Opinion

If feminism were really about gender equality, then feminists should be spending time looking at all situations where people are disadvantaged on the basis of gender. Yes, that includes men. The immediate reaction - that only women are disadvantaged on the basis of gender - is simply untrue. The fact is that men and women face quite different challenges. The challenges faced by women are quite well known. They generally earn less money than men, they are underrepresented at senior level in various institutions including board rooms and government, they are more often and more severely the victims of sexual and domestic violence, religion can restrict them in various ways, they are more housebound and take on an unfair burden of child-rearing, they feel they have lower status, men disrespect them, they sometimes get worse education, they get raped in war, they have less freedom.  I may have missed some. And I’m all for fixing these issues, by for example mandating equal pa...

Feb 14th was of course V day, an awareness day for plight of women suffering from violence. The good: Anything which helps to reduce human suffering is a very good thing. Women are still disadvantaged far too often, and society has been too slow in redressing this. Women suffer terribly from violence. In many types of violence, particularly sexual violence, the suffering of women is far greater than that of men, in terms of both quantity and severity. Some types of violence, when divided into type, culture and region, are genuinely single-gender. Many types of violence, including violence against women, are underreported, and it’s a good thing to raise awareness of this so we can do something about it. Violence against all people of any race, colour, creed or gender is unacceptable. Feminists do a tremendous amount of good in helping women, and this is rarely to the detriment of men. The bad: Violence overall affects men and women in roughly equal measure, but diffe...

I recently came across this website by Perry Marshall, which makes a really interesting proof of the existence of God. The argument is basically that DNA constitutes information (a code), yet all information that we know of is the product of a mind. Randomness cannot create information. Therefore, God exists. Lovely argument. Now let's pick some holes. 1) My first observation is that this argument is almost exactly the same as entropy. The argument is that DNA is a low entropy state. Yet randomness always increases entropy. Therefore DNA cannot be the product of random processes, therefore it must be the work of God (or Maxwell's Demon). However this argument is invalid because localised decreases in entropy are perfectly possible, and expected, even though the entropy of the system as a whole increases. Considering that the site claims to make use of information theory, it presumably is aware of information entropy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_entropy It fo...

I've recently discovered Pat Condell's fine video collection . This is everything an atheist would like to say, but is far too polite to. Not Pat Condell. Stinging, delicious, and leaves you feeling very naughty.

I recently came across Nick Boström's article about the simulation argument , which goes that there is a non-zero chance that we are actually simulated individuals, and not actually made of carbon at all. It was spun out of The Matrix series of movies, though is a recurring theme right from Descartes and the Brain in a Vat. Key to this idea is the argument of substrate independence , that is, carbon-based cells are not the only possible way of conjuring consciousness. Surely it isn't the carbon-based molecules per se that cause consciousness, but rather their configuration, and the kinds of computation (if that's the right word) being performed. Surely any "computer program" that reproduces the workings of the brain sufficiently well would suffice, since its operation and outputs would be essentially identical to the biological brain. The simulation argument goes that we are not all that far from achieving that level of computation, so therefore there may wel...

The UK government has recently introduced legislation that any citizen is required to provide decryption keys for any privately encrypted data, or face a 2 year jail term. The excuse is that they need to "fight terrorism". This all sounds very Orwellian, where in George Orwell's book "1984", even a thought is a crime, and an invisible enemy is concocted in order to make the population more submissive. Sound familiar? Encryption is a technology that is out of the bag. The authorities are technically powerless to break strong encryption schemes, although they do have some very large computers to try to crack encryption keys. The numbers are always on the side of the individual however - no matter how large a computer the police have, you can use a key that is too large for them. The fundamental question is whether I should even be allowed to have secrets that aren't in my head? Is possession of information in itself a crime? Again, George Orwell's th...

The true origins of Christianity: http://www.sprword.com/videos/zeitgeist.html

Big Brother racism? There is a storm in a teacup about a contestant Jade Goody who made some remarks on the Big Brother TV series which could be construed as racist. I saw the program in question and she was certainly laying into Shilpa, and she certainly came across as a nasty bully. Racism is such a sensitive issue, and I'm surprised that none of the other housemates had a word with Jade before ruining her reputation on national TV. However I am really concerned that there are taboo topics, and some things that you aren't allowed to say. Speech should be free. In spite of racism being a real problem, I actually think we should be confident enough to have racist banter, in the same way that we can have sexist banter. It's a shame that we are still too insecure, and too afraid of being labelled racist. We live in a politically correct society. I have once or twice said things and immediately regretted them. For example I was once talking to a half-Indian whilst drunk...

"Prayer helped Defoe bounce back" from the BBC today. An article about a guy who used prayer to cheer himself up after being dropped from the world cup squad. This article really annoys me. Didn't Defoe remember that when he prayed to be a part of the world cup in the first place, and how his prayer wasn't answered. Didn't he get a clue that talking to yourself doesn't actually influence anything? How can people be so simple? It almost dismays me as much as people who are "miraculously" spared from a natural disaster believe it is God's work that they are saved. So God willed everyone else to die? In other news, I wonder why God would put all of those fossils into the ground in order to make scientists believe the earth is more than 10000 years old. So God is deliberately deceiving us? Why make out that he isn't there? He is deliberately deceiving us in order to test our faith? So a perfect God is deceitful??? Why make us defectiv...

Another funny video from whywontgodhealamputees.com: The delusion of Christianity

I have always wondered what the evolutionary benefits are of any kind of ritual. I could imagine that building social relationships, and identifying with a group, are beneficial for survival. I could also guess that a ritualistic killing of genes other than your own could reduce competition for resources. In nature, animals often have complex rituals, particularly mating rituals. What is most fascinating is that human rituals are learned rather than instinctive. I have always supposed that the rituals we see today are detrimental to society. I guess it can't always be so clear cut, since occasionally religious people do act altrustically, even outside their clique, and our ancestors MUST have derived some benefit from this kind of behaviour otherwise the behaviour would not have been selected. Ultimately, it only matters to our genes THAT we behave in a certain way, not WHY we do it. Since we are intelligent, our genes must manipulate us via our beliefs rather than our instinct...

Life == Information In this post I will challenge what we mean by the word "life". Biological things are "alive" by definition, and by this we mean complex biological entities which can reproduce themselves. Added to this are biological viruses, which are on a less firm footing, since they are essentially parasites which can only reproduce in a host. Although we may die, our cells may not, for example our hair and fingernails carry on growing after our death. We can also think of ourselves as the sum our our genes, which live on in our relatives. Since computing we also have other things which are life-like, though we may not immediately call them "alive". Artificial life is where various types of life (or pattern) are simulated in a computer, and are perhaps bred for fitness using genetic algorithms. We also have Conways "Game of life" where spontaneous patterns emerge (and potentially reproduce) in a computer. There are other things which ...

Here is Richard Dawkins being grilled by Jeremy Paxman:

Borat banned? I've just seen one of the most hysterical films ever: Borat. Unfortunately this film appears to discriminate against minorities, such as homosexuals, Jews and Kazakhs. It certainly draws a fine line. However the film really pokes fun at Americans, Christians, anti-Semites and homophobes. It uses the naivety of Borat's comments to show how ridiculous some of these positions are, and shows the minorities acting reasonable (e.g. the Jews). By showing a happy-clappy pentecostal church, (e.g. talking in tongues) makes Christianity appear utterly ridiculous. Also the "running of the Jew" shows the fundamental misunderstandings people have of each others' cultures.

Basic freedoms There is a news article at the moment about Aishah Azmi, a teaching assistant who insists on wearing a veil in school. I am really torn on this issue. There are clearly practical and safety issues with letting people wear veils in school, and I don't think it is that good an idea. On the other hand, I am all for freedoms and clearly this veil is an important part of culture and it is doing no real harm. Then again, children are expected to adhere to a dress code, so why not the teachers? What I find extremely infuriating is that Muslims demand civil liberties, but only when it works in their favour. Whilst we do have certain freedoms, for example to publish material that may offend others, Muslims still insist that we should not have that freedom. This is the essence of modern discourse, after all, if an idea cannot withstand criticism, then maybe it isn't such a good idea in the first place. Only by challenging ideas have we been able to ascend from the i...

Abolishing Limbo? Today the Pope is considering abolishing Limbo. This is where all the unbaptised children go if they die. So the Pope can snap his fingers and suddenly Limbo will disappear? Or, they can use some experimental method to determine whether Limbo exists? When are these people going to realise that they don't know what they are talking about? When is the rest of the world going to realise?

Whenever you use the Stumble! toolbar, you'll occasionally get something like this video . I love people who can articulate atheism better than I can.

Here is a good video about heaven (and how you will never get there):

Taking responsibility I can't decide whether Lebanon deserves the treatment it is getting from Israel. On the one hand, Isreal is acting out of all proportion and causing widespread misery. On the other hand, Muslims have not really confronted their relationship with violence. They think (mistakenly) that they have a duty to fight, and that their culture should prevail over all others. Such eugenics has not been been seen since WW2. The moderate Muslims should reign them in, but have not acknowledged their responsibility to do so. By being passive they become complicit, and have only themselves to blame when eventually Isreal turns and gives them a taste of their own medicine.

A bunch of idiots in Israel believe that the tooth fairy wears blue shoes. A bunch of idiots in Lebanon believe that the tooth fairy wears red shoes. Idiots who believe that the tooth fairy wears red shoes can't stand idiots who don't think that, and in particular think that all idiots who believe in the blue shoes should be wiped off the face of the planet. The idiots who believe in blue shoes are getting pissed off with this, and have the moral superiority (not to mention the financial and military superiority) and want to put a stop to all of this red-shoe nonsense. The blue-shoe idiots oppress and discriminate against the red-shoe idiots. The red-shoe idiots see it as their duty to kill blue-shoe idiots. The blue-shoe idiots unleash hell on the red-shoe idiots. Plenty of idiots who merely disapprove of the other idiots get hurt. Theology is like arguing about whether the tooth fairy wears red shoes or blue shoes.