for it? No? Purely believed on faith? OK – we’ll put over there in the NOMA  (Non-Overlapping Magesteria) pile, but you must promise not to a) use to guilt trip anyone who thinks it’s silly b) take offense over people criticizing your beliefs with justification c) use your belief to influence public policy or education.

Anything there is evidence for, fine, that goes in the OMA pile.

Professor Gould would be very happy indeed.

Any ethics and moral edicts laid down in a holy text would have to be held scrutable to secular ethics, and the basic understanding of humanism. And, certainly, there’d be plenty that fit the bill, but there’d also be an awful lot that’d fall at the first hurdle.

It’d remove that wonderful conversation-ender in the faithful’s armoury – the idea that if God said it, it’s all right, even if it seems deeply immoral to pesky human reason (see point 6 from this graphic from The Creation Museum, taken by PZ’s article here). And then we might be able to have a two-sided conversation, for once!

I’m becoming quite enamoured with this idea.

Though it might be a tad blasphemous.

I’d have to check with Lord Charles, first, then…