Hizbullah versus Lebanon

I’m at a loss over who I’d like to see win in the recent fighting between Hizbullah and supporters of the Lebanese government.

On the one hand, although Hizbullah say they no longer want to make Lebanon into an Islamic state, there are no doubt still some very dodgy people in the Hizbullah leadership, with very dodgy religious agendas. And the more religion gets out of politics and retreats into the private sphere, the better it will be for the entire human species.

On the other hand, the fighting statrted because the Lebanese government wanted Hizbullah to scrap their secure telecom network, which provided telephone and Ineternet communications independently of the Lebanese government. I think everyone should have access to secure telecoms networks that are independent of governments.

Why people go anti-science

Mark Hoofnagle at Denialism Blog hits the hail on the head:

In fact, if there is a unifying theme of denialism, it is that any extreme of ideological thinking leads to the necessary denial of fact. When one considers the causes of denialist worldviews, one sees again and again some form of fundamentalist belief. Fundamentalist religion leads to the rejection of evolution. Free-market fundamentalists are the leading source of anti-global warming denialism. On the liberal side, a mixture of technophobia and neo-luddism leads to paranoid suspicions about everything from GM crops causing non-existent illnesses to fear of harmless radio technology such as wifi to the fear of vaccines and medicine innovations exemplified by the HuffPo cranks and the evidence-based medicine/HIV/AIDS denialists like Mike Adams and Gary Null.

Any dogma that gets any followers is likely to be (a) simple and (b) emotionality satisfying, at least to some people. In fact any belief system must be simpler than reality, since reality is vast and probably not fully comprehensible to the human mind anyway. Once people become adherents of a dogma, they are likely to hold tight to it, since it’s their intellectual comfort blanket. And when reality proves that their dogma is at least partly wrong — as all dogmas must be, even though they are probably partly right, too — then the adherent is drawn into conflict with reality, and resolves that conflict by simply pretending that the uncomfortable truth isn’t there. And then the more serious of the adherents erect whole intellectual edifices, founded on bullshit and wish-fulfillment fantasy, as to why reality isn’t real.

What’s the cure for this? Simply to realise that any simple, pat, belief system isn’t going to be the whole truth, even if it does have good points. Put simply, no belief system about how the human world works is entirely correct, or is any widely-held belief system likely to be entirely nonsense. For example:

Religion: God may not exist, but nevertheless it is still bad for people to murder or steal from each other.

Free markets: are an efficient way of allocating scarce resources, under many circumstances, but they are not the solution to all human-organisation problems.

Medicine: some medicines have genuinely harmed patients, but most do good, and by spreading panic about vaccines etc one is almost certainly doing more harm than good.

Technology: most technology leads to humans living longer, more fulfilled lives; but some technologies have lead to a diminution of human happiness (e.g. telemarketers and spammers)

Mr Eugenides on psychics

This is good:

Was there ever a more transparently fraudulent money-making scheme than the “psychic industry”? Most of the psychics I am [dimly] aware of operate out of tiny fleapits in run-down shopping arcades, or do guest readings in the upstairs rooms of Edinburgh pubs between 1pm and 4pm on weekday afternoons. If I had the gift of second sight, you can be fucking sure I wouldn’t be reading people’s palms in the Felcher and Firkin for a fiver a time; I’d be making thousands of pounds an hour on Betfair from the balcony of my villa in the Seychelles, watching a naked girl try to mix a pina colada with her free hand. No, wait; two naked girls.

Under-mentalists kill their child

Dale Neumann and Leilani Neumann are contemptable subhuman filth. Why? Because they killed their child, through denying her medical care which would have saved her life. Why would anyone do that, you ask? Because their religious beliefs told them to:

Wisconsin authorities will consider filing charges in the case of an 11-year-old girl who died on Easter Sunday of complications from diabetes that went untreated because police say her parents’ obscure religious beliefs do not allow medical intervention.

(via Balloon Juice)

Why should religion get a free ride?

Chris Dillow notes that Gordon Brown is privileging religion:

What is a conscience? This is the question Brown opened when he said that “exercising your conscience will mean for Labour Party members a free vote” on parts of the embryology bill.

But, as Janine asks, why should conscience only permit a free vote here? To take just one example, many Labour MPs consciences might - or should - stop them wanting to put people in jail for 42 days without charge. But there’s little hope of a free vote on the Counter Terrorism bill.

What Brown means by “conscience”, then, is “religious belief.” Which raises the question: why should religious beliefs have a special status in politics that allows MPs free votes when they don’t get them on other grounds?

Why should religion be privileged above other belief systems? Dillow says it shouldn’t be. I go further than that: religious beliefs should be accorded less respect, less status, than for example secular liberal beliefs.

There are about 6 billion people in the world, and about 100 million of them die every year. Most of these people die of diseases, many (or all) of which could be curable over time with medical research. So medical research saves lives, and being against medical research — which opponents of the embryology bill are — kills people. Hitler only killed 50 million or so; these people want 100 million potentially preventable deaths to happen every year.

Most of the religious people who oppose the embryology bill are I suppose in their private lives good and decent people; certainly the vast majority don’t personally go round killing people. Which leads me to the conclusion that although good people do good things, and bad people do bad things, it takes religion to make good people do bad things.

War on Civil Liberties Suffers Setback

The government’s War on Civil Liberties suffered a setback today, as five men who had been convicted of the thoughtcrime offence of reading extremist literature were freed by the Court of Appeal:

The convictions of five young Muslim men jailed over extremist literature have been quashed by the Appeal Court.

Freeing the men, the Lord Chief Justice said there was no proof of terrorist intent. The lawyer for one said they had been jailed for a “thought crime”. A jury convicted the students in 2007 after hearing the men, of Bradford and Ilford, east London, became obsessed with jihadi websites and literature.

Why science is good and religion is crap

I’ve so far not commented on the debate regarding Dr Rowan Williams’ remarks on sharia law — it’s a debate that’s caused more heat than light, expecially in the popular press which has wilfully misrepresented Williams’ remarks. But I will pass on this tidbit from Quaequam blog:

The point which much of the media has ignored is that Williams has argued for a system of exceptionalism whereby we atheists (or, as he put it in his speech on Thursday, sterile positivists) must abide by the rule of law while anyone of faith can negotiate whatever opt-outs they wish. At the same time, of course, he insists that the Church should be established and retain its existing seats in the House of Lords. Gay marriage, and even same-sex registered partnerships, is apparently a threat that undermines the institution of marriage, yet we should at least be open-minded about the idea of Muslim polygamy. People of faith can say what they like about atheists, but atheists should be locked up for slagging off the religious. In short, he believes absolutely in equal rights with the modest proviso that the religious are more equal than the rest of us.

This I think gets to the nub of what Williams is arguing for. It’s obvious what the attraction of such a point of view is to a religious leader such as Williams; it is also obvious to any fair-minded person what’s wrong with it. Why should any belief system be priviledged over any other? The only reason is that some beliefs are correct, or at least more correct than other beliefs. For example consider:

Belief A: Strawberries are good to eat.

Belief B: Broken glass is good to eat.

It happens that one of these beliefs is more true than the other one. How do we know? By observing reality. Now there’s a special way of observing reality that consists of considering procedures which if carried out will give a different result based on with belief is true, and then carrying out those procedures. This way is called experimentation and it’s how science works.

Sometimes its impossible to do experiments — for example it would be unethical to force people to smoke cigarettes to see if doing so harmed their health — but what you can do is observe the health of smokers and non-smokers and use statistical techniques to infer a correlation. Correlation isn’t causation (of course) but it does strongly hint that something is going on.

Now consider another belief:

Belief C: The world was created with apparent age by my pet cat last Tuesday.

There are no experiments that can tell whether Belief C is true or false. Thus it is said to be unfalsifiable. This has two implications: first, we don’t know whether it is true or not, and secondly we don’t (or shouldn’t) care anyway, because all observable phenomena behave exactly the same regardless of whether it is true or false.

Society (and the state) should respect and priviledge those beliefs that have been shown by observation or experiment to be true — or at least that have the evidence in their favour (beliefs such as Belief A). So for example,it’s reasonable for the state to say smoking is bad for people and therefore to tax it highly and restrict its sale.

Regarding beliefs that are wrong or unfalsifiable (such as Belief B and Belief C), these should not be respected or priviledged in any way. In fact, it’s best for society to actively ridicule such beliefs, in order to reduce the number of people who believe them.

Update on Sayed Pervez Kambaksh

(see here for backstory)

According to the Independent, Pervez isn’t going to be executed after all:

The condemned student journalist Sayed Pervez Kambaksh will not face execution, a senior government official in Afghanistan indicated yesterday. A ministerial aide, Najib Manalai, insisted: “I am not worried for his life. I’m sure Afghanistan’s justice system will find the best way to avoid this sentence.”

It was the clearest indication yet that the 23-year-old will have his death penalty revoked amid mounting international pressure on the Afghan authorities.

Mr Kambaksh was condemned to die by an Islamic court for insulting Islam. He was found guilty under sharia law after he distributed articles from the internet on women’s rights at Balkh university in northern Afghanistan, an act he claims was aimed at provoking debate. His family say he was not allowed a defence lawyer and the trial was in secret.

Of course, just because he’s not going to be executed, doesn’t mean he’s going to be freed.

(via Harry’s Place)

The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Prayer

PZ Myers reviews the book The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Prayer:

These people supposedly believe they have a direct, personal relationship with the Supreme Omnipotent Overlord of the Universe, and not only that, but he loves them and is deeply interested in the tawdry minutia of their personal lives. Yet they can consider having a conversation with such a being a “chore”? If such a being existed, and if I were able to talk with him, ask questions, and get answers, I’d be online with the big guy all the time and asking all kinds of questions. He’d be better than Google!

Of course, if he were a colossal tyrannical jerk who refused to answer any of my questions, then I’d consider it a chore. I’d also stop calling him up.

Afghan human rights

A man in Afghanistan is sentenced to death:

A young man, a student of journalism, is sentenced to death by an Islamic court for downloading a report from the internet. The sentence is then upheld by the country’s rulers. This is Afghanistan – not in Taliban times but six years after “liberation” and under the democratic rule of the West’s ally Hamid Karzai.

The fate of Sayed Pervez Kambaksh has led to domestic and international protests, and deepening concern about erosion of civil liberties in Afghanistan. He was accused of blasphemy after he downloaded a report from a Farsi website which stated that Muslim fundamentalists who claimed the Koran justified the oppression of women had misrepresented the views of the prophet Mohamed.

Mr Kambaksh, 23, distributed the tract to fellow students and teachers at Balkh University with the aim, he said, of provoking a debate on the matter. But a complaint was made against him and he was arrested, tried by religious judges without – say his friends and family – being allowed legal representation and sentenced to death.

Kambaksh should be immediately freed, and the judge who passed this sentence sacked — or better still, put to death himself. But if, on the other hand, this sentence is carried out, then Britain needs to seriously look at what we are doing in Afghanistan: why should British troops risk their lives for such a barbaric government? If the people of Afghanistan want to live in the dark ages, I suppose that is their choice, but Britain should not spend blood and money helping them.

If you want to help save the life of Sayed Pervez Kambaksh, the Independent has a petition, and there is also a facebook group.

(via Slashdot)