Why I don't like Ratzinger.

Firstly...read this, then come back here. (If you went there and thought 'this is too long!!' here is a summary :- Good people in the Catholic church should boycott the Popes visit to the UK because he was directly involved in the cover up of child rape, and he lists some individual cases to show this fact.)

I am an atheist. I have been for a long time. My reasons are many and varied but just to be clear about it, because I have often found myself correcting this, I did not become an atheist out of laziness. My atheism was a definite, clear and deliberate decision and act. Through reading, researching, thinking and learning, I came to realize that the situation that makes most sense to me is that there is no God. It wasn't just a laziness thing or through apathy that I just fell out with God and religion. I sincerely believe, from looking at it in many ways, there cannot be a God.

But I am in a minority. I am aware of that. People have many different reasons for believing in God. From my experiences I think the most common reason is that they were raised that way. The second most common reason is they like the comfort of it. These are observations, not any sort of scientific study or survey and of course are probably inaccurate. But if a person feels they are improved by religion, so be it. I of course believe these good people are good anyway and religion had nothing to do with it, but that is another blog altogether. But what is the point of religion if there is no good from it? (And I don't count simply spreading 'the word' as doing good!)

About a month or two ago I left the Catholic Church. I didn't know you could do this but a friend of mine told me about a site that showed you what to do. I was delighted and I used the information on Count Me Out to do it. There were varied reactions. Some people were shocked, some surprised, some thought I was petty and some were not surprised at all.

People wondered why I did it. Most people know I am an atheist. So why actually leave the church. Isn't it being a bit spiteful or controversial just for the sake of it? Well no. And if you read that article at the start before getting to here you now know why I did it and why I didn't want my name linked with the Catholic Church.

That horrible and disgusting man who calls himself The Pope is not a spiritual leader. He is not a moral guide. He is a bureaucrat more interested in keeping the business and image of the church intact than caring for the children who suffered while under their supposed protection. I do not want my name listed as being part of his church.

Next to my name on the baptismal registrar of my local church is says 'defected'. And I am proud.

World Science Festival 2009: Bobby McFerrin Demonstrates the Power of the Pentatonic Scale

Sir David Attenborough's view on Science & Religion - Life on Air

write away every day

I've been writing a lot on Demery Bader-Saye's blog write away every day. It's a great site where she gives you a photo prompt to get your creative juices flowing. Here are links to my entries, but give the others a look too cos there are some very good writers on there!!

slumbered
guaranteed
bugged
sheltered
powered
spent
found
parked
pined
howled
recycled
dispatched
yearned
found
unearthed
tasted

My One-Liners!!!

OK after bashing my brain I finally managed to hit a one-liner vein and these came to me in about 30 mins this morning. They are more likely to be candidates for the worst one-liner than the best.

Enjoy!

I woke up this morning staring in someone else window. I think I was stalking in my sleep.

I'm going on a package holiday next week. I'm posting myself abroad.


I've joined one of those pyramid schemes. My mummy convinced me.

I swapped the keys on my keyboard to see if it would help my Dyslexia. It qjusf.

Do colour-blind people get blue jokes?

I bought pills on the internet that help your memory. I dunno if they arrived yet.

I woke up this morning talking about black holes. I think I was Hawking in my sleep.

I was going to go to a motivation seminar, but then I, well you know.

Funny One-Liners

Yesterday I read what the funniest one liner from the Edinburgh fringe festival was. It was this.

"I've just been on a once-in-a-lifetime holiday. I'll tell you what, never again."

Not too bad. But not great either. Not really my kind of joke. They also voted for the worst one liner. It was this.

"Why did the chicken commit suicide? To get to the other side."

The worst? That was FAR better! That is a great joke. Now maybe this says more about me than the competition or the entries themselves. Maybe it says I am a depressed individual or a sadist who likes to see other people (chickens?) suffer needlessly. But I think it was great.

It got me thinking though, I could write a better one liner than that.

So I started thinking.

And I thought.

And thought.

And I can't.

Not a single one liner came to me. Nothing. I was depressed. I was miserable. I even started to doubt myself and question my own identity. It was a bad few minutes.

But then I had a coffee and everything was good in the world again. Now if I was any good I would be able to finish this blog entry with a spot on one liner.

But nope. I can't think of them on the spot.

This Weekend? Next Weekend?

Please help me settle a long standing argument and answer the poll below...

I Forgive You.

Ok...I forgive you. I forgive you for leaving me. Back in May when you left me I didn't know what I would do. How would I get through the long summer days without you? I felt a void in my gut like it was carved out with a rusty knife. My life, my meaning was gone.

But yes, I will take you back. I will forgive you and I'm sure we can start to live for each other once more. But before we start, I have a confession. Well it's not really a confession as it was you who left me, so it's more of an admission. I think it's best to get these things out in the open before we try again.....

During the summer I had a fling. There, I said it. It was mostly on my holidays but it started before I went and finished a bit after I came back. She was foreign and although it was great fun and we shared some brilliant moments together, it just wasn't the same. She wasn't what I was used to. And she was also quite noisy too. But I suppose she helped me in a way. She helped me get over my terrible time from when you finished it in May.

Don't worry, about her though. It all finished a few weeks back (July 11th to be exact) and she will not be around for 4 years, but she did say her little sister will be visiting for the summer in 2012. Not that I am making a threat or anything. I'm just saying.

So we are here again. It seems like you love to annoy me, to tease me. With these meaningless, empty summers. But I will give things a chance. Maybe on Sunday we can have a trial run. It will be good if it goes well but if it doesn't well the fact that it happened might be good enough.

The Saturday after we can try for real. We can start to plan some regular time together and see if we can end on a bitter sweet high next May again. Sweet (hopefully) because of the triumph, and bitter because you will leave me again.

Chelsea for the Premiership!!!!!!!
Chelsea for the Champions League!!!!!!!
Chelsea for the FA Cup!!!!!!!

A crazy person vs. a moral pillar of society

That's Cheating!!!

Courtesy of Pharyngula.

You are a skeptic or you are not. You don't get to choose one meat to be exempt if you are a vegetarian, so why or how can you apply skepticism to everything except religion. It's cheating. So stop it. Or I'm going home. And I'm taking my ball.

It's all Fantasy isnt' it?

I was thinking about Fantasy books, and how they follow a kind of thematic blueprint. Now before you say anything, I know not all stories follow this trend but a lot of them do!! OK!! So I don't read a HUGE amount of Fantasy books, so anyone who has will probably scoff at what I have to say, but I don't care a great deal and I will say it anyway. (Or in other words....just deal with it OK!!!)

But there is a kind of trend in some stories. It's kind of a coming of age story. The hero begins as a kind of nobody and has a regular (if not poor) life in which he trudges along. He dreams of better things but by and large he is happy with his lot. He has a loving family and a comfortable life.

We then get a glimpse of something else. Something from outside his life and usually his past comes back and his life changes. We discover he is not an ordinary boy at all, he is something special. He has royal blood in him, or he is the son of a great leader or simply in the right place at the right time and is the one who is chosen (by chance or will) to head off into the wider world. This is something that thrill or scares him. His journey brings him face to face with his past. He learns more of who he really is, either in character or genealogy and becomes a bigger, better man for it and becomes the hero of the day. He gathers his band of followers, one of who will be a great confidant and/or will have great knowledge of the path he is taking (not always a literal path) and he goes on to vanquish the evil that has covered the land and that keeps his people down.

As you read that you may have thought of several characters. Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit. Frodo in The Lord Of The Rings. Rand in The Wheel of Time books. Or in the land of movies, there is obviously Luke Skywalker in Star Wars, or even Superman. I'm sure you can think of plenty more cos it appears a hell of a lot in fiction. Now I know this is not a new revelation nor a new observance. Georges Polti and others have commented that there are a limited number of dramatic situations (39 according to Polti, 7 basic plots according to Christopher Booker) so that you will get these trends and similarities repeated often.

But what struck me was that these stories are powerful and when you read them gave you a great feeling. You feel embiggened. You feel like you can get up and take on the world. You may not have the family tree of greatness but you can be that backwater boy who finds the strength within himself to fight evil and succeed.

This led me to think of the story of Jesus. This story fits the mold almost exactly as any other fantasy book. In fact by the time the Jesus story was being written, it was far from unique. There are may specific details in the Jesus story (date of birth, virgin birth etc.) that are shared by older myths (the story of Mithras, for example).

Jesus does not have to have existed for the Jesus story to have an impact. The myths that people told that shared the content of the Jesus story (the content that some commentators have said were borrowed FOR the Jesus story) were original never supposed to be taken as an actual story of an actual man. They were stories that were supposed to be told to give you spirit and hope and the will to try to be a better you.

I think the Jesus story is better that way. Because that way it empowers you and gives you strength to do better for yourself. Instead of making you a servant to a mythical character and trying to live up to a false ideal that he has portrayed. I think it's better to live life for life's own sake. It's the only one you've got and instead of wasting it by praying to a God for help, or spending it spreading the word of this God but not doing anything to actually help people. Or worse, simply doing it for the promise of the reward of a magical afterlife or the fear of an eternity of suffering and unimaginable pain from your loving (?) God. That is a wasted life.

Life by the golden rule. Life to improve your own life and the lives you touch along the way.

That is a life well lived. Not one spend on your knees in a church or in a missionary. To me that is a self absorbed, self serving, self important existence.

And you can tell Pascal he can shag off for himself.

Welcome To This World (video)

Good video made by The Thinking Atheist.



As PZ Myers said in his blog. The disturbing thing about this video is that you could easily see the irony being lost on the most devout and see it as a vindication of their unquestioning faith.

But It Might Happen

If ever there was a phrase that annoys the hell out of me it is "But It Might Happen". Those four words are like an instant dagger right into the cranky region of my brain (which is right next to the grumpy section and above the irritated section).

It is such a cop out of a phrase and it usually delivered almost as a coup de grâce in an argument as if the fact that there is a probability, regardless of how small that probability is, that something might happen, it justifies some pointless or irrational act.

You need an example? Why? Surely you have heard this being said yourself and can completely empathise with my (over the top?) annoyance with four simple words in a specific order? No??? OK!!!

Rabbits foot.

"Rub the rabbits foot for luck?!
"Why?, I don't think rubbing a rabbits foot will make the questions I know the answers to, appear in my exam?"
"Maybe not....shur rub it anyway"
"No"
"But it might happen!!"

Apply to any superstition you know.

But it appears in more ordinary circumstances too. People have a fear of disease, theft, injury, all sorts of events that are normal enough, but share a common emotion that exacerbates this irrationality. Fear. Fear makes people believe stupid things and behave in stupid ways. Yes I said it....stupid. I know the PC police will be on to me for using such a judgmental word like that but if something looks like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck. It's not a feathered creature that is found in our lakes and ponds. It's a duck!! (Sorry, I'll come back to my PC annoyances some other time)

People take unnecessary drugs or totally ineffective cures (Homeopathy, step forward...we are talking about you). But it can't cure you...."But It Might Happen!" (or it's close relative "But It Works For Me")

I recently heard a comedian talking of how people unplug all their appliances before heading away for a weeks holidays. And it hit home. It is exactly the kind of thing you would justify with the magic words.

"Why are you doing that?"
"In case they burst into flames when I am gone."
"What?"
"In case there is a short circuit or something?"
"How long have you had that TV?"
"2 years."
"Has it ever done that before?"
"No."
"Has anything you have ever owned ever in your entire life ever burst into flames while plugged in, while you were here?"
"No."
"So there is no point in doing this now just cos you are not going to be here...."
"But it might happen"

YES!!! It MIGHT. But will it? NO!! The chances are ridiculously small.

It would be the equivalent of me buying a lottery ticket and spending a fortune on new cars, houses, TV and everything I dreamed of buying, BEFORE the draw was made. I haven't actually won the money yet......"But It Might Happen"

Now I know this is all a bit facetious and probably does not deserve this much attention. But why it really annoys me is that it kind of justifies the irrational and opens the door for more and different (and more dangerous?) irrationality. People not getting the MMR. You don't get Autism from the MMR...."But It Might Happen" No. It won't. But what MIGHT happen is that if enough people think like you, we will have a serious outbreak of a preventable illness.

People worry about Pedophiles. They wrap their kids up in bubble wrap and are afraid to let them out of their sight. But the incidents of a child being abducted are very small....."But It Might Happen". No...it probably won't. As a parent I could think of nothing more devastating than the loss of one of my children. But there is a duty I have to them to provide for them and to nurture them. And by stealing a big portion of their childhood because I have bought into the media fear mongering (another rant for another time) I think I am letting them down.

It's a flippant saying and it is usually used as the last word in an argument. Essentially it is a "look, I am going to do it anyway so just leave me alone" but I ask....Is it wrong to leave it alone? Maybe in some circumstances, the harmless ones. But that is the trouble. Which ones are the harmless ones?

No one will be harmed if all the appliances are unplugged. It will actually save electricity. But to let the reasoning be accepted even though it is irrational is dangerous. It is the thin end of the wedge. It can open the door for more serious flawed thinking.

And I know you are thinking...yeah but that is unlikely isn't it.....

But It Might Happen!!! (see what I did there!!!)

Why God Loves Atheists.

Funny God!!

QWERTY spells God.

The QWERTY keyboard was designed by a man (C. Latham Sholes to be specific). I could stop there and say that so was God and that would do. But that actually wasn't my point. But it IS a good one!!

The arms of the old typewriters had an annoying tendency to jam. If you typed too fast or used letters that were too close to each other they would clash with each other. This was a major stumbling block for the typewriter. In 1874, C. Latham Sholes designed the QWERTY layout (named after the first six letters of the top row) for the Sholes and Glidden typewriter and this design was sold to Remington in the same year. It became popular with the success of the Remington No. 2 of 1878. Had these issues not been overcome the typewriter may never have been as much of a success as it was.

So QWERTY saved the day. The ingenious design of this keyboard layout slowed down the typing speed by putting commonly used letters apart from each other as much as possible. In doing this the clashes and jams were reduced.

With the advent of golfball typewriters and electronic typewriters that no longer had an arm that clashed, the QWERTY configuration was no longer needed. With computer keyboards there is not even anything physical striking any page. But we still have QWERTY.

Why? Well here is why. It's called the Network Effect. We needed it once. There once was a very valuable reason for having it and it served a very important function. It became more and more popular and was in use so many places. But as with all things, we progressed beyond the original need for it. But like an appendix we still have it. It would be too difficult to change now. Too costly. And why bother anyway? We all grew up with it and we are all very used to it.



There was once a time when people needed a God. They needed him to give them comfort and to calm them when they were faced with things they did not understand, things that scared them, things that they could not control. A time when there were many more unanswered questions about life and the world than there are today. God was the answer. To have an answer even though it was always the same answer, even though the answer did not always make sense, was a solace.

With the advent if scientific discoveries, a lot of what used to be mysteries are now explained. We no longer need to use a deity to explain them. The gaps are getting smaller and smaller. Our knowledge is getting greater and greater. We can now find comfort in our understanding of how we know the world works. We don't need to live in fear of the unknown because we can be confident of our abilities to shed light on these areas, and that which we can't control we can often predict. God is superfluous in the modern world.

But God is a QWERTY keyboard. We grow up with it. We just accept it. And very often, don't even question it.

But unlike QWERTY we have very good alternatives to God, that need to be explored and shared.

When we do, we can finally rid ourselves from something that slows us down and holds us back.

Book Review : 59 Seconds - Richard Wiseman

This is the second Richard Wiseman book I read (the first being Quirkology) and it was as good as I expected it to be. Now that can mean any number of things so let me just clarify that I really enjoyed it.

I am a big fan of science and psychology and love discovering weird and wonderful aspects of the way we behave, act and react and this book was perfect as it was full of very interesting stuff. But where 59 Seconds differs from Quirkology, is that in this book there is practical advice given on the strength of the studies and experiments that are explained in the book.

The chapters are broken into various aspects of human behaviour/experience, like Happiness and Motivation. And there are also social based chapters like Relationships and Parenting (for me the Parenting chapter was especially eyeopening).

In each chapter, common self-help myths are debunked and shown, not only to be incorrect or inaccurate but also explanations as to why. This last part is key as otherwise it would be one just another book pushing another point of view. But this book has science on its side. The advice in this book is not waffle from a puffed up, overpaid guru, but is advice as a result of detailed studies.

The 59 Seconds refers to the amount of time you need to apply the findings from these studies to help you. I did feel that this was stretched a bit for some aspects and for some ideas (i.e. The Big Five Personalities) I would have liked to have had a 'further reading' or 'more information' section at the back as there is so much more to it than could have been covered in the book.

Richard was also very good in making it clear that in some studies, the results could not be taken at face value as they may not be a result of causation but of correlation. In some cases, he followed up with another study that tried to test these and remove the doubt. This not only highlights an important aspect of the scientific method but also shows that Richard (and the scientists involved in the studies) is being careful to avoid letting bias influence the results.

Richard clearly has a big interest in these topics and has covered a lot of ground so that we don't have to. Like I said I would have liked a further reading type section but there are extensive notes and I'm sure I will be able to get more details from there.

It is a good book, from a practical point of view (I have applied some of the tips already to great effect) but also from a purely intellectual point of view. After the reading the book, it is clear from what Richard has told us, we are a strange bunch of people and regardless of what we already know about ourselves, there is much more to learn.

Resolutions

New years resolutions are not going well. I have not written as much as I planned. I suppose you could say that since this is my second blog entry today that I am at least writing something. But I want MORE.

I am one of the millions of people who think they have a book in them. But I am actually right. I DO have a book. It's all about getting a plan in place and making the time to put the effort in.

Maybe I am biting off more than I can chew cos I have also started training for a marathon in June. But there is no reason why I can't do both. If I do little and often I should be ok (which is how I managed to lose all that weight last year).

I made a start to it last year by making out some character sketches and writing half a children book. I reconnected with an old collegue of mine who has illustrated a childrens book and she has offered to illustrate my so that will have to be my motivation.

So I'll keep you posted and all going well I will be as to pot a link to my boom here at some point on the future.

I would say I can dream anyway but I have spent took long dreaming about and it about time I started doing something about it.

Is IS 2010 isn't it???

As if the ravings of Stephen Baldwin on Celebrity Big Brother ("If my daughter was threatened by a gun man and had to say 'Jesus Isn't Real' to survive, I'd tell her not to say it and I would see her in heaven") weren't jaw dropping enough, I recently came face to face with an evolution denier!!

This never happened to me before and I was genuinely taken aback!! That was supposed to only happen to Americans when the stumbled into Creationist territory. I live in Ireland, where although there is a strong(ish) Catholic contingent, evolution is happily taught in schools and there is never even the suggestion that there might be a hint of a reason why anyone in their right mind might even begin to doubt it.

I kinda had a feeling things were going in an odd direction when he said “But how can there be Global Warming when we have had the coldest winter in 10 years?” I had made a joke earlier in the week to someone else that I was waiting to hear that, but I never ACTUALLY thought I would.

But as we were discussing global warming, I used the word ‘Theory’. As I was talking he said “I don’t believe in theories, only facts. And I can prove the theory of evolution is wrong too”. I thought I misheard (as you do) and so I asked him did I hear correctly. He said yes and then proceeded to explain that as man evolved faster than chimps, evolution is wrong because this cannot happen in evolution. Also this situation where one animal evolved faster from a common point has only ever happened to man.

I told him that environmental factors dictate way each animal evolves and the differences between one animal and another. I also pointed out that birds and reptiles evolved from the same ancestor and that the alligator hasn’t evolved in millions of years but the birds have evolved much faster but it fell on deaf ears.

He said but there are lots of holes in the theory of evolution. I said yes. And that is OK. That just means that everything isn’t fully understood yet. But I said the important word is yet. Scientists have been working on evolution for 150 years and I am confident they will find those answers at some point. But for now I am comfortable with the gaps.

At this point he made some disparaging comment about Scientists being in it together and suggested there was a massive cover-up and that they are controlled by the government.

In some way this last comment made the rest of the conversation easier to take. Added to the previous comments he was making about Global Warming (and an earlier one again about another supposed Government cover-up) I realized that there was a bigger picture going on here. That his focus is more anti-government-it’s-all-a-big-conspiracy-they-are-all-out-to-get-us rather than an evolution is wrong thing. At least I hope so.

But it makes me sad (and a little angry) to hear people make statements about evolution that they have heard somewhere, from what they believe to be a trusted source, that are clearly wrong. But they are repeated so often that they just accept them (because they wish it to be true?). At no point do they verify or validate them. It’s the straw man. It’s easier to counter false arguments and evidence for evolution than the actual facts so they stick with them. This ‘proof’ was one of those.

Like I said I was flabbergasted to hear this being said. I admit I wasn’t prepared for it in the slightest. I’m not sure if this will EVER come up again. If it does I can only hope that I can set him straight or at the very least give him something to think about. But it was a sad day to think that in 2010 we are still having conversations like this.


www.twitter.com/ohyouthinkso

New Year - New Start

I made it to 2010 and so we have a new year.

SO....for this year I resolve to blog more. About stuff. That's what the world needs. More blogs about stuff.

I have made my new years resolutions (using Joe's Goals) and one of them is to focus on my writing for the year.

As suggested by Richard Wiseman, I need to tell people what my goal is to GUILT myself into keeping them.

So buckle up peeps....My moods swings are going to find an outlet and rants will be ranted upon!!

You have been TOLD!!

Churs.