The Skeptics Tarot Cards

Tarot cards have been used for centuries as a divination method. Many Skeptics and rational thinkers however have claimed that there is no scientific evidence to support the validity of this method. I have therefore drawn up a new pack of Tarot Cards for the more sceptically minded. To practice my new art of Tarot reading, simply find yourself a believer and get them to select a card. To help you out I have posted 12 sample cards below together with my interpretation of each cards meaning.

The Twat
You have a strong tendency to base your career on deception. However, you’ve dug yourself in too deep now. You feel like you may be conceived as an even bigger twat if you come clean, so best continue to attribute your cheap tricks to psychic powers. If you have trouble finding enough people to still believe that your basic parlour tricks are not illusions, then why not exploit the New Age market. You just need to mention Crystal Power, ESP or Dowsing and their sure to lap it up. You may occasionally receive visions, but do not worry; these are probably just extraterrestrials bestowing more powers upon you.




The Misinformer
Alas your brain has been addled with a constant wash of twaddle. Rather than understand the science behind the issues that concern you, use your maternal instincts to make sense of things. Do not worry if your instincts fart in the face of science and reason, seek to promote them as best you can. Perhaps an alliance with the Queen of Fuckwits could prove a suitable platform from which to spout your gibberish. Try not to worry too much about the consequences of your actions or you might you have trouble sleeping.







The Queen Of Fuckwits
You have a nose for bullshit and are able to sniff out vast piles of steaming crap. You are able to disseminate your bullshit across America like a gigantic, inexorable muck spreader tainting all those in its wake with your distinctive pseudoscientific endorsements. You’re confused as to whether you should follow nonsensical Christian dogmas or absurd new age thoughts, as both contain much irrationality you find yourself unable to choose between them. You could choose to use your talents, riches and influence for good but heck, there’s a fresh pile of poo to throw.






The Quack
You have come to realise that modern scientifically developed, trialled and approved medicines could only possibly be created for the profit of large pharmaceutical companies. They can never therefore be as effective as simple multi-vitamin pills. Why not put your knowledge to use by publically claiming that vitamin pills are more effective at treating cancer than chemotherapy and the “poisonous compounds” used by conventional medicines. Better still; why not take advantage of the ignorance of a South African president who believes that HIV does not cause AIDS. Perhaps you could peddle a few vitamin pills in place of anti-retroviral drugs that are clearly just poisonous and a conspiracy to kill and make money. Maybe a slogan like “Stop AIDS Genocide by the Drugs Cartel” could help shift a few more vitamin pills at the insignificant cost of say 171,000 new HIV infections and perhaps 343,000 deaths.


The Creationist
The best way to determine the truth is to make your mind up based on a single ancient, pre-enlightened, arbitrary book of your choice. Do not worry if your predetermined truths do not turn out to fit with later discovered facts. If you work backwards from your preordained decision it will become easy to ignore the vast sways of evidence that contradicts you and allow you to easily invent “theories” to support your decision. Avoid making movies at all costs.









The Gob-Shiter
Be careful what you say, remember some people may believe your vile gob-shite. You could continue to use your special powers for good by assisting the FBI as a psychic detective. However try not to be despondent because out of your 35 cases to date, in 21 the details you provided were too vague to be verified and that for the remaining 14, you played no useful role. I’m sure the fact that you pleaded no contest to securities fraud and were indicted on grand larceny will not affect your popularity. Especially as these crimes pale into insignificance compared to telling a desperate couple on the Montel Williams show that their missing son was dead, even though he later turned up alive.


The Grand Deluder
Your life is controlled by a dogmatic adherence to an ancient understanding of the universe. You are a person with the ability to influence the ethics and morality of others, yet you base your own morality on 2,000-year-old scriptures that commend slavery, homophobia, and female subjugation. When science reveals flaws in your beliefs you are no longer able to simply persecute the enlightened as heretics. However you can always just invent new creeds, but do not worry if they seem ridiculous now, with time and tradition they will become accepted and the more ludicrous they sound, the more virtuous the believers can feel. BTW your cock may well be allergic to latex.



The Conspiracy Theorist
You are regularly abducted by aliens armed with shiny anal dildos, usually during the night when you are most definitely not having homoerotic dreams. It must be true because there have been countless sightings of similar shaped UFO’s and aliens ever since the stereotypical flying saucers and extraterrestrial entered popular culture in the 1950’s. When presented with an issue you find that the most likely and rational explanation is seldom the right answer. Remember never to use Occam’s Razor, it’s a lethal tool promoted by the government that could cause you to accidently cut your head of whilst shaving. It’s true; I heard that from a bloke down the pub the other day.


The Tosswipe
Humour is one of your strong suits but always remember that they are not laughing with you, they are laughing at you. When things aren’t going too well, the situation can always be remedied by pretending to be possessed by a spirit whose names is an anagram of “Derek Faker”. Always research your subjects and locations thoroughly as this may aide your psychic abilities. Try not to make sudden movements or noises when in the presence of ex Blue Peter presenters, there is always a danger that they might inadvertently shit themselves.








The Prince of Woo’s
You should follow the example of your mother and learn how to keep your mouth shut. Your privileged position in society is tolerated due to a public desire for tradition, pageantry and tourist dollars, not through agreement with your kooky views. Why not try my special recipe homeopathic tincture. It’s made from a drop of water that has been in contact with a ladies vagina. That special water droplet is then diluted until no trace of the original special molecules remain. The resulting tincture is guaranteed to stop you being a twat.







The Stargazer
You are so arrogant as to believe that the relative positions of the celestial bodies at the time of your birth determine your personality traits and the future life events of yourself and all humanity. Although most people may now see the absurdity of your claims, the desperation of those seeking love, health and wealth may draw them to your ramblings. As you relate the vastness of the universe and the positions of stars and galaxies to your own personal fate you should under no circumstances whatsoever, enter the Total Perspective Mind Vortex. If however you are open to a new fully updated version of divinity based on similar logic to astrology, why not check out my shitoscopes. BTW, why have you never won the lottery?


The Lizard King
What’s that you say, “The Illuminati are a race of reptilian humanoids that secretly rule the world?” Have you not taken your medication today? NURSE, NURSE, he’s out of bed again. There, there, calm down now, the nice man in the white coat is going to drive you home.

Actually, I don’t know why I’m being so mean, he’s easily the most likable character in my deck of Tarot cards.












Notes:
For further information on “The Quack” please refer to Ben Goldacre’s Bad Science column and blog. Download the free chapter.
For further information on the misinformer please visit StopJenny
The image used for the Stargazer represents astrologers in general and not the specific astrologer in the image
The image used for the Conspiracy Theorist is of Fox Mulder and not the actor David Duchovny
Thanks for Rebecca Watson’s 2008 Jackasses

Organised skepticism has made me more open-minded…

…although, as the old adage goes, not so open minded that my brains will fall out. Even though I used to hold religious beliefs, I have always been sceptical of superstitious and paranormal beliefs. As a kid I never worried about stepping on the cracks in the pavement and I made a point of walking under ladders. Although in hindsight even though I still believe this wouldn’t have affected my luck, it may well have increased the probability that something might land on my head.

I have fed my sceptical viewpoint for years with scientific reading, but only in the last year or so have I been partaking in Skeptical fellowship via the medium of lectures, talks, Skeptics in the Pub and Podcasts. These organised sceptical events and broadcasts have proved valuable resources in widening my understanding and appreciation, but they have not made me more dismissive of the claims of believers, in fact the complete opposite is true.

It would be all too easy to counter claims of psychic abilities or paranormal forces with un-investigated denial. All previous attempts to validate such claims have been successfully rebutted, why waste time even considering the possibility that such claims could be true? I’ve come to see that taking such a stance would be taking a non-scientific approach and would open me up to valid criticisms that I accept my sceptical views on faith. Fortunately scientists like Richard Wiseman aren’t afraid to conduct such experiments and whilst I’ve yet to see evidence to support the claims of believers, results still reveal placebo effects and other surprising details attributed to additional factors that may have not been considered otherwise.

For example, scientific evidence to date shows that it is easily possible to walk a short distance barefoot across hot coals due to the rate the heat is conducted through the coals and the feet. However longer exposure will result in burns, so when a believer claims their spirit guide can allow them to walk further, don’t just dismiss the claim. If nothing else it provides excellent entertainment watching them burn their feet, and if they succeed, then that’s an area worth further serious scientific investigation.

Taking some claims seriously and investigating them may reveal genuine benefits for those irrational beliefs. Maybe your psychic or astrologer is giving you sound valuable advice, despite their dubious methods. Maybe your belief in alternative medicine is providing a powerful placebo effect. Although on balance I still think such beliefs do more harm than good. (Check out Whatstheharm for numerous examples), the argument is perhaps not as one sided as I once thought.

I’m writing this blog on the day that Patricia Putt is taking James Randi’s Million Dollar challenge for her claimed psychic abilities. Although I am fully confident that Randi’s fund is safe, I'm not so arrogant to mention her failure without first checking the results. (0/10)

So for those believers who claim the rise in organised scepticism is promoting closed minds, I beg to differ.

Thanks for spelling my name correctly

So I was at the monthly Skeptics in the Pub meeting in London on Monday evening when I got a phone call from Samantha Stein, the director of Camp Quest UK. She was doing an article with a journalist from the Independent on the upcoming inaugural Camp Quest here in the UK, and asked if the journalist could speak to me to get a perspective from a parent who was sending their children to Camp Quest.

As I fully support the ethos of Camp Quest, I was naturally more than happy to say a few words.

The article appeared on page 13 of Wednesday 29th April’s edition of The Independent and is also available on line here.

All in all I thought it was a fair article that gave a pretty accurate portrayal of the aims and goals of Camp Quest. Not knowing the journalist, I did have a few worries about how the article might have portrayed Camp Quest and my specific reasons for booking my children onto the camp, but my worries were unfounded.

I am of course aware that journalists often take a number of sources and reviews and then distil those down to the story they are interested in, so I was fully prepared to be edited out completely or restricted to a short sentence. Especially as I was only providing a token parental anecdote to give a sample opinion of those signed up to the concept. The quote attributed to me in the article was, I am pleased to say, relevant and accurately reported.

I did think however I want to use this blog to repeat my other reasons for booking my children onto the camp that did not make the final edit.

I did mention that I would be equally happy to send my children on a general summer camp not affiliated to any particular faith purely for the physical activities (which I know my kids are looking forward to). As I suspect a week away from home would help teach valuable responsibility and social skills, as long as I knew there was no hidden religious agenda. If we lived in a world were ancient myths were not afforded such reverence then I would concede that specific non religious camps would not be needed. Sadly we do not yet live in such a world.

I also mentioned the usefulness of learning some basic logical philosophy and critical thinking skills of which I have seen little evidence in their school work. I would hope that the thinking skills taught are applied to a wider set of credulous beliefs to help children evaluate and reach their own decisions on a wide range of topics such as alternative medicines, paranormal claims and conspiracy theories.

The other point I made to the journalist was my belief in the need to teach children how to think, not what to think. From my research on Camp Quest I have confidence that this exactly what they aim to do. I have no more desire to have my children indoctrinated into an Atheist viewpoint than I have to have them indoctrinated into a Jewish, Islamic or Christian viewpoint. I just want them to be able to think for themselves and reach a logical and rational explanation for the world they will inherit from us.

Science & Religion Lectures: Conway Hall, 25th April 2008

I wasn’t planning to blog about this event as I was expecting Martin to be doing another of his fine in-depth live blogs. However, as he hasn’t, I feel duty bound to put fingers to keyboards for a brief summary of the day’s lectures.

I must admit that one of the key speakers that I was most looking forward to hearing was Baroness Mary Warnock, and I joined in with the collective air of disappointment on the announcement that she was unable to make it. Nonetheless Stephen Law once again provided a formidable line-up of fine minds for the days entertainment. I shall give a quick overview of each of the 4 lectures as best I can remember.


1. Jack Cohen

Jack introduced those unfamiliar with the 1857 work of religious biologist Philip Gosse with his explanation of the biblical creation. Gosse’s motivation was for a way of explaining the scientific evidence that is all around us while strictly adhering to the biblical texts he was completely unable to refute.

Most modern day creationists have to reject scientific evidence or invent convoluted excuses to explain how the earth is only 6,000 years old and how dinosaurs and humans coexisted. Gosse’s method is much more elegant in dealing with the evidence, whilst fully accommodating his belief in the word of God scribed verbatim in his preferred religious text. Of course whilst being more elegant it is still utterly bonkers.

Image visiting the Garden of Eden directly after the biblical creation. All of Gods creations are fully formed. A man with developed limbs, bones and hair can be seen along with fully grown trees existing in this mature state since the very start of creation a few moments previous. If you were to cut one of these tree’s in half, you would see the same as we would see today, i.e. a series rings representing previous growing seasons and showing what appears to be evidence for its existence prior to the recent creation event.

In other words, Gosse argues that everything was created with the details of its previous history as if it had existed before its creation. This is were the title of his book “Omphalus” from the Greek for navel, comes from. Many theologians argue that Adam was the first man and as he was not born of woman, he had no need for a navel. However, following Gosse’s hypothesis even though he had no need for his navel, he would have one as part of his inbuilt non existing history that was created along with him.

Jack went on to further explain the hypothesis by giving more examples, and I really enjoyed his bumbling presentation style. This argument will of course neatly deal with the miles of rock strata, fossils and light from distant galaxies that are such an inconvenience to most creationists. However, after we had understood the gist of the Omphalus idea it would have been nice to have applied it to a relevant use rather than simply reinforcing the idea with further examples.

As amusing as it would be to present creationists with an alternative load of fetid dingo’s kidneys for not critically challenging the biblical account of creation, I’ve yet to see how another crazy idea can help those blinded by faith to accept evidence. Unless the absurdity of the idea can somehow provide a mirror for seeing more traditional creationist accounts for what they are.

An entertaining talk and one that will certainly cause me to look up Jack Cohen on Amazon. The science of Terry Pratchett’s discworld sounds like a good place for me to start.


2. Simon Singh

It is of course always a privilege to hear Simon Singh talk as there is no doubting his gift for communicating and his love of science. It is in fact for this reason I photo-shopped Simon on to the shoulders of Carl Sagan in my recent TAM London speakers’ blog. Despite the comic indignation, I hope it will be seen as the mark of reverence in which it was intended.

Simon’s talk on this occasion was the Big Bang theory and consisted of a brief and entertaining run through of his excellent book of the same name. One of the reasons I love Simon Singh’s Big Bang book is that it answers the question: “How do we know that?" And "Why do scientists think that?” Teaching the Big Bang without reference to how we know it just leaves you wondering why you should believe it. Singh’s book starts from first principles and builds up by first explaining how we know the circumference of the Earth, how we know the distance of the sun and the moon, and how we know the workings of the solar system.

Due to time restrictions Simon starts of the lecture from the initial idea of the big bang theory by Belgium Catholic Priest Georges Lemaître. Of course the name “Big Bang” was not in use at this time and the theory was not scientifically accepted, especially as it smacked of the Biblical creation story rather than the solid state model preferred by Einstein and other contemporary scientists.

Singh then goes on to explain how astronomer Edwin Hubble went on to observe how the galaxies are all moving away from each other by noticing that the light from these galaxies is shifted to the red end of the spectrum. The Doppler Effect shows how the wavelength varies depending on if an object is moving away, or towards the observer (as in the familiar sound of a passing racing car).

Despite this evidence for an expanding universe and the extrapolation of running the scenario backwards to the beginnings of space and time, many scientists preferred to stick with the solid state model of the universe. In fact the phrase “Big Bang” was coined by Fred Hoyle at this time as a somewhat disparaging term for the theory. But of course it stuck, and Singh even manages to play us the original radio excerpt where the phrase was coined.

Further evidence was however required to fully validate the big bang theory and although the notion of echoes of microwave radiation emitting from the big bang should be detectible to validate the theory, the equipment of the time was not sufficient to do so.

Most of us are familiar with the tale of Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson years later using a microwave receiver to pick up signals emitted by celestial sources in our milky way but being constantly plagued with background noise from all directions. After cleaning out the deposits left by the pigeons nesting in the receiver they eventually realise they are listening to the cosmic radiation of the big bang and had discovered the predicted evidence required to fully support the Big Bang model.

Naturally Simon explains all this in much more detail and with numerous witty interjections, but of course you’re much better off reading the book than this clumsy summary.


3. Stephen Law

“It’s pretty obvious” says Stephen law, “that an all loving benevolent God does not exist”. Stephen takes us through some of the obvious points put forward by non believers such as “Why is there so much evil and suffering in the world?” For each of these pieces of evidence for the non existence of a benevolent God, Stephen points us at the arguments that sophisticated theologians have come up with to counter this evidence.

The main argument used by the religious to explain the existence of evil deeds is of course “freewill”. Without freewill we are mere puppets doing the good bidding of our creator. In order for our actions to have meaning and for us to truly exhibit love and compassion we must have freewill and the ability to choose these options for ourselves. Therefore the potential for evil is the price we must pay for the necessity of freewill.

So perhaps it’s not as obvious after all that there is no benevolent God, because theologians have come up with imaginative reasons to explain what at first glance look like screaming evidence for the non existence of God. Stephen gives further examples that I’ll gloss over in this review for the sake of brevity.

Having established a reasonable set of theological notions to refute each of the supposed obvious claims of the non-believers, Stephen proposes the idea that the universe was created by an all evil God. Not Satan, but a creator God who is completely evil and wants nothing but suffering, pain and misery.

Ridiculous of course, this sounds like a prosperous idea, how could such an evil God allow for someone like Mother Teresa who (apparently) did so much good in the world. Well of course, such an evil God could make us puppets to carry out his evil deeds, but they would be meaningless unless we had freewill in order to truly choose to be evil. For each of the claims to refute the existence of an all evil God we are able to use the exact same theological argument to dismiss it as we did for the benevolent God. This time though it sounds more absurd because the idea of an all evil God is less familiar and the counter arguments used in this context just sounds like pathetic bleating. But they are the exact same arguments used by theologians today. Why should they be any more valid when defending the benevolent God?

I thought Stephen came up with one of the cleverest arguments for the support of the evil God hypothesis during the Q&A session. “Why would an evil God create religions that are a comfort to people, provide solace and hope and do so much good work in the world”. Well suppose the all evil God revealed his extisance to a group of people in order to perpetuate such a religion, but then revealed himself to an alternative group with a few pieces of different information. The belief by each group that they alone have the divine unquestionable truth would recreate centuries of hatred, suffering and religious wars, it the perfect move for the all evil God.


4. Raj Persaud

I have to confess to not knowing who the final speaker was but I was filled in by some of my fellow attendees over lunch. I understand that Raj Persaud is a well known psychiatrist thanks to regular appearances on TV, and he was certainly a dapper and eloquent orator. The main focus of his talk was on the differences between “Internals” and “Externals”.

Raj starts us off with an imaginary scenario. Two people attend a job interview and are both unsuccessful in securing the job. The first person is an “Internal”; they take responsibility for their fate and view their failure at the interview as a consequence of their own qualifications and ability. The “External” assumes that there were forces outside of his control and he never had a chance of getting the job.

The external person gets more immediate gratification, although he didn’t get the job he can take solace in the fact that there was nothing he could have done about it anyway. The internal person however takes more responsibility and examines how he could do better in the future, peruses further education and skills and in the long term becomes better equipped for future job interviews.

These are traits that I can clearly recognise in a lot of people so I felt a lot of resonance with Raj’s talk. More disturbing however were the statistics presented showing a growing trend in the number of externals in the modern world today and the changes in our culture that fosters and promotes this type of viewpoint.




As always a highly enjoyable set of lectures, and I would recommend checking the CFI website for future events.

Daniel Dennett: A Darwinian Perspective of Religion (Video)

A few weeks a go I posted a blog on a Daniel Dennett lecture that I attended, put on by the British Humanist Society at Conway Hall in London.

The video of this lecture has now been produced and uploaded in its entirety to YouTube. It includes the introduction by Richard Dawkins, and the questions and answer at the end of the lecture.

So get yourself a drink, put your feet up and feed your brain

The Basingstoke Fairies Vs The Cottingley Fairies

I went for a short walk in the woods this afternoon with the wife and kids. In the midst of the dark woods I saw a glint of light flash past my eyes. We all stood still for a few moments and focused our eyes, what looked like a large dragonfly hovered just above a branch. We sat still and watched closely. Gradually it came nearer and settled a few feet away from the children. By this time we could clearly see that it was not a dragonfly, but we had in fact been lucky enough to catch a rare glimpse of a woodland fairy. We stayed in the woods a little while and gradually the fairies gained enough confidence to come up to my children and even settle on their outstretched hands. I was fortunate enough to have my camera with me and so was able to take the following photographs.



The photograph’s I took of the Basingstoke fairies today, reminded me in many ways of the Cottingley fairies photographed in July 1917. Picture below.




However, unlike the photographs I took this afternoon, the Cottingley fairies were widely regarded as genuine by a large number of people, including a non-critical thinking Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I believe the young girls who faked the above picture kept up the pretence into their old age before finally admitting to the prank.

Everyone who looks at my pictures will instantly think that I have photo-shopped some images of fairies from the Internet on to some snaps I took of my kids. And of course they would be quite right. The reason, however, they would jump to this conclusion I think is no reflection on my Photoshop skills, I believe they would have reached the same conclusion, however professionally done the photographs looked. The reason why everyone automatically assumes that my photographs were faked is because we are all familiar with the tools and techniques for doctoring photographs. You don’t need to be Jonathon Creek to work that one out.

When the Cottingley fairy pictures were taken, people were not so familiar with the notion of altering photographs or producing fake images, so the initial assumption with many people was that they were real.

My hypothesis suggests that as people become more familiar with the tools and techniques used by charlatans, hoaxers and fraudsters, they become less accepting of their claims and more likely to lean towards a more rational explanation for what they see.

Therefore if we all become more familiar with cold reading, will more of us find rational explanations to why psychics seem to know the unknowable?

If Richard Wiseman teaches us all how to bend spoons, will we be less impressed with certain Israeli conjurors?

If we understand more about neurology and pareidolia will we see less ghosts and UFO’s?

The example of my fairy photo’s suggest that all we need is a bit of familiarity in the methods of the hoaxers.

Arsetrology: Your Daily Shitoscope Reading

As we all know, Astrology is a belief that the relative positions of the celestial bodies can predict the personalities and affairs of individuals. I have discovered a far more accurate and precise method of predicting an individuals fortune and personal traits based on the much more accurate science of bowel movements. Like traditional Astrology, everybody can be divided into 12 groups, or Houses. Unlike celestial astrology, the 12 houses represent not the dates of birth, but the 12 possible bowel movements each person may have on any one day. I then use a complex and mysterious set of axioms to determine your own personal shitoscope reading.

Before I use my mystical powers to tell your fortunes, I will first need to introduce you to the twelve “Shit Houses”:

1. Rusty Water
Diarrhea also known as arse piss or anal firewater

2. Ghost Turd
A stool of which there is no trace when one stands up to admire it

3. Dead Otter
A single stool of immense proportions

4. Copper Bolt
Large or heavy stool also known as a Depth Charge or Belly Flopper

5. Anal Delight
Soft light brown fluffy chocolate or butterscotch coloured pudding served in a large porcelain bowl

6. Baking One
The act of not going for a shit when you really ought to

7. Bum Goblin
A gnarled malevolent turd that jumps out from behind you, casting a painful spell on your ringpiece

8. Shitterish Allsorts
A single lavatorial sitting that produces a pot-pourri of stool consistencies from copper bolts to a rusty water geyser and all points between. Aka Bomb Bay Mix

9. Bovril Bullets
Peppering the porcelain with brown shot

10. Brown Lilo
A buoyant Tom Tit that, left alone, will eventually float out to sea

11. Fizzy Gravy
Bubble poo

12. Shitsophrenia
The condition where the sufferer alternates between having wild squirts and normal bowel movements throughout the day


Once you have had your daily bowel movement(s) and determined your "Shit House", look up your Shitoscope below, and prepare to be amazed at the accuracy of this amazing new phenomenon.


Rusty Water:
You have a need for other people to like and admire you, and yet you tend to be critical of yourself. While you have some personality weaknesses you are generally able to compensate for them.


Ghost Turd:
At times you have serious doubts whether you have made the right decision or done the right thing.


Dead Otter
Most of the time you are positive and cheerful, but there has been a time in the past where you were very upset. You have a tendancy to be critical of yourself.


Copper Bolt:
You are a very kind and considerate person, but when somebody does something to break your trust, you feel deep-seated anger.


Anal Delight:
Disciplined and self controlled on the outside, you tend to be insecure inside.



Baking One:
you are mostly shy and quiet, but when the mood strikes you, you can easily become the center of attention.


Bum Goblin:
You pride yourself as an independent thinker and do not accept others’ statements without satisfactory proof.


Shitterish Allsorts:
You have found it unwise to be frank in revealing yourself to others. You have a great need for people to like and admire you.


Bovril Bullets:
Some of your aspirations tend to be very unrealistic. You feel great sometimes, other times you feel like hiding away.


Brown Lilo
You are trying to go the way you want to go and are beginning to succeed. You have considerable unused capacity that you have not turned to your advantage.



Fizzy Gravy
At times you are extraverted, affable, sociable, while at other times you are introverted, wary, reserved.


Shitsophrenia:
You need close relationships but at the same time hate being restricted by them.




Please let me know how acurate I am, hopefully we can replace the daily horoscopes in a National newspaper with my new Shitoscopes.

BTW. Thanks to Viz’s Roger’s Profanisaurus and some random Barnum statements from the web.

Jack Huberman: The Quotable Atheist

The best, and quite frankly by far the easiest way, to review a book of quotations, is by listing some of my particular favourite and pithy pearls of wisdom. So here goes…

“Philosophy is questions that may never be answered. Religion is answers that may never be questioned.”
Anonymous

“Morality is doing what is right no matter what you are told. Religion is doing what you are told no matter what is right.”
Anonymous

“Only sheep need a shepherd”
Anonymous

“Why be born again, when you can just grow up.”
Anonymous

“Faith is the fatigue resulting from the attempt to preserve God’s integrity instead of one’s own.”
Matt Berry

“A soul? Give my watch to a savage, and he will think it has a soul.”
Napoleon Bonaparte

“The Vatican is against surrogate mothers. Good thing they didn’t have that rule when Jesus was born.”
Elayne Boosler

“Not one man in ten thousand has either strength of mind or goodness of heart to be an atheist.”
Samuel Taylor Coleridge

“Where knowledge ends, religion begins.”
Benjamin Disraeli

“A myth is a religion in which no one any longer believes.”
Jules Feiffer

“The way to see faith is to shut the eye of reason.”
Benjamin Franklin

“I don’t see any god up here.”
Yuri Gagarin

“It is possible to pull out justification for imposing your will on others, simply by calling your will Gods will.”
Ruth Hurmence Green

“I am now as before a Catholic and will always remain so.”
Adolf Hitler

“Skepticism is the highest duty and blind faith the one unpardonable sin.”
Thomas Henry Huxley

“The splendour of human life, I feel sure is greater for those who are not dazzled by the divine radiance.”
Bertrand Russell

I could just keep going, no really, it’s just a matter of copying them from the book, but I would be doing the compiler of this fine source of wit an injustice. Get the book instead, every coffee table should have one.

Noah's Ark Zoo Farm

A couple of very good Christian friends of mine in Bath have been raving on for a while about a place called "Noah’s Ark". It’s a sort of Zoo / Working farm for families and school trips near Bristol.

I have to admit to never visiting, and I don’t really want to, but after hearing about a recent visit Micahel Shermer made, I thought I’d look it up on the web to find out some more.

Although this looks like a perfect family day out with lovely attractions and animals, it seems to me that there is a darker underbelly. I’ve pasted a few quotes directly from their website, followed by my comments

“The BBC has recently run an excellent but controversial series of programmes presenting Evolution by natural selection as the mechanism to explain the origin and all subsequent variation of life. See Creation Biology & Evolution: Yes and No along with the Earth History material for another perspective on this important subject.”

There’s nothing controversial about the account of Evolution presented recently by the BBC at all. Conventional scientists are in as much agreement over evolution by natural selection as they are over gravity. There may be some minor differences down in the detailed mechanisms, but the overarching theory itself is not in contention. Suggesting there is a controversy is an underhand way of trying to undermine scientific fact that simply doesn’t match with biblical texts by playing on the general public’s lack of understanding of evolution

“Popular media presents us with only two theories to explain the origins of life: Darwinism or Creationism. Both are flawed in their theory; both are extremes in their own rights. One theory leaves no room for a God or a Creation, only randomness and mutation to provide the great abundance and variety in nature; the other requires a God for Creation and a strict Genesis chronology without evolution in any form.”

Critical thinkers will recognize the "False Dichotomy" logical fallacy here. Evolution by Natural Selection (given the name Darwinism, to sound more sinister) is presented as an extreme view that has no compatibility with God, therefore forcing it to be an unavailable option for Christian’s. This is of course not the case as even the Pope has accepted evolution (for fear of having to apologize again as in the Galileo case). The Noah’s Ark web site goes on to offer an alternative of a God Created world, using elements of evolution where even they do not have the gall to deny the evidence.

“We can draw a number of conclusions from this. First, the ark was a real vessel, not a fanciful addition to the story. Second, the righteous man in the story must have been forewarned, or he would not have thought of building an ark. And third, the Flood was a global event. At least two of every animal kind had to be preserved so that the earth thereafter could be recognized.”

Do I really need to counter argue this completely absurd claim? Rather than list a ream of reasons why the earth could not possibly have been completely covered in global flood, with all rescued animals gathered aboard an Ark, I’ll ask the question do you want your children to be taught this as fact on their school trip?

“Crystalline rocks usually give very old radioisotope dates, within a broadly consistent sequence from older to younger. There is also other evidence that a substantial amount of radioactive decay has gone on in the past:

• The right amount of decay products - just what we would expect from millions of years of decay at today's rates.
• Short-lived radioisotopes are absent - suggesting that long ages have passed to allow them to all decay away.
• Visible scars (radiohalos) left by decay - direct evidence for hundreds of millions of years' worth of decay at today's rates.
• Crystal damage (fission tracks) left by splitting atoms - indicating millions of years of decay at today's rates.
• The expected heat in rocks near the Earth's surface - left by millions of years of decay at today's rates.

Many people think that evidence such as this proves that the Earth is billions of years old.”

Yes indeed, many geologists do believe that, but as that evidence does not fit in with the predefined dates required by the religious proprietor of Noah’s Ark, he has to invent a reason why it is wrong. As you can see in the examples above, the estimates in radio carbon dating are based on the current decay rate, therefore rather than accepting the answer that the earth is billions of years old based on those observable decay rates, he prefers to stick with the answer he likes and assume instead that the rate of decay was obviously much quicker in the past.

In Shermer's interview with the Noah’s Ark proprietor, he stated that the proprietor was keen to distance himself from those "Crazy American Young Earth Creationists" who think the earth is only 6,000 years old. No, he thinks the earth is about 100,000 years old. This is based on his own research as opposed to the globally agreed scientific opinion that the earth is 4,540,000,000 years ago. Yeah that’s nowhere near as crazy.

“The creation account in Genesis states that God made animals 'according to their kinds'. This does not mean that God made the animals according to the species we see today. Rather, he made them with the potential to diversify into many species; all the genetic material required for such diversification was there from the beginning.”

In this passage he has found a way of interpreting the book of Genesis to imply that God did not make the animal and plant kingdoms as we see them today. This allows for accepting a little bit of evolution for variety within species, but sticks to the rigid dogma of all creation coming from God. Sadly, however we have seen direct evidence where this is not true, the genetic make up of the AIDS virus has evolved within the last 50 or so years, before our very own eyes, creating new DNA not present before.


The whole web site, lists ridiculous claim after claim that even an amateur like me can easily debunk. Rather than further demonstrate the prosperous claims of the web site, I’ll leave you to do the others yourself, or this blog is in danger of becoming far too long.

I did however want to raise one more critical point. Noah’s Ark is presented primarily as a Zoo and Working Farm to appeal to children, families and schools. It has all sorts of interesting animals and activities to stimulate its visitors. It also appears to promote standard key stage elements of the National Teaching Curriculum to attract school trips. However it looks to me that this is fancy façade to draw in unsuspecting minds before submitting them to unfounded and dangerous misinformation.

Postscript:

Following the publication of this blog a couple of months ago I have noticed a bit more coverage of this place that I wanted to link to.

Sink The Ark: Is a website dedicated to this attraction and highlights the misinformation it presents.

There is also a Number 10 petition to withdraw government support for this attraction.

And a fair and unbiased entry in Wikipedia

Top of the Pods

Public broadcasting is all well and good when your message has broad appeal. Sadly the interest in scientific and critical thinking seldom has such widespread interest. Until recently technological ability has made efficient and effective narrowcasting a little tricky. The podcast however is the ideal vehicle for reaching a suitable target audience, and with any luck promoting its content to a wider audience as interest grows and blossoms. (As Chris French tells us it is in the Guardian this week)

A very healthy crop of scientific and critical thinking podcasts have been seeping their way into the thinking community, and I myself have been downloading numerous shows and experimenting with them. Due to the limitations enforced by the amount of hours in a week, I have distilled these podcasts down to a manageable amount that I can keep up with and regularly listen to. Which has left me with ten top regular science and critical thinking podcasts that are just crying out for chart run down....

In Our Time
Melvyn Bragg’s weekly Radio 4 programme, where his guests help him explore the history of ideas covering philosophy, science, religion and literature, and what impact those ideas have had on our current lives. This show is admittedly a national broadcast but is also not solely restricted to the title of my blog page

Bad Science
Ben Goldacre’s podcasts to accompany his excellent “Bad Science” blog is an ad hoc affair that if you subscribe to occasionally seems to appear on your iPod. The podcasts are normally audio clips taken from relevant TV or radio shows. The last couple of which I found a little harrowing especially listening to Jeni Barnet’s verbal diarrhoea concerning her bigoted and poorly informed views on the MMR vaccine. I believe Ben had to remove that particular episode but I look forward to being kept up to date with any more quackery.

The Skeptic Zone
The science and reason podcast from Australia presented by Richard Saunders and Stefan Sojika. This is the newest entry in my list of weekly podcasts and is rapidly becoming a favourite with its guest interviews and various contributions from other sources.


The Royal Society
For over 350 years the Royal Society has been at the cutting edge of scientific research and progress and has influenced science policy and promoted scientific debate. Many of their lectures and events are now easily accessible as straightforward audio or even video recordings and available for download as podcasts. As I listen to the audio only podcasts, I especially enjoy the lecturers who don’t use PowerPoint / Keynote presentations.

Skepticality
Skepticality is the official fortnightly podcast of the Skeptic Magazine. Skepticality is presented by Derek and Swoopy and generally features an interview from a special guest.

Skeptoid
Brian Dunning’s short 10 minute podcasts manage to take a different topic each week and apply some impressive critical thinking and research to present us with rational explanations for paranormal, pseudoscientific, religious and new age phenomenon.

Brian is an accomplished barber with Occam’s razor, and skilfully wields it to deftly cut through the crap and logical fallacies surrounding many popular myths.

Point Of Inquiry
Hosted by D.J. Grothe, Point of Inquiry is the première podcast for the Center for Inquiry (CFI). The topics and issues discussed and addressed by the CFI align rather nicely with my particular interests and concentrate on secularism, religion and its intersection with science as well as pseudoscience, paranormal and alternative medicine. Guests on the show include leading minds in all of these fields

Material World
Quentin Cooper’s weekly radio 4 afternoon science show is made readily accessible to me via the flexible convenience of the podcast. Material world is a 30 minute scientific magazine usually covering 2 scientific topics each week with appropriate guests.

Quentin obviously also has a keen interest in popular music as he frequently embeds a few oblique musical references into his introductions and comments which I always enjoying picking out. I also enjoy the sound of Quentin guffawing away to himself in the background after making one of his frequent humorous interjections.

The Skeptics Guide to the Universe
The Skeptics guide to the Universe is a weekly podcast hosted by Dr Steven Novella and with witty, informative and intelligent comment from: Bob Novella, Jay Novella, Evan Bernstein and Rebecca Watson. Previous episodes also featured cofounder Perry DeAngelis who sadly passed away in 2007.

Each show follows a format with a number of great regular features and science news updates and invariable some cheesy English accents from Jay, that I am actually starting to quite enjoy now. It was also nice to see Rebecca visiting us here in London back in January, and it would be great to see the other rouges here sometime, after all TAM London is coming up.

Little Atoms
Little Atoms is produced and presented by Neil Denny and Padraig Reidy and is broadcast on Resonance FM (104.4) in the UK on Fridays between 19:00 and 19:30, or in my case downloaded via iTunes.

Neil gives a brief outline of the shows rationale at the top of each programme that I think perfectly explains what it’s all about. I couldn’t describe it any better so I’ve blatantly lifted this introduction from the little atoms web site and pasted it below. For those who listen to the show regularly it will be impossible to read the following text without hearing it in Neil’s voice.

“Little Atoms is a live talk show about ideas. Each show features a guest from the worlds of science, journalism, politics, academia, human rights or the arts in conversation. If the show has a dominant and recurring theme, then it coalesces around the ideas of the Enlightenment, by which we mean freedom of expression, free inquiry, empirical rationalism, scepticism, the scientific method, secular humanism and liberal democracy. These ideas find their antithesis in superstition, religious fundamentalism, fanaticism, medievalism, totalitarianism, censorship and conspiracy theory. Our guests bring ideas that are challenging, sometimes controversial, often polemical, but always interesting.”

Little Atoms recently celebrated its 100th show party where I was delighted to meet Neil and Paidrag along with a selection of previous guests of the show and other listeners. The past guest list is extremely impressive with major name influential scientists and journalists too numerous to list. (They are however listed on the Little Atoms Web Site).

Shows often concentrate on the recent works of the guests and Neil and Paidrag always demonstrate a good knowledge of the subject material by asking good relevant and incisive questions and inviting their guests to elaborate on particular ideas, thoughts and anecdotes.


Of course this list is just my subjective opinion and bears no relationship to the actual popularity of the shows, but let me know if I have any glaring omissions.

Can Wikipedia make us think for ourselves?

I read an interesting news item regarding the updating of Wikipedia with false, incriminating or amusing information last week. Which opened a debate on whether we need to edit and approve the data held on Wikipedia.

So here’s my thoughts on the subject.

I find Wikipedia a tremendously useful research tool. I also think that we are all well aware that it is open source and we are therefore alert to the fact it can easily be updated with misinformation and cyber graffiti.

I don’t see this as a major problem as long as we are aware of these pitfalls and compensate with suitable critical thinking and further research where necessary. In fact in many ways I think the fact that Wikipedia is open to user editing can help us by forcing us to learn some critical thinking skills. This could help us evaluate the validity of the vast amounts of information we seem to process everyday from a variety of sources.

The fact that we know that anyone and everyone can contribute and amend this large body of data is in the back of our mind. So when we read something like:

“Jim Morrison was born in a van, whilst curiously enough Van Morrison was actually born in Gym”

We may be highly amused but deeply suspicious of the validity of the information, and most of us would not be prepared to accept it as the truth without a great deal more evidence to support this bizarre claim.

Prior to Wikipedia we have been used to reading facts from books, magazines and newspapers, or hearing things on Film, TV, Radio, or the pulpit and taking them as gospel when reported in a straight faced manner, because they have been written, preached or performed by an authoritative figure with enough importance to warrant their communications platform. But these people are as susceptible to bias, prejudice, ignorance, ulterior motives, delusions and general tomfoolery as the rest of us.

Much of our culture of superstitions, religions, urban myths and misconceptions must be as a result of taking incorrect authoritative information at face value. Once some individuals have taken the bait the memes can multiple and mutate, and over time become ingrained in our culture.

Wikipedia has supplied us with a mountain of mostly accurate knowledge and hopefully taught us to critically evaluate that data. Let’s embrace Wikipedia and learn to apply the methods of evaluating the accuracy of the data. Then let’s apply these principles to ALL sources of information.

BTW If anyone has some good examples of amusing misinformation posted on Wikipedia, I always find them highly entertaining so please post them in the comments field.

Wikipedia has empowered all of us all to be Ford Prefect, if we want to be.

Are We Alone?

I noticed this news article today on the BBC website stating that there could be thousands of intelligent alien civilisations out there.

This is exciting stuff, and I think the confirmation of extra terrestrial intelligent life would be probably the most significant discovery in the history of our civilisation and something that I like many others, would dearly love to see in my lifetime. Despite the hope and desire for such evidence I have a little more pessimism than many of my much-respected heroes who have far greater knowledge in this area.

My simplistic view of the likelihood of alien intelligence is based on the Drake Equation. The equation takes a whole bunch of crazy variables such as the number of likely planets, the number of those in the goldilocks zone (not too hot and not too cold), and the probability of life emerging, and eventually evolving intelligence on each habitable planet before becoming extinct.

I’ve cut and pasted the full equation below from the ever reliable wikipdeia:

Where
R* is the average rate of star formation in our galaxy
fp is the fraction of those stars that have planets
ne is the average number of planets that can potentially support life per star that has planets
fℓ is the fraction of the above that actually go on to develop life at some point
fi is the fraction of the above that actually go on to develop intelligent life
fc is the fraction of civilizations that develop a technology that releases detectable signs of their existence into space
L is the length of time such civilizations release detectable signals into space.

Technologies in detecting extra solar planets such as Gravitational Microlensing, Transit Method and Radial Velocity have been successful in detecting over 330 planets in recent years. My understanding is that these discoveries have afforded us confidence to feed in higher values for the variables fp and ne than previous conservative estimates. I imagine that upping these values based on this new evidence has increased the value of N (the number of civilisations in our galaxy) to between 361 and 38,000 according to the BBC news article.

The reason for reserving my personal optimism is that it only takes one zero in the equation to piss on our strawberries. No matter how large the other fractions, multiplying by zero will always give you a result of zero. The variable that concerns me is fℓ. In theory it is possible for life to independently develop elsewhere, but apart from our small blue planet we have no evidence that it actually has. Even if we could see evidence of life on earth that came from another root, it would demonstrate the inevitability of life evolving eventually under the right conditions.

To me the initial spark of life could be so utterly improbable that it may have only happend once in a trillion multiverses and we only witness that one vastly improbable example through the anthropic principle. Douglas Adams, used somewhat similar logic in the quote below:

"It is known that there is an infinite number of worlds, but that not every one is inhabited. Therefore, there must be a finite number of inhabited worlds. Any finite number divided by infinity is as near to nothing as makes no odds, so if every planet in the Universe has a population of zero then the entire population of the Universe must also be zero, and any people you may actually meet from time to time are merely the products of a deranged imagination."

In order to increase my optimism in the possibility of life elsewhere the one thing I want to see is evidence of simple microbial life unconnected with our tree of life. A long extinct simple organism with nothing more than a mechanism for replication on Europa would do me. I would argue that future space missions should take this into account on deciding how to spend the meagre budget afforded by most governments for the exploration of space. Once we have found that small piece of evidence we can be confident there are no zeros in the equation and I will be convinced that it is only the vastness of space that has hindered our first contact.

On Face Recognition

The organic cerebral source code that has evolved in our brains is a wondrous thing, and way beyond my humble comprehension. One of the more power subroutines of this complex neural code must be the one dealing with face recognition. We are remarkably efficient at picking out faces and instantly matching them from previous experience to immediately identify a myriad of friends, family and celebrities. This powerful process ensures that a couple of dots and a line are all we need to recognise a pair of eyes and a mouth. The consequences of this usefully evolved ability is the fact that we can also easily see faces when none are actually present. The Madonna on a pop tart, Jesus on a slice of a toast, a face on a mars, a monster in the curtains, and a ghost on the stairs seem to me more likely explained by this natural ability of our brains rather than crazy paranormal phenomenon.

The new face recognition software on iPhoto ’09 must work in a similar, but far less sophisticated way. My prediction, whilst installing iLife ’09 last night, and mulling this over, was that surely even the geniuses at Apple aren’t as clever as many hundreds of thousands of years of natural selection, honing and fine tuning our minds. Therefore surely iPhoto ’09 will also see faces where there are none.

The face recognition software turned out to be better than I had expected, despite the fact that I noticed on Stephen Fry’s twitter feed that he was having some problems getting it to recognise himself. However, as I suspected after sorting a large number of faces, iPhoto did eventually start seeing things. I’m not going to count, the cigar stall Indian, the statue of Horus and the picture of Carl Sagan on my T-Shirt, all of which iPhoto asked me to name. But as expected, iPhoto eventually found a face in the folds on my wife’s skirt, and in the craggy light and shade of a rock face. I write this not as a criticism of iPhoto ’09, which I was most impressed with, despite the fact that it did once ask me to confirm that a bearded and bespectacled gnarled old man was my beautiful wife. I’m writing this to ask a question; if we can now write software that not only efficiently apes one of our more complex brain functions, but is also prone to the same delusions as us, does this make genuine artificial intelligence or even artificial consciousness seem just a little more probable at some point in our species future?