Plink! Another Piece Falls Into Place

I love the sound of a penny dropping because it means something else has just been understood. I wish though that a piece of jigsaw puzzle falling into place was a little more onomatopoeic because that would make a better metaphor.

Understanding something anew still gives me that little frisson of pleasure, not quite so thrilling as when I realised that, whilst all religions can't be right, they can certainly all be wrong, but pleasurable nevertheless.

One such little event happened a few minutes ago when I followed the link from a tweet promoting a book and read one of the readers' reviews. The book was Last Ape Standing: The Seven-Million-Year Story of How and Why We Survived by Chip Walter.

To me, one of the puzzles of human evolution was why humans evolved such high intelligence when none of our close relatives outside our immediate ancestral line did to the same degree, and why no other branch on the tree of life has come close to evolving anything like the same level as we have (though very many are probably sentient and even able to hold a conceptual model the world in their brains, but that's s different story).

One of the central ideas in evolution is how natural selection works on the potential for change and how quickly this potential is realised once it occurs. Evolution abounds with examples of a huge burst of diversification whenever a new capability arises by chance, for example, a central nervous system; movement onto land; 'discovery' of flight by insects, then birds; 'invention' of photosynthesis, etc., etc.

Top 10 Reasons to Take Pascal's Wager

Blaise Pascal (1623-1672)

Pascal's Wager (or Gambit) basically argues that, since you have nothing to lose and everything to gain from believing in God (Pascal never specified which one), your safest bet is to believe.

Here are the top ten reasons you should play Pascal's Gambit:

1. Gods are not really all-knowing and don't know what you are thinking, so they won't realise you are just pretending.
2. Someone told you Pascal's Gambit is a good idea and you just can't be bothered to think through the consequences of it.
3. The Gambit works on any god, so you don't need to bother which is the real one or even if any of them are. Just talk about 'God' and it'll think you're talking about it.
4. The Gambit works best on gods which admire dishonesty so chose one which has shown itself to be dishonest and proud of it.
5. The less intelligent the god the better the Gambit works, so it's best to chose a really thick god although playing the Gambit in the first place shows you think none of them are too bright.
6. The Gambit assumes you can put one over on the god in question, so chose a god who doesn't mind you thinking you are smarter than it is, or one which is too stupid to realise that you think you are.

Why Feminism.

This blog was written at the invitation of award-winning Bangladeshi writer, physician, secular humanist, radical feminist and human rights campaigner, Taslima Nasreen, and appeared on her blog, in August 2012.

The reason I am a feminist is really quite simple: I am a feminist because I am a Humanist and a Socialist. I am a Humanist and a Socialist because I am a human being and I have a single guiding principle which, like a coin, has two sides:

1. I am better than no one.
2. No one is better than me.

No one is endowed with the right to assign status on another at birth. No one has the right to restrict the right of another to make their own choices and to take their own decisions in life. If anyone claims for themselves that right, then, with equal ease, I claim the right to deny them that right.

In the words of John Donne (slightly modified)

No person is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manner of thine own
Or of thine friend's were.
Each person's death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.

To me, Women's liberation was always a part of people's liberation and liberation is about freedom to choose. Socialism can never be achieved whilst half the population remain subjugated, restricted, repressed and dependent on the other half.

How pathetic, how utterly shameful for one half of humanity to try to maintain their privileges with bans and proscriptions on the other half. How pathetic for men to use their physical strength, not to liberate women but to maintain their subjugation.

To me, feminism is not about what women should do but about what they have the right to choose to do. If they choose to be miners or lumberjacks, doctors or architects, lawyers, barristers, engineers, emptiers of rubbish bins, fire-fighters or soldiers, they should be free to make that choice. If they chose to be full-time mothers they should be free to make that choice too but they should also be free to expect their partners to take on that role if that's the right choice for them both.

People liberation cannot be achieved by assigning stereotypical roles and expecting people to fit themselves into those stereotypes. People liberation is about choosing the role you want for yourself in consultation as an equal with others involved in and affected by that choice.

It would be easy to blame religions for the institutionalised misogyny women have suffered for centuries. Though they are undoubtedly now complicit in it's retention in many parts of the world, and especially in the more fundamentalist area where women are required to cover themselves or take the blame for men seeing them as mere sex objects, and even for 'loosing control' and raping or sexually assaulting them (what a grotesquely pathetic abdication of personal responsibility that is!), I'm not convinced religions cause misogyny. I think religions are, at least partly, the product of misogyny. It is surely no coincidence that gods are overwhelmingly seen as male and that the Abrahamic religions have a god which closely resembles a despotic Bronze Age tribal chief.

When the origin myths were being invented and written down, and the early laws were being codified, the people who wrote them were almost certainly high-caste males from already misogynistic cultures and women had already been relegated to chattel status. Even the creation myth of Adam and Eve results in Eve being told her role, and that of all women henceforth, was to satisfy the desires of man with "... and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee." (Genesis 3:16).

Of course a misogynistic male god would put men in charge with the right to rule over women and to have them merely for his convenience. What could be more natural and 'right' than that? In the blog The Evolution Of God I have shown how I think religions could well have evolved out of the pre-human or proto-human social structure with an alpha male leader. It could have been from this evolved dominance and the assumed right to have first access to the females and to control their sexual activity, that both male dominance and an obsessive interest in the sexual activity of others may have developed and entered the human meme-pool. Having invented gods and religion we then handed over responsibility for our moral development to the high priests of these gods, as I argued in Religion: An Abdication Of Moral Responsibility.

Pat Robertson is a multi-millionaire fundamentalist Christian

But, however it evolved, there is no excuse for it now. We are a very different species to that evolving millions of years ago on the plains of East Africa and we have a very different culture now to that of Bronze Age nomadic goat-herders. We have no use for many of the memes they generated or many of the rules they codified.

It used to be said of Britain that 17% of the people controlled 94% of the wealth. We have a long way still to go to rectify that obscene statistic. The women of the world are said to do 90% of the work but to control only 10% of the wealth. That is an even more obscene statistic which no civilised society or fair-minded person should tolerate.

We are free now, to paraphrase Richard Dawkin's, to liberate ourselves from the tyranny of unthinking replicators in our meme pool. We no longer need to check with sanctimonious moralising high priests and wizards in silly dresses whose living depends on maintaining the status quo and who consult their books of magic words and miraculously come up with the answer which always suits them and those they serve.

We are free now to ask if it is right or wrong that half of humanity should still be a lesser people; a subject people subject to the whim and fancy of the other half and to always be at their disposal. And women are free now to decide whether they will continue to accept this abrogation of power and authority or whether they will deny men this right and take their own lives back under their own control and assert the simple slogan:

No man is better than me because I am part of humanity. Until I am free, humanity will not be.

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A Human Ring Species?

Neanderthal Man

Neanderthal man

Like many questions in science, support for this ideas or that ebbs and flows according to the latest publication and as more data is added to the balance on one side or the other. Gradually a consensus builds up for one or other opinion. This is no less so for, to me, one of the fascinating questions in the human evolutionary story - where do the Neanderthals fit?

Until recently the argument was over whether they should be classified as a separate species to modern man (Homo sapiens) as H. neanderthalensis or were they merely a Euro-Asian subspecies (H. sapiens neanderthalensis) with modern humans appropriately classified as H. sapiens sapiens. The idea that they may have been directly ancestral to H. sapiens has all but disappeared, except in Creationist parodies of human evolution.

Then just as the picture seems to be clarifying, it can become even more confused by the discovery of something previously unknown and unexpected. True to form, a previously unknown group of hominids living at least 41,000 years ago in eastern Asia was recently discovered. Named the Denisovans, they appear to be close to but distinct from Neanderthals and yielded enough DNA to make an even more intriguing discovery - many ethnic groups in South-east Asia have some Denisovan genes, showing beyond reasonable doubt that Denisovans, while being genetically distinct from H. sapiens, interbred with H. sapiens in South-East Asia.

Holy Roman Farce

The Catholic cardinals - that is those who are one rung below the Pope in the Catholic Church hierarchy - are at this moment sealed in the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican to elect/select/choose/have revealed unto them [circle preferred option] a new Pope. This can be a complicated process to follow, so I will try to explain the basic principles.

This election is like no other because they are not, officially, deciding who amongst them is the best person to be Pope but are allowing God to tell them who he has chosen. They don't decide by simple majority voting or even by an agreed majority like seventy-five or ninety percent; it has to be unanimous (but see update below). God sometimes has great difficulty getting his decision through because waiting for everyone to get the message often takes many days. The record is nearly three years ending on 1 September 1271 following the death of Pope Clement IV. During this period three cardinals died and one resigned. In the end, having been sealed in and having had their rations reduced to bread and water, and then the roof having been removed from the Palazzo dei Papi di Viterbo where they were meeting, to force a decision, the sixteen surviving cardinals chose a sub-committee for God to reveal his message to, and they duly decided God had chosen Theoboldo Visconti to be Pope Gregory X. One can only assume God was having difficulty making Himself heard above the din of political in-fighting, back-stabbing and wheeler-dealing.

And that was with just twenty cardinals.

On this occasion, there are one hundred and fifteen cardinals, some of them not even white, but, because of the 'Viterbo' debacle, they are still sealed in and not allowed out until they have all reached a decisi received God's Word, nor are they allowed to communicate with anyone outside except carefully selected staff who have sworn to never breathe a word to anyone about what went on in the 'Conclave'. Conditions are not quite the same as in Viterbo in 1271 however. They will probably have to make do with something a little more substantial than bread and water and the roof of the Sistine Chapel will remain on - which at least preserves Michaelangelo's paintings. I understand they also have chemical toilets, and, one hopes, some means of washing and getting some laundry done, as an over-ripe cardinal is probably not the most pleasant of things to be close to.

The cardinals have also sworn oaths of secrecy - something which has taken up a good deal of the day - to never reveal what was said by whom or how they or anyone else voted. Some might see a special irony in servants of Jesus swearing an oath, when he told them to do so was a sin, but I expect there is some good theology behind it.

Now, it might seem strange that the Word of God is revealed to the world by ballot but apparently there are secret votes every day, and usually two, until God has managed to get his message through. It seems not to be within God's powers any more to simply speak out of Heaven or appear as a burning bush, or in a whirlwind like he used to be able to.

But, having by this process discovered God's will, something magical happens: the Holy spirit instantaneously enters the chosen person and he becomes infallible (see Understanding Papal Infallibility) and able to act as a bridge or 'pontiff' between this world and Heaven, with a direct line to God on all matter moral and ecumenical, in fact, on all matters, since whether they are ecumenical matters depends on whether the Pope er... God decides they are or not.

This devise of having the Holy Spirit descend instantaneously (which incidentally means it travels faster than light, like kingship does when it passes instantaneously to the heir on the death of the monarch) was made necessary because of a rather strange fact. In theory, this Holy Spirit was given to Simon bar Jonah by Jesus when he nick-named him 'Peter' and said he was going to build his church on him. It is the same magical ingredient that the Pope passes on to the cardinals when he puts his hands on their head, and this in turn is passed on to bishops and ordinary priests and is the magic power they use to turn wafers and wine into Jesus with a few spells and special magic hand movements, so the faithful can eat him. However, because the Pope is either dead or has lost faith and chucked in the towel like Pope Benedict XVI did, there is no one to pass the magic on, so it has to come anew from God - which all renders the legendary 'Peter' redundant when you think about it.

Mind you, there is a lot of doubt about the authenticity of the claim that Jesus gave this magic ability to Peter, what with there being no actual evidence that Jesus ever existed or that he was the son of God with plenipotentiary powers to hand out special magic abilities, and in any case, 'Peter' probably means 'father' (possibly of the Roman sect) from the Greek 'Pater', not 'rock' from the Greek 'Petra' (I wonder how many other religions rely as heavily on misinterpretations as the Christian one seems to) and the high probability that the account in Matthew 16:16-18 was added later to boost the Bishop of Rome's claim to be the top boss of Christianity - a suspicion reinforced by the fact that, read properly with the hindsight of history, Matthew 16 makes Jesus out to be both a false prophet and a foolish man.

Because they are sealed in, their only means of communicating that they have reached a decisi heard God's decision is via the smoke from the chimney of the stove they huddle around to keep themselves warm. If there is no unanimity on the ballot papers, God makes them burn with black smoke (because obviously, what with black being evil, the Satanic ballot paper(s) - the ones where the cardinals who heard Satan not God wrote their preference - burn black). When there are no more Satanic ballot papers, God allows them to burn in a non-racist white way to signify that none of them were evil and the cry goes up from assembled nuns and wannabee cardinals 'Habemus Papa' (We have a Pope, in an archaic tongue even more archaic than the rituals we are now witnessing). Just to be on the safe side however, and just in case "God is sleeping" (© 2013 Pope Benedict XVI), someone thoughtfully puts some special powder in the Sistine Chapel so they can ensure the smoke is white when God's voice has been heard properly and they are all sure it wasn't Satan.

To me, the most outstanding and enjoyable feature of all this pomp and ceremony is the way the entire charade is based on mutual hostility and distrust at the top of the Catholic Church:

• The only reason they are sealed in is to stop details of deals being passed outside to backers and vested interests for approval and to stop a splinter-group forming and electing their own Pope as they did in 1305 when we ended up with two Popes, one based in Avignon, France and one in Rome. This followed an eight-month deadlocked enclave.
• The only reason everyone is sworn to secrecy is because they don't want outsiders hearing who voted for who, what was said, what deals were done, what promises were made (and broken), who stabbed who in the back, what arm-twisting went on, and who had what information on others he could use at the right time - while listening attentively for God's decision, obviously.
• The only reason the ballots are secret and the papers are burned immediately, is because no one wants anyone else to know what deals were reneged on, which loser came closest to winning, who had to be cajoled and bullied into relenting and going along with the majority, or what the price of the last to capitulate was. Like a tennis match, the game isn't over until the final point, then it's winner takes all. And because it was 'unanimous', and because the papers aren't even there to be counted, the evidence having been carefully destroyed, no one can later say, "I told you so!"

So we are now witnessing the senior tier, la crème de la crème of the church which purports to be the font of morality and an example to us all of how a good, upright, God-fearing Christian should behave, locked in a power struggle made necessary because they know better than anyone, knowing as only they do what they did to get where they are, that few if any of them can be trusted further than you can throw them. And who are we to disagree?

And the one who floats to the top of the cesspit gets to be Pope.

[Update 13 March 2013] It seems the conclave now accepts a two-thirds majority and that voting occurs up to four times a day. Presumably, God chooses to ignore the papers with Satanic votes on them when they are below a magic number and allows them to burn with a white smoke. It's reassuring to know that up to one-third of cardinals officially can't hear God's voice but go with Satan instead.

Press reports that the conclave is deadlocked between those who think the Catholic Church needs a radical overhaul from the top down and those who see nothing wrong with things as they are, are obviously mere speculation as no one is allowed to talk to anyone about what is going on because they have sworn an oath, drawn up by that distinguished lawyer, Solomon Binding, not to... allegedly.

[Further update]. In a breach with the tradition that God, with a couple of recent exceptions, normally chooses a white European male from Italy to be the next Pope, this time God chose a white European male from Argentina, the son of Italian immigrants to that country. Rumours of his cosy relationship with the Fascist Junta which ruled Argentina while he was progressing up his chosen career ladder seem to have had little sway with God, just as the Nazi Party membership of his predecessor wasn't considered a bar to him becoming God's official spokesperson.

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Good God! No God Needed.

At least in theory, every religion has a set of ethics or a moral code by which their members are expected to live, although sometimes these morals are hard to find in the holy books one would expect them to be in and the moral codes of 'practitioners' of different religions tend to be remarkably similar to one another, and often remarkably dissimilar to those we can find in their books. Almost all religions have either explicitly or implicitly some basic ethics which boil down to the simple universal code - treat other people the way you would want to be treated. This can be expressed in different ways, such as the general "do as you would be done by; first, do no harm", or the specific "do not kill; do not bear false witness", etc.

When we look at the details in the various holy books however, the most noticeable thing is how religions modify or negate these basic principles, as though their purpose is not to ensure people behave in a civilised manner towards others, but to provide an excuse for them to behave in an uncivilised, inhumane manner for when behaving decently becomes an inconvenience.

For example, soon after the Judeo-Christian Bible lays down a few crude rules in the so-called Ten Commandments (although the actual Ten Commandments are something almost entirely different to those normally referred to) where killing and theft are forbidden with absolutely no qualifications or exceptions, we get a list of when and why people should be killed and lots of instructions from God to the Israelites to go and kill people and steal their lands. It's clear that these were never intended as universal ethics applicable to all, but were only ever meant to be internal Hebrew tribal laws applicable only to interactions between Hebrews.

It is revealing how the Bible never ever condemns things which are now rightly regarded as wrong by all civilised societies but actually promotes and endorses their practice or at best treats them with equanimity. For example, nowhere in the Bible do we see a condemnation of slavery, rape (unless it's regarded as a crime against the property of a father or husband), child abuse, misogyny, wife-beating, autocracy, disability discrimination, denial of equality of opportunity, denial of the right to elect governments and hold them to account. Nowhere is there a right to habeas corpus, trial by jury, limitations on the power of government or freedom from arbitrary arrest and execution.

Almost all the things we now take for granted as the norm in a civilised society are either never mentioned in the Bible or are actually forbidden and very many things the Bible instructs have had to be made illegal because, apart from being grotesquely cruel, unjust and inhumane, they would have made it practically impossible for a decent, civilised society to function.

It's no different with the Qur'an where misogyny, child abuse and summary execution are all taken for granted, even required and encouraged and nowhere is discrimination, wife beating, slavery or autocracy ever condemned and nowhere is equality of opportunity, democratic government, the right to education for both sexes ever advocated with the result that societies based on Koranic 'ethics' are becoming increasingly regarded as primitive, backward and uncivilised.

So how did we arrive at this absurd position where intelligent people assume we need religion to give us morals, and that without them we would revert to a notional savage, uncivilised society where people kill, steal and rape as a matter of course, when the facts show precisely the opposite; that societies strictly based on the moral codes in the holy books would actually be more like the societies from which they think religions are saving us - as we can readily see in those few remaining societies actually based on the morality in a holy book?

The answer, of course, is delusion and ignorance. Few people actually read the holy books but rely for their 'knowledge' of them on priests and preachers who cherry-pick the less embarrassing passages. It is just assumed that a holy book written by a benevolent, just and merciful god would contain instructions for living the way civilised people today live. It's also assumed that other people only behave well for fear of punishment or in the hope of a reward - though not me, obviously!

As Plato said, if God defines morality then God's morality is arbitrary and not the objective morals apologists claim. On the other hand, if God is inherently objectively moral then there must exist some standard of morality independent of God to which God is subject. So, an objectively moral god is not an omnipotent god, since it is bound by an independent standard. And if an independent standard exists, morals come not from the god but from this standard, so a god is unnecessary.

Theists can't have it both ways: God can't be simultaneously inherently moral and an omnipotent source of morals. It comes down to the problem of knowing whether the god you follow is good or evil. If you have no basis by which to objectively judge your god you have no way of knowing and your choice of god might as well be decided on the toss of a coin. If you do have such a basis you do not need a god to tell you what is right and what is wrong.

Consider the following three scenarios. For each, fill in the blank with morally "obligatory", "permissible" or "forbidden."

1. A runaway trolley is about to run over five people walking on the tracks. A railroad worker is standing next to a switch that can turn the trolley onto a side track, killing one person, but allowing the five to survive. Flipping the switch is ______.

2. You pass by a small child drowning in a shallow pond and you are the only one around. If you pick up the child, she will survive and your pants will be ruined. Picking up the child is _______.

3. Five people have just been rushed into a hospital in critical care, each requiring an organ to survive. There is not enough time to request organs from outside the hospital. There is, however, a healthy person in the hospital’s waiting room. If the surgeon takes this person’s organs, he will die but the five in critical care will survive. Taking the healthy person’s organs is _______.

If you judged case 1 as permissible, case 2 as obligatory, and case 3 as forbidden, then you are like the 1500 subjects around the world who responded to these dilemmas on our web-based moral sense test [http://moral.wjh.edu]. On the view that morality is God’s word, atheists should judge these cases differently from people with religious background and beliefs, and when asked to justify their responses, should bring forward different explanations. For example, since atheists lack a moral compass, they should go with pure self-interest, and walk by the drowning baby. Results show something completely different. There were no statistically significant differences between subjects with or without religious backgrounds, with approximately 90% of subjects saying that it is permissible to flip the switch on the boxcar, 97% saying that it is obligatory to rescue the baby, and 97% saying that is forbidden to remove the healthy man’s organs. . When asked to justify why some cases are permissible and others forbidden, subjects are either clueless or offer explanations that can not account for the differences in play. Importantly, those with a religious background are as clueless or incoherent as atheists.

These studies begin to provide empirical support for the idea that like other psychological faculties of the mind, including language and mathematics, we are endowed with a moral faculty that guides our intuitive judgments of right and wrong, interacting in interesting ways with the local culture. These intuitions reflect the outcome of millions of years in which our ancestors have lived as social mammals, and are part of our common inheritance, as much as our opposable thumbs are.

These facts are incompatible with the story of divine creation. Our evolved intuitions do not necessarily give us the right or consistent answers to moral dilemmas. What was good for our ancestors may not be good for human beings as a whole today, let alone for our planet and all the other beings living on it. But insights into the changing moral landscape [e.g., animal rights, abortion, euthanasia, international aid] have not come from religion, but from careful reflection on humanity and what we consider a life well lived. In this respect, it is important for us to be aware of the universal set of moral intuitions so that we can reflect on them and, if we choose, act contrary to them. We can do this without blasphemy, because it is our own nature, not God, that is the source of our species morality. Hopefully, governments that equate morality with religion are listening.

Morality Without Religion. Marc Hauser and Peter Singer, 2005 Ch.8 Ethics

As I showed in Xeno's Religious Paradox, the facts simply do not support the notion that our morals are handed down to us by a supernatural deity. In fact, they support the idea that morality is an evolved human cultural artefact which is modified locally by the local cultural environment to give slight variations on a basic theme with certain major principles in common to all human groups, exactly as you would expect of an evolving, intelligent, co-operative ape. The evidence that human ethics evolved and are evolving is overwhelming, as I showed in Religion: An Abdication Of Moral Responsibility.

One of the important cultural changes which is currently driving our ethical evolution is the growing realisation that religions are mere superstitions which are becoming increasingly irrelevant, so we no longer regard women as lesser beings just because the Bible or Qur'an say they are; we no longer tolerate racism and slavery just because the holy books say they are okay; we no longer allow girls to be sexually exploited just because people who wrote holy books saw nothing wrong with it and we no longer regard disability as a punishment inflicted for sin by a creator god or caused by demons allowed in due to moral weakness.

Because we are increasingly rejecting the primitive tribal savagery which passes for ethics in the holy books we are becoming increasing more civilised, not less. Gradually, we are taking responsibility for our ethical development away from the clerics and priests who usurped it in the childhoods of our species and who have been abusing it, and us with it, ever since by using it not for the good of mankind but to extend and enhance the power and privilege of the priesthood.

We will soon be in the position to take responsibility for ourselves once again and to develop ethical codes suitable for a modern, technological, scientifically literate culture and free from primitive fears and superstitions.

Humanism - an idea whose time has come.

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Good Job God!

William Blake, Satan Smiting Job with Sore Boils c.1826

The Book of Job in the Bible is a curious book. Like the story of Noah and the Flood, its only purpose seems to be to remind us what a capricious, murderous and unpredictable deity Yahweh is, as thought whoever decided to include it in the Bible thought we needed to be frightened of the deity in it and cowed into submission lest we dared to question what the priests were telling us.

Like Noah and the Flood, and much of the Old Testament for that matter, it seems to carry no moral message for mankind, unless the morality being espoused is "Obey without question or suffer the consequences and never take Yahweh for granted", like the lesson taught by a protection racketeer's heavies when they accidentally drop that antique vase or set fire to a shop down the road, just to remind you to show your appreciation for Big Ron's protection. Or maybe the moral is, "Just keep smiling and all will turn out right in the end - and don't ask us why things don't seem to be right just now!", like a rogue trader who's taken your money with no intention of ever delivering.

The book of job is one of the most powerful arguments against God in the atheist arsenal. It proves once and for all that YHWH is not a good god. Even if such a god exists, we surely cannot rely on him to define our morals, to tell us what is good or bad. If holiness is what gods do, then holiness is a terrible thing.

Victor J. Stenger. The New Atheism:
Taking a Stand for Science and Reason.
(Kindle Locations 1587-1589). Kindle Edition.

Like the Flood myth, Job seems to be based heavily on a folk tale rather than someone's idea of real history, although, in the days before writing, there was probably no real distinction between traditional stories and 'history' as both would have been related by story-tellers with a blurred distinction between fact and fiction. Curiously, in another example of the glaring contradictions in the Bible which Christians find so embarrassing they have to pretend not to have noticed them, Job is described as 'perfect', so, presumably, the author of this tale was unaware of the Adam and Eve story when God decreed that everyone was to be a sinner, and therefore definitely not perfect. Another example of authors writing stuff they never imagined at the time would be gathered together with other stories, bound up in a single book and presented as inerrant truth - a problem which plagues the New Testament even more than it does the Old.

Like the Flood and the story of Lot and the 'Cities of the Plain', Job seems to be derived from a volcano god, or at least a god of natural disasters. As we shall see, the killing of Job's flocks of sheep seems to be the work of a volcano god.

The story is that Job was a 'perfect and upright man' who (understandably as things turned out) 'feared God'. He was rich and successful and owned a lot of sheep, and offered sacrifices every day just in case his sons and daughters had got up to anything improper during the previous night's feasting and drinking.

Now the story takes a bit of a strange turn, and one in which the previous banishment of Satan from God's presence seems to have been set aside for the sake of the narrative, or because the author was, yet again, unaware of the other Bible stories. One day, God and 'the sons of God' (who they?) were gathered together when who should turn up but Satan, apparently one of the lads. Satan tells God he's been taking a bit of a look at Earth and God asks what he thinks of Job, like Job is some sort of prize exhibit.

The story seems to be set in time when there were lots of gods and this particular god was the father of them, like the Graeco-Indian god, Dyaus Petar (God the Father) who became Zeus, Jupiter, Dios, Dei and Theos, and God and his sons would regularly gather together in Heaven to watch the humans below.

Satan then taunts God and says Job only fears him because he's protected him and prevented anything bad happening. "I bet he'd soon change his mind if you took away everything he has", say's Satan.

"Rubbish!", says God, who, although he's the supreme ruler of the Universe and accountable to no one, decides he's got to prove himself to Satan by making life unbearable for Job

William Blake, Job's Sons and Daughters Overwhelmed by Satan 1821

Satan 1: God 0.

And there was a day when his sons and his daughters were eating and drinking wine in their eldest brother's house: And there came a messenger unto Job, and said, The oxen were plowing, and the asses feeding beside them: And the Sabeans fell upon them, and took them away; yea, they have slain the servants with the edge of the sword; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee.

While he was yet speaking, there came also another, and said, The fire of God is fallen from heaven, and hath burned up the sheep, and the servants, and consumed them; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee.

While he was yet speaking, there came also another, and said, The Chaldeans made out three bands, and fell upon the camels, and have carried them away, yea, and slain the servants with the edge of the sword; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee.

While he was yet speaking, there came also another, and said, Thy sons and thy daughters were eating and drinking wine in their eldest brother's house:

And, behold, there came a great wind from the wilderness, and smote the four corners of the house, and it fell upon the young men, and they are dead; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee.

Then Job arose, and rent his mantle, and shaved his head, and fell down upon the ground, and worshipped, And said, Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither: the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord. In all this Job sinned not, nor charged God foolishly.

Job 1:13-22

Wow! What a class act, eh? When you need a roll-model, look no further than God for how to treat those who love and trust you when they need to prove themselves to one of the lads!

But it gets worse!

A few days later, Satan happens by again and taunts God some more, with, "That was nothing! All you did was take away his property and kill all his children! Hurt him! See what he does then!"

And the Lord said unto Satan, Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil? and still he holdeth fast his integrity, although thou movedst me against him, to destroy him without cause.

And Satan answered the Lord, and said, Skin for skin, yea, all that a man hath will he give for his life. But put forth thine hand now, and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will curse thee to thy face.

And the Lord said unto Satan, Behold, he is in thine hand; but save his life. So went Satan forth from the presence of the Lord, and smote Job with sore boils from the sole of his foot unto his crown.

Job 2:3-7

So God gave Job to Satan to do whatever he wanted with him, except let him die, no matter how much he wanted to, and Satan, ever the imaginative demon, gave Job a nasty case of the boils.

Satan 2: God 0.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, after Job has been urged by his wife (who then mysteriously seems to disappear from the story) to put a stop to all this by cursing God, and after being mocked by his friends, he still refuses to curse the person responsible for it, so God speaks out of a whirlwind (I'm not making this up!) and Job agrees that God can do whatever he wants, proving the point to Satan, at least to God's satisfaction, so God gives him back everything he had taken away, with a bit extra for his trouble, and gives him some replacement children to make up for those he had killed to win his bet with Satan and they all live happily ever after.

Apart from the disappeared wife, and the murdered children, and the servants (i.e. slaves) who obviously counted for nothing.

So, who won the bet exactly?

At the start of the story, God is benignly watching over a man and his family making a success of their lives and enjoying the rewards for their endeavours; at the end of it, God has shown himself to be a psychopathic bully, quite capable of victimising an innocent man, killing his family and his equally undeserving servants, and making his life a misery to prove himself to one of the lads, like an insecure adolescent trying desperately to one of the gang and having to go through some sort of laddish rite of passage.

And Satan has proved he can make God do whatever he wants him to do because God has a need to prove himself and God shows that, for all practical purposes, he is indistinguishable from a malevolent, evil god, quite capable of inflicting suffering on a capricious whim with no thought for his victims - and so not the omnibenevolent, omnipotent god children are told about in Sunday school and Bible class, and which even some otherwise perfectly rational adults still believe in.

Some giver of morals, eh?

Satan 3: God 0.

But very effective for frightening superstitious people with, as no doubt the Bible's authors intended.

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The Argument From Incredulity

The argument from incredulity is one of the commonest 'arguments' against science and history, and for gods. It's not based on rational discussion, or a dispassionate assessment of the evidence, but on intuition and usually ignorance and an intellectually dishonest attempt to shoehorn the Universe into a preferred view of it and force it to conform to requirements.

A person who has never read any science or history or paid any attention in school, never-the-less feels competent to dismiss it as wrong and scientists or historians as mad because they find it hard to believe they are a biological member of the Great Ape family or that there really was nothing before the beginning of space and time, or that the Exodus story might well have been made up.

You only need spend a few minutes on Twitter when a swarm of Creationists are calling other people names for not agreeing with them to see examples of it being made by people who couldn't tell a test tube from a Bunsen burner or a amoeba from a cabbage and yet feel able to announce to the world that the science they are using to send the message to the world, has got it all wrong, and magic is the best explanation for everything.

That's just stupid! It can't be true!

The argument from incredulity is of course just another form of the God of the Gaps fallacy which argues that, because I can't think of any way this can be explained it must have been done by [insert preferred god]. It's found in the Cosmological Argument and the Teleological Argument, including it's modern pseudo-scientific versions, Intelligent Design, Irreducible Complexity and Fine-tuned Universe.

Personal incredulity

Another form, the argument from personal incredulity, takes the form "I can't believe P, therefore not-P." Merely because one cannot believe that, for example, homeopathy is no more than a placebo does not magically make such treatment effective. Clinical trials are deliberately designed in such a way that an individual personal experience is not important compared to data in aggregate. Human beings have extremely advanced pattern recognition skills, to the extent that they are objectively poor judges of probability.

General incredulity

Sometimes argument from incredulity is applied to epistemological statements, taking the form "One can't imagine how one could know whether P or not-P, therefore it is unknowable whether P or not-P." This is employed by some (though not all) strong agnostics who say it is unknowable whether gods exist. The argument in this case is, "No one has thought of a way to determine whether there are gods, so there is no way." The implied major premise, "If there were such a way, someone would have thought of it," is disputable.

Source: RationalWiki - Argument from incredulity.

I don't believe it! If that's what scientists say, they must be mad!

The psychological process going on here is our old friend, coping with cognitive dissonance. What ever it is being waved aside and dismissed is inconsistent with a pre-existing and preferred world view, so believing it would have set up a dissonance or conflict. The simplest way to resolve the conflict is to dismiss it as stupid or the opinion of someone who is mistaken, stupid or insane, or even evil. Voilà! Conflict resolved, no need to assimilate that new knowledge and a nice warm glow of smug self-satisfaction that your careful ignorance gives you a deeper kind of wisdom, a superior form of knowledge and the moral right to tell others what's right and what's wrong. A preferred view is preserved, undamaged by real-world facts and without much concern about its truth.

I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not knowing.

Richard Dawkins

And preserved along with it is a sense of superiority to those who 'waste their time' learning all that 'nonsense' when superstition, intuition and believing what mummy and daddy, or that preacher at Bible/Qur'an class, said is obviously the best way to understand things.

And so much easier too!

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The Finely Tuned Fallacy

One of the strings in the theists bow is the argument that the Universe is 'fine-tuned' for the existence of intelligent life in it. It takes many forms from the frankly childish to the scientifically sophisticated but the conclusion is invariably the same - so obviously [insert desired god] did it. It is also one of the hardest for Atheists to counter because the more sophisticated arguments normally take place in the specialist realms of physics and higher maths that few lay people understand well enough to mount a competent rebuttal.

Mind you, it is also one of the hardest for the normal scientifically illiterate Creationists to defend too. It can be quite funny, when they rush excitedly into social media like Twitter announcing that the fine-tuning of the Universe proves their particular favourite god, to ask them why they would expect the values of the 'parameters' to be anything different to what they are. Chances are they won't know what the 'parameters' are, what their values are, or how they have any bearing on the existence of life. Many of them will be hard-pressed to explain what a 'parameter' is, exactly.

More On Mormons

Religions are not sources of objective morals, they are sources of excuses for behaving immorally. This is why no one who is not indoctrinated into the abusive ways of cults like Mormonism can read accounts like the following and not recoil in horror, mystified how any rational person can behave that way towards others.

Incidentally, this is the same deranged cult thinking which was behind William Lane Craig's professed puzzlement and 'disappointment' with people who react with revulsion at his spirited defence of genocide and especially his casual declaration that there is nothing wrong with killing children because it is good for them and makes them happy. Find that hard to believe? Read it here in William Lane Craig's own words.

Cult thinking

Moreover, if we believe, as I do, that God’s grace is extended to those who die in infancy or as small children, the death of these children was actually their salvation. We are so wedded to an earthly, naturalistic perspective that we forget that those who die are happy to quit this earth for heaven’s incomparable joy. Therefore, God does these children no wrong in taking their lives.

So whom does God wrong in commanding the destruction of the Canaanites? Not the Canaanite adults, for they were corrupt and deserving of judgement. Not the children, for they inherit eternal life. So who is wronged? Ironically, I think the most difficult part of this whole debate is the apparent wrong done to the Israeli soldiers themselves. Can you imagine what it would be like to have to break into some house and kill a terrified woman and her children? The brutalizing effect on these Israeli soldiers is disturbing.

William Lane Craig

But this blog isn't about William Lane Craig's repulsive creed or how he insults our intelligence to promote it. It's about how cults are founded by people looking for an excuse for their repugnant behaviour and how they attract other like-minded individuals, and then, when a systematic process of childhood brainwashing is in place, they gain a rationale of their own and a perverted culture is produced, inducing people to behave in ways which normal people find repulsive.

But should we really be surprised by this when a brief study of history reveals so many examples of all mainstream religious cults behaving in exactly similar ways?

This account of the behaviour in a fundamentalist Mormon cult, called, appropriately, the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints or FLDS was published in the Denver Post, 4 March 2001. It was related to the reporter by a woman, Laura Chapman. who had escaped from the cult.

As a little girl, Laura Chapman taped the words "Keep Sweet" on her bathroom mirror to remind herself how to get by in this remote, polygamous community. Keeping sweet, Chapman says, meant staying silent as her father molested her starting at age 3. It meant hiding her secret from her 30 brothers and sisters. It meant being lashed with a yardstick by one of her father's four wives. It meant having to quit school at age 11, then work without pay in a store owned by her church's prophet.

Keeping sweet meant being forced into marriage at age 18 to a man she didn't know, let alone love. It meant having a baby every year. It meant walking 10 paces behind her husband. And, above all, it meant smiling, sweetly through her pain.

Polygamy prevails in remote Ariz. town Slavery to some is salvation for others.
Denver Post, March 4, 2001. Article ID: 1058372

As Los Angeles Times reporters found:

Among sect members, girls as young as 13 are forced into marriage, sexual abuse is rampant, rape is covered up and child molesters are shielded by religious authorities and law enforcement.

Boys are thrown out of town, abandoned like unwanted pets by the side of the road and forcibly ostracized from their families to reduce competition among the men for multiple wives.

Children routinely leave school at age 11 or 12 to work at hazardous construction jobs. Boys can be seen piloting dump trucks, backhoes, forklifts and other heavy equipment.

Girls work at home, trying to keep order in enormous families with multiple mothers and dozens of children who often eat in shifts around picnic tables.

Wives are threatened with mental institutions if they fail to “keep sweet,” or obedient, for their husbands.

FLDS: Blind Eye to Culture of Abuse
David Kelly and Gary Cohn. Los Angeles Times, May 12, 2006

Just think: a very large number of rational Americans actually wanted a member of this cult as their President in 2012, albeit, at least officially, a member of a reformed and 'moderate' branch.

I never once considered going to the police, Going to the police would have been going against the whole town. Everyone was [molesting]. The church never said it was all right, but it was treated nonchalantly.

Sara Hammon, 30, after enduring years of sexual abuse at the hands of her [FLDS] father and brothers.

All this is very reminiscent of what was happening on Pitcairn Island where an isolated fundamentalist Seventh Day Adventist cult had been established and where a culture had developed in which systematic abuse of young girls by older men was the norm, even being defended by some older women. Strong cult leaders who manage to convince their followers that they speak to God and get instructions from him, as Mormons claim to do, can and do abuse the power this gives them.

But what is informative is the way, when the abuse becomes so widespread, and especially when they come into contact with cultures where humanism is prevalent, many cult members eventually see it as immoral and repulsive, just as many Pitcairn Islanders did, and just as former victims of Mormon cults are doing. There is an innate human morality which sees through those imposed by religious cults and even eventually by mainstream religions like Christianity and Islam. Just as nominally Christian countries have now rejected much of what Christianity's holy book, the Bible, calls for and instructs because it is frankly repugnant to innate human decency, so Muslim countries will eventually overthrow the more repulsive diktats of the Qur'an, maybe cherry-picking the few good bits, just as some Christian societies have. It is this humane rejection of so much of the Bible which was obviously concerning William Lane Craig and his fundamentalist, would-be theocrat backers.

Human beings don't get their morals from religion. Where religions are civilised and humane it's because they have been tamed by civilised human beings and have been forced to adopt our standards. The Catholic Church, for example, is just beginning to come to terms with the fact that many people, even those still professing to be Catholics, are rejecting much of what it teaches and much of what it tolerated in the form of clerical abuse of power, hence the general air of crisis and decay pervading it from the top downwards. The fall in recruitment to the priesthood is as much to do with people rejecting what the church stands for as it is to do with the thought that power without real accountability no longer offers the opportunities for abuse that it once did.

When people no longer need excuses, and when people no longer tolerate a pretence of piety as a cover-all excuse, religions cease to have any purpose. Tweet

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Tweet Link

Religion Kills - Mormon Massacre

The Mountain Meadow Massacre

To illustrate how readily and easily religions turn their followers into killers in the name of their gods, here is a little bit of history of the new kid on the religious block, the Mormons, or Church of Latter Day Saints (LDS) as they style themselves.

The LDS was invented in the early nineteenth century by convicted fraudster Joseph Smith and is based on a novel, written in a pastiche of the same seventeenth century English that the King James translation from Latin of the Christian Bible was written in. It is thought that Smith either believed God spoke this form of English and personally wrote the Bible in it, so naturally, any novel purporting to be written by God would be written in the language God spoke, or that, correctly as it turned out, the people he was aiming to con with it would believe God spoke and wrote like that, and were so more likely to believe his scam.

How The Pope Opposed Democracy

Magna Carta is regarded as one of the most important documents in English legal and democratic history and in the legal and democratic history of most of the English-speaking world, including most of the USA. What is not generally acknowledged however, is how the papacy in the person of Pope Innocent III opposed this first tentative step towards democracy and reducing ever so slightly the absolute dictatorial power of the monarchy.

Understanding why this was may help people see the relationship the Christian Church still has with democracy, and so put a great deal of the history of the last few hundred years into context.

The background to the signing of the Magna Carta at Runnymead in June 1215 is complex and not really the point of this blog. If you wish to understand it there are on-line sources here, here and here. The result was that an increasingly autocratic King John was forced by the English barons to sign a document which both limited the power of the monarchy and guaranteed certain legal rights to the people. In fact part of it, the promise to surrender London to the King, was immediately reneged on by the barons, and John only ever regarded it as something signed under duress as a stalling action. The legal validity of Magna Carta comes from the fact that John's successor, Henry III, adopted it in order to unite the country against the French whom the barons had invited in to depose John - who saved the day by rather appropriately dying of dysentery on 18 October 1215.

Lotario dei Conti di Segni, Pope Innocent III

So where does Pope Innocent III fit into all this?

Innocent III had previously excommunicated John, partly to curry favour with the King Phillip Augustus of France, and partly as a reprisal for his taxing the churches. In order to bring the church back on side, John agreed to compensate the Pope and the Church with lots of money, and to submit to him as his feudal liege-lord, making Innocent III de jure titular ruler of England and the English possessions in France. The Pope in return declared Magna Carta null and void.

Innocent III was probably one of the more unpleasant characters to hold the title 'Pope' but at least as his regnal name shows, he had a sense of humour. He is notorious largely on accounts of actions which, if they were repeated today, would be rightly regarded as crimes against humanity:

• He ordered the suppression and massacre of the Cathars of the Languedoc region of southern France, to help his protector, King Phillip Augustus control his southern barons, and because they had declined to pay tithes.
• He ordered a crusade against Moorish Spain, which was then most of the Iberian Peninsula other than a couple of Christian kingdoms in the far north, and the subsequent massacre of the Muslim and Jewish inhabitants.
• He ordered the Fourth Crusade against Egypt in which, when the Christian army reached Constantinople where it mistook the Orthodox Christian population for Muslims, it promptly sacked the city and massacred the inhabitants. Innocent III then declared this to have been the will of God in order to re-unite the Eastern and Western Churches, under Pope Innocent III, naturally.

It's maybe worth mentioning that a 'crusade' consisted of giving a rag-tagggle bunch of mercenary soldiers, under the nominal control of a handful of princes, kings and dukes, free licence to loot, pillage, rape and massacre their way across Europe, the Balkans and Asia Minor and into the Holy Lands with no regard to the religion of those they slaughtered and robbed. They were not paid or supplied but were expected to take what they wanted from the citizenry of any towns or villages they came across on their journey - something they did with enthusiasm, routinely massacring the entire population to the applause of the Pope who declared every death a triumph for Jesus.

Of course papal opposition to democracy is fully consistent with the Bible. No where in the Bible are democracy, human rights, the right to elect a government or regulate its powers ever mentioned. Political power in the Bible is only ever autocratic and absolute, the sole right of kings and emperors and those able to exert power through force of arms. If this is ever mentioned it is only ever to endorse it. The frankest outright endorsement of autocratic government, often quoted to support the 'divine right' of kings, was in Paul's epistle to the Romans where he leaves no doubt about his sect's fawning attitude to authority.

Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God. [my emphasis] Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation. For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil.

Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power? do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise of the same: For he is the minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil.

Wherefore ye must needs be subject, not only for wrath, but also for conscience sake. For for this cause pay ye tribute also: for they are God's ministers, attending continually upon this very thing. Render therefore to all their dues: tribute to whom tribute is due; custom to whom custom; fear to whom fear; honour to whom honour.

Romans 13:1-7

No where in the Bible does any prophet or any apostle ever advocate government of the people, by the people and for the people nor do any of them ever decry its absence.

The concept of democracy and human rights for ordinary people was as alien to the founders of the Christian Church as it was to the authors of the Bible, both Old Testament and New. Not surprisingly the Christian Church, especially but by no means only, the Catholic version, is modelled on that same hierarchical concept of an absolute ruler accountable only to God and having total power over those beneath, who have no right to representation or even to be heard. The lot of the ordinary person is to receive wisdom from above and to meekly obey without question, and woe betide anyone who dares to. Fortunately, all civilised countries have turned their back on this, one of the nastier aspects of organised Christianity, and have adopted more or less democratic forms of government and abolished the right of the heads of the different Christian sects from re-establishing the theocracies which so blighted the development of Europe during the Dark Ages.

The conclave of unelected Catholic Cardinals will be bricked up in Rome soon to haggle and bargain and cut deals amongst themselves over which of them will inherit this absolute power.

So, which modern countries are now founded on those Christian Principles outside the Vatican City?

If Christian Principles are so great, why did the others abandon them over the last few hundred years?

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On The Eighth Day God Had His Appraisal Interview

Scene: Outside a large office block. Slightly dilapidated sign reads "Universe Constructions, Inc."

Scene moves into austere wood-panelled office. Desk; two chairs: One large, leather with arms; one small wooden, wobbly.

Important-looking man in suit (Zeus) open door for long-haired, youth dressed in white toga and sandals and holding a staff for no apparent good reason. Has a superior looking smirk, and a slight twitch in one eye.

Zeus: Ah! Yahweh. Nice to see you. Take a seat... No! That one is mine. That one, please.

Okay! Now the purpose of this chat is to give you a some feedback on how your probationary period is going, and for you to let us know if you're having any problems. Sort of two-way process keeping everything on track so to speak. The HR department insist on it but we all have our cross to bear, don't we, and the head of HR can get really cross. Ha ha ha!

I like to keep it informal but the important thing is that we are both frank and honest with one another. No elephants in the corner so to speak. Ha ha.

Why Your God Doesn't Exist

It's quite easy to prove logically that your god doesn't exist.

The proof is a simple deduction from certain basic assumptions which themselves are only assumptions in the sense of assuming the description you use for your god is true in the first instance. It goes without saying that if your description of your god is false then the god you are describing is also false.

Let's assume your god is real and has the following notional characteristics.

God is:

• Omnipotent - all powerful - there is nothing your god can't do.
• Omniscient - all knowing - there is nothing your god doesn't know.
• Omni-benevolent - all-loving - there is nothing your god wouldn't do to defend and protect its creation.

Okay so far? Is there anything you disagree with here? Is there something your god can't do if it has a mind to? Is there anything your god doesn't know? How about all loving? Is there anything or anyone your god doesn't love and for whom it has anything less than the greatest possible concern?

If all these were true there would be no suffering in the world because your god would be aware of it, would want to prevent it and would have the power to do so.

It also follows that, if there is suffering in the world, at least one of the above must be false and if one of the above is false, the god you believe in does not have the characteristics you believe it has; in other words, the god you believe in does not exist

And yet we can see suffering exists. This is an observable, undeniable, inescapable fact.

For suffering to exist, your god must be deficient in at least one of the above. At least one of the following must be true. God is:

• Unable to prevent it, so it isn't omnipotent.
• Unaware of it, so it isn't omniscient.
• Unconcerned about it, so it isn't all-loving

So, the undeniable existence of suffering in the world proves your god as described above does not exist.

Strange then that so much of your time is spent asking your god to either stop, reduce or prevent suffering, which is nothing more than tacit acceptance that an omniscience, omnipotent, omni-benevolent god doesn't exist.

Of course, you can escape the above logic by saying your god isn't omnipotent, isn't omniscience and/or isn't omni-benevolent, but a god who can't change things, doesn't know when they need to be changed and/or isn't bothered anyway, isn't much of a god and certainly not one worthy of worship. In fact, it's hard to imagine how we could distinguish such a god from a non-existent one.

I love these simple little proofs that gods don't exist. They are so much more elegant and simple than the cumbersome, convoluted and illogical 'proofs' which religious apologists have to try to get away with. That's the great thing about being supported by evidence, reason, logic and truth, and so not needing to fall back on the fallacy of faith and having to employ charlatans to make you feel better about being superstitious.

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Does God Hate Bees?

Something nasty is attacking our honey bees.

If you believe a benevolent, loving god created Earth and all the creatures on it for mankind, then you have to be able to explain what's going on here and how it's all to the good.

First a brief outline of what bees do and why they are important to us and the world we live in, apart from providing us with honey. To understand this we need to go back to a time before there were flowering plants and before there was nectar out of which bees could make honey or pollen from which they make the wax to build their honeycomb with.

We need to go back to a time when the most advanced plants were the ferns which dominated the Carboniferous forests as large tree-ferns. Ferns, along with their more primitive ancestors, the mosses and liverworts do not produce flowers or pollen; instead they produce 'male' and 'female' gamete which depend on the 'male' gametes or sperms (yes, some plants have sperm too) being motile (i.e. able to swim with a flagellum) and finding a 'female' gamete with which to unite, rather like the system used by most higher animals. This means that ferns do best in a moist environment where the motile gamete has moisture to swim in, tied as it still is to the water in which green plants first evolved, with an aquatic form of locomotion.

This requirement to live in moist conditions obviously restricted the range of mosses, liverworts and ferns and made much of the planet inaccessible to them. However, there was a solution available in the form of the very many arthropods - insects, etc, which had colonised the land early on and had proliferated in the hot, moist, oxygen-rich conditions which prevailed in the Carboniferous Era. Clearly, anything which helped a fern sperm find a fern egg, and especially if this worked in dry conditions, would help ferns colonise new niches and would help ensure their success. So, something which attracted insects to crawl over the reproductive structures, picking up sperm on its body and transferring it to the egg would produce more ferns, and what better to do that with than a sugar-rich secretion which the insects were going to actively seek out?

So the symbiotic link between some insects and some plants was probably established which pushed the plants into producing more attractive reproductive structures at the cost of losing some of the pollen as food as well as supplying the sugars in the nectar in return for greater breeding success and being able to move into a whole range of new niches.

And so the class of flowering plants we call the angiosperms evolved and diversified into the vast number of different species we have today in which the motile male sperms have become passive pollen grains, and so a whole variety of insects species co-evolved, most, but not all of them, as flying insects like the bees.

This process has produced a complex system of mutual interdependence in a process so typical of mindless, unplanned, undirected evolution which can so specialise a species that it only takes a small change to put it into extinction mode. This is one reason why 99% of all species which ever existed are extinct.

Now very many plants are dependent on bees to be pollinated, some of them important crops to humans who have themselves co-evolved dependent on plants that are dependent on bees. Without bees, there will not be a next generation of these crops unless we adopt the hugely expensive and labour intensive method of hand pollination we now use for very careful plant breeding.

So, if you believe in an intelligently designed world, you're probably marvelling at the wonderful system which this has provided for us, though you may have had to find a reason to dismiss the evolutionary process I described as having produced it. Asked for evidence for your creator god you will point to 'everything'; you will point to our crops, to bees and flowers and to nature but for some reason you only ever point to the good, the positive and the beneficial.

Now you have to explain something else.

You have to explain a little mite, the Varroa destructor mite to be precise. V. destructor is busy wiping out honey bee colonies, apparently for no other reason than to produce more V. destructor mites. Not for humans, or bees, or flowering plants but for V. destructor. It's almost as though an intelligent designer has designed a system because it loves V.destructor mites. That's if you believe in intelligent design, that is.

You see, back in the Carboniferous, other arthropods, including the arachnids and their close relatives the mites were also evolving by a process which exploits the potential of new niches as they arise and become accessible. The mites evolved out of, probably, sap-sucking arthropods which learned to suck not plants but animals. Some of them were later to evolved to be parasites on mammals, such as tics; some evolved to be the normally harmless little mites that live in your eyelash follicles (yes yours!) and some of them evolved to suck the body fluids from insects, especially those which live in crowded colonies like bees do.


But that's not the worst of it. Bees could possibly survive the need to feed a few mites as well as themselves but what they can't survive is an even nastier little thing. V. destructor is host to an RNA virus which it almost seems to be designed to pass on to its victims. It causes deformity in bees wings so they can't fly. Other viruses they carry harm bees in other ways. Basically, a hive of bees which becomes infested with V. destructor has been given a death sentence unless drastic action is taken, but often it is discovered only when the colony collapses and dies.

Without honey bees many of our crops, as well as many wild plants on which other species and other ecosystems depend, will fail. The Varroa mite has pushed entire ecosystems to the edge of an extinction precipice, and, given the mindlessness of evolution, it is perfectly capable of going over the cliff and taking everything with it. If they go over the edge, the effects will be catastrophic not just for humans for but for much of the planet. The planet, of course, will recover and life will go on as though nothing has happened. New species will evolve and move into vacant niches and life will continue, leaving only vague fossil records that anything significant happened. But no species has a guaranteed right to be involved in its future. The future does not care whether we are there or not. It's up to us to ensure we are.

So, if you are an intelligent design proponent you can't escape the Varroa mite. You have to explain why it was designed and how it fits into your intelligently designed universe; designed as you believe by a benevolent god because it loves us. Regrettably, your inability to let go of that cosy simplistic answer may prevent us taking responsibility for our own continued existence and so may ensure we never do.

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