This Week in Atheism, Religion and Scepticism – 21/04/2013

Been a while since I worked on a consistent weekly segment for this blog, so I thought it was high time I got something started up again.

My idea for the 'Sunday News Round-Up' is for it to pretty much do what it says on the tin: every Sunday I'll post links to some news articles relevant to topics this blog covers, along with a bit of analysis and discussion from me. I'll break them down by topic, articles relating to atheism and religion in one, articles relating to scepticism in the other.

Right then, let's get this show on the road.

THIS WEEK IN ATHEISM AND RELIGION...

Shirley Chaplin, Gary McFarlane and Lillian Ladele are back in the news this week, as they're appealing the decision made by the European Court earlier this year. You might recall these three as the guys who complained that their employers were discriminating against them on religious grounds; Mrs Chaplin is a nurse forbidden to wear a cross at work, whilst Mr McFarlane and Miss Ladele are a relationship and marriage counsellor respectively who refused to work with homosexual couples. The former lost his job over it, whilst the latter is claiming that her employers making her work with gay couples would be discrimination.

All the rulings against them were held up in the European Court of Appeals, but now they're back decrying unfair treatment, double-standards and further discrimination against Christians. I do feel a bit sorry for Mrs Chaplin, I must admit; she had been wearing her cross (not exactly a big deal) for thirty years when she was asked to remove it on health and safety grounds, and she did actually offer to modify it so it did not only for this to be refused. The other two I have no sympathy for, however. We're reaching the stage were gay couples are finally starting to gain the right straight couples have solely enjoyed for far too long, and these kind of people can scream that they're not homophobes until Hell freezes over: if you are refusing to work with such couples based solely on their being gay, that's actual discrimination based upon sexual orientation.

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A health and physical education teacher in Columbus, Ohio has been fired after the principal learned she was gay. Would it surprise you overly to learn that this school is Catholic?

Yeah, me neither.

Carla Hale, who had worked at Bishop Watterson High School for nineteen years, had her post terminated because her homosexuality is “a violation of moral law”. No, seriously. That's apparently their reasoning for this bullshit move. I never cease to be astounded by the fact that these people still think they can get away with this sort of thing still. Either way, a shitstorm is brewing, the school is under heavy scrutiny and Hale, who very kindly says that all she wants is her job back, is nonetheless pursuing legal action against the school for it's blatant discrimination against her. She's going to win, there's no doubt about it; the school diocese has no justification for the stunt it's pulled.

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And finally for this section some news closer to home for me: a poll in Scotland by the Sunday Times and Real Radio Scotland shows a sizeable decrease in the number of people saying they belong to the Christian faith. This stands in stark contrast to an earlier poll in 2001, which had 65% of respondents saying they were Christian; in this new poll it's dropped to 55%, and those stating that they have no belief in god has risen from just 28% to 39%. Good news all round, by my standards. The National Secular Society, whose analysis of these numbers I'm politely pinching, points out that many people tend to overstate their religious tendencies in these polls, so for all we know the changes might be even larger.

The poll results are available online; you can check them out here.

THIS WEEK IN SCEPTICISM...

Anyone remember Andrew Wakefield? The former doctor who kicked off the whole MMR vaccine controversy with his fraudulent 1998 paper that linked the vaccine to autism? Who was using his paper to try and trick the government into using a medical test he had the patent for?

Yeah, well the asshole's back in the news again this week.

In the wake of the reports about Measles spreading in south Wales this month, Wakefield is using this outbreak as an excuse to remind us all that he sadly hasn't stopped breathing and to blame the British government for the whole thing. Yup, the man partly responsible for the deaths of untold numbers of infants because he scared their parents away from vaccines is once again trying to redirect the blame on everyone but himself. Professor Andrew Finn, a specialist in childhood vaccines and an actually credible source of information on these matters, has denounced Wakefield's statements as, and I do quote, “balderdash”:

“His proposal for single vaccines was not based on any observations in his published paper. It came straight out of his head. There has never been any evidence it would have made any difference.”

Wakefield has been struck from the medical record and has fled to the USA, where he continues to perpetrate his particularly noxious brand of bullshit.

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If you follow vjack's blog Atheist Revolution, you might remember a post about how you should really reconsider using the Huffington Post as a reliable source of information. Well, please allow me to further stress this point by looking at another article in which HuffPo gives credence to pseudoscience and nonsense over critical thinking.

Specifically this one, in which it gives a soapbox to a group led by New Age woo-peddlar Deepak Chopra who are complaining about TEDx removing pseudoscientific videos from its blog.

Please note that TEDx is not the actual Technology, Entertainment and Design conference; parapsychologists like Rupert Sheldrake, the removal of whose talk Chopra and his friends are protesting, would never manage to get a platform there, due to them actually having standards. TEDx conferences are third-party conferences that license the TED brand in order to gain more attention, but they often don't have the standard of entry their parent group does. Nonetheless, the misuse of the brand can have negative effects on the parent company, and nothing damages ones credibility as a solid source for science than allowing a herd of quantum woo-types to use your name to add much-needed credibility to their ideas.

Thus TED, a private organisation that is free to add or remove whatever it wishes from its blogs, removed their links to several videos of such talks from their site. The videos are still available; they've not been wiped from the internet, so any claims of censorship or a cover-up is nonsense. Chopra and his ilk just seem to get upset when people try to hold their claims up to the same standards as everyone else in the scientific community, and Ariana Huffington is only too happy to offer him a highly visible spot to complain about it from.

That's this week in Atheism, Religion and Scepticism, folks. See you next time.

Four Reasons Why The Boston Crisis Actors Theory Makes No Sense

Responses to the attacks in Boston that occurred this week are already pouring in, and it’s genuinely heart-warming to see the vast majority of people united in support of the victims of this event. We search for answers, for an explanation for this seemingly unexplainable act of violence upon innocent lives.

But there’s a small but vocal minority who say they’ve already got the answer.

It’s our old friends, the Crisis Actor Theory espousers. And they’re saying the Boston attacks were faked.

If you’ve not yet heard of this particular conspiracy theory (you lucky bastard, you) then let me give you a quick rundown. It tends to pop up in the wake of attacks like Boston or Sandy Hook, proclaiming that the event was staged and the apparent victims are in fact actors hired by the guv’mint/Jews/aliens/New World Order (delete as appropriate). Advocates tend to pour over the many images of these events, grabbing the occasional one where a person in it looks vaguely similar to someone else before proclaiming “LOOK, LOOK THEY’RE AN ACTOR! THEY’RE LYING TO US, GUIZ!”

DallasGoldBug, founder of conspiracy website Wellaware1 and big fan of this blog (going by his comments on this post, anyway), has already been hard at work pouring over images of this tragic event in a desperate attempt to compartmentalise it into his world view of ‘every accident or attack that happens ever is the work of some conspiracy’. I don’t wish to single him out, however, for he’s not the only proponent of this theory out there. Thus rather than make this post an attack piece on one single conspiracy theorist, which just seems petty and more than a little mean, I’d like to instead provide four responses to the theory as a whole in an attempt to demonstrate why it really doesn’t make any sense.

So strap your bullshit protection masks on, guys, and let’s wade neck-deep into this malarkey.

1. They would not hire easily-recognisable public figures

I have several friends who are aspiring actors. You’ve never heard of them: the few things they’ve been in are student productions or small theatrical performances during the Edinburgh Fringe. Nonetheless, they’re extremely talented and have a lot of experience with their chosen vocation. It’s just that they’ve never managed to find their ‘big break’ yet.

The scene is very similar across the pond; Los Angeles is filled to the brim with would-be actors and stars, people desperate for a chance at fame and prestige. The life of a starving artist is a difficult one, however. Paying bills and living expenses when you have little frequent sources of income is hard, and I’d imagine there’s plenty of these very talented but unknown actors desperate enough to take whatever work is offered to them.

What I’m saying is, if I were in charge of a conspiracy that stages hoax tragedies, I’d hire people you’ve never seen before. It just makes sense.

Why, then, do the actors listed by crisis actor theorists all tend to be the well known ones?

If these theoretical people have the skill and ingenuity to organise a hoax on this scale, they wouldn’t hire actors you and I can recognise. That’s beyond stupid, given the umpteen thousands of unknowns who could be utilised instead. On a related note, why would these famous figures even consent to work for such an operation in the first place? These are guys who are doing pretty well for themselves, who have a lot to lose.

And the revelation that they helped stage an attack or accident wouldn’t exactly do wonders for their careers.

2. No-one could cover up something this massive

Stop and think, just for a moment, about how large a conspiracy would have to be in order to pull off a hoax this massive. Think about how many people would need to be in on this conspiracy, from the guys at the top to the first responders, eye-witnesses, the police, the fire and ambulance services, and the actual actors themselves.

That’s a lot of people.

That’s a very large margin for error.

Even assuming you could get all of these people to play ball with this hoax, even assuming that they were all in place at the right time, even assuming none of them had a twinge of guilt and blew the whistle on the whole thing (and that, to put it mildly, is a lot of assuming), people still manage to fuck things up on a scarily regular basis. Humans are not perfect, and we make mistakes. For a hoax of this scale, all of those aforementioned people (who likely number in the hundreds) would have to do their jobs without making a mistake.

That’s a level of competence you just don’t see these days.

The US government couldn’t cover up Watergate. British politicians leave briefcases containing national secrets on public transport. The possibility for things to go wrong on a conspiracy of this scale is just too high for it to succeed.

3. We are pattern-seeking animals

Human beings are exceptionally good at recognising and registering the faces of others.

This is something we learn from a very early age, and it stays with us all through our lives. We can tell very quickly if there is something off about a face that looks not quite human enough, and viewing such a face can disturb us quite deeply. Let me give you an example:

 

You can tell immediately in this photo which one is Professor Hiroshi Ishiguro and which one is his almost-realistic robot counterpart, Geminoid HI-1. One registers with us as a face, the other is instantly recognised as fake. In short, we’re really pretty good at recognising faces.

Perhaps a bit too good.

Michael Shermer has quite rightly pointed out before that human beings are “pattern-seeking story-telling animals”. We’re so adept at spotting human faces that we can very easily see them in non-human objects and items. This is a psychological phenomenon known as Pareidolia, and if you don’t believe me check out the following:

If you're having a hard time seeing the shapes, just click the image to see the full size.

 

Those images are little more than a mishmash of shapes and squares, yet with each one our brains manage to interpret these random images into human faces. That’s how hard-wired our brains are to see similar shapes in the form of faces; we do it to the point where we can see faces where none exist.

This is why we notice consistencies in the faces of certain people, such as this painting of a nineteenth century French actor and Keanu Reeves. This is why crisis actor theorists are able to notice similarities between the faces of victims and the faces of people who are apparently actors posing as these victims. It’s similar to the reason why people see images of Jesus in pieces of toast, or why this bird looks a hell of a lot like Nicolas Cage.

Fuck. Maybe that bird’s an actor, too.

4. This is all conjecture, not evidence

Conjecture, according to the Oxford Dictionary of English, is “an opinion or conclusion formed on the basis of incomplete information”.

The event that we are discussing right now is still the subject of an ongoing investigation; the authorities are still piecing together the answers, so you can bet that Joe Public does not yet have all the information available to him yet. As such, any views are being expressed right now are not being made with all the potential information.

In short, the advocates of the crisis actor theory are making half-baked speculation based on limited evidence, then calling it proof. This really isn't the case. Fuzzy, out-of-focus images placed alongside fuzzy, out-of-focus images doesn’t constitute proof.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, as the saying goes.

And the advocates of this particular conspiracy theory don’t have any.

So that, ladies and gentlemen, is the Boston Crisis Actors Theory. Hell, you could take the points I've outlined here and use them with any version of the crisis actors theory if you like. In the wake of tragedies such as the events of Boston recently it's only natural that we all want answers, that we desire an explanation for this senseless act of violence.

This need for a truth to bring answers to tragedy can lead us into the territory of conspiracy theory, however, and so if you're reading this whilst still uncertain as to what to think of all this I urge you to stick to the facts. We don't know everything about what has transpired yet, but with a bit of patience and adherence to the principles of scepticism we can hopefully come to a conclusion that explains what has happened.

Keep the victims in your hearts, for they were real people: they had families and friends, hopes and dreams. Thank the heroes who risked their lives on that day for the sake of others, who threw themselves into harm's way for the sake of their fellow man. Such individuals, be they police officer, paramedic or just a bystander who stepped up to the challenge, can remind us that even in the darkest of times people have the capacity to be amazing.

And don't listen to those who would tell you that none of this ever happened, that it was all faked. Such people spit on the memories of those who were killed and bring further grief to an already tragic event.

On the 'Redefinition of Marriage'

Of late this blog has been taking more of a sceptical bent, intermixed with a bit of light-hearted discussion of religious themes in media and the like.

So it really is high time I gave the religious hornet's nest a good boot and see what stirs up in response.

Let's talk gay marriage.

As vjack pointed out recently, we do seem to be reaching an apotheosis in modern culture when it finally starts to dawn upon people that marriage should be something people have a right to irregardless of their sexuality. Recently Uruguay's congress passed a bill legalising gay marriage in their country with over two-thirds of their lower chamber in support, and just yesterday France's upper house of parliament approved a similar bill. Times are indeed a-changing, with similar legislation all across the globe being proposed and debated.

Now I'm sure that somewhere there exists a non-religious person who is against gay marriage. These things do happen, after all. It's just that I can only think of one individual who fits this description; overwhelmingly, those who oppose the right of a gay couple to get married do so on religious grounds. That's not to say that everyone of a religious mind is against this issue, since some of the most passionate supporters for this cause that I know are also very religious.

All manner of arguments and reasoning are fired back and forth when it comes to this subject, from advocates stating its a civil right to opponents denouncing it as unnatural. There's a whole range of shitty reasoning and logical fallacies being peddled in this debate, and sadly I don't have time to go over them all here. Instead I'd like to focus in on one particular argument being used against gay marriage. It's one of the arguments I hear most frequently when this subject comes up, both in conversation with others and in speeches by government figures.

I'd like to focus on the idea that supporting this movement is to support a “redefinition of marriage”.

Now commonly on my side of the debate (hazard a guess as to which this might be) the response to this assertion is that allowing gay marriage is not a redefinition, but I'm going to take a different approach. Let's say, for a moment, that allowing gay people to get married is indeed redefining the way in which marriage is outlined in law.

Now please explain to me why this is a bad thing?

As society changes, so do the laws. So does the language. As our concepts of morality and fairness change, the way in which we legislate such matters adapts accordingly, as does the way in which we speak. Forty years ago women were viewed only as housekeepers and other notions we'd find extremely outdated now. Sixty years ago and the idea of civil rights would have been laughed at.

Laws change. And to say that in allowing gay people to get married we'd be “redefining it” is to ignore the fact that marriage has been redefined many times before.

Christians themselves will tell you that the Bible does not actually define marriage as “one man, one woman”; that seems to be something we've added more recently. In the past, it's worth noting, marriage was a political thing as well, a means of securing alliances between families and extending one's influence. Love didn't really factor into it all until far more recently. Thus this notion of marriage as a bond between a loving couple (in this instance, one male and one female) is just one more change a long list of edits and revisions to how we define the concept of marriage.

So perhaps opponents of this movement are right in saying that we are attempting to redefine marriage (I'm not saying for certain they are, let me stress; this post is more of a thought exercise than anything else). I fail to see what the issue with this is. Laws and language are redefined every single day, and that's a good thing. If these things do not change with the times they will become stagnant and outdated, no longer relevant to the times, which is something the laws our society is governed by can never afford to be.

At the end of the day, it will forever baffle me why this issue matters so much to people. You don't want gay marriage? Don't fucking get one, then. Marriage is a civil right, and there's no religious monopoly on it.

Why the hell should one group get to decide for everyone who can and cannot get married? That doesn't strike me as terribly fair.

The People Who Believe The Victims of Sandy Hook Were Actors

I don’t know if any of you guys reading have ever been part of a nationwide conspiracy that includes staging shootings in multiple states, spoon-feeding the story to the media, and using a ton of Black Ops and bribes to cover it all up each time an investigator puts two and two together.

I imagine it gets expensive, though.

At least that seems to be the logic behind one of the latest conspiracies to spring up in the wake of the recent tragedy I was discussing in my last post; these guys are claiming that many of the families, news reporters, victims and in some cases even the perpetrator are all actors hired by the government to play roles in staged tragedies and massacres. Apparently the major conspiracy that controls the entirety of the USA is trying to keep costs down by re-using these actors in different places.

No, I’m not kidding you. This is a real thing. People actually believe this.

The lovely folks have Snopes have traced the origins of this theory to Wellaware1, a site that, amongst other things, has claimed that both Hitler and Walt Disney were characters portrayed by the son of US President Theodore Roosevelt. And that Jack White was the real perpretrator of the Aurora shootings, amongst others. So clearly they know what they’re talking about.

Others have taken this nuttyness and run with it since then, however; this video uses a photo of the Two and a Half Men actor Angus T Jones from when he was around eleven years old (he’s nineteen now, by the by) to claim that he portrayed one of the victims of the tragedy just a few weeks ago. Oh, and apparently Fox News, CNN and many other news sources are all under the control of Obama as part of a conspiracy to destroy the Second Amendment and take away the guns.

Obama’s even more cunning than we thought; he’s using Fox News’ frequent and excessive criticism of him as a smokescreen for the fact that they secretly do his bidding, the diabolical bastard.

I know I’m not really giving this thing a fair trial but honestly, what else am I supposed to do? The people spreading this particularly noxious brand of shit aren’t just paranoid as hell, they’re insulting the real people who were affected by this tragedy, insulting the memories of the real victims. It’s deplorable.

Seriously, if such a widespread, quasi-omniscient conspiracy existed you’d think they could afford to hire more actors.

Question: Do Video Games Cause Violent Behaviour? Answer: No.

 

“Psychological studies purporting to show a connection between exposure to violent video games and harmful effects on children do not prove that such exposure causes minors to act aggressively.”

- Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, majority opinion in Brown v. EMA/ESA

Merry ‘Insert-Whichever-Holiday-You-Happen-To-Celebrate-At-The-End-Of-The-Year’ and a Happy New Year to you, dear readers. Sorry for the truly atrocious rate of updates for this thing; I am trying to get stuff written, I swear.

With that said, let’s get stuck right into the topic at hand.

So, confession right off the bat; I’m a fan of video games, and have been since I was a kid. I grew up on games like Mario and Sonic, the Half-Life series is nothing short of magnificent (give us Episode 3, Gabe), and I think they’re an exciting, ever-expanding form of entertainment with opportunities for audience interaction unparalleled by any other form of media.

I’ve also never murdered anyone, either.

Strange that I should have to add this, yes, but in the news frenzy that tends to follow on from senseless tragedies I’d forgive many people for being led to believe otherwise. I’m going to avoid addressing the aforementioned tragedy directly; you know the one I’m referring to, it’s been discussed, and repeatedly bringing up such a travesty only helps to exacerbate the problem. In the wake of such events, it’s understandable that many seek an explanation as to what could cause something so awful to happen. This is only natural; we are pattern-seeking animals, after all, and we desire a reason for an act.

Yet this understandable phenomenon can very often take a nasty form, namely the labelling of some form of media as the cause of the tragedy. It’s happened time and time again. When John Lennon was shot and his killer claimed he was inspired by The Catcher In The Rye, people called for the book to be banned. Hip-Hop is often blamed for violence amongst young people.

And when a mentally disturbed individual walks into a public place and starts firing, people often blame the video games.

Now, commentators far wiser, well read and wittier than I have already covered this very topic, and their rundowns of the issue are pretty damn comprehensive (I’ll link them at the end, and you guys should really consider checking them out), so you might think that someone like me writing about this is a little pointless. But given that just a few days from now the town of Southington, Connecticut intends to collect together violentvideo games and likely burn them (because nothing says calm and rational like a bunch of townspeople getting together to destroy things they don’t like), I do feel the need to make known the colours I fly and let people know why folks making the correlation between violence in video games and violence in real life are wrong.

Correlation does not equal causation, people.

The idea of video games being linked to violence is not a new one. It’s been around for many a year, and in those years many a study has been conducted. Thus it’s safe to assume that if a link between violence in video games and violence in real life was indeed a thing, we likely would have found it by now or at least have an inkling of its existence. Yet consistently, the studies that are worth a damn (that is to stay, properly-conducted studies with decent control and whose authors didn’t set out with an agenda already in mind) have shown that no such link exists. In fact, as the ESA note in one of the links, “violent crime, particularly among the young, has decreased dramatically since the early 1990s. During the same period of time, video games have steadily increased in popularity and use, exactly the opposite of what one would expect if there were a causal link.”

Please don’t misunderstand me. There are plenty of things wrong with video games and the video game industry today. Please don’t get me started on the shitty business practices of companies like Sony and EA. They are guilty of plenty of things, but the blame for the recent tragedy and others like it is not one of them. Simply put, speculation as to what the cause of a school-shooting might be is an extremely tricky tight-rope to walk; as Stephen Novella noted in a recent The Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe episode, there are more variables in such an event than there are data points, so anyone offering up answers like “video games done it” are guilty of massively over-simplifying the issue.

Whether you personally disapprove of the violence it portrays, violent media has a right to exist. As I’ve said before, I think such media can be extremely valuable, powerful and worthwhile. Don’t believe me? Check out stuff like ‘Spec Ops: The Line’ (one of the few games to really nail the horrors of war in a truly mature, sincere manner) or Telltale’s ‘The Walking Dead’. And if it really isn’t your thing? That’s perfectly fine, too, but blaming it for events we have no explanation for isn’t the way to go about things.

To quote the guys at Penny Arcade, “it’s a very odd sort of Patriot that would destroy the First Amendment to protect the Second.”

Facebook ‘Privacy Notices’ Won’t Help You

So there’s been a big stir of late over the fact that Facebook is now a publicly-traded business, with a lot of people now concerned about their privacy and the potential for violations of it. A little paranoid? Perhaps, but this is the internet; it’s important to be aware of the information that you’re putting out and the chance for it to come back to haunt you.

Such concerns seem to be the main cause of the ‘Facebook Privacy Notice’ chain update that’s doing the rounds on the popular social media website. This thing (you can view a copy of one of it’s many variations here at Snopes.com) has been around since June of this year, but as it’s now seemingly made the jump across the pond and is still spreading I thought I’d devote a quick post about it.

So let’s start with the bad news.

Sorry guys, but this Privacy Notice won’t help to protect your privacy online at all.

Your rights, responsibilities and access to things like privacy all stem from Facebook’s ‘Terms of Service’ (or ToS), which you agree to when you first sign up for the site. These are what govern who has access to your page and for what purpose; simply posting an update citing a couple ofpieces of US legislation (which are unrelated to social media and privacy and therefore irrelevant) cannot change that.

So long as you are using Facebook, it’s assumed that you are in acceptance of the ToS. If you’re not, you’re only option is to not use the site. That’s just how it works, sadly.

Concerns about your privacy online are valid, don’t get me wrong. Employers are known to read into your online life and the things you’ve posted, so it’s not a bad thing to be concerned about who can see what about you on the internet. But posting disclaimers such as this won’t help you.

You have concerns regarding who can see your content on Facebook?

Then be sure to monitor that content.

Monday Morning Musings #7

 

University kicks back in this week. Lots of Freshers to throw business cards at and an Atheist & Agnostic Society stall to man. Things are going to get busy.

The good Reverend Emily Heath has a lovely little article about how to determine whether your faith or religion is being actively persecuted or whether you’re just an asshole.

I understand that a lot of non-believers across the pond in the USA are disappointed with the Democrats’ backpeddling on the religious references in their Convention this election. Sadly that’s the nature of politics, friends; appealing to voters as much as possible will always trump ideological stances. It’s the same the world over.

Atheist blogger Jen McCreight has decided to stop her blog in the face of this Atheism+, ‘fuck those Freethought Blog guys’ shenanigans that continues to rage across the internet. I didn’t always agree with everything McCreight had to say, but I’m truly sorry that this controversy has ruined something she previously enjoyed doing. There’s no other way to say it; that fucking sucks.

And finally remember kids, dressing up in a Ghillie suit in an attempt to pretend to be Bigfoot might sound like a really cool idea. But when it ends with you standing in the middle of a highway in camouflage gear you really shouldn’t be surprised if you wind up getting hit by a car.

Monday Morning Musings #6

[This isn’t going up on Monday, sadly, but since I did technically start writing this post Monday afternoon I guess it can count at a stretch. Plus I really can’t be assed coming up with a creative title for this sort of post going up on a Tuesday. A most lazy non-believer, I am.]

I’ve heard Catholic apologists for the child sex abuse scandals use a lot of bizarre and utterly reprehensible defences, but the prize (if you can call it that; 'Badge of Shame' might be better) for the worst offender so far goes to Father Benedict Groeschel; he’s elected to go for the ‘blame the victim’ approach, claiming that in many cases it’s the child’s fault for being sexually abused. He’s since attempted to retract the comments (surprise surprise), claiming that he “did not intend to blame the victim”, but you don’t let an article reach publication unless you really do think like that.

‘beentrueandfaithful’ has uploaded a very interesting little article to /r/atheism about his experiences as a Mormon Missionary. Turns out some of them might dislike having to try and talk to you about the word of Jesus Christ even more than you dislike being talked to about it.

There was all that noise about Bruce Willis planning to sue Apple today, only for it to be revealed that the story was actually nonsense. Once again media sources forget that scepticism about a story can often be useful in preventing your paper/website/blog from looking extremely fucking silly before a national audience.

On a related note, I am aware of what a delicious irony it would be if the above story does subsequently turn out to be true. However, it was a story first reported by the Daily Mail; I think I'm safe.

Oh, and I’ve decided I’m going to drop an image at the bottom of these posts every week, since that’s always fun and totally makes these posts seem larger than they usually are.

From What I Understand From Science, the Doctor Akin Referenced Is Crazy Too

 

It must really suck to be Todd Akin right now.

After all, it’s not everyday that you practically kill your bid for the Senate in one massive political snafu.

Yet the fallout from the remarks he made about rape on Sunday continues to hurtle down like meteors. He’s been condemned by both Obama as well as Romney and Ryan, not to mention the fact that the story’s gone viral; give it a few more days and most people with an internet connection will be associated the name ‘Akin’ with ‘sexist twat’.

If somehow you’ve missed this merry little clusterfuck unfolding, here’s the breakdown; Akin, Missouri nominee for the Senate and Republican, appeared on a talk show and had his to say about abortion and rape:

“People always try to make that one of those things, ‘Oh, how do you slice this particularly tough sort of ethical question’… It seems to me, first of all, what I understand from doctors is that’s really where—if it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”[1]

Why yes, that nice Republican nominee did indeed just state that women don’t usually get pregnant from proper rapes; the particularly nasty subtext of this statement is that he’s implying any woman who does get pregnant from rape somehow deserved it. Let’s not get into what a horrible idea categorising rape is; Obama’s got me covered on that one, actually.

Let’s instead return to those doctors Akin was talking about.

Turns it it’s probably just one doctor; Dr. Fred Mecklenburg, to be precise. In 1972 he wrote an article entitled ‘The Indications for Induced Abortion: A Physician's Perspective’, which has since been the cornerstone of many an anti-abortionist’s repertoire. It’s from this article that the belief that a woman exposed to the trauma of rape “will not ovulate even if she is ‘scheduled’ to” comes from.[2] The article claims that a pregnancy resulting from rape is “extremely rare”, apparently because the trauma a woman suffers during such an attack prevents it from occurring.

‘Quite an extraordinary claim he has there’, I hear you understating, ‘what evidence does the good doctor have to back it up?’

Not a whole lot, you’ll be unsurprised to learn. Mecklenburg cites a couple of statistical examples (got to love a good bit of statistic-ing) from the city of Buffalo, NY, which at the time had apparently not had a pregnancy from a confirmed rape in decades; such evidence can be dismissed because rape is one of the most under-reported crimes out there, rendering many associated statistics pretty unhelpful.

Even more bizarrely he claims that rapists themselves are likely to be infertile because of “frequent masturbation”, which is like arguing that faeries are totally legit because this werewolf you met one time told you so.[3]

Probably the strangest, and easily the most controversial, evidence Mecklenburg gives would be evidence apparently gathered by Nazi scientists in concentration camps. No, seriously. Nazi scientists working in death camps. To quote from Raw Story:

“Nazis reportedly tested the theory “by selecting women who were about to ovulate and sending them to the gas chambers, only to bring them back after their realistic mock-killing, to see what the effect this had on their ovulatory patterns. An extremely high percentage of these women did not ovulate,” the article said.”[4]

Admittedly arguments stand or fall based on their merit alone, but you have to admit that there’s something really unsettling and distasteful about citing evidence garnered from death camps.

Mecklenburg’s article has been taken apart by the wider scientific community. It’s pseudoscience and half-baked theory that cites… well, pseudoscience and half-baked theory as evidence.

Akin quoting this as his source for his bizarre and unpleasant views just damages his case further.

Not that he really had one to begin with.

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[1] http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/08/19/gop-senate-nominee-women-dont-get-pregnant-from-legitimate-rapes/

[2] http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/metro/article_f267f02f-c9eb-515d-9a42-201de9b92d64.html#.UDPbiGk6sjY.twitter

[3] As Above

[4] http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/08/21/akin-rape-theory-rooted-in-nazi-death-camp-experiments/

Monday Morning Musings #4

 

Centuries from now, imagine if archaeologists studying those weird 21^st Century types stumble across one of our annual calendars. Now imagine if people who really don’t understand how the calendar actually works find out that it apparently ‘ends’ on the 31^st of December and build a doomsday theory around the idea that we predicted the end of the world centuries ago. That’s essentially what this whole Mayan apocalypse nonsense is.

If a British public official ever made a statement suggesting that rape victims who get pregnant from their attack somehow deserved it, they’d likely be hounded out of office and casts out into the political wastes for being a douchebag. Across the pond, however, if a public official makes such a statement there’s a depressingly large percentage of the US population who’ll agree with him. It boggles the mind.

I really hope I never stumble across a blog like elevatorgate again. Okay, so you don’t like Rebecca Watson or Surly Amy, and you think FreethoughtBlogs is shit. Fair enough, but for fuck’s sake keep it civil; you don’t have to be a prick about it.

Witch-hunting might be relegated to our past here in this side of the globe, but over in Africa it’s still a serious issue. Isn’t it odd that witches usually turn out to be young children, elderly types or people who can generally not defend themselves, as opposed to physically-fit adults?

That 'Faces of Atheism' idea is back on the rise again, countering the whole 'Faces of Mormonism' thing the LDS Church is pulling. It's a pretty cool idea; sadly I'm hideously ugly and will make your face fall off should you look upon me shy.

Selling Themselves Short?

Given that the Closing Ceremony of the London 2012 Olympics wrapped up over a day ago this post is perhaps a bit late, but timeliness has never been my strong point.

So here’s a post about the Olympics, you unlucky people.

Despite my confusion regarding it, religion is often a big part of sport. Just look at all that bollocks with Tim Tea-face or whatever he was called and you’ll notice that a lot of athletes to often hold a serious connection with god. I found myself contemplating this as I watched Christian Taylor interviewed after winning a Gold medal in the Triple Jump event.

This is a chap at the peak of human physicality, an athlete who’s at a standard where he can take a Gold at an Olympic event (which is to say, he’s extremely strong). Reaching such a stage has taken months of painstaking hard work. The training and practice, the blood, sweat and tears that this guy has put in is nothing short of incredible. He’s had the unflinching support of people like his coach, who’s urged him on through the darkest hours of self-doubt and desperation, and his family, who’ve likely (I’m not pretending to know this guy, don’t get me wrong) been there with him since the start.

And yet the first thing Taylor says on camera after winning is “how blessed” he is, and how he thanks god for his victory.

I just can’t feel that he and the athletes like him are selling themselves short when they make statements like that.

God didn’t put all those hours of training and practice in; Taylor did. God wasn’t the guy training him, urging him on all the way; that was Taylor’s coach. All in all, god really didn’t do much in Taylor’s training and racing, so it’s confusing as to why he’s the first person thanked in the victor’s interview. Surely there’s far more worthy candidates deserving of mention?

I’m sure there were plenty of people competing in that event who prayed long and hard, yet it was Taylor who won. That’s note because god has favourites, that’s because Taylor was the better athlete. He personally put in the work, he personally was the better competitor, and thus he won. I’m all for modesty, but if ever there’s a moment to be vaguely chuffed with yourself it’s when you’ve just taken the Gold.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m fully aware that this is just a personal opinion. I’m sure Taylor derived a considerable amount of confidence in thinking that god had his back during the long hours of training. It’s just I think it’s a shame these guys are giving away all the credit to some deity who just sat there and watched impartially.

They’re the ones who did all the work, after all, and so they’re the ones who deserve the praise.

Monday Morning Musings #3

 

People have the capacity to be muppets, no matter what side of the religious divide they fall into. I really think people need to bear that in mind sometimes.

I've got more respect for the Westboro Baptist Church than I do for people who dance around the issue and try and come up with supposedly legitimate reasons to dislike gay people. Just don your fucking 'GAY PEOPLE MAKE ME FEEL ICKY' t-shirt and be done with it already, guys; at least then you're being honest.

Looking at the Anti-Vaccine Movement, I can't help but feel that they're far too US-focused. Seriously, a lot of their claims boil down to “THE MEDICAL INDUSTRY IS JUST TRYING TO MAKE MONEY OFF US”, but in a country like mine, where we have this sweet National Health Service, that sort of posturing doesn't really fly. I should really do a blog post about this sometime.

Those Conspiracy Theorists are almost as quick off the block as Usain Bolt; Lady Atheist pointed out that there's already conspiracies circling regarding the shooting in Aurora, claiming that it was somegovernment super-soldier project or something equally fucking ridiculous. Can't knock them for punctuality. Just for everything thing else about their views and theories.

Freethought Sidetracked

“Why can’t we work out our differences? Why can’t we work things out? Little people, why can’t we all just get along?”

- President Dale, ‘Mars Attacks!’

I didn’t want to get involved in this shenanigans. I’ve been doing my utmost to avoid the whole debacle that just seems to keep on unfurling regarding Freethought Blogs and the controversy surrounding alleged sexism at sceptical and freethought conferences. In part due to lack of interest and in part due to lack of understanding.

But this doesn’t seem like an issue that’s going to resolve itself any time soon so I figured I’d chuck my ten cents in on the matter.

So let’s get this controversy train a-rollin’.

I’m going to try and avoid getting into the nitty-gritty of the arguments and insults being slung back and forth between Team FreethoughtBlogs and Team Fuck Those FreethoughtBlogs Guys; people better versed in those conflicts have already written about them, and I wouldn’t be adding anything of worth. If you don’t really know what the hell I’m rambling about I’d recommend heading over to vjack’s blog ‘Atheist Revolution’; he has a number of posts devoted to the topic.

As an outsider looking in as all this mud gets flung about, I can’t help but feel that this is would make for a nice wake-up call for anyone naïve enough to think that freethinker types are somehow immune from the curse of petty tribalism and human stupidity. Looking at [some of the recent updates] I can’t help but feel that communication has really broken down at this point. No-one’s really talking about the issue in an attempt to resolve it anymore; it’s just name-calling and insults for the sake of it.

This is hardly behaviour that one would want to associate with people who pride themselves on being able to think rationally to the point of calling themselves freethinkers. The issues originally raised are important; it would be nice if people could re-focus and get back to solving them. But watching all this arguing unfold, I’m not really seeing many people out to solve the problem; I’m seeing both sides flinging insults back and forth and generally acting like children rather than academics and critical thinkers.

Debate within movements is good. It’s the lifeblood of ideas; it’s what generates new theories and keeps people interested. But you cannot call this healthy debate anymore; this is a divide that grows more serious every day, and it’s perhaps high time people started aiming to fix it rather than furthering it. All we’re doing is weakening our position and making the atheist/sceptic/freethought movement look silly and tribalistic on an international scale. This bickering has been going on for well over a year, now; it needs to stop.

Seriously, guys, can’t we all just get along?

Monday Morning Musings #2

I listened to part of a radio show yesterday morning trying to show how important faith was in the Olympics. A show that predominantly focused on Christianity. At the time I thought the irony was delicious, but in hindsight Christianity attempting to pinch religious festivals from older faiths seems entirely in-keeping with its history.

Last I checked /r/atheism has well over a million subscribers now. Which is cool and all, but it’d be nice if cool places like /r/skeptic could get some love too.

There’s a preacher out there who claims he can cure people of cancer by kicking them in the face. I wonder what wondrous cures his fists can bestow?

Any supreme deity who decides that wasps and hornets are both awesome ideas is clearly a complete bastard. If you look at the whole evolution idea, however, they’re just more proof that the biggest bastards survive on this earth.

People are still going on about the whole Freethought Blogs scandal thing? Seriously, guys, we need to stop flogging a dead horse and move on; if you don’t like the way PZ Meyers runs things, don’t bloody read it.

And finally, this:

Sorry, Conspiracy Theorists, The Moon Landings Were Legit

Question: did we really put men on the moon? Answer: Yes, yes we did.

Ever since we first put a man on the moon, some people have spent a lot of time trying to claim that we didn’t.

Likely first initiated by Bill Kaysing, a NASA librarian who wrote the book ‘We Never Went to the Moon’, the moon landing hoax movement is still prevalent to this day;[1] as late as 2001 Fox TV (a wonderful, reliable and totally unbiased source of news, information and opinion) was broadcasting documentaries entitled Conspiracy Theory: Did We Really Land on the Moon?[2]

Verification of these landings that are conclusive enough to satisfy most people has been notoriously difficult; in 2009 there was “tantalizing evidence the flags from Apollo 17 was still standing, but the images were just barely too fuzzy to know for sure”.[3] A frustrating experience for everyone involved but fear not, because just three years later we might finally have some verification.

Just a few days ago the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera captured the pictures shown below:

Turns out the landing site of Apollo 16 is still very much still there; even the footprints and the flag.

Some pretty impressive stuff, all in all, and some very solid evidence to show that we did indeed make it to the moon.

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[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Kaysing

[2] http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2001/ast23feb_2/

[3] blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2012/07/31/and-the-flags-are-still-there/