Bible Bashing

This post is originally an article written for today’s The Student newspaper. The editors of the Comment section ripped out all the offensive remarks about religion (fair enough – their paper, their choice, and I’m grateful they printed it), so here’s the original. This has been talked about in more detail by Mike, PZ, and The Freethinker.

Hybridise This

Suppose that, tomorrow, we find living examples of the ‘Hobbit’, Homo floresiensis, living in a secluded and cave on Flores Island. We’d have several options on what to do. We could ship them off to the nearest zoo, perhaps exhibiting them next to the chimpanzees and bonobos. Undoubtably this is what creationists would be forced to do, their arguments logically requiring them to deny that we have any relation to the ‘Flores man’. The more enlightened amongst us would see an interesting dilemma, however. Paleoanthropologists have discovered that H. floresiensis could use quite complex tools, so despite their small brain size it’s clear that they had a lot in common with us (or at least, us 16,000 years ago) cognitively and, maybe, socially. Would we give them human rights, land and legal protection? How far do we have to go? Is this a slippery slope to arguments like those of the Great Ape Project, who want rights for our closest living relatives?

These are related, though far more improbable, dilemmas to the one discussed in an event hosted by the University of Edinburgh’s worst most interesting new society, our nemeses friends the Life Soc*. They have an interest in the debates over abortion, euthanasia, stem cells and other related matters, like human-animal hybrids. To discuss this latter issue, they brought in Dr. Callum McKellar**, who is part of the Scottish Council on Human Bioethics, a body which advises the Scottish parliament, no less. His talk was refreshingly nonpartisan (I had expected Life Soc, bless ‘em, to wheel out some religious bigot who used the phrase ‘playing God’ every ten seconds), and was a simple outline of the main techniques of hybridisation and the issues associated with them. Here I shall attempt to synthesise a hybrid of his thoughts and mine. Or something.

The Invention of Vaguely Amusing Rom-Coms

I’m a bit of a sucker for superhero films. Iron Man? Tip-top. The Dark Knight? Magnificent. Daredevil? Well, actually, that one was godawful. But the point is, there’s something about being able to perform wondrous feats that everyone else can only dream of which tickles the human psyche. Now, Ricky Gervais is hardly the most likely candidate for a superhero. But in his latest film, The Invention of Lying, his character discovers that, relative to everyone else in the alternate universe he inhabits, he has an amazing power: the ability to ’say things that aren’t’. This is because, as is explained in the introduction, humankind has not ‘evolved the ability to lie’, leading to a world with no fiction or, importantly as it turns out, religion.

(This review necessarily contains spoilers. I’m not sorry.)

Bring me the scalp of Quentin Tarantino

Imagine you have an acquaintance named, let’s say, Dave. He’s always hanging around when you’re with your friends, and most people seem to really like him. Trouble is, you’re not entirely sure why. Apparently, he once did something really funny at a party, and to be fair to the guy, he does sometimes interject in conversations with snappy one-liners which are moderately amusing, if terribly attention-seeking. Most of the time, though, he never shuts up about his specialist subject, which is film. He has seen a great many more films than you, and boy, does he know it.

Dave’s counterpart in the world of movie direction is, if you hadn’t already guessed, Quentin Tarantino. He’s back – and he’s eager, if not to please, then just to be noticed, with his new movie, Inglourious Basterds. Unfortunately for us, he’s produced yet another egregiously self-indulgent, meandering, and terrifically boring movie. I can’t emphasize that last point enough – calling this movie utterly, unconscionably, interminably, outrageously, unbelievably dull would be trivialising the awfulness, and the tragedy is compounded by the fact that someone, somewhere (I’m looking at you, Quentin), must’ve thought all this was cinema gold. You must do everything in your power to avoid this movie. Here’s why.

Oh Radiohead, what are you thinking?

There is a palpable feeling of ‘event’ each time a new Radiohead album is released. This is because they’re the diametric opposite of a ’singles band’ – sure, they have some great standout tracks, but they are, arguably, better than any other contemporary artist at crafting an album which is a cohesive listen from start to finish. So it makes for strange and depressing news that they are giving up making albums, instead relying on singles and EPs.

Fundamentalist Moderates, Insecure Fundamentalists

As I sat in Old St. Paul’s Church on Saturday night, listening to an excellent performance of Fauré’s Requiem by the St. Andrew Camerata (it’s not just comedy at the Fringe, you know), some thoughts sprang into my mind. The first thought was, sadly, ‘I really don’t like it when they replace the soprano solo in the famous Pie Jesu movement with a boy soprano. Sure he’s cute, but can he emotionally inflect the music? Thought not’. But this isn’t a music review. Somewhat naturally given the setting, my thoughts wandered to matters of religion, and the current arguments which have rent our atheist movement asunder about how we, as skeptical secular humanists, should approach religious people.

What are these arguments? One of the major ones going on in the blogosphere at the moment was sparked by the new book titled Unscientific America by Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum of The Intersection, which amongst other things chastises atheist scientists such as Richard Dawkins and PZ Myers. These ‘New Atheists’, assert Mooney and Kirshenbaum, are turning the public off science with their strident, in-your-face criticisms of religious belief. Their tactics, claim M&K, are not working, and are having a detrimental effect on the public understanding of science. I’ve often discussed this sort of issue with members of the Humanist Society at my university, some of whom are of the opinion that being forthright about atheistic views can be a bad idea. But, as Prof. Jerry Coyne deftly points out in his review of Unscientific America, there’s really very little evidence for this view. How do we know that being nice and ‘accomodationist’¹ to religious people will change their opinions or make them more skeptical? Well, we don’t. It’s just an opinion, regularly trotted out with no backing whatsoever.

Flogging a Dead Dictator

There are few things more depressing during a healthy debate about an important subject than the slow realisation that no matter what you say to your opponent, they are utterly incapable of comprehending the argument you’re making. I don’t mean incapable of agreeing with it - fair enough, people disagree, whatever. Here I refer to those arguments that, no matter how frequently or eloquently they’re put across, are still met with an almighty ‘urrhhh?’ from certain groups of people.

 

What’s the Matter, Psychoville?

Here I will attempt to weave together two perhaps unlikely subjects – an epic sci-fi novel and a black-comedy TV series. By some coincidence, I finished reading/watching both yesterday, and by another, they both left a distinctly ‘unfinished’ feeling lingering with me, while both being utterly marvellous right up until the last few minutes. I’ll try not to include too many spoilers here, but it’s going to be tough…

 

In which I am disturbed by Antichrist

Last night, my friend Max and I emerged relatively unscathed from a showing of Lars von Trier’s latest picture, Antichrist. You have heard correctly: it is horrendously violent, it is viciously misogynist (and knows it), and does indeed contain a disemboweled, undead fox risibly informing Willem Dafoe that, if it wasn’t obvious by that point in this disorienting, confounding ‘WTF’ of a movie, ’chaos reigns’. Unexpectedly, none of this necessarily makes it a bad film. I’ll explain.

Bang Goes the Science Education

Recently, I was deeply impressed by the BBC’s Dr Regan’s… series, in which the only moderately scary Professor Lesley Regan, with help (via narration) from Malcolm ‘Lubricated Horse Cock’ Tucker himself, explained the basics of evidence-based medicine, cosmetics, baby products, and more. They showed how to look for evidence that the products you buy actually work, and talked through concepts like experimental control groups and peer review. It was all done in a stylish, non-patronising manner, and I only wished the series was longer than four hour-long episodes.

With this and other excellent programmes being shown on the BBC recently, you can imagine how much I was looking forward to the first episode of their new flagship science programme, Bang Goes the Theory, which aired on BBC One on Monday evening. You can watch it here. Would it talk about the latest exciting findings in science? Would it explain how theories are built up and amended as new knowledge is uncovered (you’d reckon so, from the title)? Would it show why the scientific method is so powerful and useful?

Well, er, none of the above. Below the fold, I’ll go through each segment of the show and the daft misconceptions of science it promoted.