Last night I went to a social gathering for Humanists. There was a new member there, an iranian woman, who took a few minutes to introduce herself and suggest that we should reach out to exile iranians and other immigrants, whom are often intellectuals and non-religious. It’s an interesting topic that I won’t spend more time on now, instead I would like to recount a funny anecdote she shared.

She is a teacher in one of the Stockholm suburbs that has the most immigrants. Her pupils are mostly muslims, with some christians thrown into the mix. And no, their parents obviously have absolutely no qualms about imposing labels on them. And the children propagate the labels happily, asking each other “Are you muslim? Are you christian?”

At one point, one of the children asked her, their teacher, “What are you?”. Something like the following exchange ensued:

Child: What are you?

Teacher: I’m sorry?

Child: What are you, are you muslim?

Teacher: No, I’m not a muslim.

Child: Are you a christian?

Teacher: No, I’m not a christian.

Child: But then what are you?!

Another child: I know what she is! She’s Swedish!

Oh, this is gold. It encapsulates one of Sweden’s greatest strenghts and faults in one. Religion has become such a marginal part of Sweden that it’s barely visible at all anymore. This is nice. But, it’s also the case that if you have any opinion at all on religion, you’re automatically too hardcore. Sure, people think deeply religious believers are a bit strange, but the converse is also true: If you take a stance against religion and other nonsense, you are a fundamentalist. Even simply calling yourself an atheist is a bit too strong.

No, the acceptable stance for a true Swede is … nothing. Don’t be a christian, don’t be a muslim, don’t be an atheist - just be Swedish…

sweden, atheism, religion

Today is Blasphemy Day.

I have no original blasphemy to contribute with, because all the clever things have already been said. Here’s a few samples.

There’s plenty more, but I think more than three videos in one post would be overkill. By the way, isn’t it odd how all my favourite comedians seem to be atheists? Is it the case that I find people more funny if they agree with me, or is it the case that intelligent, clever people are more likely to be atheists? I mean, frankly, I can’t remember having heard a funny comedian admit they believe in god.

blasphemy, religion, god, atheism, comedy

Eluana Englaro, the comatose woman whom Italian prime minister Berlusconi declared “in the condition to have babies“, died a couple of hours ago. My immediate reaction was a sigh of relief and muttering, ironically, “thank god”.

Regardless of whether one agrees that she should have been taken off life support or not, the political circus surrounding the case was absolutely tasteless. Berlusconi is a pig both for getting involved in a bereaved family’s private life and for suggesting that a woman’s primary function is to have babies, and don’t even get me started on the Vatican (who has magnanimously announced that god will forgive Mr Englaro for wanting to let his daughter go).

My condolences to the Mr Englaro and any other members of the family. I hope they can finally get some closure.

eluana englaro, berlusconi, vatican, euthanasia

Aw crap. I waited too long and now Greta Christina already did what I was planning on doing - answering the questions recently posted on Friendly Atheist, questions purportedly intended to instill doubt in us atheists. Now obviously she’s not the only person to have done so but I bet if I were to read her post I’d feel it’s pointless to write my own. So I better hurry and finish this one! Here we go:

Historian Gary Habermas: “Utilizing each of the historical facts conceded by virtually all contemporary scholars, please produce a comprehensive natural explanation of Jesus’ resurrection that makes better sense than the event itself.”

These historical facts are: (1) Jesus was killed by crucifixion; (2) Jesus’ disciples believed that he rose and appeared to them; (3) The conversion of the church persecutor Saul, who became the Apostle Paul; (4) the conversion of the skeptic James, Jesus’ half-brother; (5) The empty tomb of Jesus. These “minimal facts” are strongly evidenced and are regarded as historical by the vast majority of scholars, including skeptics, who have written about the resurrection in French, German, and English since 1975. While the fifth fact doesn’t have quite the same virtual universal consensus, it nevertheless is conceded by 75 percent of the scholars and is well supported by the historical data if assessed without preconceptions.

I was under the impression that there’s very little evidence beyond the bible that Jesus even existed. But ok, I’m not a bible scholar, or a historian. So, for the sake of argument, let’s grant these “minimal facts”. First of all, facts 2, 3 and 4 are entirely incidental. What people believe makes no difference to reality. As for a tomb mysteriously emptying… Is that really so hard to imagine? I honestly don’t see how this would be compelling evidence for anything at all. Especially not the christian god. All we’re saying here is that a guy was executed, and then his corpse disappeared. So … uh … so what?

Philosopher Paul Copan: “Given the commonly recognized and scientifically supported belief that the universe (all matter, energy, space, time) began to exist a finite time ago and that the universe is remarkably finely tuned for life, does this not (strongly) suggest that the universe is ontologically haunted and that this fact should require further exploration, given the metaphysically staggering implications?

“And, second, granted that the major objection to belief in God is the problem of evil, does the concept of evil itself not suggest a standard of goodness or a design plan from which things deviate, so that if things ought to be a certain way (rather than just happening to be the way they are in nature), don’t such ‘injustices’ or ‘evils’ seem to suggest a moral/design plan independent of nature?”

1. No. Why should it? The puddle is shaped to the ground it lies on, not the other way around. If the ground was shaped differently the puddle would look different or not exist at all. Let’s just appreciate the fact that if the universe didn’t happen to be “finely tuned”, we wouldn’t be here.

2. No. We’re social animals and thus have a system of morals. We’re not the only ones but ours are arguably the most “advanced”, whatever that means. We’re the ones who have decided what is good or bad. And the problem of evil only arises because the christian god is supposed to have made us in his own image, which presumably means that what we think is “good”, he thinks is “good”. Which makes us wonder why he didn’t make the world “good”. Now if the christian god was just a general being, not affiliated with any particular species, I might be more inclined to believe… or not.

Talk show host Frank Pastore: “Please explain how something can come from nothing, how life can come from non-life, how mind can come from brain, and how our moral senses developed from an amoral source.”

Uh… how about … no? Because even if I had no idea how to answer any of those questions, I still really wouldn’t feel the need to have an invisible friend take care of them. See, I’m not worried about not having answers to everything. As it happens, I do have some clues as to how answer how life can come from non-life and the origin of morals. That this talk show host doesn’t just means he hasn’t looked for the answers.

Historian Mike Licona: “Irrespective of one’s worldview, many experience periods of doubt. Do you ever doubt your atheism and, if so, what is it about theism or Christianity that is most troubling to your atheism?”

That’s cheating, you were the one supposed to induce doubt in me, not ask what you might say to induce doubt! But to answer the question: No. There is absolutely nothing troubling in christianity or any theistic belief. It’s all crazy. Sorry! But it is!

Author Greg Koukl: “Why is something here rather than nothing here? Clearly, the physical universe is not eternal (Second Law of Thermodynamics, Big Bang cosmology). Either everything came from something outside the material universe, or everything came from nothing (Law of Excluded Middle). Which of those two is the most reasonable alternative? As an atheist, you seem to have opted for the latter. Why?”

Because there is as yet no evidence for the former.

I didn’t email Alvin Plantinga, considered by many to be among the greatest philosophers of modern times. But based on his assertion that naturalism is self-defeating, we could formulate this question (thanks to William Lane Craig for some of the concise wording): If our cognitive faculties were selected for survival, not for truth, then how can we have any confidence, for example, that our beliefs about the reality of physical objects are true or that naturalism itself is true? (By contrast, theism says God has designed our cognitive faculties in such a way that, when functioning properly in an appropriate environment, they deliver true beliefs about the world.)

Finally something interesting. You’re right - we can’t prove anything. That’s why science doesn’t deal with Truth. Only religions deal with Truth. We’re just trying to make models that seem to fit how the world works. Of course, everything we experience is filtered through our own senses and cognitive faculties, and those senses are very limited indeed. But by the same argument - they were selected for survival - I think it’s safe to say that what we experience is at least somewhat correlated with the “real world”. Otherwise, those experiences would be useless to us.

Either way, Plantinga’s argument is stupid. He’s essentially saying that since we can’t prove naturalism, we should default to the other idea. Why? Because it feels better to believe there’s Truth out there? Sorry, but that really doesn’t cut it. As long as there’s no evidence for the existence of any god, I’m going to default to naturalism. That I can’t even prove my own existence is philosophical nitpickery and really doesn’t bother me in the least.

So to wrap up. The interesting thing about these questions is that they pretty much confirm something most atheists already know: That we’re not the ones who need all the answers. Atheists are fine with unanswered questions. In fact, we thrive on them, at least those of us who are scientists. That several of these religious people thought that asking questions about the universe to which they knew or thought there were no answers only goes to show that that’s what they think we should fear.

I pity them, and I’m also vaguely embarrassed that this is the best they could come up with. I mean, come on. I could’ve answered these questions equally well ten years ago! When I was 15 years old!

Now to compare notes with Greta Christina…

religion, god, atheism, doubt, theism

Last friday I attended a seminar on beekeeping, organised by Biodynamiska Föreningen (the Swedish biodynamic association) together with the Swedish Board of Agriculture. I wouldn’t have gone if the latter hadn’t been involved, given what I already know about biodynamics.

In case you’re not familiar with the term “biodynamic”, or belong to the majority of people who think it’s a synonym for “ecological” (or possibly “holistic”), let me disillusion you. Biodynamics has ecological/organic agriculture as its foundation, but adds an absolutely insane mess of superstitious nonsense gathered from the hallucinations of Rudolf Steiner.

The practitioners are extremely tacit about this, however, which is probably because biodynamics was invented as part of anthroposophy, and anthroposophers are notoriously good at hiding their religious agenda. Just like no one seems to be aware that waldorf schools are actually religious indoctrination-centres, people are equally unaware that when practicing biodynamics, you’re supposed to take the position of the planets into account when sowing. Oh, and did you know that filling the skull of a pet with pieces of oak bark and burying it in the autumn somewhere where a lot of rainwater flows past will produce a compost additive that adds calcium to the earth in ideal form?

Now, thankfully, you can’t convert anyone to anthroposophy by making sure to always plant the crops on a fruit-day (as opposed to a root-day) - there will be no essence of Steiner in the resultant bread to slowly turn people’s minds - so I’m not nearly as opposed to biodynamics as I am to waldorf schools, at least so long as no animals are involved. Treating sick animals with homeopathic remedies is arguably worse than treating humans, as it’s not voluntary and the placebo effect is out of play. What I really dislike, however, is the dishonesty in their advertising: Omitting the truth is also a kind of lie. (Illustrative of how good they are at hiding the truth is a recent article in Dagens Nyheter about ecological food, where the above mentioned biodynamic association is mentioned without so much as a hint that they’re something other than just “ecological”.)

The beekeeping seminar wasn’t much different. There were some good talks presumably organised by the Board of Agriculture - on chemicals in agriculture, the problems associated with honeybee breeding, and on allowing bees to organise their hive the way they want - but there were also a couple of people invited to talk about “Demeter beekeeping”. Demeter is the chosen brand name for all kinds of biodynamic products.

Their talk was actually quite alright, although I can’t say they said anything particularly revolutionary. It was mostly just common sense. For instance: Bees want to swarm, so producing artificial swarms is a good way to keep them happy without losing the swarm.

The only times I could detect the biodynamic approach was some talk about how bees are the only animals that build “from heaven to earth” (which isn’t true, as bees may build from the ground up as well - and off the top of my head I can name wasps and swallows as other animals that build “downwards”), how they smell “heavenly”, and how fresh wax is “immaterial”. Also, at one point there was a rant about how “the scientists” don’t “want” to research for instance formic acid’s effect on bees because they don’t “want” to know the truth. This was immediately followed by lamenting the lack of money to research homeopathic remedies against bee diseases. It is of course unthinkable that “the scientists” might have the same monetary problems as the homeopathers…

Although at the time I was quite relieved to realise they were pretty much keeping quiet about the weirder aspects of their beekeeping, in retrospect, it annoys me. I suspect a lot of people - including the woman from the Board of Agriculture - got a very good impression of these Demeter beekeepers and the methods they represent. No one seemed to react to their mention of homeopathy, indicative of how people simply cannot get their heads around the fact that it’s been shown, over and over again, that it doesn’t work. Perhaps it’s the case that beekeepers are so distressed about the varroa invasion that at this point we’re ready to try anything.

Still, in the end me and my father came out of the seminar feeling pretty inspired, so it can’t have been all bad. Inspired to do what, exactly, I’ll come back to in future posts!

beekeeping, biodynamics, anthroposophy

One of my most popular posts on this blog is Answers From an Atheist, where I answered a load of questions about atheism. In the same vein, I recently received an e-mail from a christian creationist who said he had encountered this blog, and asked if he could “show me some things”. Shrugging off the slight creepiness of that question I responded that I’ll be happy to spar with him so long as the “things” he wanted to show me didn’t come from Answers in Genesis. I also requested permission to post our exchange on my blog. He didn’t say no, so, here we are.

Before we start: If anyone wants to take me to task for being condescending and snarky, go right ahead. I am being a bit condescending and snarky. This guy engaged me via e-mail, rather than on my blog, which to me implies he has something really important to say. He wanted me to take the time to listen to his arguments and respond to him personally. I agreed, hoping he actually had something interesting to say, and then he sends me these confused rhetorical questions. Although I try to maintain an upbeat, friendly tone throughout my response, I can’t help if some snark poured through as well. I’m sure he means well and I hope he gets back to me (although I can imagine it’ll take him some time to get through my rambling), because I do enjoy a good verbal one-on-one.

Oh and if anyone finds fault in anything I say, please call me on it. My response was hastily written and not particularly well researched (although I’ve obviously come across the subject of the origin of sexes many times, I haven’t read anything in-depth about it recently). I don’t think there’s anything ass-backwards about it but one can never be too sure.

And, finally, if you’re a non-atheist or non-biologist with questions, please do ask! I’m no expert on either area but I love pretending to be one…

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Are you willing to seek God’s existence? I certainly hope you do, because there IS evidence pointing to God.

This question is unanswerable except in the form of counter-questions:

1. Which “God” are you talking about? One of the many christian versions? Or any of the abrahamitic ideas of “God”? Or shall we branch out and include the gods of all living religions? Maybe, for good measure, the dead ones as well? I always thought grecian mythology was a hoot.
2. What evidence?
3. Do you realise it’s rather weird to ask someone to “seek” something before you present them with the evidence? Seeking God’s existence presupposes that he exists. Since I have no such presupposition, I look at the universe without religious eye-glasses, and see no evidence.
4. What do you mean by “willing”? I’m not unwilling to believe in god, I simply can’t believe in something that goes against the evidence. Are you “willing” to investigate the possibility that god actually doesn’t exist at all? Because believe me, the evidence is much better!

Do you believe the big bang formed the universe?

Since that’s the informed consensus of contemporary physicists, yes. It’s not my area of expertise so I’m happy to leave this question in more capable hands. Just like physicists are (for the most part) happy to leave the question about the evolution of life into the hands of biologists. Unfortunately, theologians often seem to do neither…

If so, then how come big bangs tend to cause detruction rather than creation any more?

I’m sorry, but what exactly do you think a “big bang” is? You seem to be confusing it with “explosion” or “loud noise”. As far as I understand it, the Big Bang was named such because it’s an easy visual - everything springing into existance at once, in a boiling hot soup of matter eventually coagulating into stars and planets. It makes our puny human minds think of explosions. But that doesn’t mean it actually was an explosion in the regular sense of the term. Besides, since the Big Bang entails something coming from nothing, and “something” is already in existence, the Big Bang can’t happen again, by definition - not in this universe, at any rate.

If the universe was formed by a big bang, things should still form by a big bang.

Non sequitur. If you were formed by your mother and father mating, you should still be forming by your mother and father mating. No? No. Something happening once does not necessarily mean it can and will happen again.

If I went to a junkyard, and got some old metal, and springs, then put them into a box, and shook it for a day, week, month, then a year, and all of a sudden BANG! A watch is formed by random chance, would you say that is logical?

“Logic” has nothing to do with it. This is about probability. And no, the probability of a watch being formed in that fashion is extremely low. What does this have to do with anything? I suspect that you think you’re saying something really smart about either evolution or the big bang, but I’m afraid you’re way off target - although I can’t say much about the big bang (as I said, I’m not a physicist), I can tell you that evolution is not purely driven by chance. Please look up “natural selection”.

One last question for now, What about reproduction? Let me explain: Almost all living organisms have to reproduce with one male, and one female. One connot carry life without the other. Which came first according to evolution? If the male evolved first, he could not have reproduced without the female, and vise versa How is it that both the male, and the female both randomly came into existance, ad they both evolved individual, and complex reproductive systems?

Ah, now, this question I can actually answer (to the degree that anyone can, I suppose)! See, reproduction is a very interesting part of life and its evolution, and one biologists spend a lot of time on (insert obligatory sex joke here). However, my answer will by necessity have to be rather brief and unsatisfactory, seeing as I don’t have time to 1. plow the literature for all the extra interesting tidbits or 2. write the series of books the subject deserves. Especially seeing as it’s already been done.

First of all, I’m glad you say “almost”, because … well, even with that caveat, you’re still completely wrong. Most living organisms are bacteria, and they do not have sexes - although they do carry out a fair bit of DNA exchange which may be seen as a sort of sexual behaviour. And among the sexually reproducing organisms, it’s still the case that when environmental conditions are stable, males are pretty much superfluous, so the idea that “one cannot carry life without the other” is also faulty. We’ll get to this in a bit.

So, how did sex start and why? First let me just say that obviously, we don’t KNOW. I’m going to present a hypothesis to you that is perfectly plausible, but I’m not saying it’s the gospel truth. The puzzle of how sex began is a big one, a whole field of research in itself. That you expect me to answer your question just like this says something about your disregard for the complexity and intricacy of biology as a research discipline.

Anyway. At some point, organisms evolved an ability and propensity for exchanging DNA with one another. What’s the benefit? According to one hypothesis, the benefit is evolution itself. Because the environment an organism and its decendants exist in is not static but ever-changing, carrying around the same old combination of genes for generation upon generation can be detrimental. Mutations that actually confer some sort of benefit are rare (most are completely neutral), and so organisms “invented” a way to introduce some variety.

This is the beginning of sex, and eventually it led to sex as we know it - where two gametes, each carrying half a genome, fuse to form a new individual. Since you’re specifically asking about how the sexes appeared, I’m not going to go more indepth about the theories of why organisms started having sex in the first place.

In the beginning of sexual reproduction, there were (probably) no males or females. Many species still don’t have sexes as we know them - there may be some small differences (we might call one individual +, another -), or in some cases, none at all. When there are no differences, everyone can mate with everyone in a free-for-all sex bonanza. However, reproduction is tricky and expensive - it costs time and resources. The more you invest in your offspring, the better your genes will fare in the next generation - but, the more you invest in each of your offspring, the fewer offspring you can afford to produce. So it’s not surprising that while some individuals evolved a propensity for creating large, well-supplied gametes, others evolved to “cheat”, producing small gametes that could fuse with the larger ones. Essentially, maleness and femaleness evolved side by side. If there’s a lot of female-type individuals around, producing a lot of big fat well-supplied gametes, it’s very advantageous to be a “cheater”, producing many small gametes that might fertilise the big ones.

The point is, the evolution of maleness and femaleness - as defined by gamete size and motility - is really not weird at all. It’s no more odd than considering the co-evolution of parasites and hosts, or symbiotic relationships. Remember that it all happened very gradually and not overnight. And remember that the organisms that first evolved these traits were not the kind of animals that you’re thinking of, which have a whole arsenal of secondary sexual traits that are not intrinsically male or female but simply tacked on throughout the course of evolution. Thus your comment about “individual and complex reproductive systems” is also faulty, as the original males and females were simply individuals that produced slightly different gametes.

And, for the record, this is still very true for many, many organisms. In the ocean, the easiest way to reproduce is simply letting your gametes float away in the water and hopefully meet some other gametes on the way - this is how for instance corals do it. They do not have “individual and complex reproductive systems” - some of them produce big fat eggs, some of them produce small swimming sperm. That’s it. You, on the other hand, happen to be a mammal, and since mammals have the most weird and complex secondary reproductive traits of all, you think that’s what it means to be male or female. Sorry to let you down.

(I would go into why secondary reproductive traits - including breasts, uteruses and vaginas - might look the way they do, but this is already very long, so I’ll leave it for another time.)

And to come back to the superfluity of males, there are plenty of examples of organisms where males have more or less disappeared. Either the females reproduce by parthenogenesis (or as you religious folk like to refer to it, “virgin birth”), or the males exist as very rudimentary attachments living like parasites on the female. Imagine a scrotum attached to a woman providing her eggs with sperm. How does parthenogenesis work? If the environment is stable over time and you don’t need a partner to help raise your offspring, no sexual recombination of genes is required to keep your offspring fit, and this means that wasting time and energy on finding a mate is a bad idea. Females that evolve a way to produce offspring without male aid thus produce more offspring than those who do require males, and eventually the males disappear. This is really not at all weird - after all, females have everything they need to produce offspring - large, well-fed gametes. All they need to do is put ALL of their DNA in a gamete, instead of just half. Piece of cake. Males on the other hand couldn’t create offspring on their own even if their life depended on it, as the gametes they produce quickly starve and die.

I have attached an essay on reproduction I wrote a couple of years back, which explores the incredible variety of reproductive strategies among animals. I’d recommend you read through it before replying as I hope it’ll give you some apprecation of the complexity of the subject before you slag me off for being too cursory.

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I obviously haven’t attached that essay to this blog post, but I do think I’m going to post it sometime in the fairly near future. Stay tuned.

religion, creationism, atheism, big bang, evolution, reproduction

Ever noticed how words lose their meaning if you say them over and over again?

This story - the photo, in particular - makes me want to make a couple of t-shirts for me and my boyfriend. One will say “Gride” and one will say “Broom”.

This is really all I have to say about the matter, except that homophobia is totally gay.

ETA: Apparently, someone got there before me! Good for them!

gay marriage

Images of Jesus and his virgin mother have been known to pop up in the most unlikely places, such as dirty sinks. The conspicuous lack of other deities on toasts and bathroom doors has been a source of some confusion for atheists - after all, if all gods are equally unlikely to exist, all of them should be equally likely to appear randomly!*

Fortunately a Swedish Muslim provides some comfort: Swedish Muslim finds Muhammad in a mango. Praise Allah!

“When I sliced the mango in two, ‘Allah’ was written in one half and ‘Muhammad’ in the other. It’s a miracle, a sign from Allah,” said Sheikh to the Metro newspaper.

Of course there’s always some stupid academic spoiling the fun:

“There are 14 recognized ways to create the word ‘Allah’. When you think about how many mangoes there are out there, it’s not strange that one of them has a pattern which can be interpreted to be the right combination of characters,” said Jan Hjärpe [emeritus professor in Islam] to Metro.

Seriously though. What kind of self-respecting god would write his name and the name of his prophet in a rotting mango? What kind of cheap-ass miracle is that? And what kind of believer will settle for something like that from a god who is supposed to be wise and merciful and all-powerful?

A ROTTING MANGO?!

I guess we’re lucky it wasn’t a picture of Muhammad in there, or the fruit merchant would certainly have sold his last mango.

Friday pic coming up. It does not involve mangoes.

* I’m lying. There’s no confusion. And I think most of my readers get that but am writing this footnote just in case: We’re not confused at all. People see what they want to see. It’s that simple.

islam, allah, muhammad, mangoes, miracles

Over at EvolutionBlog, Jason Rosenhouse asks What is it With Hitchens? “Why is he so sensible and sharp when discussing religion, but almost perfectly brain-dead on every other issue?” Several commenters point out that Hitchens appears sharp only when you agree with him on the issues. The reason he is brilliant in debates with creationists isn’t because of the substance of his arguments, but because of his style. It is simply fortuitous that he happens to be right as well.

Now, it seems a lot of people view this as a bad thing. (One of the commenters at EvolutionBlog calls him a “poseur”, another points out that “it’s mostly just cheap rhetoric tricks and catch phrases that don’t penetrate the surface of the issue, repeated ad nauseum”. Although they also call his rhetoric “admirable”, I think their choice of words illustrates their ever so slight disdain of this kind of debating.) Us rational-minded people have this idealistic notion that it’s what people say that should matter, not how they say it. We want to think that anyone who knows a lot about evolution should be able to disembowel any creationist/Incompetent Design proponent they come across with simple facts. But, this is obviously not the case. I have personally come across at least one ID person who was simply too slick, too rhetorically polished for me to get a good grip around his metaphorical throat.

In short, it doesn’t matter if you’re right or not. When you enter a debate, especially one in front of an audience, what matters is your rhetorical clout. You need to have an arsenal of slogans and catch phrases, you need to be able to think on your feet, and you need to be able to put your opponent on tilt while avoiding the same thing happening to yourself. Hitchens can do this. Many others, including sometimes Dawkins, can’t. I think this might be one of the reasons why Dawkins advises against giving creationists the time of day: He knows that many of them are far more skilled debaters than most scientists, and that regardless of the fact that we’re right, we’ll come out of it looking bad.

And when it comes to winning over the minds of the public, it’s all about the looks.

Speaking of looking good, here’s a photo of me with some guy they pulled off the street to do the key-note address on the final day of the World Humanist Congress in Washington:

(Here’s the speech on youtube. One of the heads in the foreground is mine… and you can see the picture above get taken at the end of Part 2. I am … very embarrassed. I’m really not some total fangirl, I’m just very opportunistic. As it turned out, I could have waited with the picture: After the next part was over and we were standing in line at the hotel Starbucks, Hitchens came with a long queue of disciples fans eager to shake his hand and have their books signed trailing him (giving him a rather amusing mother goose-like appearance), and ended up just behind us in the line.)

debating, christopher hitchens, hitchens, dawkins, creationism

There’s been some talk lately about americans believing in guardian angels. From Time:

In a poll of 1700 respondents, 55% answered affirmatively to the statement, “I was protected from harm by a guardian angel.” The responses defied standard class and denominational assumptions about religious belief; the majority held up regardless of denomination, region or education — though the figure was a little lower (37%) among respondents earning more than $150,000 a year.

/…/

Says Bader, “If you ask whether people believe in guardian angels, a lot of people will say, ’sure.’ But this is different. It’s experiential. It means that lots of Americans are having these lived supernatural experiences.”

/…/

What’s interesting about the Baylor findings on guardian angel experiences is that they cross all boundaries. They have scriptural writ (in Psalm 91 and elsewhere). They are clearly experiential. And guardian angels are a prominent part of Catholic belief that happens to float freely outside of a sacrament. The cross-spectrum legitimacy of the notion of angelic interventions may free Americans to engage in the kind of folk faith that is part of almost any religious system but is not always officially acknowledged.

I’m not going to go through all the wrong assumptions made (you can see those for yourself), but after some very little thought, one thing strikes me about this: Doesn’t anyone involved in this study realised that “I was protected from harm by a guardian angel” is a leading question (statement, in this case)?

Asking someone who believes in god “Have you ever been saved by a guardian angel” prompts them to think back on their lives and consider any potential dangerous situation that they got out of, and they’ll think, “yeah, it was probably that!”

If they had asked people whether they had at some point in their life been involved in some situation that threatened to harm them but escaped, and then asked them what they attributed this escape to, I suspect the results would have been very different. Some would still have attributed their escape to angels, but others would have turned directly to god. Yet others would thank the stars - and, I think, a sizeable portion might have been able to identify what really got them out of their pickle: Chance (luck, some would call it), their own biology (as Digital Cuttlefish points out), the aid of friends, the skills of doctors…

Polls can yield very interesting results, but don’t write off a majority of people as gullible or stupid because of a poorly worded one. (They might of course still be gullible or stupid, but this poll wouldn’t tell you.)

guardian angels, religion, polls