P. Z. Myers at TAM London 2010

For many attendees of TAM London 2010 the appearance of "godless liberal" P. Z. Myers would have been one of the anticipated highlights of the weekend. For those who had not previously heard him speak (on podcasts or via YouTube), his relatively mild manner would have been at odds with the surgical invective of his well-trafficked blog Pharyngula. He may have a reputation as the world's most aggressive atheist, but in person he is calm and reasonable. The media tend to focus on specific actions of his that they deem incendiary (the episode known as Crackergate is an example), but they usually — and wilfully — miss the point he's making. (Read his Pharyngula post on the culmination of Crackergate to see an example of such a point.)

We now know that P. Z. is writing a book, and those of us who consider ourselves his fans are eagerly awaiting its publication. His TAM talk was a rallying call to all atheists: he advocates ridicule appropriate to ridiculous beliefs, followed by constructive criticism — purposeful (rather than gratuitous) obnoxiousness.

Radio drama: "The Iron Curtain" — based on the diaries of Paula Kirby

All this week BBC Radio 4 is broadcasting a serialised dramatisation of the diaries of Paula Kirby — she who reviewed with such perspicuity a batch of "flea books" published in response to Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion. Paula writes regularly for the Washington Post On Faith column (her latest being on secular ritual). I've listened to the first of the five 15-minute episodes and I'm looking forward to the rest.

Part of the Writing the Century strand and broadcast as the Woman's Hour Drama, the series is called The Iron Curtain:

The series which explores the 20th century through the diaries and correspondence of real people, returns with "The Iron Curtain" by Nell Leyshon. The drama is inspired by the diaries of Paula Kirby, who went to teach English in East Germany in the 1980s, and her correspondence with paediatric surgeon Knut Löffler.
Fresh out of university, 21 year old Paula Kirby settles into her new home and job, teaching English at the University in Dresden but finds herself attracted to one of her students, a Dr Knut Löffler.
Cast:
Paula ...... Charlotte Emmerson
Knut ...... Jonathan Keeble
Sarah ...... Danielle Henry
Woman on train ...... Melissa Jane Sinden
Directed by Susan Roberts

Paula & Knut January 1988 when Paula was back in the GDR for a visit

(The Woman's Hour Drama will be available on the iPlayer for about a week after broadcast.)

Burnee links for Sunday

The Blog : Why I’d Rather Not Speak About Torture : Sam Harris
Is Sam Harris calling it quits? His point seems to be that there are some matters of ethics that it is impossible to discuss rationally.

The Archbishop of Canterbury is a pompous old gasbag who doesn’t understand evolution « Why Evolution Is True
Jerry Coyne appears to blow a gasket over one theologian's review of another. (This is what theologians do. Nobody else is listening, so let them get on with it.)

The Edinburgh Science Festival, Creationism and the Centre for Intelligent Design | Wonderful Life
The Centre for Intelligent Design plays fast and loose with definitions — corrected here.
(Via BCSE.)

Wait, I thought they believed in an absolute morality? : Pharyngula
Greta Christina rightly condemned William Lane Craig's twisted morality. P Z Myers follows suit. The fact that Craig thinks his position is moral (when anyone with a gram of moral sense clearly knows it isn't) illustrates perfectly the corrupting influence of scripture.

Secular rituals the honest choice - On Faith - The Washington Post

"Why devalue a promise of commitment by making it in the name of a deity in which we do not believe?"

Paula Kirby on the importance of staying true to your principles when it comes to rites of passage.

With friends like these: Atheists against the New Atheism - ABC Religion & Ethics - Opinion
Russell Blackford on the New Atheism backlash.

Why do Americans still dislike atheists? - The Washington Post
It's a good question. Less of a problem in the UK, but even here, as in America, there are some in the public eye who are openly contemptuous of atheists. That doesn't mean they're representative, it just means that the media seeks them out.

Creation Science Movement - News - BCSE and Ekklesia Seek to Restrict Basic Freedom in Schools
But the CSM wants creationism to be taught as "fact" — or at the very least as something that is equivalent to evolution, when it clearly isn't. We've seen what happens when creationism is merely restricted to RE lessons (for example in Muslim schools the children don't believe what they're told in science classes, for the simple reason that in RE they're told that the science contradicts scripture). The creationists have the remedy in their own hands. Go out and do some research to show that creationism is scientifically valid, and get it published in respected, peer-reviewed science journals. Creationism will then be given the chance it deserves (as, indeed, it is given now).

Catholicism a Blood Cult – Official! : Atheism
Yuk. (Follow the link at the post, to the BBC article.)

Enough of the whining about New Atheists! - steve's posterous
Steve Zara on the faux "reasonableness" of Karla McLaren's recent post attacking the Gnus.

1 in 20 don't give a monkey's about Darwin - News - TES Connect
"Many first-year biology students reject evolution, survey finds." This Times Educational Supplement article bizarrely concludes with an ID proponent:

"Alastair Noble, director of the Centre for Intelligent Design, said if the message of the research was that students should have more opportunity to assess the scientific evidence for the various positions around origins, no one would disagree with that."

But the message of the research is that 5 percent of undergraduate biology intake is woefully ignorant of the fundamental principles of biology. If the schools won't fix this, the universities must. Noble goes on to imply that evolution is a non-intuitive, dogmatic religious position, while intelligent design attempts to "account for the sophistication we find in natural and living systems in terms of mind, as well as matter and energy”. Leaving aside Noble's total inversion of the facts here, this isn't what intelligent design does; ID is merely an argument from ignorance: "it's all too complicated, therefore [insert myth here] must have done it". There's no account or explanation in ID. It ought to be crystal clear by now: intelligent design is not science.
(Via BCSE.)

Phillip E. Johnson — father of ID — lax, unpersuasive and simply wrong

I'm now up to chapter 13 of Dembski & Licona's Evidence for God, which is approximately one-eighth of the way through its "50 Arguments for Faith from the Bible, History, Philosophy, and Science". As I feared, it's proving a tedious affair. Given that this is a recent book I'd hoped it might contain some really good up-to-date arguments, or at least a challenge of some sort. So far, however, it's been disappointing. The first section, The Question of Philosophy, should have been challenging, but seems to comprise what I (a non-philosopher) can only describe as philosophically bankrupt arguments. The current section, The Question of Science, appears to be all over the place; some of its chapters don't offer an argument at all, so I fail to see how they count towards the "50 Arguments".

Nor do I understand why every one of the first 13 chapters is either identical or very similar to an article on 4truth.net. That website doesn't reference the book, and the book only briefly references the website (in the introduction) as a place to find "still more articles". Shouldn't there be at least an acknowledgement that the book contains reprints? Or that the website does? (At this stage I'll not be surprised to discover that the whole book is available on the website, which could explain why there's nothing new.)

Curious though that is, what of chapter 13? It's titled "Darwin's Battleship — Status Report on the Leaks This Ship Has Sprung" and is by Discovery Institute co-founder and major intelligent design proponent Phillip E. Johnson. He begins by citing his 1993 book Darwin on Trial, quoting the epilogue in which he predicts that ID will win out over evolution. He then goes on to list how he perceives progress in this regard. It's actually a bit comical:

Science organizations regularly mischaracterize ID, calling it "creationism in a cheap tuxedo." They dream up conspiracies and make false accusations. They try to make sure that no one who is friendly to ID is allowed to publish articles in the peer-reviewed literature and then use the lack of such articles to prove that ID is not science. They try to prevent ID-friendly scientists from attaining research or teaching positions. They enter into local school district decision-making processes to make sure that Darwinism is not allowed to be questioned in any way, bringing in the ACLU if there is any attempt to offer an even-handed approach to the teaching of evolution. (p. 74)

Who's "dreaming up conspiracies and making false accusations" here? I seem to remember a somewhat disreputable film (that's putting it mildly) called Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed that was chock-full of conspiracy theories, every one of which was promptly debunked by people who actually investigated the facts.

Johnson goes on to state that the "Darwinian mechanism of evolution" has no explanation of how the complex living world came about. This is just plain false. Anyone who reads Richard Dawkins' latest, beautifully illustrated book, The Greatest Show on Earth, cannot fail to understand the stunning simplicity and elegance of Darwin's idea. As for explaining "how life came into being from chemicals" — Johnson must surely know that evolutionary theory has practically nothing to say on the subject because that's not what it's about. He complains that Edward O. Wilson gives no concrete examples of evolution in an article in Harvard magazine, while providing no examples himself — nor does he provide a reference to Wilson's article. In fact the only reference Johnson gives is to his own book. His final paragraph is telling:

Recently, Harvard opened a new major research project, especially to study the origin of life. This may be in response to the criticisms of the Intelligent Design movement. Other recent articles suggest that scientists in the biological establishment are doing research specifically to answer the challenges raised by ID. If this is the case, it should be seen as a good thing by everyone. We in the ID movement are proponents of good science. If our criticisms and questions lead to better research, we are unafraid of the results. In the meantime, our current concern is to keep evolutionary scientists honest about the current state of the evidence and to allow young people to understand why there is a controversy about the subject of evolution. (p. 75)

It sounds entirely reasonable, until the last sentence. In evolutionary science — the kind supported by peer-reviewed research — there isn't a controversy about the subject of evolution. The controversy is entirely in the minds of ID proponents who want biological science to be based on a religious idea.

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4truth.net
http://www.4truth.net/fourtruthpbscience.aspx?pageid=8589952913

"What Genetics Can Really Tell Us" — Adam Rutherford — Winchester SitP

The ubiquitous Adam Rutherford gave a fascinating talk at Winchester Skeptics in the Pub on Thursday evening. Ubiquitous? Well, he's been on telly this week, and last, with his new BBC Four series The Gene Code (which reminds me — I wonder if there are any of those fridge magnets left...), and his previous series The Cell began a re-run that very evening. Also he's had several recent Radio 4 appearances: Science Betrayed, for instance, and last week's Start the Week with Andrew Marr.

Adam's appearance at TAM London 2010 detailed his experiences on the Alpha Course, but on Thursday he was on his own territory with a talk entitled "What Genetics Can Really Tell Us". We learned, for instance, that compared to indigenous Africans the majority of western humanity is extraordinarily inbred. We learned that except in a very few cases there isn't a "single gene" responsible for specific human attributes — or diseases. This is something the tabloid press (or at least the Daily Mail) hasn't yet caught on to, and we saw slides of several articles that claimed that "the gene for" various specific things had been found. Bizarrely, several of these disparate characteristics were attributed, in different articles, to the same gene. Adam also managed to outline the history of genetics (including the scientific principles) in about 20 minutes, which is no mean feat.

I should also mention that despite this being the first time Adam had delivered this talk he was engaging and funny throughout. While he may or may not keep the bingo cards (don't ask) in subsequent talks, if you get the chance to hear him on this subject don't pass it up. It's unlikely, however, that he'll be able to arrange a flypast of the International Space Station every time he delivers his talk. (During the break we all paraded into the pub car park to watch the ISS go by.)

Winchester SitP's regular venue, The Roebuck — now under new management — has been done up, which contributed to the general success of the evening.

Burnee links for Thursday

Amis on Hitchens: 'He's one of the most terrifying rhetoricians the world has seen' | Books | The Observer
This is almost a eulogy, by the one person probably most qualified to deliver it.

Jack of Kent: An Atheist on Easter Sunday
David Allen Green ponders his atheism.

Mocking and satirising are marks of respect | HumanistLife
An unusual slant on the idea of respect for religious (or any) views.

Cristina Odone “loathes” Terry Pratchett | HumanistLife
A quick way to tell if someone is ideologically against assisted dying: they refer to it as "assisted suicide". HumanistLife analyses Cristina Odone's Telegraph article and finds it has no substance. Odone says she loathes Terry Pratchett because he wants people to have a choice at the ends of their lives. I highly recommend Pratchett's Dimbleby Lecture on the subject, as it was a paragon of calm assessment of reality. All the arguments against assisted dying are seriously flawed — most are based on faulty logic or religious dogma.

Sir Terry Pratchett, poster-boy of assisted suicide, has the BBC doing his bidding – Telegraph Blogs
The Odone article referred to above.

Terry Pratchett, Patrick Stewart and Ian McEwan back assisted dying | HumanistLife
More about the BBC's forthcoming documentary on assisted dying.

NonProphet Status » Blog Archive » Why Do We Need New Atheists? Can’t We Just Spruce Up The Old Ones?
Pretending to be the voice of reason, Karla McLaren uses military metaphors and straw men to perpetuate the notion that New Atheists are strident, shrill and "not helping". Serious irony failure here.

Graham Linehan at TAM London 2010 (plus Fry and Minchin on video)

Richard Wiseman introduced the last thing before lunch on Sunday: a video conversation between Tim Minchin and Stephen Fry. This was interesting, if fairly relaxed and rambling, and was a substitute for Stephen Fry appearing in person as billed (though his appearance had always been "commitments permitting"). The discussion was philosophical, and — because it was Stephen Fry — also philological.

After lunch Graham Linehan joined Jon Ronson (who was making yet another unscheduled appearance) on stage for a discussion ranging from Linehan's TV writing work (among them Father Ted, Black Books and The IT Crowd), to his use of Twitter and other internet social media.

There were quite a few of these on-stage discussions and panels at TAM London 2010. Frankly I could have done with fewer of them. Too often the discussion format seems to allow the person scheduled not to prepare anything, and unless the "interviewer" is extremely skilled in the chat-show format the whole thing can become a bit unfocussed.