What Is A God?

I've decided to update this post on 21st Feb 2017. I'm doing this because of a recent exchange I had on Twitter. My interlocutor's insistence on straw-manning my very simple question of "What is a god?" to "What is God?" is decidedly dishonest. He of course gleefully answered his version of my question, and is claiming it as a valid answer. It clearly isn't is it? I mean, if you ask me what a cat is, and I describe the character of Cat from Red Dwarf to you, my answer would be of no relevance whatsoever... I simply would not be answering your question at all! For starters, no feline has ever consistently walked on two legs or spoken English!

When you ask someone to define what a god is, and they answer honestly, you often get a list of things that a god must be, or some idea of how their god exemplifies their idea of what a god is, which isn't actually an answer to the original question, but if they explain that this is all they know, I'm OK with it.

Often they reference things like being humanoid, able to create the universe, being all-good, all-knowing and all that stuff. So, let's unpick that shall we? If a god must be all these things then we should be able to pin down exactly what a god is. Surely if a god doesn't fit the bill it can't be a god, right?

So let's take a look at the common features attributed to gods:

Anthropomorphic (human-like)

There are many gods and goddesses who aren't like us, for instance Kamadhenu of Hindu culture, who whilst having the face of a human woman and often her breasts, is a cow goddess. Ninsun, the Mesapotamian mother of the famous hero-god Gilgamesh, was also a cow.

Anansi is another example of a non-arthropomorphic god. Anansi is an African spider-god, a trickster.

Huntin is an African god of trees, and himself a tree. So not all gods are humanoid.

Creative

Not all gods, or goddesses, are able to create things... especially not universes. After all, if all the creative gods did create the universe they either did so in concert, or the whole idea is total nonsense.

An example of a non-creative god is Heitsi-Eibib, an African god of evolution. Though he himself didn't create any living beings, he reputedly convinced animals to take up more suitable habitats than the ones they previously had. For instance he made the fish leave the desert for the sea, which he deemed a more appropriate place for them to live. Seems obvious when you think about it.

So no, not all gods need to be creative.

Eternal/Invulnerable

Apedemak, a Sudanese war god, came late to the Egyptian pantheon and was gone soon after. How many gods can you name? The ones you can't are probably already dead... if you believe what Terry Pratchett said about them.

Balin, an Indian hero god actually got killed in a fight with his half-brother Sugriva.

So not all gods are eternal, or it would seem invulnerable.

Ethereal/Spirit-like

Most gods and goddesses of the ancient world appeared, or could appear, physically to humans at one point or another. Yahweh's very first real appearance was walking through the Garden of Eden looking for Adam.

Khuzwane is evidenced by the marks he left during his presence on Earth, the African god who purportedly made humans from clay (where have we heard that before?) left muddy footprints everywhere he went (which are apparently still visible today) and even uses Lake Fundudzi as a private pool from time to time.

So some gods are very physical indeed.

Judgemental

There are thousands of gods and goddesses who are seemingly non-judgemental, nor are they involved in any afterlife punishments, or trials of any sort. Take the Roman goddess named Cuba who appears to only be concerned with singing lullabies to children to get them off to sleep.

So not all gods judge our actions

Global/Universal

Um... this may seem fairly obvious to anyone who has spent any time reading about gods, but it appears that many cultures have some very specific gods who look after some very specialist and rather odd things. Anarkusuga, for instance, is a Native American/Inuit goddess who looks after the Arctic ice and its contents.

Mikula, the Slavic god, is in charge of heroics. Yup... just being heroic.

So, not all gods have a universal influence after all.

All-knowing, All-powerful, Ever-present

So far I've referenced a number of gods and goddesses, none of whom appear to be particularly all-knowing, all-powerful, or ever-present... except in their own fields of speciality perhaps. I guess tree spirits are always present in all trees, Arctic frost goddesses are to be found everywhere in the Arctic ice etc. etc.

By contrast, Buga is the supreme god of everything in the Slavic pantheon. Somewhat like the god of the Abrahamic cultures, but with the added advantage of having grown out of a more shamanic and nature-loving religion.

So not all gods are all things to all people.

All-loving

It stands to reason that a god exists which isn't all good. Yama, the Indian death lord, loves nothing more than sending your souls to Hell. Tezcatlipoca, the Aztec god of night and death, actually leads people into doing evil things, despite outwardly being handsome and friendly (at first.)

So not all gods are truly omnibenevolent. Some are downright evil.

Please check out my other musings on this subject at: http://ublasphemist.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/the-impossible-god.html

Dealing with these "omnis", with regards the Christian version of "God", is unavoidable in any honest discourse on the subject. I would argue that my simple analysis in the above blog item destroys the main thrust of their arguments, but there is another point to be made.

Logic dictates that any entity able to be omnipresent must be present in all times, at all locations, future and past and present. So, he would in effect be at the farthest reaches of our expanding universe as well as watching you masturbate.

So, if this god were to watch as a hypothetical girl like Lucy (who is walking the mile home from her school after hockey practice, along the same route she always follows) gets mugged and hits her head hard enough for her to be placed in a persistent vegetative state? How does that not seem a bit evil to you? What lesson could this God possibly be trying to teach a girl who now has absolutely no way to interact with the world, her loved ones, or friends? What possible benefit could there be to her to make her entirely dependent on others for survival? If your answer is that she has been used as a pawn to teach someone else something you've just trodden on the bear-trap of telling me that your god is playing a game with us... and he cannot possibly be benevolent.This incident has robbed Lucy of any chance she has of leading the life on her own terms, nor "find Salvation" if she wasn't already a believer... think about it... isn't leading someone away from Yahweh a sin?

If this event could be foreseen, but not prevented, because it was the free will of Lucy's attacker to injure her, in order to take her purse and smart-phone, this god isn't all-powerful.

There are several logical inconsistencies wherever you look. Your god simply cannot be all-knowing, all-powerful, all-loving and ever-present.

Another point to consider is this, dear Christians:

If the Judeo-Christian god, Yahweh, was the only god, why does he even have a name? Why does the term Israel itself not point you in the direction that the original god of the Jews was El? Is-ra-EL. If the people were exclusively Yahweh worshippers their name would have been Is-ra-YAHU... but it isn't is it?

How's about you have a nice cup of tea and think about that for a while... or you can add a plate of biscuits to that and do some research of your own into how Yahweh went from being a Canaanite storm god to being the principle god of the Jews around 720BCE.

In Summary

If you're talking to Christians and ask them the question "What is a god?" they nearly always ignore the question altogether. Of the few who do answer, most just point you to a Bible passage, or come up with some deepity about their god Yahweh. Fewer still actually try to answer honestly.

I'm not sure if they are deliberately failing to engage with the question because it causes a great deal of cognitive dissonance, i.e. they're being intentionally dishonest, or they just don't understand the question. Christians get repeatedly told that Yahweh is the only god, despite their Bible referencing at least a dozen other gods, and Yahweh stating himself that we should put no other gods before him in that list of ten things he's supposed to have said.


What we've seen here is that the traditional view of what a god is according to the Abrahamics does not apply to all gods. So the question remains:

What IS a god?

Check out the source for these god ideas: http://www.godchecker.com
(this post might be updated as more suggestions about what a god is are offered to me)

Something You Ought To Know About

Hi,

I'm not sure it's usual for a blogger to recommend you leave his site immediately and check out someone else's blog, but that's precisely what this blogger is now doing.

A twitter friend of mine, who goes by the necessarily anonymous title of @Elishabenabuya, has a blog in which he shares his extensive knowledge of the Old Testament. His background is that of being a Talmud scholar for over 50 years, but who is now an atheist, putting to rest those oft cited myths of the Bible being a reliable source of history and the current translations being representative of the original texts.

You can find it here: apikoris.blogspot.co.il

If you are an atheist and you're not reading Elisha's blog and following him on twitter I don't really know what to do with you.

Perhaps a darkened room might help.

I jest, but you do really need to get on it.

Cheers y'all!

Flat-Earth & Nuclear Denier Troubles

Today, on twitter, I had the displeasure of tweeting back and forth with a geniune "flat-Earther" who also believed that nuclear was a hoax. He believed that nuclear bombs were all fake, that nuclear power was actually zero-point fusion and the Chernobyl disaster was a "Psy-op" (his word) in which "they" poisoned the water supply to mimic a massive nuclear catastrophe which resulted in a nuclear reactor blowing itself to bits.

Just when I was feeling bad about myself things have a way of making it seem that I'm really very, very smart!

So how do we convince a person like this that the Earth is round? Assuming they're not completely insane that is.

You can't show them photos of the Earth taken from the outside... they simply show you a rejigged NASA logo, redone to spell the word SATAN and tell you it's a hoax, or the photos are Photoshopped!

You can't show them images of the Earth from inside, clearly showing the curvature of the Earth because they insist that the curvature isn't there and there is only a straight line.

You can't explain that satellites and the International Space Station are orbiting the Earth because they'll tell you that they are all a hoax too.

No... really... that's what this guy actually said!

Yeah, I thought he was a jester too... very soon into the conversation. However, it seems he was deadly serious.

So how do you convince someone like this?

The only way I can think of is to either take him along to a nuclear power plant and lock him in a room with some depleting uranium, which will solve the problem fairly quickly, or send him on a round the world trip in the ISS, so that he can see it's not a hoax and that the Earth is a spheroid, with his own eyes.

Anyone care to raise the money to do that?

Why I'm No Longer Just An Atheist

Some time ago I became an atheist.

I was 12, and I'd just finished reading the family Bible (yes, we had one of those.) It was a huge, leather-bound monstrosity which sat on a corner table, set up against the stair rail on our first landing.

It took ages to read, and I have to admit to not fully understanding it at the time, but every time I came up against a passage which advocated what humans would consider an evil act I saw God at the helm.

I felt betrayed by everyone who had ever told me "God is Love". I still am.

I came to realise that the "God" of the Bible (Elohim/Yahweh take your pick) was not the god we consider to be the creator of the universe. Which meant that in that time I became a deist. A few months later I had shaken off the shackles completely and became an atheist looking for a way to express my new found love of being a human with no ties to a deity.

That is how I came to paganism. Most people think of paganism as a polytheistic religion based on a lot of woo-science, tarot card nonsense and incense burning. Yes, we burned a lot of incense, and I still like to, and I still have my tarot cards by my bed. They often fondly remind me of the actress Jane Seymour, because they are the same sort used by her in a Bond movie.

What most people don't understand is that many, many pagans know that when they invoke Pan in order to feel more free and less inhibited, they are in fact just invoking that part of themselves which can be free and uninhibited. They know it's not a prayer being received by a deity. It's self-talk. It's like knitting yourself a jumper for the cold days of winter. I was, and still am, that type of pagan. Though today I call all the gods and goddesses by their real name. Me.

In the eyes of the Christians we non-believers are all pagans and heretics.

So, why am I no longer just an atheist?

Labels matter to me. I know many people disagree, but when you see someone wearing a uniform you have a certain vision of the type of person he/she is. For good or for bad. Out of uniform their character is a little more difficult to establish. I know that when I say I'm an atheist, other atheists like me, and Christians don't (when they get to know me both groups usually agree I'm a bit of a dick!) 

:)

I have been "active" about atheism for a number of years now. But something changed recently. I see now that my simple disbelief in a deity is not getting me anywhere. 

That's why if anyone asks me what I believe now I have to be honest and tell them that religion, for me, is nothing short of POISON! I'm not an atheist anymore, I'm now a confirmed Antitheist and my new drive is that feeling of utter contempt for those religions, and their followers, which try to impose their on everyone else!

I look to that contempt to push me forward, and my compassion for humanity to take the bumps out of the ride.

Your common or garden theist is not my target. They might fund their religion and enable its crimes against humanity, reason and common sense, but they are victims too, of the venomous, institutionalised barbarism which threatens more now than ever to undermine good science and good philosophical and critical thinking; especially in our children.

All atheist activists have a responsibility to get pissed off at the constant encroachment of what is now a panicking, ever-decreasing minority of theists worming their way into our schools and colleges, either physically, or through legislation to save their religions from extinction.

We must stop this now.

Before it's too late.

Who is Mr. Maker?

The God posited by most Christians is one with ultimate, or infinite, power.

We see that term "maximally great" coming up from time to time.

However, if you think that a god exists and he is the creator of the universe, and everything in it, at which point do you make the leap from there to his power being greater than all other gods?

We have no idea, in god terms, how much power making this universe requires. For all we know this could all be a level one class at god school. 

"Great work Yahweh, I like what you've done with physics there. The gravity is really good, but that dark matter is... Class, look at Yah's universe for a second. Look at the way his dark matter flows through his space. That's really neat Yah... 'A+', but be careful not to over reach in your next assignment in Level Two's blended reality project."

How does anyone know that this god is maximally great? It's like bees thinking I'm some fantastic ethereal creature just because the hive I made for them was of perfect quality, by their standards.. The only difference being that occasionally a bee-keeper is going to pop along and make (at least) his existence known.

This brings me back to a point I made in an earlier post. Let's say God did make this universe, does it follow that He is in charge of it still? How can we be sure that the god in charge now is the same one who created it all? Did you make the car you drive?

All we have to go on is a rather simplistic view posited by ancient people's who were keen to move away from a polytheistic concept into a more monotheistic view which affords far better control of the flow of ideas and, ultimately, distribution of power.

Of course it could also be true, that the Elohim (plural) created the universe and everything in it for the LORD (God) who has since assumed control over a prefab universe. Elohim is a plural (essentially the distilled essence of all the gods) so why isn't it so that a group of gods made everything? This could account for Yahweh's inability to change anything dramatically, or intervene to stop tornadoes from tearing up houses in the US Bible-Belt! He just doesn't have that sort of juice!

Any of these scenarios could be true, so why is it that the standard Christian idea, that God rules the universe He created, so pervasive?

The church wants it to be this way and their "sheep" just lap it all up.

That's the only reason I can think of. 

"Ad homs" and why they don't matter

We're all painfully aware of the theists' black and white attitudes to morality (however twisted) and the way they insist that a person's character somehow dictates the veracity of their arguments about the (non) existence of a god, or gods. This is known as an ad hominem fallacy and it roughly translates as "you're a bad person and so you know sod all" or "I don't have to listen to you because you say things I think are immoral... lalalala talk to the hand!"

Luckily we're also quite aware of the old saying "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never harm me." Well, at least I hope we all are. Otherwise I might be talking to a few precious souls who think that insults and swearing matter. They don't. Get over yourself already!

This is the problem we have. Recently someone on the atheist side of the fence was tagged as being a racist, or sexist, or both, I wasn't really paying attention, and so his arguments were deemed null and void on the theist side. A classic ad hominem fallacy. We've all said things in the past which we regret, and I suspect that if half the stuff we think were to be broadcast we'd all be in the mire up to our necks, or personae non grata within our own communities. Such is the way of things. None of us are completely free of bias, or prejudice in our daily lives. How else do you size someone up?

Hopefully most of us are completely accepting of the big things, like LGBT rights, anti-racism, anti-bullying, anti-bigotry etc, and write off swearing at the moron who cut us up on the dual-carriageway as a blip in an otherwise flawless personality. But, would it matter a bit to the argument for God's existence if I were a racist arsehole? If I thought that the evidence for God's existence is insubstantial and therefore unproven, which it is, would being a "nigger-hater"* matter a jot as far as the debate goes?

No. Emphatically NO!

You see, it's time we stopped worrying about what people on the side of irrationality and nonsense think of us. They're not thinking clearly. Remember. They think a god exists. They're not being honest with themselves, so why would we consider what they think of us to be relevant?

What matters is the honesty of the discussion, not who's having it. Remember that according to legend, Socrates was convicted of a crime for which he received a death sentence, but nobody is writing off the Socratic Method of questioning as a dud are they?

Frankly the theists can say what they like about me. In fact I encourage them to defame me as much as they like. Perhaps they'll come up with something I've not heard from anyone else before... I doubt they'll come close to anything I've said of myself.

Our call to them should be a simple one... say whatever you want about us, as long as you're honest in the debate and everything will eventually work out.

As long as we remember to not make the same mistakes they do and try to avoid calling them names, or writing off their arguments as invalid just because they are paying money to institutions which may actively promote science denial, child abuse, abuse of civil and women's rights and hatred of gays.




*a hypothetical argument

My Doctoral Thesis

This is a copy of my doctoral thesis entitled "Do Atheists Believe In GOD?"

So what do you think? Will I get my PhD in Sarcasm?

Onus Probandi

I've been off for a while. My apologies, but my health fluctuates so sometimes I'm unable to focus clearly enough to write extensively.

Back with it now though.

While I've been away I've noticed that many theists on twitter, and in TV debates are still using the old fallacy of trying to turn the debate around and putting the onus probandi, or burden of proof, back onto the person denying the claim that they are making. This argument from ignorance is truly annoying.

Theists think that they get to claim whatever they like and because we cannot prove them wrong they get to claim victory.

The problem lies in their inability to extrapolate. If we cannot prove a god exists, then the god must be real, right? Well, they cannot prove that a universe-creating troll exists, so that must be the real truth. How would we ever decide which one was responsible for creating our universe? Then there's Bertrand Russell's cosmic teapot. How do you prove him to be incorrect? Is the teapot going to collide with any future mission to Mars? Does NASA need to take it into account?

Sometimes you achieve minor successes. I recently got one theist to admit that humans make up gods, but he couldn't get his head around the idea that the one he follows might likewise be a human invention. How frustrating! The cognitive dissonance required to apply rules to other ideas, but not your own, is beyond me.

Theists also tend to demand greater evidence for the negation of their claim than the claim they are themselves making. If I told you that I could fly without mechanical assistance you wouldn't be expected to prove me wrong, and likewise it wouldn't be incumbent upon you to prove that humans could not fly under any circumstances. I would not expect you to provide anatomical evidence, such as examples of bone or muscle tissue, or models of the physiological makeup of humans etc. etc. The onus is on me to provide you with evidence, perhaps by actually flying!

This moving of the goalposts is irritating, but like the shifting of the burden of proof it is just aimed at shutting down the conversation. It's the debating equivalent of "I am, but what are you?"

Why should an atheist be expected to be an expert in archaeology, chemistry, cosmology, physics, biology, anatomy, evolution, geology, theology, philosophy, literary studies, Biblical studies, history, climatology, or many other theoretical and physical sciences, arts and social sciences, just to defend their rejection of a theist's ridiculous claims? Atheism is the adoption of single position on a single claim. The burden of proof lies on the person making the claim, not on you or me.

Theists need (constantly) to be reminded of that.

In a recent to-ing and fro-ing in the local paper's letters section a contributor claimed that the Bible was true because he had knowledge of 40 excavations which proved the Bible to be historically accurate. Several problems arise as a result of this comment, but chief among them is the fact that even if the Bible was 100% reliable in its account of history and every single detail was absolutely true, nothing about that would be proof of a supernatural entity creating, or controlling, everything!

What on Earth makes him think it does?

If an excavation of, let's say, Tell ed-Dab'a, the home of the Canaanites* in Egypt, revealed intricate details of their religion, supporting every word of the Bible in remarkable detail, why should that prove Yaweh is real? After all, an investigation into Roman ruins does not in any way prove that Julius Caesar was a divine being. No examination of Japanese texts or temples proves that the Emperor is godly! Why do these people make that leap from A to WTF?

I think you can probably sense that I'm somewhat frustrated by these situations. I perhaps need to take a lie down and do an Apache-language crossword puzzle or a 10,000 piece jigsaw, perhaps even nail a jelly to the ceiling. Something less difficult than trying to argue with theists about their own responsibilities in the "god-debate"!

Remember:

onus probandi incumbit ei qui dicit, non ei qui negat

The burden of proof lies on the claimant, not the person denying the claim.

*Excavations revealed that the language of the inhabitants of Tell ed-Dab'a was Semitic, therefore they would have to have been Canaanite. Further evidence of the nature of their religious ideas and burial methods cemented the fact. The idea of a sudden Hyksos invasion, previously accepted by many historians as the true history, but now acknowledged to have been an exaggeration, was attributed to Manethos, an Egyptian historian who must have thought that a sudden attack on Egypt sounded sexier than the centuries of slow migration by Canaanites which actually is known to have happened.

The Impossible God

Many people I speak to just won't accept that a god who is both omnipotent and omniscient cannot exist.

So, I thought I'd lay out one simple 'proof' for you all.

An all-knowing god would know every emotion felt by humans. An all-powerful god would not know what it is like to be weak, he couldn't know regret, fear, worry, or grief.

An omnipotent god could not have true knowledge of any emotion such as self-doubt, self-criticism, or feel suicidal.

An omnipotent god could not feel pain either, since nothing could hurt him. Likewise, how could anything we do hurt him, or his feelings? Falling prey to that pain we feel when someone we love deeply does something we just know they're going to do just isn't possible for an all-powerful being. There's no way to experience pain and anguish without there being a physical component.

Also, a god who feels regret could not be said to be all-knowing, simply because knowing everything would yield no surprises, and no future left unknown. Even his own actions would already be laid out. He would be as a robot carrying out his own predestined actions. Any attempt to change path would already be built in to his knowledge of that path.

It really is that simple. If a god is omnipotent it could not be all-knowing, and if he's all-knowing he could not be all-powerful.

So What?

This post is for the atheists.

In my everyday conversations with theists I get a great deal of scripture quoted at me and a fair bit of the "God did this" and "God did that". As atheists, you probably all do. I mean, what else do we expect?

Theists are taught to prosletylize at us. It's in their books after all. Many of them are taught to follow certain scripts too, and this is the point we must get into our heads when we speak to them. They are parroting key lines and phrases taught to them at their places of worship. Particularly the Creationists. It's easy to believe that getting through to these folks is impossible, but it isn't. I know from experience that very often your seed of rationality can take months, or years, to bear fruit.

A little while ago I got a message from a chap who had been deconverted by something I had said months earlier. It had played on his mind and it sparked a realization. Though still a believer in an ultimate power, in a deist fashion, he no longer accepted Creationism as a valid model. Planting that seed is very important. You never know what might grow from it.

We've all heard the lines from the Theist Script a decent few hundreds of times. I don't need to reiterate them here, because the answers we should be giving don't come from a vantage point of defending our positions at all. 

In aikido, defence strategies are defined by the circle. Almost every technique relies on taking the opponent's attack and redirecting it back onto them. A swirling motion guides the attack from where it was going to where you want it to go, until ultimately it ends in a throw, a lock, or a grounding. Our strategy in defence of these theistic attacks on our credibility should be the same.

This is where the "So what?" comes in. 

The theist says "God did this..." so our answer has to be "So what? How does that action prove the current state of being of your God?" She says "God said this..." so our answer should be "So what? Why is this more important than what other gods are saying? What if it is more prudent to ignore these words in favour of our own, more successful philosophy?"

Recently the two earthquakes in Nepal have been in the news and it didn't take long for someone to attribute some of the discoveries of people alive in the rubble as 'God's mercy.' It may come across as cynical, or even nasty, but our response has to be "So what? Why did God create that earthquake in the first place? Why save that one person, but kill so many others? If it was a purely natural thing, why did God not save everyone?"

More often than not we get "the Creation happened as per the book and evolution is rubbish/lies etc" argument. Jeesh, how often do we get that?

If you'll recall in my earlier post I discussed how the idea that a god created the Earth and universe in no way supports the argument that he/she/it currently has anything to do with us.

Our answer to the "God created everything" statement has to be "So what? Why does that matter? What proof is there that this god, or any other god, interacts with us? What if, in creating everything, he blew himself to pieces? How can you get from 'God did it' to 'God still exists and he cares about what we do'?" 

There's no point arguing about science, especially abiogenesis or evolution. "How did life begin?" Is a common question. Saying "I don't know" shuts down their line of thinking because they are fuelled by anti-evolution websites which we all know they've got bookmarked already to go. Avoid trading facts with these folk. It does very little good.

It's far more important to ask questions than to present arguments:

"So what? What does X mean to Y?"

"How do you know that?"

"Why is that significant?"

"Why should I believe that?"

and so on.

However, that said, there is another set of questions which we often overlook, because we assume that the person we're speaking to is fixed in their belief and cannot be swayed. The first question is: "On a scale of zero to one hundred, how certain are you that you are correct!"

This puts the theist in the position of having to put a number on their belief, and it gives you an idea of what you're dealing with.

The next one is: "What evidence could I present to you in order to lower your belief score by just one point?" This establishes whether the theist is using evidence (or what they consider to be evidence) to form their beliefs. Technically it measures their doxastic openness... how willing they are to hear other people's opinions and change their minds if necessary.

The last one is: "What one single piece of evidence could you offer me to change my mind and make me believe in God?"

This sets in place their best pitch. Something you could explore with them, or later, or work on the next time you see them.

So, what do you do if they pitch something which makes sense and actually changes your mind? Not necessarily converts you to their religion, but makes you stop and think. What's your best strategy?

It's simple. Revise your thinking! If you feel that you might have got it wrong then do your research and assess your stance properly, and, if you are wrong, change your mind to better fit the evidence.

In other words, there's no point going into these discussions and asking questions if you're afraid to change your own mind.

If you do, so what?

"Jesus Was A Real Person"

... well... sort of.

Clearly the foundation of Christian thought is that Jesus was real and he brought in some new covenant or another, which made, for the first time, the meek more important than the rich and powerful... whilst telling everyone to hate their families and give away all their wealth.

They're the basics of what I've gleaned from the Christians and their New Testament. If I'm misrepresenting it it's probably on purpose.

The thing is though that Jesus was by no means the most caring and kind person in history, and on top of that he wasn't the most real... but there was someone who was.

His name wasn't even Jesus, it was Urukagina of Lagash, and he was around in the 24th Century BCE, not the 1st Century CE.

He was a Mesopotamian, who ruled under the divine authority of Ningursu (Ningirsu) , the god of Lagash, it could be argued that he was Ningursu's son, in the same way that the Emperor of Japan is regarded as a divine being. So we have yet another challenger to the moniker 'Son of God'.

Urukagina founded the earliest known formal Code of Laws, setting into law the sorts of things that Christians like to claim Jesus supported:-

Urukagina made certain that the meek inherited the Earth... or at least, he made sure that rich folk couldn't force them from their own land, or force them to sell it. Nor could the rich force the poor to sell any of their belongings, livestock or grain against their will. Also, when the rich did buy from the poor they could only do so if they paid in silver (cold hard cash), and not offer favours, future services, or any other form of promissory payments.

Urukagina also made widows and orphans exempt from taxes and cast the money-lenders from the temples... or, rather he protected the poor from exploitation by the priesthood, by ensuring that they did not have to pay any funeral costs... including the costs of any ritual offerings. The king also made certain that families who were enslaved by the rich through debt would be freed from this sort of bondage.

Urukagina also made laws banning corrupt practices by court and palace officials and he placed heavy limits on the use of capital punishment, favouring fines and incarceration over death penalties which he regarded as being ill-favoured by his god.

Altogether Urukagina was a kind and caring king whose actions set the tone for the more modern Jesus character, some 2300 years before Jesus was created; around the time that Moses was supposed to have been given the Ten Commandments by Yahweh... which he then dropped and broke so Yahweh was forced to create an entirely new set of stone tablets with noticeably different commandments on them.

It is therefore well known that these sorts of sweeping reforms were already possible, so the sorts of things Jesus did was in no way unique, or particularly special.

King Urukagina of Lagash... a.k.a. The Real Jesus, c.2360BCE

The Evolutionary Road to the Present and Beyond

WARNING: THIS IS A LONG POST. 

READ IT IN BITS, OR GET A COFFEE AND DIG IN!

I am frequently amused, and often appalled, at the Creationists who come on twitter claiming that "evolutionists" are living in a fantasy world if they believe we evolved from a common ancestor to monkeys. Let that sink in for a minute... Creationists, who believe that a magic sky-daddy poofed the universe and the Earth into existence at the same time and created every living thing on the Earth, including us, his special creation, believe that we live in a fantasy world.

Amazing!

We get everything from the classic line born out of sheer ignorance of the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection, or TOE for short: "If we evolved from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?"

Oh for flip's sake... really? Almost all bisections of the animal tree occur because of some sort of physical separation. So in our case the most likely scenario is that a large number of the common ancestor we share with chimpanzees got separated from the others in their group... we can speculate how to our heart's content... and their evolution, due to the change in their environment, possibly a once arboreal species now found itself on flat lands instead, came as a result of needing to adapt to the new conditions, or die.

This evolution took millions of years... as did the evolution of the rest of the species on the other side of the divide.

That ancestor is now extinct through necessity. A species cannot evolve en masse and keep the exact traits of its former self. That's just basic evolution 101.

 The other one they now seem to be focusing on is: "There is proof of microevolution and that fits in with our 'theory' of species being able to adapt, but no macroevolution has ever been observed so that cannot be true!"

These, and I'm struggling to not call them imbeciles, cannot [or will not] get their head around the fact that in science the terms macroevolution and microevolution simply have no weight at all. No true scientists use those words. Creationists should know this, because they send enough people on scholarships to proper university biology courses so that they can proclaim that an increasing number of evolutionary biologists [aka their plants] support Creationism. On those courses they are told that these terms are invalid.

On that last point they are correct, though as someone pointed out Pluto takes over 200 years to do one orbit of the Sun, but how can we prove that it does given that we live for a maximum of 120 years?

We extrapolate data from what we see in the laboratory, and these days we use DNA evidence to support the theory. We don't even need the 250,000 fossils we have to prove anything. The DNA supports our theory perfectly.

I often wonder how these people think, but then I read the webpages they point me to and realize that for the most part they don't think. They parrot off the stuff they hear at church, which is in turn parroting stuff that people like Ken Ham dream up between snorts of cocaine and threesomes with hookers in desert road motels. Perhaps I'm being too harsh there, but you know these people aren't straight arrows, and most of them aren't even happy about not being straight.

Think of a a hundred miles... what is a single mile made of? Yards and inches. And each inch is made up of sixteenths. So, we know that a sixteenth exists because we can see it. We know the inch exists, because we can see that too. But, imagine that the hundred miles ahead of us is over bumpy ground, so we lose sight of it every so often. Got it?

If you're happier you can use metric.

OK. So we can look down that road for maybe four hundred yards, then the road dips. We can see the equivalent of say, 2300 years of our history before the road dips for a while and pops up at about the 3500 year mark. This happens over and over along this road.

As an example. We get to see snippets of our past laid out on each of the sixteenths of the inches which make up this road. "Macroevolution" is the same as "microevolution" in the same way that this fictional road is the same as the sixteenths of inches which make it up. As each bit of the road comes into view we get a view of our past and we get to examine that to work out what could possibly have happened in the dips. In the past we had to dig up bits of that history and examine the finds. Such as dinosaurs and human settlements and geological samples. We would search caves, deserts, meadows and mountains trying to find examples of things lost to the earth over vast swathes of time. On that point, just as an aside, we do know how long it takes for earth to cover stuff, so we can roughly date a find according to how far down we had to dig for it.

I know I'm labouring that point a little but you know that not everyone gets this stuff the first time around.

It takes a great deal of skill to work out what we're seeing when we find a dinosaur fossil, or part thereof. It's not guesswork as some of the Creationists will tell you. It's careful examination, recreation and experimentation. As technology has improved we can now use computer data to recreate these creatures, based on careful anatomical examination. We use microscopes to determine all sorts of features unseen to our unaided eyes. Not one single scientist working today gets away with just guessing stuff.

Even Professor Richard Dawkins has to present his work to other scientists for them to hack it to bits when it deserves to be. Yet Creationists laugh at Dawkins for his proposition that there was once a collection of land masses known as Pangaea, and that through a process of separation and drifting the continents moved away from one another to where they are today.

I am really not sure how Creationists can justify their position on this idea of Pangaea, because we know that the continents are still moving today and we measure the distances between them occasionally to make doubly sure. If we work backwards from the now and use the rate and direction of the continents' drift to calculate the position of each in the distant past we get Pangaea. It's really that simple.

Also, another side note, doesn't the Bible refer to land being a single mass which was separated by rivers and oceans? Isn't that a vague reference to Pangaea?

So we're looking at this road and seeing bits of it, trying to work out how everything happened in the dips from the stuff we can see. When we don't know exactly we say things like "this may have happened", or "could" or "perhaps this", and this uncertainty, which is entirely valid and honest in the context of science, seems to set the Creationists on fire. They are satisfied that they have the answer and are arrogantly positive about it: "The evidence is in the book!" they say, demanding that we accept that the Bible is evidence rather than the claim which we all know is the case.

Look, I don't care if the Bible is a million years old, I don't care if it was written by gold-plated angelic goat herders using giant, jet-black heron feather quills and unicorn blood, on the skins of sacrificial eunuchs, there is absolutely nothing in the Bible which can be taken as prima facie evidence for anything. Nothing. The Bible is, and always will be, a claim that the stuff in it happened. Most of it is not supported by evidence of any sort.

Sorry to have to tell you Creationists, but despite what you've been told there are NO corroborative contemporary accounts of anything Jesus is said to have said, or done, and the fact remains that the Bible is now and forever a work of fiction.

That's not blasphemy... that's just a fact.

I'm not even sure that Creationists really understand some of the implications of some of the texts, but I'll deal with that another time. The purpose of this post is just to raise an analogy which explains why scientists have to use uncertain terms to describe past events and evolutionary processes.

Despite our uncertainty over many dips in the road to our past, we do now have a helping hand. We have a traveler which has been to mostly every part of that road and has now finally reached us. I'm not talking about the crocodile, which seems to have been around for a gazillion years. I'm talking about deoxyribonucleic acid [DNA].

DNA has been with organisms for a very long time. It has been handed the baton from RNA and run with it all the way through history. A really interesting part about DNA is that some of its constituent parts may have formed in Red Giant stars. This means that when Creationists are poking us for evidence of abiogenesis on Earth, they're ignoring the idea that we might well have come from outer space! Hee hee!

Building blocks of DNA (adenine, guanine and related organic molecules) may have been formed extraterrestrially in outer space. Complex DNA and RNA organic compounds of life, including uracil,cytosine and thymine, have also been formed in the laboratory under conditions mimicking those found in outer space, using starting chemicals, such as pyrimidine, found in meteorites. Pyrimidine, like polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), the most carbon-rich chemical found in the universe, may have been formed in red giants or in interstellar dust and gas clouds. - Wikipedia [DNA]

Now that we've unlocked the secrets of our own genome we can read the DNA strands with relative ease. To the point where we are now using our knowledge to modify babies DNA to make them immune to certain genetic diseases. Something God forgot to do.
In our DNA we can see markers which we see in other ape species on out side of the divide, but not in other apes from the other side. We can trace our retroviral markers and figure out what changes have been made to the genome to make us happen, and make chimps happen.

This is not guesswork, this is bona fide science using the tools now available to us. Tools which can now see the very building blocks of life in full colour. We can see inside crystals, and pick out previously invisible specks of evidence from all around the world. We now know there was never a global flood. The Noah story is just another myth, which another thing the Creationists cannot accept.
We weren't created as a separate species from the Earth and women aren't the product of a man's rib. For starters there's no way you'll get a an XY being by taking parts of an XX being. Perhaps the other way around could be argued, but not that. Also, why would God create a woman if his goal was to have Adam and his "companion" look after the Garden of Eden? Surely another man would have done just as well, if not better. Men have similar strength profiles, unless you're going to include bodybuilders, or the Basques. Two men could have happily kept that garden in tip top shape forever. A woman was in fact an unnecessary addition.

The whole Creation thing is a load of hooey. For starters there's two versions of it, which Creationists seem to purposely ignore, or claim that the two opposing timelines are versions of the same event. I'd not want one of them defending me in a court that's for sure, if they can't see basic facts like that.

Evolution is a progression, one sixteenth at a time, until we cover the 100s and 1000s of miles into the past. It's like when we look at a prairie rising up to become a tall hill. The upward sweep of the lowlands forces us to ask a question... where does the hill start and the prairie end? Likewise with evolution, when precisely does species A become species B and how? What were the changes and what was the final straw which prevented the two species from being able to interbreed?

Where does the hill begin? Where do humans fit in on the future of the evolutionary tree? What will we become? Will we create a technological supreme being as has been predicted? Will we eventually be ruled over by this TechnoGod? Will the science of the future create what the Creationists have been telling us is already real?

Who knows? We don't... but one thing is for certain, Creationists really have no idea at all.

You MUST Believe Me!

How often have we heard a believer trot out the old "I've had personal experience with God" as proof that they know the truth? They are so convinced of their experience that it is impossible, they say, for it to be anything else. Well, let me relay my experience to you for you to appraise; an experience which I can assure you is absolutely true...

When my first son was born, my partner and I took him home and we sat together on our sofa and we just snuggled up. It was the first time having a child felt real to both of us. It had been a bit of an ordeal. On the way to the hospital when my partner's waters broke my car was damaged by an automated car wash and I had to borrow an ambulance from my station, just to get us to the hospital for the actual delivery the next day. In the maternity ward the delivery hadn't gone well, and it was only my medical knowledge that saved him from being born very ill indeed... if at all. My partner and I were relaxing at home now for the first time in days.

As we sat there I noticed three figures enter the room. They were as real to me then as this computer is now. The first was a tall man in a black suit. He wore a black cape across his shoulders and a tall top-hat. He was obviously a military man, or had some sort of power and authority. He was very upright and "proper". The second was my grandmother. She'd been dead for a little while at this point. The third was a little lady about the same age as my Nan, with a roundish, playful-looking face.

The figures all looked at the baby and even the gentleman ventured to smile. I relayed what I was seeing to my other half, who clearly couldn't see them and she instantly recognized my description of the third lady as her grandmother, whom I'd never seen because she died a long time before we met. They each nodded at me as if to say well-done and they were gone in the blink of an eye.

I would normally write that sort of thing off as a hallucination if not for the connection to my partner's grandmother, and a little while later something else happened to confirm what I'd seen.
My partner and I were frequent visitors to the local spiritualist church. Although we were both atheists we were also pagans with a deep sense of spirit around us. I even went on a training course to become a medium and we frequently read tarot cards and attended circles and moots. We both still have our "magickal chests" full of candles, incense and other accoutrements.

On one occasion I went to the church and was singled out by a medium on stage. He went on to describe, exactly, the man who had come into our lounge when my son was brought home. His description of the man was perfect and he explained that he was a distant uncle, an ex-military sort, who had had money and land to his name. He explained that I was under the man's wing somewhat and he was very close to us as a family at all times.

Well, that confirmed it. I had definitely seen what I saw. Right?

Perhaps you're not yet convinced.

When my son was a year old he could already walk and read quite well and could hold a fairly adult conversation with us. One night he called us through the monitor to ask if we could get rid of the "dark man in the tall hat". We asked if the man was being naughty and he replied that the man was actually telling him jokes, which is why he couldn't get off to sleep. So I called through the monitor to ask the man to leave. A short while later my son called again to say that the man wanted to let me know he was very proud to be related to my son, but that he had now gone.

My eldest son only saw him once more but that time he asked him to leave himself and the man obliged.

Still not convinced?

Well, how about this. My youngest son, who was spookily born three years, three months and three days after my eldest, also called one night when he was around the same age as my eldest son had been, complaining that a "dark-man with a tall hat" had been keeping him awake. I went into his room and my son told me the man was there by the light-fitting in the centre of the room. I turned to that point, thanked the man for being there and asked if he would in future refrain from making himself visible to my kids. My son told me that the man had raised his arm in acknowledgment and disappeared into the "light in the ceiling".

So, I saw the man, a medium saw the man and both my kids saw the same man. Clearly the spirit does exist. Right?

I mean, that is very strong evidence, you have to agree.

Well... maybe not.

The way I see it is this. I'm a huge Sherlock Holmes fan. I could quite easily sit through a whole series of Jeremy Brett and Edward Hardwicke playing the fabulous Sherlock and Watson, one episode after the next. There's Mr Brett, taken from us far too soon, strutting purposefully across the street in his black suit, shoulder cape and tall black top-hat, cutting people down with his wit and razor-sharp observations. Those little dramatic touches sprinkled into an already flawless performance. It sends shivers down my spine. Brett WAS Sherlock and no matter who comes after him he will always be Sherlock Holmes, Master Detective!

Wait... how did I describe Mr Brett?

Now you see where I'm going. I am a great fan of the TV series, which I watch whenever I get a chance. I've undoubtedly watched it with both my boys and what more striking a figure is there than Sherlock? Well... for a child whose dad also likes Thomas the Tank Engine (for the animation... ahem) possibly the Fat Controller, Sir Topham Hatt? Or, his more humorous and playful brother the Thin Controller, Sir Lowham Hatt?

How can the imagination of two little boys escape the idea of a man in a dark suit with a tall hat, when their father has presented them with such strong images of three men wearing just those clothes?

As for the medium, well, you've heard of cold-reading, right? It's not too far a reach to think that a man who wears black clothes, which I most often do, would associate with another man wearing dark clothes and giving him a top-hat and a cape for good measure adds just a whiff of authenticity doesn't it? A happy coincidence.

But, what about the fact that I saw them too?

I mentioned that my partner and I had been through a somewhat stressful experience. Not only was it our first child, but we were on our own, and there had been problems with my car and the delivery itself, so sleep wasn't a priority for either of us. I think that when we both sat there together I simply fell asleep. If only for a short while. In that time my mind drew up an image of the three together... my hero, my grandmother and of course an approximation of what I imagined my partner's grandmother would look like. Her face was easily placed in the dream, since her photo was on the wall in my partner's parents' house.

It all fits very easily into line when you work it all out, but just imagine what I'd make of all that "personal experience" if I wasn't firm in my belief that there is a rational explanation for everything if you care to take the time to look. Eye-witness testimony has been rejected as bona fide evidence in most Western courts. The FBI have openly stated that this form of testimony is almost worthless and the Dancing Gorilla Experiment goes a long way to explaining why.

What we see and what we think we are seeing are often two very different things. Our brains are extremely good at filling in the blanks, especially retroactively. If you don't believe me, try watching a good magic show sometime.

I take every account of "personal experience" with a massive pinch of salt. It's not that I believe the person is lying, but rather they are reading far to much into what they saw, or think they saw. Take for instance the condition known as pareidolia, which is where a person sees human faces in inanimate objects, such as houses, trees, rocks, lichen formations and the like. Jesus on toast or in clouds is a great example, as is reading tea-leaves. There is an audible version too where voices are heard in random white noise, or sentences appear in music when it is played in reverse. Pareidolia is a form of apophenia, which is described as seeing connections without prompting and ascribing to those connections an abnormal meaningfulness.

Humans are hard-wired to ascribe connections to things and draw conclusions from minimum data. We hear a rustle in the bushes and we know an agent is at work, moving around. Ignoring it is foolish, so our primary response is to escape the scene quickly. Experience then kicks in and informs our secondary senses and we realize that the noise is a small bird, not a large ravenous lion. The people running away at that point would all swear it was a lion. A really big one with sharp teeth and, if they were fans of Sherlock Holmes, wearing a black cape and top-hat.

Another thing we're really, really good at is role-playing. How often have you been on your way to a meeting, or a job interview, and have played out how it should go in your head? You set the scene, you form the people in your mind. You know what the person on the end of the phone looks like, despite never having seen her face. You know everything about her. You imagine what you'd say, how she'd react to it and you imagine her giving you the job on the spot. Then you get there and it's a completely different set up and the tall brunette you imagined was a shortish redhead. Then you made that joke which in your head was knock-em-dead funny and it bombed. You didn't get the job.

What it boils down to is this... credulity is not a virtue, and relying on your own "personal experience" to distinguish truth from fantasy isn't a good idea either. Be careful when you accept a person's testimony for an event... especially your own!

"The Bible is True"... but which version?

As a part-time hobby I like to discuss ideas with the Jehovah's Witnesses [J-Dubs] which blight the streets of my home town every week. I only do it every now and then because some of them have banned me from visiting their stall after being unable to properly answer my questions. I'll explain why this week I even got one of them to ask me "What's the purpose of your coming here today telling us this? What difference does it make to you what our beliefs are?" Let the fact that this comment came from a Jehovah's Witness, famed for going door-to-door peddling their crap, who at the time was sitting behind a desk in a pagoda full of Witness literature and with signs outside proclaiming God to be this and that wonderful thing, sink in for a moment... yes.. indeed!

The reason I annoyed them this week was because I approached them with the topic of "Versions of the Bible"; my pitch being that for every line in the Bible which can be interpreted two or more ways there forms a pathway which leads to a new version of the doctrine. It's not as sketchy as it sounds.

For instance, if you believe that the account of The Creation [A] is true, as they do, then that's one version. If you don't then that's another. If you then consider the comment made by God prior to the Flood in which mankind is limited to 120 years [B] and think that this is a countdown to destruction, as the J-Dubs do, then that's another factor to consider, as is the idea that the 120 years is a literal age-limit set on each of us.

Putting them together we get four different versions of the story:

God created the Heavens and the Earth in six literal days and gave Mankind 120 years to shape up = AaBa
God created the Heavens and the Earth in six literal days and limited Mankind to lifespans of 120 years = AaBb
The story that God created the Heavens and the Earth in six literal days is an allegory but he did give Mankind 120 years to shape up = AbBa
The story that God created the Heavens and the Earth in six literal days is an allegory but he did limit Mankind to 120 year lifespans = AbBb

So we have the four versions... Of course there are other versions of each of these but I'm trying to keep this simple for now.

Out of two lines of text we can derive FOUR different versions of the Bible. I told this to the male J-Dub but got the standard "They're not versions, they are just different opinions." Well, I'd love to know what a version is if not a different opinion on the text. Clearly whether one has the opinion that God did create the Earth etc. in six days, or not, informs your practice of your faith. It informs your reading of other texts too. So how you interpret that one line does make a big difference.

As it is with other lines, and events.

Take for instance the event in the Bible when God supposedly appeared to Moses on a hill top [C]. The story says he appeared to Moses in a pillar of smoke. Now then, some interpret that as Moses having an actual visit from God manifesting as a pillar of smoke [a]. Others say that the fire and smoke was to cover God's face from Moses and so God appeared more as a man than the smoke itself [b]. Does this not fundamentally change your view on what your God is, or can be?

I personally think it was a charlatan's trick and Moses was making the whole thing up, making use of rudimentary pyrotechnic skills he'd learnt from other charlatans descended from Abraham. who you'll remember pulled a similar trick earlier on. However, we're talking about other people's interpretations here so mine do not matter.

So... should we add this event to the narrative? With the Creation [A], the 120 years comment [B] and the new Moses smoke trick [C] what combinations are now available?

AaBaCa
AaBaCb
AaBbCa
AaBbCb
AbBaCa
AbBaCb
AbBbCa
AbBbCb

That's eight versions from three events, using only two possible versions of each story.

The Bible is beginning to look like those old Steve Jackson books I used to read as a kid, where I got to pick my own story through the book. only this time instead of only my character dying the Bible wipes out over 2 million!

How about we add the parable of the "Water into Wine" [D]? Either Jesus really did make wine out of water [a], or it is a narrative explanation of the Jewish rite of passage [b].

I won't bore you with the details but that makes 16 possible versions.

Then what if we add the Raising of Lazarus [E], the 100 Zombie Saints [F] and on and on back and forth throughout the texts of the Old and New Testaments... how many versions of one book can there be, each with a unique narrative through the text?

At no point have I touched on how many printed versions there are, but if you even take one fundamental narrative, that of the idea that sin leads to an eternity in Hell, and you realize that the original Old Testament didn't feature Hell at all, and that even some versions of the New Testament lack that idea, you now see how utterly incompatible these books are from one simple change in dynamic.

So when I ask you which version of the Bible you trust to be the whole truth I'm not talking about the KJV, or the NIV or the YLT or KJV2000, I'm talking about all these little ideas and events and how you the reader, the believer, chose to form your ideas about what you believe. If as a conservative estimate we suggest that there are 100 lines in the Bible which can be taken two ways each, the total number of possible pathways through the Bible is 1,267,650,600,228,229,401,496,703,205,376.

Of course this is a rather facetious way of looking at it, but I think that if Christians are going to go down the line of saying that "The Bible is true" as so many insist on doing, I think we do get to ask "which version"... because I do not see that it is such a stupid question after all.

Vaccine Nuts

I have been moved to write a short post about the ridiculous  anti-vax movement and its claims by a conversation I've had over the last 24 hours with someone on twitter.

I decided to pop over to the sites the chap pointed me to. I don't recommend you visit it because it really is full of nonsense and half-truths, but I thought I'd be able to put to bed some of the psuedoscience contained therein.

The first site is: http://www.whale.to/vaccines/rubella4.html which is a link I clicked on from a few hundred on the main page of this idiotic collection.*

The page lists a few dozen medical studies which investigate illnesses which have appeared to affect people since they were vaccinated against measles/rubella.

The study I have chosen is right up near the top of the list and it concerns the incidence of Immune (form. Idiopathic) Thrombocytopenia Purpura associated with rubella vaccination. The link to the study is broken and PubMed cites, but no longer features, the article itself. However other studies do mention a possible link with the vaccine and ITP, so I thought it was worth giving a little bit of information regarding the condition itself.

ITP is an autoimmune condition which affects around 2 to 5 children out of around 100,000 in any given population, most commonly in pre-school. Its clinical features are a lowered platlet count, a purple or red rash (purpura), significant bruising and persistent nosebleeds. ITP affects children around two or three weeks following a viral infection and in most cases the affects naturally subside within a few weeks to at most six months, less with appropriate treatment. In very rare cases the condition becomes a lifelong problem necessitating frequent blood tests and ongoing review. Patients who suffer ITP in adulthood are often advised to follow a balanced diet and avoid contact sports. Women may find that their menstruation is heavier than average.

Look out for signs of:

A nosebleed which will not stop despite pinching the nose after 30 minutes.
Prolonged bleeding from the gums.
Blood in the poo (stools) or urine.
A heavy blow to the head, especially if the child is unwell afterwards in any way.
Persistent or severe headache.
Sickness (vomiting).
Unexplained drowsiness.

And avoid taking aspirin or ibuprofen.

That's the illness, so on to the problem. The articles I read do mention an association with vaccination with a live vaccine. And this is the source of the confusion.

So, What is a live vaccine?

A live vaccine, most commonly for measles, or rubella, is created by passing a live virus through a nun-human cell culture. We use chicken chicks most often because the virus remains intact, yet loses its ability to infect humans after a relatively few passes through live cell cultures. The advantage here being that our immune responses are triggered by the virus, but it cannot infect us at all.
This immune response is the cause of the ITP problem.

So, is my child at risk of developing ITP from a live rubella vaccine?

The short answer is yes. But, you might be asking why I'd say that if I'm pro-vaccination. Well, it's because I'm an honest chap. Your child is at risk of having an autoimmune response to the rubella vaccine. However, I have as much chance of Kelly Brook suddenly awakening from a dream and declaring her undying love for me by having a sky-writer fly over my house. It could happen, but it's extremely unlikely.

Far more likely is that your child gets infected by the real rubella infection and dies from it.

You see the way rubella works is that between two to three weeks after infection the patient (often a child) starts to develop a pink or red rash which typically spreads downward from the head. Rarely the child will develop symptoms of arthritis, or encephalitis (swelling in the brain) and in very rare cases the child might die.

However the symptoms in children are more often than not very mild, so the real risk is from Congenital Rubella Syndrome... that's when the unborn baby of an unvaccinated mother is infected in utero and develops serious, often life-changing and life-threatening conditions as a result. Rubella vaccination is not indicated for women who are already pregnant, or who intend to become pregnant within four weeks’ time, although CRS has never been reported to be caused by the vaccine.

From 1964-1965, before the development of a vaccine against the disease, a rubella epidemic swept the United States. During that short period there were 12.5 million cases of rubella.

20,000 children were born with CRS:

11,000 were born deaf
3,500 born blind
1,800 born mentally retarded
with 2,100 neonatal deaths

And more than 11,000 abortions occurred as a result of CRS during that time – some a spontaneous result of rubella infection in the mother, and others performed surgically after women were informed of the serious risks of rubella exposure during their pregnancy.

Following an intensive vaccination program rubella was declared to have been eliminated from the USA in 2004, and from the rest of the Americas in 2009.

So, why all the fuss? Why are we vaccinating against an illness which is known to no longer be relevant? Well, you see, there are a number of people who still do not vaccinate their children, or themselves, and because of the herd immunity generated by the millions of others who do, they remain safe... until of course they come into contact with other children who have the illness. Then the trouble starts.

In Europe in 2010, there were 30,367 cases reported with 21 confirmed measles-related deaths. Of those cases 21,864 occurred in Bulgaria, with 17 deaths.

Here we have to compare a small sample of clinical trials indicating that between 2 to 5 out of every 100,000 children can get ITP, with a minute number of people going on to die from the disease with an even smaller number getting it as a result of a measles vaccination, with a recent known sample of 30,367 people being diagnosed with measles across 32 countries resulting in 88 serious complications requiring hospital treatment and one death.

So... and I'm no mathematician here but I'll give it a go... that's a 0.00005% chance of developing a mild rash from the vaccine, or a 0.00077% chance of dying from the illness that the vaccine prevents.

That means that on my very un-scientific poll:

YOU ARE SIXTEEN TIMES MORE LIKELY TO DIE OF THE DISEASE THAN SUFFER SOME VERY MILD  SYMPTOMS FROM THE VACCINATION!

Another uncomfortable fact is that in ALL the recent outbreaks across the globe, in the USA, Israel, The Philippines, Australia, New Zealand, The Netherlands, Bulgaria, Japan, the UK, France and Romania occurred in communities where people were against vaccination, for religious reasons, or simply through stupidity.

So the message... and I want to make this abundantly clear... is no matter what you've been told about vaccinations, from whatever dubious half-truth spilling, short-sighted, dumb-ass, no-good, un-patriotic website that you've chosen to get your information...

ANTI-VAXXERS... YOU ARE WRONG!

Vaccines are safe.
Vaccines save lives.
And the next life you save by getting yourself and your children vaccinated might well be your own!




*I'm not going to endorse that page by making it a hyperlink on my blog... not in a million years!

Deliver Us From Evil

When Christians pray I wonder what they think they're doing. The New Testament clearly states that Jesus wanted his followers to avoid synagogues (and by extension churches and chapels) and praying in public. More specifically he said to pray alone, in a closet and to only use the prayer commonly known as The Lord's Prayer.

I wonder if any one of the mumblers have ever stopped to examine that prayer. For me it's a list of requests, or even demands, made to their god. So let's see what you think.

The common Lord's Prayer goes like this:

Our Father, which art in Heaven

Hallowed be thy name

Thy kingdom come

Thy will be done In Earth

As it is in Heaven

Give us this day our daily bread

And forgive us our trespasses

As we forgive those who trespass against us

Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from Evil

For thine is the kingdom

The power and the glory

For ever and ever

Amen

I apologize to every non-believer who just read that, because as we know God sees and hears everything, even if you don't say it out loud. :)

Which brings me to my first point about prayer. Why would an eternal, benevolent being who is all-knowing and all-seeing need anyone to pray to them. The idea Christians (and all theists) have about their god is that he (it's always a he) can see and hear everything we say and do at all times. There's no thought we can hide from him and nothing we want, hope for, dream about or need is missed by this ever present CCTV-wielding god. So why are they bothering to pray at all?

Christian apologists will tell you that they are doing it to become closer to god, yet their god is inside their head, so how exactly do they think they can get closer? Another apologetic is that they get to show thanks, or increase their connection to their god, or even move one step closer to Heaven. Their god knows if they are thankful without them having to say so. Arguably their staying verbally silent cuts down on the amount of work their god needs to do, so staying schtum would be better. Again, they can't get any more connected to a god who is always hovering around. The getting closer to Heaven is a bit of a doosie. God's Will is paramount, he chooses who goes to Heaven and who doesn't, and has decided this long before the person was ever born... so a few mumbled words saying thanks for a nice meal, which farmers, retailers and cooks provided, or their favourite team winning a game/match/test isn't going to do anything to change that.

So why pray? It's totally pointless... unless of course the pray-er doesn't trust their god's power, or abilities.

Anyhoo... back to the Lord's Prayer itself.

It starts with a fairly standard 'you're god and you're awesome' sort of schtick but then the next few lines are quite telling.

"Thy kingdom come
Thy Will be done on Earth 
As it is in Heaven"

These lines assume that God's kingdom on Earth is on its way and what he wants will happen here as it has always been done in Heaven. What would be his purpose of creating a new kingdom on Earth when he already has the perfect set up in Heaven? Is it something to do with the Nephilim? Is it about the angels wanting to have sex with mortals all the time? Does god have to keep them apart, just in case?

"Give us this day our daily bread"

Provide for us... give us food every day. The presumption here is that it goes beyond bread; perhaps into money, fame or success. At any rate, this is the first request/demand.

"And forgive us our trespasses
As we forgive those who trespass against us"

We are good people. We're tolerant and forgiving, so we'd like you (god) to be forgiving of our sins, mistakes and crimes. So what's the suggestion here? I would like to think that it reminds the person to be more like their god, and be good to others, but I think on face value it is a request that the god be as good as the person. The basis of the Christian faith is that you should accept Jesus as your saviour or you'll burn in a fiery lake, so since that's the only real qualification set out by the Bible for guaranteed entry into Heaven (or God's new Earthly Kingdom away from rutting angel types) anything else we do is irrelevant*.

An important note is that the original lines from Matthew 6:9-13 state "And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors", but this must have been inconvenient to a church which preached that Christians owe an eternal debt to their Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ.

"Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from Evil"

I believe this is a demand which has more to it than meets the eye. God is being asked to lead people away from the evil of temptation, but this reveals a lack of dedication to the cause. It places the emphasis on their god to lead them away from situations they themselves should be avoiding. This is a prayer which abdicates the person from their responsibilities. If they don't sin then everything is copacetic, but if they do then God clearly didn't want to lead them away from it and so, by extension, he wanted them to do it.

What if the line is a darker one, which the early Church fathers were using, by placing these words into the mouth of Jesus, to disguise the real character of their god? The Bible makes it perfectly clear to us that God created evil before he created mankind and the whole Garden of Evil... sorry Eden... thing was a set-up to make us feel that we're to blame for his anger at God's own failings.

I'll explain.

The tree which Adam and Eve were warned not to eat from was called "The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil" which immediately raises the question, how could anyone be aware of something which didn't exist at the time? So, evil preceded mankind, or at the very least was created at the same time. An obvious point to anyone who bothers to read between the lines. Apart from this, God states that he created evil, but the common consensus is that he created it after the Fall, so it was man's fault. If read the way I've stated it though a case could be made for the events in the Garden to be part of God's plan, which makes the Fall an pre-meditated excuse to put mankind in the firing line.  If the serpent in the story was Satan, as some have suggested, we see from later on in the book that Satan was in God's employ which places his sudden appearance in the Garden in a whole different light.

So, this line could clearly be a request to God to stop him using us for the Evil he intends to commit. Could it be an admission that God's default is to put us in harm's way? Is it a line born of the fear that it is God's intention to direct us to sin?

The last lines of this prayer are yet more praise and 'aren't you wonderful' nonsense before the traditional ending borrowed from paganism's ritual "If it is willed to be."

So, in my view, this prayer is a solid request to provide for the person saying the prayer. It's a prayer which stems from a fear of an unknown future and it smacks of resentment born of knowing that we're better than the god who controls us.

So the next time you speak that prayer, or hear someone else speak it you should be suspicious. Be suspicious of your, or their, motives for wanting to say it. Firstly it shows a lack of faith in their god and secondly I believe it begs God to prevent them from turning out just like Him.

At the very least it should give you pause for thought.





* see my future post on the human soul (link to be provided later)