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!