Meet the new Pope - same as the old Pope...

I was digging through some old emails the other day, when I came across a humorous little piece I composed on the election of the new Pope, Benedict XVI, following the death of the old Pope, John Paul II. Being no great fan of the Roman Catholic Church (okay, that's a huge understatement...), I thought I would have a poke at the process of Papal succession by likening it to a user attempting upgrading a piece of software, finding problems with it and then submitting a request for assistance to a user-group bulletin board.

Enjoy...

***

Hmmm....when I try to run the upgrade wizard for VaticanSoft PopeBenedict v16.0, I get the following messages:

'Info: Windows is about to install the following ScreenSaviour Themes: last_supper, crucifixion and ascension. The ScreenSaviours play audio file angelic_choir.mp3. Please associate this file with your default media player.'

'Info: Windows is about to install the icons for JesusChrist.exe, VirginMary.exe and PopeBenedict.exe on your desktop. Continue? Y/N'

So far so good. But then I get...

'Warning: Windows cannot find a copy of the file rationality.exe on the installation disk. PopeBenedict v16.0 may not run correctly without it.'

'Warning: McAfee AntiVirus has detected a file dogma.exe on the installation disk. This is a known virus. McAfee will attempt to quarantine this file. You should run AntiVirus after the installation of PopeBenedict v16.0 is completed, to check for other malicious programmes'

'Warning: there is a sharing violation on the file absolute_truth.dll; this file is already in use by judaism.exe and islam.exe.'

'Warning: the files allow_abortion.dll, promote_contraception.dll and accept_sexual_diversity.dll appear to be missing. If you continue with the installation, these options will be disabled.'

'Warning: the file core_teachings.dll has not been updated since 81AD. The installation wizard has searched the web for updates, but cannot find any. It is recommended that you update this file as soon as possible.'

'Warning: the file revealed_truth.exe is in conflict with the file scientific_method.exe. PopeBenedict v16.0 will only run with revealed_truth.exe. You must disable scientific_method.exe before running PopeBenedict v16.0'

'Warning: the files compassion.exe, tolerance.exe and benevolence.exe appear to have been corrupted. You should run ScanDisk after the installation is completed, and repair these files.'

This doesn't look good. After all the problems we had with PopeJohnPaul v2.0, I was hoping that VaticanSoft's latest offering would be a little less flaky...

***

And it seems that my misgivings about Benedict XVI have turned out to be completely justified, sadly. Not that we were ever going to get an enlightened, progressive liberal elected to the most powerful post in the Christian Church, of course...

If we turn science teaching over to religious zealots, a new Dark Age beckons

Had someone told me, when I started my university degree (maths/theoretical physics) back in 1982 that, in 2006, people in this country would actually be asking the question 'Should schools teach Creationism?', I would have laughed, assuming it to be a joke.

But now, almost 25 years on, it is anything but a laughing matter.

For a small island nation, the UK used to punch well above its weight in terms of scientific research and technological innovation. But I fear that reputation is now under grave threat. Because few things are more indicative of our nation's depressing decline into scientific illiteracy than the fact that we have certain school teachers and politicians (including our esteemed PM) who appear to think that there is nothing wrong with teaching Creationism and Intelligent Design in schools, and even including it within the science curriculum!

I do not blame this turn of events solely on the resurgence of religious fundamentalism, because there has always been a tendency amongst human beings that rejects 'complicated' and abstruse explanations for things if there are simpler, more emotionally appealing ones to hand. And there is no denying that modern science is complicated and abstruse, and no matter how hard writers and documentary-makers try to bridge the gap in understanding between academic scientists and the general public, by producing books and television programmes on scientific topics aimed at the non-specialist, there will always be the unfortunate belief that science is something only scientists understand, and that the general public should just accept that they don't understand it, and be content in their ignorance.

The decline in the quality of science education in schools over the last 30 years has only exacerbated this cultural divide between science and the general public, of course. But, until relatively recently, the majority who did not know much science were at least confident that scientists knew what they were talking about, and were content to let them get on with the business of doing science relatively unmolested. (There have been a few high-profile PR-disasters for science, of course, but these often originated from precisely those areas of modern science (e.g. nuclear power, biotechnology, pharmaceuticals) where the political and economic implications of new discoveries were very great, and where there was a correspondingly great temptation for scientifically ignorant politicians and corporate CEOs to make decisions of questionable scientific or ethical wisdom concerning them.)

However, in recent years, religious fundamentalists have begun to cynically exploit the general public's ignorance about science in order to serve their own selfish agendas; in their desperate attempts to reclaim the intellectual high-ground from science and reassert the intellectual credibility of theological precepts about the origins of the universe and of life, they are attempting to fool the public into believing that the impressive edifice of modern science is in fact built upon quicksand, and that even its most reliable and well-respected theories about the natural world are logically and emprically flawed.

To a true scientist, these claims are utterly absurd, of course; not only are such theories regarded as reliable and well-respected precisely because they have so far withstood our attempts to prove that they are logically or empirically flawed, but the religious fundamentalists who are attacking them are almost invariably people whose own scientific illiteracy is so glaringly obvious (to scientists, at least) that they are clearly disqualified from having anything intelligent or erudite to say concerning matters of science! They are simply relying on the even greater scientific ignorance the general public in order to foment distrust of scientific orthodoxy and promote their alternative, religious orthodoxies as having an equal - or even a superior - claim on the truth.

But they do not fool scientists. We know frauds and charlatans when we see them. And we know the difference between a body of scientific knowledge (Darwinian Evolution, in this case) that has so far survived over 100 years of tests and challenges to its claims on the truth (and which, with every passing day, seems an ever more reliable, comprehensive and compelling account of the origins of biological diversity), and a set of absurdly fanciful, metaphysical notions involving supernatural deities, having their origins in religious texts written over 2000 years ago by a bunch of relgious zealots who knew even less about science than the ancient Greeks - a people whose proud tradition of rationalism and scientific inquiry would be condemned as heretical by later religious zealots of the same ilk, and which would suffer their attempts to all-but erase it from human history, leading directly to the thousand years of intellectual stagnation we call the Dark Ages!

And we - scientists - know which type of knowledge should be taught in science classes, and which should not - under any circumstances! And unless we stand up to these scientific ignoramuses, and expose them for the devious, self-serving charlatans that they are, many of us fear that their fundamentalist beliefs could come to pose as great a threat to the survival of modern science as they did 2000 years ago to the rationalist philosophy of the Greeks.

We cannot - and we will not - allow these people to turn the 21st century into the dawn of a new Dark Age.

Black-list of 'inappropriate' school sponsors leaves religious proselytizers untouched.

Yet more evidence of the UK government's disingenuousness and double-standards concerning its educational 'reforms' has come to light in an article in today's Independent newspaper.

It appears that education ministers have published a list of the types of companies and individuals that they consider to be 'inappropriate' as sponsors for Blair's new 'trust' schools. This list includes those companies or individuals involved in alcohol, tobacco, gambling and adult entertainment.

Significantly, the black-list does not include religious organizations or individuals - not that we could have had any realistic hope that it might, of course, because these types of sponsors seem to be the main beneficiaries of Blair's education 'reforms', as he and his ministers no doubt intended from the very outset.

The apparent rationale behind their black-list seems to be that they don't want trust schools to be funded with money that might be considered 'tainted' because it comes from businesses which they deem to be morally ambiguous - a judgement which, in itself, carries overtones of religious moralizing (not to mention naked hypocrisy, considering all the tax revenue that the Treasury gleans from alcohol and tobacco sales alone...). And perhaps they also fear that such companies might try to use schools in order to promote their products and services to schoolchildren.

But it is hard to imagine that such sponsors might have secret agendas relating to the manipulation of the school curriculum in order to brainwash and indoctrinate school children into becoming future consumers of their products or services; I cannot imagine that a brewery company would attempt to install a bar on a school's premises, for instance, or that a gambling company might try to use maths lessons to introduce students to the heady thrills of Blackjack or Roulette!

And yet our government sees no problem at all in allowing trust schools to be run by religious organizations and evangelical Christian millionaires, even though these most certainly do have agendas - and not even secret ones - relating to the manipulation of the school curriculum in order to brainwash and indoctrinate school children into becoming future believers and followers of the faiths they promote!

Which would be more damaging to a child's moral and intellectual development - teaching him how to calculate the odds in Blackjack, or teaching him that God created the world in six days, that vast chunks of modern science are wrong because they contradict the Bible, that homosexuals are the spawn of Satan, and that he will burn in Hell for all Eternity unless he 'accepts the grace of Jesus Christ' into his life? In the former case, he may not be gaining a moral education, but at least he will be learning some useful mathematics. In the latter case, it is doubtful that he will be learning anything of value at all, other than to place his trust in a book written 2000 years ago by men who knew nothing about evolution or cosmology, but an awful lot about how to create social divisions, intolerance, hostility towards minorities and a mortal dread of the callous judgementalism of an imaginary deity!

It is precisely this kind of complete inversion of priorities that seems to characterize this government's entire ideology regarding education, and which has led teachers, educational theorists, MPs and members of the public to conclude that placing the education of the next generation in the hands of Blair's government is as suicidally idiotic as placing the fate of nuclear arms proliferation in the hands of Iran's psychotic Islamist president.

May common sense and reason save us from them all!

Is that your Bible or your foot in your mouth, Mr Blair?

Those who have been following political events in the UK over the last few months will be aware that there is a huge controversy surrounding the UK government's plans for 'educational reform', which it is currently trying to steam-roller through Parliament in the face of mounting protests.

These reforms entail the handing over of large chunks of our school system to religious institutions (mainly the Church of England and the Catholic Church), to create even more 'faith schools' than currently exist (and that's a lot), and the establishment of 'City Academies' funded by businesses and wealthy private individuals (I won't call them philanthropists, unless in sarcastic quotes, because their interest in controlling the education of our children is anything but philanthropic...).

The controversy stems from the fact that, at a time when it seemed the power and influence of organized religion in the UK was in terminal decline (if only...), the churches and various wealthy evangelical Christians have decided that the best way to stop the rot and turn things around for their religion is to gain access to the impressionable and pliable young minds of school children, in the hope that their naive and uncritical acceptance of religious dogma will turn them into the next generation of believers. Their unstated - but blindingly obvious - intention is to use the faith schools and city academies which they run as recruiting grounds for their faiths. Not only this, but there is growing evidence that many of these schools and academies are distorting the national curriculum, infusing it with religious dogma and teaching children to disrespect and disbelieve whole areas of knowledge - particularly scientific knowledge - simply because they contradict those religious dogma.

So we have the insane situation where the UK - an advanced technological nation (and birthplace of the Industrial Revolution), and supposedly the most secular nation on the planet - now has schools which are teaching their pupils that Darwinian Evolution and Big Bang cosmology are wrong, and that the Book of Genesis is right - i.e. that Life, The Universe and Everything was all created on the whim of a Great Sky Fairy called 'God'. And this is supposed to be the 21st century?!

I have contributed volumes of opinion on this matter to discussion forums over the past few months, and will no doubt continue to do so. But I wrote the piece below four years ago, when the scandal first broke about how one of Tony Blair's favourite educational 'philanthropists' was using his privately-run school to teach Creationism in science classes.

Of course, as anyone familiar with our current Prime Minister's style of government by diktat will confirm, Tony Blair is not a man who is easily diverted from his ideological course by such trifling annoyances as public opinion or the advice of experts. And so, four years on, the message of this piece is - sadly - even more relevant and urgent now.

It was written in response to a remark by an ex-colleague of mine ('WD'), posted to a discussion forum on the topic of teaching Creationism in schools. I have reproduced said ex-colleague's remarks below, in order to set the context of my reply.

+++

WD: I think the point which is most pertinent is the need to main scepticism in the face of anything which lays claim to being absolute truth. Unfortunately, the rise and dominance of empirical science as the normative paradigm has emabled such as the creationists to portay themselves and their beliefs as marginalised and, to a degree, oppressed, and thus, in our relativist secular culture, equally worhty, if not of our respect, at least of our tolerance.

+++

My response:

I am all for tolerance - no problem with that. And I acknowledge that we live in a 'relativist secular culture' (though not as ‘secular’ as some of us would like…). But this is not an excuse for sloppy thinking, and cannot be used to justify filling the brains of the next generation with superstitious, metaphysical claptrap (e.g. Creationism).

Relativism was all the rage in the 60s and 70s, when many previously-accepted ideas about society, politics, culture and so forth were being questioned by a younger generation keen to challenge the 'tyranny' of their parents' values. Many good things came from this.

Unfortunately, however, relativism soon became such a popular mode of thinking that it was applied indiscriminately, encouraging people to believe that everything (including 'truth') was 'only relative' and therefore open to question. This was thought to be particularly true of 'hard' science, which was singled out as 'Western-centric' (it is not - science is a truly international activity), 'capitalist' (because it drives industries and therefore economies - but so do many other areas of human thought) and ‘de-humanizing’ (because it fails to incorporate or explain subjective human experience - as if it were ever meant to, or claimed that it could).

This rebellion against science and scientific values intensified with the growth of the environmental/ecology movement over the same period. Industry and modern technologies were seen as leading inevitably to pollution, the ravaging of the world's natural resources, the disruption of ecosystems, the degradation of the environment and the 'spiritual impoverishment' of modern life.

Some of these criticisms were, of course, justified. But instead of confining their attacks to politicians and Big Business - at whose feet the blame for all these problems properly lay - they targeted science itself. Their warped logic ran thus: science begets industry and technology, which are ‘bad’, and therefore science is also ‘bad’ - guilt by association. Voila! The relativists now had positive proof that, not only was science Western-centric, capitalist and de-humanizing, it was actually responsible for all the evils of the modern world!

So they cheerfully set about toppling the pillars of well-established scientific knowledge, and then compounded their idiocy by replacing them with a confused hotch-potch of metaphysical ideas borrowed from spiritual paradigms as disparate as Buddhism, the Tarot, Taoism, Hinduism, astrology, witchcraft, paganism and whatever else took their fancy.

They became a generation of dilettante mystics. They consulted their horoscopes every morning, took up yoga and Tai Chi (nothing wrong with these in themselves - both are excellent forms of exercise - as long as you don’t believe all the mystical hocus-pocus about ‘prana’ and ‘chi’ that usually goes with them), filled their homes with Indian sculptures and ethnic wall-hangings, burned candles and incense, and dropped quotes from their favourite-Eastern-guru-of-the-moment into every conversation. Their reading typically alternated between the Bhagavad Gita (Eastern mysticism) and The Lord Of The Rings (pagan witchcraft) (whereas previous generations might have read science-fiction - it is no coincidence that the popularity of 'fantasy' and 'science-fantasy' ('soft' science-fiction) novels has overtaken that of 'hard' science-fiction in recent decades).

Just as the Romantics had sought to escape from the ugly world created by the Industrial Revolution almost two centuries before, they purged their lifestyles and their thoughts of anything that reminded them of the modern, technological, scientific age in which they lived, and retreated - if only mentally - into an idealized, mythic, pre-scientific world infused with magic, mystery and infinite possibilities. No doubt the drugs helped ease their passage, too...

In the process, they lost the ability to discriminate between objective truth and metaphysical myth, their powers of logic and reasoning atrophied through lack of use, and their thought processes finally became as soft, woolly and unstructured as their clothes.

In short, their brains turned to porridge.

And what happened to all these head-in-the-clouds, mantra-chanting, tree-hugging mystics? They grew up, and had kids (anyone out there born in the 70s?). And then they passed on to their kids all their attitudes (i.e. suspicion and contempt) about anything claiming to be rational, objective and scientific, thereby ensuring that another generation would grow up believing that all knowledge is ‘only relative’, that all science is ‘only a theory’, and that there is no more objective truth in quantum mechanics than in the Qabbalah.

Now, is it surprising that the teaching of science and mathematics is in crisis in our schools and universities, when you consider how the minds of recent generations have been so poisoned by irrational, anti-science propaganda?

Is it surprising that most teenagers are choosing ‘soft’ degree courses like ‘media studies’ and ‘performing arts’, rather than science subjects?

Is it surprising that educational attainment in science subjects continues to decline (in real terms, that is, without the judicious massaging of statistics by the DfES…)? It’s not as if science is getting harder to learn. With the ubiquitous use of computers loaded with scientific and mathematical software, much of the routine ‘drudgery’ has been removed from the subject, and science should now be easier and more pleasurable to learn than ever before.

The fact is that science has been politicized, demonized, misrepresented and misunderstood for so long now that the younger generations think it is either un-cool, irrelevant or simply bad.

As a result, science education is on the defensive in this country, and not only science, but the scientific mindset itself is under threat; the values and techniques of rationality, reason, logic and careful, critical, analytical thinking are in danger of being lost in a chaos of wishy-washy intellectual relativism - precisely the type of relativism which thinks it might actually be a Jolly Good Idea to teach Creationism in our schools!

And what does our esteemed Prime Minister have to say on the subject? He says it is a great idea - it will help promote ‘educational diversity’.

Jeezus wept!

No Tony, what it will do is help promote wishy-washy intellectual relativism!

It is perhaps unsurprising that Tony Blair sees no problem in allowing Creationism to be taught on an equal footing with proper science. His previous profession as a barrister suggests that he may have a mindset that regards eloquence of rhetoric to be as important as actual physical evidence - if not more so - in determining the nature of reality. After all, as frequent miscarriages of justice demonstrate, a barrister will never let the ugly truth get in the way of a beautiful argument! (And I have done Jury Service often enough to have seen this tragic inversion of logic in action...)

And, as a politician, he is even more likely to regard Truth as a malleable and subjective concept at best...

Oh, and let’s not forget he is also a (very publically) practicing Roman Catholic! (Smell a rat? I think so…)

Creationism in our schools? Yeah Tony, great idea. Now please take your foot out of your mouth so I can punch you in it, you idiot!

Introduction

This blog is unashamedly elitist. I make no apologies for that.

It is addressed to intelligent, rational people everywhere.

I will be using it as a space for me to have a damned good rant about all the stupid, irrational people in the world, and the stupid, irrational things they believe, say and do.

I feel the need to have such rants on a fairly regular basis, firstly, because there are an awful lot of stupid, irrational people out there (it is a sad fact that they vastly outnumber all the intelligent, rational people in the world) and, secondly, because these people are continually saying and doing incredibly stupid, irrational things as a consequence of all the stupid, irrational things they believe.

It wouldn't be so bad if the only people who suffered as a result of their words and actions were these same stupid, irrational people themselves. Some might say they richly deserved it. But it is in the very nature of many of the things they say and do that they are not only selfish and thoughtless, but also wide-ranging and completely indiscriminate in their effects, so that everyone else suffers, too - including all the intelligent, rational people who, while we can see all this going on, are usually powerless to prevent it (on account of our minority status) and must simply shake our heads in despair at the stupidity and irrationality of the majority of mankind.

As a result, many intelligent, rational people come to feel that the world they live in is little more than a vast lunatic asylum, with six billion patients, most exhibiting varying degrees of mental incapacity, from the mildly retarded to the dangerously psychotic. And, through some bizarre misdiagnosis or miscarriage of justice, these intelligent, rational people have been committed to this same asylum, and must live amongst its inmates and obey its petty rules, even though they - and the minority who are like them - are perfectly sane and sensible. And, worst of all, they realize that many of the people who are actually in charge of this asylum - the people who run it and get to make up all its rules - are also some of its most desperately retarded and dangerously psychotic inmates!

Living in such a world can be extremely aggravating and frustrating for intelligent, rational people. This can lead to stress, which in turn can lead to elevated blood pressure, insomnia, digestive disorders and a host of other anxiety-related conditions. So I believe it is important for us to blow off steam, on a regular basis, in the interests of maintaining both our sanity and our physical health; we should vent our frustrations at being wrongly imprisoned in an asylum along with all these nutters; we should form a huddle in a corner of the exercise yard during recreation periods, and have a damned good bitch about how swivel-eyed, mouth-foaming mad all the other inmates are, and how unfair it is that we are trapped in here with them.

It probably won't change anything, but it will make us feel a whole lot better. Think of it as a form of psychotherapy.

And the first rule of psychotherapy is complete honesty in all participants. So I will be doing a lot of plain-speaking with very frank language. And I will not - repeat not - be making any concessions to political correctness, because political correctness is to open debate what Nazi eugenics was to racial diversity; it is linguistic eugenics, in fact, and operates to stifle free expression, gag valid criticism and silence dissent. And I suspect it was invented by the aforementioned stupid, irrational people in order to prevent intelligent, rational people from telling them things about themselves that they would rather not hear.

I will also be naming and shaming those people who deserve to be named and shamed for their crimes against sanity; I will mock and ridicule them relentlessly, because they deserve it. Be they lying politicians, corrupt corporations, deranged religious leaders or any other representatives of the stupid and irrational majority, they can expect no mercy on here, and will receive none.

Oh, and I like using italics for emphasis, so I will be using them a lot. And I make no apologies for that, either!