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This edition features an interview atheist Ed Turner

Burnee links for Friday

Poor Ardipithecus…exploited again : Pharyngula
PZ Myers explains the folly of those who attempt justification of religious dogma with flawed readings of palaeontology. Again.

Butterflies and Wheels Article: Are the 'New Atheists' avoiding the 'real arguments'?
This was brought to my attention by manicstreetpreacher. It pretty much encapsulates my enduring suspicions about vacuous theology. I especially liked Edmund Standing's description of theological pursuits: "the creation of a smokescreen of meaningless jargon in an attempt to make superstition appear sophisticated."

Creationists Say Science and Bible Disprove Ardi Fossil Is Evidence of Evolution - ABC News
...and the Earth is flat, and stationary, with the Sun orbiting it every 24 hours. (This is so bad it hurts.)

Daylight Atheism > Kiva Atheists’ Million-Dollar Milestone
Atheists have no morals, live purely for themselves alone, and have no reason to give to charity (they also eat babies — alive).

Guest Voices: Where is the Evidence of God? - On Faith at washingtonpost.com
Paula Kirby on evidence — as concise and clear as one could wish.

Creation Science Movement: ‘God is not the Creator’, claims academic

"What Professor Van Wolde seems to be doing is to take the Ancient Near Eastern myths and try to squeeze the Genesis account into conformity with them. But if the only way you can do this is to distort the Genesis account, then it is a pretty good sign that the endeavour is doomed to fail."

Of course, such squeezing and distortion is something that creationists wouldn't dream of attempting....

Complementary and Alternative Medicines: 14 Oct 2009: House of Commons debates (TheyWorkForYou.com): David Tredinnick (Bosworth, Conservative)

On homeopathy:

"...very clear randomised, double-blind trials that proved that it is effective in the particular area of childhood diarrhoea..."

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Citations please.

In the cathedral I saw a sign. God help us | Matthew Parris - Times Online
Those relics again. See also this excerpt from the Today Programme:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8308000/8308396.stmhttp://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8308000/8308396.stm

Ariane Sherine at TAM London

If any one person is likely to dispel the notion that atheists are all heartless nihilists, that person must be the lovely Ariane Sherine, who graced the Mermaid stage after lunch on Saturday, to give us the full story of the Atheist Bus Campaign.

It's a heartwarming tale that began with her initial reaction to a Christian bus advertisement and the uncompromising website it linked to (with its dire warning of Hell), and her subsequent suggestion in the Guardian that atheists might like to club together and pay for an ad with a less intimidating message. After a couple of false starts — gleefully snickered at by the press — the campaign suddenly took off, reaching its funding target within hours of its formal launch. The final sum raised was in excess of £150,000 — about 14 times the initial target of £11,000.

News of the campaign's overwhelming success quickly travelled around the globe, prompting similar efforts in many other countries. Atheism, it seemed, had arrived. By bus.

The campaign did have its detractors, many of whom showed up in Ariane Sherine's email, and she treated us to a sad selection of these. They were, however, vastly outnumbered by messages of support, and she thanked those who had been vocal in their encouragement.

Now there's a book. The Atheist's Guide to Christmas is an anthology of contributions from many well known people of the godless persuasion, with all royalties going to the Terrence Higgins Trust. Not bad, for a bunch of nihilistic heathens with nary a moral amongst them.

Ariane Sherine seemed to spend a good deal of her time during the two days of TAM London tirelessly signing copies of the book she edited. No quick-scrawl-and-on-to-the-next for her — each book was patiently inscribed while chatting pleasantly to the recipient. If Richard Dawkins is Britain's most prominent atheist, whom the atheist community might (or might not) like to name as some kind of figurehead, Ariane Sherine is the atheist many of the younger generation must surely aspire to be.

TAM London edition of Skepticule now available

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This edition features an interview with satirical blogger Crispian Jago.

The purpose of life

This post is sparked by an interesting recent episode of The Unbelievers, an engaging podcast out of New Zealand, in which the two hosts discussed (among other things) the idea of purpose, and how it colours the perception of both religious and non-religious people. While they agreed that atheism does not itself have a purpose, they nevertheless went on to speculate that the purpose of life could in some sense be "to reproduce". This, I feel, illustrates the strong grip that the idea of "intention" has on our human way of thinking, and it's not, in my opinion, helpful.

In the absence of a religious purpose for human life (for instance, "the glorification of God"), it might seem reasonable for perpetuation of the species to be offered as a substitute. But reproduction is simply what humans, and other species, do. If they didn't, they would become extinct. Reproduction is not, therefore, a purpose, but simply the result of evolution. Those that are best at reproduction (which includes being good at surviving to reproductive age) are the ones who pass on their genes to the most offspring.

Such a statement is somewhat tautologous ("the ones that survive are the ones that survive"), but its very tautology shows why the idea of a "purpose" behind it is wrong-headed. Human reproduction is the way it is as a result of random mutation and natural selection. There never was any over-arching intention or purpose behind it. Any instinctive impulse to reproduce is there because those without such an impulse tended not to reproduce.

But if there's no intrinsic purpose to life, why are we here? That, surely, is entirely up to us.

Simon Singh at TAM London

Simon Singh, bastion of journalistic integrity with his stand against an apparently vexatious libel suit brought against him by the British Chiropractic Association, talked initially about the Bible Code, which is the idea that holy scripture contains hidden references to modern events — or in other words predictions — and therefore must be the true Word of God. This, apparently, is nonsense and has been shown to be such by applying the same "decoding" techniques to other literature. For instance, Herman Melville's Moby Dick can be shown to contain hidden references to the death of Diana, Princess of Wales.

This was but preamble to what I think most of us in the audience wanted to hear: the story so far regarding the libel suit. Singh then told us the story, explaining why he decided not to back down, and illustrated how his stand has raised two related but separate issues: the threat to freedom of speech, where essential and legitimate criticism of bogus practices is suppressed — often by journalists' self-censorship for fear of being sued; and the absurdly inflated costs of defending a libel case in England — to the point where aggrieved plaintiffs go out of their way to sue in this country because they know that in most cases a defendant cannot afford to win, let alone lose. Another reason he cited for not backing down, "Because I'm right," elicited spontaneous applause from the TAM London audience.

Singh explained all this without once uttering the "contentious" phrase that apparently triggered the BCA's action. That was left to the blogger "Jack of Kent" (aka lawyer David Allen Green) who during the Q & A read the offending paragraph from Singh's Guardian article. I was pleased to meet the notorious Jack of Kent the previous evening at the Penderel's Oak in Holborn, where several of those attending the "secret" George Hrab gig gravitated afterwards. Jack of Kent explained during conversation on Friday evening that as a lawyer he's able to say stuff others can't, because he knows just how far he can go without being sued.

Simon Singh thanked all those who continue to support him in the stand he's taking, singling out satirical blogger Crispian Jago for lightening his spirit.

For our part, the TAM London audience gave Simon Singh a standing ovation.

Theodicy, or idiocy?

Listening to a recent episode of Unbelievable? in which Andrew Wilson and Norman Bacrac discussed their occasionally coincident views of God, I was struck once again by how the subject of theology seems to have been invented purely as an attempt to reconcile the inconsistencies of god-belief. The fact that theologians appear to tie themselves in logical knots trying to show how an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent and omnibenevolent deity is somehow compatible and consistent with the physical universe as we perceive it, simply shows that they refuse to accept the most parsimonious explanation.

Theodicy, for example, is a real problem, but it's a problem that goes away entirely if you apply Occam's razor and accept that in all probability God doesn't exist.

For a relentless no-holds-barred take-down of theology, see this recent post from Chris Ray at Factonista:

Why skeptics do not, and should not, waste their time with academic theology | Factonista