A Question on Belief.

I have found 4 books. They are by four different authors. Matthias, Marcus, Lucas and Johannes. All of them claim that they were abducted by aliens in the same incident back in the 90's in Germany.

I can confirm to the best of my knowledge that the 4 men did actually write the books. I have written affidavits from all 4 of them and there exists original phone and bank records from the time that can demonstrate they were in the geographical location they say they were in the weeks before and after the incident and also sworn testimony from their families that said they were missing for the time the 4 men said they were abducted.

The four books are written in the different styles of the authors, as you'd expect. They all appear to tell a similar story however they do vary in a lot of ways, some even missing out important points that would seem to be really important details in the story. Occasionally one will mention rather important details that the others fail to mention.

I am sure as I can be that they wrote the books and the authors swear that they wrote a lot of it down at the time in diaries (to which I also have access), so they are not using what could be rather distorted memories but their original thoughts at the time.

Unfortunately, there is no alien body, alien spacecraft or burn marks/landing marks at the location to confirm their story. One or two other people claim they saw some lights at the time and place mentioned but they couldn't identify anything more than that. One quite well known academic, a Professor Joseph from the US, has said that that he had heard people mention these 4 men and the alien before but it wasn't something he was able to confirm for himself.

So we have access to the proper original documents, both the books and the diaries in the handwriting of original authors. We know the books are by the claimed authors. We even have some vague references by others to the incident. But we have no physical evidence whatsoever of the incident.

The question is, should I believe them and their extraordinary claims of alien abduction?

Now lets take this lightly veiled story for what it is.

This is, at best, the maximum amount of information we could possibly have about the 4 gospels, their writers and those around them. We don't have even this much. So if you don't accept the accounts of the abductees, why would you believe the stories from 2000 years ago?

I am that from which I have come.

I was sent a series of questions/comments by a creationist on the comments section of an article in The Telegraph on The Oldest Signs of Life on Earth Found. I have supplied a selection of his relevant comments at the end, to which this is my response.

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I am a product of my genes and of my experiences (in other words long term and short term environmental influences). The architecture of my brain reflects both of those and is a direct product of them.

Remember the brain is nothing like a computer. It doesn't have hardware and software. The hardware *is* the software. The structure of the brain changes according to outside influence or what we would call learning (in it's widest sense).

The atoms (which are constantly changing due to metabolism) that make up the neurons in my brain are also directly from the environment. Indeed, originally from the matter that accreted to make the solar system and the earth. That matter came from some long-dead star that exploded. Which, in turn, came from singularity (which has the rather inappropriate name of The Big Bang as it was neither big, nor did it make a bang).

What happened "before" that? No-one knows (or, for the moment, can know). What we do know is that time, as a dimension of the space-time continuum, came into existence at the big bang so the word "before" is somewhat inappropriate too.

So you see, "Andrew Wilson" came from the environment. I came directly from it as a product of it and will return to it. Indeed I am very temporary

If you really want a far more poetic and beautiful answer than I can give then watch this 4 minute video from a fellow non-believer.

We Are Going To Die.

If you think there is more to "Andrew Wilson" or indeed "Andy Preston" than the material things of the world from which we are made then it really is up to you to demonstrate it.

It matters not a bit to me if love is "just" neurons and hormones reacting to outside stimuli. If that's true then it's true (and the evidence suggests it is). It doesn't lessen the experience one jot. Indeed it heightens it.

Here's another fellow unbeliever on that very topic.

Ode to a Flower.

I have no other answer for you. I follow the evidence.

p.s. Colour-blind people can see rainbows and rainbows are a physical phenomenon that happen as a direct result of physical light interacting with physical water and air molecules.

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His comments.

"So Andrew, unless you know for sure and can tell me where Andrew Wilson came from, and how your self was made - and I don't mean just your outward name /parents/birth cert/education/ profession -"

"then you are surely in a position, as we all are, of seeking knowledge about your existence rather in the manner of a person in a vast dark cavern, possessing only a thin beam pencil torch with which they can illuminate only a tiny area at a time - and quite unable to perceive the vastness unilluminated all around them.

"It then behoves all of us surely, to be modest about our judgement of other seekers, and the manner in which we address their understanding."

" ... asking someone for 'proof' of God /a creator is not unlike asking someone to 'prove' that - that vital component of human existence - of 'love' exists
or you being a colour blind person, demanding that another 'proves' that a rainbow exists."

Breaking news from The Scottish Parliament

This was posted a few moments ago to the Facebook page of The Scottish Secular Society. Thanks to John Hein.




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From: Scottish Parliament Tel 0131 348 6265

UNDER EMBARGO UNTIL 00.01 FRIDAY 8 NOVEMBER 2013

8 November 2013

Marriage Bill supported by majority of Committee at Stage 1

The general principles of the Marriage and Civil Partnership (Scotland) Bill are supported by the majority of members on the Equal Opportunities Committee in its Stage 1 report published today.

A minority of the Committee’s members do not support the Bill because they disagree in principle or because they are not convinced that the Bill currently has adequate protections in place.

Committee Convener Margaret McCulloch MSP said:

“All of us on the Committee recognise the validity, depth and sincerity of all views submitted to us on what has clearly been an emotive issue for all of our stakeholders.

“While the majority of our Committee supports the general principles of this Bill, we wholeheartedly support the right of all members of the Scottish Parliament to vote on the Bill as a matter of conscience.â€

The Committee has asked the Scottish Government for consideration on a number of issues including:

* Stakeholders varying views on the approach taken in the Bill on protecting celebrants of faith and religious organisations’ freedom to conduct legally valid marriages in keeping with their doctrines.

* An amendment raised by the Scottish Council of Jewish Communities to redefine non-civil marriages, to more prominently reflect the distinction between religious ceremonies and belief ceremonies.

* An opinion expressed by the Humanist Society Scotland that the treatment in marriage law of the Church of Scotland affords it a privileged status.

* The spousal consent to be removed from the gender-recognition process.

Background
The Marriage and Civil Partnership (Scotland) Bill was introduced in the Parliament on 26 June 2013 and covers the following key matters relating to marriage law: the introduction of same-sex marriage; putting belief celebrants on the same footing as religious celebrants; the arrangements for authorising celebrants to solemnise opposite-sex and same-sex marriage; civil partnerships changing to marriage; the authorisation of Church of Scotland deacons to solemnise opposite-sex marriage and allowing civil marriage ceremonies in any place agreed between the couple and the registrar, other than religious premises.

The Stage 1 debate on The Marriage and Civil Partnership (Scotland) Bill will take place in November.

Scaremongering by UKIP

I've seen this article about muslims doing the rounds on Facebook and other social media. It's typical UKIP propganda and scaremongering. Peaceful Muslims have as much control over the radicals than the old lady that sits next to you in church does over groups like The Westboro Baptist church or "christians" that bomb abortion clinics.

The section: "Peace-loving Muslims will become our enemy if they don't speak up, because like my friend from Germany , they will awaken one day and find that the fanatics own them, and the end of their world will have begun.", Is doing nothing more than trying do demonise ordinary muslims and is also a straight out lie. The fanatics do not "own" us and our laws deal with the extremists. As for language like "end of the world", the less said the better.

The fact that the article ends: "anyone who doubts that the issue is serious and just deletes this email without sending it on, is contributing to the passiveness that allows the problems to expand", is nothing more than a way of trying to shut up opposing views.

Including the picture of Abu Hamza is just cynical. He has gone through due process, has been extradited to the U.S. and awaiting trial. He is no longer a threat to the UK. Our current laws deal with these people already.

Do not vote UKIP even if you are tempted by the events of the last few days. They are a racist organisation and are not interested in any kind of human rights.

The last few days have been scary but the 2 people who perpetrated the atrocity in Woolwich are extremists. We should be able to understand that the majority of muslims in this country run businesses, own shops, drive buses, practice medicine, work as dustmen, have children at school and live what we would easily recognise as a British life.

I can't imagine what the family of Lee Rigby must be going through. My brother is a soldier and my mind shivers at the thought.

Campaigns (rather opportunistic ones) like this one by UKIP and the violent demonstrations by EDL only serve to heighten fear when we should be trying to find peaceful a way around it.

How would we measure objective morality?

There is a question at the end of this, so be patient. Thank you. :-)

Here are 3 basic assumptions about the world:

1. There is some kind of objective material reality we can observe/measure beyond our minds (lets assume for the sake of argument we're not just a brain in a jar somewhere).
2. Our senses aren't 100% reliable (given things like the McGurk Effect and Optical illusions etc...)
3. Our senses aren't 0% reliable (given that we can pretty safely assume, when on earth, that when we let go of an object it will drop like the last time we let go of an object).

Given these assumptions, humans have developed the scientific method to try and get close to the truth about the material world around us.

The scientific method involves a number of things

A. Coming up with an idea about how something in the world might work (hypothesis).
B. Creating some way (experiment/survey etc...) of checking that hypothesis is true/false (falsifiability).
C. Running the experiment a number of times and opening our methodology to others to allow them to carry out the experiment as well (repeatability).
D. Publishing our methodolgy, assumptions, results and conclusions to allow others to check them (peer review).

It's the best system that humans have come up for to try and measure how material reality works. It may not be perfect but it has given us the space station, smart phones, antibiotics and anaesthetics.

If, as some people suggest, morality is objective and exists outside of the human mind and that our senses aren't 100% reliable, what methodology would people use to try and get close to an understanding of what objective morality is and getting a general agreement on it?

If anyone has an answer to this, I'd be interested to read it in the comments.

Commons Backs Gay Marriage Bill.

At last!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-21346220

Never ever take your morality from an outside agency. If you do that, you have given up your own ability to assess right and wrong for yourself and thus have no way of assessing whether that outside agency itself is right or wrong.

Morality is about consequences of our actions and not about obedience to a set of rules.

Gay people in love getting married and having all the rights like next of kin that go with marriage has absolutely no effect on anyone else's marriage whatsoever. Marriage is between us, our partner, children (and god, if you believe in it) and no-one else.

We live in a largely secular nation. Yes, many people go to church but the church, thankfully, no longer has a monopoly on telling us what our morality is supposed to be. We are a far more enlightened as a species than we ever were. No, we don't know everything but we know far more about the world than the people from biblical times ever did.

I'm so glad that sanity has reigned and that society is slowly, inch by inch, moving forward to a more equal society.

Solipsism?

I was involved in a discussion with a theist recently on an "Atheists vs Theists" facebook page he had created. He came up with the idea the line "Reasoning goes on in minds and only goes on in minds hence is subjective". This is solipsism, which is, basically the idea that the only thing we can say is 100% true is "I think therefore I am" and everything else is subjective and therefore not 100% reliable.

This is my answer to him.

If, as you say all reasoning is subjective, you are basically a solipsist which is, at best, irrelevant. Also, if you are claiming that all reasoning is subjective, then you can't reason your way to god either.

This is where science comes in. It confirms something that someone has reasoned could be true by testing falsifiable hypotheses. It then allows others to try repeat those tests and by using open methodology so that others can review the evidence and how it was found.

It is the only way we can spiral in or home in on the truth.

Now, when you can create a falsifiable hypothesis for god, test it, allow others to repeat that and have an open methodology that allows for peer review, and after that the evidence for god is plain and unambiguous, then maybe I'll believe that there is a god.

Any comments welcome.

Thatcher: A Pre-Obituary

I reposted this after the Thatcher Day fiasco. (Sign the petition against it).

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She isn't dead yet but this is in anticipation of all the praise the Iron Lady will receive when that blessed release finally does come.

I may be wrong, but I suspect even the worst of the official obituaries will be along the lines of the "well, I didn't agree with her politics but she was a great politician/she got things done" kind of sycophantic drivel that opposition politicians will come out with. I don't particularly care for a politician that simply "get things done". It has to be the right things. Things in which the consequences for everyone are at the very least taken into account.

Bollocks to those obituaries I say, but I can only hope people writing them remain true to the way they felt when she did hold power. The Milk Snatcher (as she was sometimes known) was almost certainly the worst thing to happen to this country since that other crazed daemon, Oliver Cromwell.

Mrs. Thatcher got us all caught up with creating yet more "record" profits for worldwide corporations that exist purely for their bottom lines. Yes, these corporations made some people rich but it wasn't the ones working ridiculous shifts.

And to do what? To stuff the faces of people who apparently have the desperate need for a burger at 1 in the morning. The belief that they need a burger is most probably fed by advertising and the alcohol they just consumed in a pub chain owned by another large corporation. A burger produced in what amounts to a factory in which animals go in one end and meat comes out the other, mirroring perfectly the consuming process by which meat goes in one end and ... well, you get the picture.

Of course, Mrs. Thatcher didn't introduce global corporates into Britain. That was happening anyway. But she taught people to love the mentality that the bottom line is what matters; that growth is what counts; that a bigger profit this year than last year is the only thing to aim for. Of course, what far more experienced people were telling her was that growth and inflation aren't really that different, especially if that growth isn't based on real commodities but on "added value". All added value means is I'm going to charge you an extortionate amount for this sandwich, but I'll smile when I'm handing it to you. The recent economic strife has taught us that rather harshly.

Mrs. T Used all the means at her disposal both legal and illegal to get her way. She disguised soldiers as policemen during the miner's strike. That was wrong and she knew it. Had she brought the army out against the people that would have been the end of her political career. The fact she disguised them as policeman tells me she was willing to ride roughshod over democracy because she thought, wrongly as it has turns out, that manual labourers were no longer needed and that we somehow needed to become a "service economy".

She was hypnotised by the utter nonsense idea, verging on a religion, known as reaganomics, that was circulating amongst decision makers at the time. It relies almost in it's entirety on something called trickle-down economics which suggests that if you reward the high earners in society by lowering their tax bills that, as if by magic, the extra money in the economy would find it's way into the pockets of the poor. Of course this is nonsense. The rich don't spend much more money on everyday things than anyone else, as it turns out. It also is completely amoral. It doesn't take any account of how the rich make that money. The fact they made it by reducing other's wages arguably had the reverse effect. Sadly the U.S. Still seems to enamoured of this idea.

And it wasn't just reaganomics that hypnotised her but the man Reagan himself. She worshipped him, as the notorious hand on coffin incident demonstrated. Yes, it was partly for show, but why did she have to show herself to be that close to Reagan in the first place? Her Infatuation with Reagan brought Britain into an embrace with the US which caused us to ignore relationships with other countries with whom we had much more in common. Firstly Europe. Imagine a Europe that had the full bodied support of a strong nation like the UK and the reputation of the pound behind it. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, the commonwealth. Imagine, in this Information Age, where distance is almost meaningless to many businesses if we had put the same amount of energy into our relationship with Australia with it's healthy economy and all the tie-ins to all the other emerging pacific nations that would have given us.

It's not that we shouldn't have a relationship with the U.S.A. A relatively young nation like the States needs the tempered hand of a more mature nation that has been where it now is. During the Thatcher years our foreign policy consisted almost entirely of our relationship with America and the Falkland incident. She Insisted on calling it a war but that was politically motivated hyperbole.

She Is not entirely to blame, of course. Blair entrenched the entire Thatcher economic model. Indeed, I could even say Thatcher was up-front about her economic goals. Blair smuggled the politics of the Iron Lady back into the country in a nice looking suit. An expensive Armani suit at that.

Unfortunately, Mrs T used our diversity against us. She played north against south, rich against poor, Scottish against English and her peak capped skeletal henchman Tebbit was even ocassionally wheeled out to play the race card. Tebbit (he's not dead yet either) was a particularly nasty piece of work that the Tory party seemed to have hanging like barnacles on it's putrifying underbelly during the 80s. I have a particularly horrible recollection of him tearing apart a woman from a homeless charity telling her "the homeless should look after themselves". There, sadly, doesn't appear to be a clip of it anywhere on the internet.

Most significantly she set back women's rights by a generation. Being one of the first nations on earth to have a female leader should have been a fantastic moment for a country like the UK and the world as a whole. Instead we got this person who had all the bad elements of the male leaders that already existed with none of the good qualities that the best male leaders do have. She also had none of the qualities that a good female leader could have brought to the table. An ability to listen, an ability not to be driven by her penis (Thatcher was, of course) and an ability to fight for the optimal compromise in a situation rather than try to dominate.

Under her leadership this country lost it's way. Under her leadership the army was brought out against it's own people. The unions could have easily been sorted out with compromises but she felt she had to make a point. Under her leadership we saw the race riots, some of the worst in-fighting between Britons since the civil war. Under her leadership we saw billions of pounds spent on a "war" defending around 300 people who, for a 10th of the price could have be repatriated and given a house and a large trust fund each. Under her leadership the number of people for whom there was no work rose to 3 million, that's 3 million people who wanted to work but weren't able to. Under her leadership the seeds of our current economic failure were sown. How demoralising.

So no, don't believe any of the snivelling obituaries that will be out there. They are written by the very, very small number of people who had something to gain from riding on her coat tails.

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After the opening ceremony of the London Olympics I felt that the genius Danny Boyle managed to sum up what Britain really could be like. We are indeed a mongrel nation. See my short blog post on the subject.

Obama vs Romney

Neil Kinnock, leader of the British Labour party during the 80s and 90s once made a speech about the the Tori leader Margaret Thatcher. This is widely regarded as his best speech and the following is possibly his most memorable quote ever. As it happens, Mrs Thatcher did win the election and his predictions started to come true.

"If Margaret Thatcher wins on Thursday, I warn you not to be ordinary. I warn you not to be young. I warn you not to fall ill. I warn you not to get old."

In my personal opinion  Obama would be perfectly able to use that line with regards to Romney and the US election tonight.

Equality of opportunity in the wider world.

This is my reply to another blog post by Crommunist entitled "Finding the faults" and located here: http://freethoughtblogs.com/crommunist/2012/09/10/finding-the-faults

" ...  I find this supposed ‘unity’ of the atheist cause to be nothing more than ridiculous wishful thinking. ... ".

Those us against Atheism Plus are, in fact, saying the opposite. Atheism has always been non-unified. The only thing any of us can guarantee to have in common is that we don't see enough evidence for gods or the supernatural.

Many atheists are completely for the aims of Atheism Plus (as am I), as long as you are fighting for equality of opportunity, but it is precisely because Atheism Plus are trying to create a unified group that we are against it.

I happily stand with christians/muslims etc... who are against racism/misogyny etc... In fact, I'd rather spend my time fighting these things in public with anyone who stands with me on these things rather than be a member of a group that claims inclusivity, but you can only be an atheist to join, even if you agree with all of our aims.

The issue of equality of opportunity for everyone is so important that having a specifically atheist group that is pro social justice is divisive (not to the atheist community, we are only a group in the loosest population dynamics sense) but to the wider community fighting for social justice.

Reply to Crommunist Manifesto on Atheism Plus

This was my reply to Crommunist Manifesto's blog post on Freethought Blogs.

His original post: http://freethoughtblogs.com/crommunist/2012/08/22/atheism-plus-sounds-awesome



When it comes to feminism, I am perfectly happy to stand shoulder to shoulder with any christian (or muslim, or hindhu…) if they share my views that men and women should be treated equally.

When it comes to racism, I am perfectly happy to stand shoulder to shoulder with any christian (or muslim, or hindhu…) if they share my views that all races should be treated equally.

When it comes to sexuality, I am perfectly happy to stand shoulder to shoulder with any christian (or muslim, or hindhu…) if they share my views that people of all sexual orientation should be treated equally.

When it comes to church/state separation, I am perfectly happy to stand shoulder to shoulder with any christian (or muslim, or hindhu…) if they share my views that people of any religion or none should given any preference by the state.

See a pattern?

There are also atheists who don’t share my views on these things and I am perfectly happy to discuss with them our differences of opinion.

I am perfectly happy if humanism is not entirely atheistic. There is nothing about atheism that necessarily leads to any particular political viewpoint. There is also nothing about humanism that means it has to be entirely atheistic.

But that’s fine. I fight each issue on it’s own merits. Creating specific clubs that exactly match my viewpoint is not something I want to be part of. In fact, the opposite is true. I want to be challenged on my views.

I thought, perhaps naively, that when I started to meet other atheists and skeptics that having my views challenged would be the norm. In fact I was rather excited by it.

I hope that is still the case.



I thought I should post my reply as a blog post as it kind of sums up my views on Atheism Plus.

A tribute

"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars", "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few", "I have a dream".

"One small step for man ... One giant leap for mankind".

To be a military test pilot is probably the most challenging, thrilling and frightening job in the world. You must have the experience of a forty year old combined with the physical strength and mental dexterity of youth. You need to be brave enough to take calculated and sometimes uncalculated risks. You must have the ability to come up with novel solutions to problems in split seconds in life threatening situations and have the fortitude to say, "go for it".

Only the best test pilots, at their peak fitness are ever considered when deciding who should become an astronaut. To be chosen to be the commander of a lunar lander you must also have the utmost respect from, and for, the team of which you are in charge.

To be the first of them and to be chosen to be the human being that will place their foot on a surface not of this world, you must be someone who has the respect of an entire nation.

To do all that, and to land with one minute of fuel to spare, then come up with one of the most memorable lines in human history takes an exceptional human being. Only a few of which come along in a generation.

That man was Neil Armstrong.

1930 - 2012

Diversity breeds Adaptability

10,000 years ago small tribes of people crossed the land that is now covered by water and that we have called the English Channel. Ever since then, we have absorbed so many cultures.

The Flemish, The Celts, the Romans, the Vikings, the French, the Dutch, the Jewish, the Caribbeans, the Indians, the Pakistanis, the Polish and so many more.

A mongrel nation makes for a healthier nation. A more diverse nation. A nation that not only copes with the world, but adapts to it and makes the best of what is thrown at it.

If we can take anything from the last two weeks, perhaps it has shown us we had, just maybe, forgotten that.

Pastor Charles Worley - working the figures

So, this man, if such a moniker can be used for someone with such inhuman standards on how to treat others, has said all the lesbians and gays and should be rounded up and put into separate "pens" and left there until they die. (He did say he would feed them, although that's un-biblical, as he is showing mercy).

In case you missed it:

I thought I would do some stats on the things he said, so here goes:

Here is my basic assumptions.

• He said 50-100km so I'll assume 100 to be generous
• He made a vague circular motion when he said it so I'll assume a circle
• He suggested a separate "pen" for gays and lesbians, so I've calculated for just one population (but the calculation is the same for both populations).
• I have assumed 1% of the female U.S. population are lesbians, although it is almost certainly much larger (which just makes the figures even more inhuman).
• I have taken the poulation of the U.S. from google to be around 312M 

It turns out that the "lesbian density" (good grief!) would be 2000 lesbians (or gays) per square kilometre! That's half a square metre per lesbian.

Given that the absolute minimum recommended for free range chickens is 2 square metres per chicken, that gives you an idea of just how inhuman this man's ideas are.

I know doing these calculations seems ridiculous, but you can bet that any leader of a nation that has concentration camps does precisely these same calcuations with the added inhumanity of a cost/benefit analysis.

Quite apart from the fact that most gays and lesbians come from heterosexual parents and there would always be new gay and lesbians born anyway.

Taking offence

My wife recently put a post on facebook that included a quote from a Tim Minchin song that refers to pope Ratzinger using some swear words. Some people took offence so she took the post down.

I have posted the following on her wall, in the hope that it makes people think a little more before trying to crush free speech.

Hazel recently put a post up about the pope that included a few swear words from a song by Tim Minchin. Some people got a bit upset so she, very generously, deleted it. In a country that has free speech at it's heart, she didn't have to do this.

I had a response to these people that I didn't have time to send before the post's removal. I still think it is worth saying, so here it is:

If you read the lyrics of the Tim Minchin song in question, you will find that it is a rant, by Tim Minchin, against Ratzinger himself, for not turning priests accused of paedophillia over to the authorities, as any other responsible institution would have done. Instead, he swept it under the carpet and moved priests to different parishes.

If anyone is not offended by that, but, at the same time, offended by a few swear words, then they need to think seriously about their priorities.

Tim Minchin himself has said he would march shoulder to shoulder with people for their right to hold sacred anything they want, but don't ever tell anyone else what they must hold sacred.

I hope that next time they think before they take offence so easily.

To measure love.

How do you measure love? I mean, really, how do you weigh it? Surely not in kilograms, or lb, or miles per hour, or kiloNewtons or mass x the speed of light squared.

Yet love is real. It is physical. True love, at least, exists as a real physical thing. Our minds can become obsessed with it, our bodies can yearn for it as much as it might yearn for chocolate, coffee, alcohol or even cocaine. Love is not some ethereal, metaphysical concept. It is absolutely real. Our love for another human being can move us to do amazing, and sometimes dreadful things. I am not judging which things are amazing and which are dreadful, but the things people do for, and in the name of love, are real.

So, given it's reality, how do we measure it? What instruments could we possibly use? What data would we look at? What are the error bars? What's the p-value?

Well, of course, we wouldn't use some instrument, some vial, some computer. But yet, it is real. So, again, how do we measure it? In what possible way can we say we love someone?

If you love someone who sees life the same way you do, then that's easy. It's a "no-brainer", everything is "hunky-dory" it's "a-ok". But how can you really say that you love that person? That is difficult to measure. Loving someone with the same values, the same principles, who looks at life in the same way, is easy. To love, within your own boundaries, is but a small step.

To love someone with different values; with a different outlook on life; who holds sacred things, which previously, perhaps, you did not; Who does not hold sacred the things that maybe you do. That is not easy. That is difficult. That involves change. Not just changes on the surface like, I don't know, changing your hairstyle, or the clothes you wear, or the type of food you like.

I mean real change. Change that actually matters. Change in your principles; Change in how you view the world; change in what you hold precious; change in how you go about this thing we call life.

They, of course, change too. But when they do, when they change their outlook on life in response to you, and when you both discover new things, new principles. That is real love. That is dedication. That is what "laying down your life for someone" really means.

And that?! That is how you measure love. Change. The measure of love is change. How much you change to become someone new; To become someone different. I won't say better, that is subjective. A fuller, richer person perhaps. A more interesting person, certainly! but a different person than the person you once were. You can still look back and see life through the eyes of that person you were, but now you have this new perspective. Now, you see the world from two different viewpoints.

And what does viewing the world from two different positions give you? Perspective. You see the world in 3D. And the further apart the two positions were to start with, the better the sense of depth. The better the perspective.

That is how you measure love!

In response to The conundrum of atheism.

No-one kills people in the name of Santa Claus, or tells everyone else they can’t spend their life with the person they love, just because they are of the same gender.

How patronising to think we really think God exists but are pretending. To what end? Imagine if I used that argument on you and said you don’t really believe, but just pretend you do.

As for morals. They didnt “magically evolve”, they evolved. You, however, believe they magically appeared from God.

So called militant atheists are harmless. Militant theists are not. See this cartoon.http://friendlyatheist.com/2009/06/05/beware-the-militant-atheists/ to make it clear what I mean.

Got that off my chest.

Losing my humanity?

"And it came to pass at midnight, that Jehovah smote all the first-born in the land of Egypt, from the first-born of Pharaoh that sat on his throne unto the first-born of the captive that was in the dungeon; and all the first-born of cattle."

Exodus 12:21

For some reason, I have found myself talking to a few theists recently, or more specifically, Christians. The above quote from exodus is one reason (of many) that I left the church. So, it was interesting to ask them what they thought of the above passage.

Apart from the usual, "you are taking it out of context" answer, to which I say, "there is no context whatsoever that makes God's actions in Egypt morally justifiable", one answer in common was along the lines of, "God needed to show his power so that he would be respected"!

Anyone that uses that kind of violence to gain respect is not interested in respect, they are interested in fear. It is the justification a spouse uses when they use violence against their partner. God, of course, cannot bypass his own moral laws and commit genocide, unless he is a hypocrite, in which case why worship him?

Anyone who defends someone else's violence by saying they need to be respected and so need to show their wrath, has lost their instinctive ability to tell the difference between fear and respect. Is this the reasoning they would have used If one of the Egyptian parents had asked, "why did God kill my child?"

This reasoning, that is used to defend God's actions, is a sign of how far down the rabbit hole Christians have to be. They have lost that very human quality, empathy. Instead they look to the bible and their pastors for answers. They no longer trust their own thoughts and feelings, particularly if those thoughts and feelings are not seen, by their peers, to fit with the group-think that is their own church's interpretation of the bible.

If that kind of twisted logic is what is required to be a Christian, then I have made the right choice. I am right. I am free of that way of thinking and that I no longer have to twist my thoughts and feelings to obey any one particular church's interpretation of the angry whims of a jealous, spiteful, violent and abusive God.

Point to ponder. Why would an all-powerful God require a red mark above the door to distinguish households of his chosen people and those of the Egyptians? Other than to require absolute obedience (a very appealing characteristic, I'm sure) or to allow humans, who probably carried out the genocide, to tell which house was which.

iPad ... Not for me ... Just yet!

It appears, unusually, that Apple may have got their market research wrong which has led them to release the iPad before it is really ready.

Don't get me wrong. I think the iPad is probably the most beautiful piece of electronic equipment ever created in looks, the way it is seamless in it's functionality and in it's " holdability".

However, Steve Jobs has said that they were creating a new category of computer somewhere between a smart phone and a laptop and that netbooks just didn't do that properly.

Where do Apple think the Market is for this is? I have a smartphone (iPhone in fact) and a laptop already as do a lot of people. In fact most of us will still be tied into a mobile contract to pay for the iPhone. Apart from the big beautiful screen there is nothing that I can do on the iPad that I can't do between my iPhone and my laptop. Worse the iPad can't take over the joint functionality of both together.

And there's the rub. I don't think people wan't another category of computer. Certainly in my case I was hoping for something that would completely replace my iPhone and my laptop and perhaps, with the addition of a docking station, the desktop too.

The problem is that the iPad doesn't do that yet. Not even close.

To be more specific here are the things that would be needed before I think it could replace the smartphone and the laptop.

3G (coming in later models).
Multi-tasking.
Flash player.
Proper access to the file system.
Front mounted camera.
More memory.
More solid-state disk space.

Certainly, Apple will sell a lot of them to apple fans and to people that don't have an iPhone yet. Especially considering the low price. But it won't replace the laptop. Not yet.

That said. The iPad is definitely going to change the way that we all look at computers and the way we interact with them.

If Apple can deliver all of the above in the next year. The competition will be worried!

The Three Chimneys

Well, we went for it. We went to the three chimneys in Skye while on honeymoon. Here is what we had:

The 7(9) Courses of Skye

ENTREE: Bites: Mini Goats Cheese Bites

COMP: Soup: Watercress Soup with Creme Fraiche and Herring Roe

1: Prawns: Langoustines with Tattie Scones and Mesclun

2: Crab: Colbost Crab risotto with Shellfish Essence and truckle wafer

3: Smoked Fish: Selection of Broadford Smoked Fish with Croft Quail Eggs

4: Scallops: Sconser King Scallop with Hazelnut Crust, Pickled Winkles, Split pea and ham hough purry and Claret Jus

5: Oysters: Three Loch Harport Oysters with cucumber and mint jelly, home-made Creme Fraiche and smoked herring roe.

6: Lamb: Roast Glenshinnisdal lamb loin with Kidney, Heart, Sweetbread and Hairst Bree(Haggis)

COMP: Pre-Desert: Saffron Genovise with Pink Grapefruit Syrup

7: Souflee: Three Chimney Hot Marmalade Pudding Souffle with Drambuie Syrup and Mealie Ice Cream

(8): Cheese: Selection of Cheeses and oatcakes

All Accompanied by Rosemary Bread, Sourmilk bread and Seeded Bread

Finished with coffee, mini bakewells, chocolate coconut and tablet.

Neither of us quite felt up to the cheese course!

If we had gone for the soup and included the coffee as a course that adds up to 12 courses.

Price: Ahem!!!

Hey, It's a five star restaurant, one of the top 10 in the world. pick a number and probably double it! Well, we were on honeymoon!

It was definitely worth it.