YouTube 4 U

For your entertainment and contemplation, Edward Current and Pat Condell:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnjfxCp92pc




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIq7tsVvEoY

Burnee links for Sunday

Religion and its mortifying history of self-inflicted pain | A.C. Grayling - Times Online

McCain's VP Wants Creationism Taught in School | Wired Science from Wired.com

Theocratic Sect Prays for Real Armageddon | | AlterNet

Review: Self-help books roundup | Books | The Observer

Mark Vernon: Face to faith | Comment is free | The Guardian

"Humanism is more part of an enlightened, liberal tradition than mere atheism"

The art of darkness: Sir Antony Sher - Times Online

Faith Central - Times Online - WBLG: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and women leaving the Church

Women preachers at moderate mosque ‘urge faithful to kill gays’ -Times Online

BBC NEWS | Education | New pressure over faith schools

BBC NEWS | Magazine | The malign power of platitudes

With God on Our Side - BBC Radio 4

BBC Radio 4's Archive Hour on Saturday evening was "With God on Our Side" - a documentary about how faith (or lack of faith) affects decisions taken on the battlefield.

From the Archive Hour website (http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/archivehour):

With God on Our Side
Saturday 23 August 2008 20:00-21:00 (Radio 4 FM)
Amid the horrors of war, what makes one man turn to God and another to atheism? Former Bishop of Edinburgh Richard Holloway explores what happens to faith when one's life is on the line.

The audio can be streamed for about a week here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00d1yqx

When this link expires you can download an mp3 of the programme from RapidShare:

http://rapidshare.com/files/341849659/ArchiveHour_WithGodOnOurSide_BBCR4i-20080823.mp3

Atheism is not a religion

Today by a fairly roundabout route I chanced upon this video excerpt, which is a good outline of my own position:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qs3RKZjSzYg



"Matt Dillahunty responds to the claim that people need as much faith to NOT believe in god, as to believe in god."

This is from The Atheist Experience, at http://www.atheist-experience.com/, which I'm surprised not to have come across before now.

(via: 1 2 3 Religious Comics)

Skeptical Inquirer

I subscribe to a fair number of print magazines, but I've noticed recently that there are very few of them that I'll open immediately on arrival and go on to read most of the contents. One such is Skeptical Inquirer - The Magazine For Science And Reason.

The September/October 2008 issue is packed with interest. Much of it is necessarily US-centric, but I've yet to come across an equivalent UK periodical that offers comparably comprehensive examination of pseudoscience, quackery and fakery, as well as coverage of the relevant larger matters of social and political concern.

Issues are usually themed - this one, as the cover opposite shows, is concerned with questionable medical treatments. We have a history of the Vagus Nerve Stimulation device and its manufacturer's attempts to get it approved for use in cases of serious depression; the prescribing of inappropriate (but expensive) drugs for the treatment of bipolar disorder, as well as coverage of the widening of the disorder's definition; and the use of misleading or downright false advertising for a weight-loss product.

There are articles on the Nibiru conspiracy theory, ghostly apparitions at lighthouses, searching for will o' the wisps, and much other fascinating stuff, including book reviews and a generous section for letters to the editor.

It's all highly readable, from short pieces for consumption during a break, to longer articles requiring more concentrated immersion. The magazine is presented in a solid, professional manner that inspires confidence, but you don't have to rely on any kind of gut-feeling about its veracity - those articles dealing with verifiable facts always have notes and references to enable you to check up on them.

Yes, I like it. If only we had something equivalent in Britain.

The Genius of Charles Darwin - raise your consciousness here

Many of the reviews of the first episode of Richard Dawkins' Channel 4 series, The Genius of Charles Darwin, which finished last Monday, were critical of Britain's most prominent atheist for being unable to resist having a go at creationists and other religious believers. I watched the series, but reading these reviews I couldn't help wondering if the reviewers had seen the same programme. Dawkins was repeatedly praised for his eloquent exposition of Darwin and his theory, but simultaneously marked down for introducing his own atheistic point of view.

My advice to these reviewers is: watch again; you're critiquing what you think Dawkins said, based on your opinion of his views. As the man himself stressed again and again, go and look at the evidence. It's true that there was a certain slant to Dawkins' telling of Darwin's story, but at no point in that first episode did he proselytise atheism, least of all to the schoolchildren he took fossil-hunting on a beach.

Dawkins' insistence on evidence became more apparent in the second and third episodes, and we saw precisely why it was inevitable that he would slant the series the way he did: he believes that an understanding of Darwinian evolution will lead to atheism, and it would have been disingenuous not to have included that point of view.

As for highlighting the creationist nutjobs, they may indeed be few and far between at present, and it's obvious that anything he says to one of these hardcore creationists is not going to sway them one iota. But by challenging them on TV, as he did here, he's showing many more people (those watching the programme) how wrong the creationists are.

Consciousness raising - it's a strategy that stands a good chance of success. Get the moderates on the side of rationality, so that they will understand why so-called creation science has no place in school science lessons, and actively oppose it (rather than leave it be, like those wishy-washy science teachers Dawkins spoke to in the final episode).

Paul Sinha on The Now Show

The Now Show completed its current series in good form, though regrettably without Marcus Brigstocke.

Nevertheless we were treated to this welcome diatribe from Paul Sinha, whose four-and-a-half minute segment I heartily commend to you:

http://rapidshare.com/files/341850763/Paul_Sinha_on_the_Now_Show_2008-08-08.mp3

(The listen again feature for this edition of The Now Show has already expired.)

Numerology is not helpful

What does the BBC think it's playing at?

In this audio clip* from Friday's Today Programme we have two minutes of arrant nonsense about the significance of the number eight to the Chinese. Sonia Ducie, a numerologist, explains that letters too can be reduced to numbers, and that the word China reduces to the number eight. Is that the English word for the country, or is it the Chinese word? She didn't say. Nor did she say whether she herself actually believes this stuff is real, though she did mention superstition at least twice.

Does the fact that the Olympics were scheduled to start at the 8th minute past the 8th hour of the 8th month of the 8th year of the century actually mean that the Chinese take this stuff seriously? Or is it just a promotional gimmick? (China's record on this sort of thing isn't encouraging. They may have given us feng shui, but taking interior design advice from a country that insists on building houses on flood plains is not a good idea.)

Numerology can be a fun party game, but is it significant in the modern (or any) world?

No. And the BBC should have said so. There's enough woo-woo around as it is, without the BBC tacitly supporting nonsense like this.

*If the embedded player above doesn't work, an mp3 of the clip can be downloaded from RapidShare here:
http://rapidshare.com/files/215453790/Today_SoniaDucie_BBCR4i-20080808.mp3