I didn’t grow up in a religious family and never had any real knowledge of religion as a child. As a young adult I would have described myself as an agnostic, not saying one way or the other whether there was a god. On one hand there was nothing to say there wasn’t, on the other it was hard to see much evidence in the positive either. There is no real evidence as far as I could see. There have been no miracles or other events in millennium (I know that the Catholic Church still uses miracles to prove sainthood, but that just seems to be people with diseases who recover and say it was prayer, but could just as easily be random recovery). And the bible and other books are stories from a iron age culture, I don’t see how anyone could take them at face value.

Over time I came to see that this position I was taking was weak and I was avoiding the issue, not addressing it. Because in fact it was obvious that there was no god. Having spent more time reading up on science, on physics, chemistry and biology it was clear that science had discovered all kind of explanation for previously unexplained phenomena. There was a really well established theory about how we evolved over time, about how the earth was formed, about the nature of the real material world. You didn’t need god to explain these things. In fact god made little sense in explaining these things, evolution fit much better. Of course people often say that well, science doesn’t explain this little thing or that – this is the basis of the intelligent Design movement. But it is a “God of the Gaps’ argument – wherever there is a gap in sciences explanation, people insert god. But is that a rational approach? Science always has gaps, but over time it fills in those gaps. The existence of gaps in knowledge is not a good basis for god.

So in the end I decided that, given the lack of evidence, I had to be an atheist. Of course, the annoying thing about religion/atheist debate is the varying nature of religious conceptions. So if the 6000 year old earth, no evolution, Abraham on the mountain god is not true, what about a more etherial god? A god who accepts science but is still there in the background, one who is about spirituality and morality? I must admit I have always found this kind of god even more annoying, because it kind of has no strong basis or evidence, so why even begin to believe?

Is it a god who doesn’t effect the evolution of the universe, but created the big bang? But no one knows where the big bang came from, why invent a god to create it? The obvious next question is who created god? And no amount of he is universal and omnipotent etc does anything more than avoid the question by quickly changing the topic.

Can there be no morality without god? Of course there can, morality comes from the same place as all other human values, from humans. Human invented human rights, and they invent all kinds of new moral rights all the time. Should it just be that we should say that the human values that were invented in the iron age are not human but god given? I don’t see the logic in that.

In the end I don’t see a place for god or a need. The history of religion is one of massacre and genocide (gee that old testament!) and inquisitions. But I don’t blame religion for that, for religion is a human construct. It was an attempt to understand the world in a time before science, when the world was dangerous and random. The history of religion is the history of human institutions, no more no less. The catholic church was an outgrowth of the Roman Empire, Islam is generally an outgrowth of Arab nationalism. Structured religion was just human constructs, and non-structured, spiritualist religion was just a blancmange pretending to fill in the gaps of science, but offering no more explanation.

In the end, we have naturalist explanation of the way the world works with all kinds of human institutions built on that, but no god. and that is why I am an Atheist. I realise that people seek meaning in all kind of places and some choose religion, and as long as they dont try and push it down other peoples throats I am fine with that (which is why I like the Anglican church but not the Catholic). But I am happy with my world view.

Chris Dillow at Stumbling and Mumbling makes a provocative post of seven reasons why he doesn’t like women. I can’t really agree with, since some of my best friends are women, but I got a good laugh out of his first reason:

1. They have “feelings.” It would be futile to decry so widespread a human failing, but women – more than men – compound this shortcoming. They think their feelings matter. Worse, they are prone to mistake them for thoughts.

Carl Zimmer, the science journalist has an article up at Corante (whatever that is), which takes an interesting look at Toxoplasma gondii. This is the parasite that cats have that is the reason pregnant women are not allowed to handle kitty litter.

The toxoplasma parasites live in the gut of cats, producing eggs which are excreted and are picked up by other animals in their surrounds, like rats. But to complete the life cycle the toxoplasma must return to the host, the cat. For this to happen the rat must be eaten by the cat. But generally rats have a fear of cats, which Carl Zimmer reports has been shown by experimentation:

The scientists studied the rats in a six-foot by six-foot outdoor enclosure. They used bricks to turn it into a maze of paths and cells. In each corner of the enclosure they put a nest box along with a bowl of food and water. On each the nests they added a few drops of a particular odor. On one they added the scent of fresh straw bedding, on another the bedding from a rat’s nests, on another the scent of rabbit urine, on another, the urine of a cat. When they set healthy rats loose in the enclosure, the animals rooted around curiously and investigated the nests. But when they came across the cat odor, they shied away and never returned to that corner. This was no surprise: the odor of a cat triggers a sudden shift in the chemistry of rat brains that brings on intense anxiety.

But when the rats were infected with the toxoplasma (which gets into their brains) their behaviour was different:

The scent of a cat in the enclosure didn’t make them anxious, and they went about their business as if nothing was bothering them. They would explore around the odor at least as often as they did anywhere else in the enclosure. In some cases, they even took a special interest in the spot and came back to it over and over again.

The toxoplasma actually infected the rats brain to make them less scared of cats, so that they are more likely to be eaten by cats, allowing the toxoplasma to return to the cat-host and reproduce in its gut.

Now this toxoplasma also infects humans, and half of all people are estimated to be infected. We also know that half of all people are dog people, and half are cat people. How did that half become cat people? I think we know now. They are all infected with toxoplasma gondii.

In related news, there are lots of these parasites that effect animal behaviour, for example, so as to make ants climb high to release their spores:

Reading the weekend paper a few weeks ago, I came across this “advertisement”:

They are always interesting, these notes put in national newspapers, that are not adverts or job ads, indicating that some section of the community has some (at least what they perceive as) interesting information for the rest of us.

It is surprising that the ad does not really give you much information at all about the organisation. The only description is that the Foundation for Humanity’s Adulthood is “dedicated to understanding and ameliorating the human condition”. This unfortunately could be used to describe half the organisations in the world! The “human condition”, at least on plain reading, could cover most human traits: love, hate, addiction, depression, religion. They only other real pointer is the description of the defamation case that the article is about, one where the SMH apparently implied that the Foundation “placed demands on its members which tore families apart”. From that one could infer that it might be a religious organisation or other such organisation (although on closer inspection it is not, see below).

Nonetheless a visit to the organisation’s website does not really help to clarify matters. It mentions the court case above, a book called “Freedom”, and an interestingly a link to a discussion forum post that makes positive comments about someone called “Griffith”. This stood out a bit for a foundation website, this Griffith must somehow be central to the foundation.

The description of the FHA page adds little, although it does mention a Foundation Director, Jeremy Griffith. More information on him is available on wikipedia:

The FHA promotes and provides a forum for Griffith’s theory of human nature. Between the years 1975 and 1988 Griffith developed a theory which claims to explain human nature, good and evil and provide a way to a better life. Griffith’s theory developed from reflections on the nature of human beings as both loving and hateful, a state of being he refers to as the human condition. He also wished to develop an explanation for humanity’s destructive effect on the natural environment. In 1988 he established the Foundation for Humanity’s Adulthood as an organization to promote, support and discuss his theory.

The organisation has about 50 members who support the program of FHA, which seem to be based around the philosophical like writing of Jeremy Griffith.

The understanding of the human condition explains the difference between our instincts and intellect and the effect that difference has had on our behaviour. It describes how the anger and selfishness felt by humans is the result of these two factions within ourselves—the gene-based instinctive learning system struggling against the nerve-based intellect’s capacity to understand.

This conflict, which started some two million years ago when consciousness emerged, causes humans to live with an undeserved sense of guilt that is characterised by competition and aggression. Once guilt is removed by being explained—which the FHA says is now possible—the competition and aggression in humans naturally subsides.

He appear to use some aspect of biology to construct a theory around our instincts and intellect on how that can improve our understanding of our condition – and maybe provide guidance to future actions.

Without going into it deeper I am not sure how far this advances us. Dualism has been around for a long time.

There was a case a few months ago regarding a 9-year old girl in Brazil who was raped by her step-father and subsequently had a abortion. At that time the Catholic Church in Brazil excommunicated the family of the girl as well as the doctors who performed the operation (original story).

As you could imagine there was some consternation over these action. But it was just the church in Brazil. But now the Catholic Church Hierarchy has made its position clear. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (previously known as the Holy Office of the Inquisition) has made it clear that the actions of the Brazilian Church was no mistake but rather official Church policy. The National Catholic reporter:

The doctrinal congregation said the statements from church leaders led to some confusion about the position of the church, “taking into account the dramatic situation of the child — who, it turns out — was accompanied with pastoral delicacy by the then-archbishop.”
“In this regard, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith reaffirms that the doctrine of the church on procured abortion has not and cannot change,” the statement said.
To deliberately abort a fetus is to kill an innocent human being, it said.
“Regarding procured abortions in certain difficult and complex situations,” the doctrinal congregation said that “the clear and precise teaching” of Pope John Paul II in his 1995 encyclical, Evangelium Vitae (The Gospel of Life), remains valid.

The Catholic Church continues to hold one of the most conservative positions on abortion, not providing even a exemption for children who are raped.