The African science, rationalism and skepticism blogroll for November

The updated African science and skepticism blogroll for November (a bit late)... If you know of blogs not listed here, please let me know. Also: add it to your blog! Tweet it! Do a post like this one! (Email me, and I'll send you the HTML).

Note: I generally remove blogs that have been inactive for more than 6 months, so if you're no longer on the list and have resumed blogging, please email me.

• 01 and the universe
• Acinonyx Scepticus
• Amanuensis
  
• ASSAf Blog
• Botswana Skeptic 
• Bomoko and other nonsense words
  
• Can Like To Have It
• Chris McEvoy
• Communicating Science, the African Way
  
• Defollyant's AntiBlog
  
• Deon Barnard 
• Digital Immigrant 
• Effortless Incitement
• Ewan’s Corner
• Expensive Beliefs
• Fluxosaurus's Blog
• Freethought Kampala 
• Geekery
• Grumpy Old Man
• Health Frog  
• Ionian Enchantment
• Lenny Says 
• Legends From a Small Country
• Leo Igwe's Blog
• Limbic Nutrition
• McBrolloks
• Nathan Bond's TART Remarks
  
• Orion Spur
  
• Other Things Amanzi
• Pickled Bushman
• Psychohistorian
  
• Quitstorm **new**
• Reason Check
  
• Retroid Raving
• Roy Jobson
• Science Blog
• Scorched
• Somali Atheism
• Stop Danie Krügel
• Sumbandlila Mission Blog
  
• Synapses
• Tauriq Moosa
• The Joys of Atheism
  
• The Science Of Sport
• The Skeptic Black Sheep
• The Skeptic Detective
• Updendo Wa Asili 
• Waxing Apocalyptic
• White Whale Holy Grail 

Lazy Linking

"This is a news website article about a scientific finding"

• Martin Robbins' absolutely wonderful parody of bad science reporting. I really can't recommend it enough. 
• Also: read the superb comments (well, some of them at least - there are over 500). 

"An Ode to the Many Evolved Virtues of Human Semen"

• Jesse Bering on the psychological effects of semen (mostly on women). He covers tons of fascinating research, including the finding that semen may have an anti-depressant effect. (Though, as this comment points out, there is a serious confound). 
• Best line: “I’m not a medical doctor, but my testicles are licensed pharmaceutical suppliers”. (Said in jest, by the way). 

"There Is No Such Thing As Sexual Intercourse" 

• Anthropologist Pascal Boyer pwns lefty/po-mo academics. 

"U.S. Religious Knowledge Survey"

• Pew surveys Americans about their knowledge of religion. Shocking ignorance found. (You can take a quiz featuring some of the questions in the survey. FWIW, I got 13 out of 15...)
• Amazingly, only 85% of the respondents knew that an atheist is a person who doesn't believe in God. A finding consistent with the existence of 'atheists' who believe in God. (Yes, that is a contradiction in terms, but there you go).

"I was wrong about veganism. Let them eat meat – but farm it properly"

• I'm not linking to this for the content, but for George Monboit's wonderful demonstration that there is honor in saying "I was wrong". I've never been a fan of Monboit's, but his willingness to write this column certainly sways my opinion more to the positive side. 

"Should science journalists take sides?"

• Yes, says Ed Yong. They should (do their best to) side with truth. 

"Power Leads Us to Dehumanize Others"

• BPS Research Digest reviews research that vindicates Lord Acton. (Not that there was much doubt to begin with). 

"Ratzinger is an Enemy of Humanity"

• Richard Dawkins brilliantly responds to the Pope's deeply idiotic comment comparing atheists to Nazis. Read it. 

"Confirmation Bias in Science: How to Avoid It"

• Excellent piece at Ars Technica by Chris Lee on the evils of confirmation bias - our tendency to see only what we expect to see. Lee looks at the topic through the lens of various scientific controversies, including Jacques Benveniste's 'water memory' nonsense. 

"'Science Cop' Mugged"

• China's answer to Ben Goldacre, Fang Shimin, gets beaten up and threatened, apparently by plagiarists and/or charlatans who stand to lose from being exposed. Shocking. 

"Religion causes a chronic biasing of visual attention"

• Another fascinating study covered by BPS Research Digest.
• The researchers compared 'global' vs. 'local' thinking among "Dutch Conservative Calvinists (a form of Protestantism), Liberal Calvinists (who aren't so strict), Conservative Calvinists turned atheist and life-long atheists." 
• The results were surprising: "the life-long atheists showed the strongest bias for the big picture, followed by the Liberal Calvinists, and then the Conservative Calvinists and the former Conservative Calvinists turned atheist. The latter two groups performed similarly suggesting that more than seven years without religious practice wasn't enough to remove the effects of the religion on a person's attentional mindset."

Heh / LOL / Wow

"The Real Stuff White People Like"

• Absolutely fascinating analysis of 526,000 OkCupid profiles reveals the differences in tastes between White, Black and Asian males and females. 
• The sample is unlikely to be representative, but it's interesting nonetheless. 

"The Data So Far"

• Classic xkcd... (For xkcd n00bs: read the mouse-over text).

"2010 Astronomy Photographer of the Year"

• Astronomy porn at its finest. #7 and #11 are especially good.

"The Future of the Universe"

• ...as an animated GIF. 

"Orations of a Pre-Post Colonial Oompa Loompa to His Revolutionary Brothers-in-Arms"

• Need I say more?

Three websites, three answers (aka Very Lazy Linking)

The web is a wonderful thing. Three questions, three wonderful resources to answer them:

1. How does homeopathy work?
2. Is there a God?
3. What happens after I die?

Problem. Solved.

Solid Rock: Preying on the desperate, ignorant and gullible

Here is some good news: South Africa's Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) is doing its job. A church called "Solid Rock Church of Miracles" (warning: horrid late-90s web design...) ran an ad with an accompanying photograph as 'evidence': "Bring the blind, the lame, Aids and cancer victims. 43 Crutches! 25 Walking sticks! 2 White canes from blind people! Already left behind!". In other words... WE DO MIRACLES! Never mind those doctors! Jebus will take care of you! And if you bring along some cash to stuff into our collection boxes, that would be great... Given that praying really, really hard to an invisible sky wizard cannot, in fact, cure AIDS, cancer, blindness or lameness, taking out such an ad preys on the desperate, ignorant and gullible.

Thus, thankfully, ruled the ASA. The reaction of Solid Rock's pastor - former bike gang-member Johan van Wyk - has been rather amusing and more that a little risible. Despite the fact that the miracles bit is in their name and in their mission statement van Wyk told the ASA he's not "claiming anything in these advertisements. It just encourages people to bring everybody. The crutches etc. are hanging in its church so there is no false claim". Right... there are crutches hanging in my church, nobody ever reads between the lines in advertisements, therefore I am not a lying bastard... But why is van Wyk being so coy? Well, maybe it's the five previous rulings against his church. The ad in question, notes the ASA, bears a "striking resemblance" to other ads for which it has already been sanctioned.  "As with all previous rulings," concluded the ASA, "the current advertisement promotes the church, under the auspices that it can cure various diseases or offer treatment for them. The respondent is clearly continuing to make unsubstantiated healing claims despite an instruction not to do so."

And van Wyk's reaction to the ruling? From the Sunday Independent: 

"Look, for our members and for ourselves, miracles are very real," Van Wyk told the Saturday Star of the divine healing he claims happens at the Northcliff, Joburg, church come weekends. "Every weekend we experience miracles and hear testimonies. For us they're very real ...The person most blind is the one who doesn't want to see. Our business is not about proving miracles; it's to help people."

Aside from the surprisingly post-modernist "for us", this is a fascinating insight into the religious mind. There is no room for careful consideration, for even a modicum of doubt, or even for expertise. ('A doctor attended services?' GREAT!). All we have is assertion, emotion, and a petulant demand to be believed. Think about it. If this guy really can cure AIDS, he has a moral duty to present the kind of evidence that would convince a skeptic. But all we're given is unsubstantiated anecdotes - testimony from the emotional and medically untrained, given to the emotional and medically untrained.

Most frustratingly, the bad publicity has likely done the church good:

The church, it seems, has reaped the benefits. "The lady (Phillips [who laid the complain with the ASA]), instead of stopping us, we've had so much publicity. If people will come because of that, we'll have to see.

"We don't advocate everybody will be healed here. But through all these years, only one person has ever complained. She (Phillips) is harming the sick people, not us."

It's time for the ASA to put some bite in its rulings. Any organization that consistently flouts the ASA's judgments deserves to be punished - as severely as the law allows.

Picture: Zapiro's follow-up

In all the hullabaloo over Draw Mohammad Day, I forgot to point to cartoonist Jonathan "Zapiro" Shapiro's follow-up cartoon. You'll recall that this cartoon of Zapiro's - in my view one of the best drawn for Draw Mo Day - caused quite a stir, and Shapiro even received death threats. Anyway, Zapiro followed-up with the following (click for a bigger version):

Video: Saving Africa's Witch Children

Update: I see the video I embedded has been removed. There is, *cough*cough*, a torrent available...

A documentary (embedded below, or click here) on one of the greatest tragedies of our time: witch hunts in Africa. The only appropriate response is burning indignation. (Note: you can download this video by following the link and creating an account with Vimeo).


Saving Africa's Witch Children from Africa's Witch Children on Vimeo.

See also my posts: "Human Sacrifice in Uganda" and "Witch Trials in Africa".

Picture: The Problem of Evil

I'm not sure there is a better illustration of the problem of evil than this photograph of the aftermath of the recent Sumatra earthquake.

(Via Big Picture)

Religious atheists

So I was thinking again today about a post of mine from a while ago, "Atheists who believe in God". The short version: a Pew religious survey found, incredibly, that 55% of agnostics and 21% of atheists say they believe in God or a "universal spirit". In my previous post I did joke that "in other news: 1 in 4 vegans eat meat" and so on, but I didn't quite spell out how preposterous this actually is.

An atheist, basically, is someone who lacks a belief in (any) God. So the very definition of an atheist is someone who does not believe. A theistic atheist, in other words, is a necessarily non-existent being; such a thing simply cannot exist in any possible universe. The same is true of, for example, a married bachelor. The definition of bachelor is "unmarried man", so a person cannot possibly be both a bachelor and married. The same goes for two-horned unicorns, three-sided squares, non-black black ravens and absolutely certain agnostics.

A person who self-identifies as atheist but also claims to believe in God, then, is either dumb, deeply confused or doesn't know what 'atheist' means. What certainly isn't true is that this person is actually both an atheist and a theist. (Well, at least not at the same time).

Fun with the Economist

The Economist has a bunch of cool recent articles, so I thought I'd link to some of them.

Richard Dawkins is not popular in some circles, indeed, he's attracted a whole host of critics or, as he puts it, "fleas". The latest is "The Selfish Genius: How Richard Dawkins Rewrote Darwin’s Legacy" by Fern Elsdon-Baker, a philosopher at Leeds University. The Economist has a good review of the book, which concludes Elsdon-Baker misses her mark. I especially liked the final paragraph:

What is left, once these attacks are dismissed, is a critique of Mr Dawkins’s proselytising atheism. It is true this wins him few converts, when a collaboration with religious moderates against the creationists might bear weightier fruit. But if his intellectual rigour forbids him making common cause with people he thinks are wrong, that perhaps only shows he is indeed the rottweiler of legend.

The Lexington column had a interesting piece about Camp Inquiry, an American summer camp for atheist / freethinking children. (If you listen to Point of Inquiry, you've no doubt heard about it before). I was somewhat surprised (though, I shouldn't have been) that the camp has been strongly condemned by fundamentalists like the nuts over at AiG. I'm always amazed how controversial teaching critical and independent thinking is.

The Economist is renowned for its dry, pithy, final sentences. Indeed, it's joked that the ability to pen such lines is more important for being hired as an Economist journalist than anything else. Anyway, I thought the closing sentence of this article on searching for Dark Matter was wonderfully crafted and apposite.

Oh. And I just can't resist linking to this review of a book on World War II. The sub-heading: "A British historian argues that Hitler lost the war for the same reason that he unleashed it—because he was a Nazi." Glorious.

Hypnogogia

The NYT op-ed columnist David Brooks writes in his latest piece, "In Defense of Death," about prominent religious leader Richard Neuhaus and how he "used death to mystify life". What struck me is that Neuhaus seems to have had a hypnogogic hallucination, which he then misinterpreted as a message from beyond. Here's Neuhaus' description of the event, in full.

It was a couple of days after leaving intensive care, and it was night. I could hear patients in adjoining rooms moaning and mumbling and occasionally calling out; the surrounding medical machines were pumping and sucking and bleeping as usual. Then, all of a sudden, I was jerked into an utterly lucid state of awareness. I was sitting up in the bed staring intently into the darkness, although in fact I knew my body was lying flat. What I was staring at was a color like blue and purple, and vaguely in the form of hanging drapery. By the drapery were two “presences.” I saw them and yet did not see them, and I cannot explain that. But they were there, and I knew that I was not tied to the bed. I was able and prepared to get up and go somewhere. And then the presences—one or both of them, I do not know—spoke. This I heard clearly. Not in an ordinary way, for I cannot remember anything about the voice. But the message was beyond mistaking: “Everything is ready now.”

That was it. They waited for a while, maybe for a minute. Whether they were waiting for a response or just waiting to see whether I had received the message, I don’t know. “Everything is ready now.” It was not in the form of a command, nor was it an invitation to do anything. They were just letting me know. Then they were gone, and I was again flat on my back with my mind racing wildly. I had an iron resolve to determine right then and there what had happened. Had I been dreaming? In no way. I was then and was now as lucid and wide awake as I had ever been in my life.

This is classic hypogogia: it was night, so Neuhaus was quite possibly falling asleep or waking up as he had the experience, he was awake and lucid (but stationary), he experienced a proprioperceptory illusion (thinking he was upright when he wasn't), and there are ill-defined "presences" in the room. Neuhaus then simply interpreted his experience in the light of his pre-existing Christian beliefs.

In one of the very first posts on the blog, I wrote about how compelling an illusion like this can be and how we should take the experiences seriously and not belittle those who have them. Nonetheless, the interpretation of any such experience is a matter for science and, in this case, it seems clear hypnogogia is a far better explanation than visiting spooks.

God & Africa

I rarely get really righteously indignant. But this bollocks by Matthew Parris that 'Africa needs God' pisses me off. So Parris, a South African-born English journalist and "confirmed atheist", traveled to Malawi and became convinced that Christianity makes an enormous contribution to Africa, distinct from its charity work. 'The rural African mind', you see, is deeply superstitious and fearful (its bugbears are 'evil spirits, ancestors, nature and the wild, tribal hierarchy, and quite everyday things') and focuses on 'the collective', which "grinds down the individual spirit, stunting curiosity". Christianity, Parris contends, "smashes straight through [this] philosphical [sic]/spiritual framework" and, unlike other Africans, its converts thus "stand tall" and are 'liberated, relaxed, lively, engaged with the world, and curious'. "Removing Christian evangelism from the African equation," he concludes, "may leave the continent at the mercy of a malign fusion of Nike, the witch doctor, the mobile phone and the machete."

There is so much wrong with this that I don't really know where to begin. But... The rural African mind? Wtf is the definite article doing in there? Let's do some revision, shall we? According to Wikipedia, Africa covers over 20% of the Earth's land surface and has almost a billion inhabitants, over 2,000 languages, hundreds of ethnic groups, and extremely diverse religious beliefs. (Traditional African religious beliefs are even more disparate). Generalizing about such a large number of diverse people strewn across a huge continent is difficult at best, and literally impossible without rigorous and statistically representative surveys. Wandering semi-randomly across the continent making biased observations will never, ever, equip you to make valid generalizations about Africa. (I'm not saying one cannot generalize, I'm saying doing so is impossible without proper statistics). At the absolutely minimum, then, Parris presents no evidence that his characterization of 'the rural African mind' is accurate or captures even a small amount of the variance in beliefs.

Similarly, Parris presents no compelling evidence for his hypothesis that conversion to Christianity causes Africans to 'stand tall'. All we get from him are some anecdotes: non-Christians are fearful and superstitious and Christians aren't. (Apparently, believing in a cosmic Jewish Zombie isn't an example of superstition). Someone really needs to tell Parris about confirmation bias: he sees support for his hypothesis everywhere only because he expects to and ignores disconfirming instances. Moreover, in the absence of experimental control, it is impossible to determine the direction of causality even if we grant the existence of a correlation: does Christianity make Africans more confident and curious (etc.) or do more confident and curious Africans become Christians in larger numbers? Or is there a third-factor (access to the education and support Christian charities provide, for example) that accounts for both? Pariss makes no observations that can distinguish between these alternatives.

Furthermore, why does Africa specifically need Christianity? While I grant that some ideologies may be more conducive to economic and societal success than others, Parris presents no evidence that Christianity (let alone only Christianity) is the right sort of ideology for Africa. Does Islam not "smash through" the African "philosphical [sic]/spiritual framework"? (Assuming such a thing exists and needs smashing). Does communism not teach people to "stand tall"? How about Afrocentrism? Or humanism? Or liberalism? Or, for that matter, Confucianism, Zoroastrianism, or Frisbeetarianism? Is there any reason to think that the only (or best) way to a better future for Africa is via a detour through the Bible? Is cultural evolution strictly linear, so that Africans can only reach Europe's vaunted current state by going through a period of Christian superstition? Apart from asserting the tautology that one belief system must be replaced with another, Parris addresses none of these questions.

Parris, in short, overgeneralizes crassly, leaps to unwarranted conclusions, ignores a multitude of confounds, pays no attention to complexities, and disregards possibly disconfirming evidence. That his conclusion is also deeply insulting, borderline racist and mind-bogglingly patronizing is, of course, strictly irrelevant to its truth. Had he presented some evidence for his conclusion, I wouldn't have minded as much. But that he confidently asserts such an insulting proposition without any reasonably good evidence whatsoever is entirely unacceptable.

Mr. Parris, shut up.

Afrikaner theocratic totalitarianism

My uncle, a pastor in the Reformed Church in Johannesburg, told me today about a batshit crazy and seemingly growing movement among Christian Afrikaners: the Ezra Movement. (Note: the website is in Afrikaans, although there are several English documents available if you click on "Esra Verslag" at left). The mission of the movement is "To contribute to the reformation of family, church and civil government in South Africa, through education in, and defence of, the Biblico-Christian worldview in every sphere of life and thought" (my translation). Their basic doctrine is theonomy, the belief that the Bible, literally interpreted, is the only souce of human ethics. As a consequence, these guys quite literally and unselfconsciously advocate religious totalitarianism. The following, from "Covenant and State" (English pdf) by University of Free State law professor Andries Raath (pdf), is particularly hair-raising:

The State is instituted by God to exercise His wrath upon evildoers, and to praise and protect those who live righteously. We see that the State is called upon to administer righteousness in society. (p. 43)

According to Raath, then, the South African constitution should be set aside, its liberal freedoms severely curtailed, and the government should "demand obedience to both tables of the
Ten Commandments" (p. 52). Chillingly, Raath goes on to say that he "rejects the ridiculous idea of the right to life, according to which the right to life for evildoers is guaranteed" (p. 57) and thus apparently advocates the death penalty for blasphemy, homosexuality, witchcraft, adultery... As I said. Batshit. Crazy.

Incidentally, an unprovable but highly plausible argument I've heard a couple of times is that the divergence between Dutch Calvinism (which became far more liberal over time) and Afrikaner Calvinism (which until recently did not) is due to the Enlightenment. Holland, of course, has long been an important intellectual center, and Dutch culture was thus strongly influenced by the Enlightenment. South Africa, on the other hand, was isolated from these developments and could thus not benefit from them. The result? The enormous difference between South Africa's shameful, intolerant and illiberal political and cultural history and Holland's mostly tolerant and liberal political history. Of course... this claim is untestable and speculative and, given that I'm a fan of the Enlightenment, I could be suffering from confirmation bias. But, it's certainly interesting and plausible.

Prayer in SA schools

Science journalist Leonie Joubert has an excellent article in the Mail & Guardian taking on ANC president Jacob Zuma's support for daily prayer in South African schools. An excerpt:

The point, Jacob Zuma, is that we don't need pious school leavers; we need ones who are developing razor-keen skills so that they can keep this country on the road to modernity. I'd like some of them to become super-healers, the kinds of doctors, nurses and medical researchers who are so good at what they do that the ruling party won't have to suffer the indignity of sending its ailing leaders off to the hospitals of former colonisers to get decent medical treatment. So let's leave the teachers to do their jobs -- teach -- and spare them the distraction of daily incantations.

Joubert also writes a blog, Scorched... why hadn't I heard about her previously?!

(Via Skeptic South Africa).

Civil rights for atheists

Some people, apparently, think that civil rights don't extend to atheist Americans. Incredible and depressing. (Click for a higher-res version).

Dawkins embarrassed after death and subsequent resurrection

Maybe I have a weird sense of humor but I found the NewsBiscuit satirical article "Richard Dawkins embarrassed after death and subsequent resurrection" hysterically funny. A sample:

Confirmed atheist Richard Dawkins was forced onto the defensive yesterday after he died but subsequently rose from the dead in a miraculous resurrection, much like that of the son of God Jesus Christ.

‘There are a number of perfectly logical scientific explanations for what has happened’ he told journalists flocking to hear his story or just touch the hem of his clothing. ‘Although I was pronounced dead after the unfortunate incident on Friday, the doctors clearly made a mistake. The fact that there was thunder and lightning, and those around claim to have heard the sound of angelic voices is completely irrelevant.’

Read on...

(Via RichardDawkins.net)

The Official God FAQ

So it turns out there is an Official God FAQ. It has to be seen to be enjoyed... 

(HT: Wim)

The Genius of Charles Darwin update

I criticized Richard Dawkins for his bad pedagogy in the first episode of his new Channel 4 documentary "The Genius of Charles Darwin" a while back. A quick note: all three episodes are now available for download on Dawkins' website. I haven't seen the third episode yet, but, despite the problems, I think the series is worth watching.

Dawkins and Bad Pedagogy

Note: there is a nasty controversy about this post over on Richard Dawkins' website. Indeed, Dawkins himself has taken offense and demanded an apology. I certainly regret the tone of this post and, on reflection, I don't think I have enough evidence to claim Dawkins was promoting atheism. I have therefore withdraw part of my criticism and apologized twice.

I linked to a documentary called "The Genius of Charles Darwin" a while ago, but embedded below (or click here) is the real deal: the first installment of Richard Dawkins' new 3-part series on Darwin. I'm linking to it for two reasons: because I think it's worth watching but also because I think Dawkins is guilty of just horrendous bad pedagogy in the documentary and I want to talk a bit about that.

Let me start with a few caveats: I really like Dawkins - he has inspired me, and I think he's had a tremendous positive impact. Also, I am a fairly "hardcore" atheist not a 'Neville Chamberlain atheist'. And, obviously, I think nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution. Nevertheless, I don't think there is any logical incompatibility between theism and evolution, that is, I deny (part of) the conflict thesis and think theistic evolution may be extremely unparsimonious, but it is not logically contradictory. Moreover, I take it as a given that there is a difference between pedagogy and polemics and that the latter should largely be kept out of the former. I take it for granted, in other words, that instructors ought in general not to evangelize for a particular point of view or ignore alternatives when there is no consensus among the relevant experts. Consequently, given the huge body of evidence and the consensus among the experts, teachers and lecturers are perfectly entitled to advocate the truth of evolution by natural selection and to dismiss or ignore alternatives. (I have been known to say things like 'anti-Darwinists are dumb and not worth taking seriously' in lectures). It is not cricket, however, to ignore alternatives and advocate a particular point of view about controversial issues like the relationship between theism and evolution.

Dawkins, I think, falls egregiously afoul of the last principle in this documentary. In one sequence, he goes to a school to teach a group 16 year-olds about evolution. Unsurprisingly, religion soon rears it head; several of the students, it turns out, are religious and they reject evolution for that reason. And what does Dawkins do? He tries to persuade them to become atheists! Now, I have nothing against evangelizing for atheism (I do it myself sometimes) but doing so (1) does not belong in the science classroom and (2) interferes with teaching evolution properly. Moreover, Dawkins' approach criminally neglects the duty of a teacher to present all sides of an argument when there is no consensus among the relevant experts. Crudely speaking, there are at least four possible positions one can take on the relationship between religion and evolution: religious compatibilism (e.g. Ken Miller, Pope John Paul II), atheistic compatibilism (e.g. Stephen Jay Gould, Steven Novella), religious incompatibilism (e.g. Ken Ham, Henry Morris) and atheistic incompatibilism (e.g. Dawkins, PZ Myers). It is obvious that a teacher should at a minimum mention these four points of view and their respective proponents. Unless the scenes were not included in the documentary, Dawkins takes the atheistic incompatibilism point of view for granted and never even mentions the alternatives to his students. This is not only bad pedagogy, it is dumb from a tactical point of view twice over: if the aim is to convince students of the truth of evolution, removing impediments (like worrying they have to give up religion) is obviously a good idea. If the aim is to spread atheism, surely it is much easier to 'convert' someone who accepts science already than it is to convert someone who rejects science? Surely it is easier on average to convert a religious compatiblist who is knowledgeable about evolution than it is to convert an ignorant religious incompatibalist like a young earth creationist? (One issue here is that one does not want to be dishonest: lying to students about evolution's impact on religion would certainly be morally dubious. An incompatibilist can nevertheless go part of the way to allaying students' fears by mentioning millions of scientists and hundreds of millions of religious people do not think evolution undermines their faith. They can acknowledge, in other words, that their view is not the only one and that they might be wrong).

At one point in the documentary I wanted to scream at Dawkins to wake up - one student actually said he (I think it was a he) was afraid to learn more about evolution because he didn't want to give up his religion. By clinging dogmatically to atheistic incompatibilism, Dawkins failed this student, failed as a teacher, failed as an advocate of evolution and arguably even failed as an advocate of atheism.

You gotta love PZ

As many of you no doubt recall, PZ Myers, author of the excellent Phyrangula, has had a run-in with a horde of Catholic fanatics because he said some mean things about a cracker and threatened to "desecrate" one. Two developments on that front: the Chancellor of PZ's university has come out in support of his academic freedom and, more importantly, PZ has now gone ahead and abused a cracker, just as he promised he would. He even did the same to pages of the Qur'an and The God Delusion.

PZ's conclusion to the cracker-abuse post is wonderful:

By the way, I didn't want to single out just the cracker, so I nailed it to a few ripped-out pages from the Qur'an and The God Delusion. They are just paper. Nothing must be held sacred. Question everything. God is not great, Jesus is not your lord, you are not disciples of any charismatic prophet. You are all human beings who must make your way through your life by thinking and learning, and you have the job of advancing humanity's knowledge by winnowing out the errors of past generations and finding deeper understanding of reality. You will not find wisdom in rituals and sacraments and dogma, which build only self-satisfied ignorance, but you can find truth by looking at your world with fresh eyes and a questioning mind.

(By the way, translated copies of the Qur'an are not considered "holy" so strictly speaking PZ has not really guilty of desecration from a Muslim perspective).

Religion can be bad for you

The South African media is reporting that a man by the name of Matthew Naidoo, calling himself the "third son of God” and "God's messenger", convinced Westville brother and sister Hardus and Nicolette Lotter to murder their parents. The father, Johan, was strangled to death with an extension cord and the mother, Magdelena ("Riekie"), was stabbed to death. Apparently, Naidoo was told by "voices in his head" that “God wanted Johan and Riekie [Magdelena Lotter]”. It's unclear whether the three belonged to a cult, but The Times quotes sources claiming the murder was some sort of religious ritual. Thankfully, police arrested Naidoo, Hardus and Nicolette and they are reported to have made a full confession.

This incident reminds me of Voltaire's justly famous quote:

Truly, whoever is able to make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities. If the God-given understanding of your mind does not resist a demand to believe what is impossible, then you will not resist a demand to do wrong to that God-given sense of justice in your heart. As soon as one faculty of your soul has been dominated, other faculties will follow as well. And from this derives all those crimes of religion which have overrun the world. (From, "Questions sur les miracles", 1765).