In the new work, The Grand Design, Professor Stephen Hawking argues that the Big Bang, rather than occurring following the intervention of a divine being, was inevitable due to the law of gravity.
In his 1988 book, A Brief History of Time, Hawking had seemed to accept the role of God in the creation of the universe. But in the new text, co-written with American physicist Leonard Mlodinow, he said new theories showed a creator is “not necessary”.
The Grand Design, an extract of which appears in the Times today, sets out to contest Sir Isaac Newton’s belief that the universe must have been designed by God as it could not have been created out of chaos.
“Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing,” he writes. “Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist.
“It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going.”
Poor poor creationists. They spend all their time bitching, moaning and whinging about the impossibility of the universe creating itself without a sentient, guiding hand (whilst ignoring where that came from), but Prof Hawking has undermined them quite comprehensively. There’s just no need for a God to explain anything in existence at all. I wonder how many imaginative ways the creationist lobby can a) dismiss his argument without addressing it b) invoke a theist, straw man argument to try to shift the burden of proof away from them yet again and c) lie about science until they’re blue in the face in the hope most people will believe them and not Hawking.
In my recent arguments and debates with creationists and arch theists I’ve been repeatedly confronted with the question ‘what if you’re wrong’, when I admit my atheism. Richard Dawkins perhaps puts it better than I ever could:
As with much of the stupidity coming out of America these days, I don’t necessarily have the words to capture how I feel about the right-wing furore over the proposed ‘Ground Zero mosque’. I’ll give you a few from Charlie Brooker instead:
Millions are hopping mad over the news that a bunch of triumphalist Muslim extremists are about to build a “victory mosque” slap bang in the middle of Ground Zero.
The planned “ultra-mosque” will be a staggering 5,600ft tall – more than five times higher than the tallest building on Earth – and will be capped with an immense dome of highly-polished solid gold, carefully positioned to bounce sunlight directly toward the pavement, where it will blind pedestrians and fry small dogs. The main structure will be delimited by 600 minarets, each shaped like an upraised middle finger, and housing a powerful amplifier: when synchronised, their combined sonic might will be capable of relaying the muezzin’s call to prayer at such deafening volume, it will be clearly audible in the Afghan mountains, where thousands of terrorists are poised to celebrate by running around with scarves over their faces, firing AK-47s into the sky and yelling whatever the foreign word for “victory” is.
It seems as though freedom of religion in America for right wingers is contingent on being…well…Christian and right-wing. Brooker quite rightly points out the absurdity of this controversy, especially given that
Cordoba House, as it’s known, is a proposed Islamic cultural centre, which, in addition to a prayer room, will include a basketball court, restaurant, and swimming pool. Its aim is to improve inter-faith relations. It’ll probably also have comfy chairs and people who smile at you when you walk in, the monsters.
To get to the Cordoba Centre from Ground Zero, you’d have to walk in the opposite direction for two blocks, before turning a corner and walking a bit more. The journey should take roughly two minutes, or possibly slightly longer if you’re heading an angry mob who can’t hear your directions over the sound of their own enraged bellowing.
New York being a densely populated city, there are lots of other buildings and businesses within two blocks of Ground Zero, including a McDonald’s and a Burger King, neither of which has yet been accused of serving milkshakes and fries on hallowed ground. Regardless, for the opponents of Cordoba House, two blocks is too close, period. Frustratingly, they haven’t produced a map pinpointing precisely how close is OK.
Seriously what is this ‘hallowed ground’ garbage? Guess what Americans, we had four suicide bombings but we just got to grips with it and got on with our lives. You however are still doing this:
Yes it IS scary that there are people out there who are prepared to commit mass murder, and take themselves out doing so. But resorting to intolerance, lynch mobs and turning your backs on every principle on which your country is based is an act of incalculable stupidity. Nearly 3,000 people died nearly ten years ago, many at the site of the former World Trade Center, but to call that site ‘hallowed ground’ (which by extension covers the entire neighbourhood or any other radius taking people’s fancy really) is extraordinarily dangerous, not to mention specious, for the reasons Brooker gives earlier. Bush may be gone, but the people who gave him license to do what he did haven’t gone away. They’re not PNAC, nor any other special interest group – they’re just average, ‘God-fearing’ Americans.
Dawkins’ documentary last night was damned entertaining, and occasionally painfully revealing. And the science teacher at the Islamic faith school who so totally dropped herself in it has responded:
Science is essentially mankind’s best effort at understanding the workings of the known universe, given our limited resources and intelligence. Learning about science is fun, fantastic and thought-provoking, especially discussions arising around ethical grey areas. However, it is important that children are made aware of the limitations of scientific endeavour lest they be corralled into a realm wherein nothing is worth knowing unless it has been determined by empirical scientific discovery.
If they were encouraged towards that worldview alone, I believe they would be receiving an education devoid of further enrichment from a faith-based narrative. I’m not in the business of wanting young people bereft of the entire canon of human belief systems. That religions have stood the test of time is testament to the human need for something other than that which we can prove or disprove.
As a teacher, I’d be doing my pupils a grave disservice if I insisted that the answers that science can give us should be the limit of our understanding of the world. Kids are bright and don’t need liberating from religion, especially if the alternative is limited to giving credence to atheistic secularism alone. Rather, equip them with all the alternatives and let them work it out for themselves.
I’m aghast at this. She’s debating her confrontation with Dawkins about evolution, which she as a science teacher disputed. I’ll accept (to a point) that history has shown at the very least a predilection for something other than what we can prove or disprove, but that has almost entirely been due to historical ignorance – we haven’t been able to figure out the answers about who we are and how we came to be. Now we can, and for her to say that metaphysics should or could in any way answer how humanity, the earth or the universe came to be is objectively wrong. By all means discuss the issues and run through the debates in a religious education class, but science alone does have the answers to these questions – to suggest there are religious/metaphysical/transcendental alternatives is in small or large measure an attempt to indoctrinate children (as Dawkins says) into believing ‘God’ has answers science doesn’t, thereby contributing to robbing them of the freedom to engage with the world critically.
I personally agree with Dawkins that children do need liberating from religion, at least from their parents’. But my bottom line from Erfana Bora’s argument is this: she is doing her pupils a horrible disservice by suggesting as a science teacher that science doesn’t provide all the answers to our understanding of the world – it does. If she disagrees with the theory of evolution, and suggests for a heartbeat that a religious text has any role in any way in explaining how life on earth has come to be, she shouldn’t be teaching science in a school funded by the British taxpayer. Very simple.
Well of course this is what creationist nutcases seem to think. Watch this video, which proves just how wrong their position on the science is. The world is not 6,000 years old.
A Roman Catholic adoption charity’s appeal to be allowed to discriminate against gay people wanting it to place children with them has been rejected.
Catholic Care wanted exemption from new anti-discrimination laws so it could limit services provided to homosexual couples on religious grounds.
The Charity Commission said gay people were suitable parents and religious views did not justify discrimination.
The Leeds-based charity said it was “very disappointed”.
Catholic Care – which had been placing children with adoptive parents for more than 100 years – was among a dozen Catholic agencies in England and Wales forced to change their policy towards homosexual people by the equality laws passed in 2007.
I’m sure it was very disappointed – it believed, as the article goes on to say, that the Equality Act went against the Catholic Church’s teachings on marriage and family life. Too bad. Gay people are suitable parents, and belief in the supernatural cannot in this day and age be allowed to justify discrimination against us. No doubt the agency and the church will complain that there are all sorts of disorders we are guilty of, that ‘forcing’ children to be parented by gay people goes against their ‘rights’ to have heterosexual parenting. My argument is that children have the right to good parenting – if the best available happen to be gay in this instance then so be it. The Pope however disagrees:
In a strongly worded letter to the Catholic bishops of England and Wales, the pope criticised the then-Labour government for creating “limitations on the freedom of religious communities to act in accordance with their beliefs”.
He wrote: “The effect of some of the legislation designed to achieve this goal has been to impose unjust limitations on the freedom of religious communities to act in accordance with their beliefs. In some respects it actually violates the natural law upon which the equality of all human beings is grounded and by which it is guaranteed.”
Suggesting that discriminating against gay people on the grounds of belief is somehow justifiable under ‘natural law’ is wrong-minded and a misrepresentation of what equality law is supposed to be about, and Ratzinger was quite rightly roundly condemned for his intervention. It’s a relief that the Charity Commission has decided to rest its decision on the rule of civil, rather than ‘God”s law.
The churches are making a huge comeback in their influence and power over our lives – and they are doing so with the complicity and encouragement of our politicians. It started with the Blair government’s instant acceptance of the Church of England’s 2001 plans to open more schools (and use them to secure the church’s future rather than see them primarily as a public service).
Of course he has a point – our politicians have, in the post-ideological era, decided that there’s advantage to be had in courting the vote of the religiously zealous. In the age where identity politics are everything and where belief has misguidedly been given legislative protection under the banner of ‘equality’, they think pandering to pre-Enlightenment attitudes will gain them easy power. They may be right, but why, when Pollock suggests this appeal shouldn’t fall on fertile ground, does it?
I think Frank Swain identified much of the answer in his excellent talk for the Westminster Skeptics a few weeks ago. We’re not just in an age of identity politics, we’re in an age where we have innumerable claims to the truth coupled to a delivery device unheard of in history. It’s no surprise that the Internet has allowed Islamists to spread their myths with alarming ease – with such an effective bully pulpit (the ‘net is hardly the Enlightening force many had hoped – in large measure the converted continuously preach only to the converted) their Christian counterparts have even decided to speak like us. We say the earth is 4.5 billion years old, and we know it from carbon dating. They say carbon dating methods are unreliable and the earth is only 6000 years old. Emboldened by stealing our clothes they’re on the rise, but surely we live in an age of reason, where education and knowledge are everything?
Watched Big Brother lately? How many people think Raoul Moat was a hero? Who thought Jade Goody was a role model? Being an idiot makes you rich and famous in the blink of an eye. Being a murderer makes you a folk hero. Is it because of the absence of ideology, have scientists failed to make their case to the current generation, or do we just take society’s embracing of Enlightenment values for granted? Are fairy stories just plain more entertaining and comforting than cold, hard emotionless facts? Well I don’t think so. Check Professor Brian Cox and his science/documentary series ‘Wonders of the Solar System’, standing up relentlessly for science and evidence-based policy-making, whilst bringing rockstar-like energy to the subject of cosmology. Prof Cox is fast gaining Dawkins-style reverence, and for all the right reasons; Christianism won’t gain a foothold everywhere.
But we do live in a society now fully marketised, where everything is given a financial value, leading to very clear winners and losers. Should it be any surprise that the economic losers – be they the Joe Cienkowskis of this world or Nigerian migrants – find solace in what makes them feel safe and valued, even if that means denouncing science and reason? We ignore this issue more than any other at our peril if we really care about the direction in which our society’s values are going. It would be easy merely to denounce African churches which label children ‘witches’, or the Vatican for its relentless interference in the lives of the most vulnerable, but those values which allow these backward steps to take place represent a retreat more than anything – people are afraid. The West now lives under a neo-liberal economic consensus, barely questions it and then wonders why segments of the population do everything they can not to take part in that order. The rise of Christianism could easily be undermined if we came up with more believable solutions about how to be a more inclusive society.
I see so much garbage on the web and Twitter about how evolution is the ‘creation story’ to atheism’s ‘religion’ these days, and it really gets my back up. There’s little more infuriating to me than modern human beings denying reason, science or the proven natural order of things. How anyone can get away with being a religious literalist in this day and age in any society, given the wealth of evidence to back up the science, is completely beyond me. Just today I’ve spoken to a fool who insisted neanderthal man looked just like us, and without any sense of irony.
This video is just one attempt by evolutionary scientists to refute creationism and Biblical literalism, but it’s a good one. Enjoy.
“A society that turns its back on reason and prefers ideology is headed towards some kind of theocracy.” – James L Powell, Ph.D.
I have to say I increasingly admire and enjoy scientists like Professor Brian Cox, who bring out the wonder of how the world and universe really are – demonstrating that what we know brings with it a deep sense of wonder, which theists imply are missing without belief in their imaginary friend. We know how the world and solar system came into being – we don’t need an organised religion to answer these questions anymore. And Dawkins, for all his militancy, demonstrates the probability that we are genetically constructed to be altruistic – we don’t need a religious tome or evangelists telling us how to behave compassionately either – we just can’t help it.
For centuries, religion was insulated from criticism in Britain. First its opponents were burned, then jailed, then shunned. But once there was a free marketplace of ideas, once people could finally hear both the religious arguments and the rationalist criticisms of them, the religious lost the British people. Their case was too weak, their opposition to divorce and abortion and gay people too cruel, their evidence for their claims non-existent. Once they had to rely on persuasion rather than intimidation, the story of British Christianity came to an end.
Now [that] only six percent of British people regularly attend a religious service
What purpose does religion really serve any more? Hari has more to say:
As their dusty Churches crumble because nobody wants to go there, the few remaining Christians in Britain will only become more angry and uncomprehending. Let them. We can’t stop this hysterical toy-tossing stop us from turning our country into a secular democracy where everyone has the same rights, and nobody is granted special rights just because they claim their ideas come from an invisible supernatural being.
Does this apply to all practising Christians? Of course not, but the increasingly strident minority who would, as in the cartoon above, seek to turn the clock back, deny science, abuse children for being witches and attempt to force legal opt outs to discriminate purely on the grounds they have an imaginary friend, genuinely do need to be dismissed. They won’t be though – in the age where identity politics rules in the absence of ideology, all the major political parties are convinced there’s marginal advantage to be gained by appeasing this lobby. So watch the rise of evangelical Christianity in the UK, don’t expect police raids on African churches any time soon, and watch religious schools grow an grow, ever (needlessly) dividing people who would otherwise learn and grow up in harmony.
Battles about morality are abounding on Twitter at the moment. Are we inherently moral, as Dawkins would have us be, or do we need a rule book? As Hitchens points out in the last post, a rule book of course presumes that we’re inherently immoral, and would rape, pillage and murder without the threat of eternal punishment. Strangely though atheists tend not to mass murder, don’t tend to fly planes into large buildings and don’t tend to hate people for being different to them. Strange that. Comments welcome.
I’m back. Sorry for the protracted delay, but I’d lost my enjoyment of writing almost entirely for a spell. But I think that’s mostly passed, and I’m feeling more comfortable with what I’m going to write about and why I’m doing it.
I’ve recently had confrontations on Twitter with creationists and other religious extremists and nutjobs, who believe that they are only (in their minds) good people because they are religious. This delightful video has Christopher Hitchins breaking that argument into smithereens:
It’s a wonderful argument, not allowing Christianity (or any monotheistic belief system) take any credit whatsoever for morality, even hinting outright totalitarian intent behind even some of the Ten Commandments. I get incensed when the devout (who have an alarming tendency to behave in discriminatory ways) insist that they are better than others because of their blind belief in hocus pocus. It’s intellectually retarded to suggest morality can only come from religious instruction - I’m sure numerous children who are branded as witches in Christian communities and then abused would agree, as well as all the other victims throughout the ages of religion-incited violence, abuse and murder.
I’m going to try to vary my writing style in the blog from time to time to see what fits with people’s interests and enjoyment levels. More than anything what I’d like is discussion. If you think my argument’s hogwash then say so. If you agree with my viewpoint then add your own please.
I’ve written about Gary McFarlane before – the devout Christian who was fired from Relate because he felt he couldn’t counsel same-sex couples on so-called ‘religious’ grounds. McFarlane then went on to an employment tribunal, claiming religious discrimination, but failed when the panel ruled he had been obliged to abide by Relate’s equal opportunities policy, which he’d refused to do. The High Court has thankfully now confirmed the panel’s ruling, and has come out fighting, following former Archbishop George Carey’s support for McFarlane:
The senior church figure called for a specially-constituted panel of judges with a “proven sensitivity and understanding of religious issues” to hear the case.
Lord Carey said recent decisions involving Christians by the courts had used “dangerous” reasoning and this could lead to civil unrest.
The judge’s ruling continued: “We do not live in a society where all the people share uniform religious beliefs.
“The precepts of any one religion – any belief system – cannot, by force of their religious origins, sound any louder in the general law than the precepts of any other.
“If they did, those out in the cold would be less than citizens, and our constitution would be on the way to a theocracy, which is of necessity autocratic.
“The law of a theocracy is dictated without option to the people, not made by their judges and governments.
“The individual conscience is free to accept such dictated law, but the State, if its people are to be free, has the burdensome duty of thinking for itself.”
A great line there, attacking Carey’s position, and the whole notion that religious belief should ever trump the rule of law. Carey’s line though was quite outrageous, seeking to suggest that anti-gay discrimination by theists somehow wasn’t bigotry at all. Sorry George, according to the rule of the land, anti-gay discrimination is bigotry from however you look at it, and the religiously devout should not have an opt-out from the same rules which apply to everyone else, however (outrageously) discriminated against they then feel. Laws though completely rejected Carey’s entire premise:
“[But] the conferment of any legal protection of preference upon a particular substantive moral position on the ground only that it is espoused by the adherents of a particular faith, however long its tradition, however long its culture, is deeply unprincipled.”
He said this would mean that laws would be imposed not to advance the general good on objective grounds but to give effect to the force of subjective opinion since faith, other than to the believer, was subjective.
“It may of course be true; but the ascertainment of such a truth lies beyond the means by which laws are made in a reasonable society
“Therefore it lies only in the heart of the believer, who is alone bound by it. No-one else is or can be so bound, unless by his own free choice he accepts its claims.
Stonewall quite rightly points out the Equality Act (Sexual Orientation) Regulations 2007. Noone, despite Chris Grayling’s wishes, who provides goods or services in the UK can opt out – that’s the point. Sadly though,completely missing the point, Carey felt the need to say this:
As reported in The Guardian, Carey said the judgment “continues a trend on the part of the courts to downgrade the right of religious believers to manifest their faith in what has become a deeply unedifying collision of human rights.”
“It heralded a ‘secular’ state rather than a ‘neutral’ one. And while with one hand the ruling seeks to protect the right of religious believers to hold and express their faith, with the other it takes away those same rights. It says that the sacking of religious believers in recent cases was not a denial of their rights even though religious belief cannot be divided from its expression in every area of the believer’s life.
“Oddly the judge doesn’t address the argument that rights have to be held in balance and he is apparently indifferent to the fact that religious believers are adversely affected by this judgment and others.”
I know it’s his job to stand up for his religion as well as his faith, but this is blatantly ridiculous. The judgments all acknowledge that the right to religious belief and the right to protection from anti-gay discrimination are often in conflict and will always be in tension. But Lilian Ladele and Gary McFarlane had equal opportunities policies which they weren’t allowed an opt-out from. If they did any theist in the country could then behave according to whatever mad thing they believed legally, rather than be obliged follow the secular laws made by and applicable to everyone else in ‘a reasonable society’. I’m sure this will keep coming back, but it’s become an interesting illustration of how the Christian Church in this country increasingly feels the need to fight to keep its special privilege, be it Carey’s unelected place in the House of Lords, or the previous (because it wasn’t codified otherwise) tacit right to discriminate against gay people.
During the 20 reasons for 20 weeks abortion campaign I spoke to many representatives from various faith organisations.
Without exception, every single one supported the campaign. Muslim and Jewish faiths all support strongly the reduction from 24 weeks.
David Cameron, is the only leader who has said he wishes to see a reduction in the upper limit. They are not words you will ever hear pass the lips of Nick Clegg.
With all faiths, home and family is paramount, as is community and society. As one Muslim leader said to me, ‘community and care for our neighbour is the pillow of Islam’.
Our families and our neighbours, our community and environment are the key elements of the ‘big society’ David Cameron wants to dictate how we live as opposed to the control of the ‘big state’ we live within today.
If you want to see marriage and the family supported and reinforced. If you agree that social abortion is performed at much too late a stage. If you are appalled at the over sexualisation of young people, if you want the principles of decency and propriety to return, if as a parent you want to send your children to faith schools and have control over the content of sex education taught to your children – it appears to me there is only one party and one man you can and should vote for.
Every Christian and person of faith has to ask themselves the very important question, does my faith play a part in how I cast my vote? If it does, then surely there is only one way anyone of any faith in this country can vote?
Nadine Dorries tells it how it is. What else can anyone add? Vote Tory if this is the Britain you want.
The amendment to the Equality Bill, which was tabled as a free vote by gay Muslim peer Waheed Alli, received overwhelming backing in the Lords, including from a number of prominent Anglican bishops.
Under current UK law religious venues are forbidden from holding civil partnerships, although some liberal denominations within Christianity and Judaism have been willing to bless gay unions once a partnership ceremony has taken place elsewhere.
The lifting of the ban, which still needs to be approved by the House of Commons, will now give religious venues the option of conducting civil partnerships – but it will not compel them to do so, as some traditionalists had feared.
Lord Alli denied the suggestion that religious communities would be forced to accept gay marriages.
“Religious freedom cannot begin and end with what one religion wants,” he said. “This amendment does not place an obligation on any religious organisation to host civil partnerships in their buildings. But there are many gay and lesbian couples who want to share their civil partnership with the congregations that they worship with. And there are a number of religious organisations that want to allow gay and lesbian couples to do exactly that.”
No doubt the religious fundamentalist set will denounce this as an anti-religious move, but as Alli points out this, if approved by the Commons (and how appalling would it be if the Commons struck this down?), would allow civil partnerships on religious premises, not demand them. It’s amazing how often the devoutly religious wilfully mix the the two up, but the distinction is pretty important because it’s about religious freedom for all. As Stonewall Chief Executive Ben Summerskill says:
‘We’ve argued throughout that this is an important matter of religious freedom. Ministers have known for some months that we intended to table this measure and we regret that the Government didn’t stand up to the bullying it faced from some churches on this issue. We’ll now work closely with ministers to ensure that we secure implementation of this further step towards equality. This vote is hugely important to those gay people of faith (and, as Lady Neuberger pointed out, to their Jewish mothers too!) who wish to celebrate their civil partnerships in their own place of worship.’
It should have been unthinkable to have had a ban in the first place. Why any religion should have the freedom to discriminate based purely on the grounds of the bigoted beliefs of some, is beyond me. But this government has kowtowed incessantly towards the religious lobby, and in the run-up to the general election will no doubt continue to do so. Remember civil partnerships are still only for gay people, and marriage is only for straight people. In a European Union where even Catholic Spain has marriage equality I fail to comprehend why Britain’s inequality is allowed to continue.
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