The Guardian gets a lot of stick but, every now and again, they have some extremely fine writing. Here’s some.

Now we seem to think every terrorist attack puts us in the same rank of suffering as the generations of 1914-45. In reality, our century is, so far, an easy one for Europeans and Americans; to imagine we reel from our own little Verduns and Stalingrads is as dangerous as it is nonsensical.

I often wonder whether the reason that European attitudes about war are so different from American attitudes is because of the numbers. 58,249 in Vietnam vs 700,000 British in WW1 and 6 million Jews and 20 million Soviets in WW2.

3000 dead in Iraq is a terrible, terrible tragedy. But 20 million is a folk memory that will last for generations.

I came across this word today.

Ignosticism is the view that the question of the existence of God is meaningless because it has no verifiable (or testable) consequences and should therefore be ignored.

It’s a nice word. Many of my best friends are ignostics. I’m not though. I am an atheist. I believe there is no God.

Where do you stand on this most important of issues? Scott Adams is against it. Scott Adams thinks that

Car singers believe they have an unalienable right to sing along with the music even if it does make other people feel as if squirrel-banshees have crawled inside their skulls to eat the parts of their brains that control joy.

I think that car singing is one of the ways that we can proclaim loudly to the world that we are alive and life is good. In the words of Mellisa Ethelridge (IIRC),

ay aya aya heye ay aya hey hey

There is no finer moment in life than when you are in a car full of people and suddenly everyone knows the words to a somewhat obscure song and joins in with wild abandon.

Particular episodes that come to mind:

• In the Ghetto with the Kendalls. I thought I was the only one in the world who still likes Elvis but it turned out that In the Ghetto was Harry’s favourite song - as it was mine when I was his age.
• Jazz joining in with Cecilia - how did she know that? I haven’t played Simon and Garfunkel for years
• Georgina knowing all the words to Paradise by the Dashboard light. All my life I dreamed of meeting a woman who would sing Paradise with me as a duet and it turned out that I had already married her! (We used to harmonize on Emotion (actually, she would harmonize, I just sang) but she won’t sing that one any more)
• You were meant for me with assorted people from Alphablox that I barely knew on on the way to the pub from a company outing to Great America

… and my all time favourite…

• Conducting the whole company to sing Bohemian Rhapsody on the bus on the way back from Monterey

[OK - the radio wasn't even playing on the last one but it was marvellous]

The Guardian has an article about new government guidelines for teaching creationism in religious education (RE) classes. Schools will also be required to teach the creation myths of all the major religions and will be required to compare and contrast natural and supernatural explanations of our origins.

This is nothing new to me, of course, since we were taught creationism in school when I was a lad. As I have often said, there is no better way to inoculate teenagers against some of the zanier myths than to have them debate it with their peers.

[to our second year (7th grade) RE teacher]

Miss! So, was Jesus a bastard?

[teacher]

Er. Well. It’s true that Mary and Joseph weren’t married when Jesus was conceived, but we don’t usually call him a bastard.

Wasn’t me asking the question, by the way.

Excellent Doonesbury over at Slate today about the global warming controversy and the dioxin controversy and ….

I have been outrageously busy for the last couple of weeks so I have not been keeping up with the news but, last night, I finally caught up with my Jim Lehrer’s New Hour watching and…it was disturbing.

One of Bush’s most common refrains since the war began has been: “I listen to the generals on the ground. If they say they want more troops, I’ll send em”.

Leak after leak (like L. Paul Bremer’s book) has shown that the generals have been asking for more troops all along.

Sadly for them - and for all of us - now that the generals have started talking about drawing down the number of troops, the president wants to increase it…and what might a stubborn president do when his generals say things he doesn’t want to hear?

Fire them and get new ones.

The president seems to be crawling out on his limb - saw in hand - increasing isolated from reality. He has long isolated himself from the reality-based media. Now he seems to be doing the same with the reality-based generals.

He is also very good when he is serious as he is in his occasional op-ed pieces that he writes for The Guardian. Like this one.

Early this year the Bush administration is to ask Congress to approve an additional $100bn for the onerous task of making life intolerable for the Iraqis. This will bring the total spent on the White House’s current obsession with war to almost $500bn - enough to have given every US citizen $1,600 each. I wonder which the voters would have gone for if given the choice: shall we (a) give every American $1,600 or (b) spend the money on bombing a country in the Middle East that doesn’t use lavatory paper?

Whenever there is a discussion of whether gods exist the discussion always flits between three distinct definitions of god.

1. Old man with a beard who hears our prayers, created the earth and intervenes in our daily affairs and performs miracles. Someone a lot like the gods who are described in the Old Testament, Greek mythology and the Norse sagas. Let’s call him Pop God.
2. Mysterious force that exists outside of the universe and outside of our comprehension. There cannot possibly be any evidence of this god because it does not interact with our universe in any way that is detectable by humans. This is the god of advanced theologians and eastern orthodox mystics. Let’s call it Mystical God.
3. Future humans or alien civilizations with very advanced technology who are able to to do things that seem miraculous to us. Let’s call them Not Gods.

It’s helpful to pin down which definition of god you are discussing to avoid arguments like this:

Clearly Pop God does not exist but if you atheists would only read more advanced theology you would understand that sophisticated believers believe in a Mystical God who is outside our universe and incomprehensible to our puny minds. There is no evidence for this god and that’s the whole point. You can’t prove that this god does not exist, therefore I am justified in believing in him and, in fact, I am off to pray for my Aunt Jessie right now.

Or this one:

Clearly Pop God does not exist but it’s possible that there is an advanced alien civilization which has a technology sufficiently advanced that it is indistinguishable from magic. It’s possible that Not Gods exist, therefore your statement that there are no gods is founded on an unreasonable faith that is entirely equivalent to belief in Pop God.

This argument is sometimes stated more succinctly as:

Since it’s possible that there are Not Gods, clearly there are gods. Your previous statements about being certain that there are no gods and your claims to be an atheist are therefore invalid.

Let me restate my beliefs addressing each category in turn to avoid confusion.

1. There is no evidence for Pop God. Never has been. All the stories about such a god were made up by men. No such god exists or has even existed. I am certain of it. With regard to Pop God, I am atheist.
2. There is no evidence for Mystical God. Never has been and, according to its adherents, never will be. This god will never interact with my world in any meaningful way and for all practical purposes is indistinguishable from no god at all. With regard to Mystical God I am somewhere between atheist and whatever. I am certainly not agnostic on the topic of Mystical God.
3. There is no evidence for Not Gods. Never has been. There might be one day, but I strongly doubt that I will encounter one in my lifetime. I am certain that none of the gods worshiped by past or existing religions were Not Gods. It’s possible that Not Gods exist but there is no evidence of them. Regarding Not Gods, I am an agnostic. At the very first piece of evidence, I will shed my agnosticism and become a believer.

To summarize:

There are no Gods (pop or mystical). I am certain of it. It’s possible that there are Not Gods though.

I wonder if a spammer would appreciate the irony that I am getting loads of comments to my entry A Pyramid of Spam saying “Thanks! I will spread this among my friends!”.

A long time ago, Bob asked

Maybe. I have to learn more about the brights. Is there a good website?

but I did not notice because I had not subscribed to his comments. Let that be a lesson to all of us who do not subscribe to the comments feed in blogs such as this one.

The answer to Bob’s question is

No.

but there is a bad website. It’s at www.the-brights.net.

The Brights did 3 excellent things.

They came up with a rather pleasing logo

that represents a sunrise in a world where north on a map is not necessarily up.

They came up with a definition

A bright is a person who has a naturalistic worldview without supernatural and mystical elements

and an antonym

A super is a person who has a supernatural worldview

to head off the inevitable observation that the opposite of bright is dim.

But then they kind of wandered off into that well-meaning no-man’s land where all liberal causes seem to go once the t-shirts are printed.

They started an entirely admirable campaign to counter the idea that morality can only come from belief in improbable entities. It was originally announced as a two year campaign in 2004. Perhaps they are working up to a big finale? It should come any day now.

They had a number of handy suggestions for what to respond if someone should inadvertently wish you a Merry Christmas or if a theist should unwittingly respond to your sneeze with an unasked for Bless You! (my favourite responses are Merry Christmas and Thank You! respectively) but then they kind of lost their way.

Many would say that they got off to a bad start with the name The Brights but I kind of like it. The world needs a positive term for a positive set of beliefs. For that, I salute them. I also like their handy-dandy definition, their logo and their antonym.

I am a bright. I believe in a naturalistic worldview without supernatural or mystical elements.