To Whom It May Concern,

I was absolutely astounded at the decision of the Student’s Union to cancel the lunchtime bookings made by the Christian Union at Royal Holloway. Before I continue, let it be known that I am not a Christian, nor do I support the views held by the Christian Union in the slightest. I am the president of the Royal Holloway Secular Students group on campus, and despite our differences we have had a positive relationship with the Christian Union during the last 3 years. This relationship has enabled us to have several engaging debates on issues such as religion and the existence of God. It was at one of these debates (“Can we know God?”) last night that I was informed by a member of the Christian Union about the SU’s aforementioned decision.

I am writing to you to express my outrage and utter disbelief over this decision, which I believe was made without proper consideration or rationalisation. Firstly, the email that was sent to cancel these events and offer the refund of the fees paid was undeniably vague, alluding to something “wholly inappropriate” that had apparently caused “controversy” at the lunch event on Tuesday 9th February. I later learned (from an unverified source, so please correct me if this is wrong) that this controversial, inappropriate idea was that God had caused the Asian tsunami as some sort of punishment^[1].

If this is indeed the cause of the controversy, I can completely understand why. Such an idea is not only irrational, but blatantly disrespectful of the people, and families of people lost in that terrible tragedy. You may wonder then, why I am so against your decision. It is because, as a rationalist and sceptic, I cannot abide censorship of any form. All ideas, especially the controversial ones, are valid for discussion. Our entire modern culture, science, and political system is built on radical inappropriate ideas being discussed openly without fear. The strength of the ideology of free speech is that anyone can have an opinion, no-matter how absurd or offensive, because at the end of the day, those on the opposition have the same freedom to refute the absurdities.

It is unbelievable that at a university, a place where the very discussion of ideas forms part of the purpose of the institution, censorship of an idea can take place under the guise of “not being suitable” as you stated in your email. By disallowing the presentation of an idea, the Student’s Union has issued a statement; that it has the control over what students can think, what we can discuss in public, what ideas are “correct” and which are not. If anything is inappropriate here, it is the use of political correctness at an institution where the search for truth, whatever that truth might be, should be held as the highest form of being. I ask you, what is the purpose of our education if we cannot question what we are taught, challenge ideas where we see fit, and discuss the alternative possibilities openly?

I plead you to see reason, and let the Christian Union continue to host talks, preach, and cause controversy. Controversy feeds the mind; it allows us to think about new ideas, to explore them, and to refute them. Causing controversy is a right protected by the freedom of speech; getting offended by such controversy and using that offence to censor ideas, is not. By all means, be offended, shout, scream with a fiery passion, but for the sake of the freedoms which we hold dear, do not stoop to the level of censoring ideas! As I have previously stated, there isn’t much agreement to be had between my society and the Christian Union, yet I respect their right to have the opinions they do, as long as they respect my right to disagree with them. We debate them annually to share our views with those who might not have heard them before, to challenge notions that may be held dear, and to make known our disagreement in an intellectual forum.

I have sent a copy of this email to my friends, to members of the Royal Holloway Secular Students, and to members of the Christian Union. I will give them instructions to forward it to you if they support the freedom of speech and the discussion of ideas as much as I do. I hope this will make you see the irrationality behind your decision. If not, and if the Christian Union are still prohibited from speaking at the end of the week, I am quite prepared to send this letter to the Founder^[2], the NUS^[3], and as many media organisations connected to students as possible. I honestly hope it does not come to that, but if it must, it must.

-Adrian

Our debate last night went extremely well, with both speakers for the atheist / agnostic side presenting clear arguments and defending criticism from the audience. It helps when one of them is a PhD student in evolutionary psychology though.

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Ok, but seriously, the next stop on the Atheist Bus Campaign (which should really just be called the “Atheist Advertising Campaign” now) is a bunch of billboards set up in strategic locations across the UK; in London, Edinburgh, Cardiff, and Belfast respectively. The billboards display an important message concerning the religious labeling of children:

The "Please Don't Label Me" Billboard

The new advert (and similar variations of it) makes the rightful comparison between calling a child of Marxist parents a “Marxist child” and calling a child of Christian parents a “Christian child”. We shouldn’t be labeling children with the faiths or political views of their parents; we shouldn’t label kids at all. The billboard background is made up of a combination of political and religion labels for children, all the way from “Libertarian Child” in the top left, to “Liberal Child” in the bottom right.

Of course, like the buses, these adverts don’t have an agenda (although the religious will surely interpret one anyway). We aren’t telling people they can’t bring children up in their faith; we aren’t even telling them to stop labeling their children! What we’re asking is that parents let the child decide what they want to be called, and whether that happens early or later on in life is ultimately irrelevant, just as long as the child gets the final decision.

It’s a powerful message, and one worthy of more discussion. If you want to learn more about the campaign, or support it through donations, please visit the British Humanist Association campaign page.

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Image via Wikipedia

A friend recently sent me a request in an email:

Adrian, hope you are well. Would you be kind and help me answer this email from a Christian who thinks Atheists are intellectually dishonest – his reasoning is a first for me.
Take care, Robert

Atheists? Intellectually dishonest? At first I think that perhaps this theist has come across an atheist who made some ridiculous statement, and has assumed all atheists think like that. The attached theist “argument” provided all the answers:

Robert, I know Christians have done evil as well! I’m a sinner Saved by grace! By the way it is impossible to be an atheist and be intellectually honest! You can be agnostic at best!  In order to be an atheist you have to know everything there is to know! Since you and I do not Know everything there is to know, it is possible for God to exist in the area you do not know: BY DEFINITION AGNOSTIC AT BEST if you are intelectually honest!? I believe you are!!!!!

As I read the paragraph, I realized that this particular theist hadn’t come across a stupid atheist, but rather hadn’t come across a dictionary in what seems like quite a while. He’s confused the meaning of the word ‘atheist’ for starters, and then confused the meaning of the word ‘agnostic’ such that both are mutually exclusive. In his world, you can either be an atheist, or an agnostic (so I’m not sure where that puts him as a theist).

My response was a quick lesson on definitions.

This fellow seems to have his definitions a little off. Firstly, an atheist is simply defined as someone “without gods”, coming from the Greek word “atheos”, meaning ‘a’ (without) and ‘theos’ (gods). Therefore to put any other meaning on the word is to commit intellectual dishonesty yourself. Given that the subject of Gods comes down to a belief (namely theism), to be “without gods” is to not believe in theism. In other words, an atheist is someone who “does not believe in gods”.

The theist in this argument has falsely asserted that all atheists are of the “God does not exist” type, which is a massive error given that most of them do not fall under this category at all. He also makes the wrong assumption that being agnostic is something mutually exclusive to being an atheist, when the complete opposite is the case.

Atheism, as I have previously defined it, is all about belief. Atheists do not “believe” in gods. Agnosticism is the position that certain things in reality (and some agnostics, myself included would say *all* things) are unprovable, in the sense that an absolute position about them cannot be known. I do not deny that absolute knowledge exists, but as an agnostic I deny that fallible and limited beings can ever “know” absolutely what those absolutes are. All knowledge is relative to us, and thus agnosticism is a position not of belief, but of knowledge.

The relationship between knowledge and belief is a simple one. You can have belief without having knowledge, and you can have non-belief without having knowledge. For example, I could be in a dark room, a mile below the surface on the Earth, and espouse the belief that it was raining on the surface, without having any knowledge (relative or absolute) that it was. Likewise, I could espouse the opposite belief, that it is not raining on the surface via the same system.

However, to have knowledge, you must also have belief. It is a fallacious statement to say “I know it is raining outside, but I don’t believe it.” Knowledge implies belief, for as Plato wrote, knowledge is “justified, true, belief”.

Thus there are 4 positions you can have concerning belief and knowledge of God:

Agnostic Atheism – “I don’t believe in God, but I don’t make any claim to have knowledge of the existence of such a being.”
Gnostic Atheism – “I don’t believe in God, and I know such a being doesn’t exist.”
Agnostic Theism – “I believe in God, but I don’t make any claim to have knowledge of the existence of such a being.”
Gnostic Theism – “I believe in God, and I know such a being exists.”

The theist is correct in his argument if you have claimed Gnostic Atheism, and likewise if someone has claimed Gnostic Theism. To know a non-temporal being existed or didn’t exist, you would have to have knowledge of the non-temporal, and as temporal beings this knowledge is beyond our capabilities.

If however, like most intelligent atheists and theists you meet, you claim agnostic atheism or theism, then you are being intellectually honest. You are admitting the possibility (however small) that God may exist (or not exist as the agnostic theist would say), because you realise that such knowledge is impossible for us to know.

This is the original argument Thomas Huxley made when he defined the word Agnostic, and the argument was visualized very well by Bertrand Russell and is known as “Russell’s teapot” (Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell’s_teapot), which deals primarily with the reasons why the burden of proof is on the claimant, but uses agnosticism to reason such a position.

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If you are interested, you can buy tickets from the Intelligence Squared website.

I’m going with a few friends and members of AtheistForums.org (one of whom is coming from the Netherlands). We are all meeting at The Iron Duke pub at 5:30pm for drinks, and then there again after the debate for more! If anyone wants to meet there, please do! My contact number for the day is: 07828 698967.

I don’t know what the turnout for the debate will be, but if the online poll is anything to go by, there will be plenty of atheists and secularists present. I’ll be taking photos and blogging about the event for anyone who can’t attend, although I hope to see you there if you can make it.

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How deep a thinker is a skeptic, for the rest of the intellectual world to ever take notice of, when he MOCKS ALL people’s beliefs? – @edaugusts

Well evidently this was untrue; skeptics do not mock all beliefs, they challenge beliefs that have no evidence or explanation behind them. On the occasion we do mock (and I’m not denying this), we do it to beliefs that have consistently failed test after test. Beliefs like astrology, homeopathy, and applied kinesiology are openly mocked because they simply do not stand up to the rigorous tests that skeptics put them through. The tests aren’t impossible either; they are set up to test the exact claims that the belief makes, and if the belief was true, the test should be passed easily.

Knowing this, I sent a reply back to the astrologer:

Skeptics don’t embrace astrology because there is no evidence to suggest it works. In fact the evidence shows the exact opposite. – @ah8r

Angry reply after angry reply came back, attacking me for my atheism (saying I couldn’t find purpose in life), insulting the JREF and James Randi (although he curiously didn’t respond to my point about the JREF tests being set up and agreed to by the claimant), and generally acting like he had all the answers with none of the responsibility for burden of proof. Here are a few more of his tweets:

It does not take a genius to see that NO ONE would EVER be able to convince a devout skeptic like Randi about ANYTHING! – @edaugusts

Well nobody is trying to convince Randi; they are trying to pass the requirements (which are written in plain English) of the JREF $1,000,000 Challenge. The claimant contacts the JREF, and agrees to a test that would demonstrate the claimant’s powers. In all cases, the claimant comes up with the test, and the JREF come up with conditions that the test much adhere to in order to be fair. Mentioning Randi’s skepticism is nothing but a red herring.

Did you know James Randi (JREF) attacks many other targets, such as alternative medicine: http://cli.gs/YsNAUt – @edaugusts

Followed closely by another red herring. Just because the JREF attacks alternative medicine doesn’t mean their test for such pseudo-scientific claims is somehow flawed. The JREF was involved with the BBC a few years back to test Homeopathy. The BBC were the claimants (as an experiment) and helped set up the test, which failed miserably. The entire case is still documented at the BBC website, and the Horizon programme is probably still online somewhere.

To cut a long story short, I requested that he do a reading of my chart, since he said that such a reading would change my mind entirely. What follows are select parts of his finished reading (mainly because the thing is far too long to post here entirely), with comments interlaced from me. You can read the entire reading here.

This chart-work came up as a sort of ‘challenge’ on a Twitter thread a few days ago. The chart belongs to a young man who calls himself  ‘AtheistBlogger’.  He attracted my attention by making a wild comment on Twitter:  “Astrology is crap,” which seemed a scary-kind of blanket statement to apply to such a well-researched and ancient subject of inquiry.

Whoaaa there! I never said any such thing! As you saw at the beginning of this post, my “wild comment” that first attracted his attention was that skeptics didn’t embrace astrology since there was no evidence of it working, and that all the evidence shows the complete opposite. A much more eloquent (and honestly skeptical) way of telling him that astrology simply doesn’t work. At this point, I was quite taken aback, and what is most interesting is that the astrologer built up a characterization of me from the way he interpreted my tweets. What I see as honest skepticism; references to studies that have debunked astrology, he sees as aggressiveness and close-mindedness. This actually helped me out a lot, because his reading was skewed off course by his own bias, and he ended up reading this characterization of me into the entire thing.

His chart is an amazing ’stand out’ in the incredibly bad aspects it forms to MY personal chart, which really is a wonderful validation of Astrology — I’m so glad he appeared in the cross-hairs for this encounter — because his chart PROVES Astrology through the definition of its many significant comparison aspects with my own chart.   After all,  it wasn’t anyone who got into this dispute about Astrology in Twitter except him — and me!

The obvious irony in the above statement is that if Astrology was true, and my chart “proved” this, I would have no choice but to accept it, and we would no longer be enemies. Heck, I’d probably hire him to do more readings; knowing the future is important! Of course, this would cause a contradiction with his following statement:

You NEVER see this line-up of powerfully negative aspects between friends.  Maybe two enemies who meet in a killing field to cut holes in each other, but never friends!

He’s set up his position so that he cannot possibly lose though, since he again reverses his decision to allow for possible “understanding”:

There is, however, a ghost of a chance of some ultimate kind of limited understanding arising between us, based on his Libra Moon in a (weak)  5 degree trine to my Gemini Sun and his Gemini Venus being conjunct my Sun.

So, I deny Astrology, he wins. I accept Astrology, he wins (via a loophole). Of course, all this relies on friendships being predetermined by where and when you were born, something that is so astronomically bizarre that I doubt any astrologer would be able to demonstrate a good naturalistic method of how it works. But of course, they aren’t interested in demonstrating how it works; they just delude themselves into thinking that because people find it accurate in places, it must be true. However they fail to realise that their “predictions” are often so vague that they cover almost all bases.

Ed starts his reading in a truly skeptical sense though:

At first I wondered if he would give me his actual chart data, or use the birth date of some well-known public figure so that he could make fun of me afterwords for describing him using a chart belonging to some rap singer or football player!  I suspected a ruse, because that sort of thing has been done in the past on USENET sites, where skeptics used to gather before Google archiving put an end to their most rampant abuses.   But after looking at the chart for a few minutes, I wrote a message on Twitter stating that AtheistBlogger had been good as his word, and sent me his true birth data. How did I know? Because the major positions and aspects portray the person who came forward on Twitter.

Ok, he started out skeptical, but then deteriorated into a conclusion based entirely on faulty reasoning and…well…faith. As I previously showed, my attitude coming across on Twitter was pure skepticism; I challenged him in a polite manner, responded to his points, etc. I was met with anger, attacks on my disbelief, and just general insults on skepticism. I’m confused as to why skeptics giving wrong data is a “rampant abuse” though; surely if Astrology worked so well, you would easily be able to tell wrong birth data straight away? It’s a test; it might be sneaky, but at the end of the day, if the claim is that it can tell you information about a person just by birth data, then a test of giving the “wrong” birth data should still return information about the person it actually belongs to, rather than the person giving the information.

The Jupiter-Neptune aspect shows, surprisingly enough,  an actual connection with religion, a familiarity with it. Perhaps as a child he was coaxed to learn the Bible from a parent or grandparent who hoped to indoctrinate the child in that system of beliefs.   He didn’t reckon on AtheistBlogger disliking authority — other than himself!  — and challenging any such teachings.

The word “perhaps” doesn’t give me much confidence here. Yes, I have a “familiarity” with religion, but then you’d be hard pushed to find someone (even an atheist) who doesn’t. The vast majority of atheists were once religious. However, as a child I wasn’t indoctrinated by anyone. My mother was somewhat religious, but didn’t force me to read the Bible at all. We went to church rarely, usually only for harvest festivals or when some form of concert was on. My father wasn’t religious at all.

There is nothing at peace and rest in this square between Mars and Pluto. It causes a person to be unjustifiably wrathful, scornful, severe, and possibly violent against anyone who doesn’t share his personal opinions.   It invites violence in its turn, so as a child, AtheistBlogger may have had more than his share of personal challenges — wins — and losses.  It is as if at some point in his young life, he has already, or soon will, witness violence of a kind usually only seen in war.   He may even be at the center of an episode of some kind of violence!

Violent? Moi? I don’t think there has ever been a more absurd accusation. The closest I get to violence is killing aliens and Nazi’s on video games, and in the “real world”, I don’t get into fights, feel compelled to strike anyone, or do anything that could be considered “violent” by any sane individual. Anyone who knows my views will be aware that I am for a completely open free speech society, one where any view may be shared by anyone. Yes, that means even astrologers can peddle their ideas about the stars, as long as I (and anyone else) gets the right to call them out on their claims, and challenge their views. Again, Ed finishes this prediction with a lot of unsure language, nothing certain, so that he can claim he is correct either way.

His sibling(s) probably include a brother, shown by Mars (male) in the 3rd House (siblings).  He has at least twice the chance of having a brother than he does a sister…  If he does have a sister, which is not as likely, she will be more aggressive and a source of possible trouble to him than most sisters, since Mars marks-her-out.  In any case, there will be rivalries with this sibling over inheritance or other worries.  He or she may have a sporty affable nature, but be prone to accidents and dangers (Mars square Pluto).  He may lose a sibling because of Mars being in that house, that sign, and the way it relates to the other planets.  Traveling abroad for said brother, and/or driving in the same car with this brother, may be dangerous (square both Jupiter and Pluto).

I really did have to laugh at this part. I have one sister, and one half-sister (on my father’s side). Quite amusing for a claim that I have at least “twice the chance of having a brother than a sister”. Both my sisters are no trouble for me at all; they aren’t aggressive at all. Likewise, there isn’t any sibling rivalry in my family; my sister is into history and archaeology, subjects I dislike completely (she dislikes Computer Science in return)! Neither are prone to accidents, and I honestly cannot remember the last time my sister was rushed to Hospital, but if memory serves correctly, she was 5 (she’s now 19). I’ve broken both my hand and my finger in various accidents, my sister hasn’t broken anything.

Writing or teaching could certainly be good careers for AtheistBlogger,  and Jupiter and Mercury together also promise travel, so a Grand Tour is indicated. The  mind is adept at languages, indeed all symbol-systems veritably fall before him.

Writing or teaching are possible careers for me, so good work there. However the only languages I am “adept” at are English and various (English-based) programming languages. I had to take French and Spanish at school, and I failed miserably at them. I just don’t do foreign languages, let alone symbol-systems.

But he is an avid learner.  Libra Moon, well-aspected, makes him know how to behave among the fair and beautiful.  His Mercury conjunct Jupiter shows he learns farther and wider than most people.  He loves learning and is enthusiastic about information and news.

Finally…something I can actually relate to. Astrology makes a hit! Shame about all the other misses, but heck, if I only remember this thing, I can join the ranks of people who claim Astrology “works” for them.

He has ideas about becoming famous by challenging people’s beliefs.  This is basically a ’sales’ idea.  Various sales activities, not just atheism, would be appreciated by the general public and may be of interest to him.

Meh…not really. I have ideas about becoming famous by creating new internet technologies for people to use, but I doubt it’ll involve challenging people’s beliefs. I’d hate being in a “sales activities” position though; I’d much rather be the guy coding or leading the product than the person who has to sell it at the end.

The rest of the reading deals with potential fortune, relationship predictions, and various things about me dying in car crashes (apparently, I’d best use public transport…). Suffice to say, there are probably a lot of people who could relate to it better than I can. If you have more than one brother, speak fluent foreign languages, used to be religious, and like learning, please let me know.

It was a very interesting experience having my chart drawn up though. I’ll have to get it done more in future and compare the results. Who knows, perhaps if we eliminate the bias of reading into my tweets, it might turn out as an accurate representation of…me! I somehow doubt it though; for all the hits Ed got (and admittedly, there were some), he got at least 4-5 times as many misses, and that’s excluding all the vague generalizations that could literally apply to 90% of the population.

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I’ve been told multiple times by people that I’ve exceptionally good at explaining things (usually), and when I have an idea for a blog post, I want to research it as much as I can before I write about it. I usually read several sources, and the whole process takes a good hour at least, if not more. Hence my problem is finding a few hours free where I can work on the post without interruptions. Of course, the other problem is that Twitter has practically removed the need to write small updates on the blog. Not only do I stay in contact with a lot of my friends and readers via Twitter, I can post tiny bursts of information from literally anywhere with a 3G internet connection.

Another problem is that other projects have suddenly become popular, largely because of my advertising them on Twitter. AtheistForums.org for instance, has exploded with new members and posts in the past few months. Various events in the world have managed to piss me off so much that I’ve become increasingly more interested in politics, namely that of Libertarianism in the UK (a criminally underrepresented minority in my opinion). I could rant about so many things on this blog, but I’m worried it’ll just divert off to something of a personal blog again, rather than one focused on atheism.

Anyway, I’m going to plow ahead and see what happens. I want this blog to stay on track, and I certainly have no plans to take it down. I’ve been doing some “atheistic” work recently, so I’ll be blogging about that when I find the time. Tomorrow for instance, I’m going to the House of Lords (part of British parliament) with the President of the National Federation of Atheist, Humanist, and Secular Student Societies (AHS) and the British Humanist Association (BHA). Last week, I met Ariane Sherine at a book swap event in Windsor, and I have the photo to prove it:

@ah8r + @arianesherine = @awesomeness

So watch this space. It’ll be updated eventually, but possibly not as often as I have managed before. I’d just like to thank everyone who has supported the blog thus far, and that includes all my readers, all my twitter followers, and anyone else who’s stopped by and thought “cool blog”.

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Remember to submit something to the next carnival, or put your own blog forward for the prestigious job of hosting the carnival!

As a side note, I’ve been meaning to update this blog a lot more often, but every time I’ve sat down to write a post, something else has barged in the way, whether it be important emails I have to answer, work that has to be done, or (most recently) a breach of my PayPal account which almost cost me $300 I don’t have. Nevertheless, I’m finally emerging from the flow of “more-important-than-blogging” things, and there will be a few articles up this week on my adventures in Egypt, and my delving into Astrology!

Given that Twitter is a far better (and quicker) way of getting my thoughts out, if you miss me you can always follow my thoughts there. My account is @ah8r.

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Image via Wikipedia

Reader Ryan Latham has created an informative presentation on the origins and history of the Pledge of Allegiance, and a brief introduction to the constitutional issues it faces. I’m not an American citizen, but it is hard to be a secularist online and not know about the 1954 inclusion of the words “under God” into the Pledge to counter “godless communism” at the time.

Ryan’s presentation fills you in on the court cases involving the Pledge, and how the addition of “under God” would fare if tested by the courts today.

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There is also a mention of “one atheist [who] has taken it upon himself to tutor other nonbelievers in effective use of Twitter.” Wait a minute…that’s me! Yup, I got a nice chunk of paragraphs in there too. The whole article is a nice secular take on atheists getting through the hate and misunderstanding in order to find others like themselves, and is well worth the read.

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If you can’t think of any sites, have a perusal of the Atheist Blogroll, and if you really can’t find a website with the starting letter (gold star goes to anyone finding a website starting with X), choose an interesting word from the dictionary and list it with its definition. Try to be imaginative! Remember, this is a great chance to discover blogs you may have not heard of before, so don’t feel that you have to put blogs in the meme that you read regularly!

Finally, link back to the blog who sent you this meme, and tag 5 other blogs.

1. About Agnosticism / Atheism
2. Bay of Fundie
3. CyberLizard’s Collection
4. Deep Thoughts
5. ExChristian.net
6. Friendly Atheist
7. God is Pretend
8. Happy Jihad’s House of Pancakes
9. The Invisible Pink Unicorn
10. Jewish Atheist
11. Kill The Afterlife
12. Life Without Faith
13. Moiz Khan
14. nullifidian
15. Oz Atheist’s Weblog
16. Pharyngula
17. Quiet Atheist
18. Radical Atheist
19. Sean the Blogonaut
20. toomanytribbles
21. Unreasonable Faith
22. The View from the Pond
23. Why Don’t You Blog?
24. xylomancy – divination by means of pieces of burning wood (lol)
25. You Made Me Say It!
26. ZackFord Blogs

For tagging, I choose: Friendly Atheist, Unreasonable Faith, CyberLizard’s Collection, and before you think I’m just spelling out naughty words, Life Without Faith & Sean the Blogonaut

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