Another Victory For Human Decency

BBC News - Six Bosnian Croat ex-leaders convicted of war crimes

Hard on the heels of a victory for human rights in the European Court yesterday, when it was confirmed that being a Christian does not excuse abusing others and denying them human rights, comes confirmation that war crimes, even when committed in the name of religion, are not to be accepted in civilised societies.

The War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague today handed down sentences of between 10 and 25 years to six Bosnian Croat Orthodox Christians who had been convicted of war crimes against Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims) and others in the former Yugoslav republic of Croatia during a series of conflicts following the breakup of Yugoslavia. The plan had been to 'ethnically cleanse' a mini state in Croatia in preparation for its incorporation into a 'Greater Bosnia'.

Those convicted were:

• Jadranko Prlic - leader of the self-proclaimed state of Herceg-Bosna - 25 years in jail.
• Bruno Stojic - former defence minister of the breakaway Herceg-Bosna - 20 years.
• Slobodan Praljak - former militia head - 20 years.
• Milivoj Petkovic - former militia head - 20 years.
• Valentin Coric - former commander of Bosnian Croat military police - 16 years.
• Berislav Pusic - ex-head of prisoner exchanges and detention facilities - 10 years.

As BBC Reporter Anna Holligan reports:

The judges ruled that murders, persecutions, rape and torture of Muslims "were not committed in a random manner by a few undisciplined soldiers" but were part of the plan to remove Muslims from the self-proclaimed Herceg-Bosna state in 1993-94.

They also said it was a religiously-motivated campaign, describing how mosques were blown up and Muslim prisoners were forced to recite Christian prayers.

Referring to the forcible expulsion of the Muslim population from the eastern part of the city of Mostar, the panel said: "Muslims were woken up in the middle of the night, beaten and forced to leave their apartments, often still in their pyjamas. Many women, including a girl of 16, were raped by HVO (Croatian Defence Council) soldiers".

The trial, which began in 2006, is the War Crimes Tribunal's longest running case. It represents yet another example of how religion is quickly losing its privileged position in Europe and abuses in its name will no longer be tolerated. The Humanist position, that all people deserve to be treated with respect and dignity by virtue of the simple fact that they are human beings, is quickly becoming the social norm and accepted as the only basis for a civilised society.

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Christianity Is No Excuse - ECHR

European Court of Human Rights refuses to hear appeals in three ‘Christian persecution’ cases » British Humanist Association:

Congratulations to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) on confirming that even Christians can't deny basic human rights to others, at least in signatory countries to the European Human Rights Convention (EHRC). This will no doubt come as a great shock to many of them who still take for granted their former privileged place in Western society and who still assume their 'faith' gives them the right to persecute and oppress those with whom they disagree.

It get really Byzantine, so bear with me:

The (refused) appeal was by three Christians who lost their original case in the ECHR when they claimed it infringed their human rights to deny them the right to deny services to others on the grounds that they are Christians. They have previously claimed for unfair dismissal when they were sacked for refusing to treat people equally in the provision of services, and had lost in the English Courts. Britons have the right to take their case to the ECHR if they feel their human rights, as outlined in the EHRC, have been infringed. The ECHR is the final court of appeal for signatory countries.

Human Gene-Meme Co-Evolution

Culture and genetics intertwined.

Credit: Adapted from a sketch by Josh
(WWW.CARTOONSBYJOSH.COM)

In an article in this week's Science Journal, scientists Simon E. Fisher and Matt Ridley make a case for some aspects of human genetic evolution in the last 200,000 years to be the consequence of cultural evolution rather than, as is generally assumed, cultural evolution to be the consequence of genetic mutation.

Abstract
State-of-the-art DNA sequencing is providing ever more detailed insights into the genomes of humans, extant apes, and even extinct hominins (1–3), offering unprecedented opportunities to uncover the molecular variants that make us human. A common assumption is that the emergence of behaviorally modern humans after 200,000 years ago required—and followed—a specific biological change triggered by one or more genetic mutations. For example, Klein has argued that the dawn of human culture stemmed from a single genetic change that “fostered the uniquely modern ability to adapt to a remarkable range of natural and social circumstance” (4). But are evolutionary changes in our genome a cause or a consequence of cultural innovation.

Culture, Genes, and the Human Revolution; Simon E. Fisher and Matt Ridley

They cite examples such as Richard Wrangham's study showing how the discovery of cooking led to a change in the size of the human gut, the spread of the lactase-persistence gene facilitated by the availability of cattle milk as a consequence of cattle-herding about which I have previously blogged in Lacatose Tolerance and Creation 'Science' and higher alcohol tolerance among Europeans as a result of greater alcohol consumption in Europe, as compared to Asians.

Building Walls

Robert Frost
(March 26, 1874 – January 29, 1963

Just been helping a neighbour repair a larch-lap fence between our gardens which the winds a few days ago brought down. It made me think of the poem "Mending Walls" by Robert Frost, about how we build walls between us and how acts of unspeakable brutality such as we saw in Woolwich, London last Wednesday are both caused by those walls and act to reinforce and 'mend' them.

Mending Walls

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors'.
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows?
But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."

Robert Frost

What we saw in Woolwich was the result of alienation and disengagement; the result of generations of wall-building between the white and black communities in Britain. In the 1960s, disaffected youths found an outlet in gangs of 'Mods' and 'Rockers' or, with some of us, in extremist politics of the various brands of ultra-left 'Marxist' groups like the Stalinists, Leninists, Trotskyites and Maoists. In the 1930 it had been the Communists and the Fascists, in the 1950's the Teddy Boys and the Beatniks.

In Northern Ireland throughout most of the second half of the twentieth century, it had been Nationalism and 'the armed struggle' or Loyalism and Protestant Supremacy. We happily fragmented into Beatles fans, Rolling Stones fans, Bob Dylan fans, Folk, Blues, R&B, Jazz. You name it we could form an exclusive little group around it. Sometimes these were political; sometimes cultural.

Sometimes they ended up with people being killed because we forgot that, despite whatever group we identify with, the group to which we all belong is the Human group.

Human beings form groups. It's what we do. If we hadn't evolved that basic behaviour on the plains of East Africa a few million years ago, very probably before we were even humans, we wouldn't have survived. As lone individuals we would have been leopard food, scraping a living looking for roots and grubs and scavenging scraps from hyena and lion kills - if we were lucky and the vultures didn't beat us to them.

Circular Reasoning

I'm amazed that anyone needs to explain the logical fallacy of the circular argument but the frequency with which you see it being employed, often in all seriousness by (presumably) otherwise normally functioning adults to defend religion, suggest many people either genuinely don't understand it, or are using in dishonestly, hoping their audience won't understand it.

Circular reasoning (also known as paradoxical thinking or circular logic), is a logical fallacy in which "the reasoner begins with what he or she is trying to end up with". The individual components of a circular argument will sometimes be logically valid because if the premises are true, the conclusion must be true, and will not lack relevance. Circular logic cannot prove a conclusion because, if the conclusion is doubted, the premise which leads to it will also be doubted. Begging the question is a form of circular reasoning.

Two Emails

Compare and contrast there two emails: one from Conservative MP, Nicola Blackwood; the other from Labour MP, Tom Watson.

Nicola Blackwood, MP; Conservative.

The first is from my MP, Nicola Blackwood, Conservative MP for Oxford West West and Abingdon, in reply to an email from me urging her to vote for the third reading of Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill.

Dear ***************,

Thank you for writing to me about the third reading of Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill. In the event, I reluctantly voted against the Bill.

I have taken a great deal of time to engage closely with the detail of this Bill and met with constituents on all sides of the argument, including equal rights campaigners, religious leaders and Ministers to discuss concerns about the Bill's drafting and implications before coming to a conclusion about how to vote.

From the beginning my concerns have not centred on the issues surrounding the definition of marriage. As a strong supporter of civil partnerships and opponent of discrimination in all its forms, I have no principled objection to equal marriage in secular institutions. I abstained from voting in the Second Reading because although I support the principle of the Bill, my concerns about details of the legislation meant I felt I could not vote for it before there was a chance to address these concerns through debate and amendments.

Initially I was disappointed that this Bill did not extend civil partnerships to heterosexual couples and that is why I voted for amendments NC16 and NC16(a) which will provide a prompt review of civil partnerships legislation. I am pleased that this compromise has been reached as it gives hope to many couples who are currently excluded from civil partnerships and unprotected by the legal rights it offers. My only remaining concern on this issue is that the timeframe and scope of this review remain unclear at this point.

Unfortunately, however, my other concerns about the detail of the Bill, and its potential unintended consequences, have remained unresolved.

In particular, although I voted for two amendments that sought to ensure protection of religious freedom, these did not pass and were not accepted by the Government. In the light of this, and given the vastly contradictory legal opinions offered by Aidan O'Neil QC and Karon Monaghan QC of Matrix Chambers, two of the most pre-eminent human rights barristers in this country, about the strength of the protections provided to religious institutions by the Bill, I am not convinced that these protections will work if challenged in the ECtHR, as is very likely. If you would like me to send you a copy of these legal opinions I would be delighted to do so.

I voted against the Bill quite simply because I could not be sure that the measures in the Bill for the protection of religious freedom would work in the way the Government intends and because the amendments designed to strengthen these protections were not accepted.

I felt as though this Bill, through poor drafting and rushed consultation, had become a choice between religious freedom and equality. In the end, as a supporter of both, I could not find a way to support a Bill that did not guarantee the protection of both.
I do hope that this helps to explain my position. Please do get back in touch with me if I can be of further assistance on this or any other topic.

Kindest regards
Nicola

Needless to say, I have expressed my disappointment to Nicola Blackwood.

Tom Watson, MP; Labour.

The second is from Tom Watson, MP, sent to me as a Labour Party member.

***********,

It was wonderful to finally see the gay marriage bill pass through the House of Commons last night. I am delighted that we are so close to having equal marriage in our country, and so very proud of our party.

In the spirit of celebration, I wanted to share with you the story of one couple -- Emma and Hannah -- who are now looking forward to their wedding and to married life together. Their story, in their own words, is below.

Today is absolutely a day to celebrate, but we have a long road ahead of us.

Help us continue our fight for a fair, equal, one nation Britain: make a donation to the Labour Party now.

Thank you for all your support and hard work.

Best wishes,

Tom
@tom_watson

--

**********,
It's been eight years since I met my partner Hannah.

Since then, we've had the joy of watching some of our closest friends and family members get married. The one sadness for us was not knowing when -- or even if -- we would ever be able to make that commitment ourselves.

All we have ever wanted is for our relationship to be seen as equal and today we can see a future where we too will be able to get married.

To see the equal marriage legislation pass through the House of Commons yesterday was a huge moment for us, and we are incredibly grateful to all the politicians who supported it.

We know this moment would never have come without the Labour Party's unwavering support for and leadership on gay equality -- from repealing Section 28 to introducing civil partnerships.

We have never been more proud to be members of this party, and we just wanted to say thank you to everyone who's campaigned for and supported this bill.

With thanks,

Emma Norris and Hannah Stoddart

(Emma on the left in the photo, Hannah on the right)

These emails probably illustrate the fundamental differences between the Conservative and Labour Parties on the issue of Human rights and equality before the law.

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Evolution Of A Plague of Locusts

Magicicada adults and final stage nymphs.

Photo credit: Arthur D. Guilani

If it hasn't happened already, and you live in the Eastern USA, you are in for a rare treat very soon. Rare, that is if you regard once every 17 years as rare, and a treat if you like fair-sized insects that can make a sound approaching the decibel level of a pneumatic drill.

I'm talking about the emergence of the so-called 17-year locust. Actually, it isn't a locust at all, which is a member of the grass-hopper and cricket family, but a cicada, which is closer to the aphids. The first Europeans in America to witness an emergence had heard of biblical plagues of locusts but had no real idea what a locust was, and assumed they were witnessing a similar biblical plague and called the cicadas locusts.

No Theists in Foxholes

Amazingly, theists seem to imagine that trotting out the aphorism, "There are no Atheists in Foxholes" somehow vindicates their irrational belief in an imaginary friend in the sky. The argument seems to be that, if other people are irrational under stress, it makes my irrational superstition, which I have even when not under stress, somehow more rational.

But what more can we expect from those who base their beliefs not on the rational but on irrational, evidence-free superstition, usually for no reason other than that their mummy and daddy did.

If you ever find yourself falling off a high building there are two things you should do:

1. Scream! Scream loud and scream all the way down. It won't help you survive but you might as well improve the chance of the paramedics finding your body!
2. Flap your arms. No human has ever flown but you just might be the first! What have you got to lose?

When the rational won't work, be irrational. At least you'll have something to think about on the way down.

More Evidence For a Human Ring Species

Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology

Relationship between modern humans, Neanderthals and Devisovans (to which now needs to be added a fourth species)

Creationist loons and the professional liars of the Discovery Institute must dread a publication from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. After the recent confirmation that modern humans (Homo sapiens) and Neanderthals (H. neaderthalensis (or should that be H. s. neanderthalensis?)), interbred and that H.sapiens also interbred with the recently discovered Neanderthal relatives, the 'Denisovans', to form what amounted to an incompletely speciated 'ring species' only a few thousand years ago, the Institute has now dealt another blow to Creationism.

At the Biology of Genomes meeting last week, reported in Science, Svante Pääbo's team announced that DNA analysis of samples obtained from Neanderthal and Denisovan bones found in the Denisova cave in Siberia, using a new technique, has yielded a nearly complete, high coverage of the genomes of our closest cousins which not only confirms the previously reported interbreeding but strongly suggests a fourth, so far undiscovered species of Homo involved in the complex.

So far as I am aware, this is the first case of a new distinct group of Homo being identified on the basis of the DNA it contributed to another species with which it occasionally interbred.

Monkeying With Creationist Fossils

Rukwapithecus (foreground) and Nsungwepithecus (background).

Credit: Mauricio Anton

Creationism has taken such a battering recently that one is almost tempted to feel sorry for frauds like Ken Ham, Eric Hovind, Dwayne Gish and the professional liars at the Discovery Institute. It must be a bit like standing in a tornado trying to shelter under an umbrella just to keep the ignorant loons who give them money from finding out the truth.

Hot on the heels of the news that modern non-African peoples interbred with Neanderthals and Denisovans to form a possible human ring-species, showing that human speciation was in progress only a few thousand years ago, and the news that a seven million year-old earliest human fossil had been found showing intermediate 'transitional' characteristics between humans and chimpanzees, comes news that the earliest common ancestor of both apes and Old World monkeys has now been found. It's a delicious irony that today's slap in the face for primitive Creationists is news about the evolution of humans from monkeys.

Self-Righteous Bigots Are Whining Again

When Christians become a 'hated minority' – CNN Belief Blog - CNN.com Blogs

I had to laugh when I read this blog by John Blake of CNN.

When Peter Sprigg speaks publicly about his opposition to homosexuality, something odd often happens.

During his speeches, people raise their hands to challenge his assertions that the Bible condemns homosexuality, but no Christians speak out to defend him.

"But after it is over, they will come over to talk to me and whisper in my ear, 'I agree with everything you said,'" says Sprigg, a spokesman for The Family Research Council, a powerful, conservative Christian lobbying group.

So we have the phenomenon of the shy Christian, or should that be shy homophobe hiding behind Christianity?

The hypocrisy of someone who wants to repress a minority complaining about being a repressed minority is all to obvious but it positively shouts out in the very next paragraph:

We’ve heard of the 'down-low' gay person who keeps his or her sexual identity secret for fear of public scorn. But Sprigg and other evangelicals say changing attitudes toward homosexuality have created a new victim: closeted Christians who believe the Bible condemns homosexuality but will not say so publicly for fear of being labeled a hateful bigot.

So closeted gays are perfectly okay and just as it should be, but imagine the effrontery of expecting a Christian to keep his/her bigotry and hate private? The very idea?

Obviously, Christians should be entitled to bully, harass, offend and deny human rights to anyone they wish provided they can find the necessary excuse in their Big Book of Excuses, aka, the Holy Bible. What's the point of a religion if you can't use it to feel better about yourself by elevating yourself above others and pretending to be their moral superior?

But what's interesting is not the usual Christian hypocrisy, inhumanity, double standards and over-inflated sense of entitlement but what these changing times tell us about two things:

1. The state of Christianity and how it's losing its former status.
2. How society's ethics and morality is developing whilst Christianity, like other religions, is trying to act as a break on human cultural progress and moral development.

On that last point, religion is not, and has never been, a source of morality. Religion and morality coexist and to a great extent, morality precedes and, in the early stages, informs religion. No popular religion ever formed around a god or an idea that was repugnant to the majority of people.

If you doubt that, ask yourself if you would think of a god as good or bad if it told you to kill babies? Is killing babies wrong because your god says so, or does your god say it's wrong because it's wrong? How do you think Christianity would have fared if those who made up the Jesus stories wrote about a man who told you to be unkind to old ladies and to kill kittens for fun?

Yes, yes! I know the Old Testament god was a monster - which is why the early Christians had to invent a nicer one when the Bronze-Age Hebrews came into contact with the culturally more advanced Greeks and Romans. Under the influence of newer ideas, 1st century Palestine was on the verge of abandoning Yahweh and becoming Yahwatheist, which is why Christianity was invented.

No matter how much humanism there is in nascent religions, the problem is that religion then becomes a dogma which can only be changed slowly and with great effort, whilst society continues to develop and reassess and re-formulates its morality. In the last few generations we have seen massive changes in our cultures and ethics. We have stopped buying and selling 'lesser races' as slaves; we no longer colonise and deny democratic and human rights to third-world people; we no longer deny working people and women the vote; we no longer fight wars with massive armies slaughtering one another to see who is the last one standing. We now see it as wrong to deny access to goods, services and opportunity to the disable.

Christianity has normally opposed every one of those improvements in human rights for ordinary people. At the very least, religions and theologians have always 'discovered' a perfectly sound theological reason to justify not changing. God created it that way for a reason and ours is not to reason why.

And now we no longer deny people basic human rights because of their gender and sexuality. This is the last bastion of Christian control. Christians like to believe they own marriage, and the ability to exercise what little control they have left is too precious to them to give it up without a fight. No area of human activity is out of bounds for their interference and meddling, even what consenting adults do in private.

Let's look at the excuse they use for this abuse:

Strangely, Jesus was entirely silent on the subject and yet this is the very Jesus whom these same gay-abusing Christians will tell you introduced a new covenant and effectively abolished the laws in Leviticus and Deuteronomy. But only the laws they find inconvenient, it seems.

First, the usual passage:

Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination.

Leviticus 18:22

Leaving aside the question of whether gay men actually DO lie with one another 'as with a woman', which would be physically impossible unless anal intercourse with a woman was the norm when Leviticus was written, since neither of them have the right female equipment, why take this law in isolation and ignore so many of the others?

This 'Letter to Dr Laura (Schlessinger) has been around the Internet for many years. I first saw it on a Compuserve forum in about 1997.

Dear Dr. Laura,

Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God's Law. I have learned a great deal from your show, and I try to share that knowledge with as many people as I can. When someone tries to defend the homosexual lifestyle, for example, I simply remind him that Leviticus 18:22 clearly
states it to be an abomination. End of debate.

I do need some advice from you, however, regarding some of the specific laws and how to best follow them.

1. When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a pleasing odor for the Lord (Lev 1:9). The problem is my neighbors. They claim the odor is not pleasing to them. Should I smite them?
2. I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her?
3. I know that I am allowed no contact with a woman while she is in her period of menstrual uncleanliness (Lev 15:19-24). The problem is, how do I tell? I have tried asking, but most women take offense.
4. Lev. 25:44 states that I may indeed possess slaves, both male and female, provided they are purchased from neighboring nations. A friend of mine claims that this applies to Mexicans, but not Canadians. Can you clarify? Why can't I own Canadians?
5. I have a neighbor who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2 clearly states he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself?
6. A friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an Abomination (Lev 11:10), it is a lesser abomination than homosexuality. I don't agree. Can you settle this?
7. Lev 21:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I have a defect in my sight. I have to admit that I wear reading glasses. Does my vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle room here?
8. Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair around their temples, even though this is expressly forbidden by Lev 19:27. How should they die?
9. I know from Lev 11:6-8 that touching the skin of a dead pig makes me unclean, but may I still play football if I wear gloves?
10. My uncle has a farm. He violates Lev 19:19 by planting two different crops in the same field, as does his wife by wearing garments made of two different kinds of thread (cotton/polyester blend). He also tends to curse and blaspheme a lot. Is it really necessary that we go to all the trouble of getting the whole town together to stone them? (Lev 24:10-16) Couldn't we just burn them to death at a private family affair like we do with people who sleep with their in-laws? (Lev. 20:14)

I know you have studied these things extensively, so I am confident you can help.

Thank you again for reminding us that God's word is eternal and unchanging.

Your devoted disciple and adoring fan.

I think that makes the point better than I ever could.

What we are witnessing now is the end-game for Christianity. The tension on the elastic band keeping us tethered to the Bronze-Age is at breaking point. Society has progress to the point where hysterical Christian attempts to hold it back simply make it worse for Christianity by making them stand out as reactionary bigots merely using an outmoded superstition to try to cling on to the last vestiges of the power they have abused for so long.

Where once you could cross the road to avoid Christians shouting abuse at strangers and threatening them with their god, or the mad person standing in stained underwear shouting Bible verses and abuse from his or her window, we now only need to log on to Twitter or do a quick Google search to find today's batch of religious nutters and Dunning-Kruger simpletons telling the world what God thinks and how science has got it all wrong - with a computer.

Christianity on the Internet is now represented by lunatics, bullies, hate-filled bigots and frauds from which decent, humanitarian, compassionate human beings are recoiling and which is causing people to question the basis of their faith if it can produce people like the repugnant religious fundamentalists we now encounter daily. Consequently, most developed countries are witnessing a phenomenal rise in the numbers of people admitting to having no religious belief, many of whom are coming out of the closet Christians would dearly love to keep them in along with gays. In many European countries Atheists/Agnostics are now the majority and even in staunchly Catholic countries, church attendance is falling rapidly.

The whining Christians complaining about not being allowed to repress a minority any more, and needing to feel ashamed of their bigotry, is merely a symptom of that terminal decline. I'm pleased that they are at least feeling shame for their hate-filled bigotry and are becoming embarrassed to show it in public, when once they would have been proud of it and made sure we all knew it. This is a sign that they are subconsciously adopting humanist morality.

[Update 19 May 2013] Yesterday France became the fourteen nation to abandon yet another inhumane piece if Christian dogma when it legalised same-sex marriages.

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Dunning-Kruger Creationists

Science doesn't invent things, that's the job of technology. Science merely discovers things.

Sometimes though, science doesn't so much discover new things as put what is already known into scientific language together with the evidence and data underpinning it. Take, for example the understandable annoyance by Patrick Matthew that credit for describing evolution by natural selection had gone to Darwin and Wallace when he had mentioned it in an obscure book on forestry, assuming that it was such obvious idea that he couldn't have been the first to think of it, so never made much of it until Darwin and Wallace, who were completely unaware of Matthew or his book, were receiving all the credit - and praise for their genius.

Darwin, of course, graciously acknowledged Matthew's prior claim, pointing only to the obscurity of his choice of publication as the excuse for his (and the entire scientific establishment's) ignorance of it.

The Dunning-Kruger effect occurs when incompetent people not only fail to realise their incompetence, but consider themselves much more competent than everyone else. Basically, they're too stupid to know that they're stupid.

RationalWiki - Dunning-Kruger effect

Just so with the Dunning-Kruger effect. One of my old mother's sayings - and she had many - was, "They're too daft to know they're silly!" She used it particularly for religious fundamentalists and fanatics but also for the idiot sons of the aristocracy and nouveaux riches who assumed they had the right to govern us and who populated the Tory benches at Westminster and kindly ran the local councils for us. It wasn't her own saying; she had learned it from her parents who were the product of countless generations of the English agricultural working class.

The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.

Bertrand Russell, The triumph of Stupidity

But Dunning and Kruger, in Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments showed the underpinning data, put it into the language of science and published it - and so claimed the title for its discovery. Which is fair enough really because the experiments they conducted were designed to sort the wheat of wisdom from the chaff of prejudice and ignorance, which are also to be found in those pearls of ancient wisdom. Science is a methodology for ensuring we are right by more than simple chance.

Not only do these people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it.

Kruger J, Dunning D.;
J Pers Soc Psychol. 1999 Dec;77(6):1121-34.

Which is a slightly convoluted lead in to a short blog on the Dunning-Kruger effect which I was prompted to look into in an attempt to understand the antics of a particularly obnoxious individual who seems to think that the best way to convince the world of his genius is to put on a daily display of ignorance and stupidity and that the best way to promote his religion is to be as obnoxious and abusive as possible in its name. Maybe it's just hate and frustration at his own social ineptitude and consequent social isolation which motivates him - certainly he shows the social skills of the sociopath - but equally possibly he could be a classic Dunning-Kruger simpleton, too daft to know he's silly.

Basically, Dunning and Kruger found that clever people tend to underestimate their own potential, usually assuming that, if they find a task easy, so will others. Asked to rank their expected performance in a test, clever people will tend to underestimate their relative performance. Stupid people, on the other hand, often over-estimate their own abilities assuming themselves to be experts on very little actual knowledge, assuming that this little knowledge is all that is required to be an expert. They tend to rank themselves higher than they actually perform.

Sound familiar? If not, spend a while on Twitter, especially following the hastags such as #Evolution, #TeamJesus, #Atheism or #Science to see a daily parade of people who know little or nothing of the subjects of either theology or science but who are eager to tell the world that science or biology has got it all wrong, or that there is definitely proof of whatever god they believe in because it says so in a holy book that they know for a fact is never wrong about anything. Few if any of them will have studied science or theology.

To be a dedicated Dunning-Kruger performer one has also to have the ability to wave away anything in the way of logic or facts which contradicts one's absolute certainty that one knows everything there is to know about a given subject. Either the information is obviously wrong - otherwise I'd know about it! - or the opponent is clearly mad, stupid, ignorant or evil. It is simply impossible that the information or logical reasoning could be correct, and who could possibly know or understand the subject better than one of the world's leading experts who knows everything about the subject, having once read a blog or watched a TV program, or read a few pages in a book, or simply thought about it once and decided it was all wrong?

Obviously, if you can't say when a monkey last gave birth to a human or a crocodile turned into a duck, like 'Darwin claimed', or you can't produce all the transitional fossils on which the Theory of Evolution (which is no more than a guess anyway) depends, Evolution is a lie and a religion, and science requires more faith that believing Jesus rose from the dead, that snakes can talk, or that Mohammed flew about on a winged horse.

Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.

Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man

So the Dunning-Kruger Creationists imagine they've won the argument and proved their god must have done it all by magic, impressing the world with their brilliance and settling the argument once and for all. Can't think what all those scientists are wasting all their time and money on when it's all so obvious! And what's the point of learning any more when you know it's all wrong anyway? Why is everyone else so stupid!?

This phenomenon was investigated by Helmuth Nyborg of the University of Aarhus, Denmark:

Abstract
The present study examined whether IQ relates systematically to denomination and income within the framework of the g nexus, using representative data from the National Longitudinal Study of Youth (NLSY97). Atheists score 1.95 IQ points higher than Agnostics, 3.82 points higher than Liberal persuasions, and 5.89 IQ points higher than Dogmatic persuasions. Denominations differ significantly in IQ and income. Religiosity declines between ages 12 to 17. It is suggested that IQ makes an individual likely to gravitate toward a denomination and level of achievement that best fit his or hers particular level of cognitive complexity. Ontogenetically speaking this means that contemporary denominations are rank ordered by largely hereditary variations in brain efficiency (i.e. IQ). In terms of evolution, modern Atheists are reacting rationally to cognitive and emotional challenges, whereas Liberals and, in particular Dogmatics, still rely on ancient, pre-rational, supernatural and wishful thinking. [My empasis]

Nyborg, H. The intelligence–religiosity nexus: A representative study of white adolescent Americans

As RationalWiki explains, the tendency of clever people to under-estimate their potential is a form of psychological projection: those who found the tasks easy (and thus scored highly) mistakenly thought that they would also be easy for others. This is similar to the "impostor syndrome" whereby high achievers fail to recognise their talents as they think that others must be equally good.

He [Paul Revere] who warned, uh, the British that they weren't gonna be takin' away our arms, uh, by ringing those bells, and um, makin' sure as he's riding his horse through town to send those warning shots and bells that we were going to be sure and we were going to be free, and we were going to be armed.

Sarah Palin, on Paul Revere's midnight ride,
June 3, 2011

It's a supreme irony that, whilst intelligent people can underestimate their ability because they have the intelligence to realise they could be wrong, unintelligent people can stupidly over-estimate their own ability because they lack the intellect to realise they could be wrong. People impressed by displays of self-confidence will often vote for stupid people whereas what we should be looking for in our politicians and leading industrialist, bankers, and generals is healthy self-doubt. Perhaps the single most important achievement of ultra-patriotic American Christian right is that people who are both educated and honest (i.e. the scientists and intellectuals) who should be amongst the best able and qualified to govern America, are effectively debarred from holding public office. Instead, America is governed by what often look like Dunning-Kruger syndrome sufferers.

The Internet at times seems to be crawling with religious loons, creationists and science deniers all confidently telling us, from a position of almost complete ignorance and with absolute certainty, that something is indisputably wrong or indisputably right, and who, when questioned, become abusive or simply dismiss you as a fool, and who never ever take the risk of accepting the answer to the questions they keep throwing out or reading anything which would disturb their cosy certainty and cause a little self doubt.

Refference: Kruger, Justin; David Dunning (1999). Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 77 (6): 1121–34.
doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.77.6.1121. PMID 10626367

Wikipedia - Dunning-Kruger effect.

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Manny's Many Twitter Accounts [Update 13]

We recently outed the serial abuser, loon, attention-seeking spammer and Internet troll, Manuel "Manny" de Dios Agosto, the emotionally immature failed wannabee Catholic priest from the Bronx who several of us have known for several months to be behind the Twitter account @Sacerdotus. The evidence can be seen here.

It is also very apparent, and has been for many months, that Manuel's method of abuse and harassment involves using multiple Twitter accounts. This blog will serve as a register for all Manuel's known accounts, so people who wish to ignore his incessant attention-seeking, infantile spam, cyber-bullying and harassment, know which accounts to ignore or block altogether. If Manuel's behaviour again descends to the depths he reached in the summer of 2012, when all his accounts had to be taken down by Twitter Support pending his undertaking to behave in future, this list can serve to support any official complaints against him.

Please feel free to register any new accounts in the comment section below, together with supporting evidence, and I will add them to the main blog. The usual signs that they are Manuel's accounts includes:

• Repetitively re-tweeting tweets from his other accounts.
• Promoting Manuel's blogs.
• Challenging people to a debate about Christianity then ignoring questions or becoming abusive when asked to clarify a point or substantiate a claim.
• Constant claims that people won't debate him or are afraid of him.
• Abusing the people Manuel normally abuses or agreeing with Manuel's abusive tweets.
• Having several of Manuel's accounts in the follower and following lists.
• Sharing Manuel's obsessions.
• Accounts impersonating people who Manuel is currently abusing, stalking or otherwise showing an obsessive interest in.
• Abusive accounts by people purporting to be devout Catholics, showing an obsessive fascination with the trappings of Catholic priesthood and variations on the 'Sacerdotus/Sacerdotvs/curatus/curatvs' theme.
• Replies from Manuel with one account to tweets sent to a different one. Running many accounts obviously gets confusing

Account	Notes	Current Status
@Sacerdotus	Manuel's main account in which he pretends his name is Michael. [Update 4 March 2015] Bizarrely, Twitter have reinstated Manuel's original account after promising to reduce trolling and abuse. It seems the hopeless muddle in Customer Safety which so embarrasses their CEO, is continuing. Of course he immediately recommenced begging for money and harassing his usual victims - Twitter informed.	Active again. Suspended again as of 30-March-2015
@SACERD0TUS	The account Manuel uses to get around being blocked, apparently believing that no one will notice the all caps to disguise the fact that he has replaces the letter 'o' with a zero.	Deleted
@Sacerdotvs	Used by Manuel to get round blocks.	Permanently suspended.
@SacerdotusBlogs	Account set up when all Manuel's other accounts were suspended. Immediately commenced abusing those whom Manuel had been harassing prior to suspension. Also suspended a few hours after creation.	Deleted.
@RosaRublcondior	An impersonation account Manuel was using to post gratuitously offensive obscenities until all his accounts were suspended by Twitter. Then used by him to support a petition to get me banned. Substitution of 'i' for 'l'.	Permanently suspended.
@RationallyFaith	Thinly disguised account normally used by Manuel to agree with himself and to abuse those who disagree with him.	Permanently suspended.
@Bronxbomber777	Used by Manuel to post threats of violence, often sexually explicit, especially to females.	Permanently suspended.
@YearOfFaith2012	Plagiarised by Manuel from an official Catholic account, presumably in an attempt to give it credence. Used for the usual abuse and to make it look like people agree with him.	Permanently suspended
@NYCLATINO2011	Used by Manuel to pose as a gay male prostitute to contact gays prior to spamming them with homophobic abuse. Has been known to post pornography visible to minors. Account appears to have been deleted very recently. Was active earlier on day of writing. (28 May 2013) Now active again and being used by Manny to compliment himself and tell others how brilliant he is. Manuel has developed a tactic for trying to hide his trail when he gets frightened that he's gone too far. He renames an account, then creates a new one with the original name and immediately deletes it. He seems to think this deletes all his old tweets but keeps all his followers. It doesn't, of course.	Name changed to @NYCLATINO2012.
@NYCLATINO2012	Ditto.	Name Changed to @NYCLATINO2013.
@NYCLATINO2013	Ditto.	Permanently suspended.
@jaxz0hnp	An impersonation account used to abuse and harass user @jaxzohnp. Simple substitution of 'o' with zero again.	Permanently suspended.
@StJohnSmith	Used for same function as @RationallyFaith.	Still active but all tweets and following appear to have been deleted. May have been renamed as above.
@Catholic_Blog	Yet another account used by Manuel to promote his blog, post abuse at those who disagree with him and agree with himself because very few real people ever do.	Permanently suspended.
822451ac-f4aa-11e2-802e-000bcdcb5194	This AOL Opaque OpenID account is used by Manuel to spam blogs requiring a registered account to post comments. The purpose of this form of OpenID appears to be to facilitate anonymous abuse and spam on blogs. He assumes people won't know it's him being his usual obnoxious and infantile self - rather like a child who thinks you can't see him when he puts his hands over his eyes. The clue of course is that he invariably agrees with and supports himself - a thing which no sane person would do - and his posts resemble those of a 8 year-old in terms of emotional maturity.	N/A
@TylerNull	Used by Manuel to promote his YouTube efforts because no one else does.	Renamed to @Peregrinusmmvii.
@Peregrinusmmvii	Another new account which began attacking Manuel's favourite obsessions and hate figures soon after the above account picked up its first warning, which came soon after it took up where Manuel left off, soon after @Sacerdotus was warned again.	Permanently suspended.
@RosaIsSuspended	The account Manuel now uses to post automated infantile abuse.	Permanently suspended.
@SacerSpended	Now all Manuel's usual accounts have been permanently suspended he is trying a new trick. He uses this account to pretend to be pleased Manny has been suspended and claims to have found who the 'real' @Sacerdotus is. Of course, it isn't the expelled seminarian Manuel de Dios Agosto but some other innocent person whom Manuel claims he found using links I provided on the blog where we exposed him. Needless to say, these links don't exist. The laugh is that this account was only created a couple of days ago and immediately followed me claiming to know all about @Sacerdotus and his lies, yet appears not to know what his other account is or why he should be interested in Manuel. What he doesn't seem to grasp is that he's simply confirming yet again that he is indeed Manuel de Dios Agosto, expelled seminarian, otherwise why would he be so implausibly pretending @Sacerdotus is someone else? I wonder if anyone can guess why Manuel is so desperate to want people not to know his real identity, and the reason he was expelled from St Joseph's Seminary, New York. [update 19 November 2013] Just when you thought Manuel couldn't get any more stupid, the idiot is now using this account to claim he's me!	Permanently suspended.
@Blog_Catholic	Manuel is back with a new account cleverly disguised so no one will think it's his by creaftily turning round the name of one he used earlier - @Catholic_Blog. I bet that has people fooled, eh, Manuel?	Permanently suspended.
@SacerdotusLives	And another new account so he can continue his obsessive attention-seeking and abuse. Bizarrely he implies in this one's bio that Twitter have given him this temporary account while his 'contacts' in Twitter sort out the mistake they made when they wrongly suspended all his others. I wonder if his contacts in Twitter are any more real than his vast army of contacts who are supposedly watching my every move and sending him information on my criminal/terrorist activities which he claims to be including in the regular reports about me he sends to 'The UK Authorities' Any bets on how long this one will last?	Permanently suspended.
@SCDTVS	After 4 months enforced absence, Manuel is now up and runnign again, and already posting abuse with a brand new account brilliantly disguised by removing a few letters, posting exactly the same stuff and resuming obsessive abuse of his usual victims. Can't accuse Manuel of being anything other than a traditionalist. Name changed to @CatholicGadfly and a new one created with the same name	Permanently suspended.
@Atheist707	Apparently he's been stung by everyone spotting him within a few minutes of starting up again despite his brilliantly disguised account, so he's now come up with another ploy. Now he's pretending to be an Atheist who just happens to mention Sacerdotus, his blog and his @SCDTVS Twitter account in every tweet. It's the same ploy he tried with his @SacerSpended account last November. He's soon abusing all his usual favourites too. And now he's even claiming that other people are him too! You might as well quote the above complaint reference when you have cause to report him for abuse. I'll register this new one against it with Twitter. Name changed to @StudiousAtheist then a new account created and deleted. He has apparently panicked after being threatened with legal action for posting a defamatory tweet depicting a minor without permission and claiming another Twitter user is abusing the child.	Name Changed to @StudiousAtheist.
@StudiousAtheist	Having failed to get away with his idiotic attempt to pretend to be an Atheist with some secret knowledge he was never quite able to explain that he isn't really Manuel de Dios Agosto but me and another Twitter user are ... look! This is Manuel's world we are in, where nothing makes any sense except to Manny and the walls of his bedroom in his mother's apartment just round the corner from the zoo, so bear with me, okay?... Manny has now had the brilliant idea of creating an identical account with a different name. He has already started abusing all his usual obsessive target of course. No one will ever guess so don't tell Manny we all know, okay! [Update] Manuel is now using this account to abuse a Catholic priest from Suffolk, UK by posting his contact details on Twitter and claiming he is demented and responsible for his embarrassingly bad blog on which he used to alternate between posting psychotic lies and begging for money, for no other reason apparently than his email address includes the name 'sacerdotus' (i.e. priest). And you thought Manuel couldn't find new depths to plumb!	Permanently suspended.
@CatholicGadfly	The account Manuel has renamed @SCDTVS to, having been exposed as Manny within minutes of creating it and recommencing his habitual abuse. Presumably, he imagines this will preclude his account being suspended. With this account he's now posing as a Jeff T. Follon MA, who, as a quick Google search will show, appears to have sprung fully formed into existence, complete with a Mannyesque 'degree', last July. I expect everyone will fall for that, eh Manuel? Has now inserted an underscore in the username to try to hide his abuse following a warning from Twitter about his abusive behaviour. (@Catholic_Gadfly). He appears not to realise this doesn't work despite having been shown you can't hide your history when he tried it by changing @SCDTVS to @CatholicGadfly.	Permanently suspended.
@SacerdotusRadio	Used by Manuel to post links to his podcasts where he tells lies, usually to himself, presumably hoping to convince himself that they are right. Usual infantile blather only spoken instead of typed out. Cunningly disguised again presumably in the hope it'll fool Twitter long enough for him to fool a simpleton or two that he's not really the expelled seminarian, Manuel de Dios Agosto, or Mad Manny from Bronx.	Permanently suspended.
@RosaRubicondlor	Don't worry Manuel. Your followers are far too stupid to notice you've cleverly substituted an 'l' for an 'i' like you did with your @RosaRublcondior account with which you used to tweet sexually explicit obscenities pretending to be me. Do you think they'll fall for your latest insane attempt to prove you're not the expelled seminarian by posting links to one of your accounts which you made in a poor copy of my blog and in which you are posting your normal lies? The give away is the insane gibberish you post in it. It has your emotionally retarded signature.	Permanently suspended.
@RationalFaith1	Manny has resurrected this old name for a new account specially to promote a new blog where he can debate with himself in different guises. He's understandably sensitive to being mocked for repeatedly challenging people to debate him then crying foul when they call his bluff, so in his new blog he can hold pretend debates with himself to 'prove' he isn't really afraid. Watch him feed himself idiotic points to knock back and convince himself with the brilliance of his arguments. I guess he's flunked his basic philosophy course at Leahman Community College already - I do hope he wasn't expelled again because of his old problem - and now has a lot of spare time on his hands once more.	Permanently suspended.
@Catholicgadfly	Created when Manny inserted an underscore in his @Catholic_Gadfly account to try to hide his continued abuse and harassment after being warned by Twitter and promising to desist in future. The only reason can have been to try to confuse Twitter Support.	Deleted or renamed.
@SacerdotusHgout	Used to advertise Manuel's little group on Google+ where he can post lies without getting suspended by Twitter. However, G+ also take a dim view of their services being use for targeted abuse and harassment and are quick to delete offending accounts. [Update 05 Nov 2014] Despite being told by Twitter support that this account had been permanently suspended along with the rest of Manny's then active accounts, it appears to have been reinstated. I assume this was following yet another promise by Manuel de Dios Agosto that he would try to control his habitual abuse, he recommenced posting abusive tweets today. Twitter support notified, meanwhile, please let me know when his behaviour deteriorates to its previous level. On previous experience this normally takes about a month as Manuel realises people ignore him. [Update 26 Feb 2015] Now suspended again "because this user appears to have created multiple accounts for disruptive purposes, or with overlapping uses".	Permanently Suspended.
@CatholicGadfIy	In what can only be another attempt to confuse Twitter Support, Manny has again changed the username of this account. The underscore has now been removed and the penultimate character has been changed from lower case 'L' to upper case 'i'. Manny seems to believe this will confuse Twitter support who will think his @Catholic_Gadfly account has been deleted so he can continue his campaign of abuse and harassment despite his recent suspension and promise to behave. 16-Jan 2015 Inexplicably, in the last few days, Twitter have suspended then un-suspended this account, told me they can't find it, that it isn't posting abuse and that it has been suspended while it is still active and Manny is repeating the tweets Twitter originally said they warned him about. Watch this space. Maybe Twitter support will sort themselves out.	Permanently suspended.
@TheBishopOfRome	This account, the name of which shows Manny's delusion of grandeur, had been a suspect for a Manny-controlled account for some time but was only confirmed as such when Twitter took it down simultaneously with his @SacerdotusHgout account, having implied that there were others with: Thanks for letting us know about this issue. We’ve investigated and suspended the account you reported because this user appears to have created multiple accounts for disruptive purposes, or with overlapping uses, which is a violation of the Twitter Rules (https://twitter.com/rules). Please note that the suspended user may appeal the suspension, which could result in the restoration of one or more accounts. Clearly, this relates to more than one account being suspended at that time. And Manuel was so confident that he had found a work-around to his problem of creating all his accounts with the same Bronx ip address by creating them from Lehman College. Obviously, Twitter are getting better at this since their CEO expressed his embarrassment at their inability to control the sort of abuses that Manny get off on.	Permanently suspended

No doubt there are other accounts owned by Manuel de Dios Agosto. They will be added as and when they are identified.

This site details how to go about dealing with abusive behaviour on Twitter. Twitter Support should already have records of Manuel's previous form in this regard.

In addition to using these accounts Manuel has recently begun spamming blogs with impersonation comments using a simple method to fake a username and disguise it as a Twitter account. The technique can be read about here. The clue is to check the URL beneath the name. If it is a Twitter domain URL it can ONLY have been entered manually as described in the preceding link. There is no other reason to enter a name this way other than to mislead and impersonate.

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Grains of Truth

Chandra X-ray Observatory image of Cassiopeia A,
a 300-year-old supernova remnant.
Credit: NASA/CXC/SAO.

It must be awful being a Creationist these days with so much information available on the Internet and having to be ignored or explained away and with so many new discoveries being made available to a mass audience and having to be avoided. At times it must be a bit like walking about in a rain storm whilst telling yourself there is no such thing as rain.

Take, for example, this article by Maria Cruz which appeared in Science last week. It concerned a paper published in the Journal of Astrophysics by Haenecour et al. (Astrophys. J. 768, L17 (2013)) which reported on the discovery of grains of material that pre-date the formation of the solar system. These grains were part of the molecular cloud out of which the solar system formed and which subsequently became incorporated into solid accretions.

These presolar grains can be identified by their unusual isotopic composition which can only have been formed outside the solar system. The team used sophisticated techniques called 'nano secondary ion mass spectrometry' (NanoSIMS) and 'Auger electron spectroscopy', to identify silica (SiO₂)grains in two meteorites. The isotopic composition of the oxygen atoms in the silica suggests that they were formed in the core collapse of an earlier supernova - an exploding star in which heavier elements are formed out of helium by nuclear fusion under intense pressure and heat.

This reaction creates such a violent release of energy that it overcomes gravity and causes the star to explode, creating the nebulae in which new stars form. Unlike the first generation stars which formed out of collapsing molecular clouds of almost pure hydrogen, second and subsequent generation stars form from collapsing clouds which include these heavier elements, the so-called stardust. As the cloud collapses under gravity, the heat and gravity causes the fusion of hydrogen nuclei to form helium to start up. The release of energy causes the heavier elements to be thrown out to form an accretion disk out of which planets form around stable orbital centres. This is how we know that our sun is at least a second-generation star.

The problem for Creationist loons and the professional liars who promote Creationism as an alternative science, is that their preferred fairytale version of the creation of the Universe says that everything was created together in a single day, so there would never have been a presolar time or first and second generation stars. The existence of presolar grains will either have to be ignored altogether, or some other traditional coping strategy will need to be called into play, such as attacking the scientists or dismissing science as 'scientism', in order to handle the painful cognitive dissonance without incorporating this new information into their fairytale.

Reference: Supernova Grains Identified in the Lab, Maria Cruz,
Science 3 May 2013: 340 (6132), 526. [DOI:10.1126/science.340.6132.526-a]

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Sacerdotus - The Fraud Exposed

[left caption]

[Right caption/credit]

This detailed report on Manuel "Manny" de Dios Agosto, aka @Sacerdotus and many other Twitter aliases, has just been published on Twitter by @Yhwh_TheLord. As regular Twitter Atheists will know, Manuel is a notoriously obsessive stalker, fantasist and abuser who uses Catholicism and an obviously fake piety as the excuse for his abusive posts there as well as on his blog site.

I happen to be his most recent obsession ever since I exposed his ludicrous claims to have scientific proof of the Christian god by simply challenging him to produce it and debate it in a neutral forum, but apparently I'm not the first.

It fully validates everything I had exposed about Manuel and his murky past in blogs here and here.

[Update] Within a few hours of this blog going live, Manuel had taken down most of the sites listed. Fortunately, anticipating Manuel's panic, @Yahweh_TheLord had grabbed and saved screenshots which are linked to at the end of this blog.

[Further update - 31 March 2024] Sadly, the online account where @Yahweh_TheLord placed the screenshots has now expired and Manuel has taken down all the social media posts they relate to. Sceptics might like to speculate about why he would do that if they don't incriminate him.

Enjoy.

St Paul - Lying On The Road To Damascus

The Conversion of Saul, Michelangelo Buonarotti Simoni,
Capella Paolina, Palazzi Pontifici, Vatican City.

One of the problems Bible apologists face is the frequency with which the Bible was obviously written by people who made crass errors because they were ignorant of so much history and yet needed to set their tales in olden times to give them credibility.

Leaving aside such obviously glaring examples as the Noah's Ark story which was set in an event which simply never took place at all - a global flood a few thousand years ago - and the Tower of Babel story which was set on a flat Earth before there were enough people alive to build such a building if the Flood tale was true, there are plenty of more subtle examples.

I have written about one, identified by Thomas Paine in The Age Of Reason, where Genesis talks of people being "chased unto Dan" - somewhere which wasn't so called until many hundreds of years after the event it purports to describe - See How Dan Destroys The Bible.

Ear Worm Crosses The Species Barrier

Outside near my garden right now is a male Blackbird in a beech tree announcing to the blackbird world, and particularly to any spare females, that this is his territory and he is available. He has been there every day for about two weeks or more singing variations of his repertoire of musical phrases and cadences and competing with the Gold finch's babbling silver trickle of notes and Great tit's piping in the same tree. (A typical Blackbird song on this RSPB site).

European Blackbirds are noted for incorporating musical phrases into their song and extemporising on them. This particular one seems to have a snatch of a song by Robert Burns called Ye Banks and Braes which is ironic really because the phrase it keeps singing is the tune to the lines "Thou'll break my heart, thou warbling bird, That wantons thro' the flowering thorn!"

Ye Banks and Braes

Ye banks and braes o' bonnie Doon,

How can ye bloom sae fresh and fair?
How can ye chant, ye little birds,
And I sae weary, fu' o' care!
Thou'll break my heart, thou warbling bird,
That wantons thro' the flowering thorn!
Thou minds me o' departed joys,
Departed, never to return.
Aft hae I rov'd by bonnie Doon

To see the rose and woodbine twine;
And ilka bird sang o' its luve,
And fondly sae did I o' mine;
Wi' lightsome heart I pu'd a rose,
Fu' sweet upon its thorny tree!
And my fause luver stole my rose -
But, ah! he left the thorn wi' me.

Robert Burns

Maybe it's just a coincidence and that it my brain's ability to recognise patterns which is working, but what we have here is an example of a meme or ear worm. It's something every successful pop tune writer tries to achieve - a phrase you keep playing over and over in your mind.

This Blackbird has pulled off the neat trick of passing a meme across the species barrier so my mind now keeps singing "Thou'll break my heart, though warbling bird...". A meme is of course a unit of cultural inheritance; in this case a musical phrase which interprets in the context of my British cultural background and my personal development as a song by Burns, complete with the Galawegian Scottish dialect words with phrases like "And I sae weary, fu' o' care!" and "And ilka bird sang o' its luve, And fondly sae did I o' mine; Wi' lightsome heart I pu'd a rose, Fu' sweet upon its thorny tree!"

In the context of the Blackbird's culture of course, that same meme has a totally different meaning understood only truly by another Blackbird.

This is the exact analogy of how genes only have meaning in the context of the environment in which they are expressed and by which the information in them is translated into meanings. This is a point which Creationist pseudo-scientists either don't understand or deliberately obscure when they claim that no new information can arise from mutation (which is nonsensical anyway) when what is important is not the information but what that information means in the context of the environment in which it expresses. Even with no change in information, an environmental change can produce a change in the meaning if that information and so an evolutionary change in the species carrying it.

The importance of the cultural context of memes is also illustrated in a blog I wrote a few days ago about cultural bias in which I presented some common 'proofs' of the existence of the locally popular god and the truth of different holy books with 'proofs' which only work on people with a pre-exiting belief in those gods and holy books. To people from other cultures, the fallacy of those 'proofs' is laughably obvious because it is quite simply devoid of an rational meaning.

It is because the interaction between the genotype and the environment produces the phenotype and the environment selects in favour of fitness to survive in that environment, that species look as though they were made for that environment. They were. They were made by the environment itself.

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Looking At Life

In an earlier blog I looked at life and showed how, although people use it to mean something else, biologically speaking, 'life' is simply entropy management. Most people use the word life to express some hazy, often muddled, idea including consciousness, thinking, existing or even an idea of a 'soul' as though being alive means you have some magical entity inside you which gives you 'life'.

Religious people even think 'life' is something you get at some stage in your development as an embryo, although they will argue ceaselessly about when this occurs - the moment of conception, at the first 'quickening', at birth. In this respect, as in so many others, the ideas religious people have are almost unchanged from the opinions held by people in the childhood of our species when the world was so poorly understood it must have seemed a magical place.

It has even been claimed that there is something qualitatively different about the chemistry of carbon and the molecules based on it - the so-called organic molecules - as though they obey a different set of physical laws which separates organic 'life' from inorganic 'non-life', so life is what carbon atoms, together with oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, sulphur and occasionally other atoms produce.

This muddle and confusion over what exactly life is would be amusing if only Creationists in particular didn't keep challenging people to explain what it is, or to create it, or to say what its purpose is. Challenging one of them to define it first is a sure-fire way to bring the conversation to a shuddering halt, often with an indignant flounce and an insult hurled over the shoulder together with a passive aggressive threat to back it up. But never any coherent definition of 'life' of course.