Why you should support One Law For All

I'm shocked to learn that Sharia Law operates in the UK. This legal framework is essentially governed by those who interpret Islam in a similar way that some fundamental Christians use the bible to stop women speaking in public, consider homosexuality a sin that should be punished, and other morally dubious conclusions. We don't hand over legal power to such extreme Christians, so why has power been handed to their Islamic counter parts?

Before continuing to read, please be clear with the terms being used here. I'm arguing against giving power to those intent on imposing extreme theocratic values into the legal system, I am not arguing against the right to believe, have faith, and to worship. If you're unclear on the terms used please read this post.

The Sharia courts are sanctioned by the UK legal system and they consider a women's testimony to be half that of a mans. Legal decisions are made in these courts that denigrate women in ways I find not only shocking, but also depressing - I thought we had stamped out this kind of thinking in the UK. This court system only delays, and in some cases, puts a stop to equality and justice. These courts were put in place in the 80's and still operate today in the UK.

Part of the reason why women are worth half that of a man, and why they are not allowed to file directly for a divorce under Sharia Law in the UK is below (taken from the Sharia Council website):

"In many other matters, the nature of women are considered. For example, the right of divorce is vested in the hand of the man while she is allowed to ask for divorce either directly or through a Qadi (Judge). Why? Because the women are kind-hearted human beings who are governed by their emotions, a character strongly needed for bringing up the children. On the other hand, man is governed by his mind more than his emotions."

For more reasons why women are worth less than men under Sharia Law, please visit the Islamic Sharia Council's website. http://www.islamic-sharia.org/general/on-the-testimony-of-women-2.html

The One Law For All campaign wishes to put a stop to this. We should have one legal system in the UK that applies to all people, regardless of what religion they subscribe to. We are all equal and it's a disgrace that, in the UK, this is simply not true. 

Support One Law For All to put an end to such shocking injustice within the UK and across the world.

http://www.onelawforall.org.uk/

Edit: Who does the above apply to and how does it work? As a Muslim woman (or man) living in a Muslim community within the UK, you can be encouraged/pressured/required by your community to visit a Sharia Court. There are roughly 85 of them in the UK. In this court, which has official legal authority in the UK, the things above apply. The Sharia courts deal in family matters such as marriage, divorce, custody of children, etc. As a woman in these courts, your testimony is worth half that of a mans. You are not equal. You are not considered. The only genuine hope of help is to try to peruse your legal rights through a UK civil court. However, many don't make it to this stage. And for many this means you are expelled from your community and have to escape from your home, your support, and your family, to seek justice. All of this is legal in the UK. Help stop this and support One Law For All.

QEDcon: Saturday Evening

The entertainment for the Saturday evening at QEDcon was fantastic. Richard Wiseman presented an award ceremony called the Ockham Awards. A list of the awards and winners are below.

Editor's Choice Award - Mike Hutchinson from The Skeptic
Best Skeptic Video - Tim Michin's Storm
Best science video - Daniel Keogh and Luke Harris
Best skeptic blog of 2011 - Skepchick
Best Podcast - POD Delusion
Best Event/campaign/outreach - Robin Ince

The award winning videos are below.

We had stand up comedy from Robin Ince and Alun Cochrane. We also had a music performace from Sarah Angliss. And of course we had Paul Zenon with his magic and comedy.



The night continued on the dance floor and at the bar into the small hours of the morning.

Photos in the header image are from Your Funny Uncle. His photos of the QEDcon evening (and more) can be seen on his Flickr page.

QEDcon: Richard Saunders - The Delights and Dangers of Being a TV Skeptic

Richard Saunders is a film/ TV actor and a skeptic. Perhaps his most famous show is called "The One". 

We're first presented with an important message. Skeptical activism should be done and seen and heard by as many as possible.

He worked on a show called the one in 2008 & 2011. The show focused on trying to find a real-life psychic. The process to choose contestants was not very thorough, and looked for characters really. Marketing slogans said "Search for Australia's best psychic". 

The idea was to whittle the contestants down to three, and public would vote for the remaining ones. Skeptical judge was Richard Saunders. The believer judge was Stacey De Marco who self described as a witch.

Richard says the show was "Good fun". He seems to look at it warmly, but not too seriously.

When the show went to air the networks encouraged the audience to tweet about it. The producers received live feedback as the show was aired. Richard said he enjoyed watching the twitter feed. It seems to be divided into two camps, believers and skeptics. The twitter battles turned out to be more entertaining than watching the show.

The producers relied heavily on Richard to recommend test protocols. Unfortunately not everyone knows how to run tests, however, the focus was on good television and not scientific tests. Do not read too much into whether the contestants do well or badly.

He then talks about the false balance on morning TV shows etc. On one such show a peice of ghost footage was shown. He played us the Ghost footage.



I thought it was a fly crawling across the lens. The psychics said it was real. Richard said it was a moth or spider crawling across the dome of the night security camera. The show took it to a video lab who agreed with the psychic.

Being a prominent skeptic led to an interesting situation regarding power balance bands. In 2009 Richard saw a report on TV advertising a wrist band with extraordinary claims. He recognised what the power balance test was. It's an old trick that has more to do with the balance of the person and angle of pressure than anything else.

Richard soon found out a lot more about power balance. They are all over world. Marketing claimed that it will even out the force fields in your body.
Why were people convinced? Scientific words. And the demonstrations used were convincing people.

Michel Marshal "volunteered" to have the tests done on him so we could all see what Power Balance were using as a test.

The video below was played later in the talk but I've included it here as it shows the tests.



Richard set up his own video showing how to do this. He also set up a guide for students called F.A.K.E.

Future 
Amazing
Kinetic
Energy

There are 4 tests. Arm balance, back balance, tip test and flexibility. The tests are shown in the video above. They have a trick to them that can fool the person being tested into thinking things are improving.

There's also the matter of perception. Sport stars backed the products. Presumably they were also fooled by the tests & marketing. "Give a man a reputation of an early riser and he will sleep til noon." The enthusiasm of Power Balance had people convinced it was real.

Richard flew to Adelaide to meet Tom, the distributor of power balance in Australia and set up tests. The test is shown in the video above. All he had to do was find which of the six people had the real Power Balance hologram. Tom failed five out of five times.

Richard says that he thinks Tom was a true believer. He says he thinks Tom was out to help people, and was conned by the product he was selling. The reason Richard thought Tom was a true believer was that he was happy to be tested on TV. A con artist would probably shy away from TV and testing. Tom agreed to fair conditions and was puzzled when he kept failing. No ready excuses. Tom later wrote off the tests as silly TV games. Victim of the ideomotor effect?

Richard made a video on YouTube called applied kinesiology. It explained the scam.



Power Balance was told to make retraction of their claims. An official government retraction saying product doesn't work. The ACCC called the product a con, a fraud, a sham.

A company can't really come back from that kind of publicity. Power Balance were required to place a corrective ad in all publications previously advertised in and to offer a full refund to all. 20 publications had the retraction published.

Then one day the Power Balance Australia website was gone. The parent company had removed all trace of the Australia distributor.

But a class action suit was launched in the USA. The American company was forced into bankruptcy. Power Balance used Tom as the scapegoat for failure. The company Power Balance was eventually sold to a Chinese manufacturer

Lessons for skeptics:
1. Know your topic
2. Spoon feed the media
3. Keep it simple
4. In the end it may take government action

Unfortunately you can still buy variations of Power Balance all around the world. For example, Ion band. This was sold in the same chain in Australia who were selling power balance.

Richard wrote an open letter to Rebel Sport and NRG against power bands and posted this on twitter. After many people tweeting about it and complaining, the retailer decided to remove the product from sale altogether.

QEDcon: Massimo Polidoro - The Search for Superman

Massimo Polidoro has worked extensively with James Randi, is the co-founder and head of the Italian skeptics group CICAP, and is the first professor of Anomalistic Psychology in Italy at the University of Milano. He is also the author of over thirty books.

His talk is essentially about his experiences trying to find a real-life psychic, or a person with other super powers. The search for Superman, people who claim to have amazing powers like Uri Gellar, etc.

In the 1970's the general attitude was that something must be out there with regards to psychic powers and that we just need to find it. 

In recent years the question has changed into are psychic powers actually real? Massimo has never found any evidence in all his investigations. However, it's still important to search without being disrespectful.

In his experiences, Massimo Polidoro has noticed there are different types of individuals who claim to have special powers. He goes through each type for us.

Naive psychics: People who live in a world of their own, see mysterious things in everyday life. For example, "magnetic man" thought he was a human magnet as when he placed cutlery on his chest they stayed there. But once he realised what really happening (sweaty body plus gravity), the magic disappeared. The man was simply asked to bend forward and the cutlery fell. Man said he was now a non-believer.

Deluded psychics: people who have decided that they have supernatural power and nothing will shake this belief. They believe they can correctly identify cards without looking, guess what items their husband put in a box without looking, discern from a single picture if the person in the photograph is current alive or dead, etc. What they have in common is when they were asked to demonstrate the powers, they could not do what they claimed. However, as they were performing they thought they were dong alright.

These people do hot have an understanding of how to perform a test and adapt excuses to explain the negative result. They always think they are right.

Unlikely psychics: they tend to find a power that no one felt the need for. Many of these powers are shown in comic book hero forms. Madam Fatal (a guy who dresses as a granny), arm fall off guy (can grab one arm with the other, take it off his body, and beat someone with the severed arm), and of course.... bending metal with your mind.

The example in this category was the case of a girl believing that she could mummify eggs. She waved her hands over the eggs, then left the eggs for several days, and they were mummified. Why? An experiment was done where one egg was given to her to mummify, and 9 other eggs were just left without her hand waving powers. A week later, all ten eggs looked same. It turns out that if you break an egg onto a plate and leave it for a number of days, they look a little "mummified". She said that it only proves we all have these powers.

Bereaved psychics: These people have really suffered, but only by imagining they have some power connection to another reality can they cope with the grief/loss. Automatic writing, seances, etc. Any testing is fruitless and frustrating. The only position you will find yourself in is telling them that their loved one is dead, which isn't a nice position to be in.

Psychiatrist's case psychics: these people have mental issues and should be avoided. Unfortunately it's not always clear until you actually engage. For example, a friend of Massimo said he was receiving distressing signals, preventing him from doing anything, sleeping, eating, etc. His friend said that by doing some calculations he found the location of the signals. He went to the house where he thought the source of the signls was with a gun, and stayed all night. Lucky for anyone living there, no one came out.

Another example is that a man claimed that he could make the figures of a simple digital clock move. To do this he had to follow a ritual. He put on a big heavy jacket, had two scoops of honey, put on exercise bands, then he was ready to look very carefully at the clock. At this point he stretched out his arms, pointing to the clock, and shook his head up and down. Because he was moving up and down and looking at the clock, the clock appeared to move to him. The test was (obviously) over at this point. But the person being tested thought that he had passed.

Cunning psychics: Not necessarily dishonest, may have found seemingly strange things happen when they are around and feel special. Actually found these situations are pretty common, but sometimes transform into "miracles".

Frau... "differently honest" psychics: these people typically steer away from testing. One not so bright psychic tried to convince skeptics. A lady claimed to be a psychic detective found a missing girl drowned in a lake. Huge media attention. However, a year or so before this event, the paper reported that a girl last seen leaving club was thought to have slid her car from the road into the lake during a drive home. The car was known to probably be at the bottom of the lake. But this paper report was presented as a psychic vision. Volunteers dedicated weeks to searching for missing person. They found the car right where the newspaper had reported it. Psychic took credit.

Another case is when the National Geographic channel called saying a man had developed Jedi like power to knock people out. We were shown a video.



Listen to the "experts" explanation of why it didn't work. Blatant bull? What is happening is that people have the expectation to react in a certain way to the suggestion of the punch, and fall over when expected. It's a known psychological effect.

So how do you test a psychic? 
 
1. Exactly define the claim - have them write down details and conditions etc
2. Agree on shared protocol - agreed on success and failure, control of experiment
3. Have them perform a demonstration - same way would at home, sign paper say just demonstration not test.
4. Add the control - double blind or whatever might be needed
5.See what happens and wait for the excuses 

Inevitably they will come, people rarely admit they were wrong.

But why test psychics at all? Because if something really was out there it would be an amazing find. But to date it has proved to be a fruitless search.

QEDcon: Sarah Angliss - Voices of the Dead

Sarah Angliss makes robots and is a historian of sound technology. She completed a number of visual and audio demonstarions during her talk. To see the performace at the end of her talk please skip to the bottom of this post.

In 1933 Howard Flynn heard a dead woman speak in his company store room when he found a tube lying undisturbed in a box. The cylinder, covered in mildew, was the type used in an Edison Phonograph to play sound. It turned out to be the long lost voice of Florence Nightingale recorded in 1880.

In scientific American, an advert reported a device which will enable the voices of the dead to be heard. The technology was young and they didn't quite understand a use for it T this stage. Looking back at the marketing, it's now clear that they were looking for a quick fix to market the device.

An excerpt from the recording of Florence Nightingale is played for us. It says "when I am no longer even a memory, just a name, I hope my voice may perpetuate the great work of my life." she had interest in the idea that her voice would survive after her.

But the "killer app" was not in recording your voice for it to survive your death, but in music.

We had a demonstration of recording something on a phonograph. A new head and wax cylinder was used to record the voices of two members of audience. This was played back and the audience members sounded very similar to Florence Nightingale.

When you hear a recording made with a phonograph, there is a strange sound and timbre. Many of the Victorian stereotypes come from these artefacts. But they most likely sounded very different from their recordings.

Believers in paranormal phenomenon used the phonograph to try and communicate with the dead. But sound recordings were also used in wonderful ways. People could travel the World and bring back recordings from the source.

We listened to a new recording. It sounded human but very odd. It turned out to be a seal named "Hoover". The seal learned the sounds of humans. He was found and looked after in swimming pool, raised by humans. Recording sounds very human. Seals are primed to imitate.

We are then introduced to the idea of teaching bird songs to sing. There was an industry of books and Recorders (musical istrument) that focused on teaching birds songs. These songs were written for birds to learn.

But is this really possible? In the 1950s a study was done but the bird didn't learn anything. But birds can learn tunes but perhaps not that complex.

Sparky Williams, the worlds most talented budgie, spoke 500 words allegedly. But was this in fact a case of ventriloquism?

The talk finishes with a live performance using a Theremin, bells, and a disembodied ventriloquist's dummy head...

QEDcon: Ophelia Benson - Silencing for God

This talk was on the religiously motivated pressure on restricting free speech.
What is the focus of religiously motivated pressure on free speech?

Motivations appear to be to protect people's own beliefs. Also people appear to want to defend what they think are the vulnerabilities and concerns of others (in a religious context).

There is currently an energetic outburst for this protection in London Universities. Incidents in Januray started with University College London. The atheist secular humanist society listed a picture of the cover of book of cartoons Jesus and Mo. The student union rebuked the group for having the picture on the fbook page and told them to take it down. They did temporarily but then realised it was a bad idea and put it back.

The same group complained at the London school of economics. The student union called an emergency meeting (audio is apparently online but I couldn't find it). It was a disturbing event. The argument was that the the Jesus and Mo cartoons were racist. The wing of the student union that asserted it was racist argued that having cartoons of this type on a university events page made it unwelcoming for religious students. Their claim is that the Atheist group has to provide a safe space for all students. Does this then mean that religious groups have to provide a safe space for atheists? Why are specific groups required to provide a safe place for people from a completely different, and perhaps contradictory, direction than the group?

I looked this incident up online and you can read more about this here: http://blog.newhumanist.org.uk/2012/01/jesus-mo-cartoon-censorship-controversy.html

Before a talk could take place by Emily waters who represented the one law for all society, a man came in (who was chatting outside), stood in front of audience and photographed everyone. He threatened them all. The meeting was cancelled. Thankfully it has been rescheduled for March 14th 2012.

A Saudi Arabian journalist and political columnist tweeted meditative thoughts about Islam and the prophet Mohamed. There was outrage. An avalanche of tweets were sent to him along the lines of "how dare you", "you should be killed", "you should be executed", etc. he decided to flee to new Zealand but first went to Kuala Lumpur. Officials arrested him there and extradited him to Saudi Arabia. He is there now and could be sentenced to execution.

Salmon Rushdie. Scheduled to read from his book in Jaipur festival. He was told about threats and decided he couldn't do it because of his responsibility to his family. Some other Indian writers read from his book but the festival organisers told them to stop because the authorities told the organisers this will hurt the religious sentiments of the people.

Attacks on Richard Dawkins. A survey showed that there are more nominal Christians in the UK than was previously thought. Not that much passion in strictly following Christianity in the UK. The most startling attack was a supposedly shock discovery made by an independent researcher who passed it to journalist. Apparently Dawkins had an ancestor who owned slaves two and half centuries ago. Pathetic joke, 4000 ancestors and one singled out, and why is he being held responsible for his ancestors 250 years ago? But this was published by the Daily Telegraph.

Marian Seaward published an article about Richard Dawkins in the Independent. It was just a list of unfriendly adjectives. People resort to this type of argument when defending religion.

The brave Jessica Alquist. She had the prayer removed from her state school. But it took going through the American court system. Seriously harassed. Rhode Island State Representative Peter Palumbo called her an evil little thing on a radio show.

Ellen Beth sent a letter of protest when officials donated the Polk County jail’s basketball hoops and other equipment to local churches (violation of church state separation). Police burst into her office held employees at gunpoint and arrested her from using the title "esquire". She was held in solitary confinement and treated abominably.

Does any of this matter? Yes. Because it shifts the way the public discussion of belief from the substantive (reasons evidence argument) to new territory where it's all about respect and deference and religious privilege. The argument is that we're simply not allowed to question religion. Before we open our mouths we are supposed to feel guilty for making people feel bad. This is not what it's about with criticism of labour unions or eduction or healthcare or how to pay for things, but it is with religion. Attempting to bully people by talking about hurt feelings, equating criticism of religion with racism. Shifting into grounds where things cannot be questioned. This is eroding free speech.

A lot of traction has been gained for the argument of the protection of religion. It's a patronising position. People can't take criticism so we must protect them. Don't say anything that might upset a religious person. If we all follow this we all end up saying nothing.

What can we do? Keep pointing out that religion is one thing and race is another. Keep repeating. Criticism of religion is not racist, not hating people. It is about criticising religion and content and consequences. None of the groups of religions are monolithic. There are always disagreements and different views within the groups. The conversation must be kept alive.

Questions from the audience:

Q: The USA has separation of church and state. Can you ever envisage a time when religious organisations powerful enough to remove it from the constitution?
A: This isn't spelled out specifically in the constitution. Matter of precedent and case law. Can't get overturned constitutionally as not there. First amendment, don't see it being overturned. Whether precedent and case law can be turned in some sense? Chinks are being cut into the wall between church and stated all the time. The people who are resisting this are being persecuted. A group is working state by state to get rid of specific mentions of separation of church and state.

Q: What is the role of media in these issues?
A: Think the Media don't set agenda go along with popularity. Very good at taking a popular prejudice and repeating and reinforcing these ideas. Media money can do a lot to entrench and popularise ideas.

Q: Can you envisage a time ever when an Openly atheist president elected?
A: No.

Q: Seeking to be offended not avoid. Is there a desire for offence?
A: Applies to lots of people. Without bullshit what would sceptics do?

How do you convince people to give up the fun of indignation? Not sure.
Q: Pope visit, accuse the uk of aggressive secularism, thoughts?
A: I dont think there is agressive secularism. But suppose I honestly, yeah there can be aggressive secularism. If we started rounding up and imprisoning people. But that not what was meant by the pope.

Q: Attacks on abortion and equal marriage.
A: Disgusting, infuriating. No reason. Admit this by 'church teaching' excuse. Nothing can be said that makes that defensible. Even if god exists (no reason to think so) no reason to think that anyone knows what god wants or that we should endorse what god wants. God could be a shit - why worship him or do as he says?

Q: Atheism and agnosticism are mostly accepted by the public in the UK and Europe. Do you see a political gap between Europe and USA because of this?
A: Yes, see huge gap, embarrassing and depressing. Moving closer to open theocracy. Whole public discourse is stupid and this makes it more stupid. Not fun to live with.

Q: Rights of a person granted to corporations, roles corporations may play in this?
A: I don't know specifically, but the catholic and other churches are working very hard on campaign by which they chip away at secularism by claiming their rights and freedoms are being violated. Loads of lawyers. Branches in school boards, government and corporations and institutions, working hard to get more and more powers for Christianity. Jewish nor muslim groups are organised in this same way.

Q: Could the anger of religious outcry be a sign of it dying? The final death throws?
A: Could be. Pleasantly optimistic to think so. But somehow it doesn't instinctively seem right. Maybe too good to be true. Wonderful to think of a world without religion. Would be nice to think that, but because it would be nice to think it I'm not inclined to believe it.

QEDcon panel talk: Science vs Skepticism

The panel was made up of David Briggs, Steve Jones, Dr Austin and Mark. It focused on questions regarding the role of scepticism in science, the influences of religion, reporting science, journalists impression of science, and communicating science via press offices.

What is the role of scepticism in science?
The answer from everyone on the panel was that its an essential aspect. Scepticism is about not fooling yourself when you're the easiest person to fool. Scepticism in everything you do helps you try to keep that in check. But we're all human and fallible.

Which fields are the most/least sceptical people and why?
Again, all the panel pretty much agreed. Those things closest to human values, e.g. Psychology. Steve Jones said that the currently brain science has wonderful technology but no ideas. But everyone agreed that with emotional involvement comes the breakdown of scepticism (and therefore bad science).

Scientific fraud, what are the motives and cases? How does the public know who to trust?
David Briggs - as an early career scientist your success depends on research results, and therefor it's easy to "over egg the pudding". If you overstate the impact of your results, you can get more from this with regards to your career, funding and progression. It,s the thick end of this wedge to falsify data and results with the goal of getting publications accepted. However, peer review & replication can detect overstated results and science eventually catches and exposes this.
Steve Jones - 85% of science news items reported in the media come straight from press releases. Journalists are not doing their job! A certain science editor once thought that every time a scientific discovery made the scientist put out a press release. Journalists assume that scientific papers are honest. But only around one case in a thousand is proved not to be.
Dr Austin - In the history of science fraud has always been around. It's ultimately the consequence of human beings taking short cuts. The easiest paper to publish is to confirm already expected results empirically.

Question from the audience: How do you approach the public when it has "run off" with an incorrect idea?
Steve Jones - very difficult. "Scientist find the gene for" is usually a misunderstanding of the research. In a Pisa international survey on scientific understanding, the British population do poorly.
Dr Austin - Don't know, just keep trying at all levels to dislodge the untruths. Have to understand how these ideas co exist. Government conspiracies etc. try educate and counteract erroneous reporting.
Steve Jones - At a private eye lunch, Ian Hislop asked Andrew Wakefeild when he thought he was going to win the Nobel prize for his discovery linking MMR to autism (before this discovery was discovered to be fraudulent). Reporting this study in the papers led to a reduction in those getting their children vaccinated. Those who were vaccinated and their children happened to also be autistic saw a false link, which perpetuated the idea. It's easy for a parent to persuade themselves there is a reason for their child to have autism.
Dr Austin - A subgroup of scientists (dark side) intriguing, select group brought up buy people who believe in mad ideas and conspiracies. Scientist who used to be respected and turned. They are all people who when you talk to or debate resort to the "if you were clever enough you would understand it". They have a "too smart to be fooled" mindset.

Question from audience: Is there a major difference between male and female scientists when it comes to fraud?
Unanimous answer from all panel members. No evidence either way, more male names than female but just more male scientists. No bias detected and we wouldn't expect any.

Comment to what part lobby groups against science. Promoting fraud?
Steve Jones - There is concern. News has false balance. A scientist is pitched against a spokesperson for the "other side" that believes differently. They give an evidence based view against a belief based view, and end with "well the debate goes on". Same time and respect given to each of the guests. One scientist one lobbyist/believer/crazy. Don't take lobby groups seriously.
Dr Austin - accused of being on pharma pay roll. Funding is a potential source of bias. Know biases exist, steps are taken to deal with this as we can see the biases and open about funding sources.

Question from audience. An argument in favour of alternative medicine goes along the lines of "if a scientist doesn't know how something works, therefore they think it can't work". What are the panels comments?
Dr Austin - Unfair representation of the scientific argument. What is really being argued is that if you accept this postulation, we have to dump an enormous body of evidence that is contradictory to the claim. Also, how do you propose that this works exactly?
Steve Jones - We don't know how many things works, e.g. Aspirin. Best thing to say is I don't know. You certainty can't claim something works with no evidence. We need evidence that it works, not the complete understanding of it. Did you hear about the homeopath who forgot to take his medicine and dies of an overdose?
David Briggs - You have to ask how likely is it that something will work? Given what we know about the universe.
Dr Austin - We many not entirely understand how something works, but we do have a very improving understanding of the ways people fool themselves. What is more likely, that the laws of chemistry, biology, physics are broken, or that you have fooled yourself? Partly what we're saying is that there are a lot of things that we do understand which give no support to what you claim. More probably fooling yourself.


Please note the above was written from notes and may not be entirely accurate.

QEDcon panel talk: A Question of God

The panel had D J Grothe, Ophelia Benson, Maryam Namazie and was chaired by Paula Kirby. I felt that there was one area this talk really hit home for me, which is below.

Islam is a word used in the same context as the western use of the word Christian with regards to church goers, people who believe in the certian doctrines, who believe in a particular god, or profit/saviour, or who perhaps chose not to believe in some bits, etc. It's a loaded word that can mean so many different things to so many different people.

Islamism is a term that is ascribed to those who wish to push their particular orthodox views of Islam into the realm of politics, and to force these views upon a population. This is a political movement that favours a theocratic approach to government.

Muslim is a term that refers to an individual who practices Islam. There isn't really a correlating term in Christanity. A person who practices Christanity is called a Christian.

You can be a Muslim and oppose Islamism. Just as you can be a Christian and support secularism (keeping religion out of politics).

With this in mind, criticising Islamism and viewing it in the light of being one of the most horrific ideas in modern times is essential. If we thought it was bad when Christianity had theocratic power with the witch hunts, burnings, state murder for believing in the wrong things, etc, this is exactly what's happening to our fellow human beings across the world at this moment. We shouldn't be silent in our criticism to such a terrible regime of malicious superstition. And we should understand what is going on over there, and the distinction between the terms above.

And most of all, we should stop trying to rationalise away the problem. The humans that live under such vitriolic theocratic rule do not want this. We must listen to them. And we must understand that they are human just like us. Would we wish to live under such conditions?

Maryam Namazie really drove home these points for me. And I feel ashamed that I didn't really understand the above until listening to her.

QEDcon: Steve Jones - Why Evolution is Right and Creationism is Wrong

Steve Jones was the former Head of the Department of Genetics, Evolution and Environment at University College London. His talk was a combination of examples of evolution, and ideas relating to the possible origin of language.

Steve starts the talk with two myths. One is, of course, Adam and Eve. The other was of the Chinese creation myth. This is where the god Pangu formed inside an egg, grew gigantic in size, broke from the egg, grew taller still and stretched the sky from the ground, and then died. From http://www.livingmyths.com/Chinese.htm:

Pangu died, and his body went to make the world and all its elements. The wind and clouds were formed from his breath, his voice was thunder and lightning, his eyes became the sun and moon, his arms and his legs became the four directions of the compass and his trunk became the mountains. His flesh turned into the soil and the trees that grow on it, his blood into the rivers that flow and his veins into paths men travel. His body hair became the grass and herbs, and his skin the same, while precious stones and minerals were formed from his bones and teeth. His sweat became the dew and the hair of his head became the stars that trail throughout heaven. As for the parasites on his body, these became the divers races of humankind.

Although Pangu is dead, some say he is still responsible for the weather, which fluctuates according to his moods.

Most of us in the UK may be familiar with the Adam and Eve Myth. However, to get a sense of how weird that story really is, it's good to look at creation myths that we're not culturally familiar with.

After the creation myth we are presented with statistics of the public acceptance of evolution. It's interesting but ultimately shows that a large percentage of people don't accept (understand?) evolution. According to the surveys, the problem resides mostly in Islamic countries (although the UK is far from immune).

So thousands of people deny the facts of evolution. Biologists accept and use evolution in a practical way, so why the disconnect? And where did the idea of evolution come from?

We are next shown the origin of species by Charles Darwin. However, the ideas contained within aren't entirely new. We are shown diagrams that were made to track the etymology of certain words in different languages. The diagram looks much like the tree of life used in biology. Just as Certain words have common ancestors, mutations, and similarities, we find the same in the natural world. Darwin didn't come up with this idea, it was already around. But he was one of the first to apply this thinking to biology.

Then we go back into exploring possible reason why people don't accept (or understand?) evolution. One possible explanation for dissent is that when Darwin first presented his ideas, many people saw them as dragging humans down to the level of animals. But why was the idea that Humans belong to the animal world wrong?

Gorilla DNA has now been sequenced and is 95% similar to human DNA. Chimps are 98% similar. Today it is undeniable that humans are part of the animal kingdom. But at the time of Darwin, it was argued that humans were made by god and were special. The argument continued to claim that if we are just animals, all of law and civilisation would crumble.

The talk gave many examples of evolution. The most interesting and obvious (when you're aware of it) is skin pigmentation. We were shown a map where the various type of skin pigmentation were plotted around the globe. However, it turns out that while humans are the only primate with varying skin pigmentation, they aren't the only species where this happens. Zebra fish also have interesting various in skin pigmentation depending on their location. And there does appear to be correlation between the location of human and zebra fish skin pigmentation.

The colour of our skin is primarily determined by melanin. Its the same for the Zebra fish. Having skin pigmentation protects us against nasty effects of UV light, and reduces rates of certain types of cancer, so it's a good thing for us. So why did some of us loose our pigmentation?

It turns out to be linked to the production of vitamin D. This is an important thing that we need. Without it, humans can experience difficulties in child birth, and babies can be born with rickets.

When our skin is exposed to sunlight it produces vitamin D. Having pigmentation in our skin acts as a natural sun block. In areas where there isn't a lot of sunlight, there is evolutionary pressure on losing this pigmentation so that vitamin D can be produced. If you have pigmentation in a countries with not a lot of sunlight, you are at a higher risk of vitamin D deficiency.

There were many other examples of evolution given in the talk. Steve wrapped things up by linking back to the idea of the origin of language. There appears to be a gene that is linked to the ability to understand language. Humans have it, but chimps don't. The gene seems to have appeared in our genome roughly 35 - 40 thousand years ago, which correlates with the origin of language. Is this gene essentially responsible for much of what we consider to be human traits?

QEDcon: Deborah Hyde - The Natural History of the European Werewolf

The first talk at QEDcon was on werewolves. Actually, it was about the cultural backlash to the reformation during the 16th & 17th centuries. This counter reformation occurred during a time when Northern Europe was somewhat divided between competing Catholic and Protestant groups, both wanting to gain power. Unsurprisingly, it was a time where superstition was used as a tool by those in charge to punish those they saw fit.

So this talk was actually about reviewing cases where people in positions of power used the trumped up charge of changing into a werewolf to justify torture and capital punishment.

We were taken through a number of cases where this had happened. Such as the trial of Peter Stumpp in Germany. The court was presented with the argument that Peter had been given a girdle by the devil that enabled him to turn into a wolf. But the really surprising thing to hear in a modern setting is that, at the time, the court accepted this as a valid argument. He was killed quite horrifically. Below is the entry from WikiPedia:

His execution on October 31, 1589 is one of the most brutal on record: He was put to the wheel, where "flesh was torn from his body", in ten places, with red-hot pincers, followed by his arms and legs. Then his limbs were broken with the blunt side of an axehead to prevent him from returning from the grave, before he was beheaded and burned on a pyre. His daughter and mistress had already been "flayed, raped, and strangled" and were burned alive along with Stumpp's body. As a warning against similar behavior, local authorities erected a pole with the torture wheel and the figure of a wolf on it, and at the very top they placed Peter Stumpp's severed head.

The reason such nonsense could be shovelled is largely due to the efforts of Michel Verdun, Pierre Bourgot, and Philbert Mentor. They presented an argument that a human could transform into a beast that was dressed in an intellectual-sounding language based on zero evidence. As a substitute for doing any real investigation to these claims, the authors referenced each other in an echo chamber of dangerous made up things that ultimately lead to providing a way to conduct unnecessary torture and death to people in the sights of those who had power.

Other cases were also mentioned, but in the end Deborah Hyde left us with a number of things to consider in an attempt to learn from this part of our history.

1. Watch during times of (economic/social) upheaval for scapegoating behaviours
2. Especially directed towards the vulnerable
3. Beware of the educated and influential talking bollocks
4. Witchcraft is not a separate thing from conventional religion - it is produced by it

QEDcon: Friday gathering

I'm at QEDcon in Manchester for the weekend. The conference title translates to Question Explore Discover, and is a two-day science and skepticism conference. It is, according to the website, "a weekend celebration of science, reason and critical thinking".

The first conference started around this time last year. I attended but regretted a) not turning up on the Friday night and b) not keeping some kind of notes on the speaker's talks. So this year I turned up with my wife on the Friday and had a fantastic night of alcohol fuelled conversation about so many things with many different people.

I'm planning on making notes on each talk and posting them here. The first talk is by Deborah Hyde and it's about the Natural History of the European Werewolf.