Jesus Abducted on the Mount

A question for christians.

'Would you still believe the bible, if it said Jesus was an alien?' :)

Milgram

I found this fascinating video on youtube which discusses Milgram's ground breaking work on obedience. I was first taught about Milgram over ten years ago and it has remained one of the most important pieces of research I have ever learnt.

What you have to understand is, a lot of social psychology developed after the second world war, because of the general belief that it had been caused by something specific to the German people. The horrors of the holocaust had shocked the world and nobody wanted to believe that they would have collaborated if they had been in the same place.

Milgram therefore devised his experiment with the aim of comparing the results with the German people. It is important to understand that he essentially believed that his American sample would be a control group.

And what did he do? Simply put, he asked participants to press a button on a machine, which would administer an electric shock to a person in another room (who was a stooge, working for Milgram). Under the guise of a learning experiment, the participant was required to give the stooge an ever increasing electric shock. He tested some 40 men and found that 60-65% gave the maximum level of shock (marked xxx dangerous). Essentially those men were under the impression that the stooge was dead (or at least seriously injured). But responsibility for that act was deferred to the experimenter; despite having pressed the button, even if the person had died in the other room, it was not the participant's fault.

What does Milgram's experiment tell us? That human beings are capable of obeying orders whether they are German or not, with potentially fatal consequences. I say it often: you have a brain, you have no excuse not to engage it!

Oh No, Not Again!

After writing the last post, I've had a tiny bit of 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy' rattling around inside my head. Enjoy Douglas Adam's take on the question:

Another thing that got forgotten was the fact that against all probability a sperm whale had suddenly been called into existence several miles above the surface of an alien planet.

And since this is not a naturally tenable position for a whale, this poor innocent creature had very little time to come to terms with its identity as a whale before it then had to come to terms with not being a whale any more.

This is a complete record of its thoughts from the moment it began its life till the moment it ended it.

Ah ... ! What’s happening? it thought.

Er, excuse me, who am I?

Hello? Why am I here? What’s my purpose in life?

What do I mean by who am I?

Calm down, get a grip now ... oh! this is an interesting sensation, what is it? It’s a sort of ... yawning, tingling sensation in my ... my ... well I suppose I’d better start finding names for things if I want to make any headway in what for the sake of what I shall call an argument I shall call the world, so let’s call it my stomach.

Good. Ooooh, it’s getting quite strong. And hey, what about this whistling roaring sound going past what I’m suddenly going to call my head? Perhaps I can call that ... wind! Is that a good name? It’ll do ... perhaps I can find a better name for it later when I’ve found out what it’s for. It must be something very important because there certainly seems to be a hell of a lot of it. Hey! What’s this thing? This ... let’s call it a tail - yeah, tail. Hey! I can can really thrash it about pretty good can’t I? Wow! Wow! That feels great! Doesn’t seem to achieve very much but I’ll probably find out what it’s for later on. Now - have I built up any coherent picture of things yet?

No. Never mind, hey, this is really exciting, so much to find out about, so much to look forward to, I’m quite dizzy with anticipation ... Or is it the wind?

There really is a lot of that now isn’t there?

And wow! Hey! What’s this thing suddenly coming towards me very fast? Very very fast. So big and flat and round, it needs a big wide sounding name like ... ow ... ound ... round ... ground! That’s it! That’s a good name - ground!

I wonder if it will be friends with me?

And the rest, after a sudden wet thud, was silence.

Curiously enough, the only thing that went through the mind of the bowl of petunias as it fell was Oh no, not again. Many people have speculated that if we knew exactly why the bowl of petunias had thought that we would know a lot more about the nature of the universe than we do now.

The Forbidden Experiment

I've touched on this briefly before, but I'd like to think a little about something known as the forbidden experiment. What is it? It is the question of what happens if you raise a human in isolation, without other humans to teach it things. What is a human infant born with and what does it learn? Nature vs nurture. So it's an age old question, but one which is extremely pertinent to all of the topics that I discuss on this blog.

Let's pose a thought experiment. I have cloned myself. I took one of my cells and grew it into a baby (the details are not important, just assume that the technology exists). The baby is a copy of my DNA, created by me, for this experiment. I can do what I want to it.

Okay, first I decide to raise the baby in a box. It is given food and water, heat and air. But it will never interact with another human being. It will never hear a person speak or see another's face. What would this clone be like at age 17? When I was 17 I was a youthful, happy, teenager. My clone though, has never learnt language. He does not know how to think. He does not know what anything is. He is an animal: alive with basic emotions (he shows fear and happiness). Importantly he is nothing like me.

Let's try again. This time, I give my clone to be raised by a chimpanzee mother. She is very experienced and has already raised a number of foster apes. Again the clone is not allowed any contact with humans, but spends all of his time with his new chimpanzee carer. Moving forward to 17, what is my clone like this time? He is different from before. More alert and aware of his environment. He makes chimp-like utterances and gestures, and acts very much like a chimpanzee. He does not have anything like a sophisticated language though and so he is only slightly like me.

The last time. I give my clone to be raised by a theist. His theist mother raises him as her own child, teaches him language and facts about the world. She also teaches him about her religion. She tells him that only people who believe in her god will live forever and that when he grows up he should fight against anyone who believes differently. At 17, this teenager is very like I was, but is still different. If only that he speaks Spanish and believes in a god.

What have we learnt from this thought experiment? That biology and genetics must only ever be part of what makes a human being. Yesterday I discussed the creationist claim that the world is 6000 years old. What I find astonishing is this. The only reason you believe anything is because you have been told it by another human being. You do not know if the world is 6000 years old or 4 billion years old, for sure. You know because you've been told (and reading about it is a kind of being told). More fundamentally, you were taught how to think and given language. If you had not been taught a language, you would probably not be like the person you are today. Your brain started out empty and began to be filled.

But language like religion is made up. You can have a baby without language but no language without people to use it. You can also have a baby without religion but there is no such thing as a religion without people. And since there is no god and life is ultimately pointless, I for one consider myself lucky that I was not the clone in the box, but have had an opportunity to understand my place in the universe.

Drugs Are Bad M'kay?

Continuing my discussion of morality, let's move on to hedonism and specifically drug taking. Earlier this week, the Guardian produced a special report on the effect of heroin in the UK. It makes for disturbing reading:

Latest figures indicate there are 327,000 hard-drug users, although drugs charities worry the figure could be as high as 500,000.

Drug use...continues to fuel high levels of offending and scar entire communities.

Addicts spend an average of £10,000 a year feeding their habit.

So there is conflict within society between those people who want to take drugs and those people who do not. What does the drug user want though? Addicts may only want to sit in their room and take heroin, all day every day for the rest of their lives. Who am I to say that such behaviour is wrong? Compare that to a nun who spends her entire adult life worshipping a god that isn't real. Why is one behaviour better than another? But heroin users cannot often supply themselves constantly. They must pay for their drugs, often causing violent and distressing crime, because they cannot afford that £10,000 a year.

Now we have a choice as a society. Do we care more about victims of crime or about hedonists who do not want to be part of society? We spend billions of pounds in the UK trying to stop people taking drugs. Trying to stop people selling drugs. And then criminalising anyone for almost any involvement in the illicit trade. Then tax payers money is spent on prisons, methadone programs, and the whole gamut of different strategies to stop people taking drugs.

To what end? Again it seems to me that if somebody wants to not be part of society, then that is their choice. Is there anything we can do to improve the current state of affairs? Ultimately heroin is derived from poppies which could easily be grown legally and supplied by government to those that want it. What would be the consequence of such a policy? That crime would exponentially decrease, as those people who cause crime are not forced to rob the innocent, but are allowed their pleasure without fear of prosecution, or exploitation by the black market.

Today there is another article in the Guardian, which mirrors this thinking:

Cut crime at a stroke: let clinics prescribe enough heroin to addicts daily to stop them mugging, stealing and turning to prostitution to support a habit. Lives can be stabilised on regular heroin and that is also the best hope of getting chaotic addicts into rehab.

What is the alternative? There is no god. Nobody is in charge ultimately. Is it really better to take away people's freedoms than let them have what they want? When is enough, enough? Finally aren't there better things we could be spending all of that time, energy and money on?

CJD on the NHS

For those who missed this particular story, here's a little explanation of my latest youtube animation. According to a recent UK health report, the risk of transmitting CJD (the human form of mad-cow disease) through blood transfusions is 'substantial'. From an article on the BBC:

The name of the third patient to be infected has not been released, but it is known that he received the blood transfusion at the age of 23. He later became ill, and seven and a half years later he was referred to the NHS National Prion Clinic at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery where his symptoms were confirmed to be caused by vCJD. He joined an experimental Medical Research Council trial for a treatment called Prion-1 which began in 2004, in which patients were given a drug called quinacrine, but he died a year later at the age of 32.

Apparently there are nearly 2 million units of blood transfused every year and who knows how many are infected with CJD. Cheery thought for the new year ahead.

Dawkins' Mistake to Debate?

Over at the Guardian is an editorial written by Richard Dawkins, where he discusses two British scientists who have recently criticised evolution and specifically claim that the universe is 6000 years old and that evolution violates the laws of thermodynamics.

The article is the usual Dawkins and is followed by the usual debates and comments. But the question that comes to my mind is how long do we continue to debate evolution with people who have no inclination of changing their minds, whatsoever?

Earlier this week, I had the pleasure of a visit from an old friend, who I had not seen in a couple of years. He is an admitted agnostic and I am a committed atheist. But where was our disagreement? It was that he would never be willing to say that there is no god, only that it is unlikely. Why does that position seem ridiculous to me?

Because there is no god. If you truly understand that, then you begin to understand certain other things. The universe began 13 billion years ago. Life on earth began 3.7 billion years ago. So you see that arguing that the universe was made for humans 6000 years ago, is just plain daft. The fossil record and the galaxies we see were not put there by god. We are lucky to understand that.

Last night I watched United 93 with my girlfriend. A group of theists took over that flight and tried to kill other humans, in the belief that they would go to heaven and be rewarded by god. Some passengers suggested cooperation with the terrorists. Others finally worked up the courage to attack them. Why? Because they realised that they were fighting for their lives and they wanted to live. It is unfortunate that their actions did not fully succeed. But it is a metaphor for life.

You see people, there is no god. No one is in control. There are no arbiters of justice. Fairness is not a state of the universe. Life today is very much like being on a hijacked plane. I don't have as much control over my life, as my ancestors had, and to be honest, the people in charge often have theistic beliefs which motivate their behaviour.

So, how long do we debate, at the back of the plane for? How long do we let people collaborate and cooperate? Will there not ever be a time when atheists take a stand and demand to not allow other people's fictions to ruin their one and only life?

When the end comes for every single person upon this planet, you will have been given a choice. Not by god, but because the universe is so old and so big, that you have evolved and exist! Action vs inaction people. Rest on your laurels and you have no excuse when others decide for you!

Talking, Psychic Bird?

Recently I promised to discuss another claim of extraordinary abilities in a non-human animal. This time I'm covering N'kisi, a captive bred African Grey Parrot who Rupert Sheldrake claims is not only one of the most impressive language using animals, but is also psychic. From Sheldrake:

N'kisi speaks in sentences, showing a grasp of grammar in formulating his own original expressions. He is capable of actual conversations. He often initiates comments about what we are doing, feeling, looking at, thinking, etc, which is how we discovered his ability to read minds. N'kisi often demonstrates telepathy in spontaneous situations, and also communicates love, compassion, and a keen sense of humor.

N'kisi appears to telepathically "surf" the leading edge of Aimee's consciousness, responding to the spontaneous moment of discovery rather than to any consciously projected thoughts.

So let's think about this. If parrots are capable of mind-reading humans, why have they not developed things like technology and civilisation? More importantly why, if the parrots are capable of reading each others' minds, did natural selection not favour this silent telepathic communication, over the loud squawks for which parrots are famous? A forest full of mute, telepathic parrots would certainly be much harder for predators to catch.

Globally, parrots are the most endangered of all birds, with the greatest number of species currently facing extinction due to poaching and habitat destruction. We hope our work will help people to realize the amazing abilities and awareness of these intelligent birds, and encourage greater care of these precious beings and the planetary environment we share.

And why, if parrots are this amazing, are they not fighting against us, waging war in those areas where humans and parrots interact or at the very least demanding to be released from their cages around the globe, in an act of parrot emancipation?

Finally then, no matter what statistical proofs Rupert Sheldrake provides for his claims, surely they are not enough to accept his dubious conclusions. The fact of the matter is that we have a researcher who is predisposed to believing in conscious animals and psychic powers. It doesn't matter that neither is a reality, because there are always people willing to believe in such fantasies.

Expect to see his Zener card tests with Big Bird soon!

Icke is Incorrect

Over at the Guardian is an article which asks 'so was David Icke right?'. For those who don't know him, David Icke is a former sports correspondent turned conspiracy nut, who's made quite a career claiming that the world is run by alien lizards! From the article:

In January 1999, he wrote that "between 2000 and 2002, the United States will suffer a major attack on a large city". In his 1990 paperback, Truth Vibrations, he declared: "The years after the millennium will see gathering conflict all over the world to the point where the United Nations will be overwhelmed." And in the same book he predicted severe hurricanes around the Gulf of Mexico and New Orleans after 2000.

Predicting hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico hardly requires input from god or alien reptiles. At least when Hunter S. Thompson saw giant lizard people, he understood they were a product of a drug induced state, as opposed to evidence for a huge alien conspiracy. I'm afraid to say that humans don't need any extraterrestrial intervention to create the problems of the world.

Douglas Adams Understood

Investigating StumbleUpon, I happened upon an interview with one of my boyhood heroes, Douglas Adams. I've read Hitchhiker's Guide a few times and his Dirk Gently detective novels are equally existential. So I was pleased to read in his own words, how he came to be a radical atheist:

Sometime around my early thirties I stumbled upon evolutionary biology, particularly in the form of Richard Dawkins’s books The Selfish Gene and then The Blind Watchmaker and suddenly (on, I think the second reading of The Selfish Gene) it all fell into place. It was a concept of such stunning simplicity, but it gave rise, naturally, to all of the infinite and baffling complexity of life. The awe it inspired in me made the awe that people talk about in respect of religious experience seem, frankly, silly beside it. I'd take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day.

Douglas, I understand exactly how you felt! I think I may even have been inspired to attempt to finish the Hitchhiker's text adventure. Now where was I?
>put babel fish in ear

See With Your Own Eyes

So I can hear the doubters cry 'how can this guy be so sure?'. Look at this picture, published by NASA a couple of days ago. It was spied by the Spitzer space telescope and shows infrared light from 13 billion years ago. Scientists think that it shows the very first objects that existed in the universe. From Dr Kashlinsky of NASA:

Whatever these objects are, they are intrinsically incredibly bright and very different from anything in existence today.

It confirms what we already knew about the early universe from looking at the cosmic microwave background radiation. That the universe started with a big bang, over 13 billion years ago! So you see people, you cannot argue with space. No god put those images in the telescope. We are seeing the universe as it really was, with our own eyes! We could potentially be the only organism in the entire universe which can see and understand what that actually means.

So, yes I am very sure there is no god and no point. We are extremely lucky to know the truth that science gives us and I'm pleased to have had the opportunity to peer through Spitzer's eyes.

Friends, Atheists, Countrymen

Over at the BBC is an interesting article on arguments, which is something I've been thinking about for the past couple of days. As well as being involved in a discussion on James Randi's forum, I've also had a few comments recently which have got quite emotional in tone. From the BBC article:

Those familiar with internet culture may have heard of Godwin's law. Coined by the American lawyer Mike Godwin in 1990, it states that the greater the length of an internet discussion, the higher the chances of a comparison involving Hitler or the Nazis.

On this blog I deal with contentious issues. Animal consciousness, god, religion and the meaning of life are all topics over which people get emotional (and are sometimes even willing to die for). If you think that I expect everybody to agree with me, you are very much mistaken. And I know I can sound a certain way and it is worse in real life, I assure you. People can get very distressed (or frustrated) talking to me, because they think that I am patronising and condescending.

But before people start accusing me of being a 'science caesar', I would suggest taking a few deep breaths and if you don't like what you're reading, go away! I am a scientist, atheist and human being and I am capable of discussing most topics without getting overly emotional. I am often dismissive, because I have thought long and hard about these things. I used to believe a lot of the same things, which enables me to see different perspectives.

However I have concluded everything is pointless. That really is an unequivocal statement. And no debate will convince me otherwise. So read or don't read. Agree or don't agree. Those really are the questions and they're up to you.

The Moon, a Volcano & a Castle

I often get frustrated by the illusion of permanence which most people seem oblivious to. From my window I frequently get to observe three objects which illustrate this point: the Moon, Castle Rock and Edinburgh Castle.

None of these things have existed since the beginning of the universe. The moon is some 4 billion years old and was probably created when a large body smashed into the Earth (almost destroying it). Castle Rock is a rocky outcrop, formed some 350 million years ago by volcanic activity. And finally Edinburgh Castle sits on a site occupied at least since the 7th century, although much of the castle seen today dates from the 15th and 16th centuries.

For human beings a year is a long time and for most of us it makes no difference that at one time the moon existed before even life had appeared. That after billions of years a volcano erupted (in an area that would later become Edinburgh) leaving behind rock which after millions of years was built upon by humans. It seems as though they were always part of the scenery. But this illusion of permanence gives us a false sense of security. Just as in the past when the universe existed without those seemingly permanent things, one day all three will be gone. They may each exist for billions of years to come, but it is a fact that one day everything, including the moon, the volcano and the castle, will be gone.

And so enjoy life and the universe while you can. Each generation gets a unique opportunity to do what they want. Don't be confined by things you imagine are permanent, for one day they will be gone too.

Stop Staring At Me!

Edward Titchener was an important early psychologist who published the very first paper on staring detection, in the prestigious periodical Science in 1898. Titchener, who worked at Cornell University, noted that every year a large percentage of his students claimed:

that they can ‘feel’ that they are being stared at from behind, and a smaller proportion who believe that, by persistent gazing at the back of the neck, they have the power of making a person seated in front of them turn around and look them in the face (p. 895).

He reported that over the years he had conducted a large number of informal tests and found no evidence for this particular claim. As far as Titchener was concerned people were not able to demonstrate their widely held belief.

He went on to provide a very good normal explanation for why people have this belief. First he noted that humans have forward facing vision, which leaves us exposed to the rear and he suggested that when in a situation where you are forced to present your back to a group of people, that there may be some psychological discomfort in that. He went as far to say that our ancestors must surely have devoted constant care to the defence of their backs. Titchener claimed that this back vigilance is the first element of staring detection: that people protect their backs by being aware of the environment behind them.

Once the feeling to turn around has formed, it is followed by an executing of the behavioural component: turning the head around and examining the back environment. Attention moves across the back of the room, scanning it to update their information as to what is actually going on.

Titchener next turned his attention to what might be happening behind the individual. He noted that his students could be engaged in a range of different behaviours (playing with their hair, eating food etc) and that it should be expected that some of the people sitting behind may be staring in the general direction of the individual. When they turn around, they disturb the visual field for those people who happen to have been looking in their general direction. This movement is a strong stimulus for people sitting behind, which they are required to attend to. There may in fact be any number of people who have the person in their visual field and who suddenly respond to the movement of the person looking around.

It is this coincidence which Titchener argued is the basis for the belief. Why do people feel the special tingling in their neck though? Titchener remarked that this no different from the feeling experienced in the bottom after sitting down for a long time!

Finally Titchener preempted future criticism, by raising the concern that other scientists would no-doubt respond with ‘so what’. His claim that there is no such thing as paranormal staring detection was hardly a revelation for the sceptic. But Titchener argued that it would not be pointless, if he helped breakdown this deep-seated belief from the popular mind-set and concluded:

no scientifically minded psychologist believes in telepathy. (p.897)

Over 100 years later, staring detection is a popular area of parapsychology, yet most researchers have often ignored Titchener's conclusions. However the evidence today is really no better than in Titchener's time and I'm sure he would be turning in his grave if he knew science was still investigating the question.

You see people, isn't science supposed to learn from past experience? Titchener was not a dogmatic sceptic (if he was, surely he wouldn't have thought the question interesting in the first place). He was a scientist who looked at other peoples' claims and then tested them. In my mind the greatest disservice you can do to Titchener's contribution, is to sweep him under the carpet because you do not like his conclusions.

So the next time I am asked is it really right to ignore paranormal claims altogether, I will merely point them to this post and ask 'do we really need to keep experimentally testing staring detection to be sure that it isn't paranormal'?

Sheldrake Vs Savva

I got an email from Rupert Sheldrake last week, asking about an informal telephone telepathy test I was involved with a couple of years ago. In my reply, I asked:

I suspect that you believe in god, or in a purpose or point to life? Am I correct?

I present for you his response to those questions and my replies back to him. Enjoy!

Dear Louie
Thanks for your email. In your telephone telepathy tests, roughly how many did you do, how many subjects and how many trials were involved?

An honest reply is I can't remember. I think we had about 5 receivers and senders running multiple trials and as far as possible we tried to maintain a methodology as close to your published procedure. I do remember that the results were not suggestive of any paranormal effect and we decided against a larger formal study, as I was then involved in a couple of projects which seemed more likely to achieve those elusive positive results.

When you say that “quite a few other people did the same,” can you remember who they were or how many there were? I’d like to follow this up and get some estimate of what the results were and how many tests were done. Chris Roe told me one of his students had done a test at Northampton, with positive results. But who else have you in mind and at which universities?

This is researcher hear-say. I was merely stating my experience that when I had discussed telephone telepathy at conferences, I remember being told about unpublished student projects. Where and by whom, again, I cannot remember. I raised this point not as a strong argument against the existence of the effect, rather that I was satisfied that there were alternative explanations which could account for it.

Anecdotal sceptic file drawer arguments are not very scientific. I publish all my data in peer-reviewed journals. If sceptics don't publish theirs they condemn them to the realm of anecdote. But lets try and get some more facts here if possible.

However Rupert, I have quit parapsychology. I have no real interest in engaging in debate or otherwise with anyone on the topic. What I'm doing on my blog, is presenting my own PhD research and life experiences, partly to record them for myself and partly to allow others to read them, if they so wish. I became a parapsychologist to discover the answers to questions that had troubled me. I pursued my goals honestly and I believe capably and have given parapsychology more thought than I care to estimate. If only I could have read my thesis before I had started (instead of Radin's 'Conscious Universe' for example) I might have chosen to spend my life differently.

As a committed sceptic, I am quite sure that you could see how unconvincing this argument would be if it were done the other way round. If sceptics had done some tests and found negative results, and published them, and then somebody said “Lots of parapsychologists have done this experiment and it always works really well”, with no references, no data, and no names I’m sure you wouldn’t find it a very convincing argument. That’s why I’m trying to go beyond this unsatisfactory situation.

I understand your frustration. But not wanting to repeat myself I don't see a need to reference every thought or conversation I've had with another person, which may have influenced my thinking. At the end of the day, either there is psi (for example) or there isn't. I looked at the evidence and concluded against. It was not an easy conclusion for me to reach.

On the question of evolution, the idea that it has no purpose is just an idea, it’s one interpretation. If you believe it, then that’s you belief and there’s nothing much anyone can say about it. It seems to me just as much a faith position as the opposite.

I absolutely disagree. Positing that everything is pointless is a position of not believing claims of a purpose. Dawkins has made the celestial teapot argument quite famous. I am a sceptic to your claim of a point. Why is the onus on me to provide evidence that everything is pointless (which I try to do, by the way)? Is it not for people who posit a point to provide evidence to support their claims?

And ultimately I cannot see how anybody can argue that the big bang had intelligent direction. That it all cooled down and formed so that, simple replicating molecules could evolve into life. You and I, Rupert, are descended from organisms that had one purpose: to propagate in a pointless universe. And even this had no intelligence behind it, but was a consequence of natural selection. I do indeed argue that everything is pointless and to argue otherwise is to try and reinterpret those key pieces of hard-fought knowledge. Show me the evidence to refute my argument and I will of course consider it. But it must be an exceptional kind of evidence to undermine Darwin's contribution.

I myself am a very firm believer in evolution, and my idea of morphic resonance is more radically evolutionary then conventional neo Darwinism. I suggest that nature is ruled not be fixed laws, all there at the moment of the Big Bang, but rather by evolving habits, so evolution applies not only in the biological but also in the physical and chemical realms.

If I might quote you on morphic resonance (from SkepDic):

it is not at all necessary for us to assume that the physical characteristics of organisms are contained inside the genes, which may in fact be analogous to transistors tuned in to the proper frequencies for translating invisible information into visible form. Thus, morphogenetic fields are located invisibly in and around organisms, and may account for such hitherto unexplainable phenomena as the regeneration of severed limbs by worms and salamanders, phantom limbs, the holographic properties of memory, telepathy, and the increasing ease with which new skills are learned as greater quantities of a population acquire them.

And I'm afraid Rupert, that I dismiss the idea you propose outright. Your words sound reminiscent of Jules Eisenbud and his writings proposing that animals give themselves to predators for the sake of group selection. I have written recently on my blog about animal consciousness and I'm afraid I'm as sceptical of that as I am of your claims for telepathy and staring detection. The world simply does not appear to be the way you describe it and all of the wishful thinking will not make it so.

One thing that’s very clear from studying animal and human behaviour is that animals and humans behave in a purposive way. So purpose is important to us, whether or not it’s important to the whole universe. Without a sense of purpose, people lose the will to life and become depressed. Even if you say that animal purposefulness has been programmed in by natural selection because it’s useful, it doesn’t alter the fact that it’s part of life as we know it, and has evolved because it helps us survive.

Humans do not require any kind of evidence to believe in something. Just because we are indoctrinated as children to believe there is a purpose to what we do, does not follow that there actually is. I am interested in reality, not make-believe.

You could argue that this simply biases our philosophies of the universe. But if someone is depressed and thinks everything is purposeless, this may also introduce a subjective bias.

Except that I have outlined the facts that are the basis for claiming everything is pointless. They are not emotional arguments caused by abnormal brain functioning. They are sterile, scientific facts. I would wager everything, that the universe was not built for human beings. That when we die, we will never see our friends and family again. Much as I disagree with you Rupert, I wish you no ill will and wish that all humans could live happy lives with no pain or suffering. But we get only one life and it is only since Darwin's time that we have had the absolutely luxury to know our place in the scheme of things. Even if we are all one membrane floating in 10 dimensions, it will not change certain facts. The universe was not made for us and we will one day all be gone. Please don't patronise me by diagnosing depression. Unfortunately the answers to scientific questions may not always please us.

I wouldn’t like to speculate about a purpose or point to the whole of the universe and I don’t think traditional religion is that much help either, since it was formulated before an evolutionary perspective came along in science. I do believe in God, and am a member of the Church of England.

This does not surprise me. So we are diametrically opposed. You believe in the supernatural, paranormal and theistic. I do not. And so again I am reminded of why dialogue between sceptics and believers is ultimately as pointless as the rest of 'creation'. We will never agree. I am never going to believe there is a god or that any intelligence was involved in our evolution.

But I’m against both scientific and religious fundamentalism. And while human beings undoubtedly see a purpose in what they do, and need to experience one, most human-centred religions don’t have much to tell us about the purpose of galaxies, or even billions of stars in our own galaxy which from a traditional religious perspective seem quite irrelevant to our own concerns on earth. nevertheless the universe has a direction, if not a purpose, in that it is expanding and diversifying as it does so.

Interesting last point. I might even agree. Although everything is pointless, exploring the expanding universe might well be one of the most exciting things that could happen to our species. Or we go extinct trying!

So thanks to Rupert. You've confirmed rather than changed my opinion!

Mrs Sidgwick's Spooky Survey

Eleanor Sidgwick published the first survey of precognitive cases from the files of the Society for Psychical Research, in 1888. She reviewed some 38 first-hand cases of premonitions, of which 24 were dreams.

Sidgwick began her review by adding the caveat that despite the cases she reviewed being the very best, none were good enough to judge the case for precognition made. An example:

In the year 1859, I was with a medical man here as a student. On the night of June 9th, in that year, I dreamed a dream, and when I awoke in the morning I could not recollect the details, but the date, June 9th, 1864, was forcibly impressed on my memory.

I went to the surgery and told the assistant surgeon of my dream, and I said “Look here, I will write the date on the underpart of this mantelpiece, ‘June 9th, 1864, J. F. E.,’ and if you are here you will see that on that day I shall die, or a calamity will overtake me.” I wrote as above; time went on. I left the profession, went into business. In 1863, June 9th, I married, and on June 9th, 1864, my wife died, and only on the evening of that day did the recollection of my dream (five years before) come back to me.

The end of that month I took two friends up to the old surgery, and there was my memo : “June 9th, 1864, J. F. E.” (p. 318)

Mrs Sidgwick engaged in correspondence with the percipient of this tale, to obtain more information. In the reply many of the same details were given, although there was some confusion regarding the date of the dream (where the second time it is given as 1858 instead of 1859). Importantly, this particular example would seem very much to rely on the dates being exact. That there is a discrepancy between the two retellings of the experience surely brings the entire account into question and reduces its evidential value.

Sidgwick concluded that given the evidence and the many and varied potential normal influencing factors, that the possibility of a paranormal precognitive ability had nowhere near the standard of evidence required to be accepted, even as a ‘working hypothesis’ by the scientific world.

Yet, nearly 120 years on from the publication of Sidgwick’s survey, the evidence is not substantially better.

Weight Loss on the Atheist Diet

A little irreverent post. And it's all true by the way!

Dots Don't Make the Man

Look at this animation and think about it. What are you looking at and what do you 'see'? Aren't they two different things? The human brain has evolved an innate predisposition to interpret things as having intention. You think that the dots are 'alive' because it is cheap to come to this conclusion.

Think about it. Our ancestors evolved in environments where it was important to quickly determine what something was. Is that shape a human or a predator? Friend or foe? And you see it was better to make a quick, snap decision than to wait around to learn the potentially deadly truth.

For example, if you are hiding from somebody, it is better to determine that the shape you see on the horizon is that person, rather than wait for it to become more detailed (say until you see the whites of his eyes). Natural selection has favoured the genes which cause this decision-making, because humans who didn't do this were more likely to die!

So you are programmed to see intention behind almost anything. It is like looking for patterns in the clouds. The patterns are not real, but in our heads. And we do it because it is better to be safe than sorry. But just because a dot, shadow or cloud looks like it has intention, doesn't mean it really does. It takes more than dots to make the man!

Wallace Was Wrong!

Alfred Russell Wallace was an interesting character. A Victorian scientist, Wallace's greatest achievement was as the co-discoverer of evolution with Charles Darwin. Impressive stuff.

But as well as being a founder of evolution, Wallace was an advocate of Spiritualism (a movement very popular at the turn of the twentieth century, where people believe that mediums can communicate with the 'spirits of the dead').

It has often been the case that history has interpreted Wallace’s interests in evolution and in Spiritualism as completely independent and Wallace’s Spiritualist beliefs are often ignored in favour of his work on evolution. However there is also the view that Wallace saw his involvement in Spiritualism as an extension of his work on evolution and that for Wallace, evolution did not end at death, but continued to some extent after. From Wallace (1892):

The universal teaching of modern spiritualism is that the world and the whole material universe exist for the purpose of developing spiritual beings-that death is simply a transition from material existence to the first grade of spirit-life-and that our happiness and the degree of our progress will be wholly dependent upon the use we have made of our faculties and opportunities here. (p. 648).

Where Darwin argued that man was subject to the same influences as the rest of nature, Wallace clearly believed that the evidence from Spiritualism showed that natural selection was a great deal of the answer, but not the whole answer.

But Wallace was just wrong. How can evolution occur once the organism is dead? It's an impossibility, with no evidence. Where is this land where spiritual evolution continues? That undiscovered country remains so, because it is a dream. And no amount of wishful thinking can make it so. So here's to Alfred Russell Wallace. Proof that great men can also believe great fictions!

Dreaming of a White Christmas

Another snippet from my PhD, this time about David Mandell (DM), a man who believed he could dream the future.

DM claimed to have frequent precognitive dreams and as an artist took to painting them down, to provide a record of his experiences. One of his most impressive claims is to have dreamt about the twin towers attack before it happened. There is evidence that he drew a picture of the twin towers (apparently collapsing) on September 11th, 1996. But is it paranormal or just normal?

Well DM had produced hundreds of drawings, although not all were specific and many were very general in nature (like ship sinking's etc). One in particular inspired some good normal explanations. Look at the picture (top of the page) drawn by DM on the 20th March, 1997. It is claimed to be a picture of Concorde crashing. The picture depicts a triangular looking aeroplane, with flames or a jet coming out from underneath the plane’s tail. At the bottom right-hand corner is a figure of a man, sat in a small triangular plane and flying a French flag.

On the 25th of July, 2000 Concorde crashed, with the loss of 113 lives, just after take-off from a French airport. At the time of the crash, Concorde was deemed one of the safest planes on record, having not had a single fatal accident since it first flew in 1969. At first glance, the Concorde example also seems compelling evidence for some kind of precognitive ability on the part of DM.

But how unlikely was Concorde's crash? Even though it had not reported a single fatal accident over its long flying history, it did report some accidents. Was it just a matter of time before Concorde would crash (if it had not been on the 25th of July would it have happened sooner or later)? Dreaming of a white christmas isn't psychic. It just requires that you wait long enough.

Secondly, an alternative event was found that seemed an even better match for the picture.

On June 3, 1973, Russia's supersonic rival to Concorde, the TU-144 (pictured), crashed at the same airport as the pilot of the Concorde which crashed, was hoping he might reach: Le Bourget. The plane was dubbed Concordski by the British and French press and it crashed killing 13. At the time of the crash, there were rumours of a botched espionage attempt by the French, mistakes by the crew, and mechanical failures.

The French eventually acknowledged that they had sent up a Mirage III jet to photograph the TU-144 in flight, without telling the Russians. The French also allegedly shortened the TU-144's demonstration flight at the last minute, and extended one by the Concorde. The crew aboard the TU-144 were forced to improvise a landing and apparently tried to do so on the wrong runway. As they went around to make another attempt, they were on a collision course with the French jet. The pilot took evasive action, which supposedly caused stalls in some or all of the engines and caused the plane to crash.

So we have one picture and two events which match it. Do we conclude the picture is a precognition of Concorde crashing or a memory of Concordski crashing? Seems to me that if you write down enough dreams and wait long enough, your dreams will seem precognitive too!

Is Paris Hilton Inevitable?

Do you think that wherever evolution occurs,
Paris Hilton is an inevitability?
Do species compete,
to feature in Heat?
Is the pinnacle really celebrity?

Deaf, Dumb, Blind and Paralysed

More thoughts: A congenitally blind person will never have a visual experience. A congenitally deaf person will never have an auditory experience.

What about a baby that is born deaf, blind and paralysed (with no conscious control over any part of its body so that it is mute and couldn't even tap out a message). Could it ever become human? If its organs still functioned and grew, but it had no way of learning anything, wouldn't it just remain a helpless vegetable?

Even if you could read its brain waves and work out how it felt, how would you get information back into the brain?

So again, I identify an animal which is not capable of thought and consciousness like you or I. Human beings require software upgrades. Genie was denied them. This hypothetical child has no way of downloading them. The result is the same though.

Who's Really in Control?

Here is a story, straight out of Richard Dawkins' 'The Extended Phenotype'. Go and read about toxoplasma gondii. It is a cat parasite which also infects rats and changes the rats behaviour, making them more adventurous and more likely to get caught.

So inside the body of this parasite, there are genes which code for behaviour in another organism. It was not designed, but is a product of natural selection. The parasite just happens to change the rats behaviour and in doing so gets a survival advantage.

There is some suggestion that this organism may even effect our own behaviour. Isn't that a scary thought?

The Problem is Randy Atheists

One thing I'd quite like is to live in a kind of atheist commune. It would consist of a group of like minded friends, raising their offspring together and living a simpler life. I foresee an immediate problem. Humans do not have a great track record when it comes to living in small groups.

From Matt Ridley in his fantastic read 'The Red Queen':

Consider the case of the Pitcairn Islanders. In 1790, nine mutineers from HMS bounty landed on Pitcairn along with six male and thirteen female Polynesians...When the colony was discovered eighteen years later, ten of the women had survived and only one of the men. Of the other men, one had committed suicide, one had died and twelve had been murdered. The survivor was simply the last man standing in an orgy of violence motivated entirely by sexual competition (p.195).

And today, some 216 years later, the UK government is spending £500,000 a year imprisoning the descendants of Fletcher Christian on Pitcairn island for sexual crimes. Oddly, one of the men is called 'Randy Christian'.

More from Matt Ridley:

Despite the best efforts of anthropologists to find a society with no jealousy and so prove it is an emotion introduced by pernicious social pressure or pathology, sexual jealousy seems to be an unavoidable part of being a human being (p.227).

Most males are monogamous. Polygamy is prevented by wives who resent sharing their husbands lest they also share his contributions to child-rearing. Even though they could bring up the children unaided, the husband's pay cheque is invaluable. But the ban on polygamous marriage does not prevent the males seeking polygamous matings. Adultery is common. It is commonest between high-ranking makes and females of all ranks. To prevent it males try to guard their wives, are extremely violent towards their wives, are extremely violent towards their wives' lovers and copulate with their wives frequently, not just when they are fertile (p.226).

Baker and Bellis...have tried to measure the extent of cuckoldry in human beings. In a block of flats in Liverpool, they found by genetic tests that less than four in every five people were the sons of their ostensible fathers. The rest were apparently fathered by somebody else. In case this was something to do with Liverpool, they did the same tests in southern England and got the same result (p.218).

What hope then is there for maintaining a stable atheist community? Sooner or later somebody will have sex with somebody they shouldn't. And then it's a countdown to the last 'randy atheist' standing.

Koko Cabanna

Continuing my discussion of whether animals think like humans, I'm going to look at one of the best cases: Koko the talking gorilla. Gorillas are genetically much closer to humans, than say cats or dogs and if any animal is capable of human-like thinking, then it really should be one of our ape cousins. Now Koko has apparently been taught sign language for many years and it is claimed has a vocabulary of about 2000 words.

Let's look at an extract of a 'webchat' that Koko took part in, a few years ago:

PENNY: We're going to be on the phone with a lot of people who are going to ask us questions...

KOKO: Nipple. (Koko sometimes uses 'nipple' as a 'sounds like' for 'people.')

PENNY: ...about you and about me. . . Lots of people.

KOKO: That red pink. (Indicating Penny's shirt.)

PENNY: That red pink. Yes, right!

KOKO: Hurry good.

PENNY: This is red—this is pink, exactly.

KOKO: Pink. (Koko reaches for Penny's pocket which contains treats.)

PENNY: OK. That's the kind of things they are going to ask.

KOKO: Good.

PENNY: Questions about colors or how you're feeling. OK?

KOKO: That red. (Indicating her own hair.)

PENNY: Honey, this is black.

Read the whole thing and you'll see that there is a great deal of interpretation on the part of the trainer. The human reads much more into Koko's responses than appears justified. Over at the CSICOP site there is an article which argues much the same thing. What we have is anthropomorphism on the part of the human, as opposed to human-thinking on the part of the gorilla.

And so, if a gorilla taught sign language isn't really thinking like you or I, what hope is there for the humble pets? My opinion is none and in a future post, I'll discuss a talking, 'psychic' pet parrot. Impressive? What do you think?

What Thoughts for Foetus?

If you have been reading any of my posts on animal consciousness, you know that I don't believe that animals think like humans. But there are also humans that don't think like humans and one large group are the babies. In the documentary film Jesus Camp, there is a very disturbing section where a middle aged man preaches to a group of children about abortion. Part of his act involved handing out foetus replicas whilst declaring that god put every child inside their mother's womb and that he has a plan for everyone.

Firstly, approximately 50% of fertilized eggs die before the woman even knows she is pregnant. For known pregnancies, the number of spontaneous miscarriages (not caused by human intervention) is about 10%. The number of stillborn babies is approximately 1 in 200 pregnancies. That's some bad planning, if god really was involved.

Why is this information important? Because building a human inside another human is a difficult task. Let's look at it in more detail. The average ejaculate contains 180 million sperm cells. Females are born with about 1 million eggs inside of them. When you were conceived, a single sperm (containing a random mix of your father's DNA - which in itself is a random mix of his parents DNA) combined with your mother's egg and grew. The fact that you are sat reading this article is not divine intervention, but blind luck. There are billions of different combinations of DNA that could be sat there instead of you.

Now if you were lucky enough not to get spontaneously aborted or die before birth, you were pushed out of your mother's womb too early. It all comes down to the female pelvis and the size of the babies brain. Chimpanzee gestation is about 8 or 9 months, but their offspring are considerably more developed than human babies. Human babies need to stay inside their mother's for as long as possible, but the size of the pelvis means that there is a limit to the amount of growth that can occur in the womb. Our brains are just too big to carry on growing in our mothers. Hence we are popped out before we should be (in comparison to other animals).

As a consequence humans give birth to undeveloped foetuses, that are not able to care for themselves. The first years of human life are then about building the machine that is the human body. Zygotes begin as single cells and grow into naked apes capable of extraordinary feats (no other animal has built space probes that have left the solar system). Is there a line in the process of development, where we can say that the foetus is conscious? Lots of theists and non-theists alike get very emotional about this particular question. But if we look at the evidence it seems to me that humans only develop consciousness over time. A single zygote is not conscious. A 22 week baby is not conscious in the same way we are. And I might go as far to suggest that it is only with the acquisition of language that the 'I' develops. Some psychologists argue that this is why you do not have any real memories before the age of about 3. Because without language you cannot think in the same way as adults.

But my baby is aware of me, I hear the doubters cry. My girlfriend has just spent the last few months as a paediatric surgeon and I asked her to consider my opinion. That babies are bundles of reflexes and innate programming designed to elicit responses from adults. Babies that are not attended to by their parents, die. Genes that cause a baby to get more attention from their parents survive. As George the nintendog demands to be played with, so too babies require interaction, food etc but not consciousness like you or I have. Just sophisticated programming and a lot of anthropomorphism.

Despite her initial scepticism, she has slowly been convinced, not by me banging on about infant consciousness, but by actually stepping back and watching young infants doing what they do. And babies really are the best example of the changes that occur as we move from non-conscious animal to conscious human.

Can I be Dawkins' Guerrilla?

Again, requires little explanation.

Throw 'em to the Lions

Doesn't need any real explanation. Enjoy.

Truth in an Encyclopedia

Last year I got a chance to read through the Gale Encyclopedia of Science and Religion. I was shocked to discover a very interesting paragraph under the heading Eschatology (the study of last things):

Biology, paleontology, geology, and astronomy help one appreciate the transience and fragility of all that exists, even though nature continually brings new things and new life out of dissolution and death. No individual entity or species continues forever. Cosmology assures us that the observable universe itself will eventually become sterile and evanesce as it expands forever, undergoing heat death (p.300)

Of course we don't yet conclusively know which way the universe is actually going to die (although it really is either the big crunch or the big freeze), but even if you don't want to think that far ahead, just remember that your own personal existence is just as fragile as the rest of the universe.

How Many Dinos Per Gallon?

This one's dedicated to my parapsychologist buddy, Nicola Holt. Inspired by a post over at Digg, haven't we all asked how many tyrannosaurs in a gallon of petrol?

Idiot, You're on Fire!

One of my favourite social psychology studies is Latane & Darley's (1968) smoke filled room study. In the first condition, participants sat alone in a room, filling out a questionnaire, whilst the researchers pumped smoke into the room. 75% of the participants got up and reported the suspicious smoke (although strangely some 25% didn't do anything).

In the second condition, 3 naive participants were sat together in the room, filling out their questionnaires and again smoke was pumped into the room. This time only 38% of people reported the smoke (where the remaining 62% continued with their task).

Finally there was a third condition, where a single naive participant was joined by 2 confederates of the researchers (who were told not to do anything as the smoke was pumped in). In this condition only 10% of the participants got up to report the smoke, even when it was so thick that the questionnaire was hard to read!

So why is this interesting? Because if you were sat in a room, which was filling with smoke and nobody else moved, you would more than likely just stay where you were. If that smoke had been a real threat to the participants life, they would have made the wrong choice. Using other people as indicators of reality can be very unreliable. Is it any wonder that people get into trouble following idiots? You've got a brain, use it!

Planet of the Ants

One of the things that I want for this blog is to have different kinds of evidence to show that everything is pointless.

Before I had my epiphany about the implications of evolution for human existence, I had a dream which matches this little video I've created. It doesn't really need any more explanation, so enjoy!

Baboon Walking Upright

I apologise for the amateurish animation, but you get the idea. Recently I re-read Richard Leakey's book 'The Origin of Humankind' which is a fantastic read for anyone who wants to learn about our ancestors, from a man who found plenty of important early human fossils.

Let's assume that the common ancestor of humans and African apes possessed a level of self awareness equivalent to modern chimpanzees. From what we've learned about the biology and social organisation of the australopithecine species, they were essentially bipedal apes: the social structure among these species would have been no more intense than we see in modern baboons. There is therefore no cogent reason why their level of self awareness would have been enhanced during the first 5 million years of the human family's existence (p.196).

Isn't it interesting that our direct ancestors were really nothing more than baboons that walked upright? You see this all relates back to the question of how animals think and despite protestations to the contrary, I honestly don't think cats, dogs or baboons experience the world in anything like the same way we do.

This one's dedicated to our ancestors, the upright apes. Without whom, we wouldn't be sat here today.