Professor J. Anderson Thomson on Why We Believe

This is a great talk by Professor J. Anderson Thomson from the American Atheist convention in Atlanta, Georgia in 2009, which addresses ideas of human evolution, the mind’s coping mechanisms, and the way religion probably evolved with us as a by-product of social mechanisms which emerged within us.

Watch and enjoy!

Peter Singer – The Genius of Darwin – Dawkins interview

I was fortunate enough to see BOTH Peter Singer and Richard Dawkins speak at the Rise Of Atheism conference here in Melbourne in March of this year. While Dawkins’ talk was eye-opening, Peter Singer’s talk resonated with me far more powerfully.

Peter Singer is a Bio-Ethicist, animal rights activist and advocate of vegetarianism. Here in an interview with Richard Dawkins from his program “The Genius of Darwin”, Singer speaks of the ethical tradeoff we make as humans who eat meat, and whether it is ethical at all to kill and animal when there are alternatives to eating meat which don’t involve killing. I enjoyed this talk immensely.

While I sympathise with the ideals of vegetarians, I am not a vegetarian at all. The ideals of living a vegetarian lifestyle are sound, and sustainable if managed properly. But so too can be the practices of being an omnivore if we only eat meat occasionally. See Polyface Farms as an example of good and sustainable farming practices (as outlined in the book “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” by Michael Pollan).

I am not a vegetarian activist, nor do I pertain to being an ethics expert, however I am an advocate for sustainable (and humane) farming practices, and those that have a lessened impact on the lives of animals. Make of this what you will.

A Puff Of Logic

“I refuse to prove that I exist,” says God, “for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.”
“But,” say Man, “the Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn’t it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don’t. QED.”
“Oh dear,” says God, “I hadn’t though of that” and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.

– Douglas Adams from “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” – 1979

The Eye Of God - The Helix Nebula

I find it very strange that we are living in the year 2010, a time when massive advances in humankind have been made by countless people over thousands of years for the betterment of us all using logic, reason, rational thought, trial and error and empirical evidence, and yet in this day and age a sub-current of illogical thought is rearing its ugly head to muddy the waters of progress.

By using pseudo-science, misquoting evidence and warping facts brought about by advances and discoveries in science, we are hearing ideas that, frankly, sound like they have come from the Middle Ages rather than the 21st century. Deniers of empirical information are cherrypicking ideas to suit their agendas. They use all the words that science uses, but they take gigantic “leaps-of-faith” when linking these ideas together, which in turn warps the meaning of the facts. Many people don’t ask as many questions as I do when given these pseudo-scientific “interpretations” of science, and end up believing and even preaching and spreading these wrongs.

Now I’m no scientist, but it doesn’t take a scientist to figure out that the mis-information being served up by organisations such as Creation Ministries International is warped and twisted. One look at the website reveals that the “information” they are serving up supports hatred and misogyny, that the one point they are trying to prove takes a backseat to a political and social agenda which stems from antiquated stone-age beliefs. Creation Ministries International are deliberately telling their followers to disbelieve everything the mainstream media tells them, to “drop-out” of society and homeschool their children in a controlled environment where that can teach them whatever they want. They are also blaming humanists and atheists for a perceived “moral decay of society” which can be traced back to a disbelief in the Christian God. Lies bundled in falsehoods, wrapped up in scapegoatery and mumbo-jumbo, misrepresentations of science, and demonisation of empirical thought! And if I didn’t know better, the writings of people like Dr Carl Wieland could hold water, if it weren’t for the fact that they are wrong.

I’m not going to opt-in to their hatespeak by disparaging them any further, not give them more space on my blog than I already have. Go to the website and make up your mind for yourself.

Archaeopteryx bavarica - no indication of evolution

Most people say that this kind of thought only happens in the USA, where Creationism is a mainstream belief system. However this kind of thinking is weaving its insidious tentacles into the politics of countries all over the earth. This past week, in Melbourne, Australia, a former footballer named Gary Ablett Snr was given a 2 page spread in a local newspaper The Herald Sun (also duplicated in Perth Now I noticed) with a piece titled “What kind of world do we want to live in?” where he espouses his creationist beliefs and bigotries under the guise that the world is experiencing “a very serious decline in morals and values in our community.” He goes on to plagiarise Ken Ham, lie about Richard Dawkins at the Global Atheist Convention, deny evolution,even to deny that Australia was once a penal colony. (WTF?!?) By using language like “experts agree” to try to substantiate himself, and talks of the “theory of evolution” as if to point out a flaw in Darwin’s writings (really it just points out a failing in the English language). But really Gary Ablett Snr is a soft target for criticism, as I doubt he has the intelligence to truly understand the implications of what he writes in that article.

To answer your question Mr Ablett, I want to live in a world without poorly constructed arguments pieced together from questionable sources which point to deliberately misleading outcomes.

Come to think of it, maybe Mr Ablett is correct, that we are in a “very serious decline”. A decline into the new dark-ages.