FEAR ME

FOR I AM ALL-POWERFUL

Until this week, I would have said that my super-powers are limited to the following:

• Locating any spider's web within a 5 metre radius, using only my face
• Locating submerged rocks in the ocean, using only my bare feet
• Turning wine into water

However, over the last few days I have not only caused a peer-reviewed paper to be retracted, but also influenced the outcome of the upcoming US House of Representatives elections.

Inadvertent, but still impressive.

The paper retraction came about as a result of a tweet I posted after spotting something unusual in my journal table of contents RSS feeds:

The tweet inspired Bob O'Hara to write a post about the paper, and the story then got picked up by Tara C. Smith (as a direct result of Bob's post) and PZ Myers (I'm not sure where he first heard about the paper, but he linked to Tara's post).

The editor of the journal left comments on all the posts the next day, saying that the paper was being retracted, and apologising for the mistake! See Bob's comment thread for one example.

Blimey, I wasn't expecting THAT when I rattled off that quick tweet! I almost feel guilty*, except that the paper really was very bizarre and unscientific. I'm all in favour of the occasional silly entry in the peer reviewed literature (e.g. here), but feel that it should be marked as such, or made obvious by the date of publication. April 1st springs to mind... Also, it appears that at least one of the authors had intended the paper as a serious attempt at thought provocation.

I think the comments around the internet about "humourless atheists" are off-base, though - most of the comments I've read are full of humourous piss-taking!

My influence over the US elections came about as a result of this book review. Apparently the author is currently running for office as a US Representative, and someone who lives in that district found my book review when Googling all the candidates. This voter then emailed me yesterday, to thank me - he explained that he has a rule against voting for creationists, and based on my review he's decided not to vote for the book's author!

(For the record, I'm not sure that the author's an out-and-out old-skool religious creationist. From what I've read in the book and then in his comments on my review post, I'd classify him more as a proponent of some weird modified form of intelligent design).

I'm thinking that this might be a good week to buy a lottery ticket.

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*I'd like to direct your attention to this egregious little bit of buck-passing:

Rib tickler

I like food.

And drinks.

I like to try lots of different stuff. I'm reasonably adventurous. But I also like to make sure that when I order a meal in a restaurant, I'm going to enjoy it*.

The obvious solution is to order something "safe", but also try a little taste of whatever Mr E Man orders. Just a leeettle sip of his drink; just a leeettle bite of his food.

He calls this "tithing", or more accurately "fucking tithing" (even though I take much less than 10%), and complains good naturedly every time I do it (even though I always give him a taste of my food and drink in return).

We had a very rare week-night dinner out last night, at a new place near our house. Mr E Man is on a mission to find the best ribs in Vancouver**, so when he heard that they had a rack of baby back ribs on special, that's what he chose. I opted for the halibut, and switched my beer order from the lager to the IPA after tasting a leettle bit of Mr E Man's pint (thereby proving the usefulness of tithing).

My fish was pretty good, so I cut off a chunk and transferred it to Mr E Man's plate. He ate it, but didn't reciprocate the gift until I reminded him about tithing.

Mr E Man: [dirty look]

Me: "Oh come on, I just want that little one from the end"

Mr E Man: "Every time!"

Me: "It's tradition. Women have been stealing men's ribs ever since the Garden of Eden"

Mr E Man: "But you don't even believe that, even though it's totally true and you can't prove any different!"

Me: "Yes I can! If women were made from a man's rib, they'd have Y chromosomes!"

Mr E Man, eating a rib: "Mmmmmmmm, tasty chromosomes. You can't have any"

I got my way in the end, of course. I thought the ribs were pretty tasty, but Mr E Man was disappointed. He says he's going to stop ordering ribs in new places, because his standards are too high and burgers are a better way to judge the overall quality of the restaurant. In future, he will only move on to try the ribs in places that pass the burger test.

We all have our little foibles; tithing (and scientific pedantry in the face of inaccurate religious mythology) isn't too much for him to live with, right, guys?

Right?

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*I'm actually really, really good at this. My Dad isn't; he'll order the most exotic sounding thing on any given menu, then complain when he doesn't like it. But with the exception of times when the general quality of the restaurant's food just isn't up to scratch, I very rarely end up with something I don't like.

**Current leader: Mr E Man's BFF. Current leading restaurant: Ouisi's.

Agnostic about Humanism

I don't really like labels.

Why do I have to be "a Liberal" rather than "a Tory", "an atheist" rather than "a Christian?" I prefer to think in terms of my stance on individual issues - politically I usually agree with the Greens, and often with the Socialists, but I disagree with both platforms in some cases, and sometimes even (gasp!) agree with a right winger. So my vote goes to whichever party in a given election best represents my attitude towards the issues I deem most important at that time. (It's a shame, because other than effectively having to be part of a specific political party, politics sounds like a decent career option for me).

Labels can sometimes be useful though. (Even the "anti-label" label doesn't fit me all the time). They're a short-cut, a way to describe the essence of my views without spending too much time on lengthy explanations.

As I've written before, I've labelled myself in the past as an agnostic, and then later as an atheist. People (well, most people) understand what both those terms mean. If the conversation develops, then you can get into more detail, but often it's just a brief question and answer from a casual acquaintance (e.g. at a recent baby shower: "How about you? Do you go to church?" "No, I'm an atheist." "Oh...." (lengthy pause) "these mini quiches are great, aren't they?"). However, the term that fits me best is the mixed-label "agnostic atheist". What I mean by this is that in the absence of any evidence for the existence of gods, I'm fairly convinced that they don't exist; but I accept that absence of evidence is not necessarily evidence of absence, that I can't ever know for certain, and that I will change my mind if evidence arises. Try dropping that into casual conversation though.

More recently, I've started reading a little about Humanism. It's come up in conversation a couple of times recently with agnostic/atheist friends who self-identify as Humanists, so I thought I'd better investigate.

From Wikipedia:

Humanism is a broad category of ethical philosophies that affirm the dignity and worth of all people, based on the ability to determine right and wrong by appealing to universal human qualities, particularly rationality, without resorting to the supernatural or alleged divine authority from religious texts. It is a component of a variety of more specific philosophical systems. Humanism can be considered as a process by which truth and morality is sought through human investigation and as such views on morals can change when new knowledge and information is discovered. In focusing on the capacity for self-determination, humanism rejects transcendental justifications, such as a dependence on belief without reason, the supernatural, or texts of allegedly divine origin. Humanists endorse universal morality based on the commonality of the human condition, suggesting that solutions to human social and cultural problems cannot be parochial.

From the British Humanist Association:

Humanism is an approach to life based on humanity and reason – humanists recognise that moral values are properly founded on human nature and experience alone and that the aims of morality should be human welfare, happiness and fulfillment. Our decisions are based on the available evidence and our assessment of the outcomes of our actions, not on any dogma or sacred text.

Humanism is a naturalistic view, encompassing atheism and agnosticism as responses to theistic claims, but is an active and ethical philosophy far greater than these reactions to religion.
Humanists believe in individual rights and freedoms, but believe that individual responsibility, social cooperation and mutual respect are just as important.
Humanists believe that people can and will continue to find solutions to the world's problems, so that quality of life can be improved for everyone.
Humanists are positive, gaining inspiration from our lives, art and culture, and a rich natural world.

The difficulty for me is that while I agree with all of the above, it's hitting me on a purely intellectual level. It makes perfect sense to me. BUT it's not reaching out of the page and grabbing me by the throat, it's not punching me in the gut and making me shout "YES! This is what I've been looking for my whole life!"

So am I a Humanist? (And does that word require capitalisation? Usage differs...) Luckily the British Humanist Association website has a quiz, imaginatively titled "Are you a Humanist?"

I took it. I got about 60-70% Ds, the rest were Cs. For some questions, I agreed with answers C and D equally.

From the answer key:

All or mostly Cs: Your answers are fairly neutral, perhaps a bit dependent on authority or other people or pure emotion. Humanists try to think, and to think for themselves. You may be an agnostic or a humanist or vaguely religious, depending on what your other answers were.

All or mostly Ds: You are a humanist or very close to humanist thinking. Many people are, often without even knowing it! Humanists don't agree about everything, and you may have collected some other answers too, though if they include As and Bs you’re unlikely to be a humanist.

So... I guess I might be a Humanist. But then again, I might not.

Yeah, I know, it doesn't matter. It's just another label. I'm not planning to join any groups or attend any meetings anyway. But for some reason, I'd like to know.

I'm only human, after all, even if I'm not (necessarily) a Humanist.

The election selection

As one of them pesky foreigners, I don't think I should say any more than I already have about the US election.

Instead I'm going to link to a bunch of excellent posts from around the blogosphere*. (Edit: OK, and apparently I'm going to comment on them too - couldn't resist. Please pretend you didn't read the first sentence of this post).

Good luck to my American friends - I think I'm hoping for the same result as almost all of you! I'll be at the Canucks-Predators game, but with my ear close to the iPhone ground for updates. If anyone would care to leave comments here as the evening progresses, I'd be very grateful - I'll see more of the hockey if I just wait for the beep that means a comment has been emailed to me than if I'm constantly refreshing cnn.com manually!

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First up is Ruchi with a wonderful post that literally brought tears to my eyes. "It doesn't matter if your parents came from Kenya, or India, or North Dakota; you CAN still become president. [...] I may not want to be president anymore, but somewhere out there, I know a young child of immigrants is now free to dream big".

(Although, as Digital Cuttlefish points out, young American atheists are obviously gonna have to wait a bit longer for their chance to be treated as equals president: "No need to watch your language, Or to treat us with respect—Because demonizing us is still politically correct").

Microbiologist XX also posts about the importance of voting, regardless of where you live. It's not just about the Presidential ballot! Oh, and also, "If you don't vote, then you forfeit your right to complain about the government until the next election". Too right.

Dr Jekyll and Mrs Hyde shares her experiences as she volunteers for the Obama-Biden campaign in a swing state. "We had lots of pro-Obama responses, with the only exception being some people complaining they had been called TOO MUCH by the Obama campaign. If this is our biggest problem, we are doing ok." Good luck Dr J!

Todd Oakley injects some evolutionary theory (and a much-needed chuckle) into the proceedings. "A common theme of this blog is to share cases of "linear evolutionary thinking". These are instances, usually graphics, that illustrate the common conception of evolution as a line of progress, from worst to best". Click through for this particular example - you don't need to be a biologist to appreciate it!

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Bonus posts for my Californian reader(s), who are voting on Proposition 8:

DrugMonkey neatly eviscerates the alleged logic of the pro-(H)8 side: "I'm sure there are other classes of arguments and I'd like to hear something that sounds halfway rational. Have any of you Californians heard anything that makes any kind of sense? Because from where I sit, all I hear that makes any consistent sense in any of this is the following: "I just don't like gay people, in fact I fear and hate them.""

Meanwhile Digital Cuttlefish skewers the proposition in rhyme. "It’s a simple little proposition, Proposition Eight: All we ask is that you join us, as we all discriminate!"

And here's Ruchi again with "A Heart-felt Speech From The Republican Mayor of San Diego".

I am very proud that gay couples in both my native and adopted country can marry. I'm therefore wishing for an extra dose of good luck for my anti-prop 8 buddies and blog buddies down the coast...

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Finally, Bob is looking for new topics to keep the blogosphere busy after the election: "We have to save the poor slavering dears by giving them a topic to get excited about", he says. My suggestion of "football" seems to be working - for now.

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*posts featured here are rendered ineligible for "post of the week" bragging rights. Why? Because I said so...

That Atheist Meme

Tagged by R.E.S.E.A.R.C.H.E.R.S. I swear this thing was written by a theist who wants to make us look bad or something!

Can You Remember The Day That You Officially Became An Atheist?

There was no specific day, and I didn't realise it had to be official. Do I need to get a certificate? I can remember the first time I said "I'm an atheist" rather than "I'm not religious", does that count? (It was in the UK so the recipient didn't care).

Do you remember the day you officially became an agnostic?

Again, there was no specific day, it was a very gradual process. My path to agnosticism and atheism is described in more detail in this post if anyone is interested.

How about the last time you spoke or prayed to God with actual thought that someone was listening?

I did mentally recite the Lord's Prayer to myself most nights when I was much younger, but it was more a superstition than an attempt to actually "speak to God". I don't think I've ever done that with any real thought that there was someone listening.

Did anger towards God or religion help cause you to be an atheist or agnostic?

As just about everyone else has already pointed out, being angry at something requires a belief in that thing. I'm not angry at God, nor at leprechauns.

Being angry at religion is a much more interesting (and actually valid) question. But no, religion has never harmed me personally, and animosity to religion played no role in my path to atheism. I feel frustrated and yeah, occasionally angry, with people who try to impose their own religious beliefs on others, but that came after my realisation that they are, in all likelihood, completely wrong.

Were you agnostic towards ghosts, even after you became an atheist?

This is where you all get to laugh with me (Dr. A has promised that no-one will laugh at me).

I do not necessarily disbelieve in ghosts. I emphatically do NOT believe in any kind of conscious spirit that deliberately haunts the people who wronged it during its life or whatever. However I think it is possible that people sometimes, somehow, manage to see a glimpse into a different time. A replay of a past event that happened in that place. I know too many completely trustworthy people with "ghost" stories that they swear are true. Including my Dad, who saw a fellow student come out of his bedroom and walk right past him in his hall of residence at University. This despite the fact that the other student had fatally broken his neck in a rugby scrum a few weeks earlier, and that his parents had taken away all his belongings and the room was locked up for the remainder of the year since no-one else wanted to live there. My Dad knew the guy well and says that there is NO WAY it could have been anyone else.

Now my Dad is a lapsed Catholic, a skeptic, and enjoys telling a good story, but you have to really push him and push him (and ply him with whisky) before he'll tell you that one. And I've heard similar stories from other people I trust.

There is also this, the most famous of the many ghost stories that come from my home town. The ghosts were first seen before the Roman road was discovered.

I've heard more evidence for the existence of ghosts than for the existence of any god!

Do you want to be wrong?

About which god? The one described in the Old Testament? No, he sounds like a mean spirited old bugger. New Testament? Maybe. Buddhism? If I'm wrong about anything I'd like it to be Buddhism. It would indeed be nice (and convenient to ruling authorities) if there really were an omniscient entity or system that rewards good behaviour and punishes the bad guys. And if I could see my Grandma and Nana again. That's why religion is so appealing, right?

I would also like free presents from Santa and a pet unicorn, if anyone's keeping count.

I tag: any atheists who would like to play!

I was DEEPLY offended by PZ Myers today

His actions were truly reprehensible.

Dude, recycle that paper! And do you not have a compost bin for the banana skin and coffee grounds? Show some fucking respect!

You can leave your hat on

Does anyone else read PossumMomma's blog? (aka Atheist in a Minivan). The usual content consists of thoughtful posts about atheist parenting in a world full of theists, and (fully justified) rants about Warren Jeffs. Highly recommended.

A recent entry stood out though. Click through and discover the perfect birthday present for the atheist who has everything.

Explaining my scarlet letter

This post has been brewing and fermenting in my mind ever since I added the scarlet A to my blog a few months ago. The A is for Atheist, and you can read about the purpose of the corresponding "Out Campaign" here.

I was finally spurred into action by a recent thread on Pharyngula, in which commenters gave their "deconversion" stories. Plus I wanted to tell you my own story before reading and being influenced by "The God Delusion", which is lurking near the top of my reading list. So here is the tale of Why CAE is an Atheist. My apologies for the length, but it was a long process...

Unlike many of the people on the Pharyngula thread, I do not come from a particularly religious family. My Mum is Church of England and my Dad is a lapsed Catholic. My Mum is definitely the more religious of the two. She teaches French at a church-sponsored state school and attends services with her students, but apart from that she doesn't go to church except for the obligatory hatches, matches and dispatches. My Dad effectively gave up on organised religion after his family priest refused to acknowledge my Mum's existence - they had visited him together to try to persuade him to change his mind and read the banns.

So what did this mean for my sister and me? We were both baptised Church of England, and I vaguely remember going to some kind of Sunday school once or twice, but it wasn't a major feature of our home lives. I went to a Christmas Eve church service with my Mum one year, because we wanted to hear the carols. I once had a discussion with my Dad about how he wants to figure out what he believes in before he dies, but I was quite young at the time and hadn't really formulated my own opinions yet. (We're not really a deep discussion kind of a family - our weekly phone calls are 50% personal news updates, 40% sport and 10% dreadful jokes). I did find out last year that my Catholic Godmother tried to buy me a catechism and rosary when I was a kid, but was deterred by my parents. As it stands, she's taken me to more pubs than churches.

Most of my religious instruction therefore took place at school. I went to a perfectly normal state primary school, but since there's no formal separation of church and state in the UK our teachers were apparently free to discuss religion in any way they saw fit. (I have no idea what the actual law was at the time, but I do know that no kids or parents ever complained or thought that our teachers were doing anything wrong or strange in any way. It should be noted that our school was almost 100% white at the time, although my best friend (then and now) is Sikh - more on that later).

Our exposure to religion mostly took the form of teachers telling us the nativity, crucifixion and resurrection stories, with none of the "some people believe" phrases that you'd need to include nowadays. So, for all intents and purposes, the same people who told us that there are two high tides and two low tides each day, and that the Earth goes around the sun, also told us that our saviour was born in a stable in Bethlehem and died for our sins before coming back to life and ascending to heaven. No context, no caveats, no nothing, and we had no reason not to believe every word they said.

I was a quiet, well behaved and academic kind of girl, and I wanted to please my teachers. When I was about 8 or 9 my favourite teacher asked everyone in the class to raise their hands if they went to church. When only a couple of kids did so she reacted in shock and horror and said that she couldn't believe such a thing was possible. I went home that night and asked my parents if we could please start going to church? They were quite taken aback and quizzed me for my reasons, never guessing that it was only so I could report back to Mrs Lawson and receive her praise.

They really, really like to remind me now that I was the one who wanted to go to church when I was a kid. And that they didn't take me. We usually went on hikes on Sundays instead.

Things changed when I went to secondary school - again, a perfectly normal state comprehensive. I think our non-white contingent went up, from 2 students to 4 or something like that, and our new teachers didn't tell bible stories or make us sing hymns. Instead we started to learn about history, biology, and, more importantly, other religions. This was my first "hang on a minute" moment. You're saying that the Hindus, and Moslems, and Buddhists, and Jews, all believe different things, all with the same conviction with which my former teachers believed those bible stories? And what about the Greek, Roman and Norse gods? People back then knew that those stories were true, too.

From "well, they can't all be right" it's not too much of a stretch to get to "maybe they're all wrong", but in fact it took me a good few years.

I spent much of my time in high school with my two best friends, one Sikh and one Methodist. They both came from religious families and attended church or temple regularly, and we had some interesting discussions as I started to question what I'd been taught at primary school. My Sikh friend and her family maintained that Jesus, Mohammad, Buddha, the Hindu gods and Sikh gurus were all different manifestations of one unifying truth. They took my sister and me to their temple in Leeds one weekend, which was a very interesting experience for us. Coming from such a white area, it was especially strange to enter the temple and be the only white people in a room of several hundred people. It certainly gave me some perspective on what my friend and her sister went through every day. And the food was excellent.

On the other hand, my Methodist friend was shocked at my statement that "if there is a God, and to get into Heaven you have to worship him and obey him, rather than just do good things, then I'm not sure I want to go". I should say that this friend is one of the few very religious Christians I've ever known who truly practiced what she preached. If she saw a homeless person on the street she would drop whatever she was doing to buy them some food and have a conversation with them. Imagine a large group of semi-drunk 18 year olds on a Christmas Eve pub crawl standing around in the cold and wondering what she would do if we told her to bloody well hurry up so we could go to the White Swan... Interestingly, she's now an agnostic (it wasn't my fault) and still just as lovely.

My ideas continued to mature as I got older. I read "I Claudius", which described the Roman reaction to the burgeoning Christian faith and disparaged Christianity as a religion for slaves. I started to see how the concept of an eternal reward in the afterlife - if you obey certain laws and generally behave yourself in the present - could be used to control a population, and how invoking an all-seeing, all-powerful deity was the best way to ensure compliance. I heard someone make an off-hand remark that avoiding pork and seafood in hot climates was a really good idea and that, again, invoking a deity was the best way to make an uneducated population understand the importance of food hygiene. And how better to explain where we came from than to say we'd been created by the same all powerful deity? I realised that there must be a deep-seated human need to know where we came from, and that every culture in history has come up with a different explanation to satisfy its people.

We first learned about evolution at around the same time, and it just made so much sense. It was so logical, so elegant - how could it possibly be any other way? Now, I haven't read "The Blind Watchmaker", but I do know one of its most famous quotes:

"Although atheism might have been logically tenable before Charles Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist."

Dawkins' quote sums up my own feelings perfectly. Evolution, along with abiogenesis theories such as the RNA world hypothesis, provides us with an explanation of where we came from that is supported by actual evidence and doesn't need to invoke a magical deity. Some people might not like the fact that we're related to monkeys, but that doesn't make it any less true, and the supporting evidence is right there for anyone to see - if they're willing to look. I began to see the myths and stories of all extinct and extant religions as nothing more* than attempts to explain (and control) from an era that didn't have access to any better explanations.

I called myself an agnostic for a few years, and really, agnosticism is the only truly defensible position. I can't know for sure that there are no gods, just as no-one else can know for sure that there are. But for the last few years I've called myself an atheist. In the absence of all evidence to the contrary, I'm happy to say that there are no gods.

Of course, if I'm struck by lightning as I publish this post, or see any other evidence, I'll be more than happy to change my mind.

I hope I didn't offend anyone - that wasn't my intention, and I'm sure boredom and indifference are the more likely reactions anyway. I'm heading off on a ski trip today, back next week, so if you leave a comment and I don't reply right away, it's not because I'm not willing to debate and to examine my logic. It might be because I got struck by lightning though. That Thor bloke has a temper on him.

*or less. In that context, I find the stories absolutely fascinating.

Bringing out the atheist vote?

I'm currently in voting limbo. I'm not a Canadian citizen yet, so I can't vote in my country of residence. And while I am eligible to vote in the UK, I choose not to; I don't think it's fair for me to, say, vote for a party that might raise taxes (I'm a bit of a lefty) if I don't have to actually pay them.

But here's an interesting development in UK politics that might change things. The Liberal Democrats, the third-largest UK party and the most left-leaning of the big three, just appointed a new leader, Nick Clegg. I have to admit I don't know much about this bloke, but a headline on the BBC website caught my eye yesterday. Clegg has publicly stated that he does not believe in God.

I would never vote for someone just because they're an atheist, but it is definitely an attractive idea to have someone in office who will not be influenced by outdated religious ideas. (There's an interesting quote from Tony Blair in the same BBC article - he was scared of discussing his religious beliefs while in office as he thought people would think he was "a nutter". That says a lot about the differences between British and American politics I think!) I've voted for the Lib Dems before and I'll definitely keep an eye on how Nick Clegg develops as a leader. I might just be tempted to become part of the ex-pat vote next time around.

Any questions for Richard Dawkins?

The BBC website is offering readers the chance to submit questions for Richard Dawkins, who will be appearing on a BBC show this weekend.

Any takers?