On Anne Atkins' thought for the day

I have conflicted feelings about BBC Radio 4’s Thought for the Day spot. It occupies a handful of minutes during the Today program and I hear it most days on the way to work.
Conflicted feelings, because part of me doesn’t see the point of having a dedicated spot in a current affairs program for religious apologists to tout their opinions, It’s not as if religion doesn’t have enough opportunity to belabour the myth of its own moral superiority. But on the other hand, it is sometimes a rich vein of material to mine for this blog.
Today was one of those times. . .
Anne Atkins, a fairly regular contributor decided to tackle the thorny old issue of the problem of evil. The platform for this was the distress of her son at unexpectedly losing a friend who had died suddenly. He found this inexplicable and was prompted, as would many of us in the circumstances, to ask “why him?”
Anne Atkins then went on to point out, quite reasonably, that many random unpleasant events happen to people all of the time, and that it is human nature to look to find reasons or ascribe blame for those events, when in fact there maybe no justification for doing so.
However she is not arguing that we should not ask “why me?” or “why now?” or “why them?” because some events truly are random, but because implicit in the question is “why has God done this?”
The question of why bad things happen to “good” people has troubled the religious mind for centuries, along with its corollary. But Atkins goes on to state this slightly differently.

Lottery winners don’t ask “why me?” yet this is just as much a random event.

Her conclusion is that we all have a sense of expectation that life is meant to be good, that love (from God) is the default position and that we all know deep down that there is a prescribed order in the world that is designed to nurture us.
However there is more than a little question begging here. What humans define as “good” at an individual level is anything that helps them meet the requirements of their lives. At a basic level this is shelter, food, sex, companionship and status. It is as true for us as it is for the simplest organism and when those needs are fulfilled we are not as stressed as when they are not.
Furthermore if left to their own devices, events are rarely on balance fortuitous for individuals. It is a truism that people “make their own luck” and this is partly because natural entropy will degrade any environment unless some work is put into maintaining it. If we have built a stable, balanced, comfortable life almost any random event that impinges on it is likely to be deleterious which is why we all want a bit of slack in the system; emotional and financial buffers to shield us from the disruption of outside events.
The lottery winner doesn’t ask “why me?” firstly because they know why, dumb luck! Secondly because it is not a threat to their well-being. The victim of disaster may well rant against the unfairness of it all and if they are of a religious bent, may look for reasons in their own lack of piety. But Anne Atkins cannot use this as an argument for God. Bad luck is not the counterpoint to a benevolent creation; it is the inevitable outcome of random events on a life seeking equilibrium.

More science please

The last episode of the excellent BBC program The Story of Science aired this week. The whole series has been a complete delight and left me even surer than ever (if that’s possible) that science is the best and most enthralling way possible of understanding the universe and our place in it.
Ever since the enlightenment, the scientific method has consistently succeeded in getting ever closer to explaining the phenomena we experience around us. It has provided sufficiently accurate models of matter, energy, space and time that we can build rockets, control them with computers and reach distant planets. It has provided explanations of the diversity of life and the information behind it to define our existence on earth and our relationship to every other organism. It allows us to manipulate the genetic code and create organisms suited to our needs. It gives us the means to communicate instantly and effortlessly across continents, with sound, pictures and the written word.
What all of this demonstrates is that science works. The evidence is all around us; everywhere and everyday.
It is all the more surprising then that so many people are anti-science or sceptical of its claims to usefulness. I fail to understand, particularly in the relatively science literate west, how for example, Homeopathy can be such a lucrative business, when its claims can be shown to be totally bogus, with no rational mechanism by which they could be otherwise.
Similarly,the level of belief in creationism found in the U.S, one of the most technologically innovative nations in the world is astounding. When you consider that the same physics that informs their nuclear power industry is the same physics that proves the earth to be 4.5 Billion years old, how do they reconcile a biblical creation with switching the lights on at night?
What was so good about The Story of Science and the Channel 4 program Genius of Britain(also worth watching) was the emphasis on how science is done, the assumptions it makes and the use of the scientific method to attempt to falsify those assumptions. It cast scientists as real people, with real questions to ask about the world, thus overturning the B-movie stereotypical scientist the media still like to portray.
We cannot have enough of this positive portrayal of science and scientists on our screens. My hope is that it will rejuvenate an interest in understanding the world scientifically and encourage more young people to study for science degrees at college.
Not least I hope it will persuade the general public that science is not just dogma, or opinion. It is simply the best method found so far for revealing the truth about the world.

Marie Stopes to advertise on T.V

Marie Stopes, a non-profit organisation offering sexual health counselling to women is today to screen an advertisement for its services on British T.V (Channel 4). Because the organisation is known for its unbiased and non-judgmental attitude toward abortion, predictably religious groups and the anti-abortion lobby are crying foul.
The advertisement itself does not mention abortion specifically, but asks the question “are you late” and offers the telephone number of the 24-hour helpline.
This to me seems a reasonable and innocuous advance in getting information to women, who may fear an unwanted pregnancy, in a timely manner. It will offer them pragmatic options and choices free from the guilt-laden rhetoric they may receive from family and friends and would definitely get from a religious organisation.
Some of the arguments coming out of the anti-abortion camp are bordering on ludicrous. In particular this one from Anthony Ozimic of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children

"[Marie Stopes'] huge multi-national revenue means it can afford TV advertising, which is hugely expensive. This creates an unfair playing field, as pro-life groups simply cannot afford any such advertising". source

This isn’t about relative airtime. His organisation does not give unbiased advice to young women in trouble. They are not a “competing service”, they are an ideological lobby and whether they can afford to advertise on T.V or not is irrelevant. It is not as though there is any lack of “pro-life” propaganda and misinformation spewing out of the churches, creating moral dilemmas where none need exist.
Let’s make no mistake. The choice to abort is not a trivial one and the psychological impact on women who have abortions is real. But, we live in a society that recognises a woman’s right to choose what happens to her body and they have the right to information that will help them make that choice in as rational a way as possible.

Craig Venter: Neither God nor Frankenstein

Dr Craig Venter (he of the human genome fame) has today announced that his institute has made a breakthrough in the creation of synthetic life
I won’t go into the science in detail as it is available elsewhere, but essentially what has been achieved is the insertion of an artificially synthesised bacterial chromosome into the cell of a different bacterium whose own chromosome had been removed.
In this instance the artificial chromosome was designed as a computer sequence mimicking that of Mycoplasma mycoides synthesised in vitro as short strands and “stitched” together by insertion into a yeast.
When the fully compiled chromosome was inserted into M. capricolum the resulting bacterium functioned and expressed the proteins of mycoides.
This is a brilliant result and proof of principle but it is not the creation of “synthetic life” in the way most of us would describe it.
Synthesising a DNA sequence is one thing, the chemistry is relatively straightforward, even if the techniques to achieve it are complex. However to function as life that DNA needs access to the complex array of organelles, ribosomes, transcription RNA and infrastructure of an already living cell. In practice this technique is doing little more than a naturally occuring bacteriophage does when it hijacks the machinary of a host cell.
This is important why? Because already the doomsayers are predicting runaway pathogens, the woo merchants are trotting out the “playing God” cliches and the press are making comparisons to Frankenstein.
Now, it’s not that this sort of technology is risk free. But the essence of what can be done with it is not new. We can already manipulate bacterial genomes to make unique species that will, for example, produce vaccines as a product of their metabolism. Which is exactly the sort of thing Dr Venter hopes to achieve with his technique. But we already have the controls and the precautionary principles in place for this. The source of the variation in the genome is largely irrelevant for the purpose of risk assessment.
The promise of the Venter’s achievement is that gene sequences will be able to be more specifically modified to allow bacterial metabolisms to be harnessed for hydrocarbon production, drugs or chemicals. But the idea that totally novel “Frankenstein” microbes will swamp the earth anytime soon is fantasy.
This whole project failed at the previous attempt purely because one gene was coded incorrectly, and the organism that has been produced is a replication of one already selected by evolution to function.
This is not therefore “synthetic life”, it is just another tool in the armoury of genetic engineering for us to employ, carefully, for our future benefit.

Draw Mohammed Day

Today is Draw Mohammed Day, in honour of which I’ve knocked up this image in MS Paint in order to prove I have no artistic skills whatsoever. It is also my Facebook profile picture for today only.
It is also to point out that regardless of what the followers of Islam believe, those of us who do not adhere to their particular brand of religious tomfoolery are not obliged to obey its rules.
I eat pork, beef and shrimp. I work on Saturdays and Sundays, all of which are against the rules of some stupid religion or another and I don’t expect to get death threats for doing so. So today along with hopefully thousands of others I am drawing Mohammed. They can’t get us all.

Why be an English atheist?

There is something a little frustrating about being an atheist in England. No one really cares! Not even the religious.
We have developed in this country a delightfully wishy-washy religious infrastructure centred mainly around established Anglicanism (more tea vicar?) and to a lesser extent a neutered Catholicism (“Do you believe in God, then Ted?”) that means you can pretty much insult religion anywhere within our borders without seriously offending anyone English.
This was brought home to me by a comment made on my last post, simultaneously published on my Facebook, where Adam Lee of Daylight Atheism said

Very cool indeed. But you Brits have always been much more level-headed when it comes to religion than us, so this only counts for half!

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Indeed from his U.S perspective where religion permeates every aspect of culture we must seem a haven of rationality second only to Scandinavia, and for sure no self declared American atheist is going to be President anytime soon.
So why bother to be a vocal, and active atheist in Britain at all?
Firstly, (in case anyone has noticed) religious apathy is not a British condition it is an English one. Take the concept of atheism to parts of Scotland or Ireland and you will get as much approbation as you would in the Bible obsessed Mid West of America. Secondly we are a country with a large and recent influx of Muslims and Islam is a religion with dubious credentials for tolerance (note this is not an anti immigration pitch nor a racist one, I’m cool with people of any ethnicity as my neighbour and I dislike Christianity just as much as I dislike Islam, Judaism, Hinduism and peanut butter, {and I hate peanut butter}). Thirdly, we are suckers for Americanism and quick to adopt U.S cultural norms no matter how facile. All of which makes expressing a U.K –centric atheist perspective worthwhile, regardless of how small or unconcerned my audience might be.
We might not have high profile religious wingnuts on T.V every night, we don’t suffer our politicians appealing to God to preserve our nation at every opportunity, we don’t have our neighbours commenting that we “weren’t in Church this Sabbath” and no-one bats an eyelid if we casually mention we don’t believe in God. But, we do have an increasing number of faith-based schools, we do have a creeping cultural relativism that excuses actions on religious grounds and we do have the spectre of fundamentalist Islam threatening our freedom of speech. So the time to point out that secularism, science and rationality has served our society well, that humanist values, fairness and inclusiveness are better than religious tribalism and prejudice and that pandering to irrational superstitious beliefs is a poor substitute for either of the above, is now.

Atheism the winner in U.K election

So the dust is beginning to settle on a tumultuous week of post election politics and we wake up this morning to a Conservative led coalition government incorporating the Liberal Democrats.
Actually I don’t want to say too much about the details of this as the media is already saturated with coverage, opinion and speculation. Except that I think this coalition is the most pragmatic response to a hung parliament given the current financial situation and the ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Afganistan.
Although the alternative, a broad left “progressive” coalition of Liberals, Labour and a ragtag of nationalists and independents may have more accurately reflected the social and political mood of the electorate it would have been too much a hostage to fortune and the minority parties to be a stable government.
I am much more interested in the new face and indeed the new faces of British politics set to emerge as a result of this election and Gordon Brown’s departure as Labour leader.
I have already mentioned that Nick Clegg is an openly atheist politician and I think his rational, pragmatic and refreshingly non-dogmatic approach to politics is a reflection of this. That a self declared atheist is now Deputy Prime Minister is a positive sign that secularism, rationality and critical thinking are getting the upper hand in Britain.
I’m not too bothered that since getting so much media attention Clegg has started referring to himself as “agnostic” rather than atheist, since all atheists are agnostic to some degree and now is not the time to totally alienate the theistic elements of the electorate.
David Cameron is a C of E Christian and has declared a belief in God. However his politics is not grounded in his religious beliefs and he is reported as saying,

"I am a Christian, I go to church, I believe in God, but I do not have a direct line”

which is frankly not a statement that suggests Christian ideology is at the top of his agenda. It gives me some hope that Clegg can talk him out of his plans to expand church affiliated schools, or at least remind him that such schools need a tight control on how they teach the curriculum.
So far so good then, but it could get better. The front runner in the contest to replace Gordon Brown as leader of the Labour Party is David Milliband who is also a self declared atheist. If he wins we will have a Deputy Prime Minister and a Leader of the Opposition firmly in the non-religious camp. Just what we need for clear thinking, rational and pragmatic governance with the hope that our pressing social issues will be addressed without the encumbrance of religious dogma and prejudice.