Make sure you're sitting down before you read this surprising article:

Turkey in radical revision of Islamic texts

...the Turkish state has come to see the Hadith as having an often negative influence on a society it is in a hurry to modernise, and believes it responsible for obscuring the original values of Islam.

The argument is that Islamic tradition has been gradually hijacked by various - often conservative - cultures, seeking to use the religion for various forms of social control.

Turkey is intent on sweeping away that "cultural baggage" and returning to a form of Islam it claims accords with its original values and those of the Prophet.

Watch any video or read any article which is anti-Muslim and chances are you'll find it mentioning the negative teachings of the Muslim religion, the ones which show up the inequality, the intolerance, the insanity, of some of the vigorously defended beliefs and practices of Islam. We all talk about how Islam has not changed, and refuses to change, despite the long, gradual shift in all aspects of the world's cultures over the centuries, and how this refusal to adapt is making Islam more and more unacceptable to Western societies, where change is the norm.

And now these words, which I thought I would never see:

"This is kind of akin to the Christian Reformation," he says.

Read the whole article and wonder if, finally, some Muslims have woken up and realised that, in reality, their religion must change if it to stand any chance of ever being seen in a positive light by those who do not follow its teachings. It's a start, at least, but you can't change something as enormous as a major world religion without small steps, and this seems to be one.

I truly detest people who try to tell me I'm ignorant, but in the attempt show, seemingly effortlessly, that in reality their ignorance is what is being paraded, for all to see.

Today's comments, from someone who shall remain nameless, just on the assumption that he has escaped from a psychiatric unit and may be acting with diminished responsibility, are as follows:

1. And if you wanna take on Creation do your homework... Darwin disproved his own theory when he couldn't explain the development of the EYE!

2. And I am not even a supporter of The Christian Faith as it stands. What does that tell you?

This was such a simple thing to deal with that I'll just show you my response in full:

It tells me you're an idiot who has not even looked into what you are talking about. That bullshit about the eye is just ignorance - you've read the standard propaganda quote and failed to read two sentences further. I'm going to educate you before I block you. Here comes the passage you're talking about...

"To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree."

The above is where your knowledge ends, but someone who has READ THE BOOK would know that Darwin continues...

"When it was first said that the sun stood still and the world turned round, the common sense of mankind declared the doctrine false; but the old saying of Vox populi, vox Dei (translation: The voice of the people is the voice of God), as every philosopher knows, cannot be trusted in science. Reason tells me, that if numerous gradations from a simple and imperfect eye to one complex and perfect can be shown to exist, each grade being useful to its possessor, as is certainly the case; if further, the eye ever varies and the variations be inherited, as is likewise certainly the case; and if such variations should be useful to any animal under changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, though insuperable by our imagination, should not be considered as subversive of the theory. How a nerve comes to be sensitive to light, hardly concerns us more than how life itself originated; but I may remark that, as some of the lowest organisms in which nerves cannot be detected, are capable of perceiving light, it does not seem impossible that certain sensitive elements in their sarcode should become aggregated and developed into nerves, endowed with this special sensibility."

I finished with this comment:

You are a moron. All you had to do was look up that passage in 'On the Origin of Species' and you'd have known that Darwin himself provided the reply to your stupid comment. Chapter 6 is called 'Difficulties of the Theory'. The passage I gave you begins a section called 'Organs of extreme perfection and complication' in which Darwin eloquently answers every point you will EVER make, 150 years before you puked them out.

Get an education - read a fucking book, you ignoramus.

What I didn't mention was that this is the very chapter I am currently recording so that I can provide it as an MP3 audio file (if you recall, I plan to record the entire book). I'll be done with that chapter very shortly - I recorded all of the above text only a few days ago, so this very subject is completely fresh in my mind.

Why are religious people so ignorant of the things they seek to discredit? All the atheists I know have read the Bible, at least those who speak out against its teachings. We know the source material, so we know what we are talking about. And yet it seems that none of the people who reject evolution have read anything about it other than one or two quotes, cut short in the way I demonstrate above, which anyone, anyone at all, would know are part of a larger argument and which are answered by Darwin so easily. Darwin himself presented these obstacles to acceptance of his theory... and then proceeeded to provided the answers to each and every one of them.

People who have not read 'On the Origin of Species' should not try to discredit evolution. If they do, they will just show their ignorance. You don't have to read the book to understand evolution, but you do have to read it if you want to try to tear it down. The trouble is, anyone who has read it and understood it will be unable to do so. That is, if they really do understand it in the first place.

If ignorance is bliss, I truly hope never to have a moment's bliss in my whole life, because I don't ever want to be as stupid as the people who send me comments such as the one which led to this article.

Imagine the first manned spaceflight to Mars. The mission will take several years. Four or five astronauts will be shut into a small metal box for month after month, speeding towards the red planet. They've done all the training, they have their assigned tasks to perform, and yet very little can prepare them for being, to all intents and purposes, imprisoned in a capsule with absolutely no way out. So they'd better really know how to live together for long periods of time.

Day three or four arrives - the first few days were a rush of non-stop instrument checks and putting the spacecraft into 'cruise mode' for this immense journey of millions of kilometres. The crew settle down for the long haul and finally they have time to relax and chat for the first time. They all talk about what they will miss most about Earth. For one of them it's good food, for another it's walking in the woods back home. They all take their turns.

"So Bob, what will you miss most about good old planet Earth?" one asks.

Bob smiles and says, "I'll miss preaching the word of the Lord to the sinners and the blasphemers and the atheists. I'll miss knocking on the doors and witnessing to those poor helpless souls about the power of Jeeeeesus and the evils of saying that the universe is older than 6000 years old - lies, all lies. I'll miss praising God's mighty creation and cursing the wickedness that the evolutionists tell our children."

He adds, "But at least I have you guys to share the wonders of God's awesome universe for the next couple of years. Come on, praise Jesus our Lord and Saviour with me. Come on, don't be shy now."

Such a shame that on a routine check of the airlock Bob becomes the first man to perform a space walk without a suit. You'd have thought that God would protect him.

Moral: mission to Mars good, missionary to Mars bad.

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Footnote:
If Jeebus comes back for the Rapture how does that work with the people up in space anyway? The Bible is strangely silent about what happens to anyone caught in the International Space Station when the rivers of blood start flowing.

I've just finished eating a clementine, which is a type of mandarin, and according to the label 'intensely sweet in flavour' and 'high in vitamin C'. Shipped all the way from Morocco to my mouth. Marvellous. Meanwhile the apple I'm now eating is a Cox variety, 'rich and fully flavoured' and was grown in Kent, known to some as 'the garden of England'. I eat a lot of fruit, and there's a banana with my name on it waiting downstairs when I've finished this blog.

So why am I telling you this? Just because I want to, I suppose. But also perhaps to hint that writing about 'stuff' on a blog isn't the only thing I enjoy doing. Today I walked the 2.5 miles into the city instead of using my car, had a walk around the huge new shopping centre there, went into precisely two of the shops, and bought a couple of books from one of them. I walked back the 2.5 miles back home, was repaid with a big blister on the sole of my foot, and realised there was definitely a reason I owned a car. That reason seems to be to avoid walking at all costs. Later I watched the soaps on TV (that's another story), had a lovely dinner of prawns with stir-fry Chinese vegetables, and watched 'The Terminator', realising that special effects weren't as good as I remembered they were back in 1984. That was pretty much my day and those are 24 hours I will never have again, but I'm not too unhappy about spending them in the way I did.

And again, I'm telling you this because I'm in the mood to do so.

Most of this blog, and most of the videos I make for YouTube revolve around atheism and religion. It's what I am known for, and perhaps you wouldn't be here if I made videos about Formula 1 racing, which I also enjoy but which doesn't overlap greatly with atheism. I write and make videos because I enjoy speaking my mind about subjects which are important to me. If you've been around these parts for long enough, you'll have seen periods when I was no longer interested in doing this, and so stopped. My recent videos have hardly been what you might call religion-packed - I've been reading stories and poems and you haven't actually seen me personally in a video since the end of 2007.

From time to time people tell me they are disappointed that I am no longer making 'serious' videos like I used to. Some people have unsubscribed because I am no longer the <IRONY> atheist philosopher </IRONY> I once was. Are these people important to me? As individuals, no. I have over 3000 subscribers and have never met a single one of them. And 3000 is, in the grand scheme of things, a drop in the ocean, so if one goes away this is not in any way a concern of mine. The fact that there are 3000 more isn't that important either - the first video I made was recorded when I had no subscribers at all, so obviously I was motivated to make it with few prospects of any sizable audience. But I did it anyway, because it was something I wanted to do. I am of course grateful that 3000+ people decided to subscribe to my channel, but I am stirred to nothing more than a simple 'thank you' to this amorphous group of people I don't know, perhaps because I myself am subscribed to over 200 channels and they probably don't give a toss about me.

I used to take making new atheist videos very seriously, and churned them out on a pretty regular basis, maybe 2 or 3 a week, but now I kind of think I've said all I want to say in video form, and while I will be making more videos, they might not be about anything to do with religion at all. Or they might - the last one was, so who knows? I prefer to write in this blog, as and when I feel the urge, and the urge has today urged me to write this, for some reason.

The atheist videos, and this blog, have always been made solely for an audience of atheists. At first I used to reply to every message I received from Christians, and, rarely, a few Muslims, but for anyone who hasn't worked it out yet, this is actually pretty pointless. The only theists who contact you are the ones who are so set in their ways that they will never change, and it isn't as if there is much of a grey area - they believe in God, I don't, and there is no middle ground, no compromise to be made. Neither side listens, because both sides have heard every counter-argument before and it's the nature of religion - beliefs (or lack of them) do not change simply because someone has a more elaborately constructed argument.

So I write, I make videos, and they are for atheists. Even when I appear to be addressing Christians, what I'm really saying is, 'this is what I think of Christians and Christianity'. I don't actually seek to engage in any kind of debate with them because it is pointless. And like the 3000 subscribers who are not actually known to me, the Christians and Muslims who want me to respond to their comments are just faceless accounts on YouTube. They simply don't matter to me - I don't want to change their lives so very much that I want to spend time responding to their quotes of scripture, or threats of hell and damnation. These days I pretty much block and delete such people and their comments. They are free to debate with themselves on their own channels, but nobody gets the last word on mine these days. All this I do because I choose to do so.

If you like getting into arguments with religious believers, go for it. If you don't, stay well away from it. I'm of the latter persuasion, and I'm just here to churn out more of what interests me on the day. There's no big plan, and no real need to do it if I don't want to - as I've said, I have periods of varying length when I really don't want to be bothered with it at all.

I enjoy blogging and making videos, but I have a life beyond this. Some people would call it a very dull life - no mountain climbing or sky diving, nothing like that - but nonetheless it's a life which is stress-free for the greater part of my day. Most of my day isn't even remotely connected to atheism, and to be honest I'd like to think that you spend very little of your time reading my blog and watching my videos, because while you're sitting at your desk right now, you too could be eating a sweet, juicy orange or apple, or, if you're not a fruity person, a huge slab of cake. If you don't have any cake you could always bake one - it's not difficult, and it's better than watching some creationist rambling on about the nothing-at-all he knows about evolution. If you find yourself doing such a thing, ask yourself why you are bothering and what else you could be doing with your life - the one life you get, remember.

Talking of rambling on, this is exactly what I'm doing, so if you're wondering when this blog is ever going to end, stick with it for a few more sentences. Then get as far away from the computer as you can and do something less... religious with your life. You may thank me for that suggestion, but don't worry if you don't, we are neither of us important to each other, at least not as important as the 'real' people we know. Just do the things you want to do and be happy doing them, and I'll give that philosophy a try myself now and again. Starting with that banana. Good things often start and end with a nice piece of fruit. Or maybe cake.

Article from the Belfast Telegraph:

The humanist touch

Queen's University, Belfast, has raised eyebrows after appointing as its latest chaplain someone who doesn't believe in God. Peter Hutchison meets new cleric Ruth Yeo.

For many people the term humanist chaplain will seem absurd. A contradiction in terms. Sacrilegious even. They may have a point. It is, after all, a philosophy, a way of life. It is not a religion, although humanists claim it can still be spiritual.

Humanists do not believe in God or the afterlife. This is the only life there is and people must do their best to make it a good one, they say.

In September, Queen's University in Belfast became one of the first educational institutions in the UK to appoint a humanist chaplain.

It was approached by the Belfast Humanist Group who said they should be added to the 15 faiths already represented which included Baptist, Methodist, and the Chinese Church.

The proposal went before the university's senate and Ruth Yeo, who was vice chairman of the group, was appointed.

A spokesperson for the university says: "Chaplains and religious representatives are appointed by the university for the moral and spiritual care of its students. The university made this appointment in accordance with its statutes."

For the former Protestant and retired education officer, however, the first semester wasn't all plain sailing, as she encountered awkwardness and attempted to dispel some myths about the Godless faith.

"First of all, the word chaplain is not very important. I would like people to look beyond that because what I am is really the humanist representative," she says.

"I have found it very exciting and very good so far. I saw my first task as raising awareness because humanism is not out there. Even people who don't believe in God would not often put that label on themselves."

She gathered together a small group of students interested in humanism. Their application to become an affiliated society is expected to be ratified by the student council later this month.

Progress is being made against the odds. As a secular institution, Queen's leaves chaplains to their own devices.

"They make the appointment and give the title but that is as far as they go. They don't provide me with an office and I'm more or less on my own," explains Mrs Yeo.

"The mainstream denominations such as the Presbyterians and Roman Catholics have the wealth of their church behind them so they have buildings, chaplaincies, staff and rooms beside the university. As a humanist I have nothing."

Mrs Yeo did not feel she was welcomed with open arms by some of the other chaplains and felt many were suspicious of her atheist beliefs. "I experienced a little bit of opposition in the beginning from the mainstream churches but nothing terribly overt," she says.

"There was just that wee bit of stand-offishness in September but since then we have got to know each other better.

"I think I experienced a little bit of opposition in the beginning from the mainstream churches but nothing terribly overt. they saw humanists as being aggressive so I'm always trying to show that I am not. We are not out to convert. My idea is to open up the debate and to get people talking.

"When I approached them (mainstream churches) I didn't feel I was getting the co-operation back. It's better now but certainly not at the beginning. It was shocking because to me that is not what Christianity is."

The chaplain recalls one particular incident at the freshers fayre when she was approached by a student: "She asked what humanism was all about. I explained and she looked at me and said, 'I think you are sad. Very, very sad and I'm going to go away and pray for you', and away she went.

"What she did was show me how blinkered her thinking was."

The 64-year-old, born in Belfast, had a strict Protestant upbringing. She went to Sunday School as a child and became a teacher.

In her adolescent years she began to question religion and the existence of God. It took time for her to make the full conversion though, and she has been a humanist for 20 years.

So why did she reject God and what is humanism to her?

"I suppose as I looked around the world, religion hasn't always done good. It has been involved in wars and a lot of bad things have happened in the name of religion.

"There are a lot of people who seem to live a very good life, they go to church, read the Bible, do good works, and yet they'll be struck down with an illness or something terrible happens to them. I couldn't see where this loving God, that I had been brought up to believe existed, was in all of this.

"When I was about 15 or 16 I went to a rally and the speaker said if we didn't come to the front of the hall and sign the paper we would burn in hell. And I remember thinking, once I'd signed the piece of paper, that I was going to be ok and that I wasn't going to burn in hell. That is such a horrific, terrible thing.

"I remember learning about Egypt in geography in school. The teacher said that once a year all the silt from the mountainside swept into the Nile. It was red clay that made the river look like blood. I understood that and liked that story rather than saying God turned the river into blood.

"The scientific logic appealed to me and that was the first time I realised that I liked clear scientific explanations.

"Humanism is about rational thinking. All I say to people is don't just accept everything you've been told. Have a think and even if you come back and say no I'm still happy with God and the Bible then that's fine."

But it wasn't just the clamouring for clearer answers to life's complex questions that drove her to humanism.

"I felt I was living with this guilt and fear all the time that if I didn't do right I wouldn't go to heaven. Humanism for me takes away the guilt and fear that religion gave me.

"The loss of guilt and fear is the incentive for me. I don't have that fear that I will burn in the fires of hell and I don't have the guilt of doing wrong and being a sinner.

"Humanism also takes away hypocrisy. I think a lot of people call themselves religious but all they are doing is paying lip service to it.

"We say lead as good a life as you can. There is still a misconception that because you don't have God or a religion then you can't have any morals. We do have a moral compass and know what is right and wrong."

She also insists that humanist weddings, funerals, and christenings are powerful and poignant occasions. The absence of God and religion makes them even more relevant, she suggests.

Humanist christenings are called naming ceremonies while a wedding could take place in a hotel and would have no references to God.

Mrs Yeo says: "For all these ceremonies the people involved are invited to put together their own service. They would choose poetry, songs, and maybe write their own vows. It would be very personal to them.

"A humanist funeral is a celebration of life.

"Recently I went to a religious funeral and the minister quite blatantly used the opportunity of having an audience to deliver a sermon. It was totally nothing to do with the person who had died. I don't want to hear talk about repentance on an occasion of grief. I want to be told about the person who died and anyone who has been to a humanist funeral will always say that was lovely because it was about the person."

Mrs Yeo believes religion is a personal thing. It shouldn't be in politics and there shouldn't be faith schools. She feels mixed schools where all religions are taught is the way forward and she is hopeful that people will sit up and take note of humanism.

"There are so many people who maybe wouldn't call themselves a humanist but have moved away from religion," she adds.

"In Northern Ireland it is very difficult to stand up and say, 'I'm a humanist and I don't believe in God'. On a personal basis I have had friends who have been quite shocked that I would say that.

"I hope more people will have the courage to say they don't believe in God."

While dealing with a typical intertard commenting on my videos, I was asked, "What makes you think the Earth is more than 6000 years old?"

Okay, I admit it, that single question should have disqualified the person from receiving any kind of response at all. Young Earth creationists are the slime from which no sentient, quasi-intelligent thought can ever emerge. But I plead 'sneak attack' because this was in the middle of several comments about other things which, on the surface, were questions I was happy to answer, and the 6000-year question was sandwiched inbetween some other points in the same post.

So I replied, "Science and scientists makes me believe the Earth is more than 6000 years old, because they provide evidence and proof. Science provides the best explanations we have for the natural world. This is know the world is more than 6000 years old."

I then went on to explain that young Earth creationists (at this point I had not realised the questioner was one himself) not only believe that the Earth is 6000 years old but that all life, except that in one huge boat, was killed by a global flood, around 2350 BC. This timeline shows these ludicrous belief in detail, while this one shows that in 2350 BC Egypt was undergoing its Fifth Dynasty, preceded of course by Dynasties 1-4 (the Great Pyramid of Giza was bult in the 4th) and followed by dozens more, in a continuous, unbroken and distinctly unflooded line of rulers.

Yes, young Earth creationists have shit for brains. You can quote me on that.

But back to the main point I was making: that we rely on science and scientists to provide us with answers which prove that the Earth (and indeed the universe - did I mention the YEC people think the whole universe is young too?) is way way older than 6000 years.

The response was one which, as many times as I hear it, and I've heard this a lot, never ceases to both amaze and disappoint me:

"Science can be wrong. You can't rely on science for answers. The best position to take would be 'we don't really know'."

See what he did there? Alongside dismissing the combined intelligence of thousands of scientists over hundreds of years, he made a lame attempt at sounding 'reasonable' by assuming a position of scepticism, just shrugging our shoulders and accepting that we don't know and, by extension, will never know and should probably give up trying.

Bullshit. This is a stupid argument. Of course science can be wrong. This is how science advances - new discoveries are made, which either refine the knowledge to add more precision, or replace the old assumptions completely, whereby the old knowledge is no longer up to the task. Scientists used to think the Sun orbited the Earth. Now they don't. Observations - evidence - have given us a good understanding of planetary motion, and we can say with great certainty that the Earth orbits the Sun.

Can scientists be wrong about the age of the Earth? Yes, of course. The current figure of 4.5 billion years as the age of our planet could be wrong. Could it be wrong by a factor of almost a million? It could, yes. But, crucially, the likelihood of this being the case is extremely remote because the age of the Earth is calculated by many, many different methods in many and varied scientific fields, all of which coincide and come to the same conclusions: the Earth is a planet of extreme age. If it is only 6000 years old, those many different methods would all have to be wrong. As for the entire universe being only 6000 years old, that would involve so much basic science being wrong that it's not even worth describing why in any great detail. Suffice to say that it's a stupid idea.

This is only one example, but the person making the statement that 'science can be wrong' was also advocating taking up a 'we don't really know' position. The more I read about the history of scientific discovery, particularly science which disproves the teachings of religion, the more I realise that such statements have been common throughout the advancement of science.

Back again to the Heliocentric Model (the Sun at the centre, with the planets orbiting around it). Although Copernicus proposed this idea, Galileo was its most famous proponent. But guess who didn't like this idea? The Church of course. Why? Because it went against the teachings of the Church, which at the time were that the Earth was at the centre of the Universe. The Church didn't like this. In fact it was only in 1992 (and remember that Galileo died in 1642) that "Pope John Paul II expressed regret for how the Galileo affair was handled, and officially conceded that the Earth was not stationary, as the result of a study conducted by the Pontifical Council for Culture." That's right, in 1992 the Catholic Church finally conceded that the Earth moved around the Sun.

If we allowed religious people to dictate to us what is and is not 'true' and what we should consider as something 'we really don't know' you would probably not be seeing these words today - the Church would have never allowed electricity to develop, or any of the other varied and numerous technologies which have led to such a wonderful communications medium.

To simply assume 'we don't know' is to sit idly on our lazy backsides and be happy as we are, in ignorance. This is, unfortunately, what a vast number of religous people are prepared to do. They actively welcome it - 'ignorance is bliss' as the saying goes. Even Sir Isaac Newton, considered to be the greatest scientist who ever lived, was stopped in his tracks by his own religion:

"Gravity explains the motions of the planets, but it cannot explain who set the planets in motion. God governs all things and knows all that is or can be done."

Well, he was wrong about that because later scientists did explain what set the planets in motion, and added to his work, building a more detailed understanding of the Solar System and the universe beyond it.

We will never get to a point where science has all the answers, but in some cases - the age of the Earth, the age of the Universe, and that old favourite evolution - we have vast amounts of evidence, cross-referenced over a number of different scientific disciplines, and not as yet disproven, which give us great confidence in the current scientific position. Yes the details change, but often this is because more data makes scientific theories (aka explanations) even more water-tight and precise (see the Egyptian dynasties table, where later discoveries refined the dates accepted by historians.

Referring finally to the blockhead questioner, who lured me into a futile discussion about creationism, the one thing we cannot do is ever accept that not knowing is the best position to take. If we don't know something, we should do our very best to find out. This is what science and scientists have continued to do for thousands of years. They will not be stopped simply because some crackpot with a Bible says they might be wrong.

I've been reading and recording several chapters for a group project over at Librivox, a site which aims to create audio versions of public domain texts. The project, She, by H Rider Haggard has just been completed, so I'd like to share it with you. Although I read chapters 5, 14, 15, 16 and 17, like most of the work at Librivox this was a group effort and I recommend listening to the other readers and enjoying the whole book.

To play a chapter, just click on the title. I found that sometimes it takes a while for the chapters to start playing, often because the files have a few seconds of silence at the start, so don't worry if the playback appears not to be working at first.

If you prefer to download the MP3 files, please visit the project page for 'She' at Librivox.org

Link to an interesting article from The Telegraph, about Scientology:

What do Tom Cruise and John Travolta know about Scientology that we don't?

I also recommend searching for 'Scientology' on that web site - they have plenty more stories about this weird and crazy cult.

Just a couple of things about morality.

1. The Bible says that Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. So even if we are atheists shouldn't we still know what is good and what is evil? Since everyone has that knowledge now, at least according to the Bible, why do we actually need faith in God to have an understanding of good and evil, ie morality? If the snake-and-apple story in Genesis 3 is true, we don't.

2. Even though I am an atheist, I act in a moral way. I don't steal, murder, rape, etc. In fact on the whole I behave pretty much like any law-abiding citizen of any Western democracy. If I'm an atheist how can this be? Well, I'm assured by some Christians that although I don't believe in God, my values are still taken from Biblical teachings because I was brought up in a Christian society. Therefore I still follow the moral guidelines of Jesus.

   So, we have the Bible, we have morality. We have people who don't believe in God and Jesus who are still behaving in a moral way. Why then does anyone need to believe in God to be moral? If the book itself is enough for us all to be moral, then surely faith in God isn't actually very important at all. If every good Christian stopping believing in God overnight, they would instead become good atheists. Likewise atheists who become Christians don't automatically become better people. There are good and bad people of all faiths and none.

The world is not going to fall apart just because there are more and more atheists in the world. Whether someone believes in God or not is not the reason people behave in moral or immoral ways. Why is it that Christians don't get this: you don't need to believe in a specific doctrine to be a moral person. You just have to read about The Golden Rule to realise that.

I don't really need to add more commentary to this do I? Other than to remind you that what these animals are shouting in the background, after they pour fuel onto their prisoners, push them into a pit, and BURN THEM ALIVE, is 'Allah u Akhbar', which means 'God is great', a declaration of faith given by all Muslims.

Religion of peace? I don't think so. Even the most extreme members of any other religion you care to name would not sink to such barbarity. Only Muslim extremists do this. Only Muslims.

This and stories like this are to be found daily in the Memri Newsfeed on this site - click here for more.

Well, it's the 14th of February and none of you bitches bought me a card, so here's a romantic poem, actually a sonnet, for women everywhere who don't know what they are missing...

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Shall I Compare Thee (Sonnet XVIII)
by William Shakespeare

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Shall I compare thee to a Summer's day?
HELL NO!

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Okay, let's try that one again:

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Shall I Compare Thee (redux)
by Nick Gisburne

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Shall I compare thee to a lump of clay?
Thou art more fugly and more heavy-weight
An arse that no mere bathroom scales can weigh
No sumo wrestler downs the pies you ate

Sometimes the sweat pours off when hot sun shines
Your gut blocks out the light, the whole room dimmed
That facial hair won't cover up your lines
You really need to get your moustache trimmed

But thy enormous belly shall not fade
Nor lose some weight by eating cheese on toast
You're putting half the country into shade
And your external size just grow'st and grow'st

So long as you can breathe you'll eat with glee
I have but one request - please don't eat me

---

One more:

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A Red, Red Rose
by Robert Burns Nick Gisburne

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O my love's like a red, red rose
Covered in dirt and surrounded by pricks
Biiiiiiiiiiitch!

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Happy VD :o)

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Exercise update:
I suppose this fits in here, because next Valentine's Day I plan to be super-fit and getting dozens of offers... er, maybe!

So, if anyone's interested, my exercise and diet is going extrememly well. I started with the bike on 9 January, doing that every day until my resistance bands arrived on 22 January and I now do those 3 times a week, alternating with the exercise bike, also 3 times a week, and the seventh day when I do nothing at all.

With the bike, I've gone from 20 minutes on very low resistance, burning 290 calories, to my current 40 minutes on much higher resistance - today I pedalled for 20 km (12.5 miles) and clocked up 1049 calories! There are a lot of different programs on the computer console, so I change them quite regularly, just to keep it interesting, and push myself a little more each time I change it.

The bands take me longer, but I went from a 30 minute workout to a 60 minute one, which actually takes me about 80 minutes. I also keep upping the resistance on those because some of the exercises start to get to the point where I am doing 30 or more reps before getting tired, so at that point I add more resistance and go back to fewer, but harder, reps.

I mentioned before that I have a punch bag, but the damned wall fixing for it has still not arrived, so I've not used it yet.

The diet is cool, I'm not feeling hungry, but eat ridiculously small portions when compared to the great hub-cap size dinner plates of old. All good, tasty, healthy stuff. And as well as losing pounds in weight, I save pounds in money because the food goes a lot further. The key to not getting hungry is this: drink lots of water. And drink it from a water bottle, not a glass, because then you just take lots of little sips through the day, you don't get fed up with it, and it all adds up. Er, and you need to pee a LOT more, unfortunately!

I've lost something like 11 pounds so far, most of them since I started with the resistance bands AND the bike together. I suspect that before that I was so out of shape that I wasn't able to push myself far enough to actually lose much weight, but now the sweat literally pours off me, so it's all definitely going!

I saw this quote today which I'm going to retrospectively adopt as my exercising/diet motto:

"The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one."

Mark Twain

I like that quote because the big task is to lose a shed-load of weight, which I'm now achieving, in little steps, daily. I'm just glad I'm doing this, because I feel a LOT better in myself. And one last point is that because I have more than one type of exercise equipment I don't get bored. I had a day, last week in fact, when I really couldn't face the resistance bands, so I just got on the bike instead that day. And I have one day a week when I don't do either - luxury!

I've been on a horror theme with my videos lately, but I needed to get back into my HFB project again. So why not combine both in one ghastly little video bundle?

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Are You Lovecraft Tonight?
Gruesomeness 13 - The Horror Fucking Bible

You may have wanted more Holy Fucking Bible, but you probably didn't expect anything quite like this. H P Lovecraft eat your heart out... too late, I ate it already. Mwahahahaaaa!

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The Holy Fucking Bible:
1.	Another Fucking Creation Story
2.	The Talking Snake Fucks It Up For Everyone
3.	Eve Shows Off Her Furry Knickers
4.	Cain Twats Abel and Fucks a Mystery Woman
5.	OldTesticles.com - God's nuts for dating
6.	Noah's Ark: It's Fucking Genocide I Tell Ya!
7.	God's Shit Stained Planet of Death
8.	Noah: The Transvestite Years
9.	9/11 - The Triple Towers of Bullshit
10.	DIY Coffin Dodgers Gettin Jiggy Wit Da Pharaoh
11.	Are You Lovecraft Tonight?
12.	Allah G's Skool Histry Homewerk
13.	God Loves Panties and Porn
My earlier Bible Stories for children:
1.	God Made Everything
2.	The Apple and the Snake
3.	Babies, Murders and Mysterious Girls

Abe Lincoln wannabe-look-alike Ken Ham, he of the ridiculous Answers in Genesis web site, but perhaps now more famously the man behind the Kentucky Creation Museum, is coming to the UK in the spring of 2008. Big deal. He isn't exactly going to get much national TV airtime. In fact I'd be willing to bet he doesn't get more than a small mention in a local newspaper. Creationism is not big in the UK. In fact I doubt if the majority of British people have even heard of it.

So how is creationism doing in the UK and Europe? Let's take a look at the state of play, according to this article:

Creationists Seek Foothold in Europe

In October, the 47-nation Council of Europe, a human rights watchdog, condemned all attempts to bring creationism into Europe's schools. Bible-based theories and "religious dogma" threaten to undercut sound educational practices, it charged.

That's forty seven nations condemning creationism in schools. Not exactly a promising start is it? Read the text of the resolution here, published 4 October 2007:

Council of Europe states must 'firmly oppose' the teaching of creationism as a scientific discipline, say parliamentarians

Back to the article under discussion:

A British branch of Answers in Genesis... has managed to introduce its creationist point of view into science classes at a number of state-supported schools in Britain, said Monty White, the group's chief executive.

"We do go into the schools about 10 to 20 times a year and we do get the students to question what they're being taught about evolution," said White, who founded the British branch seven years ago.

Some context for that '10 to 20 times a year' is needed. Although it's still 10 to 20 too many, it's a tiny fraction of the number of secondary schools in the country. According to this page, as of January 2006 there were 3367 secondary schools in England alone, so if 10 or 20 were visited by the AIG people, that is just 0.3 to 0.6% of schools (still lower percentages when you add schools in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland). The phrase 'statistically insignificant' springs to mind - creationism is not getting a warm welcome in schools at all.

Meanwhile:

Truth in Science has sent thousands of unsolicited DVDs to every high school in Britain arguing that mankind is the result of "intelligent design," not Darwinian evolution.

Just one snag - the UK government has already reacted to Truth in Science by issuing the following guidelines:

Creationism and intelligent design are not part of the science National Curriculum programmes of study and should not be taught as science.

I blogged about this in October 2007 - click here to read my post.

But back to the main article again, and the claim that support for creationism is rising:

In the chapel (Westminster Chapel), Rev. Greg Haslam tells the 150 believers that they are in a conflict with secularism that can only be won if they heed Churchill's exhortation and never, ever give up.

"People have walked away from God; it's not fashionable," said congregant Chris Mullins, a civil servant. "But the evangelical church does seem to be growing and I'm very encouraged by that. In what is a very secular society, there are people returning to God."

150 believers. A growing church? Well yes, it would have to be growing from such a tiny base wouldn't it? Add another 150 and you'll have 100% growth. Woohoo. Note that Westminster Chapel is where Ken Ham has been invited to speak in the spring of 2008. With a congregation of 150 that is hardly going to set the world alight is it? Is it actually worth his while turning up at all?

Creationism is growing, of course, as you would expect, simply because its influence in Europe started only relatively recently, from zero. Any new idea grows when people talk about it, but that doesn't mean we are going to see the widespread acceptance of these barmy ideas any time soon. Or indeed any time ever.

Governments are aware of creationism, and they have quickly moved to ensure that it does not gain any kind of foothold in schools. Europe is largely secular and to be perfectly honest we just don't do the happy-clappy, hand-waving, evangelical style of religion over here. We leave that to the kooky American Christians who love that kind of thing. Ken Ham is simply wasting his time in Europe.

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Footnote:
Some negative press about Ken Ham, this time from Christians:
Fellow Christians Aggrieved by Business Practices of Ken Ham and Answers in Genesis

The site also contains this interesting article which gives a perfectly reasonable account of why Young Earth Creationists (such as Ken Ham and AIG) are harming what might otherwise be seen as sensible, science-based research:
Why the Creation Museum is Bad for Christians

If you're in the USA, I suspect you just did a double-take. Or fainted. It's well known that no atheist would ever stand for president of the USA. For one thing, there is only one known atheist actually in the American government, Peter Stark, and he's in the House of Representatives, not a Senator (I don't know enough about US politics to know if that makes too much of a difference). For another, Americans just are not going to vote for an atheist president. No way. Unless he hides his atheism of course. Some people think that Barack Obama is such a man. Who knows? Only he does.

But back to the title: 87% would let an atheist lead the country. We're obviously not talking about the USA, so it has to be... The Netherlands (Holland if you prefer). Europe is secular, and to be perfectly honest most countries in Europe couldn't care less if an atheist was in charge. The fact that 87% of the Dutch don't mind is actually less exciting than you might think, if you're a European that is. But to most Americans, atheism is something evil, something you can accuse somebody of being. You atheist!

According to this story 78% wouldn't mind of the leader was homosexual either. Meanwhile if you're a fundamentalist Christian (and George Bush surely is), don't expect to reach the top step in Dutch politics - only 33% of the population would be happy to see you there.

The world is strange, but it's strange because the most powerful democracy in the world stands out like a sore thumb among 'western nations' - secularism is enshrined in the US Constitution, yet no secular candidate would have a glimmer of a chance of becoming president. Almost everywhere else (again, I'm talking about 'western' countries) this is not the case. Having said that, the UK Prime Minister is a devout Christian... but then again one of the leader of the three major parties here is 100% atheist, and has said so. Unfortunately Nick Clegg leads the third of the three parties, so it may be a while before we see an atheist Prime Minister here. Perhaps, and we can only hope, the Dutch won't have to wait quite so long.

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Footnote:
I realise that when I say 'we can only hope' it makes it sound as if having an atheist in a leadership role is all-important. Of course it isn't. What is important is having a population which is okay with the thought that it might happen sometime. The bottom line, as always, is that atheism is just 'not believing in God', and unlike fundamentalist Christianity would not define the behaviour of a successful candidate. Religion would affect the whole political agenda of a fundie leader... which is perhaps why 67% of the Dutch don't want such a person to lead them. Interestingly, this figure is close to the 73% who would not like to see a Muslim in that post. Just keep religion out of politics, that's what most people seem to prefer. Except in the USA!

I've been neglecting the blog, as you can tell by the date of my previous post, which itself said I was going to blog less! But I am still around, and have in recent times uploaded two H P Lovecraft stories and an original horror poem of my own, 'The Kittens of Doom'!

These three videos can be found here, and I will be adding the MP3 files here: poetry page / audio page.

This is the third of three blogs today, and I seriously think I should get back to writing more. I may, or my not. I'm fickle! Expect nothing, and anything more than that will be a bonus. Hey, I just described my social life!

This is going to make the Jesus freaks go totally apoplectic:

Three-parent embryo formed in lab

Scientists believe they have made a potential breakthrough in the treatment of serious disease by creating a human embryo with three separate parents.

The embryos have been created using DNA from a man and two women in lab tests.

It could ensure women with genetic defects do not pass the diseases on to their children.

But, as you might expect, the dissenters are already making themselves heard:

Josephine Quintavalle, of the pro-life group Comment on Reproductive Ethics, said it was "risky, dangerous" and a step towards "designer babies".

"It is human beings they are experimenting with," she said.

"We should not be messing around with the building blocks of life."

Sorry, but when we create new medicines don't we always test them on people first? Isn't that 'human beings they are experimenting with'? This is potentially going to give couples, who would otherwise have passed on a serious genetic defect to their baby, the opportunity to have a normal, healthy child, without some of the major medical problems which, to be honest, we would be much better off living without:

About one in every 6,500 people is affected by such conditions, which include fatal liver failure, stroke-like episodes, blindness, muscular dystrophy, diabetes and deafness.

If we could get rid of those illnesses, isn't it worth the effort to try to do so? Or must we continue to have children who, because people objected on 'moral grounds', have to live and suffer with horrifying, crippling, painful, and life-shortening problems.

Designer babies? Well who wouldn't want to design out muscular dystrophy or deafness from their child? I know I would. Expect the reactions from religious quarters to be even more vocal as this breakthrough becomes more widely publicised.

I can't adequately describe the degree of hilarity, mixed with just a tinge of despair, which enters my life when I see that yet another celebrity has given their newborn child a really stupid name. This phenomenon first entered my consciousness with Franka Zappa and David Bowie's respective offspring, Moon Unit Zappa and Zowie Bowie. Frank Zappa was at least consistently weird, as his son Dweezil will no doubt affirm.

From there we've passed through so many stupid (and the italics is appropriate for extra emphasis at all times) baby names that I only need to mention a few of the more notable ones (parent in parentheses): Bluebell Madonna (Geri Halliwell), Tallulah, Rumor and Scout (Demi Moore), Pilot Inspecktor (Jason Lee)... and so on, to name a very few (because more would just make me heave).

But the prize, the Oscar, the presidential election winner of the saddest, the cruelest, the most downright stupid set of names ever to be thoughtlessly inflicted on an innocent victim has to be those names given to the daughter of the author and blogger Cory Doctorow, who has presented his new-born girl with this horror-show of a name:

Poesy Emmeline Fibonacci Nautilus Taylor Doctorow

WHAT. THE. FUCK?

When she is older will she be saying, 'Thanks Dad for my lovely names, they are just what I'd pick if I'd chosen them for myself?' Or might she be wondering why the kids are laughing at her stupid name? Or wondering how the hell she is supposed to fit all those names on any standard application form with a limited number of available characters? Can you buy passports with a little fold-out flap for super-long and simultaneously stupid names? Who knows?

What is it with these people? Are there not enough genuine names in the world without having to invent something totally new and bizarre? The length of the name is not even an issue, because if you want to create a unique name, just put together any 4 or 5 from the thousands of names, real names, out there. For fuck's sake don't use WORDS WHICH ARE NOT NAMES.

Poesy? On the face of it, the definition of the word, one of which is 'poetic inspiration' seems to be quite, well, poetic I suppose. But it's not a name! It's not. Really. The only use in a name I could find was Clemence Poesy, an actress from the Harry Potter movies. But Poesy is her surname. Surnames are allowed to be weird and wonderful. Right, Mr Doctorow? Tell me you didn't choose it for that reason? Whatever the reason, it's not a name!

Emmeline is a name. But only one person I know had that name, and that was Emmeline Pankhurst, one of the founders of the British suffragette movement. So if you've chosen that name people know why you've chosen it. It's pretentious. It's attaching your child to something and someone where attachment does not belong. And it's a stupid name anyway. Old fashioned and unused. For the same reason there are no longer people called Ebeneezer in the world (one would hope).

But you could have got away with it. Having stopped at Poesy Emmeline Taylor Doctorow (I'll give Taylor a free pass - it's the mother's surname), you could have passed it through 'stupid name interrogation room A' with little notice. You could. But you blew it. Oh, how you blew it.

Fibonacci and Nautilus. Fuck, fuck, fuckity fuck. Notice how the names have their own entries in Wikipedia. That's Wikipedia, not an encyclopedia of names. Certainly not an encyclopedia of stupid names.

Cory Doctorow, I accuse you of giving you a poor, defenceless child, your child, someone who has no say in the matter, a series of names so utterly and completely stupid that they surpass all understanding. And as I don't understand, and have no wish to understand, lest my brain turn to a clotted, gluey kind of paste (the process has already begun, believe me), I'll end here.

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Or maybe I won't.

Why, you ask, am I putting this in my blog? Well, you can thank Teresa Nielsen Hayden for that. In fact if you really want to thank her after you've read this, her email address is: tnhayden@fmpub.net.

The announcement of the stupid name came on Cory Doctorow's blog site, Boing Boing - link here to the article, and while you're there you'll find links to the reasons for choosing each of the names. Links which are every bit as pretentious as the ones I assumed (I was guessing as I wrote this) and yes, even including a link to the Wikepedia article for Fibonacci. (Shakes head with added despair)

So naturally my first thought was to congratulate the father on the birth and to tell him what I thought of the names. My original comment was this:

Congratulations, but... please tell me you are joking about those names. I've never understood the quest to inflict ever more outlandish and, ultimately, embarrassing names on children. Well, at least she will have to be well educated, if only to be able to write her own name. But again, congratulations.

So far I see to be the only one noticing that Poesy Emmeline Fibonacci Nautilus Taylor Doctorow is a stupid name. So I said so. And when I later searched for the post I couldn't find it (I am used to the YouTube system, which eats comments for breakfast), so posted this one later:

Congratulations, but those names... truly, truly embarrassing.

Of course as soon as I'd posted the second one I managed to find the first, so I'd posted twice, purely by accident. But even if it was intentional, it's not exactly a hanging offence is it? Nobody else was saying anything about that stupid name!

Teresa Nielsen Hayden seemed to think it was. Teresa Nielsen Hayden is a Boing Boing Moderator, apparently, and took it upon herself to switch off my account (you need one to post comments) and send me this rather curt email:

Posting once about how you think it's an awful name might just be wrong-footedness and bad manners. Posting twice about it, the second time after receiving a quiet remonstrance, suggests to me that the intent is to harass, not congratulate.

Drop me a note when you're ready to have your account turned back on.

Sincerely,

Teresa Nielsen Hayden

I immediately apologised about posting twice. That was a genuine accident. But wrong-footedness? Bad manners? This is (was - past tense for me) a comments section, where you are supposed to post comments, opinions, reactions to the main article. My comment, my opinion, my reaction was that Poesy Emmeline Fibonacci Nautilus Taylor Doctorow is a stupid name!

Let me point out that Boing Boing prides itself on standing up against net censorship, and also fights against the evils of copyright (not relevant, but I can plug the blog because it's a good one - no link though, fuck 'em). So for one of their moderators to (gasp) censor any further comments of mine seems like high comedy and hypocrisy in its purest form.

I looked at those comments again and Teresa Nielsen Hayden (have you spotted another stupid name in this article yet?) has now childishly, yes childishly removed most of the vowels so that they now look like this:

Congratulations, but... pls tll m y r jkng bt ths nms. 'v nvr ndrstnd th qst t nflct vr mr tlndsh nd, ltmtly, mbrrssng nms n chldrn. Wll, t lst sh wll hv t b wll dctd, f nly t b bl t wrt hr wn nm. Bt gn, congratulations.

and...

Cngrtltns, bt ths nms... trly, trly mbrrssng.

So contact Teresa Nielsen Hayden at tnhayden@fmpub.net and tell her I said hi. Or, if you're a spammer collecting email addresses, you'll find hers all over this page. Hey, if she can be childish so can I. And if you hate the name as much as I do you will go to the article and post your own opinion, and bring some sanity to the proceedings. If you don't, that's cool too - protest with your abstention!

I hate stupid baby names, and Poesy Emmeline Fibonacci Nautilus Taylor Doctorow is a truly stupid baby name.

End of rant.

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Again, not quite, because the mother has already decided that Poesy is not stupid enough and has taken to calling the child Poe. Poe as in Edgar Allan Poe? Well I did say it was a horror-show of a name, but actually where I come when you say 'poe' (you spell it 'po', but the sound is the same), you mean an old-fashioned chamber pot, or potty (hence 'po'). So keep the kid out of England (too late, they live here) if you want her to avoid further abuse - you've just named her after a piss pot. Well done.

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Update:
More baby name horror stories from the BBC:
Help, my name's Lolita
A boy called Primrose