The Atheist Blogger

Last Wednesday, Derren Brown amazed the nation by predicting the National Lottery. On Friday night, he promised to reveal how to do the trick, and this resulted in an hour long show that demonstrated some nice mental gymnastics, but no real answer. He started by stating that there were three (main) ways of predicting the National Lottery:

1. Faking a ticket.
2. Predicting the outcome of the machine.
3. Fixing the machine.

Option 1 wasn’t really an option for him, since it involved breaking the law and wasn’t really predicting anything. Option 2 was of more interest, and the rest of the show was devoted to this, explaining about various mathematical tricks you can do, and finally came to the “wisdom of crowds” technique.

Derren explained that a mathematician observed a “guess the weight of the ox” game at a country fair, and although nobody got the answer spot on, if you took the average of the answers given by the crowd, you got the exact weight. He said the same technique could be used to predict the lottery, and showed a film of 24 individuals studying the numbers of the last 100 lotteries, and trying to figure out what the next numbers would be. On the first attempt, they got 1 correct, on the second, when they did automatic writing and were allowed to write down negative numbers and numbers higher than 49 (the highest number in the lottery), they got 4 out of 6. Derren claimed that on the last go (a few minutes before his lottery prediction on Wednesday), they gave him the numbers that would eventually end up on the podium next to him; his prediction.

Of course, none of that makes any sense, and it doesn’t surprise me. Predicting the lottery is impossible if you are trying to guess some kind of pattern to the numbers. The reason why “wisdom of crowds” worked for the ox is because everyone could see the ox, and in guessing its weight you will have people who go too high and people who go too low, the average of all these values will be a good estimate for the weight. The same just doesn’t apply to random lottery balls; it doesn’t matter if a group of 24 people come up with “2″ as an answer, the machine will pick balls at random, and in a random machine every ball has an equal chance of coming out.

So how did he do it? People who want to believe his explanation will think that, the more rational will come up with other methods he could have used. The one that seems most likely is the theory that he simply used a split-screen and some very clever live video editing. The evidence that backs this theory up is the apparent sudden movement of one of the end balls in the stand (caused by the split-screen syncing back to a single-screen view), and the fact that Derren didn’t reveal his prediction before the actual draw. His reason for not doing this is that the BBC had a legal right to announce the result before anyone else, but the only problem with that logic is that he wasn’t announcing the result, he was announcing his prediction. Even in the “behind the scenes” footage that he aired with his show on Friday, you only see him select the balls out of the box, not the actual balls themselves.

As for option 3, in the true spirit of a showman, Derren took to the stage in the last 5 minutes of his Friday show, and told everyone how he *could* have done it by fixing the machines; simply make 12 sets of weighted balls, sneak into the high security area where the machines are used, and replace the regular balls with the weighted ones. His story was illustrated by blurred out pictures on the wall behind him, which gave everyone a laugh, and reminded everyone that this was Derren Brown; a man who does not reveal his secrets even if he says he will.

This Friday, Derren has promised to reveal a tape that will literally “glue us to our seats” in a show he has called “How to Control the Nation“. I’ll be sat with my laptop so I can tweet the event and see whether I get “stuck” as Derren says I will.

Now for what is meant to be somewhat of a secular broadcasting company, the BBC still managed to astound me with this headline: “Flying rabbis fight swine flu“. The story as reported by the BBC is that a group of rabbis and “Jewish mystics” have been flying around over Israel in an attempt to ward off swine flu. Don’t stop me there, because it gets better.

Apparently “about 50 religious leaders circled over the country on Monday, chanting prayers and blowing horns” because they got it into their heads that this would “stop the pandemic so people will stop dying from it”, at least this is according to Rabbi Yitzhak Batzri, who is evidently a complete idiot.

The video included with the article will brings tears of laughter (as well as utter disbelief) to your eyes, so please go and watch it. What is perhaps even crazier is the announcement by our friend Rabbi Batzri, that “thanks to the prayer, the danger is already behind us”. No Rabbi, I’m afraid that we discovered centuries ago that these things have natural causes, and do not go away with prayer; they go away with medical treatment!

Now back to the BBC, which has a history or putting ‘quotation marks’ where they don’t belong, yet failed to put the obvious ones in this headline: Flying rabbis ‘fight’ swine flu. Honestly, how could they justify giving these people credit? They are not fighting swine flu in any sense of the word; what they are doing is flying around in a plane acting like a bunch of children.

If I was cruel I’d make some kind of remark like “I hope they get swine flu”, but I don’t want anyone to suffer through something like that, even if they are displaying such idiotic behavior. Instead, I can only hope that once they see that the threat isn’t gone; instead of pulling a stunt like this again, they will encourage their followers to get proper treatment.

Well…one can dream.

If you still don’t think that religious parents who inflict their religion on their children isn’t tantamount to child abuse, watch this BBC documentary and have a rethink. Deborah Drapper is a 13 year old fundamentalist Christian, who lives in a reclusive environment with her family. She spouts off bad arguments from the likes of Ray Comfort when trying to convert people (she even uses his “atheist test” tracts) and she falls to sleep each night listening to Kent Hovind spreading constant lies about science.

If you think you can handle that, as well as her emotional and sickening breakdown at the end (Jesus *sniff* he…*sniff* he died for MY sins! *bursts into tears*) then watch it. The documentary only goes to show how dangerous these religions can be. They have turned a perfectly ordinary and probably very intelligent girl into a person who is ignorant of the ways of science and spreads the “loving” message that we are all pathetic and deserve Hell to 5 year old children through puppet shows.

Absolutely disgusting. Here is her blog, which I am going to read and comment on as much as I feel like. Someone needs to save this girl from Ray Comfort and the other people who lie for Jesus.

Two weeks ago I wrote about the epic failure that was the new BBC archaeology drama “Bonekickers“. It attempted to combine CSI and Indiana Jones which is a fair combination if you get it right. Unfortunately, the first episode concerned religion and went about it in a very bizarre way. The second episode was much better, focusing on an American Presidential election which included a black candidate (foreshadowing anyone?), and a conspiracy to prevent black people from becoming the leader of the USA. I found this episode to be very watchable and entertaining.

The third episode aired a few days ago and was concerned with the Roman Baths at Bath, which was great and brought back fond memories of visits to the city. The episode was centred around a Roman inventor Marcus Quintanus (fictional) and Boudicca, the English warrior queen. Quintanus invented what were essentially hand grenades, a simple small clay pot that separated two volatile liquids inside. Once the pot is thrown and broken, the two liquids mixed and exploded. The story went that Quintanus was enlisted to help find Queen Boudicca who was in hiding after losing a battle. He was so upset that his weapons had caused so much death and destruction all for finding one woman that when he eventually found her in Bath, he hid her under the Celtic springs that would eventually become the Roman Baths. They fell in love, etc. etc.

It was a fun story to follow and the episode was great, but I have one tiny complaint concerning the character of Quintanus. The character was an atheist as revealed by a member of the archaeology team, and when the details of his life were discovered, including his disgust at the massacre he had a hand in, one of the team, Professor Gregory Parton remarked

No wonder he was an atheist. Who would want to be judged by god after that?

This seems to me like a very poor description of atheist attitudes and a common misconception among non-atheists. The concept that we don’t believe in gods because we don’t want to be judged is the most idiotic argument ever. Its the same as not believing in cars because you don’t want to be hit by one. At the end of the day, if cars exist (which they do) then you will get hit by one if you cross the road without looking, nomatter your beliefs.

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John Barrowman, the popular Scottish-American actor from Doctor Who, Torchwood, and various TV Quiz shows has tried to figure out why he is gay. The BBC filmed a documentary about his journey back to America where he visits various scientific institutes trying to prove that homosexuality is something you are born with, not a lifestyle choice.

Barrowmans journey, which is available on the BBC iplayer (non-UK residents may have to use a proxy to view it) first goes to Chicagos Northwestern University, where he went through a Penile plethysmograph, and also a FMRI. Both tests conclusively came up with a “gay” verdict.

He then visited his parents to question them about his growing up and whether there was any influence in his childhood that could have caused his homosexuality. Ranging from playing with dolls to having a best friend who was a girl, to dressing up in a bikini for a fancy dress competition, Johns childhood was anything but normal for a boy.

However, John travels back to Chicago to meet an expert in early childhood behaviour. The expert looks at various videos of children from their childhood, and compares their actions with their sexual orientation today. One film is of a young girl playing with a toy truck, smashing it off a table, and generally breaking things. Another shows a boy who has dressed up and is dancing. Both children grew up and are openly homosexual today. The studies show that 75% of boys who exhibit female behaviour traits whilst very young tend to be homosexual.

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