People of no religion outnumber Christians in England and Wales – study | World news | The Guardian
Having been away from active blogging about religion for a while, what with a few personal family issues and a little matter of my fellow countrymen and women having voted to commit economic suicide by trying to go back to the 1970s instead of forward as part of a united Europe, it's good to come back with some good news, albeit a little late.
Ironically, it is news that illustrates how much like the rest of Western Europe we are. As with many other European countries, religious affiliation and church attendance continues to tumble in England at a rate that is causing panic and despondency in the established churches. The reaction of the established churches may reveal something about the attitude of clerics to 'faith'.
Religion, Creationism, evolution, science and politics from a centre-left atheist humanist. The blog religious frauds tell lies about.
Tuesday 5 July 2016
Sunday 26 June 2016
Faith Is A Feminist Issue
In the concluding chapter, Freedom to Choose, in my book, Ten Reasons To Lose Faith: And Why You Are Better Off Without It,I point out the following after reproducing an extract from http://www.allaboutgod.com/ which spells out in minute detail the role of both husband and wife in a marriage accordign to Christian dogma:
Note the entire ‘justification’ for men declaring the role of women, and for abrogating to themselves the right to do so with no reference to women’s opinions. It is wholly and solely that they can find excuses for it in a book of highly dubious provenance, which some people assert is the inspired word of an invisible magic man for which there is not an iota of definitive evidence.
The stories in the Bible were written by people with a Late Bronze Age Middle Eastern tribal misogyny who saw women as goods, not people. The cultural norms, prejudices and assumptions in that society are expected to be appropriate for today and half the world’s population are expected to meekly comply, because some men say so – and they have a book they can blame.
European Union - After The Storm
Oh! This was just a mistake! |
The result has already wiped £200 billion off the value of UK shares - some 20 years EU contribution - caused Sterling to fall to it's lowest level for 30 years, relegated Britain from the fifth to the sixth largest economy and caused credit agencies to downgrade our credit worthiness.
Tuesday 21 June 2016
European Union - The Three Big Brexit Lies
The defining feature of the Brexit campaign has been its dishonesty and use of lies and distorted statistics right from the beginning. This intensified and became even more overtly racist and xenophobic when opinion polls began showing the Remain side pulling comfortably ahead and panic set in amongst those whose political ambitions depend on Cameron being forced out if he loses.
The main lies concern three major question:
The main lies concern three major question:
- Britain's Contribution.
The Brexiteers claim that it costs Britain £350 million a week in EU contributions. This is a lie. After the famous Thatcher rebate of £100 million and after the amount the EU gives back to finance regional development, improved transport infrastructure, etc, this falls to £161 million or $23 million a day. This is 1% of total government spending!
Labels:
EU
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Human Rights
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Politics
Monday 20 June 2016
European Union - Why I'm In
I'll be departing from my usual science and Atheism posts for the next few days to concentrate on the impending referendum on the UK's continuing membership of the European Union.
The EU is important to me because I believe it represents one of the most significant achievements of human history. For the first time, previously waring and generally hostile states decided to put aside historical differences and build something new. Within an increasingly united Europe, trade wars and tariff barriers were to be abolished and political differences were to be settle by consensus.
The EU is important to me because I believe it represents one of the most significant achievements of human history. For the first time, previously waring and generally hostile states decided to put aside historical differences and build something new. Within an increasingly united Europe, trade wars and tariff barriers were to be abolished and political differences were to be settle by consensus.
Labels:
EU
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Human Rights
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Peace
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Politics
Friday 17 June 2016
Lessons From Menorca - Religious Intolerance
Statue of Jesus on Menorca's highest point - Monte Toro |
At the end of the Punic wars between Rome and Carthage, Minorca fell under Roman control. By the fifth century it had acquired a large Jewish population which seems to have coexisted more or less peacefully with the predominantly Christian population. However, this was not to last.
In 415 AD there was a forced conversion of the Jews as related by a bishop Severus in The Letter on the Conversion of the Jews. 540 Jews were forcibly baptised, including many of the leading and most wealthy members of the community. Those that remained were expelled to the centre of the island. The synagogues were burned. However, many Jewish families retained their religion whilst showing an outward appearance of Christianity. These went on to form the persecuted and shunned Xueta community with it's distinct form of non-Catholic Christianity.
Labels:
Atheism
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Religion
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Secularism
Lessons From Menorca - More Dead Gods!
Naveta d'Es Tudons, Menorca. A burial tomb for about 100 bodies between 1200 and 750 BCE. Possibly the oldest roofed building in Europe. |
Menorca has a very long history of conquest and religious persecution which will be the subject of another blog post; what I want to deal with here is how religions and gods that we know little or nothing of can inspire their believers and shape their cultures, yet they disappear without trace when their last believer dies.
It's a theme I've previously written about in my book, Ten Reasons To Lose Faith: And Why You Are Better Off Without It, and in earlier blog posts such asThe Old Dead Gods of Wiltshire, Old Dead Gods - Lessons From Silbury Hill, Old Dead Gods - Lessons from Cirencester, Gods Come And Go But Truth Remains, etc.
Wednesday 8 June 2016
How Evolution Works - Suffering Saxifrage!
I noticed this saxifrage which has been struggling for about three years to survive on a the patch of gravel which constitutes my front garden and it suddenly dawned on me how neatly it illustrates some aspects of evolution. It shows how a species fits itself into an available niche and how it diversifies as it spreads its range, not necessarily because it changes but because the environment in which it finds itself changes. The genetic information doesn't need to change for the meaning of that information to change because meaning is given to the information by environmental context.
If that idea seems a little obscure, consider the word karutis. It is probably meaningless to the average reader of this blog. Show it to a Latvian speaker however, and the meaning will be obvious - wheelbarrow. Of course, if you showed the word 'wheelbarrow' to a Latvian, it would be as meaningless as 'karutis' is to an English speaker. The information in the words is the same in either language; only the meaning changes with the language environment
Saxifrage is good ground cover for gravel because it can survive in shallow soil and spreads mostly vegetatively by short runners and so forms colonies of what are essentially clones of the parent plant. It can also survive being scuffed and kicked occasionally, which is useful when postmen and others going door to door walk to your neighbours door across your gravel garden as though it's a public footpath. It's there partly for ground cover but also for the pretty red flowers it puts up at the right time of the year.
If that idea seems a little obscure, consider the word karutis. It is probably meaningless to the average reader of this blog. Show it to a Latvian speaker however, and the meaning will be obvious - wheelbarrow. Of course, if you showed the word 'wheelbarrow' to a Latvian, it would be as meaningless as 'karutis' is to an English speaker. The information in the words is the same in either language; only the meaning changes with the language environment
Saxifrage is good ground cover for gravel because it can survive in shallow soil and spreads mostly vegetatively by short runners and so forms colonies of what are essentially clones of the parent plant. It can also survive being scuffed and kicked occasionally, which is useful when postmen and others going door to door walk to your neighbours door across your gravel garden as though it's a public footpath. It's there partly for ground cover but also for the pretty red flowers it puts up at the right time of the year.
Labels:
Biology
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Creationism
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Evolution
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Science
Tuesday 7 June 2016
Human Evolution and Neanderthal Inbreeding
The Genetic Cost of Neanderthal Introgression - Genetics
According to a paper recently published in GeneticsPDF, interbreeding between modern humans and Neanderthals in Eurasia may have been much more common that the small quantity of Neanderthal DNA in modern non-African peoples suggests. The two populations may even have behaved like a single breeding group, in which Neanderthals were eventually genetically swamped by Homo sapien DNA.
The team led by Kelley Harris, of Stanford University used computer simulation of mutation accumulation during Neanderthal evolution to model how humans were affected by imported neanderthal genes. The simulations used known data on mutation rates and population dynamics of hominids.
According to a paper recently published in GeneticsPDF, interbreeding between modern humans and Neanderthals in Eurasia may have been much more common that the small quantity of Neanderthal DNA in modern non-African peoples suggests. The two populations may even have behaved like a single breeding group, in which Neanderthals were eventually genetically swamped by Homo sapien DNA.
The team led by Kelley Harris, of Stanford University used computer simulation of mutation accumulation during Neanderthal evolution to model how humans were affected by imported neanderthal genes. The simulations used known data on mutation rates and population dynamics of hominids.
Labels:
Anthropology
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Biology
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Creationism
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Evolution
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Science
Sunday 29 May 2016
Habitable Planets Are Probably Commonplace.
Kepler-62f (Artist's impression). A planet in the 'habitable zone' of a star located about 1,200 light-years from Earth. Credit: NASA Ames/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle |
News that astronomers have identified yet another possibly habitable planet raises a number of questions for religion, especially the Abrahamic religions, and even more so for creationist fundamentalism based on a literal reading of the Bible or Qur'an.
Both these books portray a Universe created especially for Earth-bound human beings and a creator god who has, or wants, a close relationship with these specially-created Earthlings. Both Christianity and Islam insist that their god created humans simply to worship it. The entire Universe is supposedly here for somewhere for humans to live as they worship this creator god.
Labels:
Astronomy
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Creationism
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Evolution
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Religion
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Science
Human Evolution - Another Piece Of The Jigsaw
35,000 year old female skull found in the Pestera Muierii cave in Romania. Source: Daily Mail |
The basic evolutionary history of Homo sapiens is now so well established that new discoveries are tending to fill in the detail rather than cause existing thinking to be substantially revised. Far from being a 'theory in crisis' as the creation industry would have people believe, Darwin's fundamental principles of evolution are actually being confirmed with each new find and the Theory of Evolution is proving to be the only scientific theory capable of making sense of the entire picture.
We know that H. sapiens evolved in Africa and that there was a subsequent migration out of Africa and into Eurasia on at least one occasion. Everything else is now more or less filling in the details of what happened next and how that migrant population spread, diversified and re-mixed to give the modern Eurasian populations with its present geographical distribution of genes.
Labels:
Anthropology
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Creationism
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Evolution
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Science
Thursday 26 May 2016
Are Theists Afraid of Something?
You know, theists seem a frightened little lot especially when it comes to even basic argument against 'faith'. They seem almost to be afraid you'll read something that makes them feel uncomfortable, as though they think it'll expose the vacuous nonsense they rely on to keep the flock of sheeple together. They'll do almost anything to deter you reading criticism, including abandoning even the basic principles of the 'morality' they claim their 'faith' gives them.
The important thing, so far as a theist is concerned, is keeping you from not thinking about your 'faith' rather than thinking about it and finding it worthless.
Take, for example this ludicrously inaccurate, anonymous 'review' of my book, Ten Reasons To Lose Faith: And Why You Are Better Off Without It.It was almost certainly posted by someone who isn't interested in truth since there is not a word of truth in it.
The important thing, so far as a theist is concerned, is keeping you from not thinking about your 'faith' rather than thinking about it and finding it worthless.
Take, for example this ludicrously inaccurate, anonymous 'review' of my book, Ten Reasons To Lose Faith: And Why You Are Better Off Without It.It was almost certainly posted by someone who isn't interested in truth since there is not a word of truth in it.
Recycled banal arguments already refuted by scholars. Don't waste your money on this junk. The book has many errors both in grammar and content. This author uses a fake name and plagiarizes other atheists. This book is poor scholarship and offers nothing new. The conclusions that she comes up with are illogical and based on anecdotal inferences, not logic or reason. Over 90% of the book is meandering and doesn't make any points. The reader will get bored and will realize that this author is an amateur and has no academic credentials.
Monday 23 May 2016
How Evolution Works - Evolving Ichthyosaurs
A large aberrant stem ichthyosauriform indicating early rise and demise of ichthyosauromorphs in the wake of the end-Permian extinction : Scientific Reports
A nice example this week of how a major, possibly the main, driver of evolution is not as creationists pretend science says, random mutation, but environmental change. It also seems to go some way to solving something of a mystery in marine evolution during the period following the end-Permian mass extinction.
The Permian Era came to an abrupt end about 250 million years ago when increased volcanic activity and climate change and led to rising sea levels causing the extinction of ninty-six percent of all marine life. Unlike terrestrial metazoans which radiated rapidly to fill the newly-vacated ecological niches this mass extinction provided, the marine reptiles were thought to have evolved much more slowly.
A nice example this week of how a major, possibly the main, driver of evolution is not as creationists pretend science says, random mutation, but environmental change. It also seems to go some way to solving something of a mystery in marine evolution during the period following the end-Permian mass extinction.
The Permian Era came to an abrupt end about 250 million years ago when increased volcanic activity and climate change and led to rising sea levels causing the extinction of ninty-six percent of all marine life. Unlike terrestrial metazoans which radiated rapidly to fill the newly-vacated ecological niches this mass extinction provided, the marine reptiles were thought to have evolved much more slowly.
Labels:
Biology
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Creationism
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Evolution
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Palaeontology
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Science
Monday 16 May 2016
A Whale of a Problem For Creationism!
Hector's beaked whale found at Waitpinga Beach Photo credit: South Australian Museum |
A problem which creationists have to cope with, normally by simply ignoring or denying the evidence, is the problem of redundant structures and genes. These frequently appear in organisms which do not need them any more and look for all the world like they were once needed in an earlier ancestor. They may even still be present in a related species as evidence of common descent.
One of these is the genes for making egg yolk which are still present in placental mammals - which don't have eggs with yolk in them. In humans we have the wonderful example of wisdom teeth which seem to be there now only to provide work for dentists. They are entirely consistent with the fossil evidence that the human maxilla and mandible have become reduced during evolution but our dentistry hasn't kept up with the changes due to a lack of selection pressure, probably because impacted wisdom teeth tend not to inhibit reproduction very much.
Labels:
Biology
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Creationism
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Evolution
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Science
Sac Watch - Doppy Dotus Does It Again!
Manuel de Dios Agosto (aka Sacerdotus and very many other aliases) - one of the least competent Internet beggars and frauds in the business - really does take some beating for sheer stupidity on a quite astonishing scale.
Readers may remember his very long list of Twitter atheists. He spent several days compiling it in a desperate attempt to get people to file false reports on them to get them shut down because they were exposing his scams and refuting his lies, only to discover that he had blundered stupidly into compiling one of the best source lists of atheists to follow. This rapidly became 'Manny's List' which indignant atheists soon began complaining of being omitted from.
Now it seems he did it again in even more spectacular style! This time he's compiled and published a list of blog posts about himself that he doesn't want anyone reading! No, honestly!
Readers may remember his very long list of Twitter atheists. He spent several days compiling it in a desperate attempt to get people to file false reports on them to get them shut down because they were exposing his scams and refuting his lies, only to discover that he had blundered stupidly into compiling one of the best source lists of atheists to follow. This rapidly became 'Manny's List' which indignant atheists soon began complaining of being omitted from.
Now it seems he did it again in even more spectacular style! This time he's compiled and published a list of blog posts about himself that he doesn't want anyone reading! No, honestly!
Labels:
Atheism
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Catholics
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Christianity
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Fraud
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Religious abuse
Saturday 14 May 2016
Evolving A Loss Of Complexity!
Monocercomonoides
First eukaryotes found without a normal cellular power supply | Science | AAAS
One of the problems creationism suffers from, apart from not having any supporting evidence, is that it relies almost entirely on counter-factual dogma. One such dogma, for example, is that scientists believe evolution is all about life progressing from the simple to the complex and that somehow all evolutionary change must involve an increase in complexity.
Yes, I know this is nonsensical and at odds with the facts, but that's the point of dogma; it means evidence doesn't need to be bothered with because the truth is 'known' by fiat. The dogma says so...
Labels:
Biology
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Creationism
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Evolution
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Science
Tuesday 10 May 2016
Carrot Evolution And Creationism
A high-quality carrot genome assembly provides new insights into carotenoid accumulation and asterid genome evolution:
Can there be any other group of people who cling to a belief so tenaciously in spite of all the evidence against it as creationists?
I suppose, to be fair, there are climate change deniers, anti-vaxxers, moon landing conspiracy nut-jobs and other associated wack-a-doodle cults, but there can be few who do it with such fanaticism as creationists. There just doesn't appear to be any connection between their fanatically-held beliefs and what the evidence shows to be true. For example, a central dogma of creationsm is that mutaions are
Can there be any other group of people who cling to a belief so tenaciously in spite of all the evidence against it as creationists?
I suppose, to be fair, there are climate change deniers, anti-vaxxers, moon landing conspiracy nut-jobs and other associated wack-a-doodle cults, but there can be few who do it with such fanaticism as creationists. There just doesn't appear to be any connection between their fanatically-held beliefs and what the evidence shows to be true. For example, a central dogma of creationsm is that mutaions are
Labels:
Biology
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Creationism
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Evolution
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Science
Friday 6 May 2016
Why You Need To Lose Faith
Another excerpt from my book, Ten Reasons To Lose Faith: And Why You Are Better Off Without It,this time explaining why you would be better off without faith and by embracing the doubt and uncertainty that comes from acceptance of evidence as the only basis for making rational decisions.
It is not insignificant that for everyday life, and for any activity where material reality has to be taken into account, the only way to make rational decisions is to behave atheistically. The simple task of crossing a road is the same for an atheist as for a theist, even though a theist might want to mutter a few prayers as well. In the end, it is the physical evidence that the road is safe to cross that determines the appropriate action.
Atheists and theists leaving a sinking ship must go through exactly the same process of getting into a lifeboat even though the theist might spend a moment in prayer. Only the most insane of theist would decline to get in a lifeboat believing a god would be along to save them shortly. In effect, theists crossing a road or theists getting into a lifeboat are behaving just like atheists. Even Christians have a saying, ‘God helps those who help themselves’, to explain why people need to behave like atheists in everyday life. That rather begs the question though of why the Christian god would favour people who behave like atheists.
Labels:
Atheism
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Humanism
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My Books
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Religion
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Secularism
Wednesday 4 May 2016
A Crisis of Faith
The phenomenon of the 'crisis of faith' is curious. Theology must be the only academic discipline where practitioners regularly have severe doubt about their subject being real. A 'crisis of faith' should more properly called an intrusion of reality, as common sense tries to take over and allow reality in.
The following is an excerpt from my book, Ten Reasons To Lose Faith: And Why You Are Better Off Without It,dealing with this curious phenomenon that seems to be an occupational hazard in clerical circles.
The following is an excerpt from my book, Ten Reasons To Lose Faith: And Why You Are Better Off Without It,dealing with this curious phenomenon that seems to be an occupational hazard in clerical circles.
There is probably a very good evolutionary explanation for the tendency to check the evidence before making a life or death decision. Those who did not check had a greatly reduced likelihood of passing on their genes, so the genes for not bothering about evidence would tend to lose out in competition with their counterparts which regarded evidence as important.
So, when it comes to life and death decisions in real life, normal people not only rely on evidence but look for it and regard it as the best available basis for the decision. Importantly, they regard absence of evidence of cars as perfectly reliable evidence of the absence of cars. Why would they not? What would be the purpose of looking for evidence then regarding its presence or absence as evidence of the same thing?
Sunday 1 May 2016
Why Dinosaur-Birds Evolved Beaks
Diet affects the evolution of birds -- ScienceDaily
One of the nicest things about studying biology, and particularly evolutionary biology, is the way it all dovetails neatly into place and fits in with, for example, climate change, geology, etc., to form a complete coherent picture that tells us not only why things are as they appear today but how.
For example, we it take for granted that there will be birds around. The world as we know it would be quite a different world without birds. Flowering trees might not have small berries; humans might not have colour vision because our simian ancestors would not have needed to recognise ripe fruit by the colour change that signals to birds that the fruit is ripe.
One of the nicest things about studying biology, and particularly evolutionary biology, is the way it all dovetails neatly into place and fits in with, for example, climate change, geology, etc., to form a complete coherent picture that tells us not only why things are as they appear today but how.
For example, we it take for granted that there will be birds around. The world as we know it would be quite a different world without birds. Flowering trees might not have small berries; humans might not have colour vision because our simian ancestors would not have needed to recognise ripe fruit by the colour change that signals to birds that the fruit is ripe.
Labels:
Biology
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Creationism
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Evolution
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Science
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