I was only talking about prayer a couple of days ago and now it gets into the news. This story has been all over the news and was even in my local paper tonight. Until I saw that, I hadn’t realised it was a local incident. A community nurse has been suspended for asking a patient if she wanted to be prayed over (prayed upon? Not sure what the correct terminology is). Of course she is now being portrayed as a martyr, being persecuted for her faith. When you read the details of the story, it turns out that she had done this sort of thing before and had been told to stop, so I guess she doesn’t have much of a complaint against her employers.

The strange this is that, as an atheist, I don’t think it really would have bothered me if a nurse offered to pray for me (I’d obviously refuse!). My wife actually works as a nurse in the same health authority, albeit in a different area of nursing. She said it would be very unprofessional for a nurse or doctor to do what this nurse had done and she shouldn’t have done it.

Relating to my earlier post about praying, does this nurse actually believe that a prayer for one of her patients would actually swing the decision with the big guy upstairs? Does she think that she could direct some supernatural force that would change the laws of nature just because she asked (while shutting her eyes tight and putting her hands together)?

The other odd thing is why she bothers to ask whether her patients want a prayer or not. If she really cares for her patients and really believes that prayer works, why wouldn’t she just pray for everyone? Why does the recipient need to know? Perhaps the nurse knows deep down that the only possible effect of prayer would be a placebo effect on a credulous patient, in which case you don’t really need to pray for them, just tell them that you are…

I’ve been catching up on my podcasts and just listened to one from the Radio 4 Today Programme. This was originally broadcast last Friday. The story was about a hospital in Derbyshire where staff claimed to have seen a ghost and the hospital management have arranged for an exorcist to come in and sort out the problem. The daft story was picked up elsewhere on the BBC and in some newspapers, but Radio 4 outdid them. They interviewed a former Benedictine monk, now a parish priest, who explained the details of exorcism. He explained that ghosts just inhabit places, but the real difficulties are with demons who are evil spirits that can possess an unfortunate person. Apprently, ghosts are easy to get rid of with a few simple prayers, but demons are more tricky and require the special skills of a trained exorcist.

He was interviewed by Ed Stourton. Now I know Mr Stourton is a well-known catholic, but surely that’s not a good enough reason to give the ex-monk such airtime. He was treated as if he was giving his opinion on the best way to stop slugs eating your lettuces, but he was talking about ghosts and demons. DEMONS!! Is this 2009 or 1609?? Either he was being treated seriously by a presenter who who actually believed in demons or Radio 4 were poking fun at a deluded old man. I don’t think either reflects well on the BBC.

I saw an article on the BBC website today about an online prayer service. Prayer is one of those aspects of religion that I never really understood. Even if you believe there is an omnipresent, omniscient supernatural being out there, how can you possibly believe that this being would change the natural laws of the universe just because you put in a special plea? If two sets of parents are worrying over the beds of their sick children, would a god choose to spare one just because the parents asked nicely? The whole concept is bizarre and a just a bit obscene.

This is related to one of my main gripes with organized religion. Why would anyone want to worship a supernatural power that demands to be worshipped in order to get special treatment? Shouldn’t it be enough that you live a ‘good’ life (’good’ obviously having different values depending on your flavour of religion). You would think that something powerful to create an entire universe wouldn’t have this problem of low self-esteem with a constant need to have its postition confirmed.

I wonder if all the followers of a particular religion would be happy if the world followed the teachings of their religion apart from the bits that were ‘religious’, i.e. the morality and ‘lifestyle’ aspects, but explicitly rejected any supernatural beings?

There has been a lot of discussion recently regarding the ‘Atheist Bus’ campaign set up by Ariane Sherine. The campaign was originally set up to raise a small amount of money in order to counteract some religious ads that kindly advised us non-believers that we would all burn in hell. The British buses sport the phrase ‘There’s probably no God so stop worrying and enjoy your life’. I actually prefer the one put out just before Christmas by the American Humanist Society which said ‘Why believe in a god? Just be good for goodness’ sake’. I think that’s a much more positive message.

A lot of the discussion has been around the use of the word ‘probably’ in the ad. Some people said that this showed a lack of conviction and was really a statement of agnosticism. Actually the truth was that the word had to be added to satisfy the advertising authorities. I think most of us have come round to accept ‘probably’ as it is logically correct (you can’t prove that there isn’t a god), but I think it’s going a bit far to say that this makes us agnostics rather than atheists.

I call myself an atheist because I don’t believe in the existence of god, in the same sense I don’t believe in the existence of unicorns or the tooth fairy.  I could never claim that I can prove the non-existence of any of these entities.

Some atheists describe themselves as strong agnostics as the argument cannot be proved one way or another. I think this is a fine philosophical point, but the problem is that the agnostic in general use tends to mean someone who is undecided and feels that the argument is evenly balanced on either side. You could be agnostic on the grounds that the evidence is only 99.99% on one side.

Also, theists cannot prove that their particular god exists so, until they start referring to themselves as agnostics, I’m still happy to call myself an atheist.

As it’s still holiday season I’m getting a bit behind in listening to all my podcasts, so I’ve only just heard this one from the Radio 4 Today show (don’t know how long they keep their links active!). Their guest editor was Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, Archbishop of Westminster. As he is such an important person (  :-/ ), he was able to arrange an interview with Gordon Brown. During the interview, the Cardinal was suggesting to the PM that, after the recent problems, businesses should take on higher standards of morals and this would somehow protect the public in the future.

I think he is missing the point here. I don’t think it is the position of businesses to be deliberately moral or immoral. Businesses should do whatever they need to do to survive in the long term. Without wanting to sound too Darwinian, natural selection will tend to favour those businesses that act in what most people consider to be a moral or ethical manner. Any business that consistently acted immorally or unethically would eventually get caught out, either through legal action or through a failure of their business model (e.g. the irresponsible lending of money that we have seen over the last few years).

Even though my politics tend to be on the liberal side, I could agree with the point of a economist I heard recently. He said that the problem with the banking industry was not that they were too capitalist, but that they weren’t capitalist enough.  In a pure capitalist system, each bank would be entirely responsible for its own actions, without any chance of a government bail-out. In this situation, they would not take so many dangerous risks and, almost by default, would have to act in a more reasonable, ethical, moral manner.

To me, this is probably how ethics and morality evolved generally. There is no need to impose  a set of moral rules from on high. There are certain sets of behaviour that will allow a society to flourish and others that will only lead to a complete breakdown. Any society where murder and theft were acceptable would just fall apart very quickly. The only societies that would survive would be those that embraced a general sense of trust, but punished those who broke that trust.

In fact, for a long time I’ve felt that it just comes down to Game Theory. I studied Game Theory a little when I was working with Artificial Life and it relates to a lot of complex real world issues. There doesn’t need to any grand supernatural theory as to why being good is good – it just works! Incidentally, when I looked up the Tit for Tat strategy that the argument above relies on, there was a link to a Richard Dawkins programme that discusses how this relates to the evolution of altruism, so maybe I’m on the right track!

Another day, another article on whether religion and evolution can coexist. I have never really understood the position of religious scientists who claim that there is no conflict and it is perfectly possible to accept both the theory of evolution and the existence of a supernatural. If you really understand the concept of evolution there can’t be any place for an external force who either directed the process or interfered with the process as it went along. Evolution moves forward by the process of random mutation and mixing of genes through reproduction in conjunction with natural selection. How can you believe in this process, but also believe that man was created in god’s image so that there was always some directionality to the evolution of humans and a known endpoint? Did god somehow tweak the environment in such a way that there was only one way that evolution could go? Or did he directly interfere with the process? If  he was constantly adjusting, why did he stop about 150,000 years ago and then only start to interact with humans 6,000 years ago? It makes less sense the more I think about it!

I’ve dabbled a bit in genetic algorithms and Artificial Life, so I can sympathise with his job!

It’s a pity that intelligence and education isn’t a barrier to reproduction. I think some people are definitely holding this evolution business back…

Religious ’shun nanotechnology’

Are they really that concerned about the

potential to create life at a nano scale without divine intervention

Maybe they are worried about the competition and that some creatures will be worshipping the Great Creator Craig Venter in a few million years.

I get really fed up with religious people telling us that the reasons for the ills in today’s society are due to our rejection of religion. See today’s moan by Cardinal Cormac Murphy O’Connor for example.

The UK is certainly less religious than it used to be, say 50 years ago, and our society is probably worse now than it was then. The problems in the US are a lot worse when you look at measures such as murder, teen pregnancies and drug addiction. Is the US less religious than it used to be? I don’t know.

It’s interesting that there are studies like those of Gregory Paul that show there is a correlation between sociological problems and religiousness and there is also the work of Phil Zuckerman who has shown that the most stable, balanced, safe, societies are the most secular, non-religious ones such as the Scandinavian countries.

Here’s my take on this issue. Societies that have historically had their morality imposed on them from religious authorities have never been forced to think for themselves. It’s the equivalent of a parent telling a child to do something ‘because I say so’. Once that religious authority loses its influence, then there could well be a loss of moral direction, in the same way as a child might misbehave once a parent loses control.

In a society where morality isn’t imposed and could be said to be somewhat subjective, you have to consider for yourself what the consequences of your actions are and take full responsibility for your actions. This internally generated morality will always stay with you.

I don’t know how I’ve gone this long without reading it, but I’ve finally started to read The Age of Reason by Thomas Paine. It’s very interesting so far and an easy read. It’s written from a deist point of view and is as scathing of organized religion as anything from the atheists of today such as Dawkins and Hitchens. I wonder if the deists of the 18th century who became the founding fathers of America would be atheists today when it’s not so much of a terrible sin to denounce completely denounce god and religion.

Even in the first few pages, I’ve found some choice quotes on religion in general

The un-natural anything is, the more is it capable of becoming the object of dismal admiration

and the Old Testament

It is a history of wickedness, that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind; and, for my own part, I sincerely detest it, as I detest everything that is cruel.

The worst thing is that I probably won’t have enough time to finish the book until Christmas.

Edit: It just struck me that Thomas Paine looked familiar

I’ve been wondering whether it’s easier to decide on your philosophy of life, a particular religion or lack of religion, when you are older or younger.

Like most people in the UK I was brought up in a culturally Christian household. The rest of the family believed in the religion they had been brought with, but didn’t go to church and religion didn’t really have any effect on our daily lives.

At the age of about 11-12, I decided to take myself off to the local Baptist church and Sunday school to find out what this religion business was all about. I began to realise that I couldn’t take all the parables literally, as everyone seemed to, and the whole story started to make less and less sense.

Not long after my church experience, we were given a course in Comparative Religions in school. This finally convinced me that religion was a made-made phenomenon and that all the believers around me were just following the religion that they were brought up in.

So, by the age of 13 I was a devout atheist (although strictly I should say a strong agnostic – just to be logically consistent!). Maybe I was lucky as my parents hadn’t forced religion on me, but I didn’t ever feel that I had wasted any time or intellectual effort on believing. My  ‘belief’ was just something that I went along with, like Santa or the tooth fairy and giving it up didn’t worry me.

I can imagine that if I had truly believed what people had been telling me and I had run my life on that basis, that it would be very difficult to make such a change in philosophy later in life. I guess the longer you follow a particular way of thinking the harder it is to change. Also, you get comfortable with your way of thinking and you may not want to start thinking about it too deeply in case you realise you have been wasting your time.

I’m not saying that everyone ought to believe the same as me, but as most children are brought up in a society that is culturally religious, they should be given full sight of all the alternative viewpoints (through comparative religion or critical thinking courses) so they realise there is a choice and they don’t have to believe everything they have been told.