I'll post more about the event in a day or so, but for the time being here's a taster of Richard Dawkins during the Q&A after his keynote, answering a question about the language Darwin used.
I recorded this with my little digicam, so the quality is no great shakes (actually no shakes at all - the cam at least has decent vibration reduction) and the sound is woolly. Professional video equipment was in evidence, however, so with luck we may eventually have access to recordings of the whole event.
It's great news that Simon Singh is to appeal the nonsensical ruling in the libel case brought against him by the British Chiropractic Association. We know that quack-merchants often resort to law when challenged, rather than produce evidence to support their claims. This diversionary tactic needs to be exposed.
English libel law is not an appropriate tool in such disputes, but I wonder if perhaps it has been unfairly mis-characterised. Some maintain that Singh is being asked to prove a negative, when all sceptics know that the burden of proof rests on those making the claim. But in this case Singh did make a public claim, that the BCA "happily promotes bogus treatments" - and the BCA has demanded, in a court of law, that he prove his claim. That the BCA would have difficulty in proving their own claims for the efficacy of chiropractic is a separate issue - strictly it's not their claims that are under examination here.
Singh's claim, however, is clearly justified: the treatments to which he refers are promoted by the BCA (and presumably they wouldn't promote these treatments if they weren't "happy" with such promotion), and plenty of trials, studies and surveys have shown that these specific treatments are indeed "bogus" - that is, "not genuine or true" (Concise Oxford English Dictionary, eleventh edition). The BCA may dispute the plethora of evidence that their treatments are bogus, and as a result may sincerely believe in the efficacy of the treatments, but bogus they remain. Contrary to the judge's interpretation, Singh made no claim in his Guardian article as to whether or not the BCA was knowingly promoting treatments that don't work.
It will be a scandal if Singh loses this appeal, because such a result would reinforce the erroneous idea that libel law is an appropriate instrument for quashing dissent and scientific scrutiny.
Looking through some two-month-old notes I found something I scribbled in response to a BBC TV programme shown on March 31, "Did Darwin Kill God?" Part of the BBC's Darwin programming, it was presented by Conor Cunningham. This is what I wrote (copy-edited for a modicum of clarity):
A mess. Hardly surprising - Conor Cunningham describes himself as a philosopher and theologian. He claims that literal interpretation of the Bible is not mainstream, and never has been. The conflicting stories in Genesis (Adam and Eve created together vs. Adam, then Eve) are stories intended to deliver deeper truths, and should be read thus.
So what's stopping anyone interpreting the Bible as a story whose deeper truth is that God is a figment of human imagination?
Theology is made up. It's like a lesser form of literary criticism. At least literary critics acknowledge that what they're studying is fiction. How would you react to a long, in-depth critique of Harry Potter that started from the presumption that J. K. Rowling's stories were historical fact?
A couple of days later the programme came up for discussion on RD.net, to which I added the following comment:
This programme rang alarm bells as soon as Cunningham stated he was a philosopher and theologian. Maybe he's right about the historicity of the interpreted understanding of the Bible - I don't know enough about it to agree or disagree. But as all theologians do, he started his interpretation with the assumption that God exists. (He had to; without this assumption, all of theology crumbles to dust.)
To go a little further in interpreting the "apparently" contradictory stories in Genesis ("Adam and Eve" vs. "Adam, then Eve") - if these stories are not to be taken literally (which they can't be if they contradict each other), and instead are intended to be fables that reveal deeper truths, one might come to the conclusion that Adam and Eve never existed as real people.
Nor, then, did the talking snake exist, nor the fruit, nor the tree. Perhaps none of the characters portrayed in either story actually existed in the literal, or any, sense. An allegorical or metaphorical reading of Genesis, according to Cunningham's argument, does not require the reader to take any of it literally, including the existence of one other character in the stories - God.
On June 6th the British Humanist Association is hosting a one-day conference at Conway Hall in London on evolution - its teaching in schools, and the conflict between evolution and creationism. Until recently I would have been surprised to see a whole day devoted to this topic, as I wasn't aware that in Britain we had much of a problem with creationism. Then I discovered a creation museum within ten miles of where I live.
When I realised I could attend this event without taking time off work I decided that in view of my recent visit to said creation museum I really ought to go. It's now sold out, but fortunately I was in time to get a ticket. I hope to be reporting on the event here.
The programme, in brief, is as follows.
Welcome from Polly Toynbee, president of the BHA
‘Charles Darwin and the theory of evolution’ Professor Richard Dawkins
Teaching of evolution in European schools Professor Charles Susanne, Free University of Brussels, Belgium
Insidious Creationism: the intellectual abuse of children through creationist books, comics and literature James Williams, University of Sussex, England
Lost in education: on the cognitive biases that impede our acceptance of evolutionary theory Johan De Smedt, University of Ghent, Belgium
“Evolutionary Humanism”: How to cope with the ‘moral’ arguments against evolution Dr Michael Schmidt-Salomon, Giordano-Bruno Foundation, Germany
Hinduism and the Myth of Evolution Babu Gogineni, International Humanist and Ethical Union, India
‘Humanism and Science’ Professor A C Grayling, Birkbeck College, London, England
This should be a comprehensive overview. The detailed schedule on the BHA website indicates there will be opportunities for questions.
A few weeks ago I watched a BBC TV programme entitled "The Narnia Code" in which Dr. Michael Ward, a C. S. Lewis expert, expounded his theory that Lewis's Christian allegory series of children's books, The Chronicles of Narnia, contain disguised references to medieval cosmology. It was fascinating stuff, as far as it went, though blown out of all proportion to its somewhat peripheral literary significance. But Dr. Ward has a book to promote, so I don't blame him for opportunistic hyperbole.
The TV show is due to be repeated tomorrow (May 18) at 7:30 pm on BBC Four:
Unfortunately the final ten minutes of the show goes unnecessarily god-cute, bringing on such dubious luminaries as John Polkinghorne, who beamingly mumbles some trite non sequiturs – in particular the irrelevant notion that the idea of God as Creator is more "explanatory" than the naturalistic model.
What, pray, does the idea of a creator-god explain? The naturalistic thesis attempts to propose mechanisms of how things happen (or happened), to suggest explanations in terms of scientific knowledge we already have, in an effort to further that knowledge. How does saying "Goddidit" explain anything? At all? Tell me, please – I really would like to know.
Polkinghorne and other god-bods often use the phrase "explanatory power" when contending that the god hypothesis is more useful than scientific uncertainty, but it's high time such vacuous buzz-wordology was challenged and sent packing. I've no objection, in philosophical terms, to people of faith holding to their idea of a first cause for the universe – I think there's no evidence for such a view, though I appreciate some people subscribe to it. But if anyone says such a view offers any kind of "explanatory power" my response will be, "give me an explanation."
Saying that for whatever reason we can't possibly understand the supreme transcendent complexity of God's act of creation does not offer even a scrap of "explanatory power", and theists should stop claiming it does.
The science of imitating nature to produce more effective designs is called biomimetics (3). There are many applications, including robotic arms, variable geometry aircraft wings, and this one. It seems that as so often is the case, God got there first!
It seems that as so often is the case, creationists simply ignore the overwhelming evidence for evolution.
This is what might be called a parable about the "problem of evil". My own take on the POE (or theodicy, in its supposedly reconciled form) is that it isn't much of a concern. For the problem of evil actually to be a problem, you have to believe in a good god. Those of us who don't believe in the existence of gods of any kind do not find our worldviews confounded by something as illogical as theodicy. In the same way we do not concern ourselves with statistical analysis of the likely average length of the typical unicorn's horn, nor with the wing-folding techniques most probably employed by angels who dance on the head of a pin.
Paul S. Jenkins, writer, podcaster and tech-enthusiast (and atheist and skeptic) lives and works in Hampshire, UK. Notes from an Evil Burnee is his blog about things skeptical.
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