I need a badge.

As I was saying, it turns out that in the fifties, America's motto was changed from "e pluribus unum" to "In God We Trust". Now, far be it from me to slag off America when it's been so popular to do that lately. "From the many, one", is, it must be observed, a lovely sentiment, packed with meaning, speaking into being a state that makes democracy its central ingredient. The nation exists in that it is a democracy; democracy is not a new style of government for a pre-existing nation. More than that, it evokes a pluralism which remains a bold ideal, even now - particularly now. It is entirely appropriate for the secular state that the USA is constitutionally bound to be.

"In God We Trust", by contrast, is psycho imperialist religious paranoid bollocks.

Meanwhile, it seems that the airline worker who insists on wearing her emblem of murderous torture (that would be a cross) over her uniform may well be allowed so to do in future. I don't care whether she wears it or not, really. But the thing is, in contrast to some of the symbols of other religions, which symbols are tolerated, there is no stricture within Christianity which says that she will go to hell, or suffer ostracism, or some similar opprobrium if she doesn't wear it. She just seems to think that she can't do her job unless she can declare to all and sundry that she is a Christian while she does it. I'd really quite enjoy going to work wearing some kind of symbol which meant "there is no God, you stupid bastards", but I don't expect it would be popular.

Rumsfeld lives, while...

"I personally don't believe in God;

I tend to think, if God wanted us to believe in Him,

He'd exist."

Linda Smith

This decision is a great erroneous.

According to the White House, apparently, "Saddam's death sentence is a great day for Iraq." I've heard this repeated often enough to assume that it is, in fact, what they intended to say. I suppose that, by now, we shouldn't be surprised that they have such a poor grasp of the English language; more than that, these are people who are quite happy to assert that where the facts don't agree with what they say, it is reality that has got it wrong. How many legal judgements make a month?

On a slightly less obscure point, I have for a long time found it rather ironic that in a country where the State is seen as a necessary evil at best, the viewpoint that the State should keep as far out of people's business as possible is held by essentially the same demographic that believes that the State should have jurisdiction inside women's bodies.

A Pusillanimous Priest.

This morning Radio Four had "Humphrys in search of God", interviewing Rowan Williams. John Humphrys is an ex-believer, and the purpose of the program is that he asks leaders of three religions to convert him back. Given that Humphries is a journalist, it is no surprise that it was the good old fashioned Problem of Evil which did for his faith. As a consequence, much of the focus of the program was on that area.

It was a truly painful experience listening to Williams negotiate the twists and turns of the architecture of nonsense which he has had to construct in order to find some evidence of God in the world. What it seems to amount to is that if people pray and are generally sort of holy, then they weaken the membrane between this world and God's, and occasionally some good stuff gets through to help people cope with all the pain and misery of existence. And that's about it. It's as if he's an atheist who feels a duty to pray because he can't think of anything else useful to do for the world.

Strange; so often we atheists are accused of nihilism. Whereas, it seems to me that the world is a neutral place which we can fill with true glory and beauty if and when we so choose. In other words, I live with and through hope every day. Williams, on the other hand, seems to see the world as a horrible place, so horrible that he has to explain any good he can find in it as God's work, because he can't imagine that it just comes from people. (Or, indeed, nature, chance, and all those other wonderful things). Wretched man.

Fascinatingly, at the end he says "God alone can judge how much of your resistance to God is culpable, due to selfishness, laziness of spirit, bloodymindedness, and how much is just due to whatever got in the way." I despise with all my being this idea that there is some sort of moral responsibility to accept God, but it is easy to see how this offers Williams his own get out clause. In his worldview, God is in all the good bits, and so he is doing good just by believing. That must be comforting to a man whose moral cowardice was written large, in public, in his pitiful climbdown over gay priests. Bugger off and write your rubbish poetry, say I.

Faith. No More!

The problem with faith is that once you use it to justify anything, you can use it to justify everything.

Female genital mutilation. It's illegal in this country, and it's also illegal to take someone abroad from this country to have it done. Bloody well right. Those who practice it, though, say that it is expected in their culture, and will argue that it is required by their religions. It's all about their relationship with their God, and it's nobody else's business.
This may sound familiar to anyone who has paid any attention to the news recently. I don't like a lot of the people who have come out against the wearing of the niqab, and "it makes me feel uncomfortable" is just about the most pathetic, bleating excuse for a contribution to a political debate I've ever heard. But as soon as you admit the argument "It's about my faith" you've lost any possible claim to moral authority.

This is thrown into sharp relief when people justify their adhesion to nonsense in the face of evidence by saying "you don't understand, it's not about evidence, it's about faith." In which case, you can believe absolutely anything and give it equal moral weight and truthfulness. If you accept, alternatively, that some things are taboo, no matter what the faith-based reason for them, then you have admitted something which cuts to the heart of many of the arguments which are used to justify faith based schools and the like.

Morality does not derive from faith. It is imposed on it from without, and often in spite of it.

This means, among other things, that extremist, mine-is-the only-true-faith bigots are actually more rational than tolerant moderates. Morality can only be associated with faith where there is only one faith; if a negotiated morality is acceptable, then it derives from without.

This should be obvious, really. Anyone who has ever read the bible with an open mind will be aware that alongside the "thou shalt not kill" stuff, which everyone can appreciate, is the "go slaughter your enemies and rape their wives and beat their babies brains out" stuff. Yet few who claim their morality to be biblical would argue that the latter exerts moral precedence over the former (even when behaving in the latter manner). Why not? because our morality doesn't come from the damn book, it comes from somewhere else. I would suggest that it is probably from a mixture of hard-wired behaviour and social negotiation, but that's not really important.

What is, is that if you call on faith to justify your position, you have lost the argument by any reasonable intellectual standard. And if you say that religious people tend to be better, because they derive moral standards from their faiths, then you are a liar, a fool, or a bigot.

And as for the veil, by the way, wear it if you want to. But don't tell me that your religion requires it, because if that's not an excuse for genital mutilation - and it isn't - then it's not an excuse for anything else either. You wear it because you want to, and if you have political reasons for wanting to these days, that certainly makes sense. But just because you have individual reasons for wearing it, you have not changed its essential nature. Its purpose and function is to dehumanise women, no matter what any God's mouthpiece says.

Live by this

A new motto:

"Give a good supper to the righteous, and a sound drubbing to the wicked."

Strange mushrooms in the woods...

So here's an interesting ethical one. When I talk to the little ones about God - which has occurred already - I say it's an idea that some people have. As and when the issue of what I think comes up, I will explain in no uncertain terms my own position on the subject. Yet I'm quite happy for them to think that this was put in place by fairies, rather than, as is in fact the case, Jem Finer.

Neologism: "dringley" (hard 'g').

Yeah, you and your pork pie hat.

The Guardian's been giving print space to the tiresome Pete Doherty again. (If you don't know who he is, don't worry, you haven't missed anything at all).

If you've read that and aren't sure what the problem is, exactly, then read these two letters, because they sum it up quite nicely. In fact, they sum it up quite nicely in any case.

If Pete Doherty is our best hope for lyrics better than Noel Gallagher's, then God help us poor atheists. Folks, you can do better. Go out and listen to The Pursuit of Happiness, Warren Zevon, Simon and Garfunkel. if you still think Pete Doherty's got anything to say, then tell me so - I'll be fascinated. For comparison:

"It's the story of a coked-up pansy
Who spent his nights in a flights of fancy
Met two fellas over gin and mixers
They talked for a while he soon got the picture"

vs.

"Don't talk of love
Well I've heard the word before
It's sleeping in my memory
I won't disturb the slumber
Of feelings that have died
If I never loved I never would have cried"

If anyone's writing great lyrics at the moment then I can't think of them off the cuff, although "You Suck" by Strapping Young Lad is very funny. Any suggestions welcome...

Why the human race does not deserve to exist part 342.

Blunt's "Goodbye My Lover" most requested funeral song, it says here, presumably by people who want to make their loved ones suffer. I know that listening to that kind of banal cack makes me want to die.

Me, I want "Surprise, You're Dead" followed by the Dropkick Murpys' version of "Amazing Grace" from "The Gang's All Here". And if there's a band at the wake they can play a version of the Hoodoo Gurus' "Dig it Up" with the lyrics transposed.

They said it wasn't our fault? Must be some mistake!

The Michael Stone report is finally with us. Startlingly, it fails to say that mental health services, having met him, should have cured him of being a bastard with a wave of their magic therapy wand and taken away all his responsibility for not killing people! This seems rather wondrous, given the way this case has been reported over the years. We have bright shiny new personality disorder services in purpose built buildings at Rampton Hospital, thanks to Michael Stone. I wonder how this report - which essentially says that his mental health care was appropriate - will impact on all the service changes that were instituted to make up for his supposed lack of care?

What's not stressed in the BBC report linked to above, but was stated on the radio, is that the report suggests that the criminal justice system needs to be taking more responsibility for managing people like Stone. This is a huge statement; the trend of the last ten years, from this observer's perspective, seems to have been putting more and more pressure on mental health services to bear responsibility for all the behaviour of those who come into contact with them. To say that the criminal justice system is the appropriate agency is the same, surely, as to say that psychopaths must bear the responsibility for their own behaviour.

Speaking of which, I hear that Cherie Blair has been "accidentally" - and deniably - overheard calling Gordon Brown a liar. Whatever happens over the next year, we can be sure that Tony and cohorts will be blaming Gordon and his posse for spoiling it all. This is a crying shame, because it is another reason why Blair will never face up to the horrific disaster that his foreign policy has been.

"How very stupid not to have thought of that" part 308,972

"The president of the United States has claimed, on more than one occasion, to be in dialogue with God. If he said that he was talking to God through his hairdryer, this would precipitate a national emergency. I fail to see how the addition of a hairdryer makes the claim more ridiculous or offensive."

-Sam Harris

Nice.

Calling anyone who ever thought guitars were cool...

Just have a look at these! Quite possibly the most beautiful guitars I've ever seen. One of the guitarists from Mastodon has one of these in Silverburst, which may well be the loveliest single guitar I've ever seen; trying to figure out what exactly it was led me to these. And they only made 40! The swines!

If I can find a link to a decent pic of Mastodon bloke's one I'll pop it in.

Honestly, I care about stuff other than religion, but...

Tony Robinson turned up a prodigous crew of swine tonight in the tediously, but understandably, named "The Doomsday Code". This was all about the Book of Revelation, and the people, some of them hugely influential, who believe in a "literal" truth derived from it, and why we should hate them, fear them, and throw mud and poo at them.

One delightful preacher was deriding those who would believe in evolution, when all the time there was a God telling them that he had had his son tortured to death for them, and they only had to take Him into their hearts, so it was their own fault they were going to BURN and have their livers drawn out and there was going to be a river of blood up to HERE, wow, and isn't God infinitely merciful. Another one, or it might have been the same one, condensed this unconscious irony in beautifully compact form; it ran along the lines of "all you (atheists and agnostics) had to do was accept my grace and love and infinite mercy, but you didn't and so you're fucked forever!" (Without the swearing and probably more elegantly put.)

And so, for the morally inept amongst you, here it is. Any creature which defined the worth of a human being by their attitude towards that creature, rather than by how they behave towards other human beings, would be an egotistical excrescence, even if it did make them in the first place. Anyone with the remotest approximation of a moral sense would have a duty to oppose it.

And that's just one of the reasons why if God existed He, She, or It would be a scumbag of, ahem, biblical proportions. Good job there's no sensible reason to do so, isn't it.

Eight legs good.

I haven't posted for a little while - clearly not enough to complain about. So today I shall complain that it's bloody hard to take pictures of spiders with an autofocus camera. Still, I think these came out OK - I found these two beauties apparently hanging in midair the other day.

'Ang on, I've changed me mind...

Last run before, er, the run, tonight. It felt really good, actually. I've had a nagging pain in my right thigh for a while now, but it's given me less trouble each time for a the last few runs, so I take that to mean I'm judging something right. I have my number - 879 - so I know I'm really in it. Well, this will certainly be different from anything else I've ever done...

Creeping Americanisation... It gets everywhere.

I said assholes! I, of course, meant arseholes. Some heritage is worth preserving. Apologies.

The fact of the matter is, some people are downright wrong, and we don't want them.

Yes, I'm still here. It seems that a vaccine for HPV will soon be here; HPV is the virus which causes cervical cancer. It also seems that the voices of hate and fear have to have their say on this, as on so much else. The Catholic Church, as well as "family campaigners", according to Zoe Williams, for starters. There's reference to more assholes to be found if you follow this link. Let's be quite clear on this - if you think ten year old girls will suddenly want to have sex because they've been given a jab, you're a twisted old pervert. And if you think that thousands of deaths are preferable to giving people the tools to make their own moral choices and to offering them protection when it will be the most effective, then you are the sodding Taliban, and no civilised country deserves you.

Wot no harmonicas?

Slayer have a new album out, "Christ Illusion". On it they still "Hail Satan" and "choose 666", which is reassuring after all these years. But a closer inspection reveals that, rather worryingly, there is something serious going on here. War, religion, religious wars... that's about it as far as lyrics go, and there's no ambiguity about their position. These are hardly new concepts for metal in general and Slayer in particular, but I'd usually expect a few numbers about, I don't know, zombies in there too. There seems little doubt that this focus derives from 9/11 and all that's happened since. So not only could this be described as a concept album, this is surely... a protest album. That shreds like a bastard!

Yeurch...

While wittering about right-wing historians, I forgot to mention the loathsome Niall Ferguson, but now I have remembered!

A Classical Education

I've finally finished Robin Lane Fox's "The Classical World", which I'd been wanting to read since the hardback came out. It was well worth the wait; a fantastic way of putting what I can only describe as "all that stuff" into context without having to go through a pre-1940's public school education. His occasional, somewhat bizarre, emphasis on the significance of gardens is only explicable when one reads the author's biog and discovers that he has been the Financial Times' gardening correspondent since 1970.

It's clear that Fox has a great deal of admiration for many of the military exploits and feels sympathetic towards some individuals whose behaviour was at times, well, ruthless, to say the least. This is probably fair; neither the idea that the classical civilisations were hideously cruel and alien, nor that their inhabitants were demigods compared to us can be adequate. We must judge in context. Nevertheless, I was reminded of David Starkey, another historian; during an edition of "Any Questions" he claimed that anyone who actually understood history would be right-wing politically. I'm not at all sure; I think that, inevitably, people like Starkey and Fox view history from the top-down, as it were. It's no wonder that this happens, because that is the stuff that our traditional sources of History talk about, and that is where all the action seems to be - wars are led by kings, not serfs. Life, though, is lived from the bottom up. There have been vastly more serfs than kings, and the history of kings and queens is really only context for the true meat and gristle of human experience.

Theists and their Straw Men, Life and its Beauty.

So, back to the Hitchens critique of Darwinism. (1) (2) By the way, I acknowledge that the piece I have picked up on is not his own words, but someone else's attempt to sum up his views. However, the "Hitchens critique" seems reasonable shorthand, given that the piece is explicitly associated with him, even if it does not necessarily derive from him. You can find some comment about this in words that are explicitly his under "What are Archbishops for?"; scroll down the page to find it. He says there:
"Darwin's theory - and that of his followers - is a heroic and impressive attempt to describe events that no human could ever have witnessed, on the basis of very thin evidence which cannot easily be tested."

But I shall go back to the original piece first, because there's even more foolishness in it. Like this: "the theory of evolution, unlike other scientific theories cannot be tested because it cannot be and has not been observed, and remains a theory about the distant past." See that Big Bang? Apparently, that's not a scientific theory. To be fair, this is where poor wording may be making Hitchens look more ignorant of science than he actually is. Or maybe he really does believe that the theory of evolution is unique in this regard.

But what, exactly, is meant by "cannot be tested"? This seems to assume that unless you can reproduce all of what you're talking about in a laboratory experiment, then you can't be doing science. Because there are plenty of ways to test a theory. For example, you could dig up thousands upon thousands of fossils which demonstrate different species living on the earth at different times. Or you could look for "transitional stages". Good one this, because for some reason, anti-darwinists of various stripes often point to it:

"If all that's true, then we should see lots of inbetween stages, shouldn't we." Yes, is the reply, and the thing is, that we do. For example, every animal that has ever lived anywhere ever. And all the plants, too. "Species" only appear to be discrete entities because what we actually see are individual creatures at one moment in time. But if that's too abstract to grasp, then take the eye. (Squelch.) Go for a more complex one, such as that of a human, or octopus. Now, the fantastic thing is that just about every stage that could be easily imagined in between "no eye at all" and the organ in your hand exists in animals, many of them alive now. (This eye bit is entirely derived from The Blind Watchmaker, by the way.) So that's transitional stages thoroughly sorted out, then.

Or there's the burgeoning science of genetics, and all that we have learned about molecular clocks. The test, not to labour the point, is whether the information that we keep on turning up is compatible with the theory, or not. And it is, in all its vast quantity.

So, and lastly for today, about this "has not been observed bit". I hope I've already indicated that a theory can be highly robust without needing for all its implications to be seen in process. But go back to the bit about natural selection. The two observations, I would contend, being observations, have been observed. Stop me if I've missed something, here. The rest simply follows. The really interesting part, though, is speciation, the process itself. Even if species, as such, only exist in snapshots of time, the process of speciation is absolutely vital; it does not (necessarily) happen in quantum leaps, but even if we cannot draw a boundary, it is still possible to say "this species is not that species, yet they are both descended from that species." If you can identify that, then you have identified a speciation.
Shame we can't see that happening, isn't it? Oh. Have a look here. And here. I'll not deny that this evidence has its detractors. Some of those detractors may actually be better at it than that one, who nicely attempts to refute the evidence by ignoring most of it (compare the examples listed by the proponent above and the opponent), and by setting up straw men: "Darwinists say all dogs are different species!". Only thick ones. "Speciation...In the sense of one species changing into another" is not what we're looking for; speciation, where descendents of a common ancestor diverge into separate species is another matter entirely.

Well, I'm off for now. If this has become gibberish, I may well come back to tighten it up; in the meantime, I just wish we Darwinists had more than just the flimsiest of evidence to draw upon. More about why Intelligent Design is just a misprint of Nonrational Craving for a big old Daddy in the sky later.

My fun spoilt.

Woe! Jesse Norman has disappointed me. He was introduced on "Any Questions" with reference to the Telegraph's having described him as "one of the brightest young Tory minds". Nick Clarke then mentioned his recent book "Compassionate Conservatism, what is it, and why we need it". I was delighted by this apparent evidence that this bright young Tory mind couldn't even string a coherent title together (hint - where does the question mark go?). Unfortunately, it seems the real title has it "what it is, and why we need it".

I like the idea of a "Tory mind", though, somehow defined by its quintessential connection to a political party. Bit Stalinist, somehow.

I'm tough, me

Yikes; supposedly a shortish "tempo run" tonight; in fact a miserable washout. Makes me realise what a dry summer it's been, since I've encountered the rain only once before since starting this insane mission. It's not being able to see that I object to the most. Moan, moan; now I really feel like Ranulph Fiennes.

On the Other Hand

Of course, we might all just be spawned from pods...

Right, then, about that Evolution thing.

See entries below; time to see if I can nail this. For starters, let's just check what Natural Selection actually means, because I think that there are a lot of people who have never understood this. It's actually blindingly simple. It depends on only two observations. The rest barely constitutes an argument; it's really just a statement of a necessary truth.

Observation One: Changes in the form of an animal (including people) can occur between generations.
Observation Two: These changes can often be inherited.

Yup, that's it, and I'd just like to see anyone try to say that either of those points has not enough evidence to support it. We'd be a lot colder if it wasn't true, because we wouldn't have such marvelously woolly sheep.

Now here's the logic bit.
If such a change confers an advantage upon its possessor, then those who possess it will do better than those who don't. (As you see, this is basically a definition of "advantage". It's an important step, though, because it sets up the next one.)
This means that, over time, the proportion of creatures (in the particular context) with the trait in question will increase.

And. That's. It. That's what it means, for a particular trait to be naturally selected. Everything else we know is just icing on the cake, really.

This is survival of the fittest, and for those amongst you who have never gotten over the misinformation which was promulgated in (particularly) America post-Darwin, please note the complete absence of it being all about getting one over on the other guy, or of any feature which could allow it to be mistaken for any sort of moral imperative.

I'm not saying that this is enough to account robustly for all that is attributed to the process of evolution. But this is what is meant by Natural Selection, and this is what is meant by the Survival of the Fittest; please, show me how the existence of these forces is just a matter of opinion, do.

So Arch, You Could Build a Cathedral On 'Em.

So, we know all about how Queen Muse are. The backing vocals, the imperviousness to ridicule, the painstaking layering. This refers of course to the time when Queen really did build Sonic Cathedrals of Sound, rather than spending months evidently getting a synthesizer to go "parp".

But how Metal are they? On the day of the Loincloth Revolution, when Death comes at last to False Metal, will they be lined up against the wall next to Jon BJ, or will they be knighted (order of Olympus Mons) next to Lemmy? Lemmy, like Robert Plant and Jimmy Page, says his band isn't Heavy Metal; they are all wrong, and they have missed a key point: it isn't up to them. I digress - although the Zeppelin connection is apposite; it doesn't matter how many reggae songs you do nor how much folk, if you put Stonehenge on your stage you are Metal. So it's not all about the riff quotient; "In Through the Out Door" is part of the Metal Canon, even if "In the Evening" is the only song on it which is Metal in and of itself.

So, let's look at the evidence. A first album that sounds like watered-down Radiohead? Ah, not helpful, or indeed good in any sense whatsoever. Still, let's carry on. Song called "Assassin"? Better. Song called "Assassin" with a galloping riff and which contains the lyric "destroy demonocracy"? Much better. Songs about celestial phenomena? Positively Rush! Having your guitars custom built with all sorts of gimmicks, and calling them "Mattocasters", you yourself being called Matt? Sterling work. Duffel coats? Oh dear. Video where the band ride spaceships away from exploding planets? Now that should be good, but Linkin Park have been up to that sort of thing too, and they are False, False, False, and knobshiners to boot.

Hmm. But what about a song called "Knights of Cydonia"? That's promising. What about a song called "Knights of Cydonia" which actually features the sound of galloping horses? My hands desperately want to do the horn thing, but I think we need a clincher. So, go and listen to "Supermassive Black Hole". Listen to the way he delivers the title. Why does he pronounce "Hole" like that? Well, I wonder if you could write that down phonetically, somehow. Some way of showing precisely how he does that vowel sound. Ah, yes, of course. "Supermassive Black Höle". QED.

String 'Em Up!

Not the greatest start to the day. Somehow, it's actually more annoying because there doesn't seem even to have been an attempt to steal anything. Just for fun. Now, it's nothing, of course, which couldn't be dealt with with a couple of hours of cleaning, a few 'phone calls and a trip to the local glass replacement firm. In the course of a lifetime, it's not much, really, and not worth wasting time worrying about.

But you know what? I could see their feet hacked off at the ankles without it troubling my conscience. Or do it myself. Which just goes to show what a bloody stupid idea is John Reid's current one of letting victims have a say in the disposal of offenders.

This newfangled technology...

I posted today - it's appeared below, as "Hitchens (Peter) on Darwinism etc." I saved it as a draft a few days ago, but I would still have thought it would post - well - here, as I actually posted it today. Sighs. What I intended to do was split it in two - there was more than the same again, which I seem to have lost. Nuts.
Anyway, have a look at it, if only for a link to an entertaining bit of banter with Hitchens and Fry.

More time lords

I found this in the Guardian's diary section today. It's utterly beautiful and requires no other comment.

"The office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron." HL Mencken, 1920.

I run! You give away your cash!

See "Give us your fucking money" below; here's a page for sponsoring my run and giving your money to Amnesty:

http://www.justgiving.com/danhaycock

Thangyewverymudge.

Blair in your past, present and future! Celebrate!

Armando agrees with me, but the bastard's managed to explain the otherwise inexplicable. I'd been wondering if and when Russell Davies was going to recast the Master...

In fact, I've just read a headline which suggests that even Dubya is going to suggest, soon, that perhaps killing hundreds of civilians and rendering their cities uninhabitable might be a bit unhelpful. Most observers would have to admit that this is potentially quite remarkable, and no bad thing. Maybe it even comes as the result of skilful behind the scenes work. Maybe that would have been undermined by calls for immediate ceasefire. I don't believe it, though.

Hitchens (Peter) on Darwinism. God help us. I mean...

In the entry about Peter Hitchens in Wikipedia, I found the phrase "profound shallowness", which is rather nice. I also found the following text, which I will reproduce as the chances are it won't be there in ten minutes:

On Darwinism
Hitchens' position on the theory of evolution is that the theory of evolution, unlike other scientific theories cannot be tested because it cannot be and has not been observed, and remains a theory about the distant past. Those who adhere to it are therefore embracing a faith, just as theists (whose beliefs also cannot be tested) are. His use of expressions such as 'fundamentalist' and 'ayatollah' to describe the intolerant, dogmatic advocates of evolution is mockery intended to provoke thought - applying to them the epithets they aim at others. He opposes dogmatism of any kind on this subject, pointing out that neither he nor anyone else has any idea how the realm of nature took its present shape, or how the universe began. Views on this, theist or atheist, remain a matter of free choice.

As to why I seem to be obsessed by the Hitchens boys at the moment, it's just that I seem to keep running into both of them. Peter was on Radio Four last Saturday explaining why women should stay in the home while being very careful not to actually say that.

Both Hitchens brothers are clearly very articulate, bright, and capable of some excellent insight. I have the sense, though, that they are each equally happy using rhetorical slights of hand to support poor reasoning when it supports their prejudices as they are making truly well-argued cases. While both celebrate their reason, they are both idealogues; if you watch Peter for long enough, he will start talking about "real" conservatives, which is a Platonic ideal too far for me. Similarly, Christopher just loves his newfound neoconservatism nearly as much as he still loves his Trotskyist identity (see - or rather hear - him on this program, if it's still up). He's right about God, though. And this here, which I've mentioned before, is very entertaining and worth your time. However! this is not what I originally intended to talk about, so I will wrap it up and start again.

Name that Fallacy

Here is a review from today's Guardian. In it John Gray sympathises with but disagrees with the thesis presented by Amartya Sen in "Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny". Broadly, Gray says that Sen argues that too much thinking categorises people in terms a single identity - muslim, for example - rather than the multiplicity of interrelated roles which is a more proper way of viewing a person. This mistake then fuels conflict. Gray thinks that Sen's solution to this is unrealistic, but also that Sen has misunderstood human nature. I don't want to go too far into the relative merits of Sen's and Gray's understanding; my interest was piqued by one particular thing that Gray says:

"For Sen, as a good liberal rationalist, it is an article of faith that the violence of identity is a result of erroneous beliefs. He cannot accept that its causes are inherent in human beings themselves."

This is surely a false dichotomy, as there is no reason why the causes of those irrational beliefs cannot be inherent in human beings. Humans are not naturally rational; there wouldn't be enough time for all decisions to go through internal processes of deductive reasoning. Most thinking is done in shortcuts, and one type of shortcut is the stereotype. They are useful - actually, they are essential. They are often correct, but sometimes erroneous beliefs whose origins are inherent in human beings. More on this later.

Keep your smelly shoes to yourself.

There is a general assumption that experience is a good thing. This is reflected in phrases like "walk a mile in my shoes", "university of life".
Plainly, though, experience is not always useful. I am sure that the multitude of Israelis who support their country's recent behaviour do so because their quite genuine experience teaches them that it is appropriate. Similarly, Hizbullah no doubt feel their behaviour is appropriate, because that stems from their own life experiences. Each in turn creates the experience of the other. And thus we are inexorably led to unstoppable cycles of violence and barbarity in which the most bestial behaviour seems reasonable. So, the next time someone says "walk a mile in my shoes before you judge me", you may want to be sympathetic, you may want to express understanding, but if the behaviour can only be justified by "walking in their shoes" then that should be a big glowing red warning to you that there's a problem here.

Some people will use phrases like "I live in the real world" to justify their holding certain opinions. This often seems to mean that they in fact can't justify or explain them other than by making this assertion; it's the sort of crap bigots come out with to justify ill-concieved stereotyping. It is an attempt to make a point inarguable - if you don't agree, that's just because you haven't had enough experience to understand. It is a poor cloak for ignorance. In my experience.

Where do you start?

Will Tony Blair, or someone, please explain why asking for an immediate ceasefire will prevent a sustainable ceasefire? No, of course they won't.

Give us your fucking money

I mentioned running below, which may well have surprised anyone who read it and knows me. However, it's so; I decided to enter the Nottingham Half-Marathon this year, entirely for the sake of the challenge and the "buzz" - well, buzzes, meaning the physical buzz from the exercise, and the achievement buzz. Half-Marathon because I didn't think I had time enough to get fit enough for a full one, but that doesn't mean that won't come later.

Since I was going to do it anyway, though, I figured it would be a waste not to do something else with it, so to speak, and so I will be raising money for Amnesty. An address for a justgiving page will be up soon, and I'll be emailing people and stuff.

So, why Amnesty? Put it this way: my raising money for Amnesty will do not a jot to resolve the situation in the Middle East, but it puts a bit of cash in the way of people who are trying to help people cope with the consequences of the worst human behaviour. We're all seeing some pretty dreadful human behaviour on a daily basis at the moment. Can your money, put to some medical charity, maybe save some lives? Indeed. Should we fight nature in that way? Oh yes, not for nothing do I describe myself as a child of the Enlightenment. However, I am not against cancer in the same way as I feel impelled to be against, for example, war, torture, Israel's behaviour, AND Hizbullah's behaviour. So am I going to dedicate my life to fighting injustice? Of course not; I have a life and a family to which I am dedicated; I don't love other people's children more than I love my own. For one reason. But, if 95% of my nature is quite venal, that's no reason to suppress the other 5%; or, to put it another way, I might as well raise some money, and Amnesty seems to me to be a good place to put it. I hope anyone who reads this will agree; I will post the justgiving page as soon as I recieve a couple of bits of info from Amnesty.

My name in lights. Well, nearly.

I'm pleased to have had a letter published in the Guardian's review section today. It's here, and the article to which it refers is here. Here's the full text of the letter, before the Graun edited it:

"Do we like [Gill's Petra drawings] any less knowing...that...Gill was habitually abusing his two elder daughters?" asks Fiona MacCarthy. Well, I certainly hope so. Let me reframe that question: "Does the knowledge that these are a rapist's portraits of his victim, who also happens to be his daughter, change the way we feel about it?" Are these pictures really still "delicious"?
Sex offenders, by the way, are not motivated by an "overbalance of tendresse". Like other emotionally manipulative people, though, they are often expert at fooling the naive, which makes their behaviour easier to commit and to get away with.

Don't misunderstand me - many forms of transgression are terrific and productive and thrilling in Art and in life. Work of incontestible value has been created by some vile people, too; you could start with Wagner and make a list a mile long. But "impossible to view without a frisson, those delicate, delicious portraits of the teenage Petra"? A "frisson", for goodness sake, like it's just a bit of added spice. For all I know, Petra's still alive, although she must be very ancient if so. She wasn't raped by her father in order to give your viewing experience added flavour, she was raped by her father because he was scum.

Homosexuality is often quoted as the archetypal transgressive behaviour, and the changes in its legal status are testament to the inappropriateness of mistaking "illegal" for "bad". This is not the same thing, though. Even many of those stupid enough to believe that homosexuality is in some sense unnatural, let alone immoral, must, I hope, understand the whole "consenting adults" thing, and why if I call this a crime, it is in a different sense from that in which homosexuality used to be one.

So should we destroy Gill's works? Of course not; see reference to Wagner, above, and no, you don't have to be as good as W. for the argument to apply. And NO, an "it's art" defense does not apply to child pornography. I can recognise, having said that, that the Petra pictures could be seen as occupying something of a grey area in that regard; more thought required, perhaps.

What I do know is that, knowing what they are, I don't want the Petra pictures on my wall.

Anyway - my name's in the paper today!

My Cat Drinks the Blood of the Censorious

The easiest comment to make about this would surely be the timeworn truism that some people have no sense of humour, although that's perhaps not much comfort. Instead, I suggest finding solace in the fact that idiocy is its own punishment.
She had to take her sign down, but the person who made the complaint has to live their whole life as a tedious waste of oxygen who has nothing to offer but to make the world a little greyer. Without question a fender-less eunuch, and a knobshiner to boot. Man, woman or other.
For goodness sake, when did people start to expect to live their lives without ever being offended? (I am in the uncomfortable position of being indebted to Christopher Hitchens to some extent on this one. A rather wonderful conversation between him and Stephen Fry on the theme of blasphemy is available as a podcast - I'll find a link to it at some point soon. Anyway, Hitchens makes this point.) And since when did the population, as a general trend, decide to indulge such nonentities, rather than telling them where to go, and to think about what it really means to live in a world with other people in it while they're out there? It's no good expecting me to tolerate your millenialist death cult if you won't tolerate my laughing at you.

"There's some rum thoughts going on inside that lad's head" said Mr. Ravenscroft.

Well, a day so hot and humid that you can't sit still for more than a couple of minutes or you find yourself in a puddle. After that it makes perfect sense, of course, to go running in the still-oppressive evening heat. Or pace running, even. I'm glad to say that the afterglow is rather lovely, in fact, because otherwise there wouldn't have been a lot to recommend it. "Ah!" you say, "surely the point of running is the challenge, and without suffering there is no challenge?"

No. The point of running is that moment when you suddenly feel like you're flying, because the ground is just shooting by under your feet and you could go on like that for ever and ever and you aren't flying because you're almost part of the ground but there's no suffering and no effort at all. And that happens more often than you might think. Bloody hard work a lot of the rest of the time, though.

The last couple of times out I've been listening to a Julian Cope playlist on shuffle while I run; I had feared that this wouldn't work too well, and that I'd get too much Autogeddon turgidity and not enough Jehovahkill transcendence, but quite the opposite, in fact. Plus when you're listening to someone singing "to penetrate the diamond the pituitary gland gets torn off its axis and leaves" it's hard to think that what you're doing might be construed as daft.

Speaking of the Archdrude, on a recent perusal of his website (http://www.headheritage.co.uk/) I discovered what has instantly become one of my all time favourite insults. It is this:
"fender-less eunuch".
I hope I need say no more, but for me this just gets funnier and cleverer the more I think about it; there's a whole world-view wrapped up in that. The recipient, incidentally, was a charming radical Muslim who had been explaining how we in the West needed to "fix our women". Because they dress like whores, that sort of thing. Now, I think this epithet works exceptionally well when applied to this sort of "clerical knobshiner", as Copey also, exquisitely, refers to him, but need surely not be restricted to this use. If Julian Cope didn't exist it would be impossible to invent him.

Don't Tar Me With Your Brush

This is my blog, where I can rant if I want to. So...

On Radio Four last Sunday I heard a program about faith schools, their advocates and their opponents (23/07/06, Sunday Best - A Class Apart). One man interviewed was the Reverend Steve Chalk, who runs a religious charity which is taking over the running of Enfield Academy and other schools. I was quite warming to his apparent broadmindedness until he was explaining how very broad the education in schools needs to be, how indoctrination needed to be avoided, by incorporating, alongside teaching about Christianity, teaching about Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism..."and that other great faith, Secular Humanism."

Right! Lets go through this, once again, for the hard of thinking. The absence of faith is not the same thing as another kind of faith. Positions which do not start from the premise that there is a God are not equivalent to those that do. To not assert a thing is not the same as to assert a thing. The difference between a non-theist position and a theist one is really quite easy to fathom - it's right there in the language, so there's just no excuse for this twisting of that language in order to assert that the lack of faith is just a special kind of faith.

So let's just think about what "faith" means here. Whenever I try to boil it down, what I am left with is that it is all about believing something for which there is no evidence, or which contradicts the evidence, or which is otherwise impossible. I really can't bring myself to see this as in any sense a virtue.

Theists often try to defend their position against reason by asserting the presence of faith in other modes of thought, and generalising from there. The deterministic nature of Marxism is an example commonly given. The fallacy of this, though, is that identifying an error in one mode of thinking, which is also present in another, does not indicate that it is not an error. Furthermore, to identify aspects of faith in one aggressively antireligious system is not a demonstration that all modes of thought not including a God work the same way.

Which brings me back to the reverend's vocabulary - not all atheistic thought should really be classified as Secular Humanism. However, Secular Humanism as a very specific philosophy is not followed by more than a few intellectuals, as compared with the teeming millions in the theist yoke. Yet Mr Chalk describes it as a "great faith". This is a common trick which works by encouraging people to group all atheist thought together under one umbrella, the easier to disparage it.

Does all this matter? Well, it does to me. In a country and at a time when faith schools are such an issue, it matters greatly that even apparently moderate advocates of faith schools can't help but display their religious chauvinism wrapped in doublespeak.