Police, firefighters called in after flat Earth debate turns heated

The fact that a domestic dispute turned a little ugly is, unfortunately, nothing new. Even the topic of the dispute is hardly worth thinking about, I mean, how many people in this modern age could still seriously believe that the Earth is flat? Certainly there will be some, as this story from Canada shows, but surely one must be more likely to win a multi-million dollar lottery, receive a surprise visit from the pope, be nominated for a Nobel Prize and get abducted by aliens, all in the same day, than actually meet a Flat Earther that is prepared to reveal their silly belief? Even though I recently read that, 'it was only in 2001 that Charles K. Johnson, vociferous president of the International Flat Earth Society, died in Lancaster, California', belief in a flat Earth must surely be extremely rare. But is it? Has anyone done a survey, and would people answer honestly?

After the obligatory smirks and shaking of the head in disbelief, it got me thinking. If you seriously hold some belief, and you're astute enough to realise that pretty much the rest of the world, and certainly your friends and local community, would likely view that belief as a silly belief and would see you as barking mad if you revealed your acceptance of it, then wouldn't you keep it to yourself? I've been repeatedly surprised over the years when people that I thought as relatively intelligent and knowledgeable unexpectedly revealed that they held some silly belief. But since on such occasions I would typically ask in a stunned voice, 'You believe what? ... Seriously?', then perhaps that's why most people keep their silly beliefs hidden from skeptics like me.

I've worked with people for years whom it was later revealed were seriously religious, some holding Bible discussions in their lunch hour, even some fundamentalists believing in that 6 day creation crap. I naturally never made a secret of my atheism and love of scientific explanations, and yet never did they even hint that they preferred religious answers. I've discovered that I had relations that believed in the superiority of the likes of homeopathy and colour therapy over modern medicine. I have other relations and acquaintances that believe the moon landing was a hoax, that aliens built the pyramids, and that dark powers are trying to kill us with deadly vaccines and chemtrails. Others visit psychics for advice or think that their horoscopes reveal the future. But the thing is that almost all these people hid their wacky beliefs from me. Mostly I only ever learnt of them when some other person told me about them, 'You know they're religious — right?' Only rarely, and often out of frustration, did they unintentionally reveal their belief during a discussion, and sometimes they mentioned their belief because they thought that I believed as they did. And even when we both came to realise that we disagreed about gods or the moon landing or whatever, beyond revealing their opposition, they almost always refused to discuss the topic further. Even though I'm no expert, I suspect that they realised that I still knew more about their belief than they did and further discussion would only embarrass them by revealing their ignorance. I'm always been amazed that some people can believe something so completely and yet not be interested in the slightest in actually being able to support their belief, or overly concerned that they can't. Many would rather hurl insults, destroy relationships and make enemies than consider having a serious conversation or reading a book on the subject. As long as they believe, that seems to be all that matters, discussion is superfluous, and any arguments to the contrary are irrelevant and can be ignored. It reminds me again of a woman I encountered awhile back, who asked me about my 'Born Again Atheist' button. After I very briefly explained why I was an atheist, she confidently said,

'There's nothing in the world, nothing that anyone could say or do, nothing whatsoever, that could ever convince me — Ever! — that God isn't real.'

And yet I know that people pushing nearly all those silly beliefs do exist in my community. We just don't see them. The only species I haven't encountered is a Flat Earther. Five years ago I attended a local meeting where believers in visiting aliens spoke absolute nonsense for an hour or so. Around the same time a group of Catholics with placards performed a weekly protest outside the local hospital against abortion. There was a group of local ghost hunters advertising their services. There also used to be a shop for witches called 'Wytch Haven', but thankfully, even that's closed down. These people with their silly beliefs aren't obvious anymore, but they're not all dead, they're still out there somewhere, just unseen. They could be my neighbours, my colleagues, my relations. Most of these people are not completely stupid, they can gauge how society in general feels about their particular belief, and if they feel that many would laugh at them or argue with them or insult them, then they remain in the shadows, only revealing themselves to fellow believers. Coming from the opposite direction, I know three atheists that keep their disbelief hidden from family and friends and only talk about atheism with me.

The only obvious silly belief that can be seen is religion, but even signs of that are waning as churches close and more and more people are seen visiting their local café rather than their local church on Sunday. Of course that doesn't mean that religiosity is fading as fast as church attendance, since many believers simply keep their faith to themselves while leading, for all intents and purposes, secular lives. It used to be said that many believers were Christians on Sunday and atheists for the rest of the week, but now they pretty much live as atheists everyday of the week. Only the feeling of guilt as they combine recreational sex and contraception, or the occasional private prayer as they buy their Lotto ticket or watch their favourite sports team play exposes their faith, but of course we don't get to witness that.

As science learns more and more about life and the universe, I used to believe that like me others would also be taking advantage of this huge influx of knowledge and readily ditching silly beliefs that Bronze Age goat herders dreamt up, along with thousand year old silly beliefs that were common in the Dark Ages, and even using reason and logic to dismiss clear nonsense that has arisen in more recent times. But clearly I was wrong. On a regular and depressing basis I'm still meeting or hearing of people that embrace beliefs that go against everything we know about how the universe works and/or what history reveals. And of course because I'm open about my skepticism of all these silly beliefs, I'll only get to experience a minute fraction of all the nutters that are out there. They know to keep quiet around me, and not to ask if I want to say grace before a meal, inquire if I can recommend a good homeopath or ask me if I might know how to guard against alien probes.

All I can say is that, based on all the other fruitcakes in my community, I suspect that there will be some Flat Earthers among them. Why wouldn't there be? Every time I hear a silly belief and think that surely no one, in this day and age, believes that anymore, I'm soon proven wrong. It's almost as if half the population has been transported through time from the superstitious, ignorant Middle Ages and plonked in the 21st century, given a brief course in modern language, culture and on how to use Facebook, and then told to go forth and mingle. A smartphone in their pocket and a Bible in their bag.

And that reminds me. I was chatting with an acquaintance a couple of weeks ago who coincidentally said he couldn't understand how some people in the last century or two continued to believe in a flat Earth. But being a lapsed Christian, he should have known, since the Bible clearly implies in several places that the Earth is flat. Of course most churches don't push this argument any more, they let it fade into oblivion, and thus most Christians happily (but wrongly) assume that the Bible agrees with scientific knowledge about the shape of the Earth. It's no mystery why many people in the past believed the world was flat, since it looks flat, and the Bible, God's word, told them it was flat. So when confronted with clear evidence that it's not flat, what's a good Christian to do? If they accept, and it's difficult not to, that the Bible was wrong, and God was wrong, then it's not a big step before they're wondering what else in the Bible might be wrong? Did that snake really talk to Eve? Hell, was Eve even real? The only other option is to dig your heals in and become a literalist or fundamentalist, and assert that everything that is stated in the Bible, no matter how absurd or ridiculous it appears, is literally true. The Earth is flat and rests on pillars, the snake did talk, and the donkey, God made the world and all life in six days, then flooded it in the time of Noah, God raped a virgin called Mary, then later had their son tortured and executed to show how much he loved us all. It's all ludicrous and vile, and contradicts everything we've learnt from other sources, but if you're a truly devout Christian, apparently it's all true.

So I wonder how many fundamentalist Christians would still argue that the Earth is flat? And unfortunately there's still plenty of those in my community. One lot even have their own school so they can avoid reality and its annoying facts. They tend to focus on arguing that the world is only a few thousand years old, that evolution is a lie and humanity came from Adam and Eve, that man lived with the dinosaurs, and that God sees homosexuals as an abomination. Of course it's near impossible to get a fundamentalist to discuss these things with an atheist. The closest I've heard personally is when an acquaintance revealed his fundamentalist status by denying the reality of plate tectonics. He said God has made the continents go up and down, but never sideways. Typical of such conversations, others in the group then quickly changed the subject away from religion versus science. But it leads me to suspect that quite a few fundamentalist Christians (and Jews and Muslims) might well secretly believe in a flat Earth. It's no more ridiculous than the other things they believe.

So, might one of my neighbours be a nutter? As I've said, I've worked and socialised with several people that, unbeknown to me, were closet nutters, so clearly many people choose to hide their dodgy beliefs to avoid potential ridicule. If my skeptical radar often can't detect hidden silly beliefs in the people I spend time with, it's quite clear that neighbours that I have nothing to do with might be harbouring a veritable Aladdin's Cave of nonsense. Some will believe in invisible sky fairies, some may believe in ghosts, some in healing crystals and others that they're in telepathic communication with aliens in another galaxy. One could even be a Flat Earther. I might be living next door to an ignorant medieval peasant and not even know it.

Posted by the 'Silly Beliefs' Team, 27 Jun, 2016 ~ Add a Comment    Send to a Friend

Comments:

1. Comment by Jonathon, 29 Jun, 2016

   Have you tried some of the ideas from philosopher Peter Boghossian who founded the Street Epistemology movement?
   The idea is to engage with people with silly beliefs in an equal manner that avoids, or tries to avoid a deadlock. Yet it may lead to your interlocutor (nutty belief holder) starting to think about the epistemological basis of ia's (his/her) belief.
   I have studied it in detail and I like some of the ideas ...but am yet to apply it properly...

2. Comment by the 'Silly Beliefs' Team, 29 Jun, 2016

   Hi Jonathon. I have read Peter Boghossian's book, 'A Manual for Creating Atheists', and I too like some of his ideas, and find that I already use some of them. However, my 'problem' is not that I can't think of ways to make someone question the claims they're making, it's to even get that conversation started.

   Contrary to the fact that on this website I talk about silly beliefs, invisible sky fairies and nutters, when I chat to someone in real life about their belief in gods, aliens or astrology, I don't use those terms. People that know me would, I think, describe me as friendly, polite, reserved and not at all argumentative. But the thing is that those that know I have a skeptical view usually choose to hide their 'silly belief' from me, or if I know about it, refuse to discuss it with me. A Muslim I worked with once asked me, completely out of the blue, 'So you don't believe God exists, is that right?' I replied, Yes, but there were no follow up questions, he simply walked away, never to raise the topic again. And unlike annoying evangelists, I don't pester people about their beliefs. I don't think people avoid talking to me about their beliefs because they think I'll angrily abuse them or ridicule them, they avoid any discussion because they know or suspect that I'm better informed than they are. Perhaps they've heard me explain away some other silly belief, or on seeing my Atheist button realise that only someone serious about atheism would wear one. They'd likely be happy to convert me to their belief, but are not at all interested in considering whether their belief is actually true. They know it's true, so why waste time. Even door-knocking evangelists who stumble upon me and are initially keen to convert an atheist are soon making excuses to flee the scene. I've mentioned the following conversation before, but I'll repeat it since I find it so revealing regarding the unwillingness of many people to examine their beliefs once they realise others don't also hold them.

   To my sincere and polite queries about god, one of two female Christian evangelists replied, 'Well, we'd be happy to answer your questions, but we can see you're busy'. I said, 'No, I'm not busy. Explain away'. They responded, 'No, no, we don't want to hold you up, we'll show you the evidence some other time'. I replied, 'No, I've got nothing else on. Please show me your evidence'. To which they replied, 'Look it's obvious that you don't want to listen, so we'll just go'. And I said, 'Do you actually have any answers or evidence? Why won't you at least try and convince me that you're right?' Their answer: 'Well, we'll be off then, our friends will be worried where we got to'. With that they turned and left.

   If someone absolutely believes that vaccines or chemtrails are harming us, that aliens are abducting us, or that I need to find God for my salvation, then why aren't they prepared to tell me about their conviction? I'm more than happy talking about these topics, and defending my views, so I can only conclude that a believer's reluctance to do likewise is because they are too afraid to expose their silly belief to scrutiny. They believe in it, and can confuse the ignorant, but they know that they don't know enough to defend it against an informed opponent. So whether it's gods, astrology, psychics or homeopathy, it's extremely difficult to get in a few killer questions or arguments if believers won't talk or even reveal that they believe in the first place.

3. Comment by H, 29 Jun, 2016

   What was that saying that Vicki had? "You can't rationalise someone out of a belief that they never rationalised themselves into in the beginning." something like that

4. Comment by the 'Silly Beliefs' Team, 29 Jun, 2016

   Yes, I agree. It's not just a matter of presenting a rational argument, since if you can't change their mindset first, get them to understand what constitutes evidence and a rational argument, then your argument might as well be written in an alien language. I believe Christopher Hitchens made a similar point to yours, 'what can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence'. But again, my gripe is chiefly that I can't even get believers to spout nonsense to me so that I can even try and respond. My reputation for ghost busting precedes me it seems. Like a priest with his dog collar, I'm guessing my 'Born Again Atheist' button gives me away. On the bright side, it means not many idiots engage me in conversation.

Colson: 'I'm Agent Phil Colson with the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division.'
Pepper: 'That's quite a mouthful.'
Colson: 'I know. We're working on it.'

While SHIELD is fictional, NZARH is not. And like SHIELD, giving the full name usually doesn't help either. In my experience, the typical reply is, 'So what do they do?' After an explanation about their disbelief in gods and their belief that the natural world is all there is, that they push to keep religion out of schools and government, and that they reject any talk of the supernatural, the response normally is: 'So ... they're atheists then?'

We believe we'd be correct in answering, Yes. If you do a Google search with the keywords 'NZ' and 'atheist', the first link that pops up is 'New Zealand Association of Rationalists and Humanists', so clearly Google's search algorithms believe that it is highly likely that the NZARH is just a front for NZ atheists. When I mentioned the organisation to a friend in the US recently, I described it as the NZ equivalent of 'American Atheists', but without the catchy, and forthright, name. On their website it states that the NZARH 'is a not-for-profit organisation that exists to serve the interests of the non-religious; those who do not have a belief in gods or the supernatural'. Hmm ... atheists then.

So what's with the name then, why do a group of atheists form a group called rationalists and humanists?

If you know a little about the long history of atheism then you'll know that the religious majority have pretty much always and everywhere vilified and reviled anyone that admitted to being an atheist. At times such an admission could mean imprisonment or death. Philosopher A. C. Grayling writes that, 'By the period of the church's greatest temporal power and influence, the late Middle Ages ... it was no longer necessary to try persuading people about Christianity: it had become a capital crime not to believe it'. While thankfully it's no longer unlawful not to believe in sky fairies, at least in Western countries, in the last couple of centuries most atheists have remained fearful of the Church and society have still been reluctant to call themselves atheists, and so have deliberately flown under the radar by using various euphemisms, such as rationalist, freethinker, humanist, secularist, irreligionist, bright, skeptic, agnostic, materialist, naturalist, anti-theist, realist, pagan, heathen, infidel, nonbeliever etc. All these are code-words recognised by other closet atheists to essentially mean someone whose worldview has no need of gods. Of course some rationalists will argue that there are important differences between them and, say, humanists, hence the reason we have an 'Association of Rationalists and Humanists', and freethinkers, naturalists etc will likewise raise perceived differences in how they each view the world. But if there had been no religious persecution of atheists throughout much of history, we would argue that none of these euphemisms would have been invented, atheists would have simply stuck with the name that has been around since antiquity — atheist.

However, in the 21st century there has been a true flowering of support for atheism. Worldwide, atheism is on the increase, with more and more people embracing atheism, walking away from religion, ticking 'None' in the census, even in the religious USA, and especially among young people. The future is atheism. Yay! One reason is the flood of widely popular books promoting atheism and exposing religion, such as 'The God Delusion' by Richard Dawkins, 'God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything' by Christopher Hitchens, 'The End of Faith: Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason' by Sam Harris, 'God: The Failed Hypothesis: How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist' by Victor J. Stenger, and 'Breaking The Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomena' by Daniel C. Dennett.

And they're just the bestsellers, there are many, many more excellent books available (See here). Another reason is the enmity towards religion brought about by the Sep 11, 2001 terror attacks carried out by radical Muslims, plus the widespread sexual abuse of children by priests, which encouraged many to read those books on atheism. Then of course there is the easy access to information on the Internet that debunks religion, plus a greater exposure to atheists as positive role models in mainstream movies, TV shows and books.

So it's now cool to be an atheist. Or whatever the current word for 'cool' is.

But if your group is advertised as a bunch of rationalists and humanists then you're not taking full advantage of the atheism wave. And for the near future the largest demographic of atheists is going to be the youth, a group who are totally familiar with the term atheist but for whom the terms rationalist and humanist are as meaningless as fob-watch and omnibus.

So, if the organisation is going to be spiffed up for the 21st century, what are the name choices that members may or may not get to vote on? Well, there is Keep the existing name, Suggest a new name, or consider one of the following:

• Reason New Zealand
• Secular New Zealand
• Rational New Zealand
• Enlighten New Zealand
• Atheism New Zealand

It's not just that 'Atheism New Zealand' is the only name in that list that actually imparts information and frankly reveals the core stance of the group, it's far superior because the other names are, when you think about them, not very clear at all, and if anything, might even be seen as mocking of religious believers. What do we mean by that? Well, let's look at how my dictionary defines the main term in each suggested name:

Reason New Zealand

'Reason: The capacity for logical, rational, and analytic thought; intelligence. Good judgment; sound sense.'

Rational New Zealand

'Rational: Of sound mind; sane. Consistent with or based on reason; logical.'

Secular New Zealand

'Secular: Worldly rather than spiritual. Not specifically relating to religion or to a religious body.'

Enlighten New Zealand

'Enlighten: To give spiritual or intellectual insight to. To give information to; inform or instruct.'

When you think about those aforementioned names, a group of skeptics could call themselves 'Reason New Zealand', an anti-fluoride group could label themselves 'Rational New Zealand', a Christian/Muslim coalition against religion in schools could tag themselves 'Secular New Zealand', and even the Catholic Church could brand themselves 'Enlighten New Zealand'. All because the names are vague and don't express a concise objective or stance. If these names could legitimately be used by such disparate groups, then clearly the names fail as effective names.

Atheism New Zealand

'Atheism: Disbelief in or denial of the existence of God or gods.'

So, do we think that the atheism name will carry the day with the NZARH? I'm not holding my breath. On their website, the 'New Zealand Association of Rationalists and Humanists' accepts that 'For many the two terms that identify our Association may need explanation', and they agree that, 'the term atheist conveys meaning with more people'. However, they argue that atheism, 'is only stating a lack of a belief [whereas] Our members do believe in something'. The clear implication being that atheists don't believe in something, something beyond their lack of belief in gods. I'm sorry, but that's like saying adults with a lack of belief in Santa Claus don't believe in anything either. It's a silly argument that many religious people have thrown at me as an atheist, so it's a little disappointing to see it on a website that exists to support atheists. Door-knocking evangelists often ask me, 'So if you're an atheist, if you lack a belief in God, if you think that nothing out there created us, then that must mean you believe in nothing?' Nothing, could be further from the truth. Yes, atheism at its most basic merely means a lack of belief in gods, but many atheists don't leave it there, and certainly not most atheists that would bother joining such an organisation. So while all atheists will say that they have no belief that gods exist, because they see no evidence for gods or need for gods, atheists that are confident and informed will also say that they have a belief that there are no gods. So there's something right there that we believe in, that gods don’t exist. We're not saying we can prove there are no gods, anymore than we (or Christians) can prove there are no leprechauns, but until we see evidence to the contrary, we believe it’s reasonable to say that neither gods nor leprechauns exist. We don’t have absolute knowledge or certainty that gods or leprechauns don’t exist, but our confidence level is sufficiently high that we’re prepared to stop making wishy-washy excuses and just say outright that neither gods nor leprechauns exist. Furthermore, atheists, having dismissed gods and their enforced morality codes, must look elsewhere for information about the universe and how we should live, and usually turn to scientists, historians and philosophers, and so end up believing in quite a lot actually, rather than nothing.

The reality is the giving up a belief usually involves gaining more knowledge, not emptying out your thoughts until nothing is left. If by the use of evidence and cogent arguments you come to develop a lack of belief in gods and tooth fairies, it's likely that you now understand far more, and believe in a lot more about the universe and life than you did when you believed in gods and tooth fairies. As you add a lack of belief in psychics, ghosts, ESP, healing crystals, homeopathy, astrology, witchcraft etc, your mind doesn't slowly empty out, since each dismissed belief, usually a flimsy thing in itself, is replaced by a library of knowledge and robust facts, and you come to believe in the evidence that dismissed those things. It's not 'nothing' that holds every lack of belief in check, but a wealth of reason, logic and evidence.

Just the other day, while waiting for takeaways, I was chatting to a guy who commented on my
'Born Again Atheist' badge, and unable to counter my dismissal of religion, he got a little annoyed and said, 'You seem to know a lot about the Bible for someone that claims to be an atheist?' I replied, 'It's because I know a lot about the Bible that I am an atheist!'

He was clearly amazed, and frustrated, that an atheist could go beyond simply stating a lack of a belief, that an atheist actually believed in something, and worse still, actually knew a lot about that something (well, maybe not a lot, but certainly far more than he did). But he was a Christian, and since most dismiss science while knowing almost nothing about it, he clearly believed that atheists do the same with religion. Beyond my stated lack of belief, the religious expect me to be ignorant about my disbelief and unable to defend it, and that doesn't surprise me anymore. But I find it frustrating that the NZARH are also a little dismissive of atheists, suggesting that their members who are rationalists and humanists have actually thought not just about their disbelief, but what it means to the world and their life, whereas those lowly atheists likely came to their disbelief with little or no thought, probably just on a whim, and then never thought anything more about it. Well, maybe I'm an anomaly, but I'm an atheist, as are many of my friends, and we all 'do believe in something', something beyond a simple lack of belief.

Having explained what the terms rationalist and humanist mean in their name, the website then notes that, 'Our members may identify themselves as being an atheist, agnostic, freethinker, heathen, infidel, bright, or choose not to associate themselves with any of these labels'.

But again, if the terms rationalist and humanist needed explaining, why don't all those terms need explaining too? If atheist is different, and inferior, to rationalist, how do all those other terms differ in meaning? This is again just highlighting the numerous euphemisms that timid atheists hide behind. And some even 'choose not to associate themselves with any of these labels', apparently for fear that the latent atheism behind the label might be publicly revealed.

The confusion created by all these labels that effectively mean the same thing is bad enough, and it only gets worse when you reject all names and want to be anonymous. When people talking or writing about atheism choose to use their preferred term for atheist rather than simply say 'atheist', the potential for confusion is high, since one never knows how the audience will interpret the word that they've decided will mean atheist. When people elect to use lesser known words to stand in for well-known words, then meaning can be lost. For example, Michael Ruse is no ignorant hillbilly, he's a philosopher of science who currently teaches at Florida State University, and yet in his book, 'Atheism: What Everyone Needs to Know', he wrote:

'Let's distinguish three senses in which we might use words. First up is "equivocal," where the meanings are quite different. Compare "John is a naturalist," meaning John doesn't believe in miracles, with "Mary is a naturalist," meaning Mary is a nudist. Not the same thing at all!'

Even the first example that Ruse uses is a little misleading: '"John is a naturalist," meaning John doesn't believe in miracles'. He uses naturalist to mean atheist, and while some atheists call themselves naturalists because they only believe in a natural world and not a supernatural one, my dictionary makes no clear connection between naturalists and atheists. However, it does also say that a naturalist is, 'One who believes in and follows the tenets of naturalism'. So, on looking up naturalism, it's revealed that naturalism also features in both philosophy and theology:

Naturalism:
Philosophy. The system of thought holding that all phenomena can be explained in terms of natural causes and laws without attributing moral, spiritual, or supernatural significance to them.
Theology. The doctrine that all religious truths are derived from nature and natural causes and not from revelation.

'Naturalism is the belief that nature is all that exists, and that all things supernatural (including gods, spirits, souls and non-natural values) therefore do not exist. It is often called Metaphysical Naturalism or Philosophical Naturalism or Ontological Naturalism to distinguish it from Methodological Naturalism.'

My reason for quoting all that is to show that shying away from the term atheist and adopting some lesser known term, such as naturalist, can all get very confusing and very complicated very fast, and it drags us away from the purpose our name should serve. And that is to clearly identify us and our stance to the widest audience possible. A scientist, philosopher or informed atheist may know of the added meaning behind terms like naturalist or materialist, but the general public won't. And this is what often happens when some group decides to relabel themselves in an attempt to change public perception, but uses a term that only they are familiar with — meaning the public is either totally ignorant of what it means or is misled by what they think it means.

Look at the various labels that closet atheists give themselves, such as rationalists, humanists, agnostics, freethinkers etc. Most do so because they feel that the word atheist has a really negative rep, that our religiously informed society views atheists as everything from arrogant and angry to immoral and downright evil. and so to avoid potential conflict they don a disguise, adopting a new name which lets them mingle unnoticed in polite society, while still expressing a name that is somehow a little different. And if that cunning ploy works for them, it's only because they have misled people. It's no different from Granny who has an abiding hatred of homosexuals but still loves her openly gay grandson, solely because she doesn't understand what the word gay means when used by homosexuals.

There is no reason that anyone who feels some animosity towards atheists shouldn't feel the same animosity towards rationalists, humanists, freethinkers, agnostics etc., all nonbelievers who reject the same gods and divine moral codes as do atheists. Whatever thoughts people have regarding atheists should apply to the rest as well. And if that's not happening, and clearly it's not, if atheists are treated differently, ie worse, then the only explanation is that by the use of those other labels the public fails to grasp that they're still dealing with people who don't believe in gods, ie atheists. These people remain on better terms with their religious family, friends and colleagues only by deceiving them. They're accepted because no one understands that they're really atheists. They're living a lie, where being accepted is more important than being honest.

We'd be the first to agree that the religious have a completely screwed up view of atheism, and we need to start explaining what it really entails. So why don't we all simply explain atheism, rather that splintering off under different labels, with everyone explaining their own label? The result will be the same, although it will waste a lot of time, because every alternative label explanation will, or at least should, end up having to explain atheism. When asked what makes Rationalists, Humanists and Freethinkers different to Christians, Jews or Muslims, the answer in every case will be that none of the former have a belief in gods, ie it's atheism that informs their worldview. So all these groups, if they're honest, will eventually end up where atheists start from, explaining atheism. And if you're in one of these alternative groups and you're not being asked about atheism, if you're not being compared to atheists, then you're lying to your audience. Just as the public are very familiar with the term nudist, but not naturist, they are also familiar with the term atheist, but not so much naturalist, rationalist, freethinker etc, or that these terms can all be used by the reluctant atheist to stand in for the scary A word. So let's be honest, let's make it simple, let's get rid of all the confusing labels and unite under our core belief, or should that be disbelief, and use our name to inform the public, not to hide from them.

Popular culture, movies and books these days clearly identify non-believers in gods and the supernatural as atheists, not as any of these other labels. Love it or hate it, the general public knows what atheist means, unlike the many other labels atheists have, understandably, hidden behind over the years. In his book, 'Fighting God: An Atheist Manifesto for a Religious World', David Silverman, the president of American Atheists, argued that, 'while more than eighty percent of Americans essentially know what an atheist is, less than half of Americans know what agnostic means, less than 30 percent understand what it means to be secular, and very few Americans know what Humanists and freethinkers are'. We doubt that Kiwis would be much different.

Outside those people that don't have a problem with nudity and do have a problem with gods, would your neighbour, colleague or teenager know what the terms 'naturist' or 'freethinker' meant? I suspect most wouldn't, but ask what nudism or atheism involved and few people couldn't answer correctly — public nudity and no gods. That's why we prefer the term atheist over all the other euphemisms that many atheists choose to hide behind. When you say you're an atheist everyone immediately knows what you mean. Some may not like what they hear, but what's the alternative, you lie to them?

If you're an atheist, but are afraid or reluctant to identify yourself as such, and you choose to fudge the issue by calling yourself a rationalist, humanist, freethinker, agnostic or whatever, then you're lying about what you truly think, hiding your true views so that certain people — Christians most likely — will think you're something you're not. Why is it important to you that Christians don't realise that you have no belief in their God, or any god? Christians want us to be ashamed of our atheism so that we'll shut up and stop exposing their stories as fairy tales. Why do the religious get to go around openly flaunting their belief while atheists are expected to deny our disbelief, hiding behind confusing labels that reveal our atheism only to other atheists? What's next, secret handshakes?

This is about far more than what the NZARH decide concerning their name, since the majority of atheists will never join any atheist organisation, no matter what its name. As they say, getting atheists together is like herding cats. It's about people that have no belief in gods or the supernatural — atheists — finally gaining the courage to announce their conviction to the world and proudly adopting the one name that clearly reveals their disbelief — atheist. Never in history has there been a better time to promote atheism, never has there been so much evidence arguing for atheism, nor so much high profile support, so rather than remain sidelined behind vague labels, careful not to offend the religious, we should be pushing our advantage and proudly stating, I am an atheist. Yes, I use reason and rational thought, I support secularism, I seek enlightenment using philosophical naturalism, but, first and foremost, I am an atheist. It's my atheism that allows me to use reason and promote secularism and enlightenment without fear of divine retribution. It's my atheism that convinces me of the need for a humanistic philosophy to inform my ethics. It's my atheism that brings me to argue for contraception, sexual equality, abortion and euthanasia. It's my atheism that drives my support of science in understanding the world, rather than blindly accepting the answers in holy books. No matter what secondary labels I might attach to my worldview, it's my atheism that informs them all. It's that one core belief — that there are no gods to obey or seek answers from — that makes me the person I am today. So, no matter what fuzzy label you might prefer to express your disbelief to others, atheism is still the one thing that unites us all, and the only name that most people will understand. Maybe it's time we all accepted that, and stepped proudly out of the closet.

So, be it in their books, documentaries on religion, on the Internet, in their sermons or knocking at your door, the silly god believers truly get their prayer beads and turbans in a knot talking about atheists, and only atheists. Never are they heard railing about the likes of rationalists, humanists or freethinkers. Clearly it's the growth of atheism that threatens them, that scares them, that keeps them awake at night. It's widespread public atheism that's bringing the closure of church after church around NZ, and never before in history has their hold on the minds of the masses been so tenuous, and dropping. The religious don't fear the wrath of God as much as they fear the relentless rise of atheism, it's their weakness, and for that reason alone, everyone that lacks a belief in gods needs to unite under the atheism banner. Since we know it's the one name that they'd like to hear less of, it's thus the one name we should all choose to express our disbelief.

Posted by the 'Silly Beliefs' Team, 20 Jun, 2016 ~ Add a Comment    Send to a Friend

Comments:

1. Comment by Des, 22 Jun, 2016

   Kia ora

   I don't understand your obsession with the term "atheist". It is actually an in-group's word for an out-group. It is not our word for us, it is their word for us. The terms you dislike — Freetthinker, Rationalist, Humanist, Bright — were at least chosen for us by us.

   The word "atheist" merely says what someone does not believe and little or nothing about what they actually do believe. As A C Grayling puts it: ".. atheism is to theism as not collecting stamps is to stamp-collecting. Not collecting stamps is not a hobby. It says nothing about the non-stamp-collector's other hobbies or interests. It denotes only the open-ended and negative state of not-collecting-stamps." (A C Grayling The God Argument: The Case Against Religion and for Humanism)

   But the worst aspect of your article is your conviction that Rationalists, Humanists and others have chosen these labels to hide in the closet. This is both ignorant and arrogant. It is a silly belief.

2. Comment by the 'Silly Beliefs' Team, 23 Jun, 2016

   Hola Des. We're not obsessed with the term atheist, we merely see it as the one and only term that the majority of the public recognise as meaning lacking a belief in gods. In our view it simply makes good sense to use the term that is widely known. It's the word used in movies, books and in public conversation. Name one popular movie or book where a character's disbelief in religion was revealed by someone using the word Bright, Rationalist or Freethinker. I can name hundreds of non-fiction books where atheist or atheism is in the title or is the clear subject of the book, and yet I can't think of one book that uses the term Bright, Rationalist or Freethinker in place of atheist. Then we have magazine, newspaper and Internet articles that almost all use the term atheist and atheism to stand in for people that have no belief in gods. Atheist, like it or not, is the one and only term that is universally understood. For example, to rebrand ourselves as Brights, the latest suggested name change, only creates utter confusion or outright animosity, and for that to be resolved means wasting time explaining the name and/or apologising for the name. And of course to fully explain the worldview behind the Bright label requires one to understand atheism, and if it's atheism that's feared, a fear of people that lack a belief in gods and that refuse to submit to divine laws, then we're right back where we started, making a link with atheists, at a place that we apparently hoped to avoid by calling ourselves Brights.

   Also, atheist is not really 'their word for us'. And by 'their word', we assume you mean Christians. Atheist, meaning 'without a belief in gods', was a term invented by the ancient Greeks, before the rise of Christianity, and atheist went on to be used as a term to label early Christians, describing anyone that didn't believe in the pagan gods of the Roman Empire. So the first Christians were atheists! When the Christians gained power a few hundred years later they simply stole the label, as they also stole pagan festivals and relabelled them, like Christmas and Easter, and said that atheists were now anyone that didn't believe in their version of god. Atheist is not a Christian term, it's from ancient Greek, like atom, democracy and ethics, and it's high time it was wrestled off the Church and returned to it origins, to be used in the philosophical and scientific debate over the existence of gods.

   You say that the terms we 'dislike — Freetthinker, Rationalist, Humanist, Bright — were at least chosen for us by us'. No, they we're chosen by us, they were chosen by a very small minority of atheists living in different times that weren't comfortable with the term atheist and couldn't reach a consensus on what name they should use, hence the reason we have the likes of rationalist, freethinker, humanist, secularist, irreligionist, bright, skeptic, agnostic, materialist, naturalist, antitheist, realist, truth seeker, pagan, heathen, infidel, unbeliever, nonbeliever, disbeliever, pyrrhonist, lapsed believer etc. The only new term that might have been chosen by us is Bright, but even then not a single atheist got to vote on it. Every name has arisen over the years when a handful of atheists have, for whatever reason, wished to distance themselves from the term atheist, and Bright is the perfect example since we all saw the fight to try and get it accepted. Nearly every argument revolved around the negativity that people felt was associated with the term atheist, that atheists were seen to be arrogant, angry, immoral and generally feared by all decent church-goers. It was agreed that Brights would be just as atheistic in outlook as so-called atheists, the lack of belief in gods wouldn't change, just the name that atheists go by. It's a bit like the Catholic Church changing a priest's name from Mr Patrick to Father Patrick to make him more child friendly. Of course the Bright attempt to give atheism a facelift was just a PR exercise, since the only thing that was to change was the name, no atheists were sent on anger management courses, none of our arguments were banned from use to give Christians some relief, and none of us were told to stop giggling when someone invoked God as an explanation. In short, we would be seen as just as arrogant, angry and immoral as ever, but on the bright side, people might not realise that we were atheists. But of course choosing a name that appeared to insult Christians meant it was destined for failure, and if it had succeeded, it would have only affirmed that atheists are indeed arrogant. And fail it did, not that we got a say in the matter, and for every atheist that joins an atheist organisation like the NZARH, there will be thousands that never join, meaning the great majority of atheists never get to choose the name they prefer. And even the minority that are members can't reach a consensus, hence the note on their website that says, 'Our members may identify themselves as being an atheist, agnostic, freethinker, heathen, infidel, bright, or choose not to associate themselves with any of these labels'. If our name was 'chosen for us by us' then there would only be one accepted name, worldwide. It's estimated that there are presently some 44,000 different Christian denominations, and while there are a lot more Christians than atheists, it seems that atheists also have the problem of splintering under different names, each believing that theirs best represents the movement as a whole.

   I agree with you, and Grayling, that it would be silly to introduce yourself as a non-stamp collector, or to form a group of non-stamp collectors. Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson has also made a similar argument to that of Grayling: 'It's odd that the word atheist even exists. I don't play golf. Is there a word for non-golf players? Do non-golf players gather and strategize? Do non-skiers have a word and come together and talk about the fact that they don't ski? I don't — I can't do that. I can't gather around and talk about how much everybody in the room doesn't believe in God'. However we don't think it's odd at all that the word atheist exists, and has remained in use for over 2,000 years. In fact we think it would be odd if the word atheist didn't exist.

   Where did the world come from, how did life arise, what happens when we die, how should we behave towards others, these are some the biggest questions anyone can ask, and people have been asking them for millennia. And basically there have been two responses, one camp, made up of the majority, positing creation and control by supernatural forces, and the opposing camp, arguing that natural forces are responsible, and that belief in gods isn't necessary. Wouldn't it be totally weird if the supernatural argument and those that promoted it were given a name, eg religious and theist, and yet those with the opposing argument weren't given a name to tell them apart, such as nonreligious and atheist? Surely to aid communication it makes good sense to label both camps, with one word clearly identifying the stance you're backing? There is no word for non-golf players or non-stamp-collectors because no one gives a damn, because neither golf players and stamp-collectors nor those that don't play or collect interact or care what the other is doing. At no time in history have avid stamp collectors or keen golfers made it illegal, and at times punishable by death, not to be a stamp collector or golfer. Organisations of stamp collectors and golfers have not made laws, influenced governments, gone to war, run schools, dictated what could be taught in schools, vehemently opposed contraception, abortion and euthanasia, persecuted women and homosexuals, and vilified and argued with everyone that didn't believe in making it their life's goal to collect stamps or play golf. You don't see golfers writing books forcefully arguing that everyone should be a golfer, no wealthy golf club has formed their own nation state and is part of the United Nations, stamp collectors don't tell vulnerable young children that they'll be resurrected when they die and then tortured if they don't take up stamp collecting, stamp collectors don't go into our schools and tell kids that the dinosaurs were also avid stamp collectors, or fight to stop organisations from handing out condoms in Africa to help prevent the spread of AIDS.

   The reality is that if stamp collectors or golfers had behaved even remotely like the way the religious have throughout history we guarantee that there would be a word for those that oppose stamp collectors and golfers. There most definitely would be non-golfers and non-stamp collectors coming together and talking about what they can do to lessen the evil influence of those that persecute them. Imagine if Giordano Bruno was burnt at the stake for his criticism of stamp collecting, or that Galileo was threatened with torture, forced to recant his scientific views, and placed under house arrest for the remainder of his life for opposing his local golf club. My point is that if stamp collectors or golfers had a fraction of the negative impact or tried to force bogus beliefs onto the populace the way religion has, then there most definitely would be a term for non-golfers and non-stamp collectors.

   Also, you never see anti-war, anti-GMO or anti-TPP protestors complaining because the 'anti' term, as Grayling argues, 'denotes only the open-ended and negative state' of not being a supporter, and 'says nothing about [their] other hobbies or interests'. What about the terms virgin, paraplegic, teetotaller, celibate, pacifist, denialist, anti-evolutionist? How are these different to atheist, what does virgin tell us about a person's beliefs or interests, and while we may grasp that an anti-evolutionist lacks a belief in evolution, what else does it tell us? At sporting events we have a term for the non-athletes, we call them spectators, we call non-teachers by the term student, and at the theatre we have a term for the non-actors, we call them the audience, although these terms tell us almost nothing about them. They simply reveal a connection. So why shouldn't the terms theist and atheist reveal a similar connection, and nothing more?

   As Tyson says, non-skiers don't 'come together and talk about the fact that they don't ski', and you also don't see groups of people coming together and talking about how irrational or unreasonable they are, so why do those terms even exist if they only reveal the negative state of 'rational' and 'reasonable'? The reality is that we invent and use words that make communication clearer and more effective. We have a word for people that don't believe in gods because for most of history they were feared, and now they are everywhere and their arguments are important and far-reaching, and deserving of that name. Whereas we don't have a word for the likes of non-golfers and non-stamp collectors because they don't register as a force in society, and never have. They don't write books exposing the lies found in golfing and stamp collecting, they don't debate in public and on the Internet, they don't petition governments to keep golf out of schools and stamps out of parliament, they don't raise their kids as non-golfers or ban stamps from the house. We don't name them because their apathy towards golf or stamp collecting is irrelevant and unimportant, but we name atheists because their recognition and exposure of the bullshit that is religion is very relevant and important.

   I also want to challenge Tyson where he criticises atheists by saying, 'I can't gather around and talk about how much everybody in the room doesn't believe in God'. Tyson should understand that atheists don't sit around and congratulate each other on our disbelief, we talk about why the religious can't see the flaws in their faith, and how we might change that. And as an atheist, Tyson does actually talk to others about belief in God, since he has said, 'I want to put on the table, not why 85% of the members of the National Academy of Sciences reject God, I want to know why 15% of the National Academy don't'.

   And while you Des say that 'The word "atheist" merely says what someone does not believe and little or nothing about what they actually do believe', with Grayling stating that 'It denotes only the open-ended and negative state', why does no one argue that people shouldn't use the word 'agnostic' (meaning without knowledge of gods, lacking in knowledge), for exactly the same reason? If the label atheist tells us nothing about what is believed or about 'other hobbies or interests', then likewise agnostic tells us nothing about what is believed, only what they don't believe, ie neither the theist or the atheist.

   We're sorry you feel offended by our term closet atheist, but we find it difficult to see it any other way when people who clearly fall under the academic definition of atheist repeatedly go out of their way to reject the atheist label. Again, not because they don't lack a belief in gods, but because they apparently have a problem with the perceived baggage that accompanies the atheist label. And as we said, in the past it made good sense to hide your atheism, what with it being illegal at times, and a death sentence. To quote from A. C. Grayling's 'The God Argument':

   'Atheist' has for most of history been a term of such malediction, as a result of religious hostility, that it is only recently that atheists have begun openly celebrating their self-ascription of the title ... it was social suicide to profess atheism until the later nineteenth century, most people who expressed views about matters on which religion claimed knowledge were content to call themselves 'deists'.

   As Grayling said, 'it was social suicide to profess atheism', so we're not criticising those that weren't able, or still aren't able, to openly admit to being an atheist. But surely that doesn't apply to those that seek to join atheist organisations. Grayling also writes that 'Many of those in the eighteenth century who today would call themselves atheists described themselves as 'deists' because they were unable to see how the universe and life could begin without a creative act of some kind'. But that all changed with scientific discoveries such as evolution and the Big Bang, now there was no reason to fall back on an unknown deist god, suddenly the term atheist was the perfect label. And I agree with Grayling, but you're still arguing that the time has not yet come to call ourselves atheists. We've seen that throughout history people have gone from using the term atheist to the likes of truth seeker to freethinker and rationalist, and suddenly it's decided (by some) that these labels have done their dash and it's time for another jump, to Bright. This is at a time when atheists, as atheists, are better understood, more accepted and more popular than ever before, and yet still a name change is called for, the term atheist must be ditched worldwide and replaced with the term bright, a term utterly meaningless to not just the public, but to atheists as well. It's almost like atheists are on the Witness Protection Program and our cover has been jeopardised, so it's time for a new identity. If people lacking a belief in god aren't wary of the atheist label then why do they keep inventing names that fail to explicitly reveal their atheism? And please don't repeat your view that atheism 'merely says what someone does not believe and little or nothing about what they actually do believe'. Even if the term atheism was a one trick pony, one that merely revealed disbelief in gods, it still reveals far more than what the term bright does, which reveals absolutely nothing. We're sorry, but when people have the opportunity to take advantage of the momentum and support that atheism — that's 'atheism' and not rationalism, humanism or brightism — has gained in the last 20 years, but instead campaign to throw away that brand recognition and replace it with a term that isn't even found in the deep shadows of disbelief, then we feel that perhaps they don't yet want to come into the light.

Of course the title is a little misleading because he doesn't actually provide said proof, nor does he say that he's going to, and he assures us that politics and greed will forever prevent scientists from revealing the truth that he implies exists, hidden as it is beneath a web of conspiracy. After being by shocked by what is likely nothing but a coincidence, Ring in true medieval style jumps to a primitive conclusion, and writes in his article, 'Some would consider this to be proof of the moon's involvement in earthquakes'. Further on he writes, 'Did we predict these events? Some would say yes'. Who are these people, these mysterious 'some', that he keeps referring to, and why should we respect their opinions of Ring's silly claims? Why doesn't Ring have the confidence to boldly claim: 'My data and arguments — which I will freely provide — are proof of the moon's involvement in earthquakes', and, 'I predicted these events'? Proof is proof, it's not a matter, as Ring believes, of mere opinion. Especially not the opinion of some mysterious faerie folk whom he refuses to name.

So what is the proof that Ring promises in his title, proof that quickly slides into ill informed opinion in his article? He writes that,

'Two earthquakes, each measuring 5.2mag, have occurred exactly a month apart in Masterton, NZ. The depth was the same, as was the location, the day and the time. Above all, the geographical position of the moon for both events was identical. So are the events connected?'

Ring goes on to wrongly say that, 'A month is of course, one moonth, or a 29-day moon cycle'. The word 'month' is connected to the Moon, but it is not a misspelling of 'moonth', as Ring childishly keeps implying. According to my dictionary, it comes from Old English 'monath'.

He then claims that, 'Both earthquakes happened just after the highest tides for the month ... which is the normal case for larger earthquakes'. Actually the highest tides occurred around a week before the quakes, so Ring is again misleading his readers. But note that here Ring claims that 'the highest tides ... is the normal case for larger earthquakes'. But in his June newsletter under 'Earthquake Risk Times', he claims that 'Larger earthquakes tend to occur at or near low tide times'. Note how he has cunningly written opposing claims, so that no matter if a large quake happens near a low tide or a high tide, he can point to the appropriate claim (ignoring the other one) and say that he predicted that. Of course some people may argue in his defence that he's not being devious here in making contradictory claims, which could be true, but that would mean he's not deliberately lying, the mistake came about because of true incompetence.

Dismissing scientific talk of aftershocks and foreshocks, Ring writes, 'In fact they are all just earthquakes. There are no afterwaves, aftershowers or afterwinds. Nothing is left over in weather, ready to join any next wave'. In true conspiracy mode, he even claims that the authorities simply invented the term 'aftershock' so that people making insurance claims would happily accept delays in the payout of damage claims. According to Ring, people expect immediate action if their house was badly damaged in an 'earthquake', but are willing to accept delays if it was made unlivable in an 'aftershock'. I often wonder how much thought Ring puts into his arguments, it's clearly not a lot. As for his belief that 'Nothing is left over in weather, ready to join any next wave', does he not even understand that which he claims to be an expert in? When it rains, if nothing is left over, then what's all this water doing on my lawn? And some of that water will evaporate into the atmosphere, changing the humidity and temperature, and many more changes will see it eventually falling as yet more rain somewhere else, as part of the water cycle. Likewise, wind will kick up dust, and dust will eventually allow the formation of raindrops, and more rain. The weather is hugely complex, with the Sun, wind, snow, rain, tornados, life, cosmic rays etc all impacting on the atmosphere, each change or 'wave' will bring about more changes. Weather doesn't just appear then disappear as Ring seems to believe, it's interactive and continuous. The Moon doesn't magically switch on wind and rain, or earthquakes. Ring is clearly locked into his primitive medieval view of how the world works, and no amount of explanation or exposure to science will shake his belief in the 'ancient astrological energy grid of the constellations'.

Concerning the two Masterton quakes, in defence of astrology Ring challenges scientists to prove him wrong: 'Science otherwise must explain how otherwise the two events occurred with such uncanny repeat precision'. Not that Ring is expecting an answer, since he insists that 'Science is quiet on these matters'. Ring is of the New Age belief that anything mysterious that happens, happens for a reason. If a drought begins just as Pluto enters Sagittarius, well that can't be a coincidence. It can't be chance that it rains just as the Moon disappears below the horizon. It can't be a fluke that Auckland house prices began rising after a conjunction involving Mars. He has expressed this opinion many times, and in his article he again writes,

'Remember, there are no flukes in science. Coincidence, luck, chance etc are the language of gamblers, found in the casino, not the corridors of science'.

To answer Ring's question, 'Did we predict these events? Some would say yes', the informed answer is clearly no. No doubt expecting this response, Ring then asks, 'So how does science explain this amazing similarity, tied so closely to the moon cycle of a month?' But he's got it all backwards. It's not for science to explain a one-off coincidence, it's for astrology to explain why science should take such a coincidence seriously. The onus is on astrology to explain why this 'amazing similarity' only happened once if earthquakes are 'tied so closely to the moon cycle of a month'.

But wait, there's more. Ring pleads with us, 'why on earth not look to the moon for answers, when it comes to earthquakes? After all, 10,000 years of Hindu texts have made this link - so why not modern earth science?' Here Ring has fallen back on that silly old argument that if an ancient, primitive, superstitious, ignorant civilisation thought something, eg that the world was flat or that comets were bad omens, that means that belief has thousands of years of support behind it, and thus must be more reliable than what modern science might have discovered. And as Ring has argued in the past regarding Hindu belief, 'Could they have been possibly wrong for so long?' Of course by this logic, it means that Ring must believe the Hindus were right about all their many gods as well. And Ring's quote about '10,000 years of Hindu texts' also demonstrates that he cares nothing for accuracy, since several times in the past he has claimed that 'Present day astrologers still use the work of Hindu that is 5000 years old'. Note how he has now doubled the age of their civilisation, just to make his claim sound more impressive. And since the oldest written records in the world, meaning full writing and not some un-deciphered scratches on a bone, date to a bit over 5,000 years ago, it's hard to see how Ring could be referring to Hindu texts that are 10,000 years old. But imagining that 10,000 year old texts exist is nothing for Ring, since he has previously told us that 'ancient maps, said to be 120 million years old have been recently discovered'. And he has no problem with that, even though it would mean that modern humans lived alongside dinosaurs for at least 55 million years! Why didn't they mention that in their texts? And that folks, is how scammers work. They make up things which they assume, and hope, no one will check up on.

Ring finishes by explaining why there is a conspiracy to dismiss astrology: 'The reason is western politics. And of course, money. Some would say there is as much conviction and determination to find a reliable way to predict earthquakes to safeguard populations, as there might be to find a simple and affordable cure for cancer'.

So there you have it. Scientists are an unethical lot that only care about amassing wealth, and are paid obscene fortunes to tell lies about astrology by our evil governments. That's apparently why all the scientists we ever hear of own super yachts, private jets and mansions. Bastards! And true conspiracy theorist that he is, note how Ring also implies that medical scientists are likewise being paid not to find a cure for cancer, or if they do accidentally find one, to suppress it.

Ring's love-hate relationship with science is a psychiatrist's dream. He pretends he's a scientist, and desperately wishes he was one, but he also has this great enmity towards scientists because they achieve all the things that he never will. And this leads him to really get his frilly knickers in a twist and throw hissy fits of jealousy, as this outburst in his latest newsletter shows:

'Scientists get high salaries for sitting around waiting for stuff to happen, then, when it does, they put on white coats, rush to the spot in vans with high aerials, and declare they were expecting it. They tell the media "Well, it happened because of the You-know-what, and the Thinga-ma-jig and the Whats-a-name, and it's going to get worse in coming months".'

Posted by the 'Silly Beliefs' Team, 02 Jun, 2016 ~ Add a Comment    Send to a Friend

Comments:

1. Comment by Norman, 02 Jun, 2016

   Hi John. Just got information from my daughter in Singapore of a shake there. Here's the log of all that have occurred there recently in the most active earthquake region on the planet. A quick look fails to make any link at all to the Lunar Cycle, you bloody idiot Ring!!!

   Keep up the good work John and Team.

2. Comment by the 'Silly Beliefs' Team, 03 Jun, 2016

   Thanks for that, Norman. And you're correct. So Ken might like to explain why we don't see earthquake activity in that region on the 12th of April and May, when the evil Moon struck Masterton. Citizens of Singapore were looking at the exact same Moon. Ring claims that 'the two [Masterton] events occurred with such uncanny repeat precision'. and argues that 'this amazing similarity' is tied 'closely to the moon cycle of a month'. So why do we see no hint of this 'amazing similarity' in the 30 or so earthquakes that occurred over the last four months in that region? Why doesn't astrology seem to work in Asia, even though Ring claims that they use it all the time? Perhaps he could move to Singapore to help them out with their calculations. We could set up a crowdfunding website to help pay for his airfare. Hell, even I'd donate to that.

3. Comment by H, 03 Jun, 2016

   As Ken Ring was up in Kerikeri earlier this year and gulled the gullible, I thought a good idea was to load your last post on my FB page: Scams and Ripoffs

   If you object, I'll take it off but didn't think you'd mind a little extra exposure for your site :)

4. Comment by the 'Silly Beliefs' Team, 03 Jun, 2016

   No, I don't mind. News of Ring's silly scam needs to be spread far and wide.

5. Comment by Graham, 03 Jun, 2016

   Hi John. A quick look at Ken's April newsletter shows he didn't predict it. On April 12 he guesses a 4 to 5 in mid NZ, close, it was 5.2. But if he were expecting another earthquake to hit with "uncanny repeat precision", why did he predict a 4 to 5 earthquake "SW of NZ". If I know my geography, Masterton is actually in New Zealand, not southwest of it.

   The most significant earthquakes he predicts is a 6 on 27th of May on the east coast of NZ. No such quake occurs, the highest on that day was a 2.4.

   On another note Ken tweeted on the 25th May "Next extreme weather event: heavy rain Wellington, 4-5 June" and "A deluge is expected in Wellington in first weekend of June. Most rain overnight, risks of heavy surface flooding". So specifically surface flooding, not underground flooding or underwater flooding. It would be interesting to see the gullible almanac owners of Wellington out in the sunshine this weekend filling up sandbags. For the intelligent Wellingtonians, enjoy your weekend.

6. Comment by the 'Silly Beliefs' Team, 03 Jun, 2016

   You're quite right Graham, contrary to what Ring claims, he didn't predict the April 12th or May 12th quakes, let alone even hint that they would strike with 'uncanny repeat precision'. Like all soothsayers, he made no mention of Masterton and earthquakes until well after the quakes had passed. Trolling the data for patterns, he discovered a coincidence and claimed that he had predicted it, knowing that most people will never bother to check and discover that he's lying. And like a parrot with Alzheimer's, he, ad nauseam, keeps claiming that he has predicted every major earthquake and weather event, including the major Christchurch quakes, and yet we've failed to find a single prediction that clearly demonstrates that Ring has the faintest idea about what the future might bring. Of course, occasionally he'll predict a light drizzle and once in a blue moon, plus or minus a week and 80 km, he'll be right, but that's what we in the business call a lucky guess.

   And frankly I can't understand how people can keep buying his almanac each year. A kindergarten kid could soon discover that its predictions don't match reality. I guess it's like people and their Bibles, most households have one, but they're simply thrown in a drawer and forgotten. Clearly it's the same with Ring's almanac, people don't feel that they actually have to read it, simply having one is enough.

As skeptics, why do we try and discredit the likes of professional psychic mediums, weather astrologers, soothsayers, priests, energy healers and conspiracy theorists? One reason is to stop gullible people being harmed by these fraudsters, either physically, emotionally or financially, which of course is a very worthwhile pursuit. Another reason would be to spread the truth, to enlighten people, to let them understand how the universe really works, not how they wish it worked or how some delusional quack or greedy charlatan says it works. However, we make the battle more difficult than it should be, and everlasting, when we put the bulk of our efforts into eliminating the charlatans while often ignoring those that they take advantage of — their gullible clients. We focus on the perpetrators rather than the victims. Expose the perpetrators, problem solved, or so we think.

Over the years I've heard many leading skeptics say that while they and their organisations actively work to expose professional psychic mediums, soothsayers and healers etc, they have no great problem with the innocent, lightweight stuff, like granny reading tea leaves for her friends, or people reading their horoscopes, telling ghost stories, wearing magnetic necklaces, carrying lucky charms or wasting a few dollars on some similar nonsense, as long as no one is seriously harmed. Likewise, they'll challenge religious creationism and terrorism, but won't offend the religious by challenging religion itself. And many laypeople that are angered by the activities of the greedy mediums, abusive priests and fraudulent healers agree with this stance; go after those at the top, that make a business of it, those making the money and ripping off their clients. But leave granny and her tea leaves, the silly ghost hunters creeping around old houses and those naïve farmers buying Ken Ring's almanac alone. Most of those people, deluded as they are, harm no one nor suffer any real harm. I disagree with that attitude.

Many skeptics do suggest that we ignore the harmless beliefs of those around us, after all, they're not asking for money or putting on shows, let's concentrate on the big fish. But it's these 'harmless' beliefs that are driving those around us into the welcoming arms of the charlatans. If we nipped those harmless — and false — beliefs in the bud, the charlatans would be trying to sell something that almost no one wanted, and would quickly vanish. Of course it's true that there will always be people that believe something silly, contrary to the evidence. We will forever be surrounded by family, friends, colleagues, neighbours etc, some of whom will surprise us, and dismay us, by revealing that they believe in some nonsense. However, perhaps to avoid offending them or appearing impolite, disrespectful, judgemental or arrogant, we tend to let it slide, maybe agreeing to disagree, and we make it easy for them to hold that silly belief. I believe that we shouldn't, by our inaction, make them feel comfortable in their belief, or let them believe that it's just one of several plausible and respectable stances to hold, and yet we do. We see this all around us, with people openly flaunting primitive, superstitious behaviour, and nobody, well almost nobody, says anything. People have no problem being seen reading their horoscope, visiting a medium, buying healing crystals, thanking God for their lottery win, refusing vaccines, attending a psychic fair, or even publicly imploring an invisible friend called Jesus to help their team win a sporting event. Apparently God is quite the sports fanatic.

And because almost no one, in this polite and respectful world of ours, questions this irrational behaviour in those around us, those near and dear, charlatans like mediums, astrologers, priests and natural healers continue to widely, publicly and shamelessly advertise their supernatural and paranormal services. They know that many will welcome them with open arms. Not everyone of course, or even most, but certainly enough to encourage them to go public and enough to offer a feeling of protection, and approval. They know that any skeptics in their audience will be swamped by vocal true believers. Generally no normal person reveals their personal beliefs if they expect that society will laugh at them, challenge them or condemn them. But give people a sizeable support base, and suddenly they no longer feel stupid or embarrassed or hesitant in expressing their weird belief. Put an individual in a crowd or community surrounded by supporters, and they'll loudly and proudly reveal that they believe in all manner of nonsense.

Astrologers like Ken Ring are helped by the fact that most newspapers, many magazines and some radio stations, all provide horoscopes, which can't help but give astrology some credibility. After all, they don't print magic spells for solving our relationship problems, nor recommend what healing crystal is best for what malady, so common sense would suggest that there must be some validity to astrology. Surely they wouldn't, year after year, keep printing bullshit? Likewise with the mediums talking to dead people. Towns and cities are overrun by apparently respectable institutions that are attended weekly, or at least supported, by a sizeable proportion of society, and even given tax exemptions by the government. Called churches, they promote the widespread view that the immortal souls of the deceased are watching over us (even in the shower). So, for gullible people at least, it's not unreasonable to accept the claim made by mediums that our deceased loved ones are not content to just watch us, but are anxious to communicate with us as well. If we accept that souls are real, why wouldn't they want to stay in touch? The print and broadcast media frequently promote silly stories about sightings of UFOs, ghosts, Big Foot and the Virgin Mary, fanciful stories of people claiming miracles, psychic mediums solving murders, and misleading stories about natural healing cures. We see the police allowing priests and tribal shaman in to bless and remove evil curses from crime scenes. The reality is that many in society have been primed all their life to believe in the likes of astrologers, mediums, miracles and other superstitious nonsense. Thus there is a ready market and money to be made by anyone willing to take advantage of these delusions, delusions that pervade society as if this were still the 10th century, not the 21st.

I don't think we can simply criticise and challenge the likes of mediums, natural healers and astrologers, and think we're achieving something, when at the same time we don't criticise and challenge their clients, whose numbers are drawn from our friends, family and associates. Without their gullible clients, these charlatans with their primitive beliefs would fade into history, just as witches have. As long as people with silly beliefs exist, others will always surface to rip them off. Think of what happens when the police arrest a drug dealer or a brothel madam, another quickly moves in to fill the void, since the police made no real impact on reducing the demand that they were servicing. There are always people waiting in the wings. As long as we ignore the behaviour of those around us that use mediums, natural healers and astrologers — it's harmless — it makes them feel better — they're only wasting their own money — and only rail at the greedy mediums and astrologers raking in the money, then the scams will continue. To destroy those running these fraudulent businesses we need to destroy the silly beliefs they're taking advantage of, starting with those around us, our family and friends who often insist that they don't really believe, they're just going along for a laugh, to hear what they say. Yeah, right! If true, that would be like paying your doctor to give you a fake diagnosis.

We skeptics need a two pronged attack. We must continue to expose and discredit the actual mediums, astrologers, priests, healers and other purveyors of nonsense, and limit their ability to prey on the gullible in society, but we must also put much more effort into destroying their food source. Without their many clients to feed on, these charlatans would all starve. So clearly, part of the answer is to educate the masses, make them poisonous to those that want to prey on them. We need to have discussions — friendly but frank discussions — with those around us, family, friends, associates, and expose the underlying beliefs of these charlatans as beliefs so childish that no one would publicly admit to them, and thus reduce the pool of potential clients to such an extent that it's no longer profitable to run these scams. Let's make visiting a medium as embarrassing as visiting a brothel.

This devious, greedy horde feeding on ignorance only thrive because we live in communities awash with irrational beliefs, beliefs that many informed skeptics turn a blind eye to, the consequence being that they — surprise, surprise — continue to flourish. Yes, we skeptics read the debunking articles, attend the conferences, challenge the charlatans themselves and marvel among ourselves that people can be so gullible, so in that sense we're not ignoring the nonsense. But in another crucial sense many of us are dropping the ball, since while we're happy to challenge this nonsense with skeptical friends, effectively preaching to the converted, when it comes to dear ol' granny reading her tealeaves, a friend going to a naturopath, or on attending a funeral and hearing a priest's assurance that God had a greater need for a toddler than did her loving and now grieving parents, we tend to say little, if anything. OK, I'm not suggesting one challenges the priest during a service, tempting as it is, but afterwards when a friend or family member repeats the priest's sentiments, I believe we need to take a stand for integrity. Ditto when dealing with friends and family over their belief in homeopathy, energy healers, miracles, weather astrologers, Moon landing hoaxes or flying saucers, but alas, too often we avoid any confrontation. We ignore generation after generation as they embrace nonsense, under the notion that it's harmless, innocent stuff, and, well, we don't want to ruffle any feathers. Challenging the claims of some medium or astrologer that we don't know on an Internet forum, no problem, but upsetting granny or Uncle Boris, is it really worth the strife? But it's the grannies and uncles of this world, and your friends and mine, that keep mediums, healers and priests in business. Mediums don't make their money by giving expensive readings to other mediums, and the obscene wealth of the church wasn't gained by priests and ministers putting their own money into the donation plate. These charlatans need ordinary people in your community and mine to make their money, without us they are lost, and gone. So instead of ignoring the silly beliefs of granny and Uncle Boris, if we were honest and caring we'd tell them the truth, and in doing so, hopefully remove them as potential clients for some scammer. They'd save time and money and understand the world a little better, and the scammer would lose money and go out of business, it's win, win. But no, we let the likes of granny and Uncle Boris keep their 'harmless' delusions, and then we scream, Why do fools keep going to these mediums and healers just to be ripped off?, not realising that those fools are someone else's relations, all with silly beliefs that others decided to write off as harmless. The indifference shown by many skeptics towards family and friends is helping maintain the client base for those that will take gladly advantage of them.

Our skeptical arguments are never going to get the money-hungry mediums, healers and astrologers to suddenly accept that they've been pushing a lie and close up shop, at best we can slow them down, put them on the defensive, limit their reach and make it harder for them to make a living. But their potential clients are a different matter, they can — sometimes — be reasoned with. Unlike the quacks, we have ready access to family, friends and associates, so we can casually make insightful observations here and there, and slowly chip away at false beliefs. It may take some time to slowly increase the doubt, but our relationship with them gives us that time. We shouldn't shy away from that challenge. After all, if we don't care that our family and friends are harbouring false beliefs and wasting their money, why should we care that complete strangers are being ripped off?

Again, as long as there is a demand for something, someone will soon front up and take your money. No matter how many mediums, healers or priests are exposed as frauds, or conveniently take themselves out of play by dying, as long as there are still people seeking their services, more will keep turning up. The final solution to the problem is not to serially eliminate each person running these scams, but to severely limit the numbers seeking them out. And those numbers are made up entirely of our family, friends and associates. Don't ignore your granny and her tea leaves, and don't quietly giggle at your niece going to a psychic and yet say nothing. When your friend says man never walked on the Moon or that vaccines aren't safe, don't just dismiss it as harmless eccentricity. When a colleague states that his outhouse is haunted or that Jesus cures cancer, ask them for evidence, don't just roll your eyes and walk away. By failing to engage with those around us we allow their silly beliefs to go unchallenged, and thus we allow a huge number of ignorant, gullible believers in nonsense to flourish in our midst. Our apathy and inaction maintains the pool of fools from which the likes of mediums, priests and healers feed.

As they say, prevention is better than cure, so it makes far better sense to rid your family and friends of their silly beliefs than trying to destroy the careers of all the mediums, astrologers and natural healers in the world so that your family and friends simply have no where to go when seeking a spooky answer. There will always be somewhere to go, there will always be a delusional fool selling dreams. The answer is to confront family and friends, open their minds to the real world and in doing so deprive the quacks of their ill-gotten livelihood.

Certainly, let's destroy the vampires where we find them, but let's also stop providing them with victims.

Posted by the 'Silly Beliefs' Team, 19 May, 2016 ~ Add a Comment    Send to a Friend

Comments:

1. Comment by Norman, 19 May, 2016

   Hi John. Really good information, as usual! Keep it up. Much appreciated.

Hi John. Ken's chucked out some new nonsense — 'Does the Moon have any Effect on Humans?' — that is just stuff that he reads and regurgitates as straight up fact. When I read garbage like this I'm always reminded of the MMA fighter Conor Mcgregor's quote; "People say I talk and I talk and I talk, but guess what? I back it up!" But Ken just talks and never backs anything up, and how can you take anything anyone says seriously if they can't or won't back it up?

I spent 10 minutes digging and I found where Ken got the majority of his garbage from — 'Can the Full Moon Affect Human Behavior?'. Which is an article from, surprise, surprise ... 'Dynamic Astrology: Using Planetary Cycles to Make Personal and Career Choices, ©1997'.

A quick google of Wikipedia ('Lunar effect') exposes a few of Ring's mystical moon effects, and surprise, they back them up! I'll leave you to tear the rest of his article to shreds if you have the time.

Ring believes that the Moon affects humans in the same childish, superstitious, ignorant way that other stupid people believe werewolves come out on the full Moon, that vampires can be warded off with garlic, that aliens are abducting us from our beds and that a Jewish carpenter walked on water. He has over the years sporadically raised all the silly points he makes in his latest article, and we and others have patiently explained why it's all primitive nonsense. But it's even worse than explaining American politics to your dog, since while your dog might grasp the basics, none of it ever gets through to Ken.

In defence of his nonsense he pleads: 'let us hope that in the name of responsible science that there is room for another opinion', again fudging the fact that he isn't doing science, and that science bases it conclusions on evidence and reason, not mere opinion. In the past it was the opinion of many that the world was flat and the centre of the universe, that women played no part in the makeup of a child, they were merely a receptacle, and that natural disasters were punishments from God. Likewise, many in our dark past were of the foolish opinion that astrology and magic worked, and look how wrong they were. Without supporting evidence, opinion is no better than a guess. Of course guesses can be right, but in Ring's case, science has convincingly demonstrated that his astrology claims — his opinions — are pure bunkum, and there are good reasons why they were ditched centuries ago by all intelligent, sophisticated people.

Ring goes on to argue that 'It would not be wise for mainstream science to deny the experience of those who have found personal evidence for the contrary, even though laboratory results have not been universally applied and duplicated'. Of course it's wise to deny personal, subjective experiences, especially when, as Ring himself acknowledges, there is no evidence that they ever happened. The religious often fall back on personal experiences of their god — Allah, Shiva, Jesus, Zeus etc — in an attempt to prove that what they felt actually happened and that their god is real, but since Christians, Hindus, Muslims, Jews etc all claim personal experiences of their god, and at most only one could be true, then clearly most, I would argue all, are deluded. Should we automatically accept the opinions of those that say they saw chemtrails or an alien spacecraft? Of course not, even Ring would demand real evidence, so why should we sidestep evidence and go with personal opinion when it comes to belief in astrology?

Trying to bolster his argument for giving astrology a free ride, Ring says that 'We all know and accept that love exists, but thus far no instrument has been devised to prove it to be a biological phenomenon. It is a bit the same for all matters of astrology'. Not all evidence, or even most, involves an instrument. We know that love is a mental state, and thus a biological and chemical phenomenon. We know that brain injury or disease can alter feelings of love, that inanimate objects don't feel love, and that love can manipulate human behaviour. While there is no instrument to measure love, independent people can look at various families or relationships and all will determine if love is present, so love does have a noticeable effect. Ring says that 'It is a bit the same for all matters of astrology', and he's quite right, in the sense that if astrology works then it too should have a noticeable effect. But it doesn't, no matter how often horoscopes — astrological predictions — are compared with the real world, they never reveal a predictive effect. And Ring steadfastly refuses to release his data to prove us wrong.

Ring goes on to say that, 'Science does itself no favours setting out to demolish ideas that scientists collectively scorn, whilst offering no courses for university degrees in alternative viewpoints'. Of course by 'university degrees in alternative viewpoints', Ring is clearly thinking of astrology, but just think about what Ring is asking here. He wants certifiable nutcases to be able to attend university and learn about how someone born under one star sign is intelligent and honest whereas someone born under a different star sign is not, which is akin to racism, only discriminating on star signs rather than race. He wants them to learn such things as the following, and no, I haven't made them up, they are all genuine quotes made by Ken Ring himself:

'when it comes to deep skin cleansing, the best time to do this was said to be when the moon is on the wane... You are supposed to care for the hair when the moon is in Leo... On a simpler basis, sell a house before a full moon - people are said to be more impulsive then and typically don't quite know what they are doing... Conversely buying a house after a full moon is better as you are likely to be more rational and level headed. So if a decision is to be made, watch the moon, act or wait.'

'at the moment Venus is in Scorpio and is said to bring south winds and gentle moisture. Mars is in Leo which is dry with not much rain. Mercury is in Scorpio and brings cold fronts and blustery weather.'

'In the old astrology various planets had specific characteristics, depending on their aspects or positions. Mars brings heat and... Mercury is known for wind... but its chief influence is cold... '

However Ring isn't just pleading for astrology, but for all alternative viewpoints to be taught and accredited. So if his argument had validity, universities would also have to offer degrees in witchcraft, water divining, tea leaf reading, psychic healing, clairvoyancy, ghost and fairy hunting, crystal healing, alchemy, creationism, along with teaching that the world is flat or hollow, and that babies are delivered by storks. Would Ring be happy for our universities to teach all that nonsense, alongside his astrology? I suspect not, but all those 'alternative viewpoints' were tossed out of the education system for the same reason that astrology was. There was simply no evidence that they were true, and ever increasing evidence that they were false. And Ring clearly doesn't understand how science works by insisting that 'Science does itself no favours setting out to demolish ideas that scientists collectively scorn'. What utter nonsense, science advances because it continually sets out to demolish ideas about how things work, especially those that they scorn and suspect are holding them back. Only by investigating and effectively demolishing the bullshit claims can they then concentrate on new ideas that put them back on the right path. If scientists refused to demolish claims of astrology, witchcraft, meddlesome gods etc, then their investigations into life, the universe and everything would be a quagmire, they'd be forever uncertain as to what was causing a certain effect. Was it some natural cause, a magical spell, a miracle or had the planets reached some weird alignment? Society and progress would have stalled around the Middle Ages, where I'm sure Ring would feel right at home, knowledge wise.

Ring also tries to confuse us with his oft-repeated claim 'that universities were started in Muslim countries to promote Islam, and to teach and spread astrology'. Note the contradiction, that Muslims promoted both Islam and astrology. Since Muslims believe the world is under the control of Allah, then events on Earth can't be caused by astrological effects that are out of god's hands. Either Allah is running the world, or astrology is, it can't be both. But even if Muslims did promote belief in astrology many centuries ago, as Christians certainly did, along with magic and alchemy, why should that influence what we now believe? Ring believes Muslims were badly mistaken in their claims about their god, so isn't it likely that they were just as mistaken about astrology? And note that Muslims are no longer teaching and spreading astrology. Clearly they saw the light. It's time to catch up Ken.

Continuing with his false arguments, Ring claims that 'Very often science cites public safety as the reason for attacking alternative beliefs, as if counter belief systems are somehow evil or anti-human'. The reality is that science investigates alternative beliefs, it doesn't attack them, and if found to have some merit, science adopts them and they're no longer alternative. Science doesn't have an agenda, with a prepared list of beliefs it will accept, and all others labelled evil. It's simply looking for the best explanations for reality, and will, and has, often changed its view of the world. What Ring sees as alternative beliefs are normally those that have refused, often for centuries, to admit to their clear failings and leave quietly. He's certainly correct that his ilk do indeed trade 'on the gullibility of the ignorant masses', and in terms of public safety some people do need to be protected from themselves and the charlatans that prey on them. When gullible people are told that Jesus will heal their cancer, or that millions of dollars are waiting for them in a Nigerian bank account, or that an astrologer can select a sunny day for their wedding, then wiser heads need to step in.

Many centuries ago it was probably true, as Rings states, that 'proper science ... says that all things may be true and simply await further study and confirmation'. Of course since then further study and confirmation has been done, and many, many things that were once thought true we now know are not true. Ring wants to pretend that astrology is still awaiting further study, when of course it was long ago investigated and dismissed as baseless superstition, and all ongoing research into the universe only serves to confirm that view. He then seeks to confuse the issue by saying that 'The market place will sort out what is useful and what is not'. However, there can be a major difference between what is true and what is useful. The religious believe that having faith in their god is useful, even though both Ring and I would agree that their god is not true. Likewise children find a sincere belief in Santa useful, even though Santa isn't real. Just because certain businesses find support in the market place — such as prostitution, illegal drugs, churches and weather astrology — this says nothing about whether that business is ethical or based on a true belief.

Then Ring falls back on that old favourite of those pushing pseudoscience: 'for thousands of year the moon was been held to be very influential in human affairs'. So what? Magic, blood letting, Feng Shui and belief in thousands of imaginary gods have been very influential on human affairs in the past. It's just childish to argue that because primitive, ignorant peasants believed something for eons, say, that evil curses were real, that doesn't mean that it must be true. The reality is that much of what the ancients believed about the world was wrong. It is quite foolish on Ring's part to ignore modern scientific knowledge and instead, naively look to the distant past for answers.

As for Ring's claim that 'The moon was always used for calendars because of its reliability in measuring time. It only loses 10 seconds per year before being back in the same position after a year with respect to the background stars', I would argue with that. First, the Moon was initially used as a calendar because it clearly repeated a cycle every 29.5 days, and roughly 12 of those cycles saw a repeat of the seasons, or what we call a year. But 12 lunar cycles of 29.5 days equals 354 days, whereas our year is actually 365.25 days, so after a year the Moon is over 11 days out, not 10 seconds. This was the problem with using the Moon as a calendar, its cycles did not fit exactly into a year, and if you simply kept counting lunar cycles then in a few years your calendar was soon out of sync with the seasons. Thus by 2,000 years ago people were already looking at moving their calendars from the Moon to the Sun. With his primitive mindset, Ring says that 'If one had a watch that only lost 10 seconds per year, one would not complain', but a lot of our scientific instruments and computerised technology wouldn't work if it was that inaccurate, and we now have atomic clocks that are 'accurate within a billionth of a second a year, or 0.0000000000000000315569 of a year'. Of course Ring probably won't believe that. Next I'll be saying that men can fly. As for his claim that 'every village and town in old cultures put up stone circles, like Stonehenge, to keep a track on the weather, seasons, eclipses and earthquakes, and all stone circle structures align to the moon, in order to monitor its various inner and outer cycles', Ring is again making some claims for which there is no evidence. For a start, anyone that's travelled or knows anything of the world knows that almost no 'village and town in old cultures put up stone circles, like Stonehenge'. That's why Stonehenge is famous, because it's unique, not because every village had their own Stonehenge. Yes, there are other smaller stone circles about, but compared to the number of villages and towns in old cultures, they are extremely rare. Furthermore, experts believe that Stonehenge wasn't mainly about the Moon, but built to 'align with the sun at both solstices and at the equinoxes, and with the moon as it runs through its orbit around the earth', which would allow them to 'anticipate astronomic cycles and events'. There is no suggestion that Stonehenge was used to predict the weather or earthquakes as Ring claims, this is merely wishful thinking on his part. And let's remember that this is what Ring is selling, he's not selling a calendar, so whatever the ancients did with Stonehenge, it doesn't support Ring's spooky weather and earthquake astrology. And let's also recall that Stonehenge fell into disrepair thousands of years ago, so whatever its purpose, clearly it wasn't important enough to keep it going, or duplicate around the known world. In later centuries when people tried to predict the weather and earthquakes, no one built another Stonehenge.

Like history, Ring clearly hasn't understood anything of modern science either, saying that 'Astronomy and other earth sciences have let us down over the years'. Ringworld must be like North Korea, where access to recent scientific knowledge is banned, because the advances in astronomy in the last hundred years have been, well, astronomical. I suspect that what Ring really means is that science has badly let astrology down over the years, with each knowledge increment pushing astrology further into the grave. He says that 'Astronomers tell everyone that any body in space affects any other body ... But why we don't hear much about that, and about the cycles of nature'. Note the confusion here. Ring mentions the affect bodies in space have on other bodies and tells us that we only know this because astronomers told us, but then immediately criticises them for not telling us about such things, including 'the cycles of nature', when it's quite clear that we only understand gravity and the cycles of nature to the extent we do because of astronomers. In fact the religious condemn scientists for concentrating solely on the cycles of nature and ignoring the supernatural. Ring is a hypocrite, forever quoting well-known science and then claiming that scientists are hiding this same science from us.

Ring reckons that it's all about money, that 'Scientists don't want people to work it out for themselves like people always used to - they want everything to come through them to ensure job protection'. What utter stupidity on Ring's part! Scientists would love it if people on the street could understand their work, since that would generally mean we would support them more and make life much easier for them. How many important scientific projects have been squashed by public ignorance? But the reality is that most people, when it comes to complex science, couldn't 'work it out for themselves like people always used to'. How many people could built a telescope to observe the cosmos, and a clock accurate to fractions of a second, and then make observations over hundreds of years at the very least, to construct their own calendar? Sure, simply observing the Moon is sufficient for a peasant lifestyle, but most people couldn't even manage a peasant lifestyle today. If we didn't have supermarkets most people would starve before they learnt how to feed themselves. Today we are a society that is utterly dependent on the expertise of others, and if some catastrophic event isolated us and forced us to again work things out for ourselves, most of us would fail miserably, and within a few generations we'd quickly revert to a primitive state where astrologers like Ring would again hold sway over us, along with witches and priests.

Next Ring moves on to how the Moon specifically affects human behaviour, the real heart of astrology. He falsely claims that 'We already know that the moon affects the currents of the ocean, and the tides are a part of that, we are 75-80% water, and we also have internal tides', arguing that 'If we grow mad, or feel aroused, or if we feel some tingle of odd urges, we should pay attention to the lunar cycle'. First, it's misleading to say that 'the moon affects the currents of the ocean, and the tides are a part of that'. The Moon's gravity causes the ocean tides, not the ocean currents, although tides could then affect currents. Second, we've already explained to Ring many times that the Moon does not cause noticeable tidal forces in the human body. Unfortunately he doesn't understand the crucial difference between the gravitational force between two bodies and the tidal forces between those two bodies. While gravitational forces cause tidal forces, it is the strength of the tidal forces that determine tides, not the gravitational force per se. For example, a swimming pool right next to an ocean won't experience any tides even though the ocean will, and yet they both essentially experience the same gravitational force. And humans are much smaller than swimming pools, and our veins, arteries and bladders smaller still, and for the same reason that swimming pools and most lakes don't experience tides, the human body doesn't either. Ring's naïve, ignorant argument is that 'with such a big thing so near our planet, wouldn't it be more weird if that didn't affect us?' This is truly primitive thinking, showing that Ring has learnt nothing from the last few hundred years of science. Of course we accept that the Moon's gravity reaches our bodies, but the question is not whether there is an affect, but how much of an affect? As we've mentioned before, a 1kg melon held one metre above your head produces 200 times as much tidal affect in your body as does the Moon, and 'a mosquito would exert more gravitational pull on your arm than the moon would'. Other people, buildings etc. would completely swamp any gravitational affect the Moon has, so whatever is causing Ring's 'increased sexual tension' and 'odd urges', it's not the full Moon.

I know it will fall on deaf ears, but I'd recommend that Ken reads Ernest Naylor's book, 'Moonstruck: How Lunar Cycles Affect Life' (2015). Like many other books have already done, he also looks at lunar cycles and menstruation, libido, insanity, childbirth etc and writes:

'In conclusion, beliefs in the influence of the Moon on human life, that have their origins in the increasing perception of the natural world by ancient peoples, have so far largely failed to find validation in scientific studies.'

'Just as there are unsubstantiated claims that tree stem diameters fluctuate with 'tide', there are even suggestions that the Moon induces 'tides' in the human body because of its high fluid content. This is a concept that can be traced back to Greek philosophers, and over time has been used to try to explain the fluctuating incidence of various human diseases and behavioural traits. In fact, the gravitational pulls of the Moon and the Sun are so small that they affect the human body only by the weight equivalent of a bead of sweat or a human hair. Repeated application of even such small forces is able to induce significant tidal resonance in the open ocean, but lunar gravitational pull is insufficient to affect significantly the enclosed fluids of the human body. Nevertheless the sway of mythology often still prevails.'

Of course Ring couldn't ignore earthquakes, and in his article writes that

'We know that nearly all species of life that have mobility (except humans), have biological warning systems to detect earthquakes. These systems are undoubtedly geomagnetic. If oysters and rats are affected by the moon in this electrical way, also fish, birds, insects, plants and even bacterial viruses, how would humans escape being thus affected?'

The fact of the matter is that Ken Ring is in denial, he has blind, unshakeable faith in something which cannot be seen or measured. Like a religious fundamentalist that asserts that no evidence, either existing or theoretical, could ever convince them that their unseen god isn't real, Ring likewise asserts that the embarrassing and woeful lack of evidence supporting astrology, and the mountain of evidence against it, will never shake his belief that the Moon, Sun and planets control our lives and our destinies. He states, 'Just because an instrument made by man cannot detect persistence of lunar influence does not prove anything other than that our technology may currently be lacking'. Of course using the same logic children could maintain their belief in Santa by arguing that our Santa detection technology may currently be lacking. According to Ring the lunar influence is powerful enough to move oceans and distort the Earth, which is true, and cause massive earthquakes and insanity, which isn't true, but, paradoxically, is so fantastically weak and illusive that our most sensitive instruments, even those designed to detect phenomenally weak gravity waves from the distant parts of the universe, can't detect it. Just as we've never detected fairies or angels on clouds, the evidence Ring seeks for astrology will be forever absent, but that won't stop him insisting that it's there nonetheless, just unseen and beyond our reach. Me thinks I sense a conspiracy afoot. With such a childish mindset it's easy to believe in fantasies and retreat to a simpler time, when the bodies in the heavens influenced our behaviour. Oh dear! An evil comet. Let us flee!

In Ring's view 'The real test is whether or not real people report some effect, not whether or not a needle on some meter does not'. If this is how we decide what's real, what real people have reported throughout history, then witches on broomsticks are real, demonic possession is real, alien abduction is real, crystal and psychic healing is real, fairies and leprechauns are real, the Loch Ness monster and Big Foot are real, Jesus walking on water and rising from the dead is real, talking snakes and donkeys are real, mediums talking to dead people is real, the Tooth Fairy taking teeth is real, the Greek god Zeus is real, evil powers poisoning us with chemtrails is real, the Muslim prophet Mohammed flying to heaven on his horse is real ... and on and on with accounts of what real people have sincerely reported as real. Clearly history, and a depressing number of silly beliefs still held today, shows that the real test is not to simply believe what real people report. The real test is to investigate their reports, and if no supporting evidence is found, withhold belief, and if contrary evidence is found, reject their belief.

Ken Ring will of course continue to promote astrology as the only ancient soothsaying method that stands the test of time and really works, even though it's doing its utmost, like God, to hide its reality from us. He'll continue to deny he's an astrologer while at the same consulting astrology charts, publishing horoscopes, and condemning universities for not offering a degree in astrology. All because he needs to make his clients, both existing and potential, comfortable with the silly belief that is astrology, and this of course will result in him taking their money so he can pay his bills. And a disclaimer in the small print means that when his predictions fail, and they consistently fail, he doesn't have to give it back.

Posted by the 'Silly Beliefs' Team, 12 May, 2016 ~ Add a Comment    Send to a Friend

Comments:

1. Comment by Rene, 12 May, 2016

   Ahhh, astrology, the one field where you can say nothing specific and have 20,000 people tell you "My God, that's me!"

   Where you can tell people that the planets affect you, except for Uranus and the outer ones because they weren't known 500 years ago so they magically don't count. Also the asteroids don't count ... for some reason, even though their gravity (en mass) would surely be affecting Earth more than Mercury (relatively anyway, both are virtually nothing)

   The guy talks about astrology related to love. Love is 100% chemical based. If you ever doubt that, drop Ecstasy sometime. You'll feel true love all right for everything and especially other humans ... for a few hours. On the other hand, do opium and Aphrodite herself couldn't rouse an emotion out of you. Clearly chemically based.

   Then he brings up the moon again for calendars. People who are evolutionarily based to recognize patterns for survival ... noticed a pattern in the moon's orbit. Colour me impressed. But to be fair, the moon's gravity IS stronger than the mosquito ... it's a matter of relative mass. The same moon's gravity is pulling on the waters of your body, the pool, and the oceans equally. The only difference is the ocean has a few trillion more gallons being pulled on, so it starts to move. People forget that the Moon's about the size of the entire Pacific ocean and only ~250000 km away. The swimming pool DOES experience a tide, but since the relative water is so small, there's nothing to slosh around and earth's gravity overpowers it. In the ocean, too much water gets pulled at once.

   But ask Ken this: If gravity of the planets is so influential to human behaviour, then how does it affect astronauts as a control group? They constantly neutralize gravity in their jobs by going outside the influence of it (not counting orbits, but actual trips to the moon). But for that matter, from our perspective gravity increases every time you get on an elevator going up or hot the carnival. Why aren't we affected by that? Not even to get into the positions of planets relative to each other ... as if the entire cosmos was made for US on our one little planet.

   Personally, I think it's all self-hypnosis. If you believe that the moon will affect you, and you see the moon in the right spot, it will affect you because your subconscious will want it to in order to self-validate your belief system. Then you'll see similar vague influences around you, discount 99% of the ones that don't match up, and remember the few that do as proof that you're right. It's either that or the entirety of humanity can be distilled down to 12 personality traits and they all get the exact same influences. One that takes responsibility for your actions and fate away from you. How convenient!!!

2. Comment by the 'Silly Beliefs' Team, 14 May, 2016

   Hi Rene. Yes, it is strange that while only five planets plus the Sun and Moon were known to exist when astrology was invented, astrologers like Ken Ring insist that the old astrology still made amazingly accurate predictions, and to quote Ring himself:

   'It is the old principles of Astrology that we should be turning back to'

   'when it comes to the influence of sun, moon and planets on Earth and everything on the earth, this has already been worked out in the old astrology'

   But refusing to explain why, Ring (and your typical modern astrologer) does now take into account the movements of 'recently' discovered bodies such as Uranus, Neptune and Pluto, while still ignoring the asteroids and other minor bodies. But why do they need to worry about the likes of Pluto when the ancients didn't? Clearly adding Pluto will only stuff up their calculations if the ancient horoscopes were accurate without it, as Ring insists they were. But then again, as you say, shouldn't the extra gravity of these previously unknown bodies have severely screwed up the ancient predictions, prompting them to toss out astrology before it took hold? If it doesn't seem to matter whether you include Pluto or not, that is, both ancient and modern horoscopes are equally accurate, then clearly Pluto isn't having any affect whatsoever. So why wasn't all that extra gravity from Uranus, Neptune, Pluto and the asteroids influencing the lives of the ancients, but the gravity from little ol' Mercury's was?

   But is it gravity that causes astrological effects here on Earth and in our bodies, or is it some unknown force? Ask most astrologers and believers in astrology, and if they give an answer at all, they do normally opt for gravity. Probably because it's the only force they're familiar with, thanks to science. Of course when the Babylonians devised astrology thousands of years ago, they had no idea how big the planets were (even the Sun and Moon were called planets, or wanderers), or how far away they were, let alone anything about gravity. To them it was just some mystical force, emanating from the 7 'planets' as they moved through the zodiac of constellations. No modern astrologer claims that astrology has some intelligence behind it, that there is some grand plan being played out, as the religious nutters do for their beliefs. Thus if the astrological force is a natural part of matter, say, like gravity, then every piece of matter in the universe, big or small, near or far, has some astrological influence on Earth and me. Thus they must all be considered in astrological calculations. But we now know that gravity, if that's what causes astrological effects, falls off quickly with distance and with mass, so a nearby small planet, or a large skyscraper, will affect us far more than a big planet a long way away. The ancients didn't know this so they placed more importance on watching distant, small planets rather than our nearby, large moon and large star, the Sun. They thought that the 5 true planets, the bodies that have a very small gravitational effect on Earth, were as important or even more important than the Sun and Moon. So if a distant body has a similar or greater affect on Earth than does a nearby one, then it's not gravity that is the astrological force, and to derive an accurate horoscope would entail taking into account the influence of every planet, moon, asteroid, comet, star, alien spacecraft, black hole etc in the entire universe. If distance doesn't matter, if small and distant Pluto can affect my future (and my weather) just as easily as the large and nearby Moon, then clearly gravity isn't the cause. Of course Ring also confusingly talks of geomagnetic forces, but that can't be the answer either, since electromagnetism falls off with distance too, and suffers from similar problems to gravity. So that puts us back with an unknown force to explain astrology. But worse still, if small and distant bodies have some unknown force that will affect us as much as large nearby bodies, then again we must include everything in the universe, even the most distant star and the smallest asteroid, or else our astrological calculations will be lacking and obviously wrong. However, confusingly, astrologers do completely ignore most bodies in the cosmos, even big bodies that are close to us, while singling out small bodies that are far away. This appears to suggest that some divine being has after all placed the astrological force in some bodies but not in others. But if you put this to astrologers, none will agree that astrology works because 'someone' has given special powers to Pluto while ignoring the asteroids.

   So, if naïve astrologers like Ring argue that the astrological affect is caused by gravity or geomagnetism, then they must explain why they worry about distant Pluto and not the family of Sumo wrestlers that live next door? If they say it's some unknown force emanating from visible bodies in space, that distance and size is immaterial, then again they must explain why they only worry about 10 of the few thousand or so that I can see from my lawn. Simply put, if astrology is powered by a natural force such as gravity, then we can ignore all the planets and concentrate just on the Sun and Moon. But if it's an unknown force found in everything, and size and distance is irrelevant, then Pluto and Mercury, along with every object in the universe, most unseen, must be factored into astrological predictions. For astrology to work, one of these two stances must explain it — a known force operating locally, or an unknown force operating universally — but astrologers accept neither, because to do so would stuff up their entire enterprise. They won't just stick with the Sun and Moon, nor do they look at everything, they take a whimsical middle ground, embracing a handful of shiny points in the sky that some ancient goat herders thought special, while ignoring billions and billions of others. I've found that this argument really confounds believers in astrology. No matter which way they turn, they find themselves contradicting their understanding of how astrology works. I was introduced to this discussion by astronomer Philip Plait on his 'Bad Astronomy' website some years ago, and his article is well worth reading.

   As for your Moon to Earth comparison Rene, where you say that 'People forget that the Moon's about the size of the entire Pacific ocean and only ~250000 km away', I believe you're a little out. It doesn't affect the logic of your argument, but it's always nice to keep our facts, well, factual. The Moon is 384,400 km away, not ~250,000 km, and it's 'size' is quite a bit smaller than the Pacific Ocean. According to this site, the Moon's diameter is 3,474 km, whereas the Pacific Ocean (according to my encyclopedia), has a maximum length and width of 14,500 km and 17,700 km. If you look at surface area, the aforementioned website says the Moon is 37.9 million sq km, and my encyclopedia gives 181.3 million sq km for the Pacific. However I believe in his article Ring himself makes a deliberately misleading error, especially coming from a self-proclaimed expert. He claims that 'The moon is between a third and a quarter the size of Earth, and sitting only 10 earth circumferences away, so with such a big thing so near our planet, wouldn't it be more weird if that didn't affect us?' He hugely exaggerates its size in comparison to the Earth so as to argue for some undeniable effect. I suspect he describes the distance in the terms of 'earth circumferences' so that most people can't easily visualise how far that is. Diameter I could understand, but circumference? But even then it's wrong. Ring believes the Moon is 400,302 km away, rather than 384,400 km, so wouldn't this upset all his astrological calculations? But more egregious is his claim that 'The moon is between a third and a quarter the size of Earth'. But what does he actually mean by 'size'? The aforementioned website gives these size comparisons between the Moon and the Earth:

   Comparing diameter, the Moon is approximately 27% the size of the Earth.
   Comparing surface area, the area of the Moon compared to Earth is only 7.4%.
   Comparing volume the Moon is only 2% compared to the volume of the Earth.
   Comparing mass, the mass of the Moon is only 1.2% of the mass of the Earth.

   Only diameter fits with Ring's claim, the other size comparisons are way, way, smaller. And since Ring argues that the Moon's gravity is the force that influences the Earth, and gravity is dependent on mass (and distance), not volume, diameter or surface area, then the mass comparison is the important figure and the only one we need consider. And the mass of the Moon is only 1.2% of the mass of the Earth, not 'between a third and a quarter' as Ring claims. So Ring is again falling back on primitive thinking, seeing a big, bright object in the sky, and using his Neanderthal brain, argues, 'wouldn't it be more weird if that didn't affect us?'

   As for my quote, 'a mosquito would exert more gravitational pull on your arm than the moon would' (made by astronomer George O. Abell), I know that if you stood on the surface of the Moon and on a mosquito, the Moon's gravity would be far, far stronger. However, this is the crux of the astrology argument, we aren't talking about the Moon's surface gravity, we are asking, How strong is it when it reaches my arm, after travelling for hundreds of thousands of kilometres? If we could measure the gravitational pull on my arm as the Moon travelled overhead and the gravitational pull from a mosquito as it alighted on my arm, the pull from the mosquito would be greater, since while it's very small, it's also very close. I think too with this question of tides that it's more complex than most appreciate, and I certainly don't have more than a basic grasp. Many think that the Moon passes overhead and, like a tug of war, its gravity pulls the ocean's water up towards the Moon. But there's more to it than this, since when the Moon is overhead there is not only a high tide below it, but another high tide on the opposite side of the Earth. It's almost as if there is another invisible Moon on the opposite side pulling that ocean towards it, and that distant ocean seems to be being pushed away from the real Moon rather than pulled towards it. If it was just about the Moon's gravity pulling all the water towards it, then the Earth shouldn't experience two tides every day at the same time, one apparently going with the Moon's pull, the other against it. But it does, and this is where you have to move beyond just gravitation attraction and consider the tidal forces that can arise on large masses, like the Earth, but not on small masses like a body or swimming pool. And again, it's about noticeable tidal forces in the body, forces that have a measurable effect. And I would challenge any astrologer to produce evidence of that.

   Good luck with your question to Ken re astronauts and the variation in gravity, Rene. While he does occasionally grace us with his presence, he almost never answers questions, subterfuge and insults are his forte. Rest assured that we've put similar questions to him many times, and the silence was deafening.

   Also, interestingly, and I'm sure you know this, but when you say that astronauts 'constantly neutralize gravity in their jobs by going outside the influence of it', that isn't strictly true. People talk of astronauts being in zero-gravity, but this never actually happens. I've read that for astronauts on the International Space Station, the Earth's gravitational pull will have only dropped off by about 15%. The astronauts float around because they are falling around the Earth at the same rate as the Space Station, not because they've gone beyond the influence of Earth's gravity. Even out at the orbit of the Moon, where Earth's gravity is almost 4,000 times weaker than at the Earth's surface, it's still there and plenty powerful enough to stop the Moon floating away. So, we're never completely free of gravity's influence, not even astronauts. And since everything in the universe, most of which we can't even see, is always pulling on us to some degree, astrologers like Ring who point to gravity as the force behind astrology really need to explain why they can blindly ignore almost all of it.

   I agree Rene that believers in astrology take in the positive comments and quickly ditch the rest. And it's only apathy and ignorance that allow the idiots to believe in the identical personality traits for people born under each star sign. On top of that, because of the precession of the equinoxes, every star sign used in horoscopes is now one star sign out, so no matter what sign your horoscope matches to your birthday, that's not the actual sign you were born under. Everyone that says they're a Capricorn or a Pisces is wrong. Most professional astrologers know this, but won't tell you, nor to they care. They know it doesn't work, and lining up the star signs won't change that. In fact, revealing this embarrassing fact to all their clients would see a massive loss of confidence in their work. You mean I've been charting my life as a Gemini and I'm not a Gemini at all?

3. Comment by Daryl, 14 May, 2016

   Cheers John, I really enjoyed the read. I'm sure after years of 'arguing' with sceptics that deep down he knows he's pedalling nonsense, and if he doesn't, well, then he truly is crazy. I think now he is just in too deep, taking money from the gullible is working for him so he keeps rolling out the garbage.
   Keep up the good work John, he needs to be kept honest.

4. Comment by the 'Silly Beliefs' Team, 14 May, 2016

   Thanks Daryl. I think you're quite right. Having lost so many battles, deep down, or perhaps not so deep, Ring must now know that he's on the losing side and that defeat is inevitable. However, like the devoutly religious, I suspect he's haunted by this primitive, nagging feeling that there's something mysterious going on, that there has to be a deeper reason than that things simply happen because of natural forces, that rain and earthquakes surely can't be explained by mere science. There's a huge cosmos out there, which leads Ken to ask, 'wouldn't it be more weird if that didn't affect us?' The religious imagine meddlesome gods and demons micromanaging life and the cosmos, whereas Ken imagines that it's the 'ancient astrological energy grid of the constellations' that's doing the meddling.

   Just as most religious people keep going to church, even though their belief has become more habit than conviction, Ring will keep, as you say, 'rolling out the garbage', because admitting to error is not in his nature, and he's too old to begin an honest career. Actually I had to giggle when you wrote that Ring 'needs to be kept honest'. Regardless of all the quackery that we expose, Ring will never turn honest and admit, for example, that he has no evidence that astrology works, that his method has never been independently evaluated or that Newton wasn't an astrologer. He will continue to be deceptive, misleading and outright dishonest in much of what he claims as he promotes his business. The best we skeptics can do is reveal his deceptions and ignorance so that anyone considering giving him money, if they have the intellect to think about it, will realise that they are being conned. I wish there was a way to turn Ken honest — a prayer, a spell, a curse, just the right amount of lunar gravity — but now I fear I'm starting to think like him.

5. Comment by Rene, 16 May, 2016

   I had an astrologer once at a psychic fair try and explain the new additions, and they claimed that "like Science, they simply learned new facts and incorporated them, so the predictions are just better now, like weather models". When I pointed out that weather models always had unknowns and new information fills them in while astrology not only claimed to have it nailed down but the extra planet's influences were often in OPPOSITION to a set 7 "wanderer" prediction, they just pointed out "see, that's why they were sometimes off, we didn't have all the data. Now we do". When I pointed out that they're just moving the goalposts to ensure they always get a field goal, I was asked to leave. Yeah, they're trying to justify the ignorance, but not succeeding much.

   ‘more worried about the sumo family nest door from a gravity POV', that was a good one! [snicker] I'm now out a coffee and my monitor is really messy. [laugh]

   Yeah, I was going by far-away memory on the moon sizes and ocean-sizes, but at least I was in the ballpark, so still better than astrology on the subject. As for the effects, it's all mass so other measurements are irrelevant. (the diameter of a black hole for example is barely significant). But gravity is a pull between masses, so the mosquito still is very little. Still the moon's so far out that unless we had the mass of a planet behind us, there's not much to pull on. As for the tides, the planet is rotating fast, so the moon pulls, and the centrifugal force causes the 2nd tide. Here's the explanation: 'Why are there two tides a day?'. So the moon is definitely strong enough to influence the planet...but clearly overshadows every other gravitational influence from the cosmos (except the sun). Astrology should just be 2 wanderers...the sun and moon, by that logic, yet they keep adding "factors" to make their logic work.

   Yeah I know about the falling around the planet = illusion of zero-gravity, but I was referring to what could be called "deep space"...say a trip to Mars or the sweet spot on route to the Moon where the 2 gravity's balance each other out. Still that's a good point for our friend...if you're in orbit of Jupiter, how does THAT affect your horoscope, I'm sure their DOZENS of moons would be a factor by that point. Maybe astrology insists that you must be standing on earth to work? I'm sure they'll find some excuse.

   I like how you say the signs are out by one, so here's the question that your hypothetical Gemini should ask: "If I've been charting my life as Gemini and I am not one, yet everything worked out as IF I was a Gemini, then how come everything didn't just collapse because the math was wrong. Why did 1+2 suddenly equal 5 and nobody noticed? Maybe this whole thing is simply not true and *I* made the science and math of astrology work out from confirmation bias? Naaah, can't be, must be Mercury in retrograde making me think this."

   Anyway, great article as always! Astrology always was just religion in a science disguise. I mean, we named the planets based on gods, and the astrology influences just HAPPEN to represent the traits of the god' names we assigned. For real, which came first, the naming of the planets, or the influences noticed by astrologers? Because if the names came first, it's a HELL of a coincidence that they just named the planet the perfect representation for the personality trait they wanted it to excerpt influence over, don't you think? Astrologers, the ball's yours, let's hear it.

6. Comment by the 'Silly Beliefs' Team, 07 May, 2016

   Ahh yes, you're at a psychic fair asking reasonable questions about their belief, and suddenly, 'I was asked to leave'. I know that experience well. It's amazing how quickly their cheerful and positive sales pitch can turn to animosity, all because you ask a question or make an observation that exposes their ignorance. But lets' remember that these morons, be they astrologers, psychics, energy healers, homeopaths, Christian evangelists or whatever, all want us to hand over our wellbeing and our money, especially our money, to their silly belief, so surely sensible people should ask a few probing questions first? And yet they won't stand for a little due diligence on our part. Like they no doubt did, we're apparently expected to blindly believe their nonsense, and that it's rude to ask questions.

   Of course I can't prove that my worldview view is true, but every time an astrologer, medium, energy healer, Christian or other peddler of some esoteric belief is unable to defend their view, and refuses to even discuss it beyond a few opening comments, then this just boosts my confidence level for my view of reality. I don't leave these encounters angry or worried or confounded, I leave buoyed with the realisation that I'm seeing the world as it really is, and that they're mired in a superstitious fantasy, hence the reason they are at a loss to explain it. I've read of many Christians who, because of science and reason, seriously struggle to keep their faith, but all their doubt in their belief just bolsters my confidence. When I encounter people struggling and then refusing to defend their strongly held beliefs, I'm not annoyed, in fact I couldn't be happier.

   You say Rene that, 'Maybe astrology insists that you must be standing on earth to work?' I suspect that they would say that, since it's all about how the Earth, planets and constellations line up, as viewed from Earth. If there were astronauts in orbit around Jupiter, or anywhere off Earth, I guess the astrologers would have to develop a different set of rules for those locales. However I'd like to think that by the time we finally get out into space, astrology will be long dead. But you don't even have to leave Earth to be outside astrology. Astrology "works" by plotting the movement of the Sun and planets through the 12 constellations of the Zodiac. But there are locations on Earth, the polar regions, regions unknown to those whose developed astrology, from where the zodiac is not visible. So for people born in those regions, they can't be allocated to a star sign, so without that astrological influence setting up all their personality etc, they are astrology free. So clearly astrological forces aren't needed to run a human being successfully.

   Another major and blatant problem with astrology is that regardless of what star sign you were born under, astrologers claim that people born under the same sign have the same personality traits. Yet I know many sets of twins, mostly non-identical, and almost none of them have similar characters. If fraternal twins, who share genes, environment, upbringing and an almost identical time and place of birth, don't follow the astrology rules, why should two strangers born 10 years apart and on opposite sides of the planet?

   I understand how primitive, superstitious people thousands of years ago might have thought that the strange lights in the sky could influence them somehow, and there is indeed some physical influence, think of the tides, sunburn and Vitamin D. But all the mystical influence they imagined has long been shown not to occur. What I don't understand is how modern people with free and easy access to this knowledge ignore it all and transport their minds back to such ignorant times. Maybe there is an argument for eugenics after all, since I still have dreams of a 'Star Trek' future, one we'll struggle to attain with these morons holding us back.

Ren raised this topic by sending us a link to a post by atheist author and ex-preacher John W. Loftus:

The Detestable Practice of Divinely Sanctioned Child Sacrifice in the Bible

Like Ren I'm also familiar with many of those Biblical examples where God demands and is well pleased by human sacrifice in his name. Of course most squirming Christians will argue that all those child sacrifices happened in the Old Testament, and Christians don't follow that barbaric book and its bloodthirsty god, they follow Jesus, the main character of the OT sequel, the New Testament. Usually sequels are never as good as the original, but in this case, Christians insist it's actually much better. But as Loftus said in his post, sacrifice doesn't stop with the OT:

'In the New Testament God the Father sacrifices his only son (Jesus) as the central redemptive act of Christianity, and God still seeks to fulfill his lust for human sacrifice by burning humans forever in the lake of fire.'

So what was God thinking, especially in the OT, when so much of what God did, and approved of, and demanded, is now viewed as disgusting and barbaric and oh-so-clearly wrong? How can Christians (and Jews and Muslims) defend such immoral actions from someone that clearly, being an all-knowing god, should have known better? God slaughtered innocent individuals and entire cultures and encouraged and even forced his followers to do likewise. And yet even with clear knowledge of his atrocities, and even today when God kills their own family and friends with wars, natural disasters and disease, his followers still tearfully cry, 'Praise the Lord', and, 'Thankyou God'.

What sort of person falls in love with a monster, and what sort of person continues to love him even after his action, or inaction, has harmed their loved ones? Why do they see it as more important to please a serial killer than safeguarding their own children? Why aren't Christians even a little concerned that the monster they worship is planning to torture most humans once they die, probably even family and friends, for all eternity, for the simple reason that they failed to believe that such a monster existed? How could a god that loves us dearly, more than is humanly possible, deliberately hide from us and create false evidence that suggests he doesn't exist, then torture us because his devious scheme worked, since we never saw him, and thus never believed?

We all agree that there have been people throughout history that have committed great atrocities — Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Caligula, Genghis Khan, Attila the Hun, Torquemada etc. — where millions of innocent people were tortured and slaughtered because ignorant, fearful followers blindly and obediently carried out their leader's commands. But while today most sane and rational people can agree on who the monsters of history were, some people can't. Christians are like despicable neo-Nazis, in that they continue to worship a killer and flatly deny that what he did was wrong. Christians have the Bible which they insist is the true word of God, but even with this 'factual' account of their god's clear wrongdoing — he flooded the entire planet for Christ's sake in an uncaring bid to kill off all life, and when that didn't work out, he raped a young virgin so that years later he could torture and murder his own son! — even with complete knowledge of all those he mistreated and killed, Christians still won't accept that God is anything but a truly wonderful guy that loves us all.

Defending and praising God as Christians do is like defending and praising all the tyrants, killers, rapists and right bastards from all of human history multiplied by a septillion. It's almost mind-boggling that Christians (and Jews and Muslims) can sincerely worship such a bastard as God, so how do they do it? How do they explain away the horrors? How do they sleep at night and earnestly convince their innocent young children to follow them in worshiping a sadistic killer? It comes down to one word: ignorance. They idolise their lord and master by remaining largely ignorant about him, about his history, his commandments, and their Bible. I'm forever amazed how little most Christians know about their Bible, about history and science, and about evidence and critical thinking. But especially their Bible, since that is the focus of their life. I don't know all that much about the Bible, I can't quote verses, I don't know the name of Noah's wife, and Jesus has never invisibly reached out and touched my heart, nor genitals to my knowledge (although that might explain those mysterious nocturnal emissions). However I often find on talking to people that call themselves Christians, that superficial as my knowledge is, I almost deserve an honorary degree when compared to what they know. I've never read the Bible cover to cover, but I have read many books on the Bible, religion and atheism, plus science, history and philosophy, but not only haven't they read such books, they haven't even read the one book that they say rules them all, the Bible.

Why is this, why don't Christians read their Bibles? Why aren't they interested in the slightest in learning the real story from the original book, especially since they insist that their present and future wellbeing depends on them knowing the precise information it provides, and living by it? Can you imagine a rabid fan of 'Harry Potter' or 'The Lord of the Rings' saying that they never got past the second chapter of the first book? And yet most Christians are outspoken, lifelong fans of a book they've never actually read from start to finish, not even close. I believe Christians give their Bibles a miss for several possible reasons:

1. Much of it is dead boring, with long lists where someone begets someone who then begets someone else, and it's confusing with archaic language occurring so often that you don't understand what's really happening. What does it mean to 'beget' someone? Even the sexy bits are hidden: 'And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived'. Umm ... in the same way that I knew all my teachers? Many of the embarrassing or immoral Bible verses deliberately use euphemisms to hide what really transpired, so even on reading a certain verse people often don't realise what nasty behaviour God just approved of. Reading the Bible cover to cover can be like reading the phone book cover to cover, although at least with the phone book you might occasionally strike people you know.
2. The Church hierarchy — popes, priests, ministers etc — know that there are a lot of very damaging stories and revelations in the Bible that show God in a terrible light, so they actively steer followers to the safe and innocuous bits, repeating those verses over and over in their sermons and never reading and explaining the embarrassing sections. Followers simply aren't encouraged to read and understand the Bible in its entirety, and so they don't. I remember when I was a kid the local church gave me a Bible, but it only contained the New Testament, not the Old Testament, where most of the sex and violence happens.
3. Christians quickly discover that reading their Bible doesn't result in their life improving in any appreciable way, so why waste time reading a boring and confusing book, especially one that's also conflicting greatly with how science and history is describing the world. As long as you believe that God exists and you've given your life over to Jesus, then that surely is enough in this modern and fast-paced world. Right? Catholics have it the best, they can happily ignore their Bible then later confess to a priest that they've ignored it, and be immediately forgiven. And I'm also sure that rather than read the book, many Christians are simply waiting for the movie to come out.
4. Some Christian parents are aware that sprinkled throughout the Bible are many stories of violence, filth and immorality that they understandably don't want their children reading and asking questions about, so they don't encourage their children to read it cover to cover. Like the priests and ministers, they cherry pick verses and only read them to their children, and when they grow up children probably think that over the years they were exposed to most of the Bible, so there's no need to read it again.
5. There are no pictures in the Bible, not even a poorly drawn scribble, not even half-decent word descriptions of what the main characters looked like, and in a visual age of the Internet, TV, movies and Facebook, anything without colourful images and special effects won't get a look in. Again, wait until the movie to comes out.
6. Why read a poorly written old book when everyone knows the basic story and how it ends? The hero, unusually for the hero, is killed by the baddies. But then he comes back to life. Or does he? Either way, the Bible doesn't provide the answer, so if you're honestly curious to discover if this Jesus story is at all plausible, then spend your time reading books on science and history, not the Bible. Would you read a Mickey Mouse comic to learn whether mice could talk?

Only by stripping away all the truly immoral past actions and commandments of God and Jesus, along with denying their sickening intentions for us in the future, and by ignoring their blatant apathy towards us, demonstrated by their 2,000 year absence, can Christians produce a humanised, but still absent, god, one that they can justify worshipping. If the barbaric, tribal God of the Bible isn't clearly an artefact of man's own primitive imagination, the God of 21st century Christians certainly is. That Christians can be so ignorant and deluded, rejecting their Bible while still clinging to it, it's evidence of ... what? That the ideas of the enlightenment passed many people by, that maybe medieval thinking is truly the limit for some people, that maybe devolution, or de-evolution, is possible?

It all comes back to ignorance. Your typical Christian is either ignorant of what a nasty piece of work their god is, as described in the Bible, or, vaguely aware of these Bible stories, naively believes that the church hierarchy have feel-good explanations for them, and is ignorant of the fact that they don't. Either way, it's ignorance that allows them to sleep at night, never worrying about whether they've angered God by not sacrificing their first born son to him, and never questioning whether a god that would ever demand such a thing is worthy of their love in the first place.

Posted by the 'Silly Beliefs' Team, 11 Apr, 2016 ~ Add a Comment    Send to a Friend

Stranger: 'Are you an atheist?'
Me: 'Yes indeed.'
Stranger: 'Well, you wouldn't like me then, I belong to the Masons.'
Me: 'Actually, we're not as evil as many people make out.'

So what are we to make of his statement? Had his Freemason overlords erroneously informed him that atheists dislike anyone and everyone who believes in gods? Or is it actually the masons that don't like atheists, and he therefore assumed (without justification) that the feeling must be mutual? Perhaps he thought that I was using my anti-religion stickers as a kind of vermin repellent, and he simply wanted to show that they had no effect on him? Whatever the reason, clearly my unconcealed disbelief riled him, provoking his little outburst.

As a kid I grew up hearing snippets of weird stories about what the clandestine masons did behind closed doors, and now I'd describe those stories as a cross between the secret and sinister Opus Dei organisation portrayed in the 'The Da Vinci Code', and those teen comedies that show the embarrassing and humiliating initiation rituals that US college students must perform to be accepted into their desired fraternity. For decades now I've heard that mason membership, like that of the churches, has been falling rapidly, but my brief encounter with one individual of those 'rare and vanishing creatures of the world known as the living dead', shows that they're not yet extinct. Yet I expect the question is not if they'll join the dodo, but when.

Once I got over my initial surprise that someone would reveal their membership in a secretive organisation by accosting a stranger, I got to wondering what it all meant. I mean, if he had asked me if I knew where he could rent a goat and some sex toys for one of their weird initiation rituals, then fair enough, but criticising my lack of religion, that I didn't expect. So why does a Freemason give two hoots about god and atheists? Their secretive little group isn't a religion or an offshoot of the Vatican ... is it? So I did some quick research, and no, it's not a religion, but weirdly enough, its members do have to be religious and believe in god. In that respect it's a lot like the Boy Scouts, only far more secretive, and with adults rather than kids.

It seems that one of the core requirements to join the Freemasons, beyond being a man — and a free man at that, slaves are not allowed to join — is that members must have a belief in a supreme being, or in laypersons terms, a silly old imaginary god. According to this article, no 'stupid Atheist' need apply:

'One of the pre-requisites that must be satisfied by a prospective candidate in order to become initiated into the "mysteries and privileges" of freemasonry is to declare belief in a Supreme Being. The book of Constitutions makes this requirement quite clear:

"A Mason is oblig'd by his Tenure, to obey the moral Law; and if he rightly understands the Art, he will never be a stupid Atheist nor an irreligious Libertine..."'

'How does Freemasonry define God?

Monotheism is the sole dogma of Freemasonry. Belief in one God is required of every initiate, but his conception of the Supreme Being is left to his own interpretation. Freemasonry is not concerned with theological distinctions. This is the basis of our universality.'

'You have learned that Freemasonry calls God, "The Great Architect of the Universe" (G.A.O.T.U.). This is the Freemason's special name for God, because he is universal. He belongs to all men regardless of their religious persuasion. All wise men acknowledge His authority. In his private devotions a Mason will pray to Jehovah, Mohammed, Allah, Jesus or the Deity of his choice. In a Masonic Lodge, however, the Mason will find the name of his Deity within the G.A.O.T.U.'

Of course the phrases 'Supreme Being' and 'The Great Architect of the Universe' do put some constraints on which supernatural beings Freemasons can choose to worship. If thinking of joining, you couldn't choose to believe in Aphrodite, for example, one of the major goddesses of the ancient Greeks, since she wasn't the supreme god of the Greek pantheon, nor did she create the universe. (And she was female too, which I'm guessing they'd have a huge problem with.) You could choose Zeus though, he would fit the bill. You could also choose the Jewish god, the Christian god, the Muslim god, a Hindu god or any god of some obscure or long forgotten religion as long as that god was the supreme god of that religion and the creator of the universe. Of course you could also choose to believe in a god from a work of fiction. Yes, yes, I know, all gods, including all that I've mentioned are fictitious, but what I mean here are the gods from universally accepted works of fiction, such as fantasy and science fiction genres. For example, there is the following passage from Douglas Adams' 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: A Trilogy in Five Parts':

'In the beginning the Universe was created.
This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.
Many races believe that it was created by some sort of God, though the Jatravartid people of Viltvodle VI believe that the entire Universe was in fact sneezed out of the nose of a being called the Great Green Arkleseizure.
The Jatravartids, who live in perpetual fear of the time they call The Coming of The Great White Handkerchief, are small blue creatures with more than fifty arms each, who are therefore unique in being the only race in history to have invented the aerosol deodorant before the wheel.
However, the Great Green Arkleseizure Theory is not widely accepted outside Viltvodle VI and so, the Universe being the puzzling place it is, other explanations are constantly being sought.'

An honest true believer, be they Christian, Muslim, Jew, Hindu, Buddhist etc, will assure those with different beliefs, including atheists, that they are wrong, but when that true believer becomes a mason, their integrity, both to themselves and to their god, almost disappears, and the only person they are now prepared to challenge, if only fleetingly, is the atheist. Perhaps because they know that the atheist is the only one unlikely to threaten them or their family with physical violence, either in this life or an imaginary next one.

So apart from being rude and intolerant to atheists, what do the Freemasons do as a group? Well, depending on who you believe, from conspiracy theorists to ex-members, they do everything from covertly controlling all Western governments and battling alien and zombie threats, to simply providing a place where men can hide from women, dress up in funny outfits, perform silly rituals and have quality man-on-man time. There is even a post on a silly NZ Chemtrails website that argues that the hand of the Freemasons can be seen in the first Christchurch earthquake. Freemasons themselves claim they now do charity work in the community, and maybe they do, but I've never seen it. Perhaps their fixation with secrecy works against them here? Of course I don't believe the conspiracy theory crap, and I'm not interested in what grown men do in private with each other as long as no one is harmed. And they're not the only backward group that excludes females, there's the Vatican priesthood of course, the Boy Scouts, and there's still some gentlemen's clubs and golf clubs that abhor the thought of women sullying their premises, unless it's to come in beforehand and cook and clean. Speaking as a male, I don't understand the psyche that views the ultimate escape as a place that excludes women, but then I don't get this silly belief in gods either. And it's the god belief that interests me, not their desire to hang out with other men.

Regarding gods and religion, this article — '9 things you didn't know about Freemasonry' — made the statement:

"There are certain subjects which are prevented or we simply proscribe from discussing within the lodge," Piers Vaughan, master of St. John's Lodge #1 in New York, told Mo Rocca. "And religion is one. Politics is another."

Imagine a group of strangers declaring a belief that there is indeed a supreme race, or country, or movie, or sexual position, one that's better than all others, but not having to say which one they're thinking of. On the subject of movies, how deluded would these strangers have to be to agree amongst themselves that a certain movie, a movie that is never named, is superior to all others, and to go away believing that they would have all been thinking of the same movie? And yet this is essentially what masons do. Even though there are thousands of gods all vying for the title of supreme being, masons individually declare a belief in a supreme being, in a god they don't name, and childishly expect us to believe that they're all thinking of the same god. Are they stupid, or just think that we're stupid enough to believe that crap?

Let's reiterate that the masons' one required religious belief is quite vague, since a belief in a 'god' that is the 'supreme being' and the creator of the universe is something that most religions can and do claim title to. If I said I believed in god, I haven't told you much more than if I said I watched my favourite movie again last night. You would need to ask, for both the god and the movie, 'And which one would that be?' But masons never ask this question, aren't even allowed to, so all that masons can know is that their fellow masons agree with their broad view of god: he, whoever he is, exists. This ignorance about who believes what, means that many masons could unknowingly be friends with other masons that hold religious views that, if they were to be revealed in their entirety, they would find offensive and blasphemous.

So because no mason knows what god his fellow mason is actually referring to, and he's not allowed to ask, then they have no idea whether that god is the one they believe in, or one of the many false gods that of course aren't real at all. Their fellow masons could be people that think as they do, and can be accepted as friends, or they could be heathens that they should be arguing loudly with, if not shunning altogether. But they'll never know friend from foe, true believer from heathen, since they're forbidden from discussing with other members what religion they actually believe in. Their perceived unity is, or at least is likely to be, utterly false and illusory, and survives only because of self-censorship.

On the surface this looks like a great idea, since banning religion as a topic of discussion and simply agreeing on a common point — there is a god — allows those of competing religions to put religious animosity aside and to work together for some common goal. Masons almost sound like a very tolerant, albeit secret, organisation. But these masons aren't actually tolerating the differing religious beliefs of their fellow members at all, since they don't even know what they are. You can only be tolerant of something if you know about it and consciously decide to tolerate it. They maintain a false tolerance by hiding their differing belief from each other. I suspect that most masons secretly convince themselves that their fellow masons likely believe in the same god as they do, and because no talk is permitted that might refute this, their comforting delusion is maintained. Since they won't accept atheists, masons clearly aren't a tolerant group when it comes to differing beliefs about gods, and they apparently realise that they couldn't even tolerate the different religious beliefs of their own fellow members were they known, hence they must proscribe any and all discussion of gods, lest religious wars break out between members and they destroy the Freemasons from within.

And if further proof was needed that masons aren't even remotely tolerant of the beliefs of others, let's remember that the mason I met wasn't prepared to simply ignore me. He was apparently so offended that I didn't think about gods as he did, that he went out of his way to ensure I knew about it. There was no polite greeting, just the apparent revelation that he believed in some god and I was a hateful atheist. Approaching a stranger to rudely insult their beliefs is not tolerance in any shape or form.

Of course the best way for masons to avoid religious strife within their organisation would have been not to make a belief in some god as one of their core entry requirements in the first place, or conversely, openly specify one religious affiliation only and exclude the rest. So why do they insist that members must have a god, but that it can be a secret god of their choice?

Historically, the origin of the Freemasons isn't clear. One legend says they started as stonemasons working on King Solomon's Temple, then some accounts suggest they arose from masonry guilds in Medieval Europe. In this article it states that 'The first appearance of the modern Masons occurred in London, where the first Grand Lodge was created in 1717'. My guess is that when the Freemasons started to grow in the 1700s, most masons may not have known whether their fellow members were Catholic or Protestant, but they would have been fairly confident, and happy, that they were at least Christians. But that was then, this is now, and the western world is no longer as religiously segregated as it once was. Today you can't easily tell by one's name, ethnicity, family, occupation or by where they live as to whether they're religious, or what religion that might be. No longer can we, in NZ for example, assume that our colleagues and neighbours and the carpenters we hire are all good Christians. And even if they are Christian, the last figure I saw was that today there are an estimated 44,000 different Christian denominations. So if you're a Christian, it's not just atheists, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists etc that will tell you that you've got your god belief wrong, there will be around 44,000 other Christian denominations also convinced that you're following false leads. So even if a mason, who's a Christian, believes a new recruit is likely a Christian rather than a Jew or Muslim, he'll still have no idea if he's a true Christian, ie the same as him, or someone that follows one of those false Christian denominations. Although one thing I suspect we can predict about modern masons is that almost none of them will actually be real masons, that is, someone who builds or works with stone or brick.

But anyway, the Freemasons no doubt decided that a belief in god was needed, since in your typical religious view, our morals come from god, hence believers are moral, decent folk, and atheists, without the benefit of god's morals, must therefore be immoral, or at the very least, amoral. Christians, Jews and Muslims all accept that morality can only come from god, and while they generally argue with each other, they acknowledge that all three faiths are still far superior to atheism, since they are at least all searching for the truth about god, whereas atheists aren't even trying. So as much as a Christian may detest the Jews and the Muslims, and vice versa, they all really hate atheists so much more. If a person has a belief in a supreme being, no matter which one, that proves they have the religious mindset and even if they haven't yet found the correct god, they might soon find him, or so the reasoning goes, whereas atheists aren't even looking. An atheist, in the view of the holy books, is the last person that a god believer should be seen associating with. For example, here are some passages from the Bible and one from the Koran that detail how one should deal with the atheist problem:

'The fool says in his heart, "There is no God". They are corrupt, their deeds are vile; there is no one who does good.' (PS 14:1)

'That prophet or dreamer must be put to death, because he preached rebellion against the Lord your God... You must purge the evil from among you... Show him no pity. Do not spare him or shield him. You must certainly put him to death... Stone him to death, because he tried to turn you away from the Lord your God...' (DT 13:1-11)

'And he that blasphemeth the name of the Lord, he shall surely be put to death, and all the congregation shall certainly stone him: as well the stranger ... when he blasphemeth the name of the Lord, shall be put to death.' (Lev 24:16)

'Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness? ... What does a believer have in common with an unbeliever? ... "Therefore come out from them and be separate, says the Lord. Touch no unclean thing, and I will receive you."' (2CO 6:14-17)

'Fight and kill the disbelievers wherever you find them, take them captive, harass them, lie in wait and ambush them using every stratagem of war.' (Koran 9:5)

But again, we atheists have never been a deadly threat to those believing in some god. It appears that the only real gripes the religious have against atheists is that we (usually politely and with supporting evidence) point out flaws in their religious claims, which is no different to what they've continually done to each other for centuries (although usually not politely), or, that we simply ignore them, living our lives, happily and successfully, as if they and their god didn't exist. I suspect that this last thing annoys them most of all, that atheists (and statistics support this) often lead more meaningful, loving, happy, healthy, prosperous, well-informed, stress-free lives than do those that profess belief in gods. Do they hate us out of spite, that we get to live a carefree life while they waste theirs in churches, synagogues, mosques and temples as god-fearing servants? But yes, we certainly have tried to point out how silly belief in gods is, and have definitely blasphemed and turned many people away from their god, but does that make us an evil that must be purged from society? As graphically and accurately portrayed in the Monty Python documentary movie 'Life of Brian' (based on a true story I believe), must we be grabbed off the street and stoned to death? Just for saying Jehovah?

What a shame that masons can't extend their inclusiveness and false tolerance to all, meaning atheists and women and not just ignorant, god-fearing men. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad that they don't kill us like the Jewish, Christian and Muslim holy books say they should, that's definitely a positive, but clearly they still follow the spirit of the above Biblical command, 'Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common?' Thus these ignorant masons have clearly still got a ways to go to become truly tolerant, informed, decent citizens of the 21st century.

I still find it amazing that masons, be they Christian, Jew, Muslim or whatever, are prepared to set aside the untold atrocities they've committed against each other over the centuries, and accept into their fold believers of false gods, of fantasy gods, but they could never accept a believer in no god. Apparently even belief in a false god makes a man a good man, whereas belief in no god at all makes a man that needs to be killed. Thankfully today, other than some Muslims, most god believers just shun atheists and don't try and kill us. But think about it. If it's agreed that man gets his morals from god, then if a man worships a false god, then clearly there is no god guiding him. Whatever morals he thinks his false god has handed out must be imaginary, since his god is imaginary. Thus believers in false gods are no more receiving divine guidance than are atheists. Just like atheists, believers in false gods are making up their own morality, although unlike atheists, they delude themselves into thinking that some sky fairy is actually making up the rules. So if you're, say, a Christian, then surely you must grasp that all those believers in false gods, eg Muslims, Jews, Hindus etc, are not following the morals that the one true Christian god is handing out to all Christians. Their gods don't exist, so they can't be handing out god-given morals at all, and the Christian god certainly isn't handing out his moral code, and the true account of how the universe was created, to all those false religions under the names of false gods, since if he were then all religions would be identical, apart from what the god's name was. So, from this Christian perspective, neither the Muslim, Jew, Hindu, nor the atheist, is privy to divine morals since none believe in the Christian god that is, according to the Christian, the only source of true morality. So logically, it's not just atheists then, Muslims, Jews and Hindus must also be making up their respective moral codes as they go. So to labour the point, regarding the source of our morality, the only difference between atheists and those following false gods is that we atheists know we're making it up, whereas followers of false gods have deluded themselves into believing that some sky fairy is planting thoughts in their heads. So we have two groups, rational atheists and deluded believers in false gods, both in possession of their own moral codes, and the Freemasons, believing that the moral codes of both groups are bogus, have nevertheless decided, rather than reject both groups for the same reason, that it somehow makes good sense to embrace the deluded believers in false gods. As morality goes, the Christians would say that atheists only have one serious flaw, we're ignoring the Christian god's moral code and making up our own, whereas believers in false gods have two serious flaws, in that they're likewise ignoring the Christian god's moral code and making up their own, but they're also dangerously deluded, in that they don't realise that they're making it up. Surely you'd think a rational atheist is preferable over a deluded believer in false gods? In the real world, yes, but when considering membership to a secretive organisation where a belief in gods is paramount, then apparently masons believe it's far easier to work with a deluded believer that already believes gods are real — he's maybe just following the wrong one — than risk debating with a rational, thinking atheist. Joining the Freemasons is one instance where being ignorant, superstitious and desperate to serve some god actually works in your favour.

That masons, be they god-believers of whatever stripe, now view atheists as a bigger threat than those of rival religions is not just revealing, it's baffling, and perhaps reassuring. For centuries, Christians, Muslims and Jews, and to a lesser extent, Hindus and Buddhists, have all attacked, slaughtered and persecuted each other, everyone believing that theirs and only theirs was the one true religion, and that all others were misguided and following false gods. And it wasn't just between religions either, different Christian sects attacked each other for their misguided beliefs, as did different Muslim and Jewish sects. And it continues today, sometimes just with words, but all too often, especially with Muslims, with weapons. Whereas most god-believers all claimed that the only way to god and salvation was to belong to their particular religion, and still do, and that all others lead to damnation, now religious masons are arguing that a sincere search for god, no matter from within which religion, is good enough to get you membership. Masons apparently see a brother in any believer of any god, even the false gods. They see the claim, 'I believe in a god', as something they all have in common, something that can unite them against us evil atheists.

And so masons hold their secret meetings and do who knows what. Strangely it matters not that everyone likely recognises that some of the believers in this united group are likely believing in a fantasy, in a false god, and thus are deluded. Apparently deluded believers are just as valuable as the 'true' believers. It will be accepted that the deluded believers are completely wrong in most everything they believe religion wise, all but the simplistic but common belief that a god created the universe. That is the sole element that unites multiple religions and sects that have been enemies for centuries. They certainly aren't united because they all agree on who that god was, only that they all agree that some god must have been involved. United in their god delusion, and their hostility towards atheists that this delusion demands.

That masons are now prepared to suspend long-held beliefs about god, beliefs that they once killed and died for, to set aside hatred and intolerance and forge alliances with those that they've always insisted mistakenly believed in false gods, is showing amazing tolerance and acceptance. I mean seriously, that committed enemies that have been at each others throats for centuries, slaughtering each others children, each with a belief that their own god has been urging them on, are now prepared to set aside their differences and work together is truly great, but that they still view atheists as their enemy, the only group with an opinion on god that has never violently attacked or persecuted them over the centuries, shows that the one silly belief that unites them and drives them — that god exists — still makes them a truly hateful lot.

Posted by the 'Silly Beliefs' Team, 15 Mar, 2016 ~ Add a Comment    Send to a Friend

Comments:

1. Comment by Rene, 17 Mar, 2016

   They are a confused bunch, aren't they? I didn't know about the religious requirement, nor the massive loophole to apply. Sounds like they cannot refuse someone who's a Pastafarian wearing their colander and professing their belief in the flying Spaghetti monster. It's even a recognized religion! Or what if a Pagan/Wiccan wants to join, what do they do then???

   But if they don't care what the religion is, why do they care if a member has it at all? And then to make it a non-discussive topic? It's like they really wanted to make it exclusive to a particular religion (Christian or Jewish maybe given their views of women), but made so many loopholes to allow other prominent "other" religions to join that they had to give it up but just couldn't bring them to 100% separate the religion, but had to keep the infighting down some.

   Given that an atheist stands for everything they don't ... open-minded, tolerant, and not needing to default their goodness to an imaginary person, but rather just being good people because that's what you should do! No wonder you scared them ... you were polite so they probably assumed you were lying to trick them.

   Let them have their silly outdated club. Though some honesty on their beliefs would be nice for a change.

2. Comment by the 'Silly Beliefs' Team, 18 Mar, 2016

   Hi Rene. My guess is that a Pastafarian could easily pass the masons' religion test, as could anyone really, even an atheist, by simply saying in a believable manner, 'Yes, I believe in a supreme being'. They must take you on your word since you're not required to name the religion you follow, let alone have to provide evidence that you are a true believer. Of course if you openly divulged that you were a Pastafarian and then asked to join, I suspect they'd decline your membership, arguing that Pastafarianism is merely a joke designed to make fun of religion. Which of course it is. And if a Pagan/Wiccan revealed their beliefs before joining, I suspect the masons would likely argue that pagan beliefs, while clearly religious, still fell outside the masons' view of a supreme being who created the universe. But as long as both parties stuck to the masons 'Don't ask, don't tell' policy, then really anyone could join. I've read on the Internet that there are masons who have seen the light since joining and have become atheists, and are now wondering whether they should come clean to their fellow masons and resign, or just throw their integrity into the gutter, keep quiet and keep enjoying their quality man-on-man time, eg, this letter to The Humanist website.

   I suspect you're right Rene, that masons originally wanted to make their secret little group 'exclusive to a particular religion', and for a long time it probably was. But as they became a little more enlightened, they then tweaked it a bit to allow, say, both Catholics and Protestants to join, or perhaps Jews, and to prevent any infighting they banned religious discussion, and in their prayers they started referring to god as the 'The Great Architect of the Universe'. Of course it's now got out of hand, they've broadened, and at the same time suppressed, the religious aspect so much that anyone can now join, even an atheist. One could be fooled into thinking that the god clause is just an historical hangover that no one cares about anymore, it's just a silly ritual done for appearances sake. But no, clearly belief in a creator god is still important to masons, otherwise they wouldn't express animosity towards atheists on the street. Somehow, while not discussing their personal religious beliefs, masons still manage to fuel their hatred towards atheists.

   I've found that my quick look into the Freemasons has revealed that, while not a religion, their insistence on only accepting believers in god as members and their hostility towards atheists — just like the Boy Scouts — shows that they're as ignorant and backward as most religious folk, and they remain that way by refusing to discuss religion even with each other, let alone with an informed atheist. The sooner they die out the better, such crap is not the way of progress.

Rene's stunned response to this was:

'REALLY??? Someone Calvin's age (my son) is responsible if a priest abuses him because the "age of reason" in the church is 7, so they should know what they're doing when the priest wants to touch them???

I gotta stop reading or I'll never be able to finish my lunch!'

We all know that there are some people that are capable of committing unspeakable acts of violence and abuse towards their fellow humans — serial killers, rapists, torturers etc — psychopaths that show no empathy towards their victims, and in civilised society we go to great lengths to protect ourselves from them. And if they do manage to commit some heinous crime, we immediately arrest them and make them face justice. We want to be safe, we want our children to be safe, we just don't want animals like this roaming the streets and attacking us for their sick gratification. We can't change human nature, there will always be a few psychopaths walking among us, and we can't change them or cure them, all we can do is imprison them when they reveal themselves through their disgusting deeds. Who among us would forgive a serial killer or serial rapist or want to live next door to one, knowing what they do when they sneak out at night?

And yet when it comes to the psychopaths in the Catholic Church who are torturing and raping children, most Catholics do nothing, they turn a blind eye, and those degenerates that do decide to do something, link arms with their fellow Catholics in vocal defence of the abusers and vilify the young victims instead. Let's stop being surprised and shocked at the depths the abusive bishops and priests will sink to in excusing their crimes, or the lengths the Vatican will go to in denying these crimes, let's start by being surprised and shocked at ordinary Catholics who continue to support them. Let's start condemning the millions of ordinary Catholics who in their continued support of the Catholic Church give these psychopaths the buildings to abuse in and the children to abuse. The next time you talk to a Catholic about the sexual abuse by their priest's, don't join with them in questioning what might have caused the priests to offend, question them on why they lack the empathy, reason and courage to walk away from a religion that worships a god that loves watching children being raped. And if they can't see that they are being an accessory after the fact to these crimes, at least walk away from them.

But let's not finish it there, since we're nothing if not fair, and we don't wish other god believers to think they occupy the moral high ground over those truly deviant Catholics. Whether you're one of the around 41,000 different Christian denominations, or one of the many Muslim, Jewish or Hindu denominations, you no doubt view the Catholic faith as, well, wrong, wrong, wrong, and are utterly convinced that your god is actually the one in charge. But if it's really your god that's watching over us, especially the vulnerable children, then it's your god that's not doing anything, it's your god that either enjoys watching children being abused and raped or your god that simply couldn't care less. Either way, just like the Catholics, you're worshiping a god that allows the abuse to continue and the abusers to escape justice. Of course you might argue that your god doesn't care about Catholic children or their abuse, he only cares for the children of his true followers, in which case we would label you and your god as lacking compassion and totally unworthy of respect or fellowship. And let's remember that no matter what faith you follow, sexual abuse occurs in every one of them to varying degrees, not just in the Catholic faith. Even if your priests or wizards or whatever you call them are above reproach, your god is still ignoring mountains of abuse that's occurring elsewhere. Most caring humans would seek to alleviate the suffering of any child, not just their own, if they could easily and safely do so, and yet your god, being fully aware of every abuse and fully able to stop it, does nothing. Either you're believing in a sadistic monster or a complete fantasy. And since you believe your god is real, then that means, whether you're Catholic, Muslim, Jew, Hindu or run-of-the-mill Christian, you're someone that blindly goes along with innocent children suffering unnecessarily. And just like the Catholic priests, you're probably now desperately inventing some deplorable excuse to explain, at least to yourself, why it's not your god's fault and those children brought it all upon themselves.

This ignorant, primitive devotion to some god and the silly belief that he cares, sickens me. They tell anyone that will listen that God loves us all, while down the road a priest rapes a young boy, they scream that God is great (Allahu Akbar), even as a bomb explodes and kills their children, they make offerings to the god that watches over us, while their children die of diarrhoea or drown in a flood. They go on about their god's love, but from what I've seen of his love, what they say is his love, I'll quite happily stick with the love of a human. While it's not all-powerful or all-knowing or even forever, at least it's real.

Posted by the 'Silly Beliefs' Team, 29 Feb, 2016 ~ Add a Comment    Send to a Friend

(Note: Since writing this post we've received another two replies, where we're threatened with Hell, so we've tacked on further comments to this post here.)

So here's the first comment from our anonymous poster:

'You sound like an idiot who has no faith in anything...especially yourself....keep smoking your weed moron.'

I mean, Jesus Fucking Christ, listen to yourself! Expecting that an educated adult today would have faith in such silly stories. This is the 21st century, not the primitive and superstitious Dark Ages. Please take an interest in the real world.

And based on the delusional nonsense that I assume you believe in, I would suspect, as would numerous psychiatrists, that it is you and not me that is smoking weed or partaking all too frequently of some illegal psychotropic substance.

And what surprises me is that you no doubt consider yourself a devout, caring Catholic, and yet this is how you respond to someone that has a different viewpoint and who doesn't see angels on the clouds. You don't even attempt to explain why I might be mistaken, you just launch into the insults, which in the distant past when your crowd had a lot more control over society, would have then resulted in my arrest, torture and execution at the hands of the Catholic Inquisition. Thankfully secular humanists concerned with justice and morality now make the laws and you Catholics must resign yourself to making frothing rants on the Internet. Oh what an embarrassing comedown, and your god's clearly not making any attempt to restore your evil theocracy.

I really wonder what your fictitious long dead carpenter would make of your rabid persecution of non-believers if he did actually return, you know, as he promised to do 2,000 years ago? Might he drag you aside and ask angrily, 'Did you not understand what I meant when I said to love your enemies, and to turn the other cheek? Did I waste my teaching on ignorant fools that know nothing but intolerance and hatred?'

It's people like you that give Christians a bad name, and the fact that your loving, caring and all-powerful Jesus does nothing to rein you in and protect his image only reinforces in my mind that his worrying absence is most likely because he doesn't even exist. The Babylonians, Romans, Greeks, Aztec and countless other religious nutters had to eventually accept that their gods weren't real, now it's your turn.

Unless of course you can set aside your worthless, childish faith and insults and offer some real world evidence for your absent god? Forget the Harry Potter nonsense and bully tactics. So, anything, anything at all? ... No, I didn't think so.

That was it, and considering the tone of my reply, which I thought (hoped?) would end our futile debate, I was surprised when I received a reply:

'Lol im not christian, you idiot....my god has never failed me....but since you dont believe in god, id say your parents have failed you...there is so much proof in the afterworld and god that its unmistakeable

My god isnt absent...he lives in my heart and your heart every day...every minute...'

And yes, my parents are largely to blame for my not believing in silly gods, or fairies, trolls and leprechauns for that matter. They wanted me to live in the real world, not a fantasy one, and for that I'm truly grateful.

And I'm sorry, but you saying that 'my god has never failed me' is as worthless and delusional as me saying that the Tooth Fairy has never failed me either. And to go on and claim that 'My god isnt absent...he lives in my heart and your heart every day...every minute...' is empty piffle. Would you believe me if I said that 23 demons live in your brain every minute of every day? Of course you wouldn't, even though it might explain your delusions. So why should I believe you when you make such patently ridiculous claims? And what might your silly god be doing in my heart anyway, can't it pump blood without his help, was it that poorly designed? And why if your god is lodging rent free in my heart does he hide his existence from me, perhaps even going as far as whispering in my mind that he doesn't exist? Can you explain that? Probably not, so ask the god in your heart for the answer, and then relay it to me. That seems simple enough doesn't it, since unlike me, your god is not hiding from you, you are apparently communicating with each other, so I await his answer.

I asked you to provide some real world evidence for your absent god, and you childishly replied that 'there is so much proof in the afterworld and god that its unmistakeable'. Do you not understand what constitutes evidence? For example, when a young child argues that there is so much proof of Santa Claus and his Xmas toy delivery 'that its unmistakeable', that is not evidence, it would merely be wishful thinking based on naive ignorance. You wouldn't, hopefully, believe such empty claims from children, so why should I believe the same baseless claims from you, where you've simply replaced Santa with some god? You say the proof is unmistakable, so do more than simply hint of its existence, do more than just talk of it like some lost treasure, produce your evidence of god and the afterlife so we non-believers might be swayed. Surely that's not unreasonable, and something your god no doubt desires?

Yet you won't even say what name your god goes by? Are you embarrassed that he's not one of the big or famous gods? Is it the Jewish god, the Muslim god, one of the Hindu gods or perhaps one of the Norse gods? It's not one of those Wiccan gods is it? Maybe one from 'The Lord of the Rings', or is it a new one that you've invented? Are you taking a lesson from your god and hiding too, hiding the fact that you know that nothing that normal, intelligent people would accept as evidence actually exists? You're not saying anything that the likes of the ancient Egyptians or Sumerians didn't also say about their imaginary gods, they too thought they could discern proof that their gods were all around them. And they were all wrong! There is no known reason whatsoever, or none that you've provided, that suggests that you aren't equally wrong.

So again, I implore you to provide evidence since you believe such evidence exists, don't simply reply that the evidence for your unknown god is all around us, as is the evidence for gremlins and shape-shifting reptilian aliens apparently.

So ended my second reply, and showing true tenacity, if not much clarity of thought, we then receive a third reply:

'Lol see you know nothing about religion....not all catholics are christians...ask any roman catholic if they are a christian...you'll be told no....its 2 different things...why dont you show me proof that god and jesus never existed...'

But now you suddenly assert that 'not all catholics are christians', so should we infer from that silly remark that you are indeed a Catholic, but paradoxically, certainly not a Christian? Are you ashamed of admitting to being a Catholic, perhaps because of the great harm they've done in the name of Jesus throughout history, and the harm the Church's child-raping priests are still doing? I know I'd hide my support of such animals, so I wouldn't blame you.

But strangely you claim that 'not all catholics are christians', which suggests that you believe some Catholics are indeed Christians. How can some Catholics be Christians while others aren't? Is it do with the child-raping thing? But then confusingly you say that should I 'ask any roman catholic if they are a christian...you'll be told no', which implies that NO Catholics are Christians. However I know many Catholics, and they all consider themselves Christians, so why is that? Who's got it wrong, you or them?

I've certainly heard some Protestant Christians argue that Catholics aren't really Christians, but while you won't reveal what you are, you're open in saying what you're not, and that's a Christian. So you can't be coming at it from that angle, arguing against Catholics, since you appear to be arguing for Catholics. But since you won't say, for the sake of argument let's assume you are a Catholic. What does history and the religiously educated Catholic hierarchy say about this issue, rather than the ignorant Catholic on the street?

For the centuries before the Protestant Reformation there was only one common name for those that believed in and followed the teachings of Jesus Christ — Christians. The Romans persecuted Christians, not Catholics. Yes, the Christian religion eventually organised themselves under the Roman Catholic Church, but that was just a name for business purposes, Roman Catholics are really no more Catholic than they are Roman. Roman simply described where their headquarters were located — Rome — and catholic means universal, which implies that they naively believed that their religion concerned all mankind. And let's look to the Bible. Yes I know it's fiction, but it's the only book that both Catholics and Christians refer to. The term Catholic never appears, but the term Christian does appear twice. The first is a question to St Paul:

'Then Agrippa said to Paul, "Do you think that in such a short time you can persuade me to be a Christian?"' (AC 26:28)

'However, if you suffer as a Christian, do not be ashamed, but praise God that you bear that name.' (1PE 4:16)

'Are Catholics Christian?'
'...any organization that says "Catholics are not Christians," is ignoring the history of Christianity. The name Christian predates all Protestant and Evangelical Churches by over a millennium.'

'Why do some Protestant denominations not consider Catholics to be Christians?'
'The confusion is cased by the fact that different groups define the term 'Christian' differently. A Catholic would define a Christian as anyone who professes faith in Christ and who has been validly baptized (water baptism).'

'Professing belief in Jesus as Christ or following the religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus.'

Now let's get to your last comment, a challenge to us: 'why dont you show me proof that god and jesus never existed...'

Oh, don't be so childish! I'm assuming that you're an adult and not some kid home early from kindergarten and playing on your mummy's iPad. Let's remember that you began this conversation, by implying that you had a problem with us having no faith in the silly idea that Jesus rose from the dead, leaving behind a soiled cloth for people to cry over.

We've never said that there is proof that some god, any god, or Jesus, never existed. We are atheists because there is no good evidence, let alone proof, that any god has even existed, and that includes sons of gods. Of course there is good evidence that suggests that the Biblical god never existed, eg that the universe and life evolved naturally over billions of years, it wasn't created in six days as your god claims. But that's not proof that this god didn't exist, he could have lied in the Bible or he might have deviously falsified scientific evidence to hide his six day creation. So god could exist and be a liar or a falsifier of evidence, for some mysterious reason, but the simpler, more rational explanation is that he didn't exist and the universe arose naturally.

We don't dismiss belief in the likes of fairies, trolls, unicorns, gremlins and leprechauns because we have proof that they never existed, we dismiss them because believers in such beings have never produced any evidence or proof that they are real. It is only reasonable and rational to not waste time believing in things for which there is no evidence. And I'd hope you'd agree, but then maybe not, but I could spend the rest of my life with access to all manner of fancy scientific instruments and I'd never be able to prove that, fairies, say, don't exist. I might, by finding one, surprisingly prove that they did exist, but I could never prove that they didn't. Thus, what is known as 'the burden of proof ' rests on the person that makes some new claim, eg god is real, crystals heal cancer, aliens abducted my cat or Santa has a secret base at the North Pole. So the burden of proof rests with you.

In our previous two replies we implored you to produce evidence that god and the afterlife are real. Is this unreasonable? Of course not, since it was you that confidently asserted that 'there is so much proof in the afterworld and god that its unmistakeable'. We have made no such claim, that we possess proof, so since it is you that claims to possess proof, not us, logically it is you that should produce said proof.

So stop LOL'ing and get serious. You lot have had around 2,000 years to come up with proof, thousands more if you take into account your god's Jewish ancestry. You say your god lives in your heart, so just ask him for Christ sake! Tell him you're being made to look like a fool, tell him that his suggested 'you idiot' insults backfired. God was truly peeved when Job challenged him, and got personally involved, so why won't he even lift a wispy tentacle to help you put an annoying disbeliever in his place? I'm not saying bolts of lightning or fire and brimstone, maybe something that breaks the laws of physics or something that only god would know. Who was the girl I had a crush on when I was 12? He knows that stuff, right? Or have Marilyn Monroe pop in and tell me about the afterlife. Although unfortunately, even if these miraculous things happened, you still wouldn't have proved to me that your god is real. It could mean that I've coincidentally received a bump on the head and it's still all a delusion, revolving around my last sane thoughts. Or it could mean that some other god, say a mischievous Norse god, or a powerful alien, has been observing our discussion and has decided to fool me by stepping in and masquerading as your god. So while I may accept that something truly strange was happening, neither of us could ever prove that your god was causing it.

But that takes us back to blind faith. The religious know they can't prove anything, in fact it all looks terribly depressing, so in order to believe you have to forget about proof and fall back on faith. Belief without evidence, and even against evidence. So when asked for evidence for your claims, throw a few insults and angrily demand: 'My evidence? Forget about my evidence, where's your evidence that Santa doesn't exist? ... I mean, god'.

So, for the third time, we ask our poster. What is this unmistakable evidence for god and the afterlife that you speak of?

UPDATE: Well, since writing this post we've received another reply, but not surprisingly, it contains nothing of any substance. It reads:

'What i said was roman catholics are not christians....you can ask any roman catholic and they will tell you straight out...but youre actually starting to bore me....I also said prove that yhere isnt a god....and if you mucy know, I am roman catholic...was born roman catholic and will die roman catholic...'

Well, it sounds as though your latest reply might be your last, so that has to be a positive, right? Although if we've learnt anything, it would only be that you struggle to say what we want to hear.

Anyway, I know that you said 'roman catholics are not christians....', however, using quotes from Catholic websites, the Bible and Catholic friends I refuted that claim, but you make no response. Do you not understand how a debate works? I say something and then it's your turn to try and expose flaws in my argument, not just blindly repeat your initial claim as if I had said nothing. It makes it look as though you're not paying attention. You're starting to repeat yourself like a parrot, and frankly your short, poorly written replies make me wonder whether I'm communicating with an actual person, or an old computer running a 1980's version of artificial intelligence.

Next you say, 'but youre actually starting to bore me...'

Really, that's what you're going with to end this debate? You consider the question of whether your god exists, and is going to torture us for all eternity, as boring? Rather than bored, I suspect you've finally realised, or at least have been told, that you're really out of your depth, and just like Jesus walking on water or rising from the dead, you've discovered it's a Catholic myth that a few insults and some inane comments will see atheists questioning our view of religion and running to a priest to seek absolution.

Apparently thinking I missed your earlier challenge, you then say, 'I also said prove that yhere isnt a god'.

I'm going to be generous here and assume that you've read my comments, but clearly you didn't understand them, since we tried to explain why this isn't possible, or an efficient way to resolve the debate. Should I have used LOL more?

I spoke of something called the 'burden of proof', and why we can't prove the likes of fairies and trolls don't exist, but to no avail. So let me try again with a new example. Let's say that you argue that there exists a strange looking, fearsome creature called a crocodile, and I reply that there is no such fanciful beast. Would it make good sense for us to solve this disagreement with you insisting that I prove there aren't any crocodiles? For years you and I could travel the world, with me taking you all around New Zealand and then to places like Stonehenge in England, South Africa, Japan, Disneyland, the Sahara, and even Antarctica, and we never see a single crocodile. Will I have proved to you that crocodiles don't exist? Or would you say that what we were doing was stupid, that we were wasting time and money by me taking you to places that by honest bad luck or devious planning, there were no crocodiles, so naturally none would be found? Would you say that the debate could quickly and decisively be solved by you simply taking me to a place, like Australia, Florida or even a zoo, where you know there are crocodiles? Wouldn't you argue that you know of places where 'there is so much proof of crocodiles that its unmistakeable', and thus it makes good sense for you to immediately divulge these crocodile locations, reveal the proof, and quickly win the debate in your favour? Crocodiles do exist, and I apologise. Knowing that you could quickly and easily win the debate by showing me the proof that you have, why instead would you refuse to reveal your proof, and insist that I must prove that neither crocodiles, nor the evidence that you're hiding, exists?

It's the same with god, you claim that 'there is so much proof in the afterworld and god that its unmistakeable'. You have the advantage since you have the evidence, but rather than simply reveal it, you hide it away and want to send me on a futile hunt for evidence that god doesn't exist, evidence that you already know I'll never find. You must know that I can never produce proof that god doesn't exist, since you already have the proof that he does. So why waste my time, and why are you so afraid of producing your evidence, so reluctant to affirm god's existence? You glibly claim that god lives in my heart, but you seem terrified to actually prove that claim, truly hesitant in proving to me that god is real. Why don't you want non-believers to believe in god? Or is your unfathomable reluctance to produce your unmistakable proof actually due to the embarrassing fact that it's all a lie? There is no unmistakable proof, and you know it, and naturally you can't produce something that doesn't exist. So you change the subject, hope that I'll forget that you mentioned you had proof, and challenge me to do the impossible. It's impossible to prove that something doesn't exist, but on the flip side, it can often be child's play to prove something is real, that it does exist. Anyone can easily prove to others that birds, clouds and TVs exist. The evidence is all around us. When clear evidence exists for something, it is easy to prove a claim, so the person that believes they have this evidence — that's you — is the person that is in a commanding position to convince doubters — that's us — that we're wrong.

I simply don't understand why you are so reluctant to produce evidence that you apparently have when it would crush my argument and see me uttering an embarrassed apology, both to you and to god? You claim to have the power to open my eyes, why won't you use it? I'm sorry, but your continual silence on this unmistakable evidence for the afterworld and god makes me believe that it is just as imaginary as your god. Of course you could easily prove me wrong, but I suspect you won't bother. You're clearly upset with my view that god is just a silly belief, so why won't you prove this atheist wrong? I know they say that your god works in mysterious ways, but how can letting me win this debate go anywhere towards changing my mind about invisible beings? Seriously!

Finally, you end with this admission: 'and if you mucy know, I am roman catholic...was born roman catholic and will die roman catholic...'

umm.... no, actually you weren't. You were no more born a Roman Catholic than you were born a nurse, an avid scrabble player or a supporter of a particular political party. You were born an atheist, since as a baby you had no belief in any god. It was your parents that made you a Catholic when you were baptised, without your knowledge or consent I might add. If you seriously believe that you were 'born roman catholic', that means that your god must have made you a Catholic when you were conceived, or more likely, shortly after that when he had you ensouled, ie popped your soul in. If your silly belief is true, that god makes babies Catholic before they're born, have you never wondered why Muslim, Hindu and Jewish parents don't have Catholic babies then? Those babies are instead born Muslim, Hindu and Jewish respectively. This can only mean one of two things. One, the Catholic god is busy making Muslim, Hindu and Jewish babies as well as Catholic babies, but why would your god do that, make babies that don't believe in him? And let's remember that Catholics are a minority in the world, always have been, so why does god make far more babies as non-Catholics than he makes as Catholics? That doesn't make sense, is he deliberately trying to lose support? The second option is, as has been believed for most of history, that there are many, many gods, with each group or country having their own gods. So Zeus made the babies in ancient Greece, Allah, the Muslim god, makes Muslim babies, Jehovah makes Jewish babies, the Christian Baptist god makes Baptist babies, the Christian Methodist god makes Methodist babies, and so on. Thousands of different gods, including the Catholic one, all making babies just for their own religion.

Do you see how silly things become when you start reasoning about religious nonsense? Of course Catholics have long realised that thinking about god, rather than blindly believing, is dangerous for the Church. For example, in the 16th century Martin Luther described reason as 'the devil's bride' and 'God's worst enemy'. He wrote that:

"Faith must trample under foot all reason, sense, and understanding, and whatever it sees it must put out of sight, and wish to know nothing but the word of God".

"Reason is the greatest enemy that faith has; it never comes to the aid of spiritual things... "

"Reason should be destroyed in all Christians."

"Whoever wants to be a Christian should tear the eyes out of his reason."

The truth is that both you and I were both born atheists and ignorant, but life changes us all of course, and I will simply die an atheist, while you will die ignorant. Of course I could be wrong, but strangely you don't want me to realise I'm mistaken, unwilling as you are to reveal the divine truth that you possess. The best I can do in adopting a worldview is to consider the evidence and reasoning that others, like scientists, are all too willing to share and explain. I could never see myself believing in gods and the supernatural, the evidence for which is kept hidden, and to be told that I must believe on faith rather than evidence, to have unwavering confidence in things not seen.

Am I wasting my time to again ask you to reveal what you meant when you claimed that 'there is so much proof in the afterworld and god that its unmistakeable'? I suspect I am.

Well, surprise, surprise, I was right again. We've received yet another reply following our above comments, and this time our gormless Catholic's true black heart is revealed with a threat. They write:

'To be honest, I dont even read most of your email because what it comes down to is, i dont care if you believe or not....you're the one going to hell, not me

And for the record, i wasnt born atheist....'

'There's nothing in the world, nothing that anyone could say or do, nothing whatsoever, that could ever convince me — EVER! — that God isn't real.'

'what it comes down to is, i dont care if you believe or not....you're the one going to hell, not me'

And by your logic, your god made me an atheist rather than a Catholic, so he condemned me to Hell and eternal torture, my fate is not something I had any hand in or could have changed. I'm not going to Hell because I made the wrong choice in life, but because your god didn't make me a Catholic baby. And you think it's completely moral and just of your god to torture me for a choice he made. And as I've said, the way you Christians defiantly agree with god punishing me for his choice is disgusting. It's sickening that some humans can behave this way towards other humans.

Your blind, ignorant, primitive belief, not just in a dead Jewish carpenter that hasn't been seen for some 2,000 years, and probably never even existed, but also in the jealous, homicidal, sadistic god that raped the mother of Jesus, getting her pregnant, is superstitious belief that should have disappeared centuries ago. When mankind discovered that the world wasn't flat or built on pillars, that snow and hail isn't kept by god in storerooms, and that the sea is not held back by doors and bars, all as described in the Bible, intelligent Catholics, if that's not an oxymoron, should have thrown their Bibles en masse into their stinking latrines. Then they should have dismantled the Vatican and the Church's worldwide infrastructure, recovering an obscene fortune and returning it to those, mostly the poor, it had been stolen from. That the Catholic Church, and all the other Christian churches, not to mention their brother religions Islam and Judaism, are all still flourishing and fighting each other to gain followers in the 21st century is probably evidence that a small, very primitive part of the human brain that is sometimes referred to as our 'reptilian brain', is the only brain that religious people use when god comes up in conversation.

And now, your final comment:

'And for the record, i wasnt born atheist....'

And once again you show that you've failed to grasp how an adult debate works. You can't just say that my argument is wrong, eg 'i wasnt born atheist....', you have to give some reason as to why you think I'm wrong. You're trying to make me doubt my view, you're not a robot reading from a phone book. Are you? You completely ignore my observation that Muslims and Jews aren't born as Roman Catholics. Why didn't your god make them Catholics? You must at least try and explain why you were somehow born Roman Catholic, when most people around the world aren't. I for example was born an atheist. If you weren't born as an atheist, then you need to make some attempt, even a pathetic one, to explain how you knew about god, long, long before other babies do.

And sorry to bug you, but in your haste to reply and gloat over our future in Hell, you appear to have forgotten to attach your reasons for claiming that 'there is so much proof in the afterworld and god that its unmistakeable'. You don't have to explain all your reasons at once, drip feeding them is probably preferable so that we're not overwhelmed with shocking revelations. I've cleared my calendar for the rest of the week so that I can give them my full attention.

So I thought that might be the end of our debate, if it could seriously be called a debate, but we then received yet another email, which does have a sense of finality about it. But then that's what they said about World War I — the war to end all wars.

And I'm beginning to think we might never see that unmistakable proof for god that was mentioned way back at the start.

'Both of my parents were roman catholic...and being that i was sick as an indant i was baptised in the name of jesus christ within 24 hours of my birth...and since my parents were both believers, i was not born an atheist...I dont have to see god/ jesus/ mother mary or any of our saints to believe...this is why it is called FAITH...

Thank you, for some time I debated with myself on that to give up for lent...but in the past few days it became clear...im giving up idiots like yourself....addio'

You claim that 'since my parents were both believers, i was not born an atheist...', but can't you understand that belief in gods is a personal thing? It doesn't matter what silly nonsense your parents believed in, they can't make you believe it too just by being your parents, or even by getting some guy in a dress to throw magic water over you. Belief is not something you inherit. Both your parents might have believed that it was OK to keep slaves since their god approved of it, but they couldn't imprint this belief on you as a baby. Whether slavery is good or bad is something that you must decide for yourself when you grow up, since babies are too ignorant to think about slavery, or gods. Your parents might have said to neighbours that their newborn baby was a true supporter of slavery, just as you insist that they would have described you as a good Catholic, but this would be a delusion. Baptising a day old baby and then believing that the baby now has faith in god and Jesus is as stupid as baptising a toaster and thinking that it now has faith in god, that it's now a devout Catholic toaster.

Jesus fucking Christ, you need to stop letting your parents and childless priests tell you what you should believe. I can imagine you going to your parents aged ten and saying that you're not so sure you believe that god exists. They would reply that of course he does, and anyway, you don't have any choice in what you want to believe. We baptised you a Catholic when you were less than a day old, with a creepy old priest and everything, surely you remember that? We made you a Catholic because we were Catholics, so it matters not what you think, only what we think, so you must blindly believe. It's what we Catholics do, dear. Just as god is our master who must be obeyed in all things, we are your masters and you must believe as we do. We will have none of this selfish independent thinking under our roof, do you hear? And don't think that you can doubt god's existence when you grow up and leave home, a Catholic baptism is forever. You must always believe, because we have placed our superstitious mark on you.

OK, none of that is true, you don't have a physical superstitious mark on you, only a psychological one, and with some effort it can be erased. You can think for yourself. Or you can leave your thinking to god, it's your choice. Just remember that when society let god do the thinking we got inquisitions, crusades, religious wars, pogroms, witch hunts, slavery, stagnation, inequality, persecution, hatred and intolerance. And lots of carvings of a bloody, naked man nailed to two pieces of wood.

Your mention of Lent surprised me, since according to my 'Big Boy's Book of Superstition and Myths', Lent is the 'Christian period of fasting and penitence preparatory to Easter'. But since Lent is a Christian thing, why are you taking part, wouldn't that be sacrilegious to a Roman Catholic, who you insist are not Christians? Another thing I don't understand is that penitence is expressing regret for one's misdeeds or sins, and Catholic's claim to know exactly what misdeeds or sins they mustn't commit. And yet you lot commit so many sins that you need Lent every year and a priest's confession box every Sunday to gain absolution from them all. Other Christians try to please god by not sinning at all, you hypocritical Catholics sin with gay abandon and then just pop in and ask for forgiveness. Week after week. So what sins are you feeling remorseful over this Lent? Being insulting and intolerant towards an atheist? Probably not, since your god actually encourages that sort of behaviour. Not actively trying to have me stoned to death as commanded by your god? Maybe. Thinking lustful thoughts as you gaze upon the glistening, rippling muscles of the near near-naked body of Jesus on the crucifix hanging from your car's rear view mirror? Quite probably. Of all religions, you Catholics seem to have the most disturbing obsession with sex, and none of it in a good way. But anyway, it must be nice for you Catholics that you can get all your sins forgiven, no matter how heinous, giving you the chance commit new sins. Oh, so you're a serial pedophile, rapist and murderer? But you're also a Catholic, so no worries my son, I forgive you. Welcome to heaven. Actually you're just in time, this afternoon we're having an outing that you'll likely enjoy, an excursion to Hell to watch some non-Catholic babies being tortured. And with your life experiences, the demons might even let you join in.

And I've never understood the Catholic fascination with Easter, named as it is after a pagan goddess, and where we apparently celebrate her birth by having the Easter Bunny deliver chocolate eggs to all and sundry. It's weird that you Catholic's happily join in, considering it's such an ancient pagan celebration, dating from long before Jesus even started his carpentry apprenticeship.

I think your desire to give up associating with idiots, while a worthy one, will be hard to achieve if you're not willing kick that lazy, freeloading god out of your heart and view the world through reason rather than faith. I suspect that at present there are a lot of idiots in your life; every time you go to church or look in the mirror, there's another one!

I truly thought that would be the last we'd hear from our angry and deluded Catholic, but clearly I'll never understand the religious mind since these comments then appeared:

'Why are you writing [this]?...my religious beliefs arent up for debate....im beginning to think that youre just a lonely guy and this is your form of communication'

But no, you write back again! This time complaining that we somehow mistook your claims that you are right and we are wrong (and idiots) as a debate. Oh, silly us! Of course we believe you when you say that your 'religious beliefs arent up for debate', and we never thought they would be for one moment. Your mind is firmly rusted closed, and honestly considering new ideas is clearly foreign and offensive to you. You wrote to us solely to vent your anger, since the law now stops you from stoning us to death. But when I surprised you by replying, you naively thought you could debate like an intelligent adult, only to discover you were way out of your depth, that discussing religion with an informed atheist is not the same as discussing it with a fluffy toy, or with the god that you think lives in your heart. Your years of listening to boring sermons, wearing a creepy crucifix and keeping a Bible in the bottom of your knickers drawer hadn't prepared you for a real world debate. Of course you weren't to know that knowledge had moved on since the 10th century, after all, you'd been told to trust your priests and your holy book.

Now you're apparently wondering, how do I stop being made a fool of and stop having my fantasies ridiculed on this Internet forum? Well, it's actually quite simple, and don't worry, there's no science or maths involved. Here it is, and I'm typing slowly so as not to overwhelm you: DON'T comment on atheist forums. Simple as that. But if you simply can't resist leaving an irrational and/or angry rant, then whatever you do, DON'T RESPOND to the savaging that your silly comments will inevitably cause. To quote a line from 'Life of Brian', a famous movie about Christianity: 'Run away, run away!' Do you want me to repeat that? OK, here it is: DON'T RESPOND! Resist writing back even if you've just thought of the best insult ever. It's like the advice we'd give to Catholic children, if you don't want to handle a priest's genitals, then don't go to his place and engage him in conversation.

Posted by the 'Silly Beliefs' Team, 09 Feb, 2016 ~ Add a Comment    Send to a Friend

Comments:

1. Comment by Mikaere, 09 Feb, 2016

   Hi John. Well, that's a convincing post. Insults instead of cogent debate have always swayed me.

   I'm intrigued that there's "so much proof in the afterlife", as proof is pretty difficult to establish. Let's not be greedy, could we just ask for a little bit of evidence? Why can't people use the anger they are obviously nurturing to write insults and provide just one example of evidence of a god, or hereafter?

2. Comment by the 'Silly Beliefs' Team, 09 Feb, 2016

   Well Mikaere, I'd say no evidence is ever provided because you can't produce that which doesn't exist. But of course you already knew that. LOL.

   Up until a couple of months ago I would have said that having an intelligent and polite religious debate is as likely as coming across a living dodo. However, since then I've had an hour long discussion with a creationist publicly displaying a model of Noah's Ark. It couldn't have been more interesting and enjoyable, and while neither of us changed sides, it shows that polar views can be discussed on an intellectual level without it leading to pistols at dawn.

   So that proves that while it is very rare, some believers will happily offer what they see as real evidence, and will seriously consider your response, but I'm still waiting for some believer to produce even a snippet of evidence that stands up to scrutiny. Unfortunately the great majority of believers are either unwilling to discuss their beliefs or prefer to go down the insult and silly 'evidence' route: The evidence for god's handiwork is all around us. Just look at a beautiful sunset and a baby's smile! umm... sorry, not convinced.

3. Comment by Gabby, 09 Feb, 2016

   Thanks John. Well written.
   Good to see you're still getting hate mail!

4. Comment by the 'Silly Beliefs' Team, 10 Feb, 2016

   Hi Gabby, and thanks. Actually I like the occasional bit of hate mail. It tells me that I must be doing something right, that I've struck a nerve, and have apparently revealed an embarrassing, incontrovertible truth that has made them so enraged and impotent that insults are their only recourse.

5. Comment by Mikaere, 10 Feb, 2016

   I'd love to debate with a creationist or just anyone with strong religious beliefs. The ones who seem to have a drone watching to see if my gate is open and drive in, just hand over a pamphlet when I start to disagree. They're probably instructed not to engage. Coincidentally I watched 'Inherit the Wind' last night and was impressed with the way the opposing lawyers ripped into each other in court but were very civil to each other at other times. Of course, the movie stereotyped the bigoted 'god-botherers' and was not a true depiction of the Scopes' Trial but there were some nice lines in it, some very relevant to what is happening today, with devolution into violent fundamentalism.

   Having re-read your response to 'Anonymous', you have identified the fundamental issue — often religious people attempt to bring in science or logic into something that defies both. Their rhetoric may fool many people but not those who understand the rigours of these disciplines. What your correspondent is asking is illogical. Absolute proof of anything is very difficult to establish-we can only really look for evidence — and to ask for proof that god doesn't exist is meaningless. I could well ask him/her to show us that the Flying Spaghetti Monster is a fiction.

   Scientific theories must have a way to be falsifiable and there is no way a fictional character or event can truly be falsified. An opinion or belief is not automatically a theory. For instance, the moon-landing conspiracy nonsense is not a theory; there's no way it can be truly falsified. Conspiracy believers can always dispute what rational people would see as evidence to the contrary. I bet they'll say that the Apollo artifacts on the Moon were planted there recently. Hence such a conspiracy belief is not a scientific theory. To ask you for proof that god doesn't exist is as meaningless as (as you say) saying that the beauty of nature is evidence of a god's work. I could as well say that some alien from Antares made the trees, or they're all an illusion. Take your pick.

   So it's nonsense to try to conflate creationism with science. To espouse Bishop Ussher and reject Charles Darwin makes as much sense as saying that a flux capacitor is superior to the internal combustion engine.

   I think that some religious people know this and hence resort to insults instead of engaging in healthy discussion.

   Thanks once again for all your energy and enlightened debate.

6. Comment by the 'Silly Beliefs' Team, 10 Feb, 2016

   Hi Mikaere. Thanks for your comments. I haven't seen the movie 'Inherit the Wind', although I have read Edward J. Larson's book, 'Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate over Science and Religion'. For many people today nothing much has changed, the war is still ongoing to get science and reason tossed out of our schools and society and to get us all back into the churches, god-fearing, ignorant and under the thrall of some priest eyeing our children. And depressingly, expecting to be able to have an intelligent debate with most of these believers is as futile as expecting your toaster to quote Shakespeare.

7. Comment by Rene, 10 Feb, 2016

   Applause, just applause, well conversed with this dense person! Takes a lot of patience to even try and engage one of these types of "debaters", doesn't it? Like you said, they blindly throw around "there's LOTS of proof, you just can't see it!" and when you ask them for just one HINT of this proof, you get either insults back, or gibberish. I mean, wow... "Christians" literally means "believers in Christ", yet this person claims that Catholics aren't Christians? That's not even using basic biblical common sense let alone the regular kind! But the best is the fact they simply refuse to answer any question and ignore the fact it was even asked. Too common a tactic for those on the losing side of an debate, and they fall to it IMMEDIATELY. They don't even try, just instant "You're a moron, go to church" rather than even try. And that's when THEY bring it up in discussion even!

   One tactic I like to use when things get this annoying is to use God's logic against them. For example, if you have an anti-Gay Christian, ask them if God is all powerful. They'll probably say yes. Then ask them if he hates gays and they will say yes. Then ask them why their all-powerful god allows gays to exist if he hates them so much and the responses will be VERY telling. Remind them that if God's as they believe he is, either he LIKES gay people, or he's NOT all-powerful, and they hate both answers. This doesn't even need to use Bible quotes, just basic childish logic... the kind they specialize in.

   Or another tactic is a simple one. Take some wood and wet it, and say aloud: "God, if you exist, please make this alight with fire!". Nothing will happen. Then challenge the believer to do the same thing. If they complain this is stupid, remind them that the EXACT SAME SCENARIO was used in the Bible for the exact same reason... to prove to disbelievers that God existed. Then ask them why it was good enough in biblical times to the point where God quoted it as a good test in his own holy book, but not now.

   Yes, this person would be good for a giggle, but not anything serious. Good wording on calling her out, and your presumptions on them being Christian are correct regardless of what they try and say they are. Frankly nobody else would bother to try and discuss the glory of God and how he lives in their hearts if they WEREN'T, right? So she's delusional and a liar, all in one.

8. Comment by the 'Silly Beliefs' Team, 11 Feb, 2016

   Hi Rene. Thanks for your comments. You're quite right that debating with this sort of believer is good for a giggle, and I don't take it seriously, in the sense that I know from the offset that they aren't going to honestly consider my arguments and there's not a snowball's chance in hell that they might stop being an annoying, vindictive, irrational god botherer. But it is good fun. Of course I've been a lot less tolerant and polite with this nutter than I normally would be, since I realised from the start that this person couldn't be reasoned with. And by saying blasphemous things like 'Jesus Fucking Christ', if I can't make them see the light, I at least know that I can piss them off and leave them fuming. I can annoy and frustrate them, and some hard hitting comments might even make them think (just a little), not that they would ever admit it. But if I can perhaps make their faith in god a little less secure then it's all worth the effort. And as I write this, what looks like a final email has just popped in, so I've got yet more of their nonsense to pick a few holes in.

   But I mainly respond for two reasons. One, to show them that I'm not intimidated by their insults or confounded by the truly pathetic reasons they give for believing in gods. And two, to give those that might read our debate something to think about, to demonstrate to those that might be struggling with the gods or no gods debate how badly flawed the god argument is, and to give fellow atheists someone to laugh at. I've always said that I won't debate with true believers if I can't make our debate public so that others can follow it. I generally write for those on the sidelines, not the person I'm directing my comments to. They're generally, but not always, a wasted cause.

   I really like your challenge to god, a challenge that was indeed made in the Bible for god to prove his existence and power by setting fire to the altar (1 Kings 18:18-40), a challenge which god answered. It's also worth highlighting that the Jews celebrated their success by slaughtering 450 of Baal's prophets who failed to convince their god Baal to light their own altar. Another example of what good winners god and his followers are. I must remember it in future, although there other verses in the Bible too, but again I can't remember where, where followers ask god to prove his presence to non-believers and he does. So it's bullshit when Christians argue that we can't ask god for a sign, or that he's against providing one. Although because of the Bible's contradictory nature, I'm sure there is a verse that also says just the opposite. I must do a little research. And yes, god's nature is a real minefield, such as whether he hates gays, or created evil. Being all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving, all-present etc means god ends up contradicting himself all over the place. It's certainly fun to confound Christians with these discussions, but beyond mere entertainment, it is serious stuff that you'd think one needs to resolve if one believes god is real. Of course serious thought leads one to dismiss the Biblical god as impossible, so I can understand why the churches don't encourage it, and recommend falling back on faith instead. Ignorance is bliss.

9. Comment by Rene, 11 Feb, 2016

   Can't wait to see what wonderful knowledge this nut's going to present for our education. I'm sure you've repented and converted already just reading it! LOL

   And yeah, THEY set the tone right up front. Some deserve respect and politeness, but when they tell you to go back to smoking your weed because you're too dumb to see the truth, gloves are OFF, eh?

   I think the very fact they're talking to you means their faith is insecure. Why else start throwing around insults to someone you're "theoretically" trying to save the soul of? Every child goes through a denial period with Santa Claus, the heartbreak of realization of the truth, and then they grow up and move on. People like HER though back away from the pain of the heartbreak and just refuse to listen or think at all. So they never grow up. Her childish attempts at engaging you prove it. She can't even keep her own thoughts straight!

   If you're done with you chew toy, save some for others! LOL

10. Comment by the 'Silly Beliefs' Team, 13 Feb, 2016

    Hi Rene. Well, I've now added our comments concerning the last couple of emails from our pious Catholic to our post above. What I'm sure will surprise you is that, yet again, she didn't present any 'wonderful knowledge' that might see me repenting and seeking out a priest. She apparently just can't be bothered to reveal her unmistakable proof in god and the afterworld. You'd think the teeny wee god in her heart would set her straight, saying, Look moron, if we're to convince this atheist that I'm real then you need to front up with your evidence. You said you had some, right? So give it to them and let's end this! ... umm ... so why aren't you getting it? Hey... don't you ignore me, I'm your god!

    Of course with her final(?) reply she now tries to paint herself as a tearful victim, someone innocently praying in church when some evil atheist deliberately enters and starts harassing her, delivering insults and questioning her faith and her sanity. Of course just the opposite happened, this angry Catholic deliberately sought us out, and came to us with insults flying and enticing promises of proof. We answered her comments and said yes, we would indeed like to see the unmistakable proof of god and the afterworld that she had. But our less than honest Catholic continued to stall, and no evidence was ever produced. It took some time, but eventually she realised that she was losing the debate, and badly, and needed to make a less than honourable retreat. If the truth be known, she can now probably be found in a dark closet, collapsed into a foetal position sobbing her eyes out, and can occasionally be heard to whimper, 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?'

11. Comment by Ted, 23 Feb, 2016

    Hi John, a brilliant riposte worthy of Hitchens. I don't know how you muster the energy and eloquence to debate with these fools. I used to argue too fifty years ago, but at sixty-eight I can no longer be bothered. I am a poor debater in any case, so when confronted with a religious makebate, I generally adopt the simplistic strategy of concentrating on one point, the negation of which undermines all the major religions. Why is it supposed that consciousness might survive the annihilation of the physical brain? As Sam Harris puts it in a brilliant few minutes on youtube, if the brain is physically damaged, even slightly, the personality and consciousness change considerably. If the damage is severe, as in Alzheimers and other brain disorders, thought and personality all but disappear. But then if the whole brain disappears, as in death, we are expected to believe that fully operative consciousness suddenly returns, and we can do algebra again, possess total recall and recognise grandma. Pull the other one, mate!

12. Comment by the 'Silly Beliefs' Team, 24 Feb, 2016

    Thanks Ted. Some people follow sport fanatically, others argue over politics, but I enjoy exposing the silly flaws in religion and pseudoscience. That said, I rarely have the opportunity to debate with these fools, as you so aptly describe them, as few have the courage to reveal their silly beliefs publicly. And the few that do, eg door-knocking evangelists, visiting mediums or astrologer Ken Ring, only ever want to express their views, and have no desire to get into a debate, let alone have the ability to engage in one.

    You're right that it can be a good idea to concentrate on one point, although I've found it hard to get Christians to agree, especially if it's a topic you've raised. When you don't say what they want to hear they quickly swap to another question of their choosing. But the question of souls is fascinating. I think that the problem religious folk have with understanding the difference between the brain, the mind and an immaterial soul that survives our death, is that they just don't think about what their silly soul belief would mean if it were real. As you say Ted, it's quite clear that damage to the brain affects our behaviour. Even the ancient Greeks knew that our brain housed our personality, memories and consciousness and that a brain injury could change them all radically. Religious fools seem to believe that when we're mentally healthy then the soul is running the show, with the soul safely holding our personality, memories and consciousness. The immaterial soul passes instructions to the material brain, which causes the body to act, such as in speech or movement. Of course they've been totally unable to reveal how an immaterial soul could ever have an affect on matter, and end up waving their hands about and saying that god works in mysterious and miraculous ways. Or to put it in simple terms: it's magic.

    But let's imagine a soul housed in Diane's brain and that last week this soul caused Diane to say, 'My name is Diane and I live in Auckland', and then following a head injury, that same brain is now saying, 'My name is Josephine, wife of Napoleon, Emperor of France'. Why is Diane's soul now claiming to be a dead person called Josephine? The religious will argue that Diane's soul is no longer controlling her actions, that it is now sitting quietly in the background, still observing, but saying and doing nothing. But if Diane's soul is not controlling Diane's behaviour now, and yet Diane is still talking and moving and interacting reasonably normally, if perhaps a bit more regally and with a silly French accent, then this means that Diane's soul is superfluous. Diane's brain and the mind it creates is apparently perfectly able to run Diane's body and cause her to ask, 'Another croissant, monsieur?', all without the need of a soul. If the human brain can handle movement and speech, receive and analyse sights and sounds, construct a personality and form and recall memories, then what need is there of a soul? If the brain can do everything it is claimed that the (invisible) soul does, why the duplication? If it was a form of redundancy, that if the brain is damaged then the soul takes over, then this would be brilliant. But unfortunately this never happens. It's claimed that the soul can see, hear and move about without the need of eyes, ears or a body. For example, in near-death-experiences we're told that the soul floats off and has its own adventures. But since a soul can see without the need of eyes, this means that if the brain is damaged and goes blind, the soul could take over from the brain and full vision would continue. But again, this never happens. Whether brain damage causes loss of vision, hearing, memories, personality or whatever, even though it's claimed that the soul can handle all these, it never steps in and takes over from a damaged brain. So, the brain if damaged clearly doesn't fall back onto the soul as a reliable backup.

    But might the soul if damaged fall back onto the brain? And since the brain isn't of perfect design like the soul, this would result in the imperfect behaviour, eyesight, hearing, memories etc that we witness. Of course this would imply that for most of us we begin life with our souls running our bodies, and it's only in old age or after some injury where we somehow damage our soul and fall back onto our inferior backup, the brain. But this belief has two problems. One, many of us don't have perfect eyesight, hearing or memory when we're young, which we would have if our soul was doing all the work. It appears that even from the start, our less-than-perfect brain is doing all the work while our soul lurks in the background disguised as a lamp or a pot plant. The worse problem with this belief that the soul runs our bodies when we're young and healthy, is that we're told that the soul can't be damaged, so it would have no need to have the brain as an inferior backup. The material brain can die, it can be turned to ashes, but the soul is immaterial, so nothing in nature could ever affect it. The soul can't be damaged and thus has no need of the brain as a backup, so regardless of what happens to the brain during our life, our soul should at least give us perfect memories and a stable personality, along with acute eyesight and hearing for our entire lives. It could be argued that the immaterial soul uses the material brain to make our material body move, and brain damage could limit body movement since the link between soul and body had been broken. While this might account for physical problems, it would have no bearing on our mental life. If our personality, memories and consciousness were contained in our soul as is claimed, then while we may lose control of our body via our damaged brain, we would still know exactly who we were, and we could still see and hear those around us. If, by using our soul on our damaged brain we could still create speech or hit a keyboard, we could always say exactly who we were and remember exactly who we were talking to. Alzheimer's and other brain disorders would be unheard of.

    Since the brain and the mind can, when healthy, apparently do everything that the soul can, then believers in souls need to explain why the soul is required at all. Of course a soul would be of great benefit if it stepped in when the brain was damaged, but again, believers need to explain why it never does. Some argue that the soul has a record of the lessons we've learnt in life, and these are for use in the next life, but since there really is no next life, even for believers, these memories are all wasted. What do I mean by that? For those that believe in reincarnation, that their soul is reused and goes into a new life, then the memories of lessons learnt in this life could be extremely valuable in the next. But when a soul is placed inside a new life every memory is erased, and the baby goes through life never remembering that it has lived before. And consequently making many of the same mistakes again. Do you remember any of your previous lives? So there is no reason for a soul to retain memories on the death of the body if they're wiped on reincarnation. Of course most Christians don't believe in reincarnation, although strangely some do, but even if their soul plans to spend eternity in heaven, there is still no reason to have a soul with perfect recall of its old life. Christians in heaven won't need to remember how to fix a fuse, find a good mortgage or work out if that guy on the next cloud over might be a mugger. Every minute of their interminable existence will be spend kissing god's tentacles and singing his praises, nothing they learnt during their pitifully short life on Earth will have any relevance to their servitude in heaven, especially after a million or so years have passed. That's why I say that there really is no next life, even for Christians, since they are technically dead, and their experiences in heaven would be better described as torture rather than life. That Christians joyously look forward to their death and a freeing of their soul so that it can suffer an eternity of mind-numbing repetition is clear evidence that they have given it little thought. And in doing so they waste the only life they will ever have. What fools.

13. Comment by Ben, 24 Feb, 2016

    John, how sure are you that he wasn't just trolling?

14. Comment by the 'Silly Beliefs' Team, 24 Feb, 2016

    Well Ben, I can't be certain she wasn't a troll, but I don't think she was, and if she was, I view her effort as a failure.

    For readers not sure of what trolling is, it takes its name from the wicked trolls of fairy tales, but these trolls are real. As Wikipedia notes:

    'In Internet slang, a troll is a person who sows discord on the Internet by starting arguments or upsetting people, by posting inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community (such as a newsgroup, forum, chat room, or blog) with the deliberate intent of provoking readers into an emotional response or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion, often for their own amusement.'

    It's also said that trolls love it when you insult them or get angry. However this person insulted me and she was the one getting angry, so that's not typical troll behaviour. If she was a troll, her comments didn't upset me, so that's a fail.

    She didn't disrupt the forum discussion, nor were her comments off-topic, so another fail, and she didn't provoke me into an emotional outburst, since I gave calm and rational responses to her emotional nonsense. I agree that she was troll-like in that she clearly wanted to upset us with her insults, but I don't think she had any intention on entering into an ongoing argument. Remember that trolls want to harass people and yet she ended up begging us to desist with our comments, so not very troll like.

    She came out, in my opinion, looking like a fool, and her comments gave us the opportunity to again highlight flaws in Christianity, which regardless of why she wrote to us, is what we do. So whether she was a troll or not, her comments served our purpose, not hers.

Of course I acknowledge that we shouldn't dismiss conspiracy theories out of hand. After all there have been real conspiracies that everyone accepts really did happen. Governments especially haven't got a great track record of always telling the truth. Of course some conspiracy theories are more plausible than others, for example in the Kennedy assassination no laws of physics are broken nor do thousands have to keep quiet if there was a shooter on the grassy knoll, but credibility stretches when they argue that Queen Elizabeth and many other world leaders are all shape-shifting reptilian aliens. My experience with conspiracy theories is that they often sound credible when you read the books or articles written by the conspiracy theorists, and you don't know a lot about science or critical thinking. But if you then read the books or articles written by the experts eg scientists, historians etc. (and followers of conspiracy theories seldom do), the experts generally poke holes in the conspiracy theories large enough to sail a supertanker through. For example, I recently read a book by Tom Rogers entitled, 'Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics', where one of the movies he looked at was Oliver Stone's 'JFK', and the case that Kennedy's head 'moves back and to the left' when shot, suggesting as conspiracy theorists wrongly argue that the shooter must have been in front of Kennedy, not behind. Common sense says that Oliver Stone was correct, but the physics say he was wrong.

But unlike the conspiracies regarding the likes of JFK, chemtrails, 9/11 and the moon landing, the alleged conspiracy surrounding climate change doesn't just involve a handful of laypeople against thousands of experts. The argument for climate change or anthropogenic global warming (AGW) — warming caused or made worse by humans — is something that could be wrong, since the arguments are based on very complex science and increasing but still insufficient data. It's something that's still unfolding, not some event we can examine in hindsight. Scientists have been wrong in the past, embarrassingly so at times, and they'll definitely get things wrong again in the future. So what do we do, just throw up our hands and revert back to believing whatever we feel like? Many people would suggest we do, some even arguing that it's actually our thoughts that create the world. Think of world peace and it will be so.

But me, I'm not so sure that's how the world works. It's true that scientists have been wrong before, and that they change their views when the evidence suggests they should. Of course some people argue that this willingness of science to quickly change paths is why it can't be trusted. At least you know where you are with religion since it sticks steadfastly with the original guesses made by ignorant nomads thousands of years ago. But the reality is that much of what science now claims remains constant and our modern society reflects this. The basics of biology, physics, chemistry etc don't change; gravity stays switched on, planes keep flying, bridges stay up, the Sun continues to shine, arsenic remains poisonous and bullets continue to kill. Our advanced society exists only because science and the resultant technology works, and works consistently. I've always though it rather hypocritical and ignorant of some people to use computers, smartphones, aircraft, antibiotics and to live in air-conditioned homes and wear synthetic clothes while arguing that scientists don't know what they're talking about and we should all return to living at one with nature, consuming and using only that which is natural. And yet you don't see them handing over their smartphones, fancy coffees and clothes and returning naked to the bush. Me thinks they don't want to reject the fruits of science at all, only a few things that they don't like and believe they don't personally need. Even though they may argue that they distrust science and scientists, their actions find them indecently embracing all the things that science has given us. Like the religious that pick and choose what they will believe in their holy books, many think they can pick and choose what science they will believe too.

While it has made mistakes, science without doubt still has a great track record. It has given us amazing marvels, even though most of us might not understand how they really work, and it has laid bare many of the mysteries of the universe and life. We know we live on spherical ball of rock that orbits a distant ball of hot gas, that new life comes from the union of sperm and egg, that lightning is caused by electricity and not angry gods, that antibiotics can combat disease, that humans and apes are closely related, that comets don't predict disasters, and witches aren't the cause of crop failures. The knowledge that science has revealed about the universe is astounding, and the use of that science in creating our modern society is clear proof if any is needed that scientific claims are more than mere pronouncements, like those a religious leader might make. How often has a pope pleaded for the end of some conflict in the world, and nothing changes? Events and devices predicted by scientific claims generally come to fruition, they've created our modern world and can be accepted as true. If we have a question about the working of the universe, history has shown that we should query a scientist, rather than a priest, witch or soothsayer. And while scientists might, using the best evidence available, honestly give us the wrong answer, or reply that they simply don't know, scientists are still far, far more likely to give you the best answer than are those that have no knowledge in the field for which you seek an answer.

But along comes claims of AGW and while some of us have no problem listening to the scientists, confusingly we now have scientists arguing for both sides. But dig a little deeper and we learn that evidently the great majority of experts believe that AGW is likely true, and if so, it's probably prudent to look at taking some remedial action. Most of us believe scientists when they talk about DNA, black holes and UV radiation, all things that most of us have never seen personally, so shouldn't we again accept, or at least tentatively side with, what the general scientific consensus is? Do we have the expertise to argue?

But what if you then read an argument, from a scientist, not a layperson like yourself, that AGW is all nonsense, that there is no evidence for it and it's all a conspiracy to boost the careers and fortunes of a devious few? And what if that argument appears to make sense, should you become a AGW skeptic? Or what if a layperson glances at arguments from both sides of the AGW debate and finds themselves flip-flopping, is there a rational way of choosing a side, hopefully the right one, without reading all the articles and research papers or even understanding all the conflicting claims? I propose that there is.

I don't have the time or inclination to go into the depths of climate change science as some do, and even if I did and I came out deeply skeptical of AGW, the one question that would continue to haunt me would be why the great majority of scientists — the experts — disagree with me, the layperson? Especially since no scientist, politician or business owner actually wants AGW to be real because of the huge sacrifices that may be needed to combat it. There is no apparent incentive to back a theory that you don't want to be true, especially if you can see that the evidence clearly shows it likely isn't true, a theory that you personally are making no money from, and that will actually cost you money. And yet most scientists, politicians and business owners are acting as if AGW is happening, which doesn't make any sense if even a layperson like me can supposedly see that it's all bullshit after reading just a few web pages.

So to reiterate, after reading article after article and listening to untold technical arguments, no matter how convinced I became that AGW was an evil conspiracy, I'd still be mystified as to why other honest people that were far more expert than me couldn't see what I see. Is it likely that a non-qualified person with no experience can grasp a reality that thousands of real experts can't, even when I explain it to them? Of course it is possible. But maybe, just maybe, it's me, the non-expert, that has failed to fully understand all the complex science behind how our world really works?

Someone skeptical of AGW told me that, 'The best reason for remaining sceptical is that there are reputable scientists on both sides of the debate and they are arguing about the interpretation of evidence, not beliefs'. For me, the problem with that stance is that it is exactly the same flawed argument that creationists use. And what informed, intelligent person believes them? They argue that evolution, plus the big bang theory and Earth's geology spaning billions of years, hasn't been proven, that 'there are reputable scientists on both sides of the debate and they are arguing about the interpretation of evidence, not beliefs'. And they're right that there are 'reputable scientists on both sides of the debate', but they mislead us by suggesting that this debate is balanced, that it could easily go either way, and that it's even a real debate. I'm guessing here, but the ratio is probably something like 1,000 reputable scientists supporting evolution to every one reputable scientist supporting creationism. Worse still is that every reputable scientist supporting creationism is biased by the fact that they are also deeply religious. First and foremost, they are creationists because they firmly believe in god, not because they think there is scientific evidence for god. Their purported scientific evidence comes a distant second. If they acknowledged that there was no scientific evidence whatsoever for god, they would still believe in their god. Unlike honest scientists who go where the evidence points, and would change sides if evidence for god surfaced, creationists would never consider giving up their belief in god, no matter how poorly supported it was. I don't accept the weak argument that I should be skeptical about evolution — or AGW — simply because a handful of scientists are.

One of my favourite quotes is the following by Anatole France: 'If 50 million people believe a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing'. I usually think of this applying to the millions that believe in some god, but of course 99% of scientists could believe in a certain idea and still be wrong as well, it's happened before. So I should explain that I don't accept evolution solely because the scientific world does. I'm not just going along with the cool science crowd, blindly adopting the opinion of the majority. I accept it because I understand (to a limited degree) and accept the evidence put forward by the scientific community, and I see flaws in the alternative evidence put forward by creationists, and also because scientists have the best track record by miles of giving us the most accurate description of reality to date.

And as an atheist I'm definitely in the minority, so clearly not a sensible stance if the goal was to raise my popularity ranking. Nearly everyone on the planet, contrary to what they might argue, is a creationist, not a naturalist. Nearly all, even those religious folk that say they believe in evolution, eventually reveal that they believe the universe required a creator, ergo they are all creationists. Just because someone believes a god created the universe 14 billion years ago as opposed to a mere 6,000 years ago doesn't change that fact. If you're not an atheist, then you're a creationist. Sorry to break it to you like this, but I think it's finally time you faced the truth. So again, I'm not following the majority view by being an atheist or by agreeing with scientists, since both views are minority world views. I believe as I do because the scientific evidence is compelling and the religious evidence is, in equal measure, both laughable and heinous.

I'm not a science expert, so when I wonder where the universe and life came from I look to those that have studied these questions. Both scientists and the religious claim to have the answers or at least some good theories. And yet it is only the scientists that have supported their answers with good evidence, the religious have had most of their answers disproved and the few that remain are expected to be believed on blind faith alone. Yet history gives us no reason to believe that the few remaining religious claims are true since all their previous claims have failed so miserably. They are clearly just guessing, and very badly at that. So yes, while creationists can point to a handful of reputable scientists that argue for creationism, the overwhelming majority of reputable scientists support the scientific consensus, that evolution and the big bang explain life and the universe. Only in the minds of creationists is there still a debate going on, for everyone else it was convincingly settled long ago. And apparently as regards AGW, while perhaps the debate has not been as convincingly settled, it has been settled in the minds of most experts, even if some of the public is still unsure.

Of course I do often find myself debating with many experts, especially so-called experts in religion, spiritualism and weather astrology, and our difference of opinion would worry me if it wasn't for the fact that the view of the experts that matter most in today's world, the scientific experts, support my stance, not the stance of those I debate with. I am an atheist even though most of the planet's population disagrees with me, but reassuringly for me the few people that in my humble opinion actually know about these things, the scientists, do agree with me, so that lets me sleep at night confident in my views.

Whether it is about creationism or climate change, the Moon landing or chemtrails, if I were to find myself as a layperson arguing the facts with the great majority of the world's scientific experts, I would be greatly troubled as to why none of these prodigious minds could see the simple truths that came so clearly to me. Have they all been bribed, or perhaps threatened? If so, who would have the power to do that and keep it all secret? Not one scientist has blabbed, even on his or her death bed. Not one has had the integrity to expose the conspiracy. Even among the handful of scientists that argue against AGW, none are apparently aware of or willing to expose the conspiracy, they generally only argue about how the other side is interpreting the data, there is little suggestion that their colleagues are knowingly falsifying or misrepresenting the data.

So no matter how convincing I might find an argument against AGW, I would still just think that all they've managed to do is sway a layperson that couldn't analyse an ice core if I was given a week and all the fancy tools. I would still be nagged with the thought that I had missed a flaw in the argument that thousands of experts saw straight away. And if it truly is a killer argument, then why isn't the scientific consensus swinging to reflect this? After all, these are very bright, independent scientists searching for the truth, not priests welded to a lie.

Without getting into any of the complex details, no matter what conspiracy theory is being debated, I'm always curious as to why the opinions of a few relatively uniformed laypeople should be believed over the evidence of thousands of independent experts. Why for example could Ralph Rene, a retired carpenter, easily see that the Moon landing was a hoax, and yet the world's scientists, even those with no connection to NASA or the US, couldn't? And what magic, I can't think of any other word, forces thousands upon thousands of people that would have been involved in these conspiracies to keep quiet, even decades after the event? Only President Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky knew what transpired between them, and yet even then one of them blabbed. And yet big, global conspiracies somehow have the loose lips problem solved. Common features of all conspiracy theories are that some ordinary, unqualified Jane or Joe Bloggs can always see through the false evidence presented by scientists, no matter how complex, and will want to expose that conspiracy to the world. On the other side we have armies of ordinary J. Bloggs working as minions for some conspiracy who will remain unbelievably loyal to their evil masters, if not to their family or country, taking the secret to the grave. With chemtrails for example, loyal minions will let their families and communities be poisoned rather than become whistleblowers. The J. Bloggs on the outside can't shut up, the one on the inside won't say a word. Why is it that the honest, outspoken J. Bloggs that can quickly recognise lies when they see them and wants to do the right thing and expose corruption, never ends up being recruited into some conspiracy? Or if they are, they quickly shake off their morals and learn to keep quiet. So why are the conspiracy minions always so loyal?

Forget the arguments about the science, what I want explained is how the conspiracy masters keep their armies of minions in line, all singing the same tune, and why some ordinary J. Bloggs can always detect the flaws in the science when real scientists unconnected with the conspiracy can't? Of course some might argue that all scientists, even apparently independent ones, have been silenced by the conspiracy, but if this were true, then why not just silence annoying J. Bloggs as well? Why create a conspiracy of unimaginable complexity and expense, especially a conspiracy that has already involved numerous murders, and then let an annoying nobody ruin it all? But let's say that with some conspiracies, AGW for example, scientists are recruited and their silence bought, not with death threats, but with promises of fame and/or fortune. Are we to believe that every single scientist that was approached sold out their integrity, since not one has reported turning down an offer to fudge the science? And of the scientists speaking out against AGW, why has not one of them been approached and asked to sell their soul? We know they haven't because none have mentioned it, and why would they keep quiet about such a damming incident? If thousands of scientists worldwide have readily become part of the conspiracy, why wouldn't the few remaining ones be invited on board too? If the conspiracy is true, then they would likely jump at the chance to be involved, just as all their colleagues did. Since no scientist has ever come forward to report an inappropriate request from some shadowy group to fudge the science or to lie outright, be it concerning the Moon landing, AGW, chemtrails, 9/11, JFK, secret bases on Mars or the MMR vaccine, then we are presented with two options. One, the shadowy groups that create conspiracies have a foolproof way of recruiting their minions, meaning they never say no and never go running to the media, suggesting that they're turned into some sort of obedient zombie, or two, these silly global conspiracies aren't real, and there are no shadowy groups corrupting scientists worldwide.

So, is it evil shadowy groups bent on global harm controlling armies of obedient zombies that are inexplicably reluctant to harm or even threaten those that are exposing and jeopardising their evil plans, or is it an honest, imaginative few seeing evil conspiracies where there are none?

In matters of complex science, for me, I feel happier trusting the explanations and evidence of a respected and very credible global scientific community than I do the alternative and usually flaky explanations presented by unqualified, disparate individuals, even those that are sometimes backed by a handful of scientists working on the fringes or outside their field of expertise. There's not enough time in my life or high quality neurons in my brain to understand all of what science knows, therefore reason suggests I should back a gaggle of scientists over the likes of a retired carpenter or astrologer when it comes to matters of science. I believe this strategy will carry the day on most important issues.

Posted by the 'Silly Beliefs' Team, 01 Jan, 2016 ~ Add a Comment    Send to a Friend

Comments:

1. Comment by Graeme, 01 Jan, 2016

   Thanks Silly Beliefs for a great web-page that is unafraid of lengthy discourse or detail.

   For those who haven't seen yet, there's a delightful series of short videos on climate change here. Expertly put together and delivered by 1st rate science journalist Peter Hadfield who publishes under the vlogger monicker Potholer54. The best I have come across anyway. All his stuff, climate or otherwise, is superb.

   And one of the funniest things I've seen exposing the how retarded Fox News can be here. Shooting fish in a barrel? Much better than that.

2. Comment by the 'Silly Beliefs' Team, 01 Jan, 2016

   Thanks Graeme. Sorry for labouring the point, but I've found that a pithy comment on Twitter or witty quote on Facebook may make someone nod in agreement or laugh in support, but it never seems to change minds. Brief Twitter and Facebook comments are always preaching to the converted, they never go into enough depth to where they might actually force people to think about their stance. It annoys me that today so many people have such strong views on many important topics and yet they would never consider reading a lengthy article, let alone an entire book, to see if their viewpoint is justified. I've often offered to lend people a book on a topic we've been debating, and not once has anyone ever taken up my offer. Clearly they've made up their minds and they don't want to confuse that with annoying facts or logic. Often very dubious sound-bites in the media seems to be where most people get their opinions from these days — I heard it on the Farming Show, some scientist called Ken Ring, so it must be true!