Brilliant. PZ Myers, uh, social engineered his way into a public conference call by producers of Expelled, bided his time, then jumped in and pointed out where they were lying.

All this, and a Firefly reference too. The man's my new hero.

See I always aim to misbehave.

Wow - The Guardian is having a bit of an anti-atheist moment.

In The Atheist Delusion (see Godless evangelicals for a précis with comments enabled), John Grey says For Dawkins and Hitchens, Daniel Dennett and Martin Amis, Michel Onfray, Philip Pullman and others, religion in general is a poison that has fuelled violence and oppression throughout history, right up to the present day and These writers come from a generation schooled to think of religion as a throwback to an earlier stage of human development, which is bound to dwindle away as knowledge continues to increase. Now I think that they are certainly saying the former - and I agree with them. But I don't think that they all think that religion is bound to die out, only that it would be better it it did. Certainly there seems little evidence that the majority of people are becoming more rational, and if some of that irrationality is siphoned off into fringe beliefs like homeopathy and UFO belief, I think that's always going to be a limited group.

Yet Dawkins seems convinced that if it were not inculcated in schools and families, religion would die out. This is a view that has more in common with a certain type of fundamentalist theology than with Darwinian theory. So, Dawkins is a one dimensional character, is he? He's not allowed to hold opinions not directly related to Darwinian theory?

The idea of free will that informs liberal notions of personal autonomy is biblical in origin (think of the Genesis story). The belief that exercising free will is part of being human is a legacy of faith, and like most varieties of atheism today, Pullman's is a derivative of Christianity. I don't think anyone's saying that nothing that's ever come out of any religion was good. For example, Christianity's inclusivity was a major step forward for its time, with no built-in outgroup to despise. Christians have had to invent their own outgroups - mainly other Christians, for some reason that I'll never understand. Splitters!

Dawkins's "memetic theory of religion" is a classic example of the nonsense that is spawned when Darwinian thinking is applied outside its proper sphere. Unfortunately, the theory of memes is science only in the sense that Intelligent Design is science. Strictly speaking, it is not even a theory. This isn't entirely unfair, in so far as I've not heard of any serious work to verify memetic theory. But it seems quite falsifiable to me, in principle, so there's a least the germ of a theory there.

Wow - less than halfway through. More later. But once again, all this misses the crucial, central part of Dawkins' thesis, without which all the rest is minor, trivia: Religion, it's all just not true.

Glad as I am that Gillian Gibbons has made it back to the UK in one piece, without the medieval fringe getting hold of her, I think much of the coverage has missed the point. It dwells heavily on how she didn't intend to insult Islam. Surely we should aspire to a world in which we can criticize on another's beliefs without being threatened - or indeed being referred to as "hateful"?

Not, you understand, that I'l trying to draw parallels between a bit of closed-mind commenting and genuine threats to life and liberty.

I was going to blog about the teddy bear thing in The Sudan, but Dave has beaten me too it.

Chris Morris is missing the point in The absurd world of Martin Amis (in response to this). These concepts are more complex than Amis would have us believe, he says, but doesn't go on to point out what any of these complexities are, nor why they effect Amis' central thesis - Islamism is a problem.

To reveal my own biases: I take a dim view if any kind of systematic irrational thought of belief, and a dimmer view still of organisations based upon them. On the whole, I don't care much about the details of the irrationality. I don't care which particular flavour of invisible friend people chose to be obsequious to.

But we can't totally ignore the fact that religions do differ in the extent to which they tolerate those who do not share their delusions. You don't get Jain suicide bombers, for instance, and I don't believe that that's wholly due to economic or political circumstances.

In Tulna's case, it's probably also due to not wanting to get blood on her Jimmy Choos. But I digress...

Certainly, we shouldn't single out Islam - the Christian Zionists have more than their share of blood on their hands too.

Of course, the majority of the followers of these belief systems don't use violence. The books at their centers contradict themselves, and people can take very different messages away from them. I suspect that people take away whatever suits their temperament. But that doesn't mean that the non-fanatics aren't part of the problem - they are legitimising the belief system upon which these atrocities depend. We should just leave the whole sordid lot in the history books where it belongs.

I've just been reading Hitchens again. You might have guessed. ;-)

It comes as little surprise that Ian McEwan is capable of expressing himself a bit, but nevertheless Martin Amis is not a racist is a superb piece of writing. I had been playing with a post expressing the same sentiment; I'm glad I never posted it now.

Like Dave says, sign here now. Now, dammit.

So, the Catholics are boycotting Pullman, are they? The film makers should have stuck to their guns and left God as the villain of the piece in the first place.

I know, I'm going to boycott them right back.

Oh yes, that's right, I already was.

Happy Darwin Day!

Via Dave.