We are also intending to post a daily summary of the events on The Skeptic Blog, contributed by the organisers of Think Week.

Monday 22nd – Think About Belief
20:00 Committee Panel – “What are Atheism, Secularism, Humanism and Skepticism?” – Lincoln College, Oakeshott Room
21:00 Interfaith/Interthought Panel – “Can Different Faiths and Worldviews Work Together for a Common Good?” – Lincoln College, Oakeshott Room

Tuesday 23rd – Think About the Universe
13:00 Dr Stephen Law – “What’s It All About Then? Life, the Universe, and Everything” – Venue TBC
20:00 Professor Peter Atkins – “Science is King” – Lincoln College, Oakeshott Room

Wednesday 24th – Think About Politics
13:00 Paul Pettinger, BHA and Allan Hayes, SoF – Faith Schools – Lincoln College, Oakeshott Room
20:00 Andrew Copson, BHA – “Humanism and Campaigning” – Lincoln College, Oakeshott Room

Thursday 25th – Think About Freedom
13:00 Marayam Namazie – “One Law for All” – Lincoln College, Lower Lecture Room
19:30 Dr Julian Baggini – “Freedom, Respect and Religion” – Wadham College, Moser Theatre

Friday 26th – Think About Culture
13:00 Poetry Workshop – Lincoln College, Lower Lecture Room
20:00 Samantha Stein – “Public Perceptions of Atheism” – Wadham College, Moser Theatre
21:30 Iszi Lawrence – Stand-Up Comedian – Bar Copa Function Room

Saturday 27th
12:00 Atheist, Humanist and Secular Societies Fair – Meet the National Organisations – Linacre College, Hall
18:00 BHA Choir performance with readings – Linacre College, Hall

Sunday 28th
13:00 Ken Smith – “The Paradox of Religious Atheism” – Lincoln College, Oakeshott Room
19:30 Dr Evan Harris MP – Skepticism and Secularism – Bar Copa Function Room

For full details and to check for any changes to the schedule, see the Think Week website.

In defense of the introduction of this law, the Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern said back in May that due to the fact blasphemy is an offence in the Irish Constitution (again highlighting the pervasive influence of the Catholic Church in the founding of the Republic of Ireland) he was obliged to include it in an update of the defamation laws. To remove blasphemy from the constitution would require a referendum of the people of Ireland, and Mr Ahern reckoned that the “current economic environment” was not conducive to this.

The law does include a fairly broad get-out-of-jail clause, specifying that “It shall be a defence to proceedings for an offence under this section for the defendant to prove that a reasonable person would find genuine literary, artistic, political, scientific, or academic value in the matter to which the offence relates”. However one could argue that the number of “reasonable persons” in a world that outlaws blasphemy is questionable…

I personally found point 4 of this new law to be particularly interesting, where they attempt to distinguish between “religion” and mere “cults”.

“In this section “ religion ” does not include an organisation or cult—

• the principal object of which is the making of profit, or

• that employs oppressive psychological manipulation—

• of its followers, or
• for the purpose of gaining new followers.”

I assume telling people they are going to live an eternity of torment and pain for not following your god counts as oppressive psychological manipulation, no?

Recently I was stopped in the street by man dressed in a suit who I assumed was about to ask for directions.  He asked me if I would mind answering a question for him, and I said that depending on the question I would of course be happy to oblige.  The question was this: Do you believe in God? It occurred to me that this was a little unusual, to stop someone in the street in the morning to ask them a question about their personal beliefs.  However, I told him that I do not believe in God.  He gave me a wry smile and told me that he had expected I would answer in the negative, since in the present day in Britain there are very few people, especially in the younger generation, who believe in God.  I didn’t have any statistical information about my person but I didn’t entirely agree with him.  Figures from the 2001 census show that 76.8% of people reported themselves as belonging to a particular religion, whilst 23.2% reported no religion or did not state their religion.  Of course it’s true that many people will write down a religion whilst not practising or engaging in any sort of religious activity.  Nevertheless I don’t think it’s unreasonable to assume that if you consider yourself to belong to a religion, the chances are that you accept the existence of a higher power.  Obviously the census was taken almost 9 years ago, but it seems unlikely the figures would have swung dramatically the other way.  In any case this man seemed eager to continue the conversation.

He proceeded to ask me for my opinion on evolution; I said I consider it to be an accurate scientific theory.  He said he thought evolution was an interesting theory, and refused to rule it out, although he argued that if evolution was true it would surely have to have been instigated by God and tweaked a little throughout history so as to explain certain aspects of it.  I wasn’t in the mood for an argument, so I muttered something about having to leave, but he pressed me further.  He said that surely it is vitally important for us to discover whether or not there is, in fact, a God, which was again a little odd since I had by now ascertained that he must be a believer himself.  I pointed out that surely providing a definitive answer to that question is somewhat difficult.  He countered by saying that if I was on a tight rope would I prefer to be up there with or without a safety net, which was an anomalous metaphor that didn’t really add anything to the conversation.  If I was on a tight rope you can be sure that I’d have the best safety net money can buy, but if you’re asking me whether or not I’d prefer to have an eternal life after death or accept that once you die that’s it, I’d have to say that I’d prefer the latter, but that’s just me.  In any case I said I was in a hurry and would have to leave, at which point he delved into his bag and produced a book which he offered to me.

The book is called “Life: How did it get here? By evolution or creation?”  After leafing through a few pages it was evident that this book already had the answer: creation.  It begins in an almost rational (I use this term loosely) way. It sets out some of the theories of evolution and argues that evolution can’t explain things such as the complicated nature of the human brain; maintains that the fossil evidence does not demonstrate species evolving, but supports clearly different species created by God who never interbreed; uses analogies of houses having architects therefore the natural world must do; says that we have no way of explaining the emergence of life in the first place; claims that Genesis is scientifically sound; and so on.

It attempts to explain that the first humans had eternal life, but when they “pulled away from their creator’s direction, what happened to them is similar to what happens when you pull the plug out of an electric fan”. It finishes with the declaration that those who believe in God will be saved when Armageddon and the rapture occur, and the saved will live in paradise free from illness and in harmony with the animals (there is even a drawing of a girl hugging a tiger).  Admittedly the latter parts of the book aren’t really about evolution at all.

It’s clear that a lot of effort went into making and publishing this book however poorly conceived, badly researched, and ludicrous it is.  But it did make me think.  How can people read something like this, and believe it?  How is it that educated and intelligent people can’t and won’t accept something that is considered to be factually accurate?

Perhaps people don’t believe it because they don’t understand it?  Although there’s lots of things we believe to be true but don’t necessarily understand: you may not understand the physics behind why a plane stays in the air, but you surely wouldn’t just assume it was down to pixie dust.  Evolution and religion need to be disentangled from each other.  Teaching evolution does not mean you are teaching atheism.  It is sad that there are so many people clamouring to prevent evolution from being taught in schools, and in some extreme cases it is under threat of being taken out entirely.

The idea that if you teach evolutionary theory in a science class you should have to teach creationism as another viable theory is preposterous.  You wouldn’t say that the pixie dust theory should be taught as an alternative when teaching the physics of flight.  I am not against learning about religion in school, and think that if taught for the interest of learning about history and sociological aspects of a diverse population, then it is educational and perhaps useful in facilitating tolerance and understanding within society.  But if creationism is going to be taught at all it should be taught as part of understanding how our ancestors explained how they came to be in a religious studies class.  It does not belong in the science classroom.

Teaching the theory of evolution does not mean teachers are encouraging children not to believe in God, children are free (in school at least) to decide that one for themselves.  They are trying to teach scientific fact, something which will finally take up its rightful place in the classrooms of primary schools in the UK.

Ghostly pub’s landlord is a non-believer
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Teach the controversy?
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Prince of Wales’s guide to alternative medicine ‘inaccurate’
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Gwyneth’s new theory
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Suppliers bite back over claims about supplement safety
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Group sets up hotline for UFOs
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Dangers of alternative therapies
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My Response to Benedict
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Starts:
Monday, May 5th
Ends:
Saturday, May 10th

Lecturers:

Professor R. Joseph Hoffmann, Senior Vice President of the Center for Inquiry and Head of The CFI Institute; Adjunct Professor of History at the State University of New York, Buffalo.

Ibn Warraq, MA, distinguished author of Why I am Not a Muslim, and Whose Koran? Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Inquiry, Amherst, New York.

This six day course is an intensive exploration of the literary origins of the books that define the Jewish, Christian and Islamic world-views. It is sometimes thought that the sacred scriptures of the book religions emerged from the pages of history as a fully developed canon. In fact, the materials themselves were the product of disagreement, heresy, rivalry between sectarian perspectives, and attempts to glorify their founders and beliefs. Join R. Joseph Hoffmann and Ibn Warraq for an unusual tour of the “origins” of the books and learn what critical modern scholarship has to tell us about the dating, origin, and purposes of the Bible and the Qur’an.

Registration fee: £30.00 for all six classes; £7 for individual classes.
Advance booking and payment preferred. Registration is limited.

May 5-10th
7-9 PM at Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square, London WC1
tel. 020 7242 8037 fax 020 7242 8036
http://www.conwayhall.org.uk

http://www.centerforinquiry.net/london/events/the_sources_of_the_book/

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=8753608276

Berlin Zoo director accused of selling animals for Chinese medicine
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Flat Earth News is a genuinely important book
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Thanks to Brian Robinson for the review.

Brookside ghosts are too real life
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Hidden danger of herbal remedies
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Why we kiss, laugh, yawn and cry
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Glasgow’s UFO fan club
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The Archbishop of Cant
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Plea for psychic to help Madeleine case
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Animals go barking mad for acupuncture
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Non-surgical facial enhancements
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Hypnotheraphy success for IBS
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Much more important than a matter of life and death
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King refuses to bail banks out of toxic mess
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The not-so-secret ways to a healthier and longer life
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Atheist speaker and publisher answers questions on God, Christianity and Faith
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It is unscientific to pour wholesale scorn on complementary medicine
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‘UFO’ caught on camera in Sussex
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Why, in the world of newspapers, sorry seems to be the largest word
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Ghost chicken hunters hope for some eerie fowl play
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Hollywood horror film sparks supernatural craze as viewers send in ghostly images
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How the myth of food miles hurts the planet
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‘Monstrous’ human embryo Bill
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CITY IS THE TOPS FOR UFO SIGHTINGS-Virgin Media help with publicity
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Vatican PR ensures rebranded Pope Benedict XVI will triumph in US
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You’re not alone in County Durham
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Controversial Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen leaves India
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Psychic Joe Power to perform at Gaiety
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Nutri-Energetics ordered to stop unsubstantiated claims
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