Tag Archives: religion

Sure and certain knowledge

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by Atheism, Climate Change, Environment, Evolution • Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

It’s an odd little misunderstanding, just a minor difference in the way of looking at the world, but it has played a disproportionately huge part in making seven billion people content to allow a few energy companies turn off the world’s support systems and let them all die.

So, what is it, this misunderstanding that has the people who know what’s happening talking past the people who need to know what’s happening? Well it is just a different use of words like certainty and probability – a scientific use and a common use.

The general public thinks that things for which they have little or no evidence, just anecdote or faith, are certainties. Scientists think that nothing is certain, that all we have is the probability that something is true based on amount of evidence.

The public will use all kinds of language based on nothing but gut feeling and personal ideology to express their belief that something is true “exactly right” “certainly true” “absolutely no doubt” “no doubt” “probably” “possibly” “don’t think so” “nah, don’t believe that” “c’mon, pull the other one, that one has bells on it”.

Scientists, recognising that the presence or absence of bells is a bit hard to define precisely have by contrast developed an exact measurement for the likelihood of truth based on assessment of number of observations. It is a mathematical concept in which you can approach (by repeating an experiment over and over) more and more closely to 100% certainty but never quite reach it. For practical purposes though a probability somewhere in the 90% plus level is thought of as being a pretty sure thing (although it depends on the discipline and particular kind of experiment, physics for example demands much higher certainty than, say, the social sciences).

As well as the mathematical component though, the idea of scientific probability represents the scientific mindset – no result can be certain because the very next experiment may overturn it in whole or in part. If a writer is only as good as his last novel, then a scientific theory is, in a sense, only as good as its last experiment.

For the public though lots of things are certain, have to be otherwise you wouldn’t get up in the morning. These certainties are based on religion, ideology, common sense, authority, repetitive observations. Sun rises in East, there is a “god” or two, capitalism is the end of history, some people have psychic powers, the Liberal Party is there for the battlers, vitamin C cures colds. Then there are uncertainties where the outcome is merely probable – will my football team win next week, am I having a drink with friends on Friday night, are UFOs real, can acupuncture cure cancer, is Kevin Rudd challenging for leadership or is it a media invention.

So, the stage is set. When scientists are asked about climate change in general or particular aspects of it, they reply, as good scientists do “well there is a high probability that X is the case”. When asked “are you certain?” they reply “well, no nothing in science is ‘certain’”. They mean by this that certainty can never, mathematically, reach 100%, and they are obliged to repeat this fundamental tenet of science endlessly, thinking to themselves “well, of course there is no such thing as 100% certainty in science, don’t these idiots know anything?” Or they formalise this the way the IPCC does, saying that the chances of Y event happening in Z time have a probability of “90%” or “95%”.

Now in both cases the scientists are also thinking, and assuming the listeners are familiar with the concept, that for all practical purposes the projected outcome is certain. Will almost certainly in fact (because the scientists are sick of being called alarmist) be much more likely than the probability being quoted which will have been deliberately set on the low side.

The scientist leans back and relaxes at this point, happy in the conviction that he has merely restated the bleeding obvious about the scientific method and that everyone will totally understand what he means – and get on with saving the planet which he knows with absolute certainty is under its greatest threat in millions of years.

The listener or reader however, Joe Public, hears something quite different. They hear that things aren’t certain, just probable, and they interpret the “probable” as their own version of that prediction. Climate change becomes, in their own minds, no more likely than, say, the reality of UFOs. And you wouldn’t want to spend billions of dollars defending against UFOs now, would you.

This continues on to the details. Is this particular massive storm; record-breaking drought; record high temperature; record flood, the result of climate change? “Oh, we couldn’t say that with certainty”, says the scientist. Joe Public hears this as “No”.

Now while the scientists are maintaining scientific purity on the questions of certainty and probability, there are people, with vested interests in the short-term outcome (we all have a vested interest in the long term outcome, but most of us don’t know that), who have absolutely no scruples in pretending that scientific “uncertainty” is real uncertainty and therefore no one would want to do anything when everything is uncertain. So they add in bits and pieces of questions and comments on the siting of thermometers, melting of glaciers, troposphere temperatures, mediaeval warming periods, the north west passage, deep sea temperatures, climate sensitivity, snowfall in Chicago, cosmic rays and the like. None of them mean anything much in themselves, none of them have the slightest relevance in general to the overall pattern of rising CO2 levels causing global warming and consequent climate change.

The scientific community, realising (in some cases very belatedly) the con trick being played on them and on the community at large, and seeing the consequent failure of politicians to take any meaningful action to pull back on CO2 production, have at last begun to fight back a little. Oh they still talk about uncertainty and probability, but a few brave souls have begun to say “the science is settled”.

To see what they mean by this it is worth exploring an analogy. The theory that explains how evolution occurs (involving variation, natural selection, and geographic isolation) was extensively debated in the years after 1859 (when it had been simultaneously proposed by Darwin and Wallace after they arrived at it from different data). Some scientists (like Thomas Huxley “why didn’t I think of that”) instantly recognised its validity. Others were more cautious, looking for contradictions, wondering about mechanisms for the variation (in the years before either genes or DNA were discovered), debating the religious implications and so on. But over the next few decades the science became settled. That is the truth of the theory was clear, and now research was mopping up the details (again genes and DNA in particular) relating to the exact mechanisms. And also investigating both the comparisons and relationships between living species and their fossil records with new eyes that greatly fleshed out the actual path that the evolution of living organisms had taken on this planet.

The science of evolution is settled. There remain arguments over details of particular evolutionary sequences, whether there are other speciation mechanisms apart from the dominant allopatric one, exactly how genes interact during development and so on. But the science is settled and forms the basis, directly or indirectly, of all the sciences to do with life on the planet, and conversely is supported by all the other sciences (notably geology, chemistry, physics). Oh there are one or two scientists, brains addled by religion, who purport to believe that there is evidence for god in bacterial flagellae. But their argument (that some feature is too complex to have evolved) was one that Darwin was familiar with, and has been demolished thousands of times in the subsequent 150 years. It is amazing how otherwise apparently smart people can have their brains addled by religion.

In exactly the same way the science of climate change is settled. The fundamental elements (Milankovitch cycles, greenhouse gases, sun activity, geography) have been known for decades (in the case of greenhouse gas not much less than evolution). The science forms the basis for all the other sciences to do with the surface and atmosphere of this planet, and in turn is supported by all the other relevant sciences. Scientists argue over details of exact time frames, precisely how some mechanisms interact, likely impacts on ecology, historical sequences, and so on, but none of that has any effect on the fundamental science. Oh there are one or two scientists, brains addled by libertarian and neocon ideology, who purport to believe that climate sensitivity is a bit lower, or that clouds are going to roll in to our rescue, or that there is nothing new in the astonishing warming of the planet over the last 3 decades, but their arguments have been demolished thousands of times. Amazing how otherwise apparently smart people can have their brains addled by libertarian and neoconservative nonsense.

Look I am a scientist, OK? I understand the need to maintain the fundamental core of the scientific process, that nothing is ever 100% certain. I get that, ok? And I know that scientists are naturally shy and reticent (me too) and reluctant to involve themselves in public slanging matches and political debates, wanting to remain pure and above all that. But listen, this is the time for all good men and women to come to the aid of the planet. Cast aside your Clark Kent clothes in a handy phone box. Start speaking out. There will be death threats. The last thing the ideologues and the energy companies want is for scientists to discover they have a voice – they have already been trying to discredit science as a whole in case you ever did start to speak out, but you are still just in time if you hurry. Make it clear that the science is, sadly, settled, the data in, the planet in really big trouble. You wouldn’t say “oh, nothing certain about evolution” so don’t do it about climate change. Whatever the fine details that remain to be sorted it is absolutely irrefutable that adding more and more CO to the atmosphere is warming the planet rapidly, changing the climate, buggering up the ecology, causing damaging weather events, and it is going to get so bad that we are, not to put too fine a point on it, stuffed as a species. Nothing more certain.

Say so.

Let us all rejoice, rejoice

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by Atheism • Tags: , , , , ,

Did you see that some Christian school in Australia had rewritten the second verse of the national anthem to include a whole lot of stuff about some god or other? Look I know national anthems are crap. “our home is girt by sea”? Sounds like something Monty Python might write. And grown up people singing about a “gracious queen”. Dunno about America. They seem to have several different national anthems all of which have to be sung while clutching heart. Can’t remember anything about 183 of the other 184 anthems – they all appear to be identical. No, the only decent one is that of France (of course) – perhaps we could all take turns borrowing it.

Still, humble as it may be, our anthem, though a poor thing, is our own, and I don’t want christians messing with it as part of their brain washing (sorry, schooling, don’t know what got into me there) program. A thin edge of the wedge if ever I saw one.

Consider America. One day a sane, rational sort of country, civilised, creative, making movies, going to moon, that sort of thing. Then some idiot decided to add “in god we trust” to the coinage (rather like Germans adding “god with us” to army belt buckles). Next thing you know you have prayers in schools, ten commandments in courthouses, presidential candidates outdoing each other in carrying the biggest bible, evangelists taking over the armed forces, 99% of the people believing the world is 10,000 years old, and Rick Perry.

But I have a solution. The British have a law that no one can sing any verse about the gracious queen except the first (the rest consisting of all kinds of embarrassing rubbish about the sun never setting on lesser breeds without the law). So, we just pass the same law. No one can remember our second verse anyway (god knows where the christians found it), and blocking it would save all those excruciating scenes of footballers opening and closing mouths silently looking like those clown heads in a sideshow.

There, problem solved. If they complain threaten to change our anthem to the one about sheep stealing. Bit hard to get god into that one. Unless it’s the holy ghost who may be heard down by the billabong …

I really don’t want Jim Wallace as PM. Or some failed seminary student.

You give me fever

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by Media, politics • Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

When you have a fever your perception of the world gets distorted, your brain cells manipulated by virus and high temperature to see all kinds of things that are not there.

Chemotherapy is similar. After you have it you are left not knowing what changes to your body are the result of the illness, which are the result of the treatment, which are just ordinary everyday ailments that you normally would have ignored.

The media is having the effect of fever or vencristin on the body politic. Reading, seeing, hearing the news now I have no idea whether the events being described are real or fake, meaningful or meaningless, deserving of outrage or approbation. Video and photographic images may (or may not) be faked; descriptions of events true or false; reporters may (or more likely may not) be anywhere near the scene they are apparently describing; both witnesses and reporters may (or may not) have a vested interest (or an ideological purpose) in presenting a story in a certain way; politicians and soldiers and economists may be telling the truth or lying.

Bodies may or may not have been buried, shots may or may not have been fired, money may or may not have been stolen, people may or may not be terrorists or freedom fighters, heroes or villains. Conversely the Earth is warming, the poor are getting poorer, religion is damaging society, taxes are too low, science is essential to society, in spite of narratives that pretend these things are debatable.

The media were once meant to fling open the curtains of the sick room, let the light in, diagnose the symptoms of society, treat ills. Now they bring new and virulent diseases, raise temperatures, manipulate our brains, create illusions, prevent us perceiving the real world.

How do we cure that?

Downhill Racers

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by politics • Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Well, the presidential race is on again in America (astonishing that it takes well over a year to find out which of the few people rich enough to try is going to be “elected” to serve the corporations) and the Republicans have once again scraped together a motley crew of nutters, ideologues and religious maniacs from whom to choose their candidate.

The whole process of course is utterly alien to those of us in this simple bucolic political world of Australia with its primitive and platonic ideas of democracy. The candidates seem like creatures from another planet, or an alien society in which chanting shamans analyse the entrails of goats to decide their leader and policies. So let me translate what the race is currently about.

Imaginary being’s preferences
Candidate 1 – “god likes me more than he does you”; C2 “oh no he doesn’t he likes me best”; C3 “no, he wants ME to win, told me”; C4 “he was talking to me you moron, I am god’s chosen president”.

Living in shoebox
C1- All children will live in poverty in shoeboxes by 2013. Not rich children, obviously; C2 All children living in poverty and parents sold into slavery; C3 All children in poverty, slave parents, grandparents allowed to starve to death; C4 All children in poverty, slave parents, starving grandparents, no medical care for anyone. Except the rich, obviously.

Furriners (1)
C1 – I will build a brick wall 1000km long and 20m high along Mexican border to stop asylum seekers; C2 Build a wall, patrol with helicopters with machine guns with orders to kill; C3 Wall, helicopters, drones on Mexican side to shoot rockets at anyone walking towards wall; C4 Wall, helicopters, drones, and scorched earth for 100km on Mexican side of border.

Furriners (2)
C1 – Will bomb any country that has any terrorists; C2 Bomb any country with terrorists and who won’t sell resources to America; C3 Bomb any country with terrorists that won’t give resources to America; C4 Bomb any country with or without terrorists that won’t give resources to America.

This land is our land
C1 – More oil wells – offshore, onshore, north, south, national parks, everywhere; C2 More oil wells and remove all environmental protection laws; C3 More oil, no laws, ensure cheap disposal of toxic wastes in rivers, oceans, air; C4 more oil, no laws, toxic disposal, compulsory increase of CO2 production from all sources.

Guns
C1 – More guns; C2 A lot more guns; C3 Compulsory guns for every adult; C4 compulsory multiple guns for every citizen from birth.

Schools
C1 – No teaching evolution in schools; C2 No teaching evolution or environment; C3 No teaching evolution environment ethnic studies; C4 No evolution, environment, ethnics – only classes in religion permitted

Unions
C1 – All union leaders arrested and sent to Guantanamo Bay; C2 Ditto; C3 Ditto; C4 Ditto.

Hmm, on second thoughts, is this really that much different to the process by which we got Tony Abbott as future Prime Minister?

Never on a Sunday

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by Atheism • Tags: , , , , , , ,

The big advantage of having an atheist prime minister is that she can give the country seven days a week hard work instead of spending Sundays in the company of imaginary beings and people who believe in imaginary beings. You get 14% more work out of an atheist prime minister than a god-botherer.

But in recent times the Prime Minister has made it more and more clear that her atheism is only skin deep. In an interview the other day she suggested that many great literary works owed their existence to the Bible. She is following a well-worn path of religious apologists here. Whenever the chant of “God. What is he good for?” rises skyward yet again, religious apologists will pour out of the woodwork to suggest all kinds of benefits that religion has brought to the human race. They will talk about art works, and cathedrals, and music (and now our PM adds “literary works” to the list), and suggest that the world would be a much poorer place in the absence of the inspiration that religion has bought to artists and musicians and architects. Poppycock.

Economists talk about “opportunity costs”, that is the cost not only of taking the actual course decided upon, but the cost of not taking a different course. Religion has been the ultimate opportunity cost for the human race over thousands of years, perhaps only approached in its negative effects, its lost opportunities, by wars (many also the result of religion). An obvious case is in schools. Picture a fundamentalist religious school of any flavour, picture the children rote learning scriptures – in some cases that is all they learn, in others they spend considerable time on religious “studies”. But even where they only have limited religion activities, any at all is taking time away from productive educational activities, the kind that, as a society, we profess to want children undertaking. If a parent was to demand that a child spend several school hours a week watching cartoons, or playing video games, or chatting on facebook, or engaging in some hobby, would we be happy with that as a useful way to enhance education? Yet we turn a blind eye to the hobby of religion.

On a larger scale whole societies have sacrificed considerable opportunity costs as huge proportions of their population, often over generations, laboured to build christian cathedrals and monasteries, or stonehenge, or giant buddhist statues and temples, or Easter Island statues, or large numbers of mosques in a town, or the Egyptian pyramids; and then staffed many of these structures with people who could also have been gainfully employed in the economic, cultural or social activities of their society. Huge amounts of money have also been withdrawn from the labour of the population and frozen beyond recovery in such religious architectural assets, as well as the accumulated wealth in gold and other art objects held by religious hierarchies. Just think what the genius of the Egyptians could have achieved if not dragged down by the pyramid building cancer.

But did not the demand for religious art and music and architecture drive artistic development, produce works of great beauty and inspiration? Well, perhaps it did, but they are no more substantial than sand castles, or ice sculptures, or decorations on coffee foam – it is endeavour based on an imaginary being with imaginary characteristics and imaginary activities. Oh I guess there can be beauty in mythology, in fairy stories, in tall tales, but we generally think of them as being for children, thinking as children. Its existence as apparently being for adults again imposes an opportunity cost, replacing the potential of works related to real human beings and their aspirations,  their triumphs and tragedies, hopes and fears, loves and hates; the beauties of the natural world; the wonders of the universe.

But, oh, wait, we have been getting those works, haven’t we, since the churches lost much of their power over human minds, at least in the West, and artists and musicians, yes, and writers, started celebrating real beings instead of imaginary ones. So using art production as an excuse for literature is no more valid than suggesting we need religion to produce values. I will set my literary endeavours, and values, against those of the religiously inspired any day of the week. Including Sunday.

Steeped in religion

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by Atheism • Tags: , , , , , ,

As regular readers will know I got an iPad to give me something to do during treatment sessions and recovery periods. As a result I have done quite a lot of browsing on Amazon for ebooks. Something seemed odd about the range of non-fiction titles available, but for a while I couldn’t figure out what it was.

Then it came to me – religion. This American site with its emphasis on American books and American customers has a non-fiction list saturated with religion. Of 479,000 non-fiction titles 71,000 (15%) are “religion & spirituality” far more than any other category except history (73,000). This strikes me as a hugely disproportionate number – almost one book in every six. In an Australian bookshop the equivalent section would be tiny, and I guess the same would be true of Europe.

The other notable characteristic is indicated by the inclusion of this out-pouring of religion in the non-fiction section. These are titles (and don’t tell me I can’t judge a book by its title) that don’t treat religion in the way a civilised country does, a somewhat embarrassed tentative offering on a topic potential readers know is nutty and esoteric, but as if this is a fully fledged alternative universe where the bible is literally true, people live their lives by its rules, prayer works, and little boys (in a current best-selling title) visit a real heaven and come back to report. When Sarah Palin or Michelle Bachmann talk about teaching both creationism and evolution in schools they are really reflecting a more general view that there is a religious world alongside a real world and that both are almost equally valid (the religious one being preferred) and that children need to learn both.

This is the scum floating on the surface, the bubbles emerging from the unhealthy depths, of a society in trouble. A society in which all except one of the contenders for Republican nomination for President are vying to see who can be the most fervent about teaching creationism in schools. A country where the ten commandments are appearing on walls, crosses in yards. A country where not only could an atheist never be president, but where increasingly only a rabid evangelical could be. A country whose armed forces, frighteningly, are increasingly subjected to fundamentalist religious indoctrination relating to “holy wars”.

In a fully-fledged theocracy (Afghanistan, say, under Taliban rule) I doubt that any non-religious books are available at all. In an effective theocracy (Spain at the time of the Inquisition) there will be a list of forbidden books which can not be read and must be destroyed. In a fully secular and civilised society few religious books would be wanted or available (I imagine, deliciously, religious books being sold, like cigarettes are about to be, in plain wrappers from under the counter).

We could then compile an index of the proportion of religious books for sale in a society ranging from effectively zero in a secular country to 100% in a theocracy. What proportion was sold in a country would be an indicator have how far along the road it had gone towards theocratic rule. On the evidence of America the danger point is somewhere around 16%. I wonder where Australia is up to, and which way the index is moving?

Do or die

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by Economics • Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Yet another dumb, uneducated, religious fundamentalist, anti-science, neoconservative, gun-toting Texan has emerged from that backward state to eye off the White House where he could apply his talents on a wider stage. Rick Perry – shudder.

Not much point in dissecting this good old boy who is aiming to outdo Bachmann in the craziness stakes, the few remaining Americans capable of rational thought are doing that, but I want to pick up on one aspect of his political beliefs out of the many he shares with our own wild-eyed cowboy Tony Abbott. Perry wants to get rid of all regulation.

This of course is the fundamentalist faith of neocon libertarian true market believers, and Rick would be right at home, Right at home, with our very own bunch of market, market and nothing but the market true believers in the IPA. Perhaps they could offer him a visiting fellowship if that running for president thing doesn’t work out.

But the whole thing is as puzzling as the beliefs of Catholics or the southern evangelicals of Texas (evolution? Nah). I have as much difficulty with it as I do with the appearance of virgin mary on toasted cheese, or christ on a creeper (you don’t want to know). But I’ll give it a go.

Normal people believe that it is best to regulate airlines to stop planes crashing, pharmaceuticals to stop side effects, food preparation to stop food poisoning, factories to prevent rivers being poisoned, and guns to stop people being shot.

The Rick Perrys of this world (?) believe nothing of the sort. They start from the premise that regulation costs a business money, either directly or through opportunity cost, and that as a result really rich people will get richer a bit more slowly. Because they are either very rich themselves or best buddies with those who are, they think this is a BAD THING.

But because you can’t admit this is all just about greed they erect a philosophy around it. The idea seems to be that if there are two airlines and one takes advantage of lack of regulation to skimp on maintenance and training and the other doesn’t then the planes of the first one will crash, people won’t want to fly with them and they will go broke. Triumph of the market, no need for that silly old regulation, so twentieth century.

Except, and I think you will have spotted this for yourselves, for one tiny little flaw, nothing at all really. The theory relies on quite a few people who used airline A, well, dying, suffering in fact an opportunity cost of the potential life they could have had if strict regulation had stopped any crashes.

Oh, yes, that’s an extreme test of market force theory, but not an unfair one. Don’t regulate food preparation standards and wait for enough people to get sick, the word to get around, and a restaurant loses business, goes out of business if it doesn’t mend its ways, wash its hands. Don’t regulate speed limits on roads and, after a certain number of crashes the speeds will average out at a safe level (yes indeed suggested by an Australian libertarian).

Poorly built houses collapsing in storm, children’s toys with lead paint, untested drugs in pharmacies, sweat shops in every suburb, all media owned by Rupert Murdoch? Not to worry, when the public knows about these things the market will swing into action. Oh, sure, casualties along the way – injury, disease, death – price you pay for perfect freedom. What’s that? Well, yes, the freedom of the corporations, obviously, what are you a socialist?

But as if the idea that testing the market involves, if it must, injury and death, to maintain the purity of vision of the Libertarian gurus like Hayek and Paul (his son, almost unbelievably, named after Ayn Rand), was not bad enough, it also depends on another contradiction. If an unregulated media becomes owned by just one or two powerful owners, each with their own corporate interests in other segments of the economy, and each depending on advertising from the airlines, builders, drug companies, children’s toy makers and such like, then the chances of those media outlets exposing shonky or dangerous goods to the public so the “market” can decide is, oh, let me guess, approximately 0%. And just in case a rogue reporter does manage to survive somewhere in the bowels of a giant media conglomerate, the corporations, as we have seen recently, have all sorts of tricks up their sleeves in the form of astroturf organisations and legal injunctions and donations to political parties to prevent truth ever getting out.

Have I missed something? Yes indeed. The consequences of deregulation on individuals and their inability, in a real world outside the pages of Randian fantasy novels, to do anything about it, is obvious enough. Still, I suppose you could argue that an individual may, eventually, become informed about stuff by word of mouth and observation. But there is a whole other category of failure, bad enough even in a semi-regulated world, that has no remedy. Damage to the environment is always an externality – the tragedy of the commons is that everybody dumps rubbish in it and someone else has to pay to clean it up. At least where there are attempts at regulation, however feeble, companies might decide it is less costly, if penalties are high enough, to clean up their act than to poison water and air and soil. With no regulation there is no “consumer” to discourage environmentally damaging behaviour, and a company that did, altruistically, decide to put filters on chimneys or outlet pipes would incur costs not incurred by its competitors. Only a massive public campaign which managed to effectively aim at boycotting a company’s products might be effective, and it would be met by astroturf crazies, union thugs, legal jackals, and media disinformation campaigns.

But the faith of the true believers like Perry and Abbott is unshaken by any analysis – just as in religion the less evidence the more faith, and no evidence at all requires the greatest faith and the surest path to paradise. Those calling for theocracies in what were once western democracies are doing so from the safety of hard-won secular societies. In the same way those calling for an end to all regulation are doing so from an economy and society which still, in spite of the best efforts of the neocons, is based at least nominally on the idea that some regulation is needed to save capitalism from itself. In both cases I have the feeling that the religious and economic fundamentalists should be careful what they wish for – they wouldn’t, in the real world, like what they got.

I believe

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by Climate Change, politics • Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Some news items make me feel sceptical that the human race is ever going to be smart enough to walk and chew gum at the same time. Last week it was a serious interview with John Edwards, “world’s greatest psychic” in which he was asked how his “psychic powers” worked; and the news that London rioters would be thrown out of public housing and made homeless. This weekend it was the news that Michelle Bachmann had won the Ames Straw Poll. Well, not that she had won the bizarre (even by American political standards) ASP, but that she had won anything.

On the home front Tony Abbott was ridiculing the Prime Minister for persisting with the “carbon tax” – “What planet is she living on?” he wanted to know. Well, um, Tony, same planet as you, the one that is rapidly warming towards a future that is going to doom us all, with Australia among the countries being damaged first. That planet. Of course Mr Abbott, along with all except one of his colleagues, is a climate change denier, sorry sceptic.

He is also, famously, fundamentally religious, a once future priest turned future king’s first minister (also famously a fundamentalist monarchist, saying that there was something mystical about the monarchy that republicans couldn’t understand). Which once again illustrates a curious thing about self-described sceptics on climate change – they are sceptical about nothing else.

Not a hint of scepticism about any aspect of Catholicism as expounded by one cardinal seems to have ruffled Tony’s brow while he simultaneously denied the work of tens of thousands of scientists. The people who unaccountably tell pollsters that Mr Abbott would be a good prime minister (shades of the Iowans who can seriously propose Bachmann for president) have no scepticism about any of his publicity stunts. Have no scepticism about what the shock jocks, who they listen to religiously every day, tell them (can believe any number of impossible things before breakfast), nor about the headlines in the Murdoch Press.

No sceptical thought about WMDs troubled them as Iraq was shocked and awed. Scepticism isn’t a respectable intellectual position as they listen to the claims of the mining industry about a mining tax, clubs about poker machines, tobacco companies about packaging, the alcohol industry about closing hours, media companies about media enquiries, cattlemen about live exports.

There is no room, it seems, for scepticism about claims that there are plenty of fish in the sea, plenty of water in the rivers, plenty of trees in the forests. Nor about claims that reducing taxes on the rich benefits the poor. Ghosts, UFOs, toasted virgin Marys, virgin Virgin Marys, psychic powers, alternative medicines, Barnaby Joyce – all things that need the white hot heat of true scepticism, and all things that receive unquestioning belief from the people who attend anti carbon tax rallies.

No, the one thing, the only thing, that these modern day Galileos (revolving in his grave faster and faster each time his name is misused) point their telescopes of scepticism at is a single phenomenon known scientifically for 150 years and supported by hundreds of thousands of research results from tens of thousands of scientists.

No wonder I’m sceptical about their scepticism – and about the future of the human race.

Having a laugh

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by politics • Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Barry O’Farrell (Premier of New South Wales) is now under pressure it seems from both the far right (Fred Nile and the Shooters) and the right (federal minister Martin Ferguson). The Shooters and Fishers have already put a stop to protecting marine life (a ten year moratorium not just 5 years as I thought when I wrote about this before) and have begun putting on pressure to see every child in the state armed to the teeth and shooting guns at school. Fred Nile is said to have had a chat with Barry demanding that all teachers in public schools be replaced with chaplains approved by him (Fred), and that there be none of this teaching of “ethics” which apparently is incompatible with religion. Now Martin is demanding that NSW end all resistance and have every part of the state explored for uranium deposits, so Barry is faced with three demands all of which would have toxic legacies for generations to come for the citizens of this proud state.

I am reminded of a comedy sketch I saw years ago, the comedian now forgotten (see comments), in which Walter Raleigh comes back from America having discovered tobacco and is trying to sell its benefits to the British government whose response is incredulous – “And then they do what Walter? They stick this tube of paper full of leaves of a nasty weed into their mouths and then they set fire to it? Right, we’ll give that a miss Walt, thanks for asking.”

Just as well I ‘m not Premier, because I wouldn’t have been able to keep a straight face as these similar propositions were paraded through my office by apparently serious people. “Really, armed schoolchildren learning fundamentalist religion with no ethics whose job prospects are in uranium mining, in a state whose environment is being wrecked? Sorry, that’s a bit of a cough I have developed, my secretary will show you out, don’t call us we’ll call you.” But I am sure Barry, a much nicer and more polite man than me, will have listened to all this nonsense attentively, taken notes without laughing, and politely seen them to the door. Ushered in the next lot of ideologues demanding cattle in high country, the sale of all public assets, an increase in tree clearing, private operators in National Parks, and the destruction of the union movement in the state.

There seems to be a view from some political commentators, far less astute than yours truly, that you have to do deals with all these mad-brained people in order to get through your own agenda, which I had understood to mean catching up on years of neglect by the Labor Party (hampered by its own right wing nutters) of areas such as infrastructure, transport, hospitals, schools. Are these people beating a path to your door really going to block you on these electorally popular moves if you don’t go along with their hare-brained agendas? What if you were to discuss stuff with Labor and the Greens and isolate Mr Nile and friends in their own little world? I reckon you are a smart enough politician to rack up achievements in the next four years without giving the state a terrible case of addiction to crazy ideology with endless harmful effects. Good start with standing firm on ethics.

But do try to keep a straight face.

Strange bedfellows

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by Atheism, Climate Change • Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Well, yesterday’s post went down like an iron (not as fast as lead but fast enough) balloon. Oh, Horton on about politics eh, been there, done that, boring. Very demanding lot you Watermelon visitors, thrill seekers of the blogosphere, one day mentally bunji jumping, the next the intellectual equivalent of rowing the Pacific. Always seeking new mental thrills and spills as each new day dawns.

There are some blogs where the pleasure seems to be in the old familiar comfortable slippers of topics and writing with no surprises. Sometimes I envy them – turn out yet another post on Peak Oil or the NSW Labor Party and you can rest content. Whereas for me each new day leaves me searching feverishly for some brand new topic, some radically different approach to everyone else in the world. Groan, moan, whinge. Come on, get a grip Horton.

I know you will all have been following, as keenly as I was, the Miss USA beauty pageant whose winner was announced yesterday. This is a major competition of course, with stringent standards whose scope and breadth would make competitors at the Hawaii iron man, or the international science olympiads, quail.

Miss USA contestants had to excel in three, yes, three, disciplines. These were swimsuit, evening gown, and questions. God knows how they had the energy to answer questions after the first two disciplines, but answer they did. And this is where we come in. Faced with the question “Should evolution be taught in schools” (and just the fact that this question could be asked in 2011 should send shivers down all your spines) only 2 of the 51 (get ready to shudder) could bring themselves to say yes indeed. Although some said “teach both” evolution and creationism.

Of the two who did answer well one just said yes, teach it in schools. The other, and the eventual winner, came out with this convoluted answer – “I was taught evolution in high school. I do believe in it. I’m a huge science geek … I like to believe in the big bang theory and, you know, the evolution of humans throughout time.” See, she likes to believe in evolution, some people like to believe in a 6000 year old earth, all just a matter of taste. But at least she did say yes. Was brave enough.

So the really frightening thing is that 49 of the contestants, either because of their own beliefs, ignorance, or unwillingness to offend the voters, are too frightened to say “teach evolution in schools”. This is what America has come to after decades of battering away by evangelicals, intimidation of teachers, home-schooling. Here is a country, once the most scientifically and technologically advanced in the world, reduced to a state where most of its citizens have beliefs last popular in western countries in 1859. This is what you can achieve if a small bunch of wild-eyed fanatics keep bashing away at the education system.

Our contestants were grappling with the question of whether to teach the results of 150 years of science research or the mythology of a sheepherder in the middle east 2500 years ago at the same time as the story broke about climate scientists in Australia receiving death threats. Yes, death threats, moved on from the screams of abuse to actual promises of physical harm.

Slightly different tactic to the US creationists but the same intention – shut these people up. They are saying things I don’t want to hear. They are saying things that go against my beliefs. They are saying things that logically mean a reduction in profits for some big business. Shut them up, We don’t want them saying these things any more, don’t want them reporting their findings, we are sick of science, the shock jocks have told me everything I need to know about global warming. Why can’t these scientists listen to Alan Jones and then they wouldn’t keep saying these things I don’t want to hear. But in the mean time, death threats should make them go silent.

Beauty contestants and climate scientists – strange bedfellows eh, but both subject to the medieval forces now rampaging through our societies.